Mistress of Justice

  Was it Tuesday? The thought of the leches in the audience and Dimitri's reference to her satin touch suddenly repulsed her. "Think I'll cancel for tonight."

  Reece gave a wan smile. "I'll see you later." He seemed to be looking for something to add but said nothing more. He looked up and down the hallway to make sure it was empty then hugged her hard and walked away.

  Taylor called Ms. Strickland and told her she was taking the rest of the day off. She couldn't get the supervisor off the line, though; all the woman wanted to do was talk about Clayton's suicide. Finally she managed to hang up. Taylor avoided Carrie Mason and Sean Lillick and a half dozen of the other paralegals and snuck out the back door of the firm.

  At home she loaded dirty clothes into the basket but got only as far as the front door. She stopped and set the laundry down. She turned on her Yamaha keyboard and played music for a few hours then took a nap.

  At six that night she called Reece at home.

  "Look," she said. "I'm sorry, I can't come over tonight."

  "Sure," he said uncertainly. Then he asked, "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah. I've got the fatigues. Bad."

  "I understand." But he sounded edgy. "Is this ... Come on, tell me, is what happened going to affect us?"

  Oh, brother ... you can hardly ever get men to talk seriously. And then, at the worst possible time, you can't stop them. "No, Mitch. It's not that. I just need some R&R time."

  "Whatever you want," he said. "That's fine. I'll be here. It's just ... I guess I miss you."

  " 'Night."

  "Sleep well. Call me tomorrow."

  She took a long bath then called home. Taylor was troubled to hear her father answer.

  "Jesus, Taylie, what the hell happened at your shop?"

  No "counselor" now. They were regressing to her grade-school nickname.

  "I just heard," her father continued. "Was that somebody you worked for, this Clayton fellow?"

  "I knew him, yeah. Not too well."

  "Well, take some advice: You keep a low profile, young lady."

  "What?" she asked, put off by his professorial tone.

  "You keep your head down. The firm's going to have some scars from a suicide. We don't want any of it to rub off on you."

  How can scars rub off? Taylor thought cynically. But of course she said nothing other than: "I'm just a paralegal, Dad. Reporters from the Times aren't going to be writing me up."

  Although, she added to herself, if they'd told the whole story by rights they should.

  "Killed himself?" Samuel Lockwood mused. "If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen."

  "Maybe there was more to it than standing the heat, Dad."

  "He took the coward's way out and he hurt your shop."

  "Not mine," Taylor said. But her voice was soft and Samuel Lockwood didn't hear.

  "You want to talk to your mother?" he asked.

  "Please."

  "I'll get her. Just remember what I said, Taylie."

  "Sure, Dad."

  Her mother, who'd clearly had a glass of wine too many, was happy to hear from her daughter and, to Taylor's relief, wasn't the least alarmist about what had happened at the firm. Taylor slipped into a very different mode with her--far less defensive and tense--and the women began chatting about soap operas and distant relatives and Taylor's Christmas trip home to Maryland.

  The woman was so cheerful and comforting in fact that Taylor, on a whim, upped the length of her stay from three days to seven. Hell, Donald Burdick wants me to take some time off? Okay, I'll take some time off.

  Her mother was delighted and they talked for a few minutes longer but then Taylor said she had to go; she was afraid her father would come back on the line.

  She put a frozen pouch of spaghetti into a pot of water. That and an apple were dinner. Then she lay on her couch, watching a Cheers rerun.

  Mitchell Reece called once but she let her answering machine do the talking for her. He left a short message, saying only that he was thinking of her. The words shored her up a bit.

  But still, she didn't call back.

  Taylor Lockwood, curled on the old sofa, the TV yammering mindlessly in front of her, thought about when she was a teenager and her Labrador retriever would pile into bed next to her and lie against an adjacent pillow until she scooted him off. She'd then lie still, waiting for sleep, while she felt, in the warmth radiating from the empty pillow, the first glimmerings of understanding that the pain that solitude conjures within us is a false pain and has nothing to do with solitude at all.

  Indeed, being alone was curative, she believed.

