Mistress of Justice

for months.
    Making sure the corridor was empty again, the drapery man walked across the hall to Mitchell Reece’s office and, listening carefully for footsteps, checked the receiver of Reece’s phone.
    On Saturday night, when he’d been here to steal the promissory note, he’d placed in the handset of the phone unit an Ashika Electronics omnidirectional ambient-filtering microphone and transmitter. The device was roughly the size of a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar. It was, however, considerably more popular and was used by every security, private eye or industrial espionage outfit that could afford the eight-thousand-dollar price tag. This bug broadcast a razor-clear transmission of all of Reece’s conversations on the phone or with anyone else in the office to the radio receiver and tape recorder in the Coffee-mate container across the hall. One feature of the transmitter was that it contained a frequency-canceling feature, which made it virtually invisibleto most commercial bug-detecting sweepers. He checked the battery and found it was still good.
    When he was finished he spent another three or four minutes arranging the drapes so they looked nice. This was, after all, his purported job.
    He peeled off the gloves and walked out into the halls, which greeted him once again with their silence and their real, or imagined, disdain.

     
    “I suffer from the fallacy of the beautiful woman.” The Lincoln Town Car limo crashed through the meatpacking district in the western part of Greenwich Village, near the river. Taylor leaned sideways to hear Thom Sebastian over the crackly sound of the talk show on the driver’s AM radio.
    He continued, “Which is this: that because a woman is attractive she can do no wrong. You think, Christ, the way she lights a cigarette is the right way, the restaurants she picks are the right restaurants, the way she fakes an orgasm—pardon my French—is the right way so
I
must be doing something wrong. For instance, we’re now on our way to Meg’s. The club. You know it?” “Absolutely no idea.”
    “There, my point exactly. I’m thinking: Jesus, I’m doing something wrong. Taylor is a primo woman but she doesn’t know about this club.
I’ve
fucked up.
I’ve
got it wrong.” Taylor smirked. “Does this usually work?” Sebastian paused then slouched back in the cab seat and lit a cigarette. “What?”
    “That line? The one you’re using on me now?” Sebastian waited a few more seconds and must’ve decided there’d be no recovery from her busting him. “You’d be surprised at some of the lines I’ve gotten away with.” He laughed. “The thing is
women
suffer from the fallacy of the man who knows what he’s doing. We never do, of course.” He gave her what might pass for a sincere glance and said, “I like you.”
    They pulled up in front of nothing. A row of warehouses and small factories, not a streetlight in sight, only the distant aurora borealis of industrial Jersey across the Hudson River.
    “Welcome to my main club.”
    “Here?”
    “Yep. I’m here six, seven nights a week.”
    Sebastian led them through an unguarded, unmarked door into what looked like a Victorian bordello. The walls were covered with dark tapestry. The tables were marble and brass. Oak columns and sideboards were draped with tooling and floral chintz. Tiffanyesque lamps were everywhere. The uniform for men was tuxedo or Italian suits, for the women, dark, close-fitting dresses with necklines that required pure willpower to keep nipples hidden. The rooms were chockablock with high-level celebs and politicos, the sort that regularly make
New York
magazine and Liz Smith’s columns.
    Sebastian whispered, “The three little piggies,” and pointed out a trio of hip young novelists whom a
Times
critic had just vivisected en masse in an article called “Id as Art: The Care and Feeding of Self-Indulgence.” Skinny women hovered around the threesome. Sebastian eyed the women with dismay and said, “Why are they wasting time with those dudes? Didn’t they see the article?”
    Taylor said dryly, “You assume they can read.” And bumped into Richard Gere. He glanced at her with a polite acknowledgment, apologized and continued on.
    “Oh my God.” She gasped, staring at the man’s broad back.
“He’s
here.”
    “Yes,” Sebastian said, bored. “And so are we.”
    The music wasn’t as loud as at the previous club and the pace was less frantic. Sebastian waved to some