Mistress of Justice (12 page)

“Uh, do animals have fingerprints?”

“Primates do, but who cares? We don’t give apes government clearances or put them on the ten-most-wanted list. That’s not the question. The question is twins.”

“Twins?”

“And the answer is that twins, quadruplets, duodeceplets—they all have different fingerprints. Now, who first discovered fingerprints?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me?”

“Guess.”

“Scotland Yard?” Taylor offered.

“Prehistoric tribes in France were aware of fingerprints and used them as cave decorations. In the sixteen and seventeen hundreds they were used as graphic designs and trademarks. The first attempt to study them seriously was in 1823—Dr. J. E. Purkinje, an anatomy professor, came up with a crude classification system. Fingerprints became sexy in the late 1800s. Sir Francis Galton, who was a preeminent scholar in the field of …” He cocked his eyebrows at Taylor. “Daily Double?”

“Dactyloscopy?”

“Nice try but no. In the field of heredity. He established that all fingerprints are different and they never change throughout one’s life. The British government appointed Edward Richard Henry to a commission to consider using fingerprints to identify criminals. By around the turn of the century Henry had created the basic classification system they use in most countries. His system is called, coincidentally,
the Henry system. New York was the first state to start fingerprinting all prisoners. Around 1902.”

While she found this fascinating the urgency of the Hanover case kept prodding her. When he came up for air she asked, “If one were going to look for fingerprints, how would one do it?”

“One’?” he asked coyly. “You?”

“No, just … one.”

“Well, it depends on the surface. You—excuse me,
one
—should wear cloth gloves—not latex. If the surface is light-colored one would use a carbon-based dark powder. On dark, one would use an aluminum-and-chalk mixture; it’s light gray. One would dust on the powder with a very soft, long-bristle brush. Then one removes the excess—”

“How?”

“Flip a coin,” the detective said.

“One blows it off.”

“A lot of rookies think that. But you tend to spit and ruin the whole print. No, use a brush. Now, powders only work on smooth surfaces. If you’ve got to take a print from paper there are different techniques. If the print’s oily maybe it’ll show up in iodine vapor. The problem is that you have to expose it in an enclosed cabinet and take a picture of the print very quickly because the vapors evaporate right away. Sometimes latents come out with a nitrate solution or ninhydrin or superglue. But that’s the big league, probably over your—one’s—skill level.

“Now, once
one
has the print, he or”—a nod toward her
—“she
has to capture it. You lift it off the surface with special tape or else take a picture of it. Remember: Fingerprints are
evidence
. They have to get into the courtroom and in front of an expert witness.”

“Now,” she said, “just speaking theoretically, could someone like me take fingerprints?”

“If you practiced, sure. But could you testify that prints A and B were the same? No way. Could you even tell if they were the same or different? Not easy, mama, not at all. They squoosh out, they move, they splot. They look different
when they’re the same, they look identical except for some little significant difference you miss.… No, it isn’t easy. Fingerprinting is an art.”

“How ’bout a machine, or something? A computer?”

“The police use them, sure. The FBI. But not private citizens. Say, Ms. Lockwood?”

“Taylor,” she prompted.

“Perhaps if you told me exactly what your problem is I could offer some specific solutions.”

“It’s somewhat sensitive.”

“It always is. That’s why companies like us exist.”

“Best to keep mum for the time being.”

“Understood. Just let me know if you’d like another lesson. Though I do recommend keeping in mind the experts.” He grew serious and the charming banter vanished. “Should the matter become, let’s say, more than
sensitive
—a lot of our people here have carry permits.”

“ ‘Carry’?”

“They’re licensed to carry weapons.”

“Oh,” she said in a soft voice.

“Just something to think about.”

“Thanks, John.” Then she said, “I do have one question.”

The hand in which a basketball would look so at home rose and a finger pointed skyward. “Allow me to deduce. The inquiry is: Where you can get a Dick Tracy fingerprint kit?” Before she answered yes, he was writing an address on the back of his business card. “It’s a police equipment supply house. You can buy anything but weapons and shields there.”

“Shields?”

“Badges, you know. Those you can buy
—one
can buy—in Times Square arcades for about ten bucks. But you’re not supposed to. Oh, not to be forward, but I did happen to write my home phone number on the back of the card. In case any questions occur to you after hours, say.”

She decided she liked this guy. “This’s been fascinating, John. Thank you.” She stood and he escorted her toward the
elevator, pointing out a glass case containing a collection of blackjacks and saps.

“Oh, and Miss Lockwood? Taylor?”

“Yes?”

“Before you leave I was just wondering: Would you like to hear the lecture I give to our new employees on the laws against breaking and entering and invading privacy?”

Taylor said, “No, I don’t believe I would.”

She’ll be moody today.

Ralph Dudley sat in his creaky office chair. The nape of his neck eased into the tall leather back and he stared at the thin slice of sky next to the brick wall outside his window. Gray sky, gray water. November.

Yes, Junie would be in one of her moods.

It was a talent, this intuition of his. Whereas Donald Burdick, to whom he constantly—obsessively—compared himself, was brilliant, Ralph Dudley was intuitive. He charmed clients, he told them jokes appropriate to their age, gender and background, he listened sympathetically to their tales of sorrow at infidelities and deaths and to their stories of joy at grandchildren’s births. He told war stories of his courtroom victories with a dramatic pacing that only fiction—which they were, of course—permits. With his patented vestigial bow Dudley could charm the daylights out of the wives of clients and potential clients.

