Jeffery Deaver - Mistress of Justice

He picked up the phone and called Lillick.

The boy's cheerful voice drooped when he realized who the caller was.

"That information was helpful."

This was one of Claytons highest forms of compliments. Helpful .

"Like I mean, I'm glad."

"I'm a little concerned though, Sean. You are being careful, aren't you?"

The boy hesitated and Clayton wondered if there was anything more to his uneasiness than a phone call from his boss.

"Of course."

"I'm aware of people asking questions around the firm, Sean. Anybody been asking you questions?"

"Uh, no."

"You are making sure you cover tracks? Being a good Boy Scout or nature guide or something?"

"Yeah, I'm not stupid, Wendall."

"No, of course you're not. Just make sure everything's covered up carefully, no way to trace what you and I've been up to. You know legal defense fees can be so expensive. They can eat up all one's savings in a flash."

The boy's silence told him that the threat had been received.

Clayton looked up into the doorway, where a young woman stood at attention. "Better go, Sean. Be in early tomorrow. Snip any ends, okay?"

"Sure."

The partner hung up, his eyes on the woman. She was one of the night stenographers from the word processing department. Her name was Carmen and she was slim and had a complexion like a week-old tan. She wore tight blouses and dark skirts that would be too short for the day, but on the evening shift the dress code was more relaxed.

"I got your call, Mr. Clayton. You need some dictation?"

Clayton looked at her legs then her breasts. "Yes, I do."

Carmen had a five-year-old son, fathered by a man who was currently in prison. She lived with her mother in the Bronx. She had a patch of stretch marks on her lower belly and a tattoo of a rose on her left buttock.

"Why don't you close the door," he said. "We don't want the cleaning staff to disturb us."

She waited until he'd taken his wallet from his suit jacket pocket and opened it up before she swung the door shut and locked it.

It was nearly 8 P.M. but for some reason the closing of a corporate merger that had begun at 2 that afternoon ran into difficulties and was not yet completed – some delay in Japanese regulatory approvals.

The Hubbard, White & Willis lawyers and paralegals working on the case, clutching stacks of documents, scurried back and forth between the several conference rooms devoted to the closing like ants stealing bread crumbs from a picnic though with considerably more content faces than their insect counterparts – presumably because ants don't make a collective $4, 000 per hour for carting around bits of soggy food. The clients, on the other hand – the payers of those legal fees – were nothing but frustrated.

Back from her trip to Lillick's apartment, Taylor Lockwood had learned many intimate details about the closing because she'd been dodging the lawyers and clients for the past hour. Like the clients in the delayed deal, Taylor had her own frustrations.

John Silbert Hemming had neglected to tell her that dactyloscopy powder didn't come off.

She'd just finished fingerprinting Reece's burglarized file cabinet and painstakingly transferring the sticky tape of the two dozen latents she'd found to cards. She thought back to what Hemming'd told her. Yes, he'd mentioned the different kinds of powders. He'd mentioned how to spread it around and how to brush, not blow, the excess away.

But he hadn't told her the stuff was like dry ink.

Once you – once one – dusted it onto the surface the damn stuff didn't wipe off. The smear just got bigger and bigger.

She wasn't concerned about the file cabinet that had contained the note. She was concerned about Mitchell Reece's coffee mug, emblazoned with "World's Greatest Lawyer," which she'd dusted to get samples of his prints to eliminate those from the ones she lifted off his cabinet.

Fingerprinting powder coated the mug like epoxy paint. She did her best to clean it then noticed she'd gotten some on her blouse. She pinched the midriff of the shirt and fluffed the poor garment to see if that would dislodge the powder. No effect. She tried to blow it away, and – as her tall private eye had warned – spit into the smear, which immediately ran the powder into the cloth. Permanently, she suspected.

Taylor sighed and pulled on her suit jacket to cover the smudge.

She hurried down to Ralph Dudley's office, where she lifted samples of his fingerprints, then on to Thom Sebastian's, where she did the same.

Finally, back in the paralegal pens, she took samples of Sean Lillick's prints from several objects in his cubicle. Then back in her own cubicle she put the fingerprint cards in an envelope and hid it under a stack of papers in the bottom drawer of her desk.

She found the phone number that Lillick had given her – Danny Stuart, Linda Davidoff's roommate – and called him. He wasn't in but she left a message asking if they could meet, there was something about Linda she wanted to ask him about.

She hung up and then happened to look down at her desktop and, with a twist in her gut, noticed the managing attorney's daily memo. In the square for Tuesday of next week were these words.

New Amsterdam Bank & Trust v Hanover & Stiver Jury trial Ten A.M. No continuance .

As she stared there was suddenly a huge explosion behind her.

Taylor spun around, inhaling a scream.

Her eyes met those of a young man in a white shirt. He was standing in the hall, staring back at her. He held a bottle of French champagne he'd just opened. "Hey, sorry," he said. Then smiled. "We just closed. We finally got Bank of Tokyo approval."

"I'm happy for you," she said and snagged her coat then started down the hallway as he turned his groggy attention to opening more bottles and setting them on a silver tray.

The drapery man watched her pull her overcoat on and step into the lobby, the door swinging shut behind her.

He patiently waited a half hour, just in case she'd forgotten anything, and when she didn't return he walked slowly down the corridor to Taylor Lockwood's cubicle, pushing the drapery cart in front of him, his hand near his ice-pick weapon.

Upstairs the firm was bustling like mid-morning – some big fucking business deal going on, dozens of lawyers and assistants ignoring him – but down here the place was dark and empty. He paused in the Lockwood woman's cubicle, checked the hallways again and dropped to his knees. In two minutes he'd fitted the transmitting microphone, like the one he planted in Mitchell Recce's phone, into hers.

The drapery man finished the job, tested the device, ran a sweep to make sure it wasn't detectable and walked to the entranceway of the paralegal cubicles.

Nearby was a conference room, in which he saw a half-dozen open bottles of champagne sitting on a silver tray. When he touched one with the back of his hand he found it was still cold. He glanced behind him, pulled on his gloves and lifted the first bottle to his mouth. He took a sip then ran his tongue around the lip of the bottle. He did the same with the others.

Then feeling the faint buzz from the dry wine – and a huge sense of satisfaction – he returned to the hallway and started pushing his cart toward the back door.

"Never take a job," Sean Lillick said pensively, holding the door open, "where you have to hold things in your teeth."

Carrie Mason, standing in the door of his shabby East Village walk-up, blinked. "Never what?" she asked, entering.

"That's a line from a piece I'm working on right now. I'm, like, a performance artist. This one's about careers. I call it 'W2 Blues'. Like your W2 form, the tax thing It's spoken over music."