Mistress of Justice

need to lower his voice. The only non-Protestant sect represented in the club was Papist and none of the three Catholic members was here tonight. “How the hell did he do it?”
    Burdick didn’t know and didn’t care but, as his wife had admitted not long ago, he couldn’t help but admire Clayton. He hadn’t thought that the partner even
knew
about the negotiations, let alone that he could put together some bribery—or extortion—plan to sabotage the lease this quickly.
    Now, with the lease gone, all Burdick had left to use as leverage was urging McMillan Holdings to take a stand against the merger.
    “I’m going down to Florida tomorrow,” he said.
    “McMillan?” Stanley asked.
    Burdick nodded. “Their board meeting. I’ll do whatever I have to to make sure they let Perelli know where they stand.”
    “That’ll help some, I guess.” Then Stanley muttered something that Burdick couldn’t hear.
    “What was that?” the partner asked him.
    “I said, ‘Remember the days when all we had to do was get clients and practice law?’ ”
    “No,” Burdick replied sourly. “That must’ve been before my time.”

CHAPTER TWENTY
     
    The law professor and legal philosopher Karl Llewellyn wrote a book called
The Bramble Bush
. The foliage in his title was a metaphor for the study and practice of law and his meaning was that this field, in all its many incarnations, is endless. In that book he wrote that “the only cure for law is more law,” by which he was suggesting that you cannot dabble at the profession. When you are overwhelmed by the case, the business deal, the jurisprudential study, when you are exhausted, when you cannot bear the thought of proceeding one more moment, you can find salvation only by pushing forward, deeper into the tangle.
    The law, he was suggesting, is an infinitely complex, uncompromising mistress.
    Wendall Clayton thought of Professor Llewellyn’s writing now as he sat across his desk from Randy Simms, late Sunday morning at the firm.
    The smarmy young lawyer had just delivered troubling news. They had managed to sabotage the long-term lease that Burdick had been trying to put into place. But some of the old-guard partners at the firm were refusing to vote in favorof the merger. Burdick’s win in the St. Agnes trial had heartened them and a bit of cheerleading on Bill Stanley’s part had gotten them to switch their votes back to Burdick’s camp.
    Which meant that there was now some doubt that Clayton would have enough votes, come Tuesday, for the merger to be approved.
    “How close is it?” Clayton asked.
    “Pretty evenly balanced. Right down the middle, more or less.”
    “Then we have to make it less ‘pretty even.’ ”
    “Yessir.”
    “Stay on call. I’ll be right back.” Clayton rose and walked down the stairs to the paralegal pen.
    To his surprise he found Sean Lillick was not alone.
    The pretty boy was standing with a girl, another paralegal in the firm.
    Clayton didn’t understand what Lillick saw in her. She seemed shy, timid, unassertive. A bit, well, rotund too.
    A consolation fuck at best.
    When they saw him coming they stepped apart and Clayton noticed, though he pretended not to, that they’d been fighting about something. The girl’s eyes were red from crying and Lillick’s otherwise pasty face was flushed.
    “Sean,” the partner said.
    The boy nodded. “Hi, Wendall.”
    “And you are? …”
    “Carrie Mason.”
    “Ah.”
    “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Clayton said.
    “No. Not at all.”
    Carrie said quickly, “We were just talking.”
    “Ah. Talking. Well, if you’ll excuse us, Carrie. Sean and I have some business.”
    Neither of them moved. Lillick looked at the floor. Carrie cleared her throat and said, “We’ve got some documents to copy. For the SCI deal.”
    Clayton didn’t say anything. He just stared from one to the other.
    Lillick said to her, “Why don’t you get started.”
    She hesitated then hefted an armful of papers and walked moodily down the hall on her solid legs.
    Clayton said, “You’ll be at my party tonight, won’t you, Carrie? My place in Connecticut.”
    The girl looked back and said to the partner, “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
    “I’m so pleased,” the partner said, smiling.
    When she’d vanished, Clayton said to the young man, “We’ve got some problems. About the vote. I need some information. Good information. And I need it fast. The vote’s day after tomorrow.”
    It