Mistress of Justice

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Only a few hours had elapsed since Clayton's suicide. But it seemed to Taylor Lockwood that days had passed – given all the conjuring that Donald Burdick had done in the wake of the tragedy.

First, he'd appeared at the merger vote meeting and delivered the news to the partners. Then, leaving the stunned men and women to make what they would of the man's death, he'd returned immediately to his office, where Reece and Taylor had been ordered to remain.

The senior partner had handled an endless stream of phone calls and meetings with his cronies. So far he'd talked to the mayors and the governor's offices, the medical examiner's office, the police, the Justice Department, the press.

Taylor was startled to see Burdick's wife make an appearance, walking into her husband's office unannounced, without the least acknowledgment of Reece or Taylor. The woman apparently knew all about the suicide and she and her husband retired to the small conference room off his office and closed the door. Five minutes later Burdick returned alone.

He sat down, leaned back in the chair and then asked Reece and Taylor, "Do you have anything else that has to do with Wendall or the theft? Anything at all?"

Reece shook his head and looked at Taylor, who said numbly, "I didn't think this would happen."

Burdick looked at her blankly for a moment then repeated, "Anything else?"

"No," she said.

He nodded and took an envelope out of his pocket. "There was that suicide note in the car, the one the police found. Talking about pressures at work, being despondent." Burdick looked at both Reece and Taylor. He added, "But he wrote another one. It was on his desk, addressed to me."

He handed a sheet of paper to Reece, who read it and then passed it on to Taylor.

Donald, forgive me. I'm sending this to you privately to keep my theft of the note out of the news. It will be better for everyone.

I want you to know that I truly believed the merger would save the firm. But I lost sight of how far I should go. All I'll offer is this from Milton: "Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law."

Burdick took the letter back and locked it in his desk. "I'm going to try to keep this note quiet." He nodded at the drawer. "I'll talk to the police commissioner and I don't think he'll have a problem with it. This is Hubbard, White's dirty laundry and no one else's. Publicity would be bad for everyone. Bad for the firm. Bad for Clayton's widow too."

"Widow?" Taylor asked suddenly.

Burdick replied, "Yes, Wendall was married. Didn't you know?"

"No," she said. "She wasn't in Connecticut the other day. I've never seen her at any of the firm functions. He never wore a ring."

"Well, I guess he wouldn't now, would he? Given his extracurricular activities."

His widow.

The words stung. Before his death, Clayton the man had been hidden beneath Clayton the ruthless aristocrat. That he had a wife – and maybe children or living parents, siblings – was a shock.

"The newspapers'll get a watered-down story," Burdick continued. "I've called the public relations company. Bill Stanley's with them now. They're preparing a statement. If anybody asks we'll refer questions to them." He lowered his head and looked into Recce's eyes, then Taylor 's. She had the same sense as when she met Reece's gaze, or Clayton's. Or her father's. They drew you in, made you forget who you were, forget your own thoughts. In Burdick's eyes she saw will and confidence, strong as bronze. Her mind went blank. He asked, "Will you back me on this? If I thought there was anything to be gained by a full disclosure I wouldn't hesitate to reveal everything. But I can't see any upside to it."

Men of most renowned virtue

Reece said, "I won't perjure myself, Donald. But I won't volunteer anything."

"Fair enough." The partner looked at Taylor.

She nodded. "Sure I agree."

The hairs on the back of her neck stirred.

Widow

Taylor looked into the conference room, inside which Vera Burdick, her gray hair piled on her head in a stately bun, was on the telephone. She glanced back and caught Taylor 's gaze. The woman half-lose and swung the door closed.

Burdick's phone rang and he took the call. He mouthed something about its being from someone at City Hall but Taylor was preoccupied. She was seeing in her mind's eye the real suicide note, tucked away in Burdick's desk. She vaguely heard Burdick speaking to the caller in a low, reassuring tone. She watched his long, jowly face, carefully shaved, his sparse gray hair brushed into precise alignment.

And Taylor Lockwood thought. What the hell had she been doing all along? What did she think would happen when she fingered the thief? Had she ever considered the consequences?

Never once.

Renowned virtue

Burdick hung up the receiver and nodded with satisfaction. "I think we'll get away with it."

Taylor tried to figure out what he meant.

"The Medical Examiner's office is going to rale the death suicide. The AG agrees. And we can keep our other suicide note private."

Reece blurted an astonished laugh. "The ME ruled already?"

Burdick nodded then looked at Taylor and Reece with a vaguely ominous gaze, which she interpreted as Don't be too curious about this.

The partner looked at his watch. He held out his hand to Reece, then to Taylor, who first wanted to wipe her palm. It was damp as a washcloth, Burdick's was completely dry.

"You two get some rest. You've been through a hellish week. If you want any personal time I'll arrange it. Won't come out of your vacation or sick leave. Are you busy now?"

Reece walked toward the door. "I've got the Hanover settlement closing in Boston next week. That's the only thing on the front burner."

"You, Ms. Lockwood?"

"No, nothing," she replied, still numb.

"Then take some time off. In fact, I'd urge you to. Might be best."

Taylor nodded and began to speak but hesitated. She was waiting for some significant thought to arrive, some phrase that neatly summarized what had just happened.

Nothing occurred, her mind had jammed.

Get away with it?

"Oh, Mitchell," Burdick said, smiling, as if the suicide no longer occupied even a portion of his thoughts.

Reece turned.

"Congratulations on the Hanover settlement," the partner said. "I myself would have settled for seventy cents on the dollar. That's why you're a litigator and I'm not."

He rose and walked to the small conference room, where his wife awaited him. Burdick didn't open the door right away, though. He waited, Taylor noticed, until she and Reece had left the office.

They walked in silence to the paralegal pen.

Everyone in the corridors seemed to be staring at her. As if they knew the part she'd played in the partner's death.

Near her cubicle, in a place where the hall was empty, Reece took her by the arm. He bent down and whispered, "I know how you feel, Taylor. I know how I feel. But this wasn't our fault. There's no way we could've anticipated this."

She said nothing.

He continued, "Even if the police'd been involved the same thing would've happened."

"I know," she said in a soft voice. But it sounded lame, terribly lame. Because, of course, she didn't know anything of the kind.

Reece asked, "Come over for dinner tonight."

She nodded. "Okay, sure."

"How's eight?" Then he frowned. "Wait, it's Tuesday you're playing piano at your club, right?"

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 he 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 moment, 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 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 Recce'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."

A spasm of anger passed through her. Why can't he understand? "I was so stupid." Taylor looked at him briefly. Wondering how Clayton had felt lifting the gun. Had it been heavy? Had there been pain? How long had he lived after pulling the trigger? What had he seen? A burst of yellow light, a second of confusion, a wild eruption of thoughts, then nothing?

"Taylor," Reece said with measured words, "Clayton was crazy. No sane man would've stolen the note in the first place and no sane man would've killed himself if he'd been caught. You can't anticipate people like that."

She gripped his arm firmly. "But that's the point, Mitchell. You're thinking the problem is that Wendall outflanked us – that our fault was we weren't clever enough. But the fault was that we shouldn't've been playing the game in the first place. That firm's like Wonderland – it's got its own set of rules, which don't even make sense half the time but you never think about that because you're so deep in the place. Topsy-turvy. Everything's topsy-turvy."

"What're you saying?"

That we should've gone to the police. And we should've let the chips fall wherever. So New Amsterdam would've left the firm. Well, so what? And you? You're one of the best lawyers in New York. You would've landed on your feet."

He rose and walked to the window.

Finally he said softly, "I know, I know. You think I haven't been living with exactly what you're talking about?" He turned to face her. "But if I don't lay part of the blame at Clayton's feet, it undermines all my beliefs as a lawyer." He touched his chest. "It undermines all that I am. You know, this is something I'm going to have to live with too I mean, you did what I asked you to do. But ultimately it was my decision."

So here was another aspect of Mitchell Reece – not all-powerful, not in control, not immune to pain.

She walked next to him, lowered her head onto his shoulder. His hand twined through her hair. "I'm sorry, Mitchell. This is very odd for me. It's not the sort of thing Ms. or Savvy prepares the working girl for."

He rubbed her shoulders.

"Can I ask a favor?" she said.

"Sure."

"Can we go back?"

He was surprised. "You want to leave?"

"I've had a wonderful time. But I'm in such a funky mood I don't want to spoil our time together and I think I'd be a drag to be with."

"But I haven't learned to ski yet."

"Are you kidding? You're a graduate of the Taylor Lockwood School of Skiing Injury. You can go out now and break arms and legs all by yourself. With that kind of education there's no telling how far you can go."

"Let me see when I can get the jet."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Thursday afternoon, Taylor Lockwood stood in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, looking up at a brown brick apartment building across the street, about as far from the wilderness of New Hampshire as you could get, conceptually speaking.

She checked the address again and verified that she had found the right building. Inside, a solemn doorman regarded her carefully and then called upstairs to announce her.

She was approved and he nodded toward the elevator.

"Sixth floor," he said.

"Which apartment?" she asked.

He looked confused for a moment then said, "It's the whole floor."

"Oh."

She stepped into the leather-padded elevator and was slowly transported to a private entryway. She smoothed her hair, looking into a brass mirror, a huge thing. The foyer was in dark red and filled with Georgian yellow and white dovetail trim. The pictures were old English hunting scenes.

Plaster scrolls and cherubs and angels and columns were everywhere.

An ageless, unsmiling woman in a plain navy shift answered the door, asked her to wait then disappeared down the hallway. Taylor glanced through the doorway. The rooms were larger versions of the foyer. She looked back into the mirror and stared at herself, at a person who was thinner than she'd expected. Thinner and what else? More drawn, gaunter, grimmer? She tried smiling, it didn't take.

A shadow passed across her and Mrs. Wendall Clayton stood in the doorway a middle-aged woman, wearing the stiff, straight-cut, big-patterned clothes that people who learned style in the sixties still sometimes favor. Her straight hair was swept back and sprayed perfectly into place. Her thin face was severe. The foundation makeup had been applied thickly but her skin wasn't good and Taylor could see red patches beneath the pancake.

They shook hands and made introductions.

Taylor followed the woman into the living room Why the hell am I doing this? she wondered suddenly. What possible point could it have?

I'm here to give you my deepest sympathy.

I'm here to say I worked with your husband.

I'm here to say that even though he's dead don't feel too bad because he tried to seduce me.

Mrs. Clayton sat upright in an uncomfortable satin wingback, Taylor in a spongy armchair.

I'm here because I helped kill your husband.

The widow asked, "Tea? Coffee?"

"No, thank you," Taylor said. And then realized that the woman's dress was red and that this was hardly a household in mourning – the room was festooned with antique Christmas decorations and there was a faint but rich scent of pine in the air. Classical Christmas music played on the stereo. Taylor looked at the woman's cocked eyebrow and her expression, which wasn't one of bitterness or sorrow. It was closer to curiosity.

"I worked with your husband, Mrs. Clayton."

"Yes."

"I just came to tell you how sorry I was."

And Taylor understood then, only at that moment, that uttering those words was all she could do. Watching this stolid, lone woman (Taylor couldn't picture her as one half of the Claytons) light a cigarette, she understood that the spirits of Donald Burdick and Vera Burdick and Messrs Hubbard, White and Willis themselves had accompanied her here and were laying cold fingers on her lips. She could not, even here, in Clayton's home, do what she desperately wanted to do explain.

Explain that she'd been the one who'd uncovered the terrible secrets about her husband, that she was the cause – the proximate cause, the law would say – of his death. No, there'd be no confession. Taylor knew what bound her. In this joint venture Hubbard, White & Willis had secured her soul.

"That's very kind of you." After a pause the woman asked. "Did I see you at the funeral? There were so many people."

"I wasn't there, no." Taylor eased back in the chair, uncomfortable, and crossed her arms. Wished she'd asked for coffee to keep her hands busy.

Now she looked around the room, aware of its size. The ceilings were twenty feet high. It reminded her of National Trust mansions and palaces in England. Taylor said, "He was an excellent lawyer."

