Mistress of Justice

  Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,

  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore....

  Hardly any.

  But, he also wondered, how many Wall Street lawyers knew it?

  Not many of them either.

  "Is it, like, cold on the boat?"

  "You're saying 'like' again a lot. Remember, you were going to watch it."

  "Whatever."

  "I'm sure we can sit downstairs where it's warm. We'll get some hot chocolate."

  "Or a beer," she muttered.

  "Ha," Dudley said. "Come on over here for a minute."

  He nodded to a bench and they sat down, Dudley wondering, as he had for a thousand times that year, why he was so taken with this little creature.

  "Yo, so wassup?" she said. Sometimes she talked black and there was nothing he could say to get her out of this mode. He'd learned that it was best to ignore her affectations. They went away sooner or later.

  "I've got some papers here. For you to sign. We couldn't do it in the firm."

  She put her Walkman headsets on. He took them off her and smoothed her hair. She wrinkled her face.

  "You've got to sign them."

  "Like, okay."

  He dug them out of his briefcase and handed them to her.

  "Okay," she said, snapping her gum. "Gimme a pen."

  Dudley reached into his jacket pocket and found that he'd accidentally picked up his Cross mechanical pencil. "Damn, I forgot mine."

  "I, like, have one." She reached into her purse and pulled it out. But as she did a piece of paper fell to the ground. Dudley had picked it up and started to hand it back when he looked at the check.

  He saw Junie's name.

  He saw Taylor Lockwood's name.

  His hand froze in midair between them.

  Dudley looked at her with rage in his face. "What is this?

  "I--"

  "What the hell have you done?"

  "Poppie?" she asked, dropping her Walkman. It broke apart on the asphalt.

  "How could you?" he whispered. "How could you?"

  The going rate to get Alice into the rabbit hole of a Manhattan apartment was a sob story.

  I feel so stupid, Ralph Dudley's my uncle? And my aunt--that's his wife--passed away two years ago today and he was feeling really lousy. I wanted to make him dinner, just to cheer him up.

  She held up the Food Emporium bag as evidence.

  Here's fifty for your trouble. Don't say anything, okay? It's a surprise.

  Taylor Lockwood had dressed in her business finest, to allay the doorman's concerns. He looked her over, pocketed the money, slipped her a spare key and turned back to a tiny television.

  She knew Dudley wouldn't be here. She'd run into him in the halls and he'd told her that he was taking the afternoon off to show Junie the Statue of Liberty. The sullen girl had been in the lobby, waiting for him. Taylor shivered at the thought of the two of them together. For the girl's part, she looked from Dudley's face to Taylor's and back again. And just seemed bored.

  Taylor now walked inside and found that Dudley's apartment was much smaller and more modest than she'd expected.

  Although she knew about his financial problems, she'd assumed that an elderly Wall Street law firm partner like Dudley would be living at least in simple elegance, jaded though it might be. In fact, the four rooms in the prewar building didn't not have much more square footage than her own apartment. The walls were covered with cheap paint, which blotched where it was thin and peeled where the painters had bothered to apply several coats. There was no way the windows would ever open again.

  She gave a cursory once-over to the living room, which was filled with old furniture, some of whose tattered, cracked arms and legs were tied together neatly with twine. She saw chipped vases, lace that had been torn and carelessly resewn, books, afghans, walking sticks, a collection of dented silver cigarette cases. Walls were covered with old framed pictures of relatives, including several of Dudley as a young man with a large, unfriendly-looking woman. He was handsome but very thin and he stared at the camera with solemn introspection.

  In his bedroom, beside a neatly made bed, she found what looked like a wooden torso with one of Dudley's suit jackets hanging on the shoulders. A clothes brush rested on a small rack on the torso's chest and on the floor in front of it was a pair of carefully polished shoes with well-worn heels.

  His fussiness made her job as burglar easy. Each of the pigeonholes in his oak rolltop desk contained a single, well-marked category of documents. Con Ed bills, phone bills, letters from his daughter (the least-filled compartment), business correspondence, warranty cards for household appliances, letters from his alumni organization, receipts. He separated opera programs from symphony programs from ballet programs.

