Free The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremish Healy Page A

our table, asking her boss a short,
swift question in Vietnamese. Chan shot something back.
    I said, “I'd like to speak with Dinah myself."
    "She my only waitress here." He waved a
hand. "Must work other tables."
    I was beginning to get tired of Chan. "You cover
them for her."
    "What?"
    "Dinah sits with me, you work the tables. And if
you say anything more to her, say it in English."
    Chan didn't like that, but got up without another
word in either language and walked over to the young couple in
business suits.
    I looked at the chair he'd vacated, but Dinah went to
the third instead. After setting down my spring rolls, she used her
right hand to lower herself into the violin-back, as though the leg
didn't work very well when bent.
    "From the war?" I said.
    The eyes grew sadder. "Yes."
    "I'm sorry."
    “ War is over." And the eyes tried to come
back, too.
    "I'm investigating the—"
    "Can I see ID, please?"
    Interesting. "You asked Chan in Vietnamese if I
was police, and he said that's what I told him."
    She looked around, saw her boss go into the kitchen.
"ID, please?"
    I took out the leather case and handed it over.
Reading, Dinah glanced twice to the swinging doors, being sure Chan
was still out of sight before sending it back to me.
    Very quietly, "You not police."
    "No."
    The hacking cough again. "You lie to Chan?"
    "No."
    A smile now, but still without showing any teeth. I
said, "Chan is not as smart as you are."
    She stared at me. "Why should I talk to you?"
    "To help someone."
    "Who?"
    "The man I'm representing. The police think he
killed Woodrow Gant. I don't."
    Dinah seemed troubled. "I cannot help."
    "Why not?"
    "I . . . it is danger for me."
    "Danger from what?"
    "Please. Mr. Gant and woman have dinner. That is
all I know."
    "Dinah, what are you afraid of?"
    Chan came out of the kitchen glaring at us as he
carried a tray for the young couple.
    Dinah levered herself up from the chair, coughing
once more. "Please," she said, and then limped back toward
the swinging doors, never looking at Chan.
    He walked over to me, his tray now empty. "Waitress
bring rest of your food now. You eat, you pay, you leave."
    As Chan went back toward his cash register, I tried
the spring rolls. Kind of soggy. I also tried to figure out what was
scaring Dinah, and probably Chan, too.
    Giving up on that for the
moment, I pushed the spring rolls aside just as Jerry Vale came over
the stereo.
    * * *
    An hour later, I parked the Prelude as close as
possible to Boston's Area B police station. Families and the elderly
were taking the nice fall air within sight of it, like settlers
staying around a cavalry fort when trouble was expected.
    Which, for Area B, amounts to a
twenty-four-hour-a-day proposition.
    The station was home (in some sense of that word) to
the department's Anti-Gang Violence Unit. The unit had been organized
when Boston set its all-time record for homicides in 1990. I've
always thought a better name would have been the "Gang
Anti-Violence Unit." but nobody ever asked me.
    As I went in the downstairs door, an African-American
woman and two little girls I took to be her daughters were coming
out. The woman had on a green, tailored suit, her hair pulled back
into a bun. The girls, maybe a year apart, wore identical print
dresses and cornrowed tresses. Some beads had been carefully worked
into the braids, creating a dazzling, almost crystal-curtain effect
every time either girl moved her head. Which they were doing a lot,
as both they and the mother were crying their eyes out.
    I was still shaking my own
head as I asked the officer at the desk for Larry Cosentino or
Yolanda King.
    * * *
    "Hey. Cuddy, right?"
    Ilario "Larry" Cosentino stood near a tall
window, his right foot up on the corner of a desk chair. He was tying
the lace to a Turntec running shoe that hadn't gotten any cleaner
since the last time I'd seen him, some months before when a gang of
young girls thought their path to riches would be clearer without me
in the