  She thought about Reece and wondered if he was different, if he was like her father, who sought company when he was troubled--though it was not the presence of his family Samuel Lockwood had ever needed but that of business associates, politicians, fellow partners and clients.

  But that's a different story, she thought wearily.

  She lay back on the couch and ten hours later opened her eyes to a gray morning.

  She took the next day off and spent much of the morning and early afternoon Christmas shopping. When she returned home, in the late afternoon, there was another call from Reece and a curious one from Sean Lillick. He seemed drunk and he rambled on for a few minutes about Clayton's death, an edge to his voice. He mentioned that Carrie Mason wasn't going to Clayton's memorial service with him and asked if Taylor wanted to go.

  No, she thought. But didn't call him back.

  Thom Sebastian too had left a message, asking her to phone back. She didn't call him either.

  She rummaged through the mail she'd picked up downstairs and found, mixed in among the Christmas cards, a self-addressed envelope from a music company. Her heart sank as she felt the thick tape inside and realized what it contained. Ripping the envelope open, she upended it and let her demo tape clatter out onto the table.

  This wasn't the last of the tapes she'd sent out for consideration--there were still about a half dozen out at various companies--but it was the important one, the only tape that had made it to a label's Artists and Repertoire committee.

  There was no response letter; someone had simply jotted on her own cover note, "Thanks, but not for us."

  She tossed it into a Macy's box with the rest of them and, finally, opened that morning's New York Times. She read the article she'd been avoiding all day, headlined:

  WALL STREET LAWYER KILLS SELF

  PRESSURE AT WHITE-SHOE FIRM

  CITED IN DEATH OF PARTNER, 52

  Burdick apparently had indeed gotten away with it.

  His artistry was astonishing. Not a word about the Hanover & Stiver case, nothing about the theft of the promissory note. Nothing about her or Mitchell or the merger.

  Burdick was quoted, calling the death a terrible tragedy and saying that the profession had lost a brilliant attorney. The reporter also quoted several members of the firm--Bill Stanley mostly (well, the PR firm)--discussing Clayton's huge workload and his moodiness. The article reported that in the past year Clayton had billed over twenty-six hundred hours, a huge number for lawyers of his seniority. There was a sidebar on stress among overworked professionals.

  She sighed and threw the newspaper away then washed the ink off her hands as if it were blood.

  At five-thirty the doorbell rang.

  Who could it be? Neighbors? Thom Sebastian assaulting her to beg for a date?

  Ralph Dudley simply assaulting her?

  She opened the door.

  Mitchell Reece, wearing a windbreaker, walked inside and asked her if she had a cat.

  "What?" she asked, bewildered by his quick entrance.

  "A cat," he repeated.

  "No, why? Are you allergic? What are you doing here?"

  "Or fish, or anything you have to feed regularly?"

  She was so pleased to see him in a playful mood--so different from the shock in his face after Clayton's death--that she joked back, "Just occasional boyfriends. But none at the momen
t, as I think you know."

  "Come on downstairs. I want to show you something."

  "But--"

  He held his finger to his lips. "Let's go." She followed him out to the street, where a limo awaited, a black Lincoln. He opened the door and pointed inside, where she saw three large bags from Paragon Sporting Goods and two sets of new Rossignol skis propped across the seats.

  Taylor laughed. "Mitchell, what are you doing?"

  "Time for my lesson. Don't you remember? You were going to teach me to ski."

  "Where? Central Park?"

  "You know of someplace called Cannon? It's in New Hampshire. I just called the weather number. Four inches of new powder. I don't know what that means but even the recorded voice sounded excited so I assume it's good."

  "But when?"

  "But now," he said.

  "Just like that?"

  "The firm's jet's on the ramp at La Guardia. And they bill us by the hour so I suggest you hustle your butt. Go pack."

  "This is crazy. What about work?"

  "Donald called--he or his wife found out you like to ski so he ordered us to take some time off. He's giving us the trip all-expenses-paid. He called it a Christmas bonus. I've bought everything we need, I think. The store told me what to get. Skis, poles, black stretch pants, boots, bindings, sweaters, goggles. And ..." He held up a box.