Clayton's widow said, "I suppose." She was examining a tabletop. It seemed to be a dust inspection. "But then we didn't talk much about his career."

Taylor was counting the squares in the carpet. Trying to figure out the designs. Finally St George and the dragon, she believed.

Beware the Jabberwock.

The widow paused. "The truth is, Ms. Lockwood, I'm a little bewildered. I don't know you – though we may have met before. But you seem genuinely upset by my husband's death and I can't quite figure out why. You're not like the little sycophants who've come by since he died – the associates at the firm. They thought they were covering it up but I could see through them – in their eyes you could tell that they were amused at his death. I know they'd chuckled about it over their beers when they were alone. Do you know why they were here?"

Taylor was silent.

"They came because they thought word would get back to the firm that they'd done their duty. They'd made an appearance that might earn them another point or two, get them a step closer to being partner." She pressed out her cigarette. "Which is so ironic, of course, because they didn't grasp the situation at all. They should've been avoiding this house as if it were a leper colony. If word gets back to Burdick that young Samuel and Frederick and Douglas were paying respects to me, well, then, my God, they're in Dutch. At worst, they'd had the bad judgment to pick the wrong side, at best, they were displaying an oblivion about law firm politics.

"So you see, Ms. Lockwood, I am a little perplexed by your sympathy call." A smile. "That sounds appropriately Victorian, doesn't it? Sympathy call. Well, you aren't here to toady. You aren't here to gloat. Your dress and demeanor tell me you couldn't care less about what the Donald Burdicks and Wendall Claytons of the world think of you. You're clearly not one of the little malleable things he picked for his, dare I use the euphemism, girlfriends. No, you're genuinely upset, I can see that. Well, you may have respected my husband as a lawyer and an ambitious businessman. But I doubt very much if you respected him as a human being. And I know without a doubt that you didn't like him."

"You had a loss in your life and I'm sorry," Taylor said evenly. "I didn't mean anything more or less than that." She fell silent, watching this shrewd woman light another cigarette with bony, red hands. It seemed as if the smoke that floated out of her nose and mouth had over the years taken with it her weight and softness.

Mrs. Clayton finally laughed. "Well, I appreciate that, Ms. Lockwood. Forgive my cynicism. I hope I haven't offended you. But don't feel sorry for me. Heavens, no. You're young. You don't have any experience with marriages of convenience."

Well, let's not go that far, Taylor thought, replaying many images her parents' twin beds, her mother with her glass of wine sitting alone in front of the television, her father calling at midnight saying he was staying at his club. Night after night after night.

Clayton's widow said, "I guess you'd say our relationship wasn't even a marriage. It was a merger. His assets and mine. A certain camaraderie. Love? Was there any love between Williams Computing and RFC Industries when they consolidated? To name just one of the deals that took so much of Wendall's time." She looked out over the park, spindly with branches, the residue of snow faintly surviving in shadows. "And that's the irony, you see."

"What?"

"Love – there was never any between us. And yet I'm the one he was most content with. Cold, scheming Wendall, the power broker. The master of control. But once outside of our life, he was at sea. Vulnerable. That's why he killed himself, of course. For love."

"What do you mean?" Taylor heard herself ask, her heart pounding fast.

"He killed himself for love," the widow repeated. "That's the one thing Wendall didn't understand and couldn't control. Love. Oh, how he wanted it. And as with so many beautiful, powerful people it was denied him. He was an alcoholic of love. He'd go off on his benders. With his chippies. His little sluts. And there were plenty of them – women would flock to him. A few of the men, too, I should tell you. How they all would want him."

"He'd spirit them away on carriage rides, buy them roses, have a breakfast tray put together at Le Pengord and sent to their apartments. Wendall goes a-courting. They were all disasters, of course. The girls never quite lived up to what he wanted. The older ones they turned out to be every bit as superficial and material and cold" – she laughed again, dropping a worm of ash in the ashtray – "as cold as I was. Or he'd pick a young puppy, some ingénue, who'd cling to him desperately, rearrange her life around him. Then he'd feel the arms around his neck, dragging him down. Someone relying on him. My Lord, we couldn't have that, could we? Then he'd dump them. And back he'd come to me. To nurse his wounds."

Taylor jumped in to steer the conversation back on course. "What do you mean about his suicide? Killing himself for love?"

"It's the only thing that makes sense. He must've fallen madly in love with somebody and he was sure she was the one. When she told him no it must've devastated him."

"But the note he left said he was under pressure at work, stress."

"Oh, he wrote that for my benefit. If he'd mentioned a girlfriend, well, it would have embarrassed me." She laughed. "The idea of Wendall killing himself because of pressure? Why, he lived for pressure. He wasn't happy unless he had ten projects going at once. I've never seen him happier than over the past few months working on the merger, doing deals for his clients and then planning the other firm."

"What other firm?"

She looked at Taylor cautiously then pushed out her cigarette. "I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. In case the merger didn't go through, he was going to leave Hubbard, White & Willis, take his boys and a couple of dozen partners and open his own firm. It was his alternative plan. I think he almost preferred that to the merger. Because he'd be a named partner. He always wanted to have his name on the letterhead Clayton, Jones & Smith, or whatever."

Another firm? Taylor wondered.

The widow resumed her examination of Central Park flora. Then smiled. "That note. He could have said in the note how unhappy he was with me as a wife. With our life together. But he didn't. I was very touched."

Rising, Mrs. Clayton looked at her watch. "I'd like to talk to you longer." She picked up her Dunhill cigarette case. "But I have bridge club in ten minutes."

Aristocratize

Taylor Lockwood was sitting at Wendall Clayton's desk.

It was late afternoon and a yellow-gray illumination lit the room from the pale sun over New York Harbor. The office lights were out and the door closed.

She looked at the jotting on a faded piece of foolscap.

Aristocratize

Was that a word? Taylor glanced at the brass, the carpets, the vases, the tile painting, the wall of deal binders, the stacks of papers like the one that had held the note and tape recordings of her conversations with Mitchell Reece. The huge chair creaked as she moved.

Men of most renowned virtue

Spinning around once more to face the window, she decided that, whether it was real or not, "aristocratize" certainly described the essence of Wendall Clayton.

There was no reason for her to be in the firm. Technically she was still on vacation, courtesy of Donald Burdick. She could leave at any moment, smile at Ms. Strickland and walk out of the front door with impunity. She was, in fact, due at Mitchell Recce's loft right about now. (It turned out that he could cook after all and was planning to make them a tortellini salad for dinner, he was currently baking the bread himself.) She wanted to lie in his huge bathtub, a wonderful bathtub that had claw feet, to luxuriate in the water holding a thin-stemmed glass of wine and smell him cooking whatever went into a tortellini salad.

Instead, Taylor slouched down in Clayton's chair and spun slowly in a circle, 360 degrees, once, twice, three times.

Alice spinning as she fell down the rabbit hole, Alice buffeted on the ocean of tears, Alice arguing with the Queen of Hearts.

Off with their heads, off with their heads!

Taylor stopped spinning. She began what she'd come here for, a detailed examination of the contents of Wendall Clayton's desk and filing cabinets.

A half hour later, Taylor Lockwood walked slowly downstairs to the paralegal pen. She made certain that no one was in the cubicles surrounding hers then looked through her address book and found the number of her favorite private eye, John Silbert Hemming.

He stopped suddenly, jolted, as he watched her slip out of Wendall Clayton's office, looking around carefully as if she didn't want to be seen.

Sean Lillick ducked into a darkened conference room where Taylor Lockwood couldn't see him. It had scared the hell out of him, as he was walking toward Clayton's office, to see the sudden shadow appearing in the doorway. For a split second all his chic, retro-punk East Village cynical sensibilities had vanished and he'd thought. Fuck me, it's a ghost.

What the hell had she been doing in there? he now wondered.

Lillick waited until she was gone and the corridor was empty. Then he too ducked into the dead partner's office and locked the door behind him.

It was excellent tortellini salad – filled with all sorts of good things only about half of which she recognized. The bread was lopsided but Reece had propped it up in a cute way. Whatever us shape, it tasted wonderful. He opened a cold Pouilly-Fuisse.

They ate for ten minutes, Taylor nodding as he told her about the impending settlement conference in Boston during which Hanover & Stiver would transfer the bulk of the principal of the loan back to New Amsterdam. He told anecdotes about some of Lloyd Hanover's shady business dealings. Normally, she liked it when he talked about his job because, although she didn't always understand the nuances, the animation and enthusiasm that lit up his face were infectious.

Tonight, though, she was distracted.

He finally caught on that something was wrong and his voice faded. He looked concerned But before he could question her, Taylor set her fork down with a tap. "Mitchell."

He refilled their glasses and cocked an eyebrow at her.

"There's something I have to tell you."

"Yes?" he asked cautiously, perhaps suspecting some personal confession.

"I've been looking into a few things About Wendall Clayton."

Reece sipped his wine. Nodded.

"He didn't kill himself." Taylor picked a lopsided bit of bread crust off the table and dropped it on her plate. "He was murdered."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Mitchell Reece smiled, as if waiting for a punch.

Then. "Why do you think that?"

"I went to see his widow," Taylor said. Then she added quickly, "Oh, I wasn't going to tell her what happened – about the note and everything. But…" She paused. "Well, you know, I'm not sure why I went. It was something I just had to do."

He said, "I hear she's a bitch."

Taylor shrugged. "She was civil enough to me. But you know what she told me? That if Wendall couldn't get the merger through he was going to start his own firm."

"What?" Reece frowned.

Nodding, she said, "He had it all planned out. I went through his desk at the firm. I found business plans, bank loan applications. He even had the firm name selected Clayton, Stone & Samuels. He had a sample letterhead printed up and he'd been talking to a broker about space in the Equitable Building."

Reece too had put down his utensils. "But if he was ready to start his own firm it makes no sense for him to risk his career to push the merger through."

"Exactly. Stealing the note? He'd be disbarred if he got caught. And he'd probably be prosecuted." Taylor held up a finger. "Another thing. Think about the gun."

"The gun he used?"

"Right. I called my detective, my private eye, and he talked to some buddies of his at the police department. The gun he used was a.38 Smith & Wesson knockoff, made in Italy. No serial number. It's one of the most popular street guns there is. 'It's like your McDonald's of firearms' is what John said. But if you're going to kill yourself why buy an untraceable gun? You go to a sporting goods store, show a driver's license and buy a twelve-gauge shotgun."

"Or," Reece said, sitting forward, "why even shoot yourself? It's messy, unpleasant for your loved ones. I'd think you'd park your car in the garage with the engine running."

She nodded her agreement. "What I think is that somebody else stole the note and planted it in Clayton's office. Then when we found it he murdered Clayton to make it look like suicide."

"Who's the 'he'?" Reece asked.

"At first, I wondered if his widow might've done it. I mean here she was hosting a bridge party right after he died. She knew about the affairs he'd had. So she certainly had a motive."

"And she must have inherited some bucks from him."

"True. But then I got to thinking and it seems that the killer'd need to know about the firm and have access to it Clayton's widow isn't like Vera Burdick, who's there all the time. Besides, Mrs. Clayton didn't seem that upset with all his affairs."

"Well," Reece suggested, "what about one of them? A lover? Somebody Clayton dumped?"

"Sure That's a possibility. Or the husband or wife of somebody he'd had an affair with. But," Taylor added, smiling, "what about some of the people we thought were suspects? Ralph Dudley. Clayton had found out about Junie and was blackmailing him."

"And Thom Sebastian Clayton was the main reason he didn't make partner."

"He occurred to me, too. And one other possibility." Reece frowned, shaking his head. Taylor pointed upward. "Go to the top."

"Donald Burdick?" Reece laughed. "Look, I know the motive's there. But Donald? I can't believe it. Whoever stole the note risked not only my career but risked losing a client as well – if we lost the case. There's no way Donald would've put New Amsterdam at risk."

Taylor countered, "But there was no risk. At the very worst, if we hadn't found the note, Donald would've sent his thief to get the note back from Clayton's office and it would've shown up on the file room floor or someplace in time for you to introduce it at trial."

