Mistress of Justice

brought to the firm and how much they paid in fees.
    Donald Burdick’s salary was close to five million dollars a year. (And augmented—often doubled—by a complicated network of other “investments,” to use his preferred euphemism.)
    “My Lord,” he muttered again, pushing the sheet toward William Winston Stanley. Sixty-five years old, Stanley was stout, ruddy, grim. You could easily picture him in Pilgrim garb, cheeks puffing out steam on a frigid New England morning as he read an indictment to a witch.
    Burdick was Dartmouth and Harvard Law; Stanley had gone to Fordham Law School at night while working in the Hubbard, White mailroom. By a crafty mix of charm, bluntness and natural brilliance for business he’d fought his way up through a firm of men with addresses (Locust Valley and Westport) as foreign to him as his (Canarsie in Brooklyn) was to them. His saving grace among the society-minded partners was membership in an Episcopalian church.
    Burdick asked, “How can this be accurate?”
    Stanley gazed at the list. He shrugged.
    “How on earth did Clayton do it?” Burdick muttered. “How did he get this many in his camp without our hearing?”
    Stanley laughed in a thick rasp. “We just
have
heard.”
    The names contained on the list had been compiled by one of Burdick’s spies—a young partner who was not particularly talented at practicing law but was a whiz kid atgetting supposedly secret information out of people at the firm. The list showed how many partners were planning on voting in favor of a proposed merger between Hubbard, White & Willis and a Midtown law firm, a merger that would end the life of Hubbard, White as it then existed, as well as Burdick’s control of the firm—and very likely his practice of law on Wall Street altogether.
    Until now Burdick and Stanley were convinced that the pro-merger faction, led by a partner named Wendall Clayton, would not have enough votes to ram the deal through. But, if this tally was accurate, it was clear that the rebels probably would succeed.
    And the memo contained other information that was just as troubling. At the partnership meeting scheduled for later this morning the pro-merger side was going to try to accelerate the final merger vote to a week from today. Originally it had been planned for next January. Burdick and Stanley had been counting on the month of December to win, or bully, straying partners back into their camp. Moving the vote forward would be disastrous.
    Burdick actually felt a sudden urge to break something. His narrow, dry hand snatched up the paper. For a moment it seemed he would crumple it into a tight ball but instead he folded the paper slowly and slipped it into the inside pocket of his trim-fitting suit.
    “Well, he’s not
going
to do it,” Burdick announced.
    “What do we do to stop him?” Stanley barked.
    Burdick began to speak then shook his head, rose and, stately as ever, buttoned his suit jacket. He nodded toward the complicated telephone sitting near them on the conference table, which unlike the phones in his office was not regularly swept for microphones. “Let’s not talk here. Maybe a stroll in Battery Park. I don’t think it’s that cold out.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    His eyes were the first thing about him she noticed.
    They were alarmingly red, testifying to a lack of sleep, but they were also troubled.
    “Come on into the lion’s den.” Mitchell Reece nodded Taylor Lockwood into his office then swung the door shut. He sat slowly in his black leather chair, the mechanism giving a soft ring.
    Lion’s den …
    “I should tell you right up front,” Taylor began, “I’ve never worked in litigation. I—”
    He held up a hand to stop her. “Your experience doesn’t really matter. Not for what I have in mind. Your discretion’s what’s important.”
    “I’ve worked on a lot of sensitive deals. I appreciate client confidentiality.”
    “Good. But this situation requires more than confidentiality. If we were the government I guess we’d call it top secret.”
    When Taylor was a little girl her favorite books wereabout exploration and adventure. The two at the top of her list were the Alice stories—
Wonderland
and
Through the Looking-Glass
. She liked them because the adventures didn’t take the heroine to foreign lands or back through history; they were metaphoric journeys through the bizarre side of life around us.
    Taylor was now intrigued.
Lion’s den. Top secret
.
    She said,