The only good Lawyer

all this shit hit the fan.”
    “Where are these other weapons now?”
    “Locked away in storage, along with most of my stuff from the West Roxbury place.”
    “But you kept the throwaway piece?”
    “Brought it to the boarding-house, yeah. For protection, understand? Only the Taurus got stolen from my room. One of the reasons I moved out. Fucking owner of the place had a thing against guns, and I figured Dufresne was the one who took it.”
    “Dufresne being the owner.”
    “Yeah. ‘Vincennes Dufresne,’ the little frog fuck.”
    I let that one pass. “Whether it was your weapon or not, the shells in the cylinder had your prints on them.”
    “Steve told me my prints weren’t on the Taurus itself, though. You think I’m stupid enough to wipe my prints off the gun and not off the bullets?”
    “Happens all the time.”
    “And then leave the thing by Gant’s car?”
    Stupider still, granted. “How would somebody get shells with your prints on them if it wasn’t your gun?”
    Spaeth looked at me hard with the good eye. “That’s why I think it was my Taurus, sport. And my shells in it. Somebody set me up.”
    “Dufresne?”
    A stop. “No, that doesn’t make sense.”
    I felt the twinge again. “Who, then?”
    “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you, right?”
    There was something about Spaeth, down past all the obnoxious bluff and bluster, that rang true. And it bothered me.
    “Okay,” I said. “Steve told me you had an alibi witness.”
    “Damn straight. Mickey, guy I met at Dufresne’s.”
    “You know his last name?”
    “Of course I do. We were drinking buddies the whole time I was staying there. Had to have something for social life, once Gant got me kicked out of my house.”
    “And Mickey’s last name?”
    Spaeth paused. “Actually, his real first name’s ‘Michael,’ middle initial ‘A.’ ”
    “Michael A. what?”
    Spaeth chewed a moment. “Mantle.”
    “Mickey... Mantle?”
    “I saw his birth certificate, he carries it with him everywhere, win drinks off guys in the bars. He calls himself ‘Mickey Mantle,’ and he can prove he’s entitled to it.”
    “Just like he can prove you’re innocent.”
    “Damned right. We got shitfaced together in my apartment the night Gant was shot.”
    “Your apartment?”
    “I used the money Steve sprung from the divorce to put a security deposit on a real place.”
    “Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why would you use some of your tight money to rent an apartment instead of staying at Dufresne’s till you were employed again?”
    “Hey, sport, you ever tried to get a job—a good job—with no private phone and a boarding-house for an address? Plus, like I told you, the guy running the place probably stole my gun.”
    “So you move to an apartment, and this Mantle comes over to drink.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Why not go out drinking with him?”
    “Cheaper this way.”
    Spaeth could tell I wasn’t buying. “And besides, you live in a little room at a boarding-house long enough, even a small apartment is a nice place to spend some time.” Spaeth looked behind him, into the unit. “Believe me. Here I got a cell maybe half the size of my room at Dufresne’s.”
    “Aside from Mantle, can anybody else vouch for where you were the night Woodrow Gant was killed?”
    “No.” Spaeth raked his hand through the hair again. “No, like I said, we got shitfaced together. The Mick must have left sometime after I fell asleep, because the first thing I remember is a couple of homicide cops banging on my door after they couldn’t find Ute at the rooming house.”
    “And they can’t find Mantle, either.”
    “Which just means they haven’t really looked for him. I mean, he’s this little, scraggly guy. Reddish hair, reddish beard. Probably hasn’t gone more than five miles from Dufresne’s in the last year without somebody to drive him.”
    “So he should have turned up by now.”
    “Unless he’s in a drunk tank somewhere, or...” Spaeth ran out of gas. “Look, I’ll level with you, sport. I listen to my story as I’m telling it to you, and I don’t believe it myself. All I know is, I didn’t kill that bastard lawyer Gant. It doesn’t make any fucking sense to me, either but somebody must have set me up to take the fall, and if you can’t find Mickey, I’m gonna spend the rest of my fucking life with guys ten times worse than the one busted me in the shower. And I don’t think I can... can take...”
    At which point Alan