Reece nodded, considering this.

"And look how well Burdick covered everything up. The medical examiner, the prosecutor, the press. Nobody knows about the promissory note theft. And everything else – the evidence we found in Clayton's office, the real suicide note – I'm sure Burdick's shredded it by now."

But then Reece shook his head. "Let's think about this. If it is Burdick, remember that he's real tight with City Hall and Albany. We can't trust the police. We'll go to the U S attorney's office, I've still got friends there. I'll call them -"

"But didn't Donald call somebody in the Justice Department?" she asked. "After they found the body?"

Reece paused. "I don't remember. Yeah, I think he did."

Taylor said, "You're going to Boston tomorrow for the settlement closing. Do you know anybody in Justice up there?"

"Yeah, I do. I haven't talked to him for a while. Let's see if he's still there." He walked to his desk and found his addressbook and picked up the phone. But he looked at it wanly.

"Bugs?" Taylor asked.

"Let's not take any chances – we'll go downstairs." On the street they found a pay phone and Reece made a credit card call.

"Sam Latham, please. Hey, Sam, Mitchell Reece." The men apparently knew each other well and Taylor deduced from the conversation that they'd both been prosecutors in New York some years ago. After a few whatever-happened-to's, Reece told him their suspicions about Clayton's death. They made plans to meet at the U S attorney's office in Boston the next day, after the Hanover settlement closing. He hung up.

"He's getting his boss and an FBI agent to meet with me."

Taylor felt a huge weight lifted from her. At last the authorities were involved. This was the way the system was supposed to work.

They returned upstairs. Reece closed the front door and latched it then walked up behind her, enfolded her in his arms. She leaned her head back and slowly turned so that they were face-to-face.

He glanced at the table, where the meal sat unfinished the exceptionally good tortellini salad, the cold wine, the sagging bread. She smiled and, with her fingertips, turned his head back to face her.

She kissed him hard.

Without a word they walked to Recce's bed.

So far, not so good.

Thom Sebastian sat back in his office chair, pushing aside the documents he'd been working on all morning, a revolving credit agreement for New Amsterdam Bank.

He should have been comfortable, should have been content But he was troubled.

Wendall Clayton, the man who'd destroyed his chances for partnership at Hubbard, White, was gone – as dead as a shot pheasant in one of the hunting prints hanging in the partner's office.

Good.

But his life didn't really feel good. He had a brooding sense that his entire world was about to be torn apart. And this terrified him.

Three times he reached for the phone, hesitated, put his hands flat on his thick thighs and remained where he was.

He peeked under his blotter and saw the notes he'd gathered on Taylor Lockwood over the past ten days or so.

Taylor Lockwood the sole reason that things weren't so good.

Come on, Mr. Fucking Negotiator, make a decision.

But ultimately, he knew, there was no decision at all. Because there was only one thing to do.

The problem was finding the courage to do it.

The next morning Reece called Taylor from Boston.

She was at her apartment, she'd decided it was safest to stay away from the firm. He called to report that the settlement had gone well. The money from the Hanover settlement had been safely wired into a New Amsterdam account and he'd endured Lloyd Hanover's relentless glare and potshots at lawyers throughout the closing.

Reece was on his way to meet with his friend in the US attorney's office.

"I miss you," he said.

"Hurry home," she told him. "Let's get this behind us and go back and ski for real."

"Or," he joked, "go back and shop and eat dinner at the inns."

"I'll get you on black diamond slopes sooner or later."

"What the hell? I've still got one thumb and eight fingers left."

After some Christmas shopping, Taylor stopped at a coffee shop on Sixth Avenue, around the corner from her apartment, for some lunch.

Sitting at the counter, she wondered what to get Reece for Christmas. He had all the clothes he needed. Wine was too impersonal.

Then she recalled his collection of lead soldiers.

She'd find one that was perfect for him – just one. A special one, antique, expensive. But where? Well, this was New York, the city that boasted neighborhoods devoted to special interests the garment district, the flower district, even the sewing machine district. There was probably a cluster of stores somewhere in Midtown selling antique toys.

A man sat down next to her, a large workman in gray coveralls, wearing a baseball cap. There was something vaguely familiar about him and she wondered if he worked in her apartment building, the structure was old and there were always people renovating and repairing.

He pulled out a book and began reading.

Taylor's chicken soup came and as she was sprinkling Tabasco on it the man next to her took a sip of coffee. When he replaced the cup his elbow knocked his book to the floor. It dropped at her feet.

"Oh, sorry," he said, blushing.

"No problem," she said and bent down to retrieve the book. When she handed it to him he smiled his thanks and said, "I like this place. You come here a lot?" A trace of some accent from one of the outer boroughs.

"Some."

"With your boyfriend?" he asked, smiling, ruefully. She nodded, and let the small lie do double duty let him know she wasn't interested and save his ego from a flat-out rejection.

"Ah, well," he sighed and returned to his book.

When she left he was working on a double cheeseburger. He waved to her and called, "Merry Christmas."

"You too," she said.

Back at home, she pulled the phone book out from under her bed and looked up toy stores.

Well, let's start at the beginning.

As she stood to get the phone she realized she felt achy, as if a cold were coming on. Her head was hurting a bit too. She went into the bathroom to get some aspirin, swallowed them down and returned to the bedroom to start calling the stores in search of Recce's Christmas present.

Feeling tired.

She reclined on the bed and picked up the cordless phone.

She'd dialed the first digit when she gasped and sat up fast. A churning pain struck somewhere deep within her abdomen. Her face burst out in sweat.

"Oh, man," she whispered. Not the flu, not now.

Recalling that she often got sick around Christmas when she was young. A therapist she'd seen for a while had wondered if it wasn't her dread of a holiday presided over by a domineering father.

"Oh!" She moaned again, pressing the skin above the pang hard with both her hands. It ceased for a moment then exploded in another eruption of agony.

Taylor stood up, adding nausea to the sensation. The room began to spin and she tried to control her fall to the parquet floor. Her head hit the dressing table and she blacked out.

When she opened her eyes she saw claws.

The Jabberwock's claws, disemboweling her, tearing her stomach, throat, the back of her mouth, shredding her flesh.

She squinted. No, no, they were just the claws on the legs of her bed. She -

The pain stunned her again and she moaned, a low, animal sound.

Sweat filled her eyes and ran down her nose She wrapped her arms around herself and drew her legs up, trying to stop the pain. Every muscle hard as rubber, she tried to will the pain away but this had no effect. Then the nausea overwhelmed her and Taylor crawled to the toilet, opened the seat and held herself up on one arm while she vomited and retched for what seemed like hours.

Her hands shook, her skin was inflamed. She stared at the tiny hexagonal tiles in front of her until she fainted again. Consciousness returned and she struggled for the phone. But her muscles gave out and she dropped again to the floor. From a distant dimension she heard a thunk – the sound of her head hitting the tiles.

She understood now that she'd been poisoned. The man at the restaurant. The workman in the coveralls and baseball cap. He was the one who'd stolen the note, the one who'd run them off the road, the one who'd killed Wendall Clayton.

That was why he'd seemed familiar – because she must've seen him in the firm or following her and Reece earlier. Maybe he'd overheard her conversation with John Silbert Hemming. Maybe he'd put a tap on her phone at the office or even in her apartment.

She -

Then the poison began to churn again and she started to retch in earnest, unable to breathe, trying to scream for help, slamming her hand on the dresser so that somebody might hear and come to her aid. Perfume bottles fell, makeup, an Alice in Wonderland snowball crashed to the floor and broke, the water and sparkles spattering her.

She began to pummel the floor – until she realized she had no feeling in her hand, it was completely numb. Taylor Lockwood began to cry.

She crawled to the phone, dialed 911.

"Police and fire emergency."

She couldn't speak. Her tongue had turned to wood. The air was becoming thinner and thinner, sucked from the room.

The voice said, "Is anyone there? Hello? Hello?" Taylor's hands stopped working. She dropped the phone. She closed her eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

"What happened?" Carrie Mason asked.

The doctor was a woman in her mid-thirties. She had straight blond hair and wore no makeup except for bright blue eye shadow. The medico's badge said Dr. V. Sarravich.

The woman said, "Botulism."

"Botulism? Food poisoning?"

"I'm afraid she ate some severely tainted food."

"Is she going to be okay?"

"Botulism's much more serious than other types of food poisoning. She's unconscious, in shock. Severely dehydrated. The prognosis isn't good. We should get in touch with her family, if she has any. She lived alone and apparently the police couldn't find her address book or any next-of-kin information. We found your name and number on a card in her purse."

"I don't know where her parents live. I'll give you the name of someone who can get in touch with them. Can I see her?"

"She's in the Critical Care Unit. You can't visit now," Dr. Sarravich said. Medical people were all so serious, the girl thought.

Carrie asked, "Is it really bad?"

She hesitated – a concession to delicacy – and said, "I'm afraid it may be fatal and even if it isn't there could be some permanent damage."

"What kind of damage?"

"Neuromuscular."

"To her hands?" Carrie asked.

"Possibly."

"But she's a musician," the paralegal said, alarmed. "A pianist."

"It's too early to tell anything at this point." A pen and paper appeared, and the doctor asked, "Now, whom should I contact?"

Carrie wrote a name and phone number. The doctor looked at the pad. "Donald Burdick. Who is he?"

"The head of the firm she works at. He can tell you everything you want to know."

Taylor's eyes opened slowly. Her skin stung from the sandblasting of fever. Her vision was blurred. Her head was in a vise of fiery pressure. Her legs and arms were useless, like blocks of wood grafted to her torso. The nausea and cramps were still rampaging through her abdomen and her throat was dry as paper.

There was a young woman in a pale blue uniform making the bed next to hers.

Taylor had never been in such pain. Every breath brought pain. Every twitch was a throb of pain. She assumed that the nerves in her hands and legs had short-circuited – she couldn't move her limbs.

Taylor whispered.

No reaction from the young woman.

She screamed.

The attendant cocked her head.

She screamed again.

No reaction. Taylor closed her eyes and rested after the agonizing effort.

Several minutes later the bed was made. As the attendant walked toward the door, she glanced at Taylor.

Taylor screamed, "Poison."

The aide leaned down. "Did you say something, honey?" Taylor smelled fruity gum on her breath and felt like gagging.

"Poison," she managed to say. "I was poisoned."

"Yes, food poisoning," the girl said and started to leave.

Taylor screamed, "I want Mitchell!"

The girl held up the watch on her pudgy wrist. "It's not midnight. It's about six."

"I want Mitchell. Please."

Taylor tried fiercely to hold on to consciousness but it spilled away like a handful of sugar. She had an impression of struggling to leap out of bed and calling Mitchell in Boston but then she realized that her legs and arms had started to spasm. Then a nurse was standing over her, staring in alarm and reaching for the call button, pushing it fiercely over and over.

And then the room went black.

At 7:30 P.M. the telephone in Donald Burdick's co-op rang.

He was in the living room. He heard Vera answer it then mentally followed her footsteps as they completed a circuit that ended in the arched entrance near him. Her calm face appeared.

"Phone, Don," Vera said. "It's the doctor."

The Wall Street Journal crumpled in his hand. He rose and together they walked to the den.

"Yes?" he asked.

"Mr. Burdick?" a woman's matter-of-fact voice asked. "This is Dr. Vivian Sarravich again. From Manhattan General Hospital. I'm calling about Ms. Lockwood."

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid I have bad news, sir Miss Taylor has gone into a coma. Our neurologist's opinion is that she won't be coming out of it in the near future if at all. And if she does she's certain to have permanent brain and neuromuscular damage."

Burdick shook his head to Vera. He held the phone out a ways so that she too could hear. "It's that bad?"

"This is the most severe case of botulism I've ever seen. The infection was much greater than usual. She's had two respiratory failures. We had to put her on a ventilator. And a feeding tube, of course."

"Her family?"

"We've told them. Her parents are on their way here."

"Yes, well, thank you, Doctor. You'll keep me posted?"

"Of course I am sorry. We did everything we could."

"I'm sure you did."