  Taylor finished the desk in ten minutes but could find nothing linking Dudley to the note or to Hanover & Stiver. Discouraged and feeling hot and filthy from the search, she walked into the kitchen, illuminated with pallid light from the courtyard that the room's one small window looked out on.

  Taylor leaned against the sink. In front of her was Dudley's small kitchen table, on either side of which were two mahogany chairs. One side of the table was empty. On the other was a faded place mat on which sat an expensive, nicked porcelain plate, a setting of heavy silverware, a wineglass--all arranged for his solitary dinner that evening. A starched white napkin, rolled and held by a bright red napkin ring, rested in the center of the plate. The gaudy ring was the one item glaringly out of place. Taylor picked up the cheap plastic, the kind sold at the bargain stores in Times Square where tourists buy personalized souvenirs--cups, dishes, tiny license plates.

  She turned it over; the name sloppily embossed in the plastic was Poppie.

  A present from June, the object of his perverse desire.

  Her hour was up. Book on outta here, Alice....

  Nothing, she thought angrily. I didn't find a thing. Not a single hint as to where the note might be. She stuffed the grocery bag, which had been filled only with wadded-up newspapers, into the trash chute and left.

  So, can we eliminate Dudley? she wondered.

  No, but we can put him lower on the list than Thom Sebastian.

  Well, don't get too interested in her....

  She'd charm the young lawyer, interrogate him--the prick who'd been collecting information on her. She remembered his troubled expression yesterday. Maybe a confession would be forthcoming at dinner tonight. She still held out that hope.

  Outside, she paused for a moment, rubbed her eyes.

  Tomorrow, she thought in alarm, the trial was tomorrow.

  Taylor stepped into the street to flag down a cab.

  Thom Sebastian sat at the bar of the Blue Devil on the far edge of West Fifty-seventh, near the Hudson River.

  An excellent place, he assessed, it had a mostly black audience, dressed super-sharp. He was working on a vodka gimlet, imagining his juggler and thinking, So far, so good.

  But also thinking goddamn, I'm nervous.

  He was considering what was about to happen tonight.

  Was this a way-major mistake?

  For a while he'd thought so. But now he wasn't so sure. Had no idea.

  But it was going to happen; the die had been cast, he thought, phrasing the situation in a cliche that he found unworthy of a lawyer of his caliber.

  He found himself coolly considering partnership at Hubbard, White & Willis and he remembered--almost with amusement--that he'd always considered achieving partnership a matter of life and death.

  Death ...

  After Wendall Clayton had called him into his office and told him in that soft voice of his that the firm had concluded it would be unable to extend the offer of partnership to him, Sebastian had sat motionless for three or four minutes, smiling at the partner, listening to the man describe the firm's plans for Sebastian's severance.

  A smile, yes, but it was really a rictus gaze, what to Clayton--had the fucking prick e
ven noticed--must have seemed like a grin of madness: teeth bared, eyes crinkling in a psychotic squint.

  "We'd like to make you a partner, Thom--you're respected here--but you understand that economies have to be effected."

  Meaning simply that Sebastian was not a clone of Wendall Clayton and was, therefore, expendable.

  Effecting economies ... Oh, how that term--pure corporatespeak--had inflamed him like acid.

  Listening to Clayton, he'd lowered his head and had seen something resting on the partner's desk: an inlaid dish of Arabic design. Sebastian's eyes had clung to the dish as if he could encapsulate the terrible reality in the cloisonne and escape, leaving his sorrow trapped behind him.

  And now he thought about the problem of Taylor Lockwood.

  But he tried as hard as he could to push her away, put her out of his mind, and replaced her with the image of the juggler once more.

  He glanced at his watch.

  Okay, let's do it. He stood up from the bar, told the bartender he'd be back in five.

  So far ...

  Without really thinking about it, the man in the Dodge reached over to the passenger seat and felt the breakdown--a Remington automatic 12-gauge shotgun.

  Six shells in the extended magazine. Six more wedged into the seat, business end down.

  He wasn't concentrating on the hardware, though; his eyes were on the woman walking down the street toward the fat boy, Thom Sebastian, who waved at her, smiling a weird smile. Looking all shit-his-pants.

