Mistress of Justice (31 page)

A voice chanting? Primitive music?

She couldn’t place it at first. It seemed very familiar but she associated it with an entirely different place.

Rhythmic and soft.

No, couldn’t be.…

She walked to the far wall and pressed her head against the plaster again. The sound was coming from the other side—Clayton’s bedroom.

Oh, Taylor realized.
That’s
the sound. Of course. Not one voice, but two.

The nature of the activity didn’t surprise Taylor much, considering what she now knew about Wendall Clayton. What did surprise her, however, was that the other participant was Carrie Mason, who was contributing half of the sound effects.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.… I’m almost there.… Yeah, yeah, yeah.…”

Carrie may have finished quickly but it took Clayton considerably longer. Long enough, in fact, for Taylor to go through the partner’s desk carefully. The sound track conveniently helped her gauge how much time she had.

She found only one thing that interested her: an invoice
for a security firm. The bill was for ongoing services, which had begun last month. The job description was “As directed by client.”

She debated stealing it. What would her detective friend John Silbert Hemming do? He’d use a spy camera, she guessed. But ill-equipped Taylor Lockwood did the next best thing: She carefully copied all the information and put the invoice back.

Downstairs she noticed the crowd had dwindled considerably, as you’d expect for a Sunday night party. Only the hard-core partyers remained. Thom Sebastian, for instance, who swooped in for another sloppy bear hug. She ducked away from it. He said good-bye and reiterated his dinner invitation for tomorrow. Taylor ambled through the house, aiming toward the buffet and listening to the snatches of muted, often drunken, conversation.

He’s going to do it. For sure. Next month, we’re going to be Hubbard, White, Willis, Sullivan & Perelli
.

You’re out to lunch, dude. No way’ll Burdick let it happen
.

Do you realize the vote is Tuesday? Day after tomorrow
.

You hear about the detective that was going through Burdick’s Swiss accounts?

You hear Burdick had somebody check Clayton’s law review article to see if he plagiarized?

That’s bullshit
.

You want to talk bullshit, this merger is bullshit. Nobody’s getting any work done
.

Where’s Donald?

He doesn’t need to be here. He sent Himmler instead
.

Who?

His wife. See, Burdick would charm a man out of his balls; Vera’d just cut ’em off. You know the stories about her, don’t you? Lady Macbeth …

Taylor noticed that Burdick’s wife was no longer here.

She then surveyed the long table where there’d once sat mounds of caviar, roast beef, steak tartare and sesame chicken. All that now remained was broccoli.

Taylor Lockwood hated broccoli.

On the patio deck of the Fleetwood Hotel’s penthouse on the Miami Beach strip Ed Gliddick sent a golf ball near the putting cup embedded in the roof’s AstroTurf.

“Hell,” he said of the miss and looked at the trim young man near him, who watched the shot without emotion. Standing ramrod-straight, he offered Gliddick no false compliments and said only, “I play tennis, not golf.”

The man was Randall Simms III, Wendall Clayton’s protégé. It was he who’d pirated the Hubbard, White & Willis chartered jet to beat Donald Burdick down to Florida to meet with the executives of McMillan Holdings.

While Burdick himself was cooling his heels with the second-in-command of the company, Steve Nordstrom, Simms had been meeting with Gliddick, the chairman of the board and CEO of McMillan.

McMillan was a company that did nothing but own other companies, which either manufactured obscure industrial parts or provided necessary though obscure services to other businesses or in turn owned other companies or portions of them. The vagaries of this structure and function, however, were not to suggest that Gliddick didn’t know how to satisfy a market need when he saw one. McMillan was consistently in the top twenty of the most profitable companies in the world.

At sixty-five, Gliddick was stooped and paunchy amidships. His ruddy skin was wrinkled from years of sun on golf courses and tennis courts around the world. Sparse gray hair, a hook of a nose.

So he said to Simms, “Wendall didn’t come down to see me. He sent you instead.”

Simms said nothing.

Gliddick held up a hand. “Which means only one thing. You’re the muscle, right?”

Unsmiling, Simms folded his arms and watched Gliddick miss another easy putt. “Wendall wanted a little distance between himself and what I’m going to say to you.”

“This’s all about that fucking merger, isn’t it?”

“I’d suggest we go inside,” Simms said. “Somebody could have an antenna trained on us. They really make those things, you know. They’re not just in the movies.”

“I know.”

Gliddick walked into the room, shut the window and drew the curtains. Simms mixed whiskey sours for them both. Gliddick wondered how this man, whom he’d never met, had known that this was his drink.

The chairman sipped the sweet concoction. “You know Donald Burdick’s meeting with Steve Nordstrom right now.”

“We know.”

We
.

“So what is it that you want, I mean, Wendall wants?”

“We want you to let it be known around the firms—ours and John Perelli’s—that you want the merger to go through.”

“Why would we
not
want it to go through?”

Simms said bluntly, “Donald and his cronies won’t be there afterward.”

“Ah.” Gliddick nodded. “I see.”

“You might feel some loyalty to him,” Simms said.

“Fuck, I do feel loyalty to him.”

“Of course you do. You’ve been friends for years. But putting that aside for a moment, let’s talk about why you
would
want the firms to merge,” Simms said.

This is one slick boy—I like him, Gliddick thought, but immediately gave up the idea of trying to wrest him away from Hubbard, White to work for McMillan. Wendall Clayton was not somebody you stole employees from.