Burdick hung up and said to his wife, "She probably won't make it."

Vera gave a neutral nod and then glanced at the maid who'd silently appeared beside them. "They're here, Mrs. Burdick."

"Show them into the den, 'Nita."

Donald Burdick poured port into Waterford glasses. His hands left fingerprints in a slight coating of dust on the bottle, which, he noticed, had been put up in 1963.

The year that a Democratic President had been killed. The year he made his first million dollars. The year that happened to be a very good one for vintage port.

He carried the glasses to the guests. Bill Stanley, Lamar Fredericks, Woody Crenshaw – all old fogies, his granddaughter might say, if kids still used that word, which of course they didn't – and three other members of the executive committee. Three young partners to whom Burdick was making a point of being kind and deferential.

Three partners who were in absolute terror at the moment – because they had been picked and polished by Wendall Clayton and then leveraged by him onto the executive committee.

The men were in Burdick's study. Outside, wet snow slapped on the leaded glass windows.

"To Hubbard, White & Willis," Burdick said. Glasses were raised but not rung together.

The Reconstruction had began swiftly. Only one of Claytons lackeys had been fired outright – tall, young Randy Simms III, a fair-to-middlin' lawyer but one hell of a scheming nazi sycophant, Vera Burdick had observed. It had been her delightful task to transmit, through her own social network, rumors of various types of illegal scams the young partner was guilty of. By the time she was through he'd been thoroughly blackballed and was a pariah in the world of New York law and Upper East Side society.

As for the other pretty young men and women associates on Clayton's side they weren't asked to leave, the theory being they'd work even harder to rid themselves of the contamination. These secessionists and collaborators were given the shaved-head treatment then kicked onto the summer outing and hiring committees.

These three Nameless were the last order of business in the Purge.

One of them said, "Your wife, Donald, is a charming lady."

Burdick smiled. They had of course met Vera before this evening though she had never served them dinner, never entertained them, never told them stories of her travels and anecdotes about her famous political friends, never, in short, grilled them like an expert interrogator.

He set the assassination-year bottle in the middle of the tea table.

He said, "Bill knows this but for the rest of you, I have some news. I'm meeting tomorrow with John Perelli. We have a problem, of course. Perelli's position is that Wendall's discussions with him suggest an implicit agreement to go forward with the merger – even though the whole firm's never approved it."

One of the Nameless nodded. Impressed that the man returned his gaze, Burdick continued, "His thinking is that we agreed to negotiate in good faith. The firm has now decided that we do not want to go forward simply because we do not want to go forward. That is not good faith. We have an implied contract problem. Look at Texaco and Pennzoil."

Another Nameless. "I know the law, Don." This was a little brash, as the youngster understood immediately, he continued more contritely, "I agree they'd have an argument but I think we hedged well enough so that with Wendall gone the basic deal has changed."

Vera asked bluntly, "Was Clayton's presence a condition precedent to going forward?"

Two of the Nameless blinked, hearing the charming woman nail the legal situation perfectly with one simple question.

"No."

Her husband, smiling, shrugged. "Then, I submit, we still have our problem."

The first Nameless said, "But what would they want as a remedy? Specific performance?"

Burdick decided the man was an idiot and made a mental note to give him only scut work for the rest of his time at Hubbard, White. "Of course not. The courts can't make us merge."

Bill Stanley said, "They want money. And what do we want?" When no one answered he answered himself,

"Silence."

Burdick said, "No more publicity. Under any circumstances. A senior partner kills himself? Bad enough and we're going to lose clients because of that, my friend. Then a suit from Perelli? No, I want to preempt them."

Lamar Fredericks, round, bald and roasted from two weeks of golf on Antigua, said, "Preempt? You mean bribe? Cut the crap and tell us what it's going to cost."

Burdick looked at Stanley, who said to the group, "We'd pay Perelli twenty million. Up to, that is. We'll start lower, of course. Full release and agreement not to say anything to the press. If they do, liquidated damages of a double refund."

Crenshaw snorted. "What does that do to our partnership shares?"

Burdick snapped, "It'll be a cut out of operating profits. Take a calculator and figure it out yourself."

"Will they buy into it?"

Burdick said, "I'll be as persuasive as I can. The reason you're all here is that it would be an expenditure out of the ordinary course. I don't want to present it to the firm. So to authorize it we need a three-quarters vote of the executive committee."

None of them had assumed that this was solely a social dinner, of course, but it was not until this moment that they understood the total implications of the invitation. They were the swing votes and were being tested, Burdick had to know where they stood.

"So," Burdick said cheerfully, "are we all in agreement?"

This was the final exorcism of Wendall Clayton. In these three trim, handsome lawyers resided what was left of his ambitious spirit.

Was his legacy, Burdick wondered, as powerful as the man?

Gazes met. No one swallowed or shuffled. When Burdick called for the vote they each said an enthusiastic "In favor."

Burdick smiled and, when he poured more port, gripped one of them on the shoulder – welcome to the club. He was the foolish partner, the one whose professional life would be a living hell from that day on.

Then Burdick sat down in his glossy leather wingback chair and reflected on how much he despised them for not having the mettle to take Clayton's fallen standard and shove it up his – Burdick's – ass. He then grew somber. "Oh, just so you know. We have another problem, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean?" Stanley's voice was a harsh whine.

"One of the paralegals is in the hospital," Vera Burdick explained. "It's quite serious. I have a feeling she won't survive."

"Who?" a Nameless dared to ask.

"Taylor Lockwood."

"Taylor? Oh, no, not her. She's one of the best assistants I ever had on a closing. What happened?"

"Food poisoning. Nobody knows exactly how she got it."

"Should we -" one of the Nameless began to ask.

But Vera Burdick interrupted. "I'm on top of it. Don't worry."

Bill Stanley shook his head. "God, I only hope it wasn't anything we catered. Could you pass that port, Donald?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Mitchell Reece closed his litigation bag and slid it under the seat of the shuttle from Boston as they approached La Guardia early the next morning.

Still no call from Taylor Lockwood and he hadn't been able to reach her at the firm. He'd gotten only her voice mail.

He wondered what was going on.

But as he stared at the brown and gray expanse of the Bronx beneath him his thoughts returned to Wendall Clayton's funeral, held in an Episcopalian church on Park Avenue. The minister's words came clearly to mind.

I recall one time when I happened to meet Wendall, it was a Saturday evening, late. We happened to be strolling up Madison Avenue together, he returning from the firm, I from some function at my congregation

The minister had forsaken the pulpit and, like a talk show host, walked down into his audience.

and we passed a few moments in idle conversation. Though we were in very different places in our lives I saw that there were striking similarities between his profession and mine.

He voiced some concern for a young man or woman, a lawyer at his firm, who was suffering from doubts. Wendall wanted to inspire this protégé to be the best lawyer they might be.

Hundreds of people. Most of the partners from Hubbard, White & Willis, many associates, many friends had attended.

just as I in my own way deal with spiritual doubt in our young people.

Quite a church, Reece recalled Huge, pointy, Gothic, solid. All the joists and beams met in perfect unison – high in the air. It was a fitting place for an aristocratic man to be eulogized.

Then he thought back to another death at the firm – Linda Davidoff's. Her funeral, Reece decided, had been much better. The church was tamer, the minister more upset. It seemed to Reece preferable to get more tears and fewer words from men of the cloth at times of mourning.

Clayton's Upper East Side minister had been correct about one thing, though he and Clayton had indeed been cut from the same bolt – noblemen and medieval clergy. In tarot cards pentacles would be their suit. Choose this sign for dark men of power and money.

Aggressive men.

The minister was seizing an opportunity to preach, just as Clayton had seized a chance of his own – and had died as a consequence of his reach.

The sudden grind and windy slam of the plane's wheels coming down interrupted Reece's thoughts. And as he glanced out the window, Reece decided it was ironic that he saw below him the huge cluster of dense graveyards in Queens – a whole city of a graveyard. He watched until it vanished under the wing and they landed.

As he walked down the ramp toward the terminal, Reece saw his last name on a card being held up by a limo driver.

"Is that for Mitchell Reece?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. You have luggage?"

"Just this."

The man took his bags.

Reece gave him the address of the firm.

"We're supposed to stop someplace else, sir."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm afraid there's some kind of problem."

Reece climbed into the back of the Lincoln. "What kind of problem?"

"An emergency of some kind."

Forty minutes later the driver pulled up in front of yellow-painted doors at an annex to Manhattan General Hospital. It was deserted, except for some big blue biohazard containers and a bloody gurney sitting by itself. It seemed as if a body had just been pulled from it and hauled off to a pauper's grave.

Inside, Reece stopped at a reception desk and was directed down a long, dim corridor.

He found the basement room he sought and pushed open the door.

Gray-faced and red-eyed, Taylor Lockwood blinked in surprise at his entrance and shut off the soap opera she was watching.

She smiled. "Mitchell, it's you! Kiss me – it's not contagious – then see if you can scarf up some food. I'm starving to death."

"Suck on ice," Reece said when he returned a few minutes later.

Taylor frowned.

"I asked them what you could have to eat. They said you should suck on ice."

She nodded at the IV. "Glucose. It's pure carbohydrates. I'm dying for a hamburger."

Reece gave her a Life Saver. "You look, well, awful."

"'Awful' is a compliment, considering how I did look. The nurse tells me I've recovered incredibly well."

"What happened?"

Taylor nodded. "I was stupid. I'm sure my phone was bugged too, either at my apartment or cubicle. I should've thought about that. Anyway, we got busted – somebody overhead us. And then at lunch yesterday this guy sits down next to me. He drops a book – I mean, pretends to drop a book – and when I bent down to pick it up for him, I think he squirted botulism culture into my soup."

"Jesus, botulism? The most dangerous food poisoning there is."

She nodded. "I think he got it from Genneco Labs."

"Our client?"

"Yep."

"I was talking to a pathologist here. He told me Genneco does a lot of research into antitoxins – you know, like antidotes."

"So, whoever killed Clayton stole some culture – or told the killer about Genneco and he stole it?"

She nodded.

"I was feeling a lot better last night but I called Donald and told him I was almost dead, in a coma."

"You what?"

"I wanted word to get around the firm that I was almost dead. I was afraid the killer would try again. I called and pretended I was my doctor." She gave a faint laugh. "I called my parents and told them that whatever they heard I was fine – although I have to say I was inclined to let my father stew a bit more. Carrie Mason's the only one who knows I'm okay."

Reece stroked her cheek. "Botulism… that could've killed you."

"The doctor told me that, 'luckily, ' I ingested too much of the culture. I got sick immediately and, well, the word they used was, quote, evacuated most of the bacteria. Man, it was unpleasant. I'm talking Mount Saint Helens."

He hugged her hard. "We're not going to have to worry about anything like this happening again. I talked to Sam, my friend at the U. S. attorney's office, yesterday afternoon. He's coming down tomorrow with a special prosecutor from Washington. We're going to meet with him at the federal building at three – if you feel up to it."

"I'll feel up to it. Whoever's behind this… we're going to stop them…" Her voice faded. "What's wrong, Mitchell?"

"Wrong?" His eyes were hollow and troubled. "You almost got killed… I'm so sorry. If I'd known -"

She leaned forward and kissed him. "Hey, I lost those five pounds I gained at Thanksgiving and then some. Call it an early Christmas present. Now, go on, get out of here. Next time you see me I promise I won't look like Marley's ghost."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The girl walked sheepishly into the hospital room, hiding behind a bouquet of exotic flowers that she'd probably hand-selected from an Upper East Side florist.

"Whoa," Taylor told Carrie Mason, laughing at the massive arrangement. "Anything left in the rain forest?"

The chubby girl set the vase on the bedside table and sat in the functional gray chair near Taylor's bed, studying her carefully.

"You're looking a thousand times better, Taylor," Carrie said. "Everybody's like, ohmagod, she's dying I wanted to tell them but I didn't. Not a soul – like you said."

Taylor gave her a rundown on her condition and thanked the girl for staying with her just after she'd been admitted.

"It's, like, no problem, Taylor. You looked You were pretty sick."

Attempted murder does that to you.

