Mistress of Justice Page 10

  "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!' "

  She laughed hard. Then looked out the window toward the diminishing wails. "I don't get downtown as much as I'd like."

  "Where do you live?"

  "East Eighty-fourth."

  "Ah."

  "I know," she said, blushing, as he'd predicted. "It's not so cool. But I kinda ended up there and I've got a three-year lease."

  "So, how's Mexican?" he asked. He glanced down at his shirt. It wasn't that fucking wrinkled. "There's a place around the corner. I call it the Hacienda del Hole. Kinda a dive but the food's good."

  "Sure, whatever." Then she suggested, "Or we could just hang out here. Like, maybe order pizza, watch the tube." Carrie nodded at his dusty TV set. "I like Cheers," she said. "And M*A*S*H."

  Lillick only watched TV to pick up on pop culture icons he could trash in his performance pieces. He had to admit, though, he liked M*A*S*H. Well, and Lucy reruns. And Gilligan's Island (though not a soul in the universe knew that).

  "It's kinda broken. I mean, the reception's pretty shitty."

  He walked over to his Yamaha keyboard and turned it on. The amps sent a moan of anticipation through the warm air. "I'll show you how the sampler works. I'll play something for you."

  "Good, I'd like to hear it. Hey, got another beer?"

  He went to the fridge. "Those were the last. How 'bout wine?"

  "Sure."

  He poured two large tumblers and handed one to her. They tapped glasses. She picked a piece of cork or lint or something out of hers and they both drank.

  Then she slipped off her white plastic headband and lay back on the bed. She ran her
hand over the middle part of the mattress. "What's this?"

  "What?"

  "This lump?"

  "I don't know. A pillowcase, I think."

  But Carrie was frowning. "No, it's, like, weird. You better check it out."

  He stood up and sat on the bed next to her, rummaged under the covers to find the lump. It turned out to be not a pillowcase but a woman's red high-heel shoe.

  "How'd that get there?" Carrie laughed, teasing.

  "I used it in one of my pieces."

  "Uh-huh," she said, not believing him.

  It's true, goddamn it, he thought angrily. I'm not a fucking transvestite....

  She looked into his eyes and, without even thinking about it, he leaned forward and kissed her. He tasted lipstick and the Binaca she'd sprayed into her mouth when he was busy pouring the wine.

  Then she lifted the red shoe away, dropped it on the floor and directed his hand to her breasts.

  This is weird....

  Carrie reached up and turned off the skewed floor lamp. The only illumination in the room was from the display lights on the synthesizer.

  Weird ...

  He began to kiss her hard, desperately, and she kissed him right back.

  She pulled off her jeans and sweater. Lillick stared at the huge breasts defined by the netlike cloth of her bra, nipples dark circles.

  He kissed her for a full minute.

  Weird.

  Lillick realized that he'd left the recorder on the sampler running; it would store every sound in the room for the next twenty minutes. He supposed he should shut it off but in fact he didn't really want to get up. Besides, he figured, you never knew when you could use some good sound effects.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Taylor wasn't sure when the idea occurred to her--probably 4 or 5 A.M. as she lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the city. She was in a half-waking, half-dreaming state--in Wonderland or on the far side of the looking glass.

  She'd been thinking about the evidence she'd gathered. A brief comparison of the prints on the safe with her suspects--Sebastian, Lillick and Dudley--wasn't conclusive but it was more likely than not that Sebastian had left several prints on the safe.

  But was there any way to verify that he--or someone else--had been in the firm that Saturday night, other than through the time sheets and key card entry logs?

  Sure, she realized, there was: The thief might've taken a cab or car service limo to the firm that late at night. And he might've just used his real name and employee number on the reimbursement or payment voucher.

  And copiers too. If he'd been in the firm for some legitimate reason he might've used a copier--you had to use a special key, with your number on it, to activate the machine. Or, she thought, excited about these leads, the thief might have logged onto one of the Lexis/Nexis computers.

  Or used the phone.

  Every service or function within the firm that can be charged to a client (plus a delightful 300 percent markup for overhead) is recorded in the firm computers.

  She glanced at the clock: 7:40 A.M.

  Brother.

  Exhausted, she rolled out of bed. At least she didn't have a hangover--and she'd managed to change into boxers and a T-shirt last night, saving her skin from more stigmatas of Victoria's Secret.

  Let's go, Alice.... This is getting curiouser and curiouser....

  At 9 A.M. exactly Taylor was standing in the accounting department at Hubbard, White & Willis.

  "I'm doing a bill for Mitchell Reece," she told the computer operator. "Can you let me see the copier card, taxi and car service voucher ledger, phone records and Lexis/Nexis log-ons for last Saturday and Sunday?"

  "It's not the end of the month." The operator snapped her gum.

  "Mitchell wants to give the client an estimate."

  Snap.

  "An estimate of disbursements? It couldn't be more than a thousand bucks. Who'd care?"

  "If you don't mind," Taylor said sweetly. "Please."

  Snap. "I guess." The woman hunched over the keys and typed several lines. She frowned and typed again.

  Taylor bent over the computer screen. The screen was blank.

  Snap, snap ...

  "I don't know what's going on. There's no taxi vouchers. There always are on Saturday." Taylor knew this very well. The rule was if you had to work on Saturday the firm paid for your taxi to and from your apartment or house.

