The only good Lawyer

with the boy. Told him why he was going to die.” Burbage’s hand trembled violently inside mine.
    I said, “And then you went around to the passenger side of the car and dropped the gun into Nicole Spaeth’s lap.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why didn’t you kill her, too?”
    “I’d thought about it, believe me. As a contingency plan, just like you allow for when drawing a client’s complicated will. And I would have killed Mrs. Spaeth, too, if she’d been sober enough to see or hear anything incriminating.”
    “But since she was drunk, you didn’t have to.”
    “And didn’t want to, John. Even with the wig and sunglasses, I recognized the woman. But if possible, I didn’t want to kill her. Can you guess why?”
    “Because while you had a motive to kill Gant, only Alan Spaeth would have had a motive to kill him and not to kill a potential witness only Spaeth himself loved.”
    “And...?”
    It took me a minute. “And only Spaeth would have a revenge reason for a ‘practical joke,’ letting his wife know who killed her new lover by leaving ‘his’ gun as the murder weapon in her lap.”
    A fatherly smile. “You would have made a fine trusts and estates lawyer, John.”
    “Not if it’d mean turning out like you.”
    The smile flew off his face. “Woodrow Gant betrayed me!” Neely waved the gun around his greenhouse. “Just like those bastards in Army intelligence betrayed my Ranger outfit in ‘forty-four. Not telling us the guns at Pointe-du-Hoc had been moved, letting half my friends be cut down by enemy fire climbing that goddamned rock that didn’t mean a thing anymore. My first outfit was betrayed that day, and Woodrow betrayed my current outfit in his own way.”
    “Oh, be honest, Frank. It takes a lot of money to maintain your little version of ‘the Pointe’ up here. You’re on the mortgage personally with no other tenants to help carry it. You needed the proceeds from the policy on Gant’s life.”
    “The firm needed it.”
    “No, Frank. There wasn’t going to be a firm anymore.”
    “There always—”
    “Uta Radachowski was in line for her judgeship, and Deborah Ling intended to pull the ripcord, too, with or without Gant. The firm was going to lose most of its rainmakers, which would jeopardize your staying in this building as a home.”
    Neely seemed to soften for a moment, even relent. “I’d been through two partnership breakups, John. The only real asset I had was ‘Epstein & Neely,’ bringing in cash to carry the building here. At my age, I couldn’t start over again.” A hardening. “And I shouldn’t have to. I survived a war; goddamnit. It was supposed to be my turn to take it easy as a senior partner; not husde for clients like some insurance salesman.”
    “Tell me, Frank, is bailing out really what Ling wanted to see you about the morning she died?” Neely ground his jaw. “Deborah came into my office, said she had to talk with me. After Woodrow was gone, I was sure she’d stay, build her real estate practice inside the firm. But no, I seemed to be the only good lawyer around. Deborah confirmed that she was a traitor, too. Leaving us over her ‘romantic involvement’ with that gangster; Trinh.”
    I closed my eyes for a second.
    “Yes, John,” said Neely. “I’d never heard the name until the afternoon before, when you’d mentioned him as a criminal connected to the Vietnamese restaurant Woodrow visited. Trinh and Deborah being a couple seemed a bit too convenient to be coincidental.”
    “So you saw a chance to punish Ling for her ‘betrayal’ and to cash another million-dollar policy, both in one fell swoop.”
    “Actually, killing Deborah worried me more than you can guess.”
    Burbage’s hand squirmed in my own.
    Neely made a tsking sound. “I had to follow her last Friday and do the deed in broad daylight, stuffing her handbag into that big old briefcase of mine, all without any real planning ahead of time.”
    The reason he’d used the same method of killing that had worked with Mantle. “But why couldn’t you plan it, Frank?”
    “Because that morning in my office, Deborah told me not just about quitting the firm, but also that she was going to the District Attorney with the fact of her representing the gangster/boyfriend in purchasing that restaurant building.”
    Which meant I really had panicked Ling. “And her blowing that whistle would have widened the official investigation—”
    “—like a floodgate—”
    “—and tied