Mistress of Justice (15 page)

CHAPTER TEN

It was nearly 8
P.M
. but for some reason the closing of a corporate merger that had begun at 2 that afternoon ran into difficulties and was not yet completed—some delay in Japanese regulatory approvals.

The Hubbard, White & Willis lawyers and paralegals working on the case, clutching stacks of documents, scurried back and forth between the several conference rooms devoted to the closing like ants stealing bread crumbs from a picnic though with considerably more content faces than their insect counterparts—presumably because ants don’t make a collective $4,000 per hour for carting around bits of soggy food. The clients, on the other hand—the
payers
of those legal fees—were nothing but frustrated.

Back from her trip to Lillick’s apartment, Taylor Lockwood had learned many intimate details about the closing because she’d been dodging the lawyers and clients for the past hour. Like the clients in the delayed deal, Taylor had her own frustrations.

John Silbert Hemming had neglected to tell her that dactyloscopy powder didn’t come off.

She’d just finished fingerprinting Reece’s burglarized file cabinet and painstakingly transferring the sticky tape of the two dozen latents she’d found to cards. She thought back to what Hemming’d told her. Yes, he’d mentioned the different kinds of powders. He’d mentioned how to spread it around and how to brush, not blow, the excess away.

But he hadn’t told her the stuff was like dry ink.

Once you—once
one
—dusted it onto the surface the damn stuff didn’t wipe off. The smear just got bigger and bigger.

She wasn’t concerned about the file cabinet that had contained the note. She was concerned about Mitchell Reece’s coffee mug, emblazoned with “World’s Greatest Lawyer,” which she’d dusted to get samples of his prints to eliminate those from the ones she lifted off his cabinet.

Fingerprinting powder coated the mug like epoxy paint. She did her best to clean it then noticed she’d gotten some on her blouse. She pinched the midriff of the shirt and fluffed the poor garment to see if that would dislodge the powder. No effect. She tried to blow it away, and—as her tall private eye had warned—spit into the smear, which immediately ran the powder into the cloth. Permanently, she suspected.

Taylor sighed and pulled on her suit jacket to cover the smudge.

She hurried down to Ralph Dudley’s office, where she lifted samples of his fingerprints, then on to Thom Sebastian’s, where she did the same.

Finally, back in the paralegal pens, she took samples of Sean Lillick’s prints from several objects in his cubicle. Then back in her own cubicle she put the fingerprint cards in an envelope and hid it under a stack of papers in the bottom drawer of her desk.

She found the phone number that Lillick had given her—Danny Stuart, Linda Davidoff’s roommate—and called him. He wasn’t in but she left a message asking if they could meet; there was something about Linda she wanted to ask him about.

She hung up and then happened to look down at her desktop and, with a twist in her gut, noticed the managing attorney’s daily memo. In the square for Tuesday of next week were these words:

As she stared there was suddenly a huge explosion behind her.

Taylor spun around, inhaling a scream.

Her eyes met those of a young man in a white shirt. He was standing in the hall, staring back at her. He held a bottle of French champagne he’d just opened. “Hey, sorry,” he said. Then smiled. “We just closed. We finally got Bank of Tokyo approval.”

“I’m happy for you,” she said and snagged her coat then started down the hallway as he turned his groggy attention to opening more bottles and setting them on a silver tray.

The drapery man watched her pull her overcoat on and step into the lobby, the door swinging shut behind her.

He patiently waited a half hour, just in case she’d forgotten anything, and when she didn’t return he walked slowly down the corridor to Taylor Lockwood’s cubicle, pushing the drapery cart in front of him, his hand near his ice-pick weapon.

Upstairs the firm was bustling like mid-morning—some big fucking business deal going on, dozens of lawyers and assistants ignoring him—but down here the place was dark and empty. He paused in the Lockwood woman’s cubicle, checked the hallways again and dropped to his knees. In two minutes he’d fitted the transmitting microphone, like the one he planted in Mitchell Reece’s phone, into hers.

The drapery man finished the job, tested the device, ran a sweep to make sure it wasn’t detectable and walked to the entranceway of the paralegal cubicles.

Nearby was a conference room, in which he saw a half-dozen open bottles of champagne sitting on a silver tray. When he touched one with the back of his hand he found it was still cold. He glanced behind him, pulled on his gloves and lifted the first bottle to his mouth. He took a sip then ran his tongue around the lip of the bottle. He did the same with the others.

