The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremish Healy Read Free Book Online

of your guests'. Well, that
sounded to me a lot like being married, which I already knew I wasn't
crazy about, eh? So I said fuck it and bought this place with a
mortgage like the White House oughta have and found out my own three
gotta's."
    "Which are?"
    "Gotta pay me, gotta pay me, gotta pay me."
    Dufresne laughed, a honking sound that contrasted
with the way his accent smoothed over some of his consonants. "So
here I am, a Frenchy in an Irish neighborhood, running a welfare
hotel for deadbeats."
    He seemed to run down, and I decided to build slowly
toward Michael Mantle, the alibi witness. "About Spaeth?"
    Dufresne seemed to look at me for the first time, a
new angle for the cocked head. "What about him?"
    "I'd like to see the man's room."
    "It ain't his anymore."
    "The one he used to rent, then."
    "There's a viewing fee, eh?"
    The fourth gotta. "How much?"
    "I go by the amount of time I spend. So—"
    “— Twenty bucks for twenty minutes, if that."
    Dufresne said, "Let's see it."
    I dug out my wallet, handed him the bill. He stood up
and led me out of his sitting room to the corridor and a central
staircase.
    As we topped the first flight, I could see four room
doors, all closed. Labored, wheezy coughing came from behind the one
nearest the steps. "He all right in there?"
    "No, he's dying in there." Dufresne glanced
over his shoulder toward the door. "Hank's got emphysema. Some
day he's gonna stop coughing, and I'll be cleaning his lungs off the
floor along with everything else."
    "Did Hank know Spaeth?"
    "No."
    "You sure?"
    "Spaeth wouldn't go near him. Scared Hank had
something contagious."
    We climbed to the third floor, Dufresne stopping at
the first door on the right of the staircase. "Your asshole used
to be in here."
    Dufresne didn't have to use a key because the
old-fashioned glass knob twisted in his hand. Entering the room, I
could see carved foot and headboards, the same polished hardwood
floors as downstairs, and wallpaper that was separating only a little
in one corner from a water stain browning the ceiling plaster.
    "Nice room," I said, meaning it.
    "You rent from me, you get your money's worth."
Dufresne gestured at the floor. "Every time somebody moved out,
I'd do over his room. The floors, the walls. Bring up furniture from
the basement, restore it with sand-paper and varnish. Got through
twelve of the fourteen before I realized I'd never make my money
back."
    "Fourteen?"
    "Right. Four per floor on two through four. Just
a pair of roomers on the ground floor."
    "Because you have the other half of it."
    "Like you saw, eh? My bedroom's in the back of
the parlor we were in."
    Parlor. That's what it'd felt like, too.
    I walked around the room Spaeth had told me about.
However nice, it was only twelve-by-twelve, one window on the back
wall and a simple overhead light. A nightstand with no drawers stood
on one side of the bed, a bureau with no mirror on the other.
    I pointed to the closed door on the window wall.
    "Bathroom?"
    "Closet. Bathroom on this floor's next to the
kitchen."
    "So, four renters share the hopper and shower?"
    "And sink. Some of them'll try to brush their
teeth in the kitchen, but I stop that pretty quick."
    "Why?"
    "You let them use the kitchen for bathroom
stuff, pretty soon they're pissing in that sink, too."
    I looked at Dufresne, then went to the closet. Empty,
musty.
    Turning back to the room door, I saw a dead bolt on
it, an old keyhole lock under the knob. "You give the roomers
keys to those?"
    "The ones I got keys to."
    "Including this room?"
    "Yeah, but tell you the truth, the locks are so
old, just about everybody's is like a master key for all of them."
    Which meant that Spaeth's story about somebody
stealing his gun wasn't so crazy. But given what Spaeth had said
about Dufresne's attitude on firearms, I thought I ought to hold that
until after I asked about the alibi witness.
    "You said the man with emphysema didn't know
Spaeth. Anybody else here friendly with him?"
    "With