"Confucius?" he said, puzzled.

"I went into the library. All hand-carved wood, giant arches, a quiet, peaceful place. It's almost holy, like a church or a cathedral."

"Exactly!" he agreed, smiling now. "That's what they want you to think. Like all those churches you hauled me to in Italy. Why do you think they built them like that? For the glory of G.o.d. h.e.l.l, no! They did it to scare the s.h.i.t out of the peasants. You walk into a church, what's the first thing you do? You lower your voice, you whisper. Same thing in your fancy Court, right? The judges are the priests- they even dress like priests-and everyone else is a peasant. They want to scare you into thinking you're on hallowed ground, that they're doing sacred work. Hypocrites! They don't want you to know what they're doing under the robes."

Lisa walked to the window, looking past her balcony into Dumbarton Oaks Park and the creek beyond. Max had chosen the apartment, but unlike the old days, he wasn't paying for it. At least not on the books. Two years ago, when she was still in law school, he began erasing the paper trail-the canceled checks, airline pa.s.ses, credit card receipts-that would link her to him. It was his idea that maybe one day she'd be able to help him in a way no one could know about. It sounded crazy at first, just as crazy as taking a money-losing air-freight forwarder with three aging jet props and turning it into Atlantica Airlines, poster child of deregulation and booming international air carrier ... until the disastrous crash of Flight 640.

"You're very persuasive, Max," she said, at last. "You should have been a lawyer."

Max laughed. "No way, baby! That's why I spent a hundred grand on you."

"I don't think I'll get the job," she said, softly. "I think Justice Truitt will look at me and see I don't belong there."

Or is that what I want? The easy way out, sparing me the ha.s.sle of refusing to do Max's dirty work.

"That's where you're wrong. You belong anywhere you want to be. You're the most powerful woman I've ever known."

"I learned from you," she said.

"No! You had the power as a seventeen-year-old but didn't know it. All I did was mark the trail for you. You climbed it all by yourself." He studied her for a moment, and she averted her eyes, her shyness a childhood trait. He smiled. "Anyway, don't worry. The judge will take one look at you and want to adopt you."

"Max, he's your age."

"Even better ... he'll want to screw you." He laughed again, his mood softening, maybe pleased she was confiding her fears. She so seldom showed any insecurity.

"Stop worrying," he said. "You're going to get the job. You're going to be the s.e.xiest smartest law clerk in the history of the Supreme Court."

"Maybe," she said.

"You're being interviewed by a man, and deep inside, we're all alike."

No, Max, you're not. You and Tony were not alike. And I doubt you and Sam Truitt share much in common despite the same configuration of x and y chromosomes.

She'd never told Max that she'd become Tony Kingston's lover after their break-up her first year in law school. As far as Max knew, Tony was just the navy pilot she'd introduced him to, the hometown hero she said would be a great addition to the Atlantica fleet. Well, she was right, wasn't she?

"It's different on the Supreme Court," Lisa said. "You know what they taught us first year in law school?"

"Probably how to overcharge your clients."

"Jus est ars boni et aequi. Law is the art of the good and the just."

"And the meek shall inherit the earth," Max responded in the sarcastic tone she knew so well. He walked to the window and wrapped his arms around her from behind. "If the law worked so d.a.m.n well, O.J. would have sucked gas, Klaus von Bulow would have been stuck full of needles, and"-he paused a moment, as if not sure whether to continue-"and your father would have been hung by his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es."

She turned around in his arms to face him. "And the victims of Flight six-forty would have hit Atlantica for several hundred million in verdicts," she added.

"Sort of proves my point, doesn't it?"

It did, but his cynicism irritated her. If Max were right, then why had she just spent three years studying law and another year clerking for a federal judge? Just to be another manipulator of the system? But even if he were wrong, how could she turn him down? Max had never denied her anything. He had supported her, nurtured her, helped her grow into an adult. In return, she had been his lover for most of the past decade. He'd been understanding when she left him during law school and comforting when she'd come back after Tony's death. And now, for the first time, he wanted something more, something that collided head-on with everything she had learned the past four years.

"If justice is such a rare commodity," she said, "maybe I should work for it. Maybe I should help put criminals in jail or defend the wrongfully accused."

"You're too smart for that. That's sucker talk. I don't see you in the Justice Department or in some public defender's office with a metal desk and stale coffee."

"I remember the first time you told me how smart I was," she said. "It was endearing then. Now, it sounds like an insult."

"There's smart," he said, "like book learning, which can open some doors but otherwise doesn't mean s.h.i.t, and then there's streetsmart, which you can't buy with a degree. You got both, which knocks my socks off."

