Mistress of Justice

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