Mistress of Justice (29 page)

“Unfortunately not. That fund-raiser at City Hall?”

“When the mayor summons you—” Clayton said.

“The governor actually,” she corrected.

“—you better go.”

Taylor felt the tension between them like sparking wires. Vera Burdick clearly detested the partner, and while Clayton obviously returned the feeling, it was she who easily held his eye and the lawyer who looked defensively away as he made trivial conversation.

In this tableau Taylor recognized a truth about Clayton: While the partner knew men and how to handle them, he was only comfortable with women he could sexualize or control as his lessers.

She was nearly queasy, observing a man like this feeling threatened—a powerful man and, considering that he might have engineered the theft of the New Amsterdam note, one who was quite dangerous.

“I’ll leave you to your friends,” Vera said, the disdain visible like breath on a cold spring day. A glance at Taylor and Carrie. A meaningless smile.

Clayton said, “I hope Donald enjoys the fund-raiser.”

“Donald, you’re white as snow. Damn it, man, you’ve got to get more fresh air. Brought your racket, I hope?”

Burdick leaned against the railing of the penthouse suite in the Fleetwood Hotel in Miami Beach and looked at the
cool disk of the setting sun. “More business than pleasure today, I’m afraid, Steve.”

Burdick was tired. The firm’s private Canadair jet hadn’t been available—some maintenance problem—and he’d had to fly down to Miami in a commercial airliner. First class, of course, but he’d still had to stand in lines and then there’d been a delay on the runway that put him an hour off schedule.

He’d arrived exhausted but had ordered the car service to bring him directly here before checking in to a room.

Steve Nordstrom, shaking martinis like an ace bartender, was the president of McMillan Holdings. He was thick and square, with gray hair trimmed so impeccably it might have been injection-molded in the company’s Teterboro plant, and was wearing a purple Izod shirt and white slacks.

“Drink?”

Burdick didn’t want alcohol but he knew he would take the offered glass from Nordstrom, a man of fifty, whose face was already in bloom from the damaged blood vessels.

“How’s the board meeting going?” Burdick asked.

Nordstrom licked martini off his finger. He grinned happily. “We’re cutting a melon this year, Donald. Three sixty-three a share.”

“Ah,” Burdick said approvingly.

“You read the
Journal
, you read the
Times
—everybody’s cratering but us. Hey, tomorrow, we’re meeting on the new industry association. You want to sit in?”

“Can’t. But tell your people to watch what they say. I told you that Justice is heating up again and Antitrust is looking at price-fixing. Don’t even mention dollars. No numbers at all. Remember what happened in ’72.”

“Always looking out for your client, Donald?” Nordstrom’s question contained the silent modifiers “biggest” and “most lucrative.”

They sat down at a table. The bellboy, who had been waiting patiently, brought out lobster salads in half pineapples
and set them on the balcony table. The men ate the salad and raisin rolls—the lawyer struggling to down the food, which he had no appetite for—while they talked about vacations and family and house prices and the administration in Washington.

When they were finished eating, Burdick accepted another martini and pushed away from the table. “Which of our boys is down here helping you with the board meeting, Steve?”

“From Hubbard, White? Stan Johannsen is here and Thom Sebastian did most of the advance work last week. He’s covering the front in New York. I understand he didn’t make partner. What happened? He’s a good man.”

Burdick looked out over the flat scenery at a line of cars shooting flashes of glare from the expressway. After a moment he realized he had been asked a question and said, “I don’t remember exactly about Thom.”

He wished Bill Stanley were with him. Or Vera. He wanted allies nearby.

Nordstrom frowned. “But that’s not what you’re here for, is it? About the board meeting.”

“No, Steve, it’s not.…” Burdick stood and paced, hands clasped behind his back. “Hubbard, White’s been doing your legal work for, let’s see, thirty-five years?”

“About that. Before my time.”

“Steve, I’d ask you to keep what I’m going to tell you between you and me and Ed Gliddick. For the time being, at least. No bullshit between us.”

“Never has been.” The businessman looked the partner over coyly. “This’s about the merger, I assume?”

“Yes. And there’s more to it than meets the eye.” Burdick explained to him about Clayton and his planned massacre after the merger was completed.

Nordstrom said, “So you’d be out? That’s crap. You’ve made the firm what it is. You
are
Hubbard, White.”

Burdick laughed. “I hate to put it this way, Steve, but McMillan is our largest single source of revenue.”

“Well, you give us good service. And we’re happy to pay for it.”

“So when you or Ed talk, partners at the firm listen.”

“And you want me to talk against the merger.”

“It’d be bad for you and bad for dozens of other clients. Wendall Clayton has no vision of what a law firm should be. He wants to turn us into some kind of assembly line. Profit’s all he thinks about.”

Nordstrom picked up a fat piece of lobster and sucked it clean of dressing, then chewed and swallowed it slowly. “What’s the time frame?”

“Clayton ramrodded the merger vote through early. It’ll be this Tuesday.”

