Mistress of Justice

partner knew, of course, that Clayton was absolutely correct about the majority vote on this matter. However, it had been vitally important to make clear to everyone in the room exactly where Burdick stood on the merger—how adamantly against it he was.
    “Go ahead,” Burdick said to Stanley.
    As the rotund partner growled off names, Burdick sat calmly, pretending to edit a letter though he was keeping a perfect tally in his head of the fors and againsts.
    Distraction on his face, agony in his heart, Burdick added them up. His mood slipped from cautious to alarmed to despairing. Clayton prevailed—and by almost a two-thirds majority, the magic percentage needed to win the entire war.
    The list Stanley had shown Burdick earlier was not accurate. Clayton was
stronger
than they’d thought.
    Clayton looked at Burdick, studying his opponent from behind the emotionless guise of the great. His gold pen danced on a pad. “If anyone needs any information from Perelli—to make a better-informed decision next week—just let me know.”
    Burdick said, “Thank you, Wendall. I appreciate the time you’ve spent on the matter.” Looking around the room—at both his supporters and his Judases—with as neutral a face as he could muster, he added, “Now, any more issues we ought to discuss?”

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    “Dimitri.” Taylor Lockwood’s voice was a whisper. “Don’t say ‘satin touch’ tonight. Please.”
    “Hey, come on,” the man replied in a deep Greek-accented voice, “the guys in the audience, they like it.”
    “It’s embarrassing.”
    “It’s sexy,” he replied petulantly.
    “No, it’s not, and all it does is get me moony looks from the lechers.”
    “Hey, they like to fantasize. So do I. You got the lights?”
    She sighed and said, “Yeah, I got the lights.”
    From the amplifier his voice filled the bar: “Ladies and gentlemen, Miracles Pub is pleased to bring you the silky and oh-so-smooth satin touch of Taylor Lockwood on the keys. A warm round of applause please. And don’t forget to ask your waitress about the Miracles menu of exotic drinks.”
    Oh-so-smooth
satin touch?
    Taylor clicked the switch that turned the house lights down and ignited the two overhead spots trained on her. Dimitri had made the spotlights himself—pineapple cans painted black.
    Smiling at them all, even the moony lechers, she began to play Gershwin on the battered Baldwin baby grand.
    It wasn’t a bad gig. The temperamental owner of the club in the West Village—a lech himself—had figured that an attractive woman jazz pianist would help sell bad food, so he’d hired her for Tuesday nights, subject only to sporadic preemption by Dimitri’s son-in-law’s balalaika orchestra.
    With her day job at the firm and this gig, Taylor had found a type of harmony in her life. Music was her pure sensual love; her paralegal job gave her the pleasures of intellect, organization, function. She sometimes felt like those men with two wives who know nothing of the other. Maybe someday she’d get nailed but so far the secret was safe.
    A half hour later Taylor was doing the bridge to “Anything Goes” when the front door swung open with its familiar D to B-flat squeak. The woman who entered was in her mid-twenties, with a round, sweet, big-sister face framed by hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a sweater decorated with reindeer, black ski pants and, on her petite, out-turned feet, Top-Siders. She smiled nervously and waved broadly to Taylor then stopped suddenly, afraid of disrupting the show.
    Taylor nodded back and finished the tune. Then she announced a break and sat down.
    “Carrie, thanks for coming.”
    The young girl’s eyes sparkled. “You are
so
good. I didn’t know you were a musician. Where did you study? Like, Juilliard?”
    Taylor sipped her Seagram’s and soda. “Juilliard? Try Mrs. Cuikova’s. A famous music school. Freddy Bigelow went there. And Bunny Grundel.”
    “I never heard of them.”
    “Nobody has. We were all in the same grade school. We’d go to Frau Cuikova’s in Glen Cove every Tuesday and Thursday at four to be abused about arpeggios and finger position.”
    Several men in the audience were restless, about to make their moves, so Taylor did the lech maneuver—positioningher chair with her back to them—and turned her whole attention to Carrie.
    Taylor had spent the day looking through documents on the
New Amsterdam Bank v. Hanover & Stiver
case, collecting the names