"Well, I'll be getting out soon. May not eat for a week or so but it'll be good to get vertical again."

The girl avoided Taylor's eyes. She stood and arranged the flowers and it was this compulsive activity that told Taylor that she was troubled by something.

"What is it, Carrie?"

The girl paused, her back to Taylor, then sat down again. Tears were running down her cheeks. She wiped her face with the back of her fleshy hand. "I…"

"Go ahead Tell me. What's the matter?"

"I think I know why Mr. Clayton killed himself. I think it was my fault."

"Your fault?" Taylor said. "What do you mean?"

"Well, okay. You know Sean."

One of the firm's busier spies Taylor nodded.

"Well, what it was see, last week Sean asked me out. I went over to his place. And I thought he wanted to go out with me and I was really, really excited about it. 'Cause I've had this crush on him for, like, a while. But it turned out I mean, the thing was he just wanted to go through my purse."

"Why?"

"To get my log-on pass code for the firm computers. One of the operators told me he went on the system with my user name."

Taylor remembered the gum-snapping computer operator and the blank screen that should have had information about taxis and computer tune and phone records. This was interesting. She nodded for the girl to continue and listened carefully.

"When I found out what he did, I got totally mad. I asked him how could he do that? I mean, he way used me. Anyway he got all freaked out and apologized. But I was so mad. Well, I wanted to get even with him and…" She again attended to the stalks of weird flowers. "And when I was in Connecticut with Mr. Clayton and you. Well, afterward, he came on to me, Mr. Clayton, you know and well, we sort of slept together."

Taylor nodded, recalling that she'd overheard the tryst from Clayton's den. The poor girl, suckered in by the vortex of the partner's eyes and charm.

"So, Sean found out and he had this big fight with Clayton. It was really vicious. I think Sean threatened to go to the executive committee about what happened and Clayton was afraid he'd get fired and he killed himself."

Taylor was frowning. So he and Lillick had had a fight. It had never occurred to her that Lillick might have killed Clayton.

Then she focused on the distraught Carrie once more. She couldn't, of course, say anything about Clayton's death but she could reassure the girl. "No, Carrie, that had nothing to do with it." A woman-to-woman smile. "Wendall Clayton slept with half the firm and he couldn't care less if anybody knew about it. Besides, I talked to Donald. I know why Clayton killed himself. I can't tell you but it had nothing to do with you or Sean."

"Really?"

"Promise."

"Despite what happened, I really kind of like him – Sean, I mean. He's weird, but underneath he's not as weird as he seems to be. We kind of patched things up. I think he likes me."

"I'm glad to hear that."

Taylor decided it was time to get out of the hospital. She feigned a yawn. "Listen, Carrie I'm going to get some sleep now."

"Oh, sure. Feel better." Carrie hugged her. Then she asked, "Oh, one thing – do you know where the United Charities of New York general correspondence file is?"

"No idea I never worked for them."

The girl frowned. "You didn't?"

"No. Why?"

"I was down in the pen this morning and I saw Donald Burdick's wife in your cubicle."

"Vera?"

"Yeah. She was looking through your desk. And I asked what she needed and she said she was doing a fund-raiser for the UCNY and needed the file. She thought you had it. But we couldn't find it."

"I've never checked out any of their files. Must be a mistake."

Carrie glanced at the TV and her face lit up. "Hey, look, it's The Bold and the Beautiful. That's my favorite! I used to love summer vacations so I could watch all the soaps. Can't do that anymore. Things sure change when you start working."

Well, that's the truth.

Taylor's eyes strayed absently to the screen, watching the actors lost in their own intrigues and desires. When she turned to the doorway to say good-bye to Carrie, the paralegal had already left.

Taylor felt uneasy. Lillick, Dudley, Sebastian, Burdick or somebody else had tried to poison her. They might find out that she was no longer in a coma and try again. She summoned the floor nurse, who in turn managed to track down a resident. The young doctor, seeing the urgency in her eyes, reluctantly agreed to discharge her as soon as the paperwork was finished.

After he'd left, she lay back in bed and looked through her purse for her insurance card.

She found a folded sheet of paper stuck in the back of the address book.

It was the poem that Danny Stuart had given her Linda Davidoff's poem, her suicide note. She realized that she'd never read it, which she now did.

When I Leave

By Linda Davidoff

Taylor Lockwood thought of Linda, the beautiful, quiet, gypsy poet. She read the lines again very slowly.

Then she read them once more.

A moment later a huge orderly appeared in the door. "Ms. Lockwood, good news. The warden called."

He grinned, she frowned, not understanding.

Then the man delivered the rest of what would be his stock joke. "It's a full pardon. You're free to go." And he maneuvered the wheelchair into the room.

Taylor Lockwood had learned early who the real power centers were at Hubbard, White.

One of the most powerful was a short, round-faced woman of sixty. Mrs. Bendix had used her miraculous skills at memory and association to save the butts of almost every attorney and paralegal in the firm on more than one occasion by finding obscure file folders buried among the millions of documents residing on the gray metal shelves.

She was the doyen of the firm's massive file room.

Taylor now stood over Mrs. Bendix's frothy blue hair as the woman flipped through the three-by-five cards that were her computer. Taylor silently waited for her to finish Mrs. Bendix – even more so than a senior partner – was a person one did not interrupt. When she was through she looked up and blinked. "I was told you were in the hospital. We contributed for the flowers."

"They were lovely, Mrs. Bendix. I recovered more quickly than expected."

"They said you were almost dead."

"Modern medicine."

Mrs. Bendix was eyeing Taylor's jeans and sweatshirt critically. "This firm has a dress code. You're outfitted for sick leave, not work."

"This is a bit irregular, Mrs. Bendix. But I have a problem and you're just about the only person who can help me."

"Probably am. No need to stroke."

"I need a case."

"Which one? You've got about nine hundred current ones to chose from."

"An old case."

"In that event, the possibilities are limitless."

"Let's narrow things down Genneco Labs. Maybe a patent -"

"Hubbard, White does not do patent work. We never have and I'm sure we never will."

"Well, how about a contract for the development of bacterial or viral cultures or antitoxins?"

"Nope."

Taylor looked at the rows and rows of file cabinets. A thought fluttered past, then settled. She asked, "Insurance issues, the storage of products, toxins, food poisoning and so on?"

"Sorry, not a bell is rung, though in 1957 we did have a cruise line as a client I got a discount and took a trip to Bermuda. I ate pasta that disagreed with me very badly. But I digress."

In frustration, Taylor puffed air into her cheeks.

Mrs. Bendix said tantalizingly, "Since you said toxins, food poisoning and so on I assume you meant toxins, food poisonings and so on."

Taylor knew that when people like Mrs. Bendix bait you, you swallow the worm and the hook in their entirety. She said, "Maybe I was premature when I qualified myself."

"Well," the woman said, "my mind harkens back to… She closed her eyes, creasing her gunmetal eye shadow, then opened them dramatically." Biosecurity Systems, Inc. A contract negotiation with Genneco for the purchase and installation of Genneco's new security system in Teterboro, New Jersey. Two years ago I understand the negotiations were a nightmare."

"Security," Taylor said. "I didn't think about that'."

Mrs. Bendix said, "Apparently not."

"Can you tell me if anyone checked out the files on that deal in the past few months?"

This was beyond her brain. The woman pulled the logbook out and thumbed through it quickly then held it open for Taylor to look at Taylor nodded. "I'd like to check it out too, if you don't mind."

"Surely."

Then a frown crossed Taylor's face. "I wonder if we could just consider one more file. This might be trickier."

"I live for challenges," Mrs. Bendix replied.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The New York State Department of Social Services worked fast.

After one anonymous phone call to the police the West Side Club became the front-page feature in the evening edition of every tabloid in the New York area.

Though gentlemen did not read such newspapers, Ralph Dudley made an exception this once, since the Times wouldn't have the story until tomorrow morning. He now sat at his desk, lit only by a single battered brass lamp and the paltry December dusk light bleeding into his office, and stared at the same article he'd already read four times. A half-dozen people were under arrest and two underage prostitutes were being placed in foster homes in upstate New York.

Good-bye Junie, Dudley thought.

He'd made one last trip to see her – just before he'd made the call to 911, which closed up the West Side Art and Photography Club forever.

"Here," he'd said, handing her a blue-backed legal document.

She'd stared at it, uncomprehending. "Like, what is it?"

"It's a court order. The marshal seized your mother's and stepfather's bank accounts and house and they've put the money into a special trust fund for you."

"I… Like, I don't get it."

"The money your father left you? The court took it away from your mother and they're giving it back to you. I won my petition."

"Whoa, like radical! How much is it?"

"A hundred and ninety-two thousand."

"Awesome! Can I -"

"You can't touch it for three years, until you're eighteen."

"Or whatever," she'd added.

"And you only get it if you go to school."

"What? That's fucking bogus."

It was also untrue. There were no strings on the money once she turned eighteen, as the trust officer would undoubtedly tell her. But she'd have a few years to think about it and might just try a class or two. Junie might just succeed at school, she was, he'd concluded, more savvy than half the lawyers at Hubbard, White & Willis.

She'd hugged him and then looked at him in that coy way that, before this, would've melted him. But he'd said he had to be going. He had an important meeting – with a pay phone. He'd looked at her for a long moment then kissed her on the cheek and left.

He wondered if Junie would say anything about him. She was, of course, in a position not only to destroy the delicate balance of his career, such as it was, but also to send him to prison for the rest of his life.

These possibilities he considered with remarkable serenity, sipping coffee from a porcelain cup. He weighed the odds and decided that she would say nothing. Although she'd been badly used by life and had the dangerous edge of those who learn survival skills before maturity, Junie was nonetheless motivated by a kind of justice. She saw essential good and essential evil, assigned her loyalty accordingly and stuck by her choice.

There were few adults with that perception Or that courage.

Also, Dudley chose to believe that the girl loved him, at least by her wary definition of that word.

Good-bye, Junie.

He now set the paper down and rocked back in his chair.

Reflecting that for once in his forty years as a lawyer he'd given up charming people and trying to win clients. Rather, he'd mastered a tiny bit of the law. In this small area of expertise he was now the best in the city restitution of parentally converted intestate distributions (though he himself preferred to think of the subniche as "saving teenage hookers' bacon".) And he was proud of what he'd learned and done.

Still, there was one more potential problem. Taylor Lockwood knew his secret.

He picked up the phone and dialed a number he'd been calling so often over the past two days that he had it memorized.

The main operator at Manhattan General Hospital answered. He asked to speak to the floor nurse about the paralegal's condition.

They'd been reluctant to talk about details but it was clear from the tone – as well as from the gossip around the firm – that the girl was near death.

Maybe she'd died. That would take care of all the problems.

But then an orderly came on the phone. The man listened to Dudley's question and replied in a cheerful voice, "Don't you worry, sir. Your niece, Ms. Lockwood, was discharged today. She's doing fine."

An electric charge shot through him at this news. He hung up.

With Clayton dead, she was the one person who could destroy his fragile life here at the firm. She was the one risk to his budding life as a real lawyer. So much of the law deals with risk, Dudley reflected, some acceptable, some not. On which side did Taylor Lockwood fall?

He rocked back, looking out the window at the tiny sliver of New York Harbor that was visible between the two brick walls outside his office.

As she left the firm by the infamous back door – no longer taped open, she noticed – Taylor Lockwood was aware of someone's presence near her.

She stepped onto the sidewalk of Church Street, which at one time had been the shoreline of lower Manhattan. Now a half mile of landfill had extended the island well into the Hudson and the harbor.

Pausing, she looked behind her.

This was a quiet street, with a few bad restaurants, a girlie bar (ironically next to the rear entrance to Trinity Church) and the dingy service entrances to a number of office buildings. The street was now largely deserted.

She noticed a few businesspeople hurrying to or from one of the gyms near here and some construction workers. A number of vans were parked on the narrow street, half on the sidewalk. She had to walk around a drapery cleaning van to step into the street and hail a taxi.

Of course, there were none.

