Mistress of Justice (25 page)

The drapery man continued his search, walking slowly through the apartment, taking his time. He knew his client would grill him at length about what he’d found here and he wanted to make sure he overlooked nothing.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Taylor dropped into the chair in her cubicle.

It was six-thirty, Saturday morning. The gods of the furnace had decided that not even Type A attorneys would be in the office yet and so Hubbard, White & Willis was cold as Anchorage.

She shivered both from the temperature and from exhaustion too. She and Thom Sebastian had arrived back in the city late last night. The lawyer had been subdued. She’d sensed that he was worried she’d ask about Callaghan and he wouldn’t be able to come up with a credible story. But there was something else troubling him. His jokey self was gone. And once she caught him looking at her with an odd, troubled expression on his face.

She had an image of herself as a condemned prisoner and him as a prison guard, distancing himself from someone about to die.

Ridiculous, she thought. Still, she could hear his words in her head:

Well, don’t get too interested in her
.

What did
that
mean?

And how the hell had he known she was a musician?

She noticed a flashing light on her phone, indicating that she had a message. She picked up the receiver to check voice mail.

Reece had called again to remind her about dinner at his place that night.

There was one other message.

Beep
.

“Hey, counselor, how you doing? Saw an article about your shop in the
Law Journal.
About the merger. You’ve probably seen it but I’m faxing it to you. Always stay on top of firm politics.…”

If you only knew, Dad, she thought.

“We’re planning Christmas dinner and we’ve got an RSVP from a Supreme Court justice; I’ll let you guess who. I’m putting him next to you at the table. Just keep your more liberal views to yourself, counselor. I’m serious about that. Okay, I’ll be in town week after next. Your mother says hi.”

Supreme Court? Samuel Lockwood never did anything without a purpose. What did he have in mind? Was the dinner table placement intended to help her career? she wondered.

Or
his?
she appended cynically.

Taylor found the fax her father had sent about the merger of the firms, scanned it quickly. It described the vicious infighting among the partners at Hubbard, White & Willis—Burdick
v
. Clayton—and how, despite the animosity, the merged firms would probably succeed much better in the new business climate than if they remained separate. The picture featured Burdick and his wife.

An idea occurred to her.

She wrote on the top, “Thom, FYI.” And signed her name.

Using this as an excuse, she hurried to his office, propped the article on his chair and, with a glance into the deserted corridor, proceeded to search the room like an eager rookie cop on crime scene detail.

In his desk she found: condoms, Bamboo paper, an unopened bottle of Chivas Regal, matches from the Harvard
Club, the Palace Hotel and assorted late-night clubs around town, dozens of take-out menus from downtown restaurants, chatty letters from his brother and father and mother (all neatly organized, some with margin notes), brokerage house statements, checkbooks (Jesus, where’d he get all this
money?
), some popular spy and military paperbacks, a coffee-stained copy of the
Lawyer’s Code of Professional Responsibility
, assorted photographs from vacations, newspaper articles on bond issues and stock offerings, the
Pennystock News
, candy bars, crumbs and paper clips.

Nothing about the note, no information linking him, Bosk or Callaghan to Hanover & Stiver.

On Sebastian’s bookshelves were hundreds of huge books, bound in navy and burgundy and deep green. They’d contain copies of all the closing documents in a business transaction that Sebastian had worked on. They would be great places to hide stolen promissory notes and other incriminating evidence. But it would take several days to look through all of them. She saw Sebastian’s name embossed in gold at the bottom of each one.

It was then that she noticed the corner of a piece of paper protruding from beneath Sebastian’s desk blotter. Another glance into the corridor—still no signs of life—and she pulled the paper out.

The jottings were brief and to the point.

Taylor Lockwood. 24 Fifth Avenue
.

Her age, schools attended. Home address in Chevy Chase. Phone numbers at the firm and at home. The unlisted one too.

Father: Samuel Lockwood. Mother: housewife. No siblings. Applied to law school. Employed by HWW for two years. Merit raises and bonuses at top levels
.

“Musician. Every Tuesday. Miracles Pub.”

The son of a bitch, she whispered. Then replaced the sheet exactly where she’d found it.

She left his office and returned to the chilly corridor, hearing echoes of footsteps, hearing the click of guns being cocked and the hiss of knives being unsheathed.

