Mistress of Justice

away.
    “Paranoid,” he muttered with a smile, gave her hand a fast squeeze and then left the courthouse.
    On her way back to the firm Taylor’s willpower faded, her lust for a fast-food burger won and she decided she’d get something to eat.
    This was how she found out that Mitchell Reece had lied to her.
    Instead of going back to the office she’d headed north, to a Burger King, and as she turned the cornerDowntown Athletic Club, where he’d said he was going for lunch. She slowed, stung at first, then thinking, No, he probably meant another athletic club: the
New York
Athletic Club on Central Park South in Midtown.
    Only, if that was so, why was he disappearing into the Lexington Avenue subway stop? The train went uptown but there were no stops anywhere near the NYAC. And why was he taking a train in the first place? The rule on Wall Street was that if you went anywhere on firm business, you always took the car service or a cab.
    Taylor had had four or five serious relationships in her life and one thing about men that irked her was that their fondness for the truth fell far short of other appreciations. Honesty was her new standard for love and she didn’t think that it was too much to ask.
    Reece, of course, was nothing more than her employer—but still the lie hurt; she was surprised at how much.
    Well, maybe his plans had changed—maybe he’d checked his messages, found the witness had canceled and was on his way to Tripler’s to pick up a couple of new shirts.
    But on impulse she found herself pulling a token out of her purse and hurrying down the subway stairs.
    Why? she wondered.
    Because she was Alice. That was the only answer. And once you slip into the rabbit hole, Taylor Lockwood had learned, you go where fate directs you.
    Which happened to be Grand Central Terminal.
    Taylor followed the lawyer, climbing up the stairs, skirting a small colony of homeless. She watched Reece buy a train ticket and walk toward the gates. She stopped.
    Squinting though the misty afternoon light that spilled across the huge cavern of the terminal, she caught a glimpse of him standing at a vending cart in front of a gate. A crowd of passengers walked between them, obscuring him.
    She jockeyed aside to get a better view. Then she laughed to herself when she saw what he’d bought.
    One mystery of Mitchell Reece had been solved.
    He was walking to one of the commuter trains carrying a large bouquet of flowers.
    He had a girlfriend after all.
    Digging another token from her purse, she descended once more into the piquant subway to return to the firm.

     
    Sometimes he felt like a juggler.
    Thom Sebastian was thinking of an off-Broadway magic show he’d seen some years ago.
    Sebastian remembered the juggler most clearly. He hadn’t used balls or Indian clubs but a hatchet, a lit blowtorch, a crystal vase, a full bottle of wine and a wineglass.
    From time to time, Sebastian thought of that show, of the tension that wound your guts up as the man would add a new object and send it sailing up in an arc, a smile on his face, eyes at the apogee. Everyone waited for the metal to cut, the torch to burn, the glass to shatter. But nope, the man’s no-sweat smile silently said to the audience: So far, so good.
    Sebastian, sitting in his office this afternoon, feeling depleted, coked out, ’phetamined out, now told himself the same thing.
    So far, so good.
    When he had learned that Hubbard, White & Willis had chosen not to make him a partner Thom Sebastian had held a conference with himself and decided after considerable negotiation to cut back on his working hours; he was going to relax.
    But that didn’t work. Clients still called. They were often greedy, they were occasionally bastards, but a lot of times they were neither. And whether they were or not was irrelevant. They were still clients and they were scared and troubled and needed help that only a smart, hardworking lawyer could give them.
    Sebastian found to his surprise that he was physically incapable of slowing down. He continued at a frantic pace,his hours completely absorbed by two refinancings, a leveraged buyout, a revolving credit agreement.
    By his own real estate transactions, by his special project with Bosk, by his girlfriends, by arranging buys with his drug dealer, Magaly, by his family, by his pro bono clients, all in motion, all spinning, all just barely under control.
    So far …
    He desperately wanted sleep and that thought momentarily brought