Mistress of Justice

estate money. Italian money. Jewish money. Japanese money.
    Clayton’s wealth was money with cobwebs and therefore it was, ironically, suspect—at least around here. In this part of town, when it came to wealth the slogan was: the more respectable, the less acceptable.
    He tried not to give a damn. Yet here Clayton felt as if he were “without passport,” the phrase whose acronym gave rise to the derisive term for Italians. Wendall Clayton in Midtown was an immigrant in steerage.
    “So why the call, Wendall?” Perelli asked.
    Clayton replied, “We need to move faster. I’m trying to accelerate the vote on the merger.”
    “Faster? Why?”
    “The natives are restless.”
    Perelli barked, “What does that mean? I don’t know what it means. That your people wanta go forward or that Burdick and his cronies’re trying to fuck the deal?”
    “A little bit of both.”
    “What’s Donald doing? Setting up an office in D.C. and London to goose up your operating expense?”
    “Something like that. I’m finding out,” Clayton conceded with a nod.
    The waiter set the plates on the table. Clayton hunched over the soft mounds of eggs and ate hungrily, cutting the food into small bites.
    Perelli waited until the server was gone then examined Clayton carefully and said, “We want this to work. We’ve got labor clients we can parlay into your SEC base. We’ve got products liability cases that are gold mines. You’ve got corporate people and litigators who’d be a natural fit. Obviously we want your banking department and you want our real estate group. It’s made in heaven, Wendall. What’s Burdick’s problem?”
    “Old school. I don’t know.”
    “The fact we’ve got Jewish partners? The fact we have Eye-talian partners?”
    “Probably.”
    “But there’s more to it, right?” the keen-eyed Perelli asked. “Cut the crap, Wendall. You’ve got an agenda that’s scaring the shit out of Burdick and his boys. What?”
    Okay, Clayton thought. This is it.… He reached into his jacket and handed Perelli a piece of paper.
    Perelli read then looked up questioningly. “A hit list?”
    Clayton tapped the paper dramatically. “Yep. That’s who I want out within a year after the merger.”
    “There are—what?—twenty-five names here?” Perelli read. “Burdick, Bill Stanley, Woody Crenshaw, Lamar Fredericks, Ralph Dudley … Wendall, these men
are
Hubbard, White & Willis. They’ve been there for decades.”
    “They’re deadwood, has-beens. This is the last piece of the deal, John. For the merger to work they have to go.”
    Perelli chewed some of his toast and washed it down withcoffee. “You said you wanted to accelerate the merger.” He waved at the paper. “But if you’re asking us to agree to
this
it’ll only slow things up. I’ve got to run these names by the management committee. We’ll have to review each one of their partnership contracts. Christ, they’re all over forty-five. You know the kind of trouble they could make in court for us?”
    Clayton laughed with genuine amusement. “John, with my connections you really think the EEOC would be a problem?”
    “All right, maybe not. But these’re still dangerous men.”
    “And they’re the ones who’re bleeding the firm dry. They have to go. If we want to the firm to succeed they have to go.” He pushed aside his empty plate. “A week, John. I want the merger papers signed in a week.”
    “Impossible.”
    “Considering that you might have to move slightly more quickly,” Clayton said, “we would be willing to alter our partnership share price.”
    “You—”
    “If we ink the deal next week, Hubbard, White and Willis is willing to reduce our first-year share take by eight percent.”
    “Are you out of your fucking mind? You’re talking millions of dollars, Wendall.”
    “Thirteen
million dollars.”
    This meant that the Hubbard, White and Willis partners would in effect give the incoming partners a huge bonus simply for expediting the deal—and for ousting Burdick and his cronies.
    Clayton continued, “We’ll claim it has to be done by year end for tax reasons. That’ll be our excuse.”
    “Just tell me: If I insisted that Burdick stay for, say, five years, would you still be willing to proceed?”
    Clayton signed his name to the check. He offered no credit card.
    “Let me tell you something, John. Twenty years ago Donald Burdick was asked by the President to head a special committee looking into abuses in the