THE HIT MAN

Roxana’s request set the wheels in motion.

The call had to be made from one phone: Norman Ross’s. The number was a secret cell-phone number, stored in a hidden file on the office manager’s computer under a single name: “Mickey.” The message was standard, and only one person at the firm was cleared to leave it.

“We need to meet,” Ross said into the handset.

Then he hung up and waited. Mickey would call back from a blocked line and set the time and place. The hit man met no one and spoke to no one except Ross himself.

Ross was not an attorney. He ran the secretarial and paralegal staff and, more importantly, resolved the endless internal problems that surfaced each day in a firm of more than one hundred lawyers. He was possibly the most powerful man in the building, second only to Richard Lancy. His power came from what he knew: the private affairs and secret troubles that flowed to him from every department. What gave him real leverage was his role as go-between, standing between what the attorneys needed and the people who supplied it.

Dealing with the hit man gave Ross access to the firm’s most sensitive files. He knew the dangerous details of his attorneys’ work product, details that, if revealed, could get most of the firm disbarred.

Nearly an hour later, the blocked line rang on Ross’s direct number. A monotone, digitally distorted voice gave its orders without a greeting and without waiting for an answer.

“In two hours. Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Third pew.”

The line clicked dead.

Ross hung up and looked at Roxana, who stood in his doorway. “Tell your boss I’ll need a copy of the file in less than two hours.”

Roxy relayed the message to me. Handing a client’s file to an outsider was an unequivocal breach of attorney-client confidentiality. I knew it. And somehow I found the nerve to do the unthinkable: I opened a drawer, took out our copy of the file, and set it in front of her.

“Are you sure about this?” Roxy asked, searching my eyes for an answer.

“Yes, Roxy. It’s beyond our control now.”

Once Mickey had set a meeting, that meeting could not be broken.

I don’t know what possessed me to follow Ross to the cathedral. I suppose I felt I had a right to see where my file was going. Guilt gnawed at me. It was one thing to bend the law. I had just broken it.

I tailed him without being noticed. Inside, the Gothic nave was dark, lit only by the glow of candles. I slipped behind a column near the entrance and watched Ross walk toward the front and sit in the third pew, beside a figure in a dark raincoat and hat.

Who wears a hat inside a church?

Mickey did, of course. Presumably to keep anyone but his contact from catching a glimpse of his face.

Ross handed over the file and left, faster than he had come. I stayed hidden. Then Mickey rose and started down the aisle toward the main door, toward the column where I stood.

And in a flash, I saw the impossible.

The hit man, Mickey, was Elizabeth Grant.

I gasped and turned my face to the stone. She didn’t see me. But I had clearly seen her profile beneath the dark hat, above the black coat.

My God.

Of course Mickey could work magic on impossible cases. Mickey worked with the District Attorney’s office. And Eli was most likely representing the Morales estate as opposing counsel, in the charade of pro bono work she did for the sheer glory of it. She worked closely with police officers, many of whom could be bribed to fabricate evidence and make false statements. She was also well connected with internal affairs at the bureau, where she had served as an agent for many years before turning to the law.

I waited a few minutes inside the church. Looking up at the Roman Catholic cross, I understood that I was only a pawn in the invincible complexity of a corrupt universe.