Simms continued, “We’ve gone over your billings, Ed. Burdick’s robbing you blind. Your legal costs are totally out of control. You’re paying two hundred bucks an hour for first-year associates who know shit. You’re paying for limo deliveries when messengers can take public transportation. You’re paying premium bonuses for routine legal work. If you help the merger along we’ll pare your expenses by an easy five million a year.”

“Five?”

“Five. And if the merger goes through, Perelli can take over your labor law work. Right now you’ve got Mavern, Simpson handling it and, frankly, they’re idiots. They didn’t do shit to keep the unions out of your subs’ Oregon and Washington State operations. Perelli’s the toughest labor lawyer in New York. He’ll fuck your unions in the ass.”

Gliddick shook his head. “Donald was on our board for I don’t know how long. He’s got friends all over the company. There’re a lot of people won’t take it kindly that we’ve sold him out.”

“ ‘Kindly’?” Simms said the word as if it were in a foreign language. “Well, loyalty’s important. But it works both ways. I’d think you’d have to
earn
loyalty. And do you think a lawyer who misses a takeover plan against his client deserves it?”

“A … What’re you talking about?”

“There’s a rumor.… Only a rumor but Wendall and I think it’s valid.”

“We’re always hearing that. Hell, we beat projections every quarter last year. Everybody’d love to acquire us.”

“But does everybody contact your institutional investors on the sly?”

Gliddick’s glass froze halfway to his mouth. “Who?”

“GCI in Toronto.”

“Weinraub, that fucking Jew prick.” A glance to Simms to see if the young man was Semitic but the results of the scan came back reassuringly Aryan. “I saw him just last week in London. He gave me the great stone face.”

Simms continued, “We’re thinking four months till a tender offer. If you wait you’ll pay a takeover firm a million or two to defend. Perelli can preempt it for a quarter of that. And he can handle it in a way that your stockholders and key employees won’t get nervous and bail out. That’s what he does best.”

“Donald doesn’t know about it?”

“Nope. We found out through Perelli.

He finished his drink. Simms poured another.

“Randy, I don’t know. I can’t argue with what you’re saying, with the numbers. It’s a moral decision. I don’t like moral decisions. Maybe—”

There was a knock on the door. A young woman. Blond, about five-two, wearing a short leather miniskirt and tight white blouse, walked into the suite.

“Mr. Simms, I’ve got the file you asked for.”

“Thank you, Jean.” He took a thick manila folder. “Jean, this is Mr. Gliddick.”

They shook hands. Gliddick’s eyes skimmed the white silk over her breasts, the lacy bra clearly visible beneath.

“Jean’s an assistant with a firm we use down here occasionally.”

“Nice to meet you, Jean.”

Simms tapped the folder. “There’s a lot of other material in there about how the merger’d be good for your company, Ed.” He looked at his watch. “Say, I’ve got a conference call scheduled now. I’ll make it from my room so I don’t bother you. Look over that stuff, think about what I’m saying.”

“Sure,” Gliddick said, eyes still scanning Jean’s figure. She smiled broadly at the paunchy businessman.

“Say, Jean,” Simms said, “you know Miami, right?

“Well, now, I’ve lived here all my life” came the lilting accent.

“Then maybe you could help Mr. Gliddick figure out a place where he and I could go listen to some music. Jazz or Cuban or something.”

“I’d be happy to.” The young woman sat on the bed and picked up an entertainment guide. Her skirt hiked up high. “If that’s all right with him.”

“I’d appreciate your input,” Gliddick said.

Simms said, “We’re off-duty now, Jean, how ’bout you fix yourself a drink. And another one for Mr. Gliddick too.”

“Thanks, Randy. I believe I will.”

“I’ll be back in about an hour,” Simms said.

“That’d be fine,” Gliddick replied, setting the file on the table and watching Jean scoot pertly off the bed and walk to the bar. Somehow her shoes had come off in the process.

Moral decision …

As Simms was about to step through the door, Gliddick said, “One thing, Randy?”

The tall lawyer turned.

“Maybe you could call first—before coming back to the room?”

“Not a problem, Ed.”

At 10
P.M
., as Reece was accelerating south onto the highway that would take them from Clayton’s Connecticut home back to the city, Taylor stretched out in the reclining seat of the rented Lincoln.

She was listening to the moan of the transmission. The flabby suspension swayed her nearly to sleep. She’d told him about Clayton’s blackmailing Dudley and then about the invoice she’d found.

“ ‘Client-directed’ security services?” Reece asked. Then he nodded. “A euphemism for industrial espionage. Good job, finding that. How much was it for?”

“Two thousand a month.”

“That’s pretty low for stealing a note. Maybe it’s for spying on people for the merger.”

“Did you hear the talk at the party? My God, these are first-year associates and all they were talking about was the merger. Wendall’s out on a limb. If he doesn’t get it through he’s lost a lot of credibility.…”

Reece laughed. “Ha, if he doesn’t get the merger through he’s lost his
job.…”
He looked over and caught her in the midst of another huge yawn. “You okay?”

“I used to sleep.”

“I tried it once,” Reece said, shrugging. “It wears off.”

He reached over and began massaging her neck.

“Oh, that’s nice.…” She closed her eyes. “You ever made love in a car?”

“Never have.”

“I never have either. I’ve never even been to a drive-in movie.”

Reece said, “One time when I was in high school, I—Jesus!”

A huge jolt. Taylor’s eyes snapped open and she saw a white car directly in front of them. It’d veered into their lane. Reece swerved onto the shoulder but the Lincoln slipped off the flat surface and started down a steep embankment.