The case was routine and it was likely that the hospital was going to win. Stanley had just reported, however, that the plaintiff's attorneys – from a tough Midtown personal injury firm – had found a new witness, a doctor whose testimony could be devastating to St Agnes. Even though he was a surprise witness, the judge was going to let him testify tomorrow.

The judgment could be for tens of millions and a loss this big might mean that St Agnes – which was self-insured – would fire Hubbard, White & Willis altogether. Even if the hospital didn't do so, though, the credibility of Burdick and his litigation department would be seriously eroded and the hospital might push to support the merger, John Perelli's firm was renowned for its brutal handling of personal injury defense work.

"Damn," Burdick muttered. "Damn."

Vera's eyes narrowed. "You don't think that Wendall slipped your client's files to the other side, do you?"

"It did occur to me."

Vera took a sip of scotch and set the Waterford glass down on the table. Burdick's eyes were distant, trying to process this news. His wife's, however, had coalesced into dark dots. "One thing I'd say, darling."

The wind rattled the leaded-glass windows Burdick glanced at the sound.

She said, "With a man like Wendall, we have to hit him hard the first time. We won't have a second chance."

Burdick's eyes dropped to the Pakistani carpet on the bedroom floor. Then he picked up the phone and called the night operator at the law firm. "This is Donald Burdick," he said politely. "Please locate Mitchell Reece and have him call me at home. Tell him it's urgent."

Taylor Lockwood walked through the breezy evening streets of the East Village, the curbs banked with trash, and thought of a funeral she'd attended several months earlier.

She'd sat in the front pew of the church in Scarsdale, north of the city, a wood-and-stone building built, someone behind her had whispered, by contributions from tycoons like J P Morgan and Vanderbilt. Although Taylor had been in black, that color did not seem to be requisite at funerals any longer, any somber shade was acceptable – purple, forest green, even dusk-brown tapestry. She sat on the hard pew and watched the family members, lost in their personal rituals of grief, tears running in halting streams, hands squeezing hands, fingers rubbing obsessively against fingers. The minister had spoken of Linda Davidoff with genuine sorrow and familiarity. He knew the parents better than the daughter, that was clear, but he was eulogizing well.

Most attendees had seemed sad or bewildered but not everyone had cried, suicide makes for an ambivalent mourning.

The minister had closed the service with one of Linda's poems, one published in her college literary magazine.

As he'd read, images of Linda had returned and the tears that Taylor Lockwood had told herself not to cry appeared fast, stinging the corners of her eyes and running with maddening tickles down her cheeks, even though she hadn't known the paralegal very well.

Then the organ had played a solemn cue and the mourners had filed outside for the drive to the internment.

As she'd told Reece, nothing that she'd found suggested that Linda Davidoff had had any connection with Hanover & Stiver or the loan deal. But there was something suspicious to Taylor about the way the girl had worked such long hours on the case then stopped abruptly – and then committed suicide.

She felt she needed to follow up on this question. Alice, after all, had wandered everywhere throughout Wonderland – a place, however, in which you sure wouldn't find the disgusting six-story tenement she now stood in front of. In the foul entry foyer the intercom had been stolen and the front door was open, swinging in the breeze like a batwing door in a ghost town saloon. She started up the filthy steps.

"It may look impressive, but the bank owns most of it," Sean Lillick said.

The young paralegal was sitting on the drafty floor, shirtless and shoeless, shoving a backpack under the bed as she walked in.

Taylor Lockwood, catching her breath from the climb, was surveying what Lillick was referring to a wall of keyboards, wires, boxes, a computer terminal, speakers, guitar, amps. Easily fifty thousand dollars' worth of musical equipment.

Lillick – thin, dark-haired, about twenty-four – was smelling socks, discarding them. He wore black jeans, a sleeveless T-shirt. His boots sat in front of him. The only clue as to his day job at Hubbard, White & Willis were two dark suits and three white shirts, in various stages of recycling, hanging on nails pounded crookedly into the wall. He studied her for a moment. "You look impressed or confused I can't tell."

"Your place is a little more alternative than I expected." The apartment was a patchwork. Someone had nailed pieces of plywood, plastic or sheet metal over cracks and holes Joints didn't meet, plaster was rotting, floorboards were cracked or missing. In the living room one hanging bare bulb, one floor lamp, one daybed, one desk.

And a ton of bank-owned musical instruments and gear.

"Have a seat."

She looked helplessly about her.

"Oh Well, try the daybed. Hey, Taylor, listen to this I just thought it up. I'm going to use it in one of my pieces. You know what a preppy is?"

"I give up."

"A yuppie with papers."

She smiled politely. He didn't seem concerned about the tepid response and wrote the line down in a notebook. "So what do you do?" she asked. "Stand-up comedy?"

"Performance art. I like to rearrange perceptions."

"Ah, musically speaking," she joked, "you're a re-arranger."

He seemed to like her observation too and mentally stored it somewhere.

Taylor walked over to a music keyboard.

Lillick said, "You're thinking organ, I know. But -"

"I'm thinking Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer with a digital sampler, MIDI and a Linn sequencer that should store about a hundred sequences in RAM. You mind?"

He laughed and waved his hand. She sat on a broken stool and clicked on the Yamaha. She ran through "Ain't Misbehavin'".

Lillick said, "This machine cannot deal with music like that I think it's having a breakdown."

"What do you play?" she asked him.

"Postmodern, post-New Wave. What I do is integrate music and my show I call myself a sound painter. Is that obnoxious?"

Taylor thought it was but just smiled and read through some of his lead sheets. In addition to standard musical notation they included drawings of pans and hammers, light-bulbs, bells, a pistol.

"When I started composing I was a serialist and then I moved to minimalism. Now I'm exploring nonmusical elements, like choreography and performance art. Some sound sculpture, too. I love what Philip Glass does only I'm less thematic. Laurie Anderson, that sort of thing. I believe there should be a lot of randomness in art. Don't you think?"

She shook her head, recalling what she'd told Reece that morning. How she believed music should stay close to melodies that resonated within people's hearts. She said, "You're talking to Ms. Mainstream, Sean," and shut off the system. She asked, "Got a beer?"

"Oh. Sure. Help yourself. I'll take one, too, while you're at it."

She popped them and handed him one. He asked, "You perform?"

"You wouldn't approve. Piano bars."

"They serve a valuable function."

Irritated by his too hip, and too righteous, attitude, Taylor asked, "Are you being condescending?"

"No I mean it I like classics too." Lillick was up, hobbling on one boot to his rows of records and CDs and tapes. "Charlie Parker I got every Bird record ever made. Here, listen." He put on an LP, which sounded scratchy and authentic. "Man, that was the life," Lillick said. "You get up late, practice a bit, hang out, play sax till three, watch the sunrise with your buddies."