Then, in the bulbous disk of a wide-angle rearview mirror on one of the vans, she noticed a man looking her way.

She gasped.

There was nothing ambiguous about the recognition this time.

It was the man in the baseball cap, the one who'd sat next to her in the coffee shop.

The killer, the thief.

Okay. He doesn't know you saw him. You can get out of this.

Shaking her head casually, as if discouraged that there were no cabs, Taylor turned slowly back to the sidewalk.

Then instantly reversed herself and, sprinting as fast as her still-weak legs could carry her, made straight for population.

She glanced back once and saw that the man had given up any pretense – he was running after her. He reached into his coveralls and pulled out a long dark object. At first she thought it was a gun but then she realized that it was a knife or ice pick.

Still dehydrated and in severe pain from the poisoning, her muscles began to slow. Judging distances, Taylor realized that she wasn't going to make it to Broadway or one of the other heavily traveled streets before the killer reached her.

She stopped suddenly in the middle of the street and jogged down the concrete stairs to the Rector Street subway stop. This was better than the street anyway – not only would there be people on the platform but the token seller in the booth would have a hot line to the transit police. The killer wouldn't follow her here. He -

But he was following, grim determination – to kill her – on his face. A glance back showed that he'd picked up the speed, as if he could sense her fatigue and was moving in for the coup de grace.

"Help me'" she screamed to the startled young woman in the token booth. Three or four people scattered or ducked as Taylor vaulted the turnstile and fell hard onto the platform. One man started to help her but she raged, "Get away. No, get away!"

There were more screams behind her as the killer reached the bottom of the stairs and looked for her.

A businessman hovering nearby saw the ice pick in the hand of the killer and backed up.

Rising to her feet, she ran as fast as she could along the platform to the far exit of the subway. She heard the staticky voice of the token seller call out, "Pay your fare," as the killer jumped onto the platform and started after her.

Sprinting as best she could, she came to the end of the platform and turned to run up the stairs at the exit door.

But it was chained.

"Oh, Jesus," she cried. "No."

Taylor returned to the platform and saw the killer, his face emotionless, walking slowly now, studying her carefully from thirty feet away. Anticipating her escape routes.

She jumped off the platform and dropped four feet into the muck between the rails. Turning away from the killer, she began to run through the tunnel, stumbling over the slippery ties.

He was right behind her, saying nothing, not threatening her or urging her to stop. Not negotiating – there was only one thing he needed to do – kill her.

Taylor got only about twenty feet when, exhausted, she slipped on a slick piece of tie and nearly fell. By the time she regained her balance the killer had made a leaping grab and seized her by the ankle. She went down hard against the solid piece of wood.

Catching her breath, she lashed out with her other foot and caught him in the mouth or cheek with her sole – a solid blow -and he grunted and lost his grip.

"Fuck you," he muttered, spitting blood.

"No, fuck you!" she screamed. And kicked again.

He dodged away from her and swung with the pick.

Taylor rolled away and he missed. But she couldn't climb to her feet, he was coming forward too fast, swinging the steel, keeping her off balance.

Finally she managed to stand but just as she was about to start running he grabbed her overcoat and pulled her legs out from under her. She tumbled again to the ground, her head bouncing hard on a tie. She rose, exhausted, to her hands and knees.

"No," she said. "Please."

The killer was up, ready to pounce. But Taylor remained motionless, on her hands and knees, stunned.

"What do you want?" she gasped, breathless, spent.

Still, no answer. But why should he respond? It was clear what he wanted. She was the tiny bird that her father had hunted, she was the victim of the Queen of Hearts – off with her head, off with her head.

The weapon drawing back, its needle-sharp point aiming at her face. She lifted her head and gazed at him, piteous. "Don't, please."

But he leaned forward and lunged with the pick, aiming toward her neck.

Which is when she dropped to her belly and scrabbled backward.

She'd been feigning, remaining on all fours like an exhausted soldier, when in fact she had – somewhere – a tiny bit of strength left.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah."

Taylor squinted at him, still in the position of attack, right arm extended, clutching that terrible weapon.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah!" The terrible moan from his throat.

In his haste to stab Taylor he'd ignored what was just beyond her body – what she'd been trying to sucker him into hitting the electrified third rail of the subway, which held more amperage than an electric chair.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah."

There were no sparks, no crackles but every muscle in his body was vibrating.

Then blood appeared in his eyes and his sandy hair caught fire.

"Ah, ah, ah -"

Finally the muscles spammed once and he collapsed onto the tracks, flames dancing from his collar and cuffs and head.

Taylor heard voices and the electronic sound of walkie-talkies from the Rector Street platform. She supposed it would be the transit cops or the regular NYPD.

It didn't matter She didn't want to see them or talk to them.

She knew now that there was only one thing to do that might save her. Taylor Lockwood turned and vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

"Do you mind my saying? I mean, will you take it personally if I say you don't look very good?" John Silbert Hemming asked.

Taylor Lockwood said to the huge private eye, "I lost eight pounds in two days."

"Quite a diet. You should maybe write a book. I'm told you can make a lot of money doing that."

"We couldn't market it – the secret ingredient ain't so appetizing. I'm feeling better now."

They were at Miracles Pub. She was probing at a bowl of Greek chicken soup flavored with lemon. It wasn't on the menu. Dimitri's wife had made it herself. She had some trouble with the spoon – she had to keep her fingers curled, her rings tended to fall off if she didn't.

"Maybe," he joked cautiously, "you should've taken my offer to have dinner. Probably would've been better than where you ended up eating."

"You know, John, I wish I had." Then she said, "I need a favor."

Hemming, who was eating a hamburger, said, "If it's not illegal and not dangerous and if you agree to go to the opera with me a week from Saturday at eight o'clock sharp, I'd be happy to oblige."

She considered She said, "One out of three?"

"Which one?"

"I'd like to go to the opera."

"Oh, dear. Still, it makes me very pleased. Though nervous – considering you're balking on the other two. Now, what's the favor?" He nodded toward his plate. "This is a very good hamburger. Can I offer you some?"

She shook her head.

"Ah!" He resumed eating. "Favor?" he repeated.

After a moment, she asked, "Why do people murder?"

"Temper, insanity, love and occasionally for money."

The spoon in her hand hovered over the surface of the soup, then made a soft landing on the table. She pushed the bowl away. "The favor is, I want you to get me something."

"What?"

"A gun. That kind I was telling you about – the kind without any serial numbers."

It would be near quitting tune at the firm. The end of another day at Hubbard, White & Willis Files being stacked away, dress shoes being replaced with Adidas and Reeboks, places in law books being marked for the night, edits being dropped in the In Box for the night word processing staff.

Four miles away Taylor Lockwood was hiding out in Mitchell Reece's loft. She was concerned that the person behind Clayton's death might figure out that she'd been responsible for the death of one hired gun and had called in a second one who was staking out her apartment right now.

She picked up the scarred gray.38 revolver that John Silbert Hemming had gotten her. She smelled it, sweet oil and wood and metal warmed by her hand. She hefted the small pistol, much heavier than she'd thought it would be.

Then she put the gun in her purse and walked unsteadily to Mitchell Recce's kitchen, where she found a pen and one of his pads of yellow foolscap.

She wrote the note quickly – he was due home at any moment – and she didn't want him here to deter her from what she had to do.

In her scrawled handwriting Taylor promised that she'd explain everything to him later – if she wasn't killed or arrested – but she begged him to please, please stay away from the firm tonight. After all the deceit and horrors of the past two weeks she'd learned who Wendall Clayton's killer was. She'd gotten a gun and, finally, she was going to make sure that justice would be done.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Taylor Lockwood had never liked this room – the big conference room in the firm.

For one thing, it was always dim – a pastel room so underlit that the colors became muddy and unreal. For another, she associated it with the large meetings in which the paralegal administrator would gather her flock and give them all a rah-rah pep talk, which amounted to a plea not to quit just because the raises this year were going to be only 5 percent.

Mindless, proletariat babble.

Nonetheless, at eight o'clock in the evening, here was Taylor Lockwood, sitting in a large swivel chair at the base of the U, the chair Donald Burdick reserved for himself.

Suddenly the huge teak doors to the room opened and Mitchell Reece ran inside.

He stopped, gasping, when he saw the gun in her hand.

She looked at him with surprise. "Mitchell, what are you doing here?"

"Your note. I read the note you left. Where did you think I'd be?"

"I told you not to come. Why didn't you listen to me?"

"What're you going to do with the gun?"

She smiled absently. "It's pretty obvious, isn't it? I've got to save us."

"The US attorney's coming tomorrow. Don't do this to yourself."

"The cops? The U S attorney?" She laughed skeptically. "And what would they do? We don't have any evidence. You and I are never going to be safe. We got run off the road, I was poisoned. I was almost stabbed to death."

"What?"

She didn't tell him about the latest assault just yet. She muttered, "It's just a matter of time until we're dead – if I don't stop things right here. Now."

"You can't just shoot somebody in cold blood."

"I'll claim self-defense. Insanity."

"The insanity defense doesn't work, Taylor. Not in cases like this."

She rubbed her eyes.

"The man who stole the note's dead."

"What?"

"The janitor or whatever he was, the one who put the poison in my food – him. He tried again. He chased me into the subway. But he got electrocuted."

"Jesus. What did the police say?"

"No." She shook her head. "I didn't go to them. It wouldn't do any good, Mitchell. They'd just hire somebody else."

"Well, who is it?" he asked. "Who's behind all this?"

She didn't answer. She glanced up, over Recce's shoulder, and said, "Turn around and find out." She hid the gun behind her back and called, "We're over here. Come on in."

Reece spun around.

A figure emerged from the dull light of the hallway into the deeper shadow of the end of the conference room. Donald Burdick, his posture perfect, like a ballroom dancer's, stepped past the doors, which swung closed with a heavy snap.

The partner called from across the room, his voice ringing dully, like a bell through fog. "Taylor, it is you." He nodded at Reece.

"Surprised to see I'm still alive?"

"Your call, it didn't make any sense. What's all this about Wendall's death?" He walked to within ten feet of them and stopped. He remained standing. "We thought you were sick."

"You mean, you hoped I was dead." She slowly lifted the gun.

His mouth opened. He blinked. "Taylor, what are you doing with that?"

She started to speak. Her voice choked and then she cleared her throat. "I had a speech rehearsed, Donald. I forgot it. But what I do know is that you hired that man to steal the note and set up Clayton's suicide. Then you had him run us off the road and try to kill me – twice."

The dapper partner gave a harsh bark of a laugh. "Are you crazy?" He looked at Mitchell for help. "What's she saying?"

Reece shook his head, gazing at Taylor with concern.

"I went through the file room logs, Donald. You checked out a file for Genneco last week. I saw your signature."

"Maybe I did. I don't remember. Genneco's my client."

"But there'd be no reason to check this file out. It wasn't active. As part of a contract negotiation their insurer analyzed their pathogen storage facility in New Jersey. It was basically a blueprint about how to break into the place. You checked the file out and gave the information to your hit man. He broke in, stole some botulism culture and poisoned me."

"No, I swear I didn't."

"And when that didn't work you sent him to stab me. Well, he's dead, Donald. How do you like that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." He started to turn and walk away.

"No!" Taylor cried. "Don't move." She thrust the gun toward him. The partner stumbled backward, lifting his hands helplessly.

"Taylor!" Reece shouted.

"No!" she screamed and cocked the gun Burdick backed against the wall, his eyes huge disks of terror Reece froze.

They stood in those positions for a long minute. Taylor stared at the gun, as if willing it to fire by itself.

"I can't," she whispered finally. "I can't do it."

The gun drooped.

Reece stepped forward slowly and took the pistol from her. He put his arm around her shoulders. "It's all right," he whispered.

"I wanted to be strong," she said. "I wanted to kill him. But I can't do it."

Burdick said to them both, "I swear I had nothing to do -"

She pulled away from Recce's arm and faced Burdick in her fury. "You may think you have the police and the mayor and everyone else in your pocket but it's not going to stop me from making sure you spend the rest of your life in jail!"

Taylor grabbed a telephone off the table.

