Mistress of Justice Read Online Free PDF

unadulterated scum. He thinks he’s some kind of smooth operator. You know the kind—late fifties, crew-cut, tanned. Has three mistresses. Wears so much gold jewelry he’d never get through a metal detector.”
    “That’s not a crime,” Taylor said.
    “No, but his three SEC violations and two RICO and one IRS convictions were.”
    “Ah.”
    Taylor glanced out the window: across the street was a wall of office windows, a hundred of them. And beyond that building were others with more office windows, and still more beyond that. Taylor Lockwood was, momentarily, overwhelmed by the challenges they faced. Needles and haystacks … She asked, “Are you sure we’re looking for something that still exists?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “If nobody’s going to cash the note why wouldn’t they just burn it?”
    “Good question. I’ve thought about that. When I was an assistant U.S. prosecutor—and when I do my criminal defense work now—I always put myself in the mind of the perp. In this case, if the note disappears forever that implies a crime. If it’s just misplaced until Hanover’s hidden his assets and then it resurfaces, well, that suggests, just legal malpractice on Hubbard, White’s part; nobody looks any farther for a bad guy than us. That’s why I think the note’s still in the firm. Maybe in the file room, maybe stuck in a magazine in a partner’s office, maybe behind a copier—wherever the thief hid it.
    Thief.… Lockwood felt her first uneasy twinge—not only at the impossibility of the task but that there was potential danger too.
    In Wonderland the Queen of Hearts’ favorite slogan was “Off with their heads.”
    She sat back. “I don’t know, Mitchell. It seems hopeless. There’re a million places the note could be.”
    “We don’t have the facts yet. There’s a huge amount of information at the firm about where people have been at various times and what they’ve been doing. Billing department, payroll, things like that. I guess the first thing I’d do is check the door key entry logs and time sheets to find out who was in the firm on Saturday.”
    She nodded at the lock. “But we think it was a pro, don’t we? Not a lawyer or employee?”
    “Still, somebody had to let him in. Either that or they lent him their key card—or one they’d stolen.” Reece then took out his wallet and handed her a thousand dollars in hundreds.
    She looked at the cash with a funny smile, embarrassed, curious.
    “For expenses.”
    “Expenses.” Did he mean bribes? She wasn’t going to ask. Taylor held the bills awkwardly for a moment then slipped them into her purse. She noticed a sheet of paper on Reece’s desk. It was legal-sized and pale green—the color of corridors in old hospitals and government buildings. She recognized it as the court calendar the managing attorney of Hubbard, White circulated throughout the firm daily. It contained a grid of thirty days beginning with today. Filling these squares were the times and locations of all court appearances scheduled for the firm’s litigators. She leaned forward. In the square indicating one week from today were the words:
    New Amsterdam Bank & Trust v. Hanover & Stiver. Jury trial. Ten a.m. No continuance
.
    He looked at his watch. “Let’s talk again tomorrow. But we should keep our distance when we’re at the firm. If anybody asks tell them you’re helping me with some year-end billing problems.”
    “But who’d ask? Who’d even know?”
    He laughed and seemed to consider this a naive comment. “How’s the Vista Hotel at nine-thirty?”
    “Sure.”
    “If I call you at home I can leave a message, can’t I?”
    “I’ve got an answering machine.”
    “No, I mean, there won’t be anybody else there to pick it up, right? I heard you lived alone.”
    She hesitated momentarily and said only, “You can leave messages there.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    “I have a breakfast meeting in half an hour then the partnership meeting for the rest