No one had ever expressed admiration for her intelligence before Max came along. Not her teachers, not her mother, not her father. Especially not her father, whose praise was limited to her physical a.s.sets.

Max had told her she could be anything she wanted, and she believed him. He gave her confidence and a chance at a new life. Now that she had that life, she didn't want to risk losing it.

"Do you remember when you told me I was smarter than you?" she asked.

"Sure. It was the night we met."

Max Wanaker walked into the Tiki Club and sat down on a bar stool in front of the stage. It had a rusty bra.s.s go-go pole, chains hanging from the ceiling, a scratchy sound system, and a number of missing bulbs in the multicolored lighting system. In the back was a darkened lap-dancing lounge with black satin couches. The place smelled like a mixture of stale beer and cheap perfume, moist mildew and industrial strength cleaner.

A connoisseur of strip joints, Max preferred the sophisticated atmosphere of Ten's in Manhattan, where fifty-five exotic dancers stroll onto the stage in full-length sequined gowns, strobe lights blasting, smoke machine billowing. Tonight, he was slumming. Mainly because he had been bored, he told the limo driver to stop when he saw the flashing neon sign, LIVE GIRLS.

As opposed to what? DEAD GIRLS?

The sign, as effective as the Sirens' songs that lured sailors onto the rocks, brought Max into the club. Now he approached the small stage, scanning the room. The strippers all looked as if they'd been ridden hard-the meaty redhead slouching on stage, out of step with Aerosmith, already down to her ratty gold panties, oversize t.i.ts barely bouncing, the two in lingerie at the bar, cadging drinks-all of them with big hair, six-inch nails, and siliconed melon b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He had one watery Scotch and was ready to leave when Lisa came on the stage to the music of Billy Joel.

Jesus, she's just a kid.

She looked like a cheerleader. Small b.r.e.a.s.t.s, sleek reddish blonde hair, clear blue eyes, long legs, a full mouth, little makeup other than painted-on whiskers, something he didn't get until he realized she was wearing a tight leopard skin dress with little leopard ears. She seemed embarra.s.sed, and he was enchanted.

She could dance. She moved smoothly to the music, closing her eyes, which he knew was a no-no. It occurred to Max that he knew more about her business than she did.

You're supposed to make eye contact, baby. You're supposed to make every guy in the joint feel like you've got the hots just for him.

She was so young and so obviously new at this that Max felt a stirring. Not just to bag her. h.e.l.l, he'd bedded down half his company's secretaries, more than a few strippers, plus his daughter's fourth-grade teacher. This one was different. She looked like she didn't belong here.

What's a nice girl like you ...

The old male rescue fantasy took hold even before he talked to her. What he could do for her!

And vice versa.

The leopard dress was off now, and she was holding on to the bra.s.s pole, each leg astride it, grinding her hips in time with the music, humping that lucky pole, her firm a.s.s moving rhythmically in time with his pulse. Her eyes wide open now, she looked at Max and seemed to blush.

Now there's a first.

Then she smiled shyly at him, swung away from the pole, and drifted up to the edge of the stage. He slipped a twenty-dollar bill into her garter where it joined a number of singles. The garter was all she wore, other than the high-heeled shoes. Her strawberry nipples were erect, her mouth set in an innocent, yet seductive smile. She never said a word. She just turned around and bent over, putting her hands on her knees and arching her back. She wiggled her a.s.s clockwise, as if on coasters, stopped and wiggled counterclockwise. With impressive muscle control, her b.u.t.tocks quivered in time with the music, and he felt the contractions in his own loins.

Later, when her set was done, back in her slinky leopard dress and little leopard ears, Lisa wobbled up to him on six-inch heels and inquired with her whiskered smile and cat eyes if he'd like to buy her a drink.

"What's your name?" he had asked, "Jellylorum or Mistoffelees," for he had just taken his wife to see the musical Cats in London.

"Rumpleteazer," she said without missing a beat.

"You've seen the show," he said, surprised.

"No way! My boyfriend thinks live theater is watching three lesbians in leather and chains."

"Then how-"

"When I was a kid, I read the Eliot poems. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats."

"When you were a kid," he repeated, smiling.

"Yeah. I thought the poems were silly. I think Eliot should have stuck to 'The Waste Land.'"

"Really? You read a lot?"

"I'm taking cla.s.ses. That's all I do. Study by day, strip by night."

He watched her size him up, noting the manicured, polished nails, the gold cuff links, the dark suit. She wasn't even subtle about it just taking inventory, probably calculating her tip by the pedigree of his watch. c.o.c.king her head the way the older girls must have shown her, she said, "So you want a private dance or what?"

He laughed. "You really are a rumpleteazer, aren't you?