He had sense and feeling while Burdick had reason and logic.

And, sure enough, he was now right. Here came fifteen-year-old Junie, a sour look on her face, trooping sullenly into his office, ignoring the woman from the word processing pool who was handling a typing job for him.

The girl stopped in the doorway, a hip-cocked stance, unsmiling.

“Come on in, honey,” Dudley said. “I’m almost finished.”

She wore a jumper, white blouse and white stockings. A
large blue bow was in her hair. She gave him a formal kiss on the cheek and plopped into one of his visitor’s chairs, swinging her legs over the side.

“Sit like a lady, now.”

She waited a defiant thirty seconds then slipped on her Walkman headset and swiveled slowly in the chair, planting her feet on the lime-green carpet.

Dudley laughed. He picked up the handle of his dictating machine. “Look, I’ve got one, too—a recorder.”

She looked perplexed and he realized she couldn’t hear what he was saying (and would probably have thought his joke was idiotic if she’d been able to). But Dudley had learned not to be hurt by the girl’s behavior and he unemotionally proceeded to dictate a memo that gave the gist of some rules of law he believed he remembered. At the end of the tape he included instructions to Todd Stanton, his associate at the firm, who would rewrite the memo and look up the law Dudley hoped existed to support his points.

Ralph Dudley knew they sometimes laughed at him, the young associates here. He never raised his voice, he never criticized, he was solicitous toward them. He supposed the young men (Dudley had never quite come to terms with the idea of women lawyers) held him in all the more contempt for this obsequiousness. There were a few loyal boys, like Todd, but on the whole no one had much time for Old Man Dudley.

“Grandpa,” he’d heard that the associates called him. Partners, too, although somewhat more subtly, joined in the derision. Yet though this treatment soiled his days here—and obliterated whatever loyalty he had once felt for Hubbard, White & Willis—he was not overly troubled. His relation with the firm became just what his marriage to Emma had been: one of respectful acknowledgment. He was usually able to keep his bitterness contained.

Junie’s eyes were closed, her patent-leather shoes swaying in time to the music. My God, she was growing up. Fifteen. It gave him a pang of sorrow. At times he had flashes—poses she struck, the way the light might catch her
face—of her as a woman in her twenties. He knew that she, abandoned in adolescence, carried the seeds of adulthood within her more fertilely than other children.

And he often felt she was growing up far too fast for him.

He handed the dictated tape to the typist, who left.

“So,” he said to the girl, “are we going to do some shopping?”

“I guess.”

That
question she heard perfectly, Dudley observed. “Well, let’s go.”

She shrugged and hopped off the chair, tugging at her dress in irritation, which meant she wanted to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt—clothes that she loved and that he hated.

They were at the elevator when a woman’s voice asked, “Ralph, excuse me, you have a minute?”

He recognized the young woman from around the firm but couldn’t recall a name. It stung him slightly that she had the effrontery to call him by his first name but because he was a gentlemen he did nothing other than smile and nod. “Yes, you’re …”

“Taylor Lockwood.”

“Sure, of course. This is my granddaughter, Junie. Junie, say hello to Miss Lockwood. She’s a lawyer here.”

“Paralegal, actually.” Taylor smiled and said to the girl pleasantly, “You look like Alice.”

“Huh?”

“Alice in Wonderland
. It’s one of my favorite books.”

The girl shrugged and returned to the oblivion of her music.

Dudley wondered what this woman wanted. Had he given her some work? An assignment?

“I’d like to ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“You went to Yale Law School, didn’t you?”

“That’s right, I did.”

“I’m thinking of applying there.”

Dudley felt a bit of alarm. He hadn’t quite graduated, despite what he’d told the firm, and so couldn’t exactly send a letter of recommendation for her.

But she added, “My application and letters and everything’re in. I just want to know a little about the school. I’m trying to decide between there and Harvard and NYU.”

Relieved, Dudley said, “Oh, I went there before you were born. I don’t think anything I’d have to tell you would be much help.”

“Well, somebody here said you helped them decide to go to law school, that you were very helpful. I was sort of hoping you could spare a half hour or so.”

Dudley felt the pleasure he always did at even minor adulation like this. “Tonight?”

She said, “I was thinking tomorrow night maybe. After work? I could take you out to dinner.”

A woman taking a man out to dinner? Dudley was nearly offended.

The paralegal added, “Unless you have plans.”

He did, of course—plans he
wouldn’t
miss. But that was at 10
P.M
. He said, “I’m busy later in the evening. But how would seven be?” A charming smile. “I’ll take you to my club.”

Junie of the selective hearing said, “Like, Poppie, you told me they didn’t let women in there.”

Dudley said to her, “That’s only as members, honey.” To Taylor he said, “Come by tomorrow at six, we’ll take a cab uptown.…” Then, calculating the taxi fare, he added, “No, actually a subway would be better. That time of day, traffic is terrible.”

“Now he’s going after the clients.”

Donald Burdick knotted the silk tie carefully with his long fingers. He liked the feel of good cloth, the way it yielded yet was tough. Tonight, though, the smooth texture gave him little pleasure.