  All right, so this bitch was the one.

  The man in the Dodge watched her, wondering what kind of body she had underneath the overcoat. He would've liked it if she'd been wearing high heels. He liked high heels, not those stupid black flat shoes this broad wore.

  The man in the Dodge checked for blue-and-whites and pedestrians who might block the shot.

  Clear street, clear shooting zone.

  He eased the car forward then braked slowly to a halt twenty feet from the woman. She glanced at him with casual curiosity. Her eyes met his and, as he lifted the gun, she realized what was going down. She screamed, holding up her hands.

  Nowhere for her to run ...

  He aimed over the bead sight and pulled the trigger. The huge recoil stunned his shoulder. He had a fast image of the woman as she took one load of buckshot in the side, a glancing hit. He fired two more toward her back but the way she fell, it seemed that only one cluster struck her and even that wasn't a square hit.

  Well, if she wasn't dead yet she probably would be soon. And at the very worst she'd be out of commission for months.

  People screamed and horns wailed as cars screeched to a halt, avoiding the pedestrians who dived into the street for safety.

  The man in the Dodge accelerated fast to the next intersection, skidded through the red then slowed and, once out of sight of the hit, drove carefully uptown, well within the speed limit, diligently stopping at every red light he came to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Thom Sebastian, hands cuffed, was led into the precinct house by two uniformed cops.

  Everybody stared at him--the cops, the drunk drivers, the hookers, a lawyer or two.

  "Man," somebody whispered.

  It was the blood, which covered Sebastian's jacket and white shirt. Nobody could figure out how somebody could be covered with this much blood and not have a dozen stab wounds.

  The chubby lawyer slumped on a bench, waiting for the booking officer to get around to him, staring at his brown wing tips. A girl sat next to him, a tall black hooker with a tank top and hot pants under her fake fur coat. She looked at the blood then shook her head quickly, a shiver.

  "Jesus," she whispered.

  Sebastian felt a shadow over him, someone walking close. He looked up and blinked.

  Taylor Lockwood said, "Are you all right? The blood ..."

  Sebastian nodded then closed his eyes and lowered his head again slowly. "Nosebleed," he muttered.

  The desk sergeant said gruffly to her, "Who're you?"

  Taylor said, "What happened?"

  He looked over her black nylons, short black skirt and leather jacket. "Get outta here, lady. He's missin' his date for the night."

  A bit of her father's temper popped within her. "And I'm making the trip down here to meet with my client. So I guess I'm missing mine too. Anything else you'd like to put on the record?"

  The man's face reddened. "Hey, I didn't know you was a lawyer."

  She had no idea what had happened. She'd shown up at the restaurant and found a crime scene investigation under way. Somebody'd been shot and Sebastian had been arrested.

  She barked, "What's he been booked on?"

  "Nothing yet. The arresting's on the phone to the medical examiner." He turned back to a mass of papers.

  Man, that was a lot of blood.

  A uniformed officer came up, a thin man, slicked-back hair, gray at the temples. He looked over Taylor and was not pleased. His would be a joint prejudice: against defense lawyers in general (who spent hours tormenting cops on the witness stand and reducing them to little piles of incompetence) and women defense lawyers in particular (who had to prove they could torment more brutally than their male counterparts).

  Taylor Lockwood cocked her head and tried to look like a ballbuster. "I'm Mr. Sebastian's lawyer. What's going on?"

  Suddenly a roar of a voice filled the station house. "Hey, Taylor!"

  She froze. Oh, brother--why now? It was one of those moments when the gods get bored and decide to skewer you just for the fun of it. Taylor gave an inaudible sigh and turned toward the voice, now booming again, "Taylor Lockwood, right?"

  A huge cop, a faceful of burst vessels, tan from a vacation in Vegas or the Bahamas, stalked across the room. He was off-duty, wearing designer jeans and a windbreaker. Early forties, thirty pounds overweight. Trim, razor-cut blond hair. A boyish face.

  There was nothing to do, she decided, but go all the way. Her father's advice: If you're going to bluff, bluff like there's no tomorrow.

  "Hey," she said, smiling.

