Mistress of Justice

“Go ahead.”
    “Coffee?”
    “Sure. Just milk, no sugar.”
    Reece stood up stiffly, as if he’d been sitting in one position for hours. His office was a mess. A hundred files—bulging manila folders and Redwelds stuffed with documents—filled the floor, the credenza, his desk. Stacks of legal magazines, waiting to be read, filled the spaces between the files. She smelled food and saw the remains of a take-out Chinese dinner sitting in a greasy bag beside the door.
    He stepped into the canteen across the hall and she glanced out, watched him pour two cups.
    Taylor studied him: the expensive but wrinkled slacks and shirt (there was a pile of new Brooks Brothers’ shirts on the credenza behind him; maybe he wore one of these to court if he didn’t have time to pick up his laundry). The tousled dark hair. The lean physique. She knew that the trial lawyer, with dark straight hair a touch long to go unnoticed by the more conservative partners, was in his mid-thirties. He specialized in litigation and had a reputation of his own. The firm’s clients loved him because he won cases; the firm loved him because he ran up huge tabs doing so. (Taylor had heard that he’d once billed twenty-six hours in a single day; working on a flight to L.A., he’d taken advantage of the time zones.)
    Young associates idolized Reece though they burned out working for him. Partners were uncomfortable supervising him; the briefs and motion papers he wrote under their names were often way beyond the older lawyers’ skills at legal drafting.
    Reece also was the driving force behind the firm’s probono program, volunteering much of his time to represent indigent clients in criminal cases.
    On the personal side, Reece was
the
trophy of the firm, according to many women paralegals. He was single and probably straight (the proof wasn’t conclusive—a divorce—but the ladies were willing to accept that circumstantial evidence as entirely credible). He’d had affairs with at least two women at the firm, or so the rumor went. On the other hand, they lamented, he was your standard Type A workaholic and thus a land mine in the relationship department. Which, nonetheless, didn’t stop most of them from dreaming, if not flirting.
    Reece returned to his office and closed the door with his foot, handed her the coffee. He sat down.
    “Okay, here it is—our client’s been robbed,” he said.
    She asked, “As in what they do to you on the subway or what they do at the IRS?”
    “Burglary.”
    “Really?” Taylor again swallowed the yawn that had been trying to escape and rubbed her own stinging eyes.
    “What do you know about banking law?” he asked.
    “The fee for bounced checks is fifteen dollars.”
    “That’s all?”
    “I’m afraid so. But I’m a fast learner.”
    Reece said seriously, “I hope so. Here’s your first lesson. One of the firm’s clients is New Amsterdam Bank & Trust. You ever work for them?”
    “No.” She knew about the place, though; it was the firm’s largest banking client and had been with Hubbard, White for nearly a hundred years. Taylor took a steno pad out of her purse and uncapped a pen.
    “Don’t write.”
    “I like to get the facts straight,” she said.
    “No, don’t write,” he said bluntly.
    “Well, okay.” The pad vanished.
    Reece continued. “Last year the bank loaned two hundred fifty million dollars to a company in Midtown. Hanover & Stiver, Inc.”
    “What do they do?”
    “They make things. I don’t know. Widgets, baubles, bangles, bright, shiny beads.” Reece shrugged then continued, “Now the first installments of the loan were due six months ago and the company missed the payments. They go back and forth, the bank and Hanover, but it’s pretty clear that the company’s never going to pay the money back. So, under the loan agreement, the whole amount comes due—a quarter-billion dollars.”
    “What’d they do with the money?”
    “Good question. My feeling is it’s still sitting somewhere—hell, they didn’t have
time
to spend that much. But anyway, what happens at New Amsterdam—our revered client—is this: The economy melts down and the bank’s reserves are shrinking. Now, the government says to all banks, Thou shalt have X amount of dollars on hand at all times. But New Amsterdam doesn’t
have
X amount anymore. They need more in their reserves or the feds’re going to step in. And the only way to get a big infusion of cash is to get back Hanover’s