Then feeling the faint buzz from the dry wine—and a huge sense of satisfaction—he returned to the hallway and started pushing his cart toward the back door.

“Never take a job,” Sean Lillick said pensively, holding the door open, “where you have to hold things in your teeth.”

Carrie Mason, standing in the door of his shabby East Village walk-up, blinked. “Never what?” she asked, entering.

“That’s a line from a piece I’m working on right now. I’m, like, a performance artist. This one’s about careers. I call it ‘W2 Blues.’ Like your W2 form, the tax thing. It’s spoken over music.”

“Never take a job that …” Pained, she said, “I don’t think I get it.”

“There’s nothing to get,” he explained, a little irritated. “It’s more of a social comment, you know, than a joke. It’s about how we’re defined in terms of what we do for a living. You know, like the first thing lawyers say when you meet them is what they do for a living. The point is we should be human beings first and then have a career.”

She nodded. “So when you just said you were a performance artist, that was, like, being ironic?”

Now,
he
blinked. Then, even more irritated, he nodded. “Yeah, exactly. Ironic.”

He examined her from the corner of his eye. The girl was hardly his type. Although on the whole Lillick preferred women to men (he’d had his share of both since he came to New York from Des Moines five years ago) the sort of
women he wanted to fuck were willowy, quiet, beautiful and passed cold judgment on anyone they bothered to glance at.

Carrie Mason didn’t come close to meeting his specifications. For one thing, she was fat. Well, okay, not fat, but round—round in a way that needed pleated skirts and billowy blouses to make her look good. For another, she was polite and laughed a lot, which was evidence that she would rarely pass moody judgments on anyone at all.

Lillick also suspected she blushed frequently and he couldn’t see himself getting involved with anybody who blushed.

“You know,” she said after a moment, “tailors hold pins and things in their teeth. Fashion designers too. And carpenters hold nails when they’re building houses.”

That was true. He hadn’t thought of that. And her comment made him even angrier with her. “I meant more like, you know, maybe holding bits of tape or tools or something.” Then he added quickly, “The point is, like, just to make people think about things.”

“Well, it
does
make you think,” she conceded.

Lillick took her coat. “You want a beer?”

She was studying the keyboards and computers. “Sure.”

“Have a seat.”

She ran her hand over the tie-dye bedspread and glanced at her fingers to make sure the coloring didn’t come off.

Excuse me, your royal highness.…

She sat down. He opened a Pabst and handed it to her, thinking only after he did that he probably should have poured it into a glass. But to take it back and find a clean mug would now seem stupid.

“I was surprised when you called, Sean.”

“Yeah?” Lillick punched on a Meredith Monk tape. “I’ve been meaning to. You know, you work with somebody and you think, I’m going to call her up, yadda, yadda, yadda, but you get caught up in things.”

“That’s sure true.”

“Anyway, I was thinking of going over to this place for
goat.…” But he stopped speaking fast, thinking what the hell would his buddies from the East Village say if they saw him at Carlos’ with a fat preppy princess?

But he didn’t need to worry; Carrie wrinkled her nose at the food. “Goat?”

“Maybe,” he said, “we’ll find someplace else. Whatta you like?”

“Burgers and fries and salads. Usual stuff, you know. I usually hang out at the bars on Third Avenue. They’re fun. You know, sing along.”

“When Irish Eyes Are Smiling …” God in heaven save me.

“You want me to …,” Carrie began.

“Huh?”

“Well, I was going to say: If you want me to iron your shirt I’m, like, way good at that sort of thing.”

The garment was a tan shirt printed with tiny brown scenes of European landmarks. It was one of his favorites and the cloth was wrinkled as a prune.

He laughed. “You iron this poor thing, it’d curl up and die.”

Carrie said, “I like ironing. It’s therapeutic. Like washing dishes.”

In his five years in Manhattan he’d never ironed a single piece of clothing. He
did
do the dishes. Occasionally.

Outside a man’s scream cut through the night. Then another, followed by a long moan. Carrie looked up, alarmed.

Lillick laughed. “It’s just a hooker. There’s a guy turns tricks across the air shaft. He’s a howler.” He pointed to a machine. “That’s a digital sampler. It’s a computer that records a sound and lets you play it back through your synthesizer on any note you want.”

Carrie looked at the device.

Lillick continued, “I recorded the screaming one night. It was totally the best!” He laughed. “I performed a piece from Bach’s
Well-Tempered Clavier
, only instead of the harpsichord sound it’s a gay hooker shouting, ‘Deeper, deeper!’ ”