The partner shook his head. "Taylor, whatever you think, it's not true."

She had just started dialing when a hand reached over, lifted the receiver away from her and replaced it in the cradle.

"No, Taylor," Mitchell Reece said. He sighed and lifted the gun, the muzzle pointing at her like a single black pearl. "No," he repeated softly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

She gave a faint laugh of surprise.

Much the same sound that Mitchell Reece himself had uttered when she told him a few days ago that Clayton had been murdered. Then her smile faded and with bottomless horror in her voice she said, "What are you doing?"

His face was stone, his eyes expressionless, but the answer was clear.

"You, Mitchell?" she whispered.

Donald Burdick said, "One of you tell me what's going on here."

Reece ignored him. Still holding the gun on both of them, he walked to the door, looked outside, made sure the corridor was empty and returned. He said to her angrily, "Why the hell didn't you stop when you should have, Taylor? Why? It was all planned out so carefully. You ruined it."

Burdick, horrified, said, "Mitchell, it was you? You killed Wendall Clayton?"

Taylor's eyes closed for a brief moment. She shook her head.

Reece told her, "Wendall Clayton killed the woman I loved."

Taylor frowned then said, "Linda? Linda Davidof?"

Reece nodded slowly.

"Oh, my God."

After a moment Reece said, "It was all about a man and a woman. As simple as that." His eyebrows rose. "A man who'd never had time for relationships, a woman who was beautiful and creative and brilliant. Two people who'd never been in love before. Not real love. It wasn't a good combination. An ambitious, tough lawyer. Best in law school, best at the firm. The woman was a poet – shy, sensitive. Don't ask me how they became close. Opposites attract, maybe. A secret romance in a Wall Street law firm. They worked together and started going out. They fell in love. She got pregnant and they were going to get married."

A moment passed and Reece seemed to be hefting the words to select among them. Finally he continued, "Wendall was working on a case one weekend, and he needed a paralegal. Linda'd cut way back on her hours – that's when she'd stopped working for me and Sean Lillick took over. But she still worked occasionally. She did a few assignments for Wendall Clayton and he got obsessed with her. One weekend in September he found out she was at her parents' summer house in Connecticut, not far from his place. He went to see her, tried to seduce her. She called me, crying. But before I could get up there or she could get away there was a struggle and she fell into the ravine. She died. Clayton left her poem to make it look like a suicide."

"This whole thing," Taylor whispered, "it was fake. You lied about everything. Your mother, in the hospital? You weren't going to see her at all. You were going to Scarsdale – to take flowers to Linda's grave." Reece nodded.

The nail of Taylor's index finger touched the marble. "Oh, Mitchell, it's so fucking clear now." She looked at Burdick. "Don't you see what he's done?" She turned to face Reece, who leaned against the dark, dried-blood-red conference table, looking gaunt and pale. "You got one of your criminal clients from the pro bono program – what? A hit man, a killer, a mercenary soldier? You got him to break into your own file cabinet, steal the Hanover note and hide it in Wendall's office. Then you had him bug your own office so you'd look as innocent as possible. You recorded some conversations then planted the tapes with the note. You had me track him down."

She thought for a moment. "Then, at Clayton's party, I found the receipt from the security service upstairs, where you sent me to search – after you planted it there. Finally I found the note in Claytons office." She laughed bitterly. "And after the Hanover trial your hit man killed him right away – because he couldn't very well be accused of something he hadn't done."

The lawyer made no effort to deny any of this.

She continued, "And his suicide note. It was fake, wasn't it? Who forged it? Another criminal client?"

The associate lifted his eyebrow, conceding the accuracy of her deduction.

She laughed bitterly, glancing at the partner.

Men of most renowned virtue.

Reece was gazing at her, impassive as a statue.

Eyes still on Reece, locked on his, Taylor said, "And Donald was a big help, wasn't he?" She turned to the partner. "Nothing personal, Donald, but you laid a pretty damn good smoke screen." Her hands were shaking now. The tears started. "And as for me, well, you were keeping pretty close tabs on your pawn. All you had to do was look across the pillow."

A bit of emotion blossomed in his face at this – like the first cracks in spring ice. Reece took a Kleenex from his pocket and began rubbing the trigger guard and grip and frame of the gun. He nodded. "You won't believe me if I tell you that what happened between us wasn't part of the plan."

"Bullshit! You tried to kill me."

His eyes grew wide. "I didn't want to hurt you! You should have stopped when you were supposed to!"

Burdick said, "But Mitchell, how could you risk it? You love the law. You'd risk everything for this, for revenge?"

He smiled with a look as bleak as a hunting field in December. "But there was no risk, Donald. Don't you know me by now? I knew I'd get away with it. Every nuance was planned. Every action and reaction. Every move anticipated and guarded against. I planned this exactly the same way I plan my trials. There was no way it wouldn't work." He sighed and shook his head. "Except for you, of course, Taylor. You were the flaw. Why didn't you just let it go? I killed an evil man. I did the firm – hell, I did the world – a favor."

"You used me!"

Donald Burdick sat heavily in a chair, his head dipping. "Oh, Mitchell, all you had to do was go to the police. Clayton would've been arrested for the girl's death."

The young lawyer gave a harsh laugh. "You think so? And what would've happened, Donald? Nothing. Any half-assed criminal lawyer could've gotten him off. There was no witness, no physical evidence. Besides, you of all people ought to know how many favors Clayton could've called in. The case wouldn't've even gotten to the grand jury."

His attention dipped for a moment to the gun. He flipped it open expertly and saw six cartridges in the cylinder. Then from his pocket he took the note that Taylor Lockwood had written to him, the note about going to confront a killer. He folded it into a tight square, stepped forward and stuffed it into her breast pocket.

She whispered, nodding at it, "I wrote my own suicide note, didn't I? I kill Donald and then myself. Oh, my God."

"It's your fault," he muttered. "You should've just moved on, Taylor. You should've let Clayton stay in hell and let the rest of us get on with our business."

"My fault?" She leaned forward. "What the hell happened to you? Has it all caught up? Finally? Pushing, pushing, pushing years and years of it. Win the case, win the goddamn case – that's all you see, all you care about! You don't know what justice is anymore. You've turned it inside out."

"Don't lecture me," he said wearily. "Don't talk to me about things you can't understand. I live with the law, I've made it a part of me."

Burdick said, "There's no way you can justify it, Mitchell. You killed a man."

Reece rubbed his eyes. After a moment, he said, "You get asked a lot why you go to law school. Did you go because you wanted to help society, to make money, to further justice? That's what people always want to know. Justice? There's so little of it in the world, so little justice in our lives. Maybe on the whole it balances out, maybe God looks down from someplace and says, 'Yeah, pretty good, I'll let it go at that'. But you know the law as well as I do, both of you. Innocent people serve time and guilty ones get off. Wendall Clayton killed Linda Davidoff and he was going to go free. I wasn't going to let that happen."

Taylor said, "The suicide note – Claytons 'Men of most renowned virtue…' How does it go?"

Reece said, '"Have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.'"

"You meant it about you, then, not Clayton."

Reece nodded solemnly. "It's about me."

"Mitchell," Burdick whispered, "just put the gun down. We'll go to the police. If you talk to them -"

But Reece walked slowly over to Taylor. He stood two feet away. She didn't move.

"No!" Burdick shouted. "Don't worry about the police. We can forget what happened. There's no need for this to go beyond this room. There's no need.

Reece glanced at the partner briefly but didn't speak. His whole attention was on Taylor. He touched her hair, then her cheek. He nestled the muzzle of the gun against her breast.

"I wish." He cocked the gun. "I wish…"

Taylor wiped the thick tears. "But it's me, Mitchell. Me. Think about what you're going to do."

"Please, Mitchell," Burdick said. "Money, do you want money? A fresh start somewhere?"

But it was Taylor who raised her hand to silence the partner. "No. He's come too far. There's nothing more to say."

At last there were tears on Reece's face. The gun wavered and rose. For a moment it seemed to be levitating, maybe he intended to touch the chill muzzle to his own temple and pull the trigger.

But his deeper will won and he lowered the black weapon to her once more.

Alice, in this dreadful world on the other side of the looking glass, remained completely still. There was no place to go. All she could do was close her eyes, which is what she now did.

Mitchell Reece, practical as ever, held his left hand to his face to protect himself from the blast – and her spattered blood -and then he pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER FORTY

In the hushed conference room the metallic click was as loud as the gunshot would have been.

Reece's eyes flickered for a moment. He pulled the trigger three more times.

Three more clicks echoed throughout the room. His hand lowered.

"Fake," he whispered with the tone of someone observing an impossible occurrence. "It's fake."

Taylor wiped the streaming tears from her face. "Oh, Mitchell."

Burdick stepped forward and firmly lifted the gun away from him.

Taylor said, "The gun's real, Mitchell, but the bullets're just props." She shook her head. "All I had was speculation. I needed proof that you did it."

Reece leaned against the wall. "Oh, my God!" He was staring at Taylor. "How?" he whispered. She'd never seen such shock in anyone's eyes – pure, uncomprehending astonishment.

"A lot of clues. I finally put together today," she said. "What got me wondering was the poem, Linda's poem."

"Poem?"

"The one that Wendall left as her suicide note. I read it in the hospital and, you know, everybody thought it was a suicide note. But nobody really understood what it was about. It was a love poem. It wasn't about killing herself, it was about leaving solitude and loneliness and starting a new life with somebody she loved. Anybody who was going to kill herself wouldn't leave that as a suicide note. Danny Stuart, her roommate, said she wrote it just a few days before she died."

He was shaking his head. "Impossible. You couldn't make that kind of deduction, not from the suicide note back to me."

"No, of course not. It's just what put the idea in my head that maybe she didn't kill herself. But then I started to think about everything that'd happened since you'd asked me to help you find the note, everything I'd learned. I thought about you nudging me away from the other suspects and toward Clayton. I thought about what kind of strategist you were, about Clayton's womanizing, about how it would be easy for you to get a gun from one of your clients in the criminal pro bono program. Your trips to Linda's grave. I had my private-eye friend check out your mother. Yes, she was a paranoid schizophrenic. But she died four years ago. Oh, Mitchell, you looked me right in the eye and lied. I felt like crying when you told me about your mother." Still, he held her eye, not a flicker of remorse in his. "Then," she continued, "I called the Boston US attorney's office. Your friend Sam hasn't worked for them for four years. You faked that call to him from the street in front of your loft, didn't you?" Her anger broke through. "You're a pretty fucking good actor, Mitchell."

Then, calming, she continued. "Hard evidence? You yourself helped me there – that first day I met you, when you mentioned that the records in law firms reveal all kinds of information about where people've been and how they spend their time. I went through the time sheets going back a year and figured out exactly what happened. It's all right there. You and Linda working together, taking time off together, logging travel time to clients on the same date, joint meal vouchers. Then Linda's time drops and she takes sick leave and files insurance claims because she's pregnant. And not long after that she dies."

"Then I found the Genneco security system contract negotiation files. And, yeah, it was checked out to Donald. But if he'd used them to get access to the botulism he sure as hell wouldn't use his own name. Then I asked Mrs. Bendix to find any other files Donald had supposedly checked out recently. There was one – an insurance claim. Where a car went off the road and looked like it was going to sink in the reservoir in Westchester but ended up on a ledge of rock that kept it from sinking. In exactly the same place we drove into the reservoir that night. You needed to make it look like Clayton was desperate enough to kill us so he'd be desperate enough to kill himself. Right? Am I right?"

Reluctantly he nodded.

"Oh, sure, a lot of people had motives to kill Clayton. Thom Sebastian and Dudley and Sean Lillick and Donald here. Even Donald's wife. And probably a dozen other people. But I decided you were wrong – when you told me that motive is the most important thing in finding a killer. No, the most important thing is finding the person who has the will to murder. Remember your herald, Mitchell? Preparation and will? Well, of all the people in this firm, you were the only one I believed could actually murder someone. The way you destroyed that doctor on cross-examination you had a killer's heart I could see that."