  "What's that?" Taylor asked.

  "That? The most important thing of all."

  She opened it. "A crash helmet?"

  "That's for me." He shrugged. "Maybe you're a good teacher." He smiled. "And maybe you're not."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The helmet wasn't a bad idea. Reece had been on the bunny slope at the Cannon ski resort in New Hampshire for only fifteen minutes when he fell and jammed his thumb.

  One of the resort doctors, a cheerful Indian, had taped it.

  "Is it broken?" Reece had asked.

  "No, is no fracture."

  "Why does it hurt so much?"

  "Lots of nerves in fingers," the doctor said, beaming. "Many, many nerves."

  Afterward, they sat in the small lounge in the inn.

  "Oh, Mitchell, I feel so bad," she said. "But you did a very respectable first run."

  "My thumb doesn't feel too respectable. Is it always this cold?"

  "Cannon's got the coldest, windiest runs in New England, dear," she said, pulling his head against her neck. "People have frozen to death not far from here."

  "Really? Well, we wouldn't want to have too much fun now, would we?"

  Reece actually didn't seem too upset about either the accident or the weather. And she soon learned why: He preferred to sit out the day with what he had smuggled with him--files from the Hanover settlement closing. Taylor too didn't mind; she was eager to get out onto the double-diamond trails and kick some ski butt, not baby-sit him on the beginner slopes or worry about him on the intermediates.

  She kissed him. "Sit in the lodge and behave yourself."

  As she crunched her way toward the lifts, he called, "Good luck. I assume you don't say, 'Break a leg.' "

  She smiled, stomped into her skis and slid down the slight incline to the bottom of the lift.

  At the top of the mountain, she eased off the chair and braked to a stop just past the lift house. She bent down and washed her goggles in snow. The White Mountains were, as she'd told him, son-of-a-bitch cold and the wind steadily scraped across her face. She pulled silk hand liners on and replaced her mittens, then poled her way into position and looked down the mountain. Her impression had always been that most runs never look as steep from the top as they do from the bottom but as she gazed down toward the lodge, over a half mile straight below her, she saw a plunge, not a slope. Her pulse picked up and immediately she realized how right Mitchell had been to arrange the trip. How important it was to get away from the city, to distance herself from Hubbard, White & Willis, from Wendall Clayton's ghost.

  She pushed off the crest of the mountain.

  It was the best run of her life.

  Suddenly there was nothing in her universe but speed and snow and the rhythm of her turns.

  Speed, speed, speed ...

  Which was all she wanted. Her mouth was open slightly in the ellipse that suggests fear or sexual heights. Her teeth dried and stung in the frigid slipstream but the pain only added to her surge of abandon.

  Taylor danced over moguls the way girls skip double-Dutch jump rope on playgrounds. Once, her skis left the ground and she landed as if the snow had risen timidly to stroke the bottom of the fiberglass. Trees, bushes, other skiers were a swift-ratcheting backdrop sweeping past, everyone hushed, it seemed, listening to the cutting hiss of her Rossignol.

  She was sure she was hitting sixty or seventy miles an hour. Her hair was whipping her shoulders and back. She wished she'd borrowed Reece's helmet--not for safety, but to cut the wind resistance of the tangled mass of drag.

  Then it was over. She brodied to a stop near the base of the run, her thighs in agony but her heart filled with a glorious rush of fear and victory.

  She did four runs this way, until on the last one, on a big mogul, she lost control and had to windmill her arms to regain her balance.

  It sobered her.

  Okay, honey, one suicide a week is enough.

  At the bottom of the mountain, she kicked out of her skis and loosened her boot clasps. A tall, thin man came up to her and said in a Germanic accent, "Hey, that was a, you know, pretty okay run. You feel maybe like another one?"

  "Uh, no, not really."

  "Okay, okay. Hey, how about a drink?"

  "Sorry." She picked up her skis and walked toward the cabin. "I'm here with my boyfriend."

  And she realized suddenly that, by God, she was.