In the firm’s library she logged on to several of the computer databases that the firm subscribed to, including the Lexis/Nexis system, which contains copies of nearly all court decisions, statutes and regulations in the United States, as well as articles from hundreds of magazines and newspapers around the world.

She spent hours trying to find information about Dennis Callaghan, Bosk and Sebastian.

There wasn’t much that was helpful. Bradford Smith had been admitted to the New York and federal bars and currently practiced at a Midtown firm, which didn’t, however, seem to have any connection to Hanover & Stiver or New Amsterdam Bank.

Dennis Callaghan wasn’t a lawyer but a businessman. He dabbled in dozens of different activities and had been under investigation for stock fraud and real estate scams though he’d never been indicted. He was currently connected with about twenty different companies, some of which were incorporated offshore and which, she guessed, were fronts.

But still no connection between any of them and Hanover & Stiver.

The information about Sebastian—found in alumni magazine archives and legal magazines he’d contributed articles to—wasn’t incriminating either, though she found, interestingly, that the Upper East Side preppy image was fake. Sebastian had grown up outside of Chicago, his father the manager of a Kroger grocery store (hence, she realized, another reason for the funny look when he’d heard her tell the youngsters at Ada’s that Dad managed a convenience store). Sebastian did have an undergrad degree from Harvard but it had taken him six years because he’d gone part-time—presumably while working to support himself.

The Yale Law School certificates she’d noticed on his
wall must have been for continuing education courses; he’d gotten his law degree from Brooklyn Law at night while working as a process server during the day—serving subpoenas in some of the toughest parts of the outer boroughs.

So, there was a different Thom Sebastian beneath the jokey party animal. One who was driven, ambitious, tough. And, Taylor knew, recalling the conversation in Ada’s downstairs den, also a thief—fucking the firm that fucked him.

More associates were filing into the library now and she didn’t want anybody to see what she was doing so she logged off the computer and went to the administrative floor.

There she walked into the file room Carrie Mason had told her about, a large, dingy space filled with row upon row of cabinets. It was here that the billing department kept the original time sheets that lawyers filled out daily.

Making certain the room was empty, Taylor opened the “D” drawer—where Ralph Dudley’s sheets would reside—and found the most recent ones. They were little blue slips of carbon paper filled with his imperial scrawl, describing every ten-minute period during working hours. She read through and replaced them and then did the same in the “L” drawer for Lillick and the “S” for Thom Sebastian.

Taylor rose to leave but then paused.

The “R” cabinet was right next to her.

She rested her fingers on the handle and after a moment’s hesitation, pulled it open and looked inside. She stared in astonishment at the booklets with Mitchell Reece’s name on them. There were hundreds of them. Christ Almighty … nearly twice as many as for most other lawyers.

She pulled one out at random—September—and thumbed through it, looking at a typical day in the life of Mitchell Reece:

She skimmed ahead.

She totaled the hours: Sixteen were billed to clients. That was sixteen hours of
productive
work, not commuting time, lunch, trips to the rest rooms and the water fountain.

Sixteen hours in one day!

And every day was pretty much the same.

Arguing motion, arguing motion, on trial, writing brief, on trial, on trial, settlement conference, arguing motion, on trial, pro bono meetings with criminal clients and prosecutors
.

On trial on trial on trial …

He never stopped.

A thought occurred to her and she smiled to herself. Yes, no?

Go for it, Alice.

She opened the binder containing the most recent of his sheets. She flipped through them until she found the day that she’d followed him to Grand Central Station.

For the three hours he was out of the office he’d marked the time Code 03.

Which meant personal time.

The time you spend at the dentist’s office.

The time you spend at PTA conferences.

The time you spend in Westchester, with your girlfriend.

Taylor felt her skin buzzing with embarrassment as she flipped through other lunch hours over the past several
months. In September he’d done the same—taken long lunches—only usually it was two or three times a week. Recently, in the month of November, for instance, he’d done so only once a week.

Three hours in the middle of the day for a workaholic like Reece?

Well, Taylor Lockwood understood; she’d had lovers herself.

She put the time sheets back and closed the drawer.

Outside, the air was cold but the city was ablaze with Christmas decorations and she decided to walk home. She slipped her Walkman headset on, then her earmuffs, and began to walk briskly, thinking about the evening ahead, dinner with Mitchell Reece—at least until the hiss of the cassette grew silent, Miles Davis started into “Seven Steps to Heaven” and the rest of the world was lost to Taylor Lockwood.