Mistress of Justice

which did contain a lot of mainstream jazz. “See, I’m not a snob. We need people like that. If you don’t have rules and traditions there’s nothing to break.”
    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Taylor thought. But she wasn’t here to debate the philosophy of music with him.
    Lillick retrieved a fat joint and lit it up. He passed it toward Taylor. She shook her head and, examining the musical armada of equipment, asked, “What’re you doing at a law firm, you’re so into artsy-fartsy?”
    “Steady salary, what else. The way I look at it, Hubbard, White & Willis is supporting the arts.” He seemed uneasy, as if the conversation was going down paths he didn’t want to tread.
    He suddenly pulled out a pad of music staff paper and a pencil. “Keep talking. I work best when I’m only using half my mind.”
    She asked, “What I came to ask you about … You took over for Linda Davidoff on the Hanover & Stiver case, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What do you know about her?”
    Lillick looked at his cracked plaster walls for a moment and wrote a measure of music. She sensed he was performing for her—playing the distracted artist.
    “Linda Davidoff?” she repeated.
    After a moment he looked up. “Sorry … Linda? Well, we went out a few times. I thought she was more interesting than most of the prep princesses you see around the firm. She wanted to be a writer. It didn’t go very far between us.”
    “Why’d she stop working on the Hanover case?”
    Silent for a moment, Lillick thought back. “I’m not sure. I think she was sick.”
    “Sick? What was wrong with her?”
    “I don’t know. I remember she didn’t look good. She was—”
    “—pale,” Taylor recalled.
    “Yeah, exactly. I saw her filling out insurance forms a couple of times. I asked her about it but she didn’t tell me anything.”
    “Do you know why she killed herself?” Taylor asked.
    “No, but I’ll tell you I wasn’t wildly amazed she did. She was too sensitive, you know? She took things too much to heart. I don’t what she was doing working for a law firm.” Lillick erased and rewrote a line. He hummed it. “Give me a B-flat diminished.”
    Taylor turned on the DX-7 and hit the chord.
    “Thanks.” He wrote some more musical notations.
    “Where’d she live?”
    “I don’t know—in the Village somewhere, I think. What’s up? Why’re you so interested in Linda?”
    “Screwup with the New Amsterdam bill, going way back. They were majorly underbilled and I’m supposed to check out what happened. When you took over for her did she say anything about the case?”
    Lillick shook his head.
    Taylor asked, “You’re still billing time on the case, aren’t you?”
    “Some. But Mitchell’s handling most of it himself.” Lillick didn’t seem to have any reaction to her questions.
    “Anybody she was close to?”
    “Her roommate, Danny Stuart. He’s an editor or something. Lives in the West Village. Over on Greenwich Street, I think.” He rummaged in a stack of papers. “I’ve got the number somewhere.” He handed it to her. “Hey, back in a flash.”
    He ducked into the john.
    Which gave Taylor the chance she’d been waiting for. She dropped to her knees and found the backpack that Lillick had been stashing when she’d entered. It had seemedto her that he’d hidden it just a little too quickly when she walked inside.
    A fast unzip revealed cash. A lot of it. Taylor had only ten seconds for a fast estimate but figured the total would probably be something on the order of thirty or forty thousand dollars. An amount equal to his yearly salary at the firm—which didn’t, of course, pay in greenbacks.
    And, a regular of the Downtown performing circuit herself, Taylor knew that, to quote her father, there was no way in Satan’s backyard that anyone would ever make any kind of serious money playing music in bars.
    Which meant that, no, Sean, the bank
didn’t
own most of your equipment.
    She’d come here only for information but had found another suspect.
    Taylor shoved the bag back a few seconds before the young man returned. “Better roll,” she said. “Thanks for the beer.”
    “You like goat?”
    “What?”
    “I’m thinking of going over to this place on Fourteenth. The goat’s the best in the city. It’s a totally happening place.”
    The thought of another night partying was more than she could handle. Besides, she had a mission back at the firm.
    “Not tonight.”
    “Hey, this