Mistress of Justice (24 page)

Dinner was Ada’s jurisdiction.

She presided with the quiet authority of someone
for whom social propriety is statutory. Somewhere, in a three-decades-old volume of Emily Post, this very layout of Waterford and Wedgwood was represented. Though the clothing was supposed to be casual, Ada’s appearance in a rustling silk dress, black-velvet headband and necklace gripping a lemon-colored stone the size of a fat thumb made it clear that, whatever happened in the frat dining halls or eating clubs these youngsters were accustomed to, dinner in this particular house would be governed by a respectable modicum of formality.

Taylor tried a vain end run around the seating (“Oh, I’m sorry, was I supposed to sit there?”); Ada smilingly steered her away from Bosk’s girlfriend (a potential source of information about the “project”), scolding, “Boy, girl, boy, girl …”

Lobster bisque, a pear-and-Camembert salad, tiny veal chops surrounded by a yin-yang swirl of pureed peas and carrots, a green salad. A real butler served the meal.

Between polite words with the young man on her right Taylor tried to overhear the conversation between Bosk and Sebastian but Ada’s voice was too loud—she was a lock-jawed caricature of Long Island money. She touched the men’s arms with her dark, bony fingers and flirted fiercely. Yet their hostess knew this game as well as she knew the proper wording for bread-and-butter notes. She had no intention of seducing these boys; the only organ at play here was her ego—though sex was a strong undercurrent of the meal and crude jokes, some of them really disgusting, flew back and forth. (The upper class, Taylor remembered, had by and large not been Puritans.)

Halfway through the profiteroles and espresso with anisette, the doorbell rang. Bosk rose and a few minutes later returned with a man of about forty-five. He was introduced as Dennis Callaghan.

Taylor disliked him at once.

She wasn’t sure why. What she might in fairness have read as groomed, discerning and charming she believed was vain (spun, sprayed hair combed forward, a close-fitting suit with shot cuffs, gold bracelet), pompous (a disdaining look
at the children around him) and dishonest (a broad smile he could not have felt).

He was also insulting: He ignored Taylor while he studied the bloused or sweatered breasts of every woman younger than herself at the table before turning a flattering smile on Ada with the respect due a matriarch.

Taylor then noticed that the climate at the table had changed considerably. Sebastian’s expression was one of anger. He shot a dark, mystified glance at Bosk, who shrugged with a look that meant, It wasn’t my fault. When she saw that, Taylor’s interest immediately perked up. Perhaps Callaghan had some connection with the “project.”

The visitor, whose beach house was apparently nearby, announced that he’d played hooky from Wall Street today to hold a couple of meetings out here and happened to notice the cars as he was driving back to the city. He thought he’d stop in and see Bosk and Sebastian.

The man glanced at Sebastian, and Taylor saw another finger wag, just like the other night. Callaghan nodded subtly.

And so the conversation remained social. As he sat down at the table and took a glass of wine—he’d eaten already—they talked about problems in finding grounds-keepers and the advantages and risks of helicoptering into Manhattan. Sebastian remained nervous as hell and when Taylor asked Callaghan what he did for a living the young lawyer answered for the businessman, offering quickly, “Wall Street, darling.
Everybody
out here’s on Wall Street. Well, you’ve got an artist or two from time to time—Taylor’s a musician, by the way.”

“Really?”

The conversation turned back to her momentarily and before she could ask anything more about Callaghan, dinner was over and Sebastian had quickly shepherded Bosk and the businessman downstairs, explaining that they were going to check out Bosk’s cigar cellar.

No one else was invited but the herd of preppies didn’t
take any offense. Ada nodded toward the port, sherry and liqueur and, armed with yet more alcohol, this contingent ambled into the panoramic living room for more gossip.

It was then that Taylor recalled: She hadn’t told Sebastian that she was a musician.

Soon several people lit up cigarettes, Ada among them.

The smoke gave Taylor an excuse to drain her Grand Marnier and say she was going to step outside to get some air. Whether anyone thought this was rude, or suspicious, didn’t matter; they all seemed relieved that the 7-Eleven heiress was leaving and they could spend some time dishing in earnest.

She took her leather jacket from the closet and walked out the front door, then strolled around the house until she spotted a four-foot-deep window well. She climbed down into it. A piece of glass was loose and she worked it free. She could not see the three men downstairs but their words, carried on the warm air, streamed up to her with the awkward-sounding hesitancies of conversations overheard but not witnessed.

“Got to be more careful,” Sebastian said. “Jesus, I shit when I saw you here.”

Callaghan said, “We’ve still got some details to work out. And you’re impossible to get ahold of, Thom.”

“Well, we can’t just fucking waltz into each other’s office and take a meeting now, can we? We’ve got to be careful about it, set it up ahead of time, keep everything secret.”

Callaghan sighed. “I’ve been doing this sort of thing a lot longer than you have, Thom. We’re going to get away with it. Stop worrying so much.”

“I’m thinking about the phones,” Bosk said. “You really think they’re bugged?”

Sebastian said, “Of course they’re fucking bugged. Jesus, don’t be so naive.

Bosk: “Well, I can’t run downstairs to make a call from a
pay phone every time I want to talk to you. Somebody sees me doing that a couple of times and what’re they going to think?”

Sebastian: “Well, that’s what you’re going to have to do. You can pick up cell phone transmissions even easier than landlines.”

Callaghan: “What we could do—I’ve done this before—what we could do is get an answering service. You call and leave messages. I’ll call on a separate line and pick them up. We’ll have a second answering service going the other way.”