"But even then I wasn't absolutely sure. So I called Donald earlier tonight and we arranged this little play of our own – to find out for sure."

"You don't understand," Reece whispered desperately. "Clayton was pure evil. There was no way to bring him to justice otherwise. He -"

Taylor's hand flew up toward him, palm out. "Justice?", she raged. "Justice?" She sighed and lowered her head, speaking into the microphone hidden under her collar.

"John, could you come in please?"

The door opened and John Silbert Hemming entered. Reece stared up at the huge man as he gripped Reece's arm tightly and stepped protectively between the lawyer and Taylor.

The man said to her softly, "You could have stopped earlier, before he tried to use that." Nodding at the gun. "We had enough on tape for a conviction."

She was looking into Reece's evasive eyes as she said in a whisper, "I had to know."

The handcuffs went on quickly, with a crisp, ratchety sound.

"You can't do this!" Reece muttered bitterly. "You have no legal authority. It's illegal detention and kidnapping. And that fucking tape is illegal. You'll be subject -"

"Shhhh," John Silbert Hemming said.

"- to civil liability and criminal charges, which I'll pursue on the federal and state levels. You don't know the kind of trouble -"

"Shhhh," the big man repeated, looking down at Reece ominously. The lawyer fell silent.

Seeing Reece standing in front of her, oddly defiant, even angry at what they'd done to him, she wondered if she was going to scream, or slap him, or even reach for his throat with her hands, which seemed to have the strength, more than enough, to strangle him to death.

Reece said, "Taylor, I can make you understand. If you'll just -"

"I don't want to hear anything more."

But she was speaking only to John Silbert Hemming, who nodded solemnly and escorted the lawyer out into the firm's lobby to await the police.

She spent an hour giving several lengthy statements to two humorless detectives from Police Plaza. She refused a ride home from gallant John Silbert Hemming but promised that she'd call him about their opera "date," a word that she pointedly used.

"Looking forward to it," he said, ducking his head to step into the elevator car.

Taylor walked slowly back to her cubicle. She was almost there when she heard the sound of a photocopier and noticed. Sean Lillick copying sheets of music on the Xerox machine near the paralegal pen. He looked up and blurted, "Taylor! You're out of the hospital? We heard you were totally sick."

"Back from the dead," she said, glancing at the music, the copying of which he was probably charging to a client.

"You're all right?"

If you only knew.

"I'll live."

He nodded toward the manuscript paper. "Take a look. My latest opus. It's about Wendall Clayton. I found all of these pictures and papers and things in his office the other day and I'm writing this opera about him. I'm going to project pictures on the screen and get some Shakespearean text and -"

She leaned close and shut him up with an exasperated look. "Sean, can I give you some advice?"

He looked at the music. "Oh, these're just the rough lead sheets I'm going to arrange them later."

"I don't mean that," she whispered ominously. "Listen up. If Donald Burdick doesn't know you were Clayton's spy yet, he will in about a day or two."

He gazed at her uneasily. "What're you talking about?"

"I'm talking about this. Pack up your stuff and get out of here I'd recommend leaving town."

"Who the hell're you to -"

"You think Clayton was vindictive, you ain't seen nothing yet. Donald'll sue your ass for every penny of the money Clayton paid you to be his weasel."

"Fuck you. What money?"

"That you've got hidden under your stinky mattress."

He blinked in shock. He started to ask how she knew this but he gave up. "I was just -"

"And one more thing. Leave Carrie Mason alone. She's too good for you."

The kid tried to look angry but mostly he was scared. He grabbed his papers and scurned off down the corridor. Taylor returned to her cubicle. She'd just sat down and begun to check phone messages when she heard someone coming up behind her. She spun around fast, alarmed.

Thom Sebastian stood in the doorway, hands stuffed in his pockets.

"Hey," he said, "only me Mr. Party Animal. Didn't mean to spook you."

"Thom…"

"I was mega-freaked when I heard you were sick. They wouldn't let me in to see you. Did you get my flowers?"

"I might have. I was pretty out of it I couldn't read half the cards."

"Well, I was worried. I'm glad you're okay. You lost weight."

She nodded and said nothing.

A dense, awkward moment. His voice quavered as he said, "So."

"So." He said, "Anyway, I just wanted to let you know. Looks like I'm leaving."

"The firm?"

He nodded. "What I was telling you about, that new firm I'm starting with Bosk? It's going to happen. Tomorrow's my last day here. I've got ten associates from Hubbard, White coming with me. And a bunch of clients too. We've already got fifteen retainer agreements. St Agnes, McMillan, New Amsterdam, RFC, a bunch of others."

Taylor laughed. "You're kidding!" These were Hubbard, White's biggest clients. They represented close to one third of the firm's revenues.

Thom said, "We're going to do the same work Hubbard, White did but charge them about half. They were ready to leave anyway. Most of the presidents and CEOs I talked to said everybody here was paying too much attention to the merger and firm politics and not enough to the legal work. They said the other associates and I were the only ones who gave a shit about them."

"That's probably true."

"The funny thing is, if I'd made partner I'd be under a non competition agreement so I couldn't've taken any clients with me. But since I'm just an associate the firm can't stop me."

"Congratulations, Thom."

She started to turn back to her desk. But he stepped forward nervously and touched her arm. "The thing is, Taylor." He swallowed uneasily. "The thing is, I have to say something." He looked around, his eyes dark and troubled. "I've spent a lot of time." He swallowed. "I've spent a lot of time thinking about you and checking you out. What you found in my office, my notes about you? I shouldn't've done that, I know. But I just couldn't get you out of my head."

Taylor stood up, glanced at her arm. He removed his hand from it and stepped back. "What're you saying?" she asked.

"I'm saying I learned some things about you that're a problem for me."

She looked at him steadily. "Yes?"

"I've learned that you're the sort of person I don't think I'll ever meet again. Who I think I could spend the rest of my life with." He looked away. "I guess I'm saying that I think I love you."

She was too surprised even to laugh.

He held up a pudgy hand. "I know you think I'm goofy and crude. But I don't have to be that way. I can't be that way at my new firm. I'm giving up the drugs. That's what I was meeting with Magaly about the night she was killed – the night you got me out of jail. I wasn't going to score anything – I was going to tell her I wasn't going to buy from her anymore. I was doing that for you. Then, that night at the Blue Devil, I was going to ask if you maybe wanted to go out with me – kind of, I guess, steady." He shook his head at the old-fashioned word. "I had it all planned out, what I was going to say but then Magaly got shot and you had to bail me out. The whole night went to hell and I couldn't even look you in face, let alone tell you how I felt about you."

She began to speak but he took a deep breath. "No, no, no, don't say anything yet. Please, Taylor. Just think about what I said. Will you do that? I'll have the firm, I'll have money I can give you whatever you want. If you want to go to law school, fine. You want to play music, fine. You want to have a dozen babies, fine."

"Thom…"

"Please," he begged, "don't say yes and don't say no. Just think about it." He took a deep breath and seemed on the verge of tears. "Jesus, I'm the world's greatest fucking negotiator and here I am breaking all my rules. Look, everything's in there." He handed her a large white envelope.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I did kind of a deal memo."

Now, she couldn't help but laugh. "Deal memo?"

He grinned. "For us. About how we might work things out. Don't panic, we don't get to marriage until phase four."

"Phase four?"

"We'll take it nice and easy. Please, just read it and let the idea sit for a while."

"I'll read it," she said.

Then, unable to resist, he threw his arms around her and hugged her hard. He retreated before she could say anything more.

Don't get too interested in her Sebastian's comment to Bosk. It was a warning from a jealous lover, not a potential killer.

Taylor lowered her face to her hands and laughed softly. Thinking I guess it's safe to say, What a night.

Her desk was a mess, Vera Burdick's ransacking hadn't left it in very good shape. When she'd called Burdick about Reece earlier in the evening she'd asked him bluntly why his wife was searching through her things.

"Vera doesn't trust anybody," Burdick had said, laughing. "Samuel Lockwood's daughter? She thought for sure you were working with Clayton, helping him push the merger through – or, after he died, sabotaging me. You should consider it a compliment."

The way a fly should feel complimented that he's a spiders first choice for dinner.

Taylor noticed a blinking red light on her phone She lifted the receiver and pressed the play button.

"Hey, counselor."

Hello, Dad.

"Listen, hope you're feeling better 'Cause I've made some plans for us tomorrow. I get into La Guardia in the morning How 'bout you come pick me up? I've made lunch reservations at the Four Seasons. There's somebody from Skadden I want you to meet. A senior partner. He said they're looking for people like my little overachiever. Now, get a pen. My plane gets in at -"

Click Taylor Lockwood hit a button.

A woman's electronic voice reported. "Your message has been deleted."

She hung up the receiver.

Taylor pulled on her raincoat and walked through the half-lit corridors. The Slavic cleaning women in their blue uniforms moved from office to office with their wheeled carts. Taylor could hear the whine of vacuums coming from different directions. She imagined she could smell sour gunpowder, as if Reece had in fact fired real bullets from the heavy pistol. But she realized, as she passed a conference room littered with a thousand papers, that the smell was only the residue of cigar smoke. Earlier in the evening a deal had perhaps closed here. Or maybe it'd fallen apart. Or maybe negotiations had been postponed till tomorrow or the next day. In any case the participants had abandoned the room for the time being, leaving behind only the pungent aroma of tobacco as the evidence of that success or failure or uncertainty.

The police had gone. Burdick had gone. The partner would need some rest – he'd have plenty to do in the morning. More favors would have to be called in. Taylor suspected, though, that Donald Burdick and his wife would have a sizable inventory remaining.

She continued through the firm, pressed a door latch button and stepped into the lobby. The door swung closed behind her and when the elevator arrived she stepped in wearily.

Outside, Wall Street was nearly as quiet as the halls of Hubbard, White & Willis. This neighborhood was a daytime place. It worked hard and curled up to sleep early. Most of the offices were dark, the bartenders had stopped pouring drinks, cabs and cars were few.

Occasionally someone in a somber overcoat would appear from a revolving door then vanish into a limo or cab or down a subway stairwell. Where, she wondered, were they going? To one of Sebastians clubs, to pursue some private lust like Ralph Dudley, to plot a coup like Wendall Clayton? Or maybe just to retreat to their apartments or houses for a few hours' sleep before the grind began again tomorrow?

What a place this was, the topsy-turvy land at the bottom of the rabbit hole.

But, Taylor considered, was this her land? Alice 's trips to Wonderland and the Looking-Glass world had, after all, been dreams and the girl had eventually wakened from them.

She couldn't, for the moment, say. Taylor flagged down a cab, got in and gave the driver the address of her apartment building. As the dirty vehicle squealed away from the curb she slouched down in the seat, staring at the greasy Plexiglas divider.

Thank you for not smoking 50-cent surcharge after 8 P.M. The cab was a block away from her apartment when she leaned forward and told the driver she'd changed her mind.

Taylor Lockwood sat in the spotlight.

Dimitri twisted his curly hair and leaned over the microphone (His habitual suspicion left when she told him, "I'll play for free. You keep the receipts – all of them – but the tips're mine. And, Dimitri. No satin touch. Not tonight, okay?")

"Ladies and gentlemen…"

She whispered ominously, "Dimitri."

"…it is my pleasure to present Miss Taylor Lockwood at the piano."

He hit the switch controlling the faux spotlight. She smiled at the crowd and touched the keys, cold and smooth as glass, enjoying their yielding resilience as she began to play.

After half an hour Taylor looked out into the cockeyed lights, brilliant starbursts beaming at her, so bright she couldn't seethe patrons. Maybe the wobbly tables were completely occupied. Or maybe the place was empty In any event, if anyone was in the audience they were listening in absolute silence.

She smiled, not to them but only for herself, and swayed slowly as she played a medley of Gershwin that she herself had arranged, all revolving around Rhapsody in Blue. Tonight she improvised frequently, playing jazzy harmonies and clever riffs, allowing the music to carry itself, the notes soaring and regrouping, then flying to risky altitudes. But Taylor Lockwood never let go completely and was careful to alight at regular intervals on the theme, she knew how much people love the melody.