  Taylor returned to find Reece in great spirits, the tiny room cluttered with papers and documents delivered by FedEx or DHL. He was on the phone but he motioned her to him and kissed her hard then resumed his conversation.

  She sat on the bed, wincing as she pulled off her sweater and stretch pants, and began massaging her thighs and calves.

  It was around that time that Reece hung up the phone and stacked the files away in a corner.

  When they awoke in mid-afternoon they went to several antique stores, which weren't the precious collections of cheese dishes and brass surveying instruments you find in Connecticut or New York. These were barns packed with furniture. Rows of dusty chairs and tables and dressers and pickle jars and canopy beds and armoires. Very rustic and practical and well cared for.

  None of the shopkeepers seemed to expect them to buy anything and they didn't.

  That night they ate in one of the half-dozen interchangeable inns in the area, their menus virtually the same, they'd found: veal chop, steak, chicken, duck a l'orange, salmon or trout. Afterward, they had a drink in the common room in front of a huge fireplace.

  After they made love that night and Reece had fallen asleep, Taylor Lockwood lay under the garden patch quilt of a hundred hexagons of cotton and felt the reassuring pressure of a man's thigh beside her. She smelled the cold air as it streamed through the inch-open window and gathered on the floor. She tried to forget about Wendall Clayton, about Hubbard, White & Willis, about life on the other side of the looking glass.

  At 4 A.M. she finally fell asleep.

  On Thursday morning Taylor was first in the lift line.

  She skied her first run fast, smelling the clean electric scent of snow, the biting perfume of fireplace smoke, hearing the sharp hiss of her turns in the granular snow.

  Today, however, the speed had none of the cleansing effect that it'd had on her first day out. She felt alone, frightened, vulnerable. Like the first time her father made her ride her bike without training wheels. He'd put her on the tall Schwinn, aimed it down a hill and pushed. (She'd refused to scream until the wobbly front wheel hit a curb and she'd gone over the handlebars onto the sidewalk.) She made mistakes, skied too defensively and nearly wiped out bad.


  At the bottom of the mountain she loaded her skis and boots into the rental car.

  No, Dad, I'm not getting back on the fucking horse, she thought now.

  She drove to their inn and went back to the room, where Reece was taking a shower. She poured coffee from the pot he'd ordered and dropped into the musty armchair.

  Thinking:

  Where and for a first cause of action, Taylor Lockwood did willfully ...

  Outside she could see other skiers heading down the mountain, some fast, some timidly. ... and with full knowledge of the consequences, without a warrant or other license, enter the office of one Wendall Clayton, the decedent, and ...

  She sipped the coffee.

  Where and for a first cause of action, Taylor Lockwood did willfully ascertain and make public certain facts about one Wendall Clayton, the decedent, that caused ...

  Taylor sat back in the chair, closed her eyes.

  ... that caused said decedent to blow his fucking brains out.

  Mitchell Reece, wrapped in a towel, opened the bathroom door and, smiling with pleasant surprise, walked up to her. Kissed her on the mouth.

  "Back early. You okay?"

  "I don't know. Wasn't fun. Thumb still hurt?" she asked.

  "A bit. I tell you I'm no good at this sort of thing.... I'm much better with simpleminded, safe sports...." He seemed to be groping for a joke, something cute about sex probably, but he sensed that she was upset. He sat down on the bed opposite her.

  "So what's up, Taylor?"

  She shook her head.

  "What is it?" he persisted.

  "Mitchell, you know history?"

  He motioned with an open palm for her to continue.

  She asked, "You know what the Star Chamber was?"

  "Just that it was a medieval English court. Why?"

  "We learned about it in my European history course in college. It came back to me last night. The Star Chamber was a court without a jury, run by the Crown. When the king thought the regular court might decide against him he'd bring a case in the Star Chamber. You got hauled up before these special judges--the king's privy counselors. They'd pretend to have a trial but you can guess what happened. If the king wanted him guilty he was guilty. Very fast justice, very efficient."

  He looked at the coffee, swirled it. He set it down without drinking any more. His face was somber.

  She blurted, "Christ, Mitchell, the man is dead."

  "And you think it's your fault."