  Alarmed, Taylor said, "How about the copiers?"

  The fingernails tapped. The operator squinted, tapped some more and stared at the screen. "Well, this's damn funny."

  "Nobody made any copies either."

  "You got it."

  Snap.

  "Phones? Lexis/Nexis?"

  The clattering of keys. "Nothing."

  Taylor asked, "You think the files were erased?"

  "Hold on a minute." Her fingers tapped as noisily as her popping gum.

  Snap, snap ...

  The young woman looked up. "That's it. Erased. Must've had a software hiccup or something. The disbursement and incidental expense files for the past week've been deleted. Taxis, meals, copiers, even the phones. All gone."

  "Has that ever happened before?"

  "Nup. Never."

  Snap.

  Sean Lillick stopped by Carrie Mason's cubicle to say good morning to her.

  He could tell immediately how pleased she was to see him comply with the famous morning-after rule.

  They talked for a few minutes and then he said how much he wanted a cup of coffee and, as he'd expected, she was on her feet immediately and asking him, "How do you want it?"

  "Black," he answered because even though he liked a lot of sugar it was cooler to say "Black."

  "Sure. I'll be right back."

  "You don't have to--," he started to say.

  "No problem."

  She trotted off down the hallway.

  Which gave him the chance to put her computer room access card back into her purse.

  That's what'd been so weird last night.

  The fact that the sex had been initiated by her.

  Because the whole point of calling her up was to get her over to his place, get her drunk, seduce her and when she was dozing afterward steal her access card, which would allow him to erase the telltale files of expenses--like the taxi he'd taken from the firm to the office of the plaintiff's lawyer in the St. Agnes case, or the phone calls he'd made about the new lease with Rothstein. After he'd talked to Wendall Clayton earlier Lillick had realized that he had been pretty careless and needed to, as the partner had said, "snip some ends."

  Hence, the grand seduction last night.

  Weird ...

  Carrie now returned with the coffee and when she handed it to him their hands met and they looked into each other's eyes for a moment. It took perhaps two seconds for the guilt to prod him into looking away and he said quickly, "Got a big project. Better run. I'll call you."

  Donald Burdick believed that bringing one's first client into a law firm was the most significant milestone in the career of a Wall Street lawyer.

  Unlike graduation from law school, unlike admission to the bar, unlike being made partner--all of which are significant but abstract stages in a lawyer's life--hooking a money-paying client was what distinguished, in his metaphor, the nobility from the gentry.

  Many years ago Burdick--a young, newly made partner at Hubbard, White & Willis--had just finished the eighteenth hole at Meadowbrook Club on Long Island when one of the foursome turned to him and said, "Say, Donald, I hear good things about you. Legal-wise, I'm saying. You interested in doing a little work for a hospital?"

  That had been on a Sunday afternoon and two days later Burdick had presented to the executive committee of the firm his first signed retainer agreement--with the huge St. Agnes Hospital complex in Manhattan.

  At nine-thirty this morning Donald Burdick sat in his office with the chief executive officer of St. Agnes, a tall, middle-aged, mild-spoken veteran of hospital
administration. Also present were Fred LaDue, the senior litigation partner handling the malpractice case against the hospital, and Mitchell Reece.

  Three of these four appeared very unhappy, though for different reasons. Burdick, because of what he'd learned last night--that with the new witness St. Agnes would probably lose the malpractice trial, which would make the hospital throw its support to Clayton and the pro-merger crowd. The CEO, of course, because his hospital now stood to lose millions of dollars. Lawyer LaDue, because Burdick had summarily ordered that he stand down today and that a young associate Mitchell Reece, take over the cross-examination of the new witness.

  Reece, on the other hand, was calm as a priest though it was clear the man hadn't had more than a few hours' sleep. He'd been preparing virtually nonstop since Burdick and LaDue had briefed him last night around 9 P.M.

  "Who is this guy?" the CEO asked. "The witness?"

  "That's the problem. He was working at St. Agnes when they brought the plaintiff in. He didn't treat the patient himself but he was in the room the whole time."

  "One of our own people? Testifying against us?" The CEO was dumbfounded.

  "Apparently he was a visiting professor from UC San Diego."

  "Can't we object?"

  "I did," LaDue said plaintively. "Judge overruled me. The best he did was give us a chance to depose the witness before he goes on."

  Reece said, "I'll do that in a half hour. The guy goes on the stand at eleven."

  "How bad do you think his testimony's going to be?" the administrator asked.

  "From what the other side's lawyer said," Reece explained bluntly, "it could lose you the case."

  Burdick, who realized he had been squeezing his teeth together with fierce pressure, said, "Well, Mitchell, perhaps it isn't as hopeless as you're painting it."

  Reece shrugged. "I don't think it's hopeless. I never said it's hopeless. But the plaintiff's lawyers've upped their settlement offer to thirty million and they're holding firm. That means that this witness is the smoking gun."

  LaDue sat and stewed. The doughy man was as pale as always though at this particular moment his waxen complexion was largely due to the fact that he'd done a very clumsy job at the trial so far.

  Burdick played with a manicured thumbnail. He was furious that Clayton had probably spent thousands of dollars to track down this witness and had anonymously sent his name to the plaintiff's attorney.