“Day after tomorrow? Fuck me,” Nordstrom said. “That man is crazy.” He probed for more lobster. He settled for raisins. “Ed’s in a dinner meeting right now but he should be free in an hour or so. I’ll have him call and we’ll have after-dinner drinks. About ten or so? By the pool over there. Don’t worry, Donald. We’ll work
something
out.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Clayton moved them quickly through his old manse like a tour guide goosed by a tight schedule.

It was a rambling house—big, though the rooms themselves were small and cockeyed. Beams were uneven, floorboards sprung. Much of the furniture was painted in drab Colonial colors. The gewgaws were of hammered tin and wicker and carved wood.

He led them upstairs. Taylor pretended to be studying portraits of horses, Shaker furniture and armoires while in fact she looked for places where he might have hidden information about Hanover & Stiver or the note. She glanced into a small room that seemed to be an office and saw a desk.

“Are you with us, Taylor?” Clayton asked and she hurried to join them. He continued the tour. “… Mark Twain’s house, the house he died in, isn’t far from here.”

“Are you a Son of the American Revolution?” Carrie asked.

Clayton spoke with a feigned indignity that rested on real pride. “The Revolutionaries? They were
newcomers
. My
family was one of the original settlers of Nieuw Nederlandt. We came over in 1628.”

“Are you Dutch?”

“No. My ancestors were Huguenots.”

Taylor said, “I always got those mixed up in school—the Huguenots and the Hottentots.”

Clayton smiled coldly.

Ooooh, doesn’t like potshots into the family tree.

“The Huguenots were French Protestants,” he explained. “They were badly persecuted. In the 1620s Cardinal Richelieu ordered a siege of La Rochelle, a large Huguenot town. My family escaped and settled here. New Rochelle, New York, by the way, is named after La Rochelle.”

Carrie asked, “What did your ancestors do when they got here?”

“There was considerable prejudice against the Huguenots, even here. We were barred from many businesses. My family became artisans. Silversmiths mostly. Paul Revere was one of us. But my family were always better merchants than craftsmen.… We moved into manufacturing and then finance though that field had largely been preempted by … other groups.” For a moment he looked wily and Taylor suspected he was suppressing an opinion about early Jewish settlers.

“My family,” he continued, “ended up in Manhattan and stayed there. Upper East Side. I was born within a five-block radius of my father’s and grandfather’s birthplaces.”

That touched Taylor. “You don’t see that much anymore. Today, everybody’s spread all over the world.”

“You shouldn’t let that happen,” Clayton said sincerely. “Your family history is all you have. You should keep your ancestry and be proud of it. This year I’m steward of the French Society.…”

Carrie, of the front row in law school, blinked. “Oh, I’ve heard of that. Sure.”

Clayton said to Taylor, “After the Holland Society it’s the most prestigious of the hereditary societies in New York.”

The chubby paralegal was impressed but another need intruded. “Say, Mr. Clayton, where’s the little girls’ room?”

Oh, honey, don’t fail me now.… Taylor wanted Carrie to keep Clayton busy, giving her a chance to take a look in the office.

But he said, “We’ve been having problems with the one up here. Why don’t you go downstairs. We’ll meet you there in a bit.”

Carrie trotted off, and it was then that Taylor realized they had ended the tour at Clayton’s bedroom. The room was dramatic, filled with Ralph Lauren rust and red florals, English-hunt green, brass. This was the room of a nobleman.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son.…

Clayton closed the door. “You’re very attractive.”

Taylor sighed. Doesn’t go much for subtlety, does he? She said, “I should be getting downstairs.”

He took her hand. To her astonishment she let him and the next thing she knew some undefinable pressure overwhelmed her. She found herself sitting on the bed next to him.

“Wendall …”

“Look at me.”

Taylor did, feeling a growing power from the partner, a magnet tugging at her soul—and at everything around her. It seemed to Taylor that her hair actually stirred in this invisible wind.

She thought of the playing-card soldiers swirling around Alice.
Beware the …

“Wendall—”

“I want to tell you one thing,” he said calmly. “This has to be completely clear. Whatever happens—or doesn’t happen—has no affect on your career at Hubbard, White. Is that understood?”

She pulled her arm away. “I don’t even know you. I’ve never even spoken to you before.” But she was shocked to hear that her words seemed weak, as if she were wavering.

He shrugged. “Spoken to me? I don’t want to have a discussion. I want to make love to you.”

There was no physical impediment to her leaving. He wasn’t even standing in her way. One foot, then the other, and she could troop right out the door. Yet she didn’t.

Clayton crossed his legs. He brushed the tassel of his hair off his forehead.

“I have commitments,” she explained.

No, no, no … Don’t say that. You’re meeting his argument. It’s like making excuses to your father. Tell him to fuck off. Forget who he is. Forget the case. Just say it now: Fuck off. Fuck. Off.

Say it!

“Well, Taylor, we all have commitments. That’s not really the issue.”

She felt her throat thicken.

Don’t swallow. It’s a weakness.