Clever, Taylor Lockwood thought, though being truly clever, Thom, would have meant wearing gloves when you check out the file cabinet you’re about to break into so you don’t leave fingerprints.

Suddenly she felt a curious thrill. What was it? The excitement of the pursuit, she supposed, getting closer to her quarry. What Reece felt in the courtroom yesterday. What her father undoubtedly felt—in court, on the golf course, with his beloved shotgun out in the fields.

When she was young her father would take her with him when he’d go hunting on Saturday mornings in the fall. She’d hated those times, wanted to be back home in bed, watching cartoons or playing on her upright piano, shopping with her mother. But Samuel Lockwood, eyes keen and hungry for a kill, had insisted she come along. He’d carried the tiny, still-warm corpses of the birds back to the car, where came the moment she dreaded: To make her understand that the dead birds couldn’t hurt her, he had her touch each one with her index finger.

There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Didn’t hurt. They can’t bite when they’re dead, Taylie, remember that
.

Dennis Callaghan now said, “Look, yeah, we have to be careful but we can’t let this paralyze us.”

“We’re fucking thieves,” Sebastian said. “Am I the only one taking this seriously?”

Bosk’s laugh was flinty. “Well, whatta you want, Thom? You want to get walkie-talkies and scramblers? Disguises?”

“I’m just a little paranoid, okay? There was a weird fuckup.”

“What?”

“Well, last Saturday night, when I was in the firm?”

“Right,” Callaghan offered.

“I made sure nobody knew I was there—on Friday I taped the back door latch down so I could get in without leaving any record I was in. But what happens is this old asshole, a partner, cops my key and uses it to get in early Sunday morning. So now I’m in the system.”

Gotcha, thought Taylor Lockwood. John Silbert Hemming, her tall private eye, would be proud of her.

“Shit,” Bosk said. “Why’d he do it?”

“How the fuck do I know? Alzheimer’s.”

Callaghan said, “Not the end of the world. They don’t know what you were doing there, right?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, relax. You’ve covered up everything real well, Thom.… Oh, here. Got a present.”

“Ah, nectar of the gods,” Sebastian said.

“Sure,” Bosk said. A long pause.

Then a sniff. Another.

The magic powder boosted Sebastian’s spirits considerably. When he spoke next he said with a laugh, “I like this—fucking the firm that fucked me and getting rich in the process.”

“You want a Lamborghini?” Callaghan asked.

Bosk said seriously, “I don’t like the ride. Rough, you know.”

Sebastian: “I live in Manhattan. What’m I gonna do, alternate-side-of-the-street parking with a two-hundred-thousand-dollar car?”

“Keep it out at your summer house, Thom, like we all do.”

“I don’t have a summer house. And I don’t want one.”

The wind was dicing her face and ears. She closed her eyes against the cold. Her legs and thighs, the last stronghold
of heat, were going numb. She touched the glass that separated her from a room that was fifty degrees warmer, where she heard the sounds of two chubby, spoiled boys sniffing the residue of cocaine into their nostrils.

Bosk said, “So what’s with this Taylor cunt? She put out?”

“Fuck you,” Sebastian said unemotionally.

“No, does she fuck
you
? That’s what I’m asking.”

Callaghan sniffed his white powder then said, “You’ve got gonads for brains, Bosk. Is that all you think about? Sex?”

“Money, too. I think a lot about money but mostly I think about sex. Tell me about Taylor.”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” Sebastian said menacingly.

“Does she have big tits? I couldn’t tell.… Hey chill, will you, man? That’s a fucking scary look. I was just curious.”

There was a pause. And with an ominous tone in his voice Sebastian said, “Well, don’t get too interested in her. You hear me?”

Taylor felt a ping of fear at that.

“I’m just—”

“You hear what I’m saying?”

“Hey, chill.… I hear you, Sea Bass, I hear you.”

Then the conversation turned to sports and, stinging with cold, Taylor left them to their banter. She walked inside and rejoined the crowd in front of the fireplace, observing how the conversation grew sedate when she entered the room. She nudged herself into the center of the group and sat on the hearth with her back to the fire until the pain from the cold became a fierce itch and then finally died away.

Around 10
P.M
. the drapery man walked through Greenwich Village under huge trapezoids of bruise-purple clouds, lit from the perpetual glow of the city.

He was concentrating on the buildings and finally arrived at the address he sought.

At the service entrance, which smelled of sour garbage,
he inserted his lock gun and flicked the trigger a dozen times until the teeth of the tumblers were aligned. The door opened easily. He climbed to the fourth floor and picked another set of locks—on the door of the particular apartment he sought.

Inside, he slipped his ice-pick weapon into his belt, handle up, ready to grab it if he had to, and began to search. He found a bag of needlepoint (one a Christmas scene that sure wouldn’t be finished in time for the holiday), a box of Weight Watchers apple snacks, a garter belt in its original gift box, apparently never worn, cartons of musty sheet music. An elaborate, expensive-looking reel-to-reel tape recorder. Dozens of tape cassettes with the same title:
The Heat of Midnight. Songs by Taylor Lockwood
.

Inside the woman’s briefcase, in addition to sheet music, he found time sheets, key entry logs and other documents from Hubbard, White & Willis. He looked through them carefully and memorized exactly what they contained.

He found and read through the woman’s address book, her calendar and her phone bills. He listened to her answering machine tapes. His client had hoped that she’d have a diary but very few people kept diaries anymore and Taylor Lockwood was no exception.