  "It's Tommy Blond. Don'tcha remember? Tommy Bianca, from the Pogiolli case."

  "Sure, Tommy. How you doing?" She took his massive, callused hand.

  The man was looking down at Sebastian. "He okay?"

  "Nosebleed is all," the arresting said. "We thought he'd taken one, too. EMS looked him over, said he'll be okay, he keeps an eye on his nostrils."

  Tommy Blond looked at the arresting and the desk sergeant. "Hey, treat this lady right. She's okay. She was working with the lawyer got off Joey, youse remember--Joey Pogiolli from the Sixth? Got him off last year some asshole sued him, said Joey worked him over on a bust.... Hey, Taylor, you was a paralegal then. What, you go to law school?"

  "Nights," Taylor said, grinning and wondering if the nervous sweat that had gathered on her forehead would start running down to her chin and carrying her makeup with it.

  "That's great. My kid's applying to Brooklyn. Wants to be FBI. I told him agents don't got to have law degrees anymore but he wants to do it right. Maybe sometime he could talk to you about school? Got a card?"

  "None with me. Sorry."

  She glanced at Sebastian, staring at the floor.

  Tommy Blond said, "Whatsa story, Frank?"

  The arresting said, "We got a vic got took out outside the Blue Devil, name of Magaly Sanchez. Upscale coke dealer moving into the wrong territory. We think whoever did her wasn't sure what she looked like and was using him"--he nodded toward Sebastian--"to ID the hit. Or maybe they wanted to whack her in front of a customer. Send a message, you know. She had about ten grams on her, all packaged and ready for delivery. And Mr. Sebastian had a quarter gram.... That's why we brought him in."

  Taylor rolled her eyes. "A quarter gram? Come on, you guys."

  "Taylor, I know what you're asking...." Tommy Blond said, then: "That's a lot of blood. You're sure it's just a nosebleed?"

  She remembered a buzzword. "What was yo
ur probable cause for search?"

  "Probable cause?" The arresting blinked in surprise. "He was waving at a known drug dealer who got whacked right in front of him? That's not probable cause--that's for-damn-fucking-sure cause."

  "Let's talk." She walked over to the bulletin board. Tommy Blond and the arresting looked at each other and then followed her. She stood with her head down and whispered harshly to the arresting, "Come on, he's never been arrested before. Sure, the guy's an asshole, but a quarter gram? You and I both know a collar like that's optional."

  Taylor was making this up.

  The arresting: "I don't know.... Everybody's pissed off about these assholes from Wall Street think they can buy and sell blow and we're not going to do anything about it."

  "Let's cut a deal," Taylor continued. "Tell you what. Give him back to me and he'll give you a statement about the late Miss Sanchez and her friends--as long as it's anonymous and he never has to testify in court against anybody. And I'll make him promise to get off the stuff."

  "Whatta you say?" Tommy Blond said to the uniformed officer.

  "Look," Taylor pushed, "he works for the same firm got your buddy Joey off. That oughta count for something."

  Joey, Taylor remembered, was the patrolman who maybe did get a little carried away with his nightstick on that black kid who maybe lifted a wallet but maybe didn't. And who maybe reached for that tire iron, even though, funny thing, it was found twenty feet away from the scuffle. Took the ER fifty-eight stitches to repair Officer Joey's handiwork on the kid's face.

  The arresting gave Taylor a look that's shorthand in law enforcement. It translates to: I don't need this shit.

  "Okay, get him out of here. But tell him to clean up his act. I mean, like really. Next time they won't leave nobody around. Have him down to Narcotics at the Plaza next week and give 'em a statement." He wrote a name on a card. "Ask for this detective here."

  Taylor said, "Thanks, gentlemen."

  Tommy Blond shook her hand again. "Proud of you, little lady. A lawyer. That's all right." He walked off toward the locker room.

  Taylor walked back to Sebastian, who'd been slumped in his seat, out of earshot of the bargaining. He didn't yet know he was free.

  She knelt down next to him, looked at the blood on his face and shirt. It was quite brilliant. She said, "Thom, I may be able to help you out. But I've got to ask you something. I need an honest answer.... Look at me."