"I'm not J. Alfred Prufrock."

"What's your name? You never told me."

"Angel," she lied.

"Nah. I'm your angel."

And he was. Max Wanaker, who at that time owned a Miami freight forwarding company and had just beaten back a Teamsters strike, rescued Lisa Fremont teenage runaway. He spirited her out of the Tenderloin and put her in an apartment on n.o.b Hill. It was there-where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars-that Max made an amazing discovery. Lisa wasn't like the others, which is to say, she wasn't after money. This brainy stripper read Dostoevsky in the dressing room between sets, picked up her high school degree in night school, and was about to enroll in community college when Max bulldozed his way into her life and suggested Berkeley instead.

"You're smarter than I am," he told her that first night. And then repeated it time and again until she believed it was true.

Lisa poured Max another stiff shot of Glenmorangie, the pricey single-malt Scotch he ordered by the case. He twirled the golden liquid in the gla.s.s, sniffed it took a sip. The ritual done, he turned to her. "So what's the bottom line? Are we on the same page here?"

Speaking in corporate jargon when it's my life!

"I can't do it, Max. I can't prost.i.tute myself."

Max's face reddened. He stared at her in disbelief. "What!"

"I would do anything for you, but not this."

"This is the only thing I've ever asked."

"I'm sorry. I want to help, but ..."

Max had been wonderful. If it weren't for him, where would she be now? But what he had given her-the education, the belief in herself-had changed her. She didn't know precisely when she had rejected Max's way of life, but somewhere between the Tiki Club and the Supreme Court, she had moved on. "You're asking too much, Max."

"After all I've done for you," Max said, his voice a razor despite the mellow whiskey, "don't you think you owe me this?"

He'd never said that before, not even close. Anger boiled up inside her. Her look was lethal, her voice icy. "Why not just total up my bill, and I'll pay you back with interest. What's the prime rate these days, Max?"

"It's not the money and you know it. I just resent this att.i.tude of yours, like you're looking down at me."

Lisa padded barefoot to the bar and dumped her drink into the sink. "From the curb to the gutter, Max. It's not that far."

Max looked wounded, like it was his blood going down the drain. "You stopped smoking. You're not drinking. Is there anything else you're not going to do, anything I ought to know about?"

She didn't answer, just stood there, stone-faced.

"The new, improved Lisa Fremont," he said, sarcastically.

"Don't you like me this way?"

No, Max Wanaker thought. He didn't like her this way at all. Christ who had she become? Maybe it served him right. He had wanted Lisa to grow, had encouraged her independence, but look what happened. The roses still bloomed, but they'd grown thorns. He liked Lisa the girl, not Lisa Fremont, Esq., the woman, the G.o.ddam lawyer. She's been a tough kid. h.e.l.l, she had to be to survive. Now she gets misty eyed looking at statues and books. How long until she learns that her precious oaths and credos are just fade J ink on rotting paper?

Max struggled to control his anger and mask his desperation. He wanted to tell her just how important the case was to him. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't just about money or even the survival of the company. He wanted to tell her the truth.

If we don't win, I'm a dead man.

No, if he told her that, she would want to know everything. And if he laid it all out, what would she think of him? If he told her the crash had been his fault, that he had ordered the maintenance records falsified, that he had perjured himself before the NTSB, that blood was on his hands, would she help him? Maybe, if he told her the spot he was in.

Oh, he could rationalize it. Every airline cuts corners. It didn't take Mary Schiavo, the big-mouth blonde from the Department of Transportation, to tell him that airlines would rather have their insurers pay off wrongful death verdicts than spend the money to fix known dangers. Simple cost-benefit economics, babe.

He just never thought it would happen to him, to his airline. And he never expected the guilt, the nightmares, the pills, the late-night sweats.

No, he could never tell Lisa the truth. He tried a different approach. "Why do you think we've been together so long?"

"Inertia, Max. We're used to each other."

"No. Because deep down inside, we're alike," he said.

"If that's supposed to be a compliment-"

"We both see things the way they really are. We take the cards we're dealt, and if it means sliding an extra ace up the sleeve to get what we want, then d.a.m.n it, we do it. We don't play by somebody else's rules."

"That's not the way I see myself," she said, sounding defensive, a measure of doubt creeping into her voice.

"A leopard can't change her spots," he said with a smirk.

"I didn't cheat in college or law school," she said angrily. "I worked like h.e.l.l in the appellate clerkship. I'm proud of my accomplishments. I'm proud of who I am."

"Dean's list doesn't mean s.h.i.t in the real world, Lisa. You got good grades? Big f.u.c.king deal. I got MBAs from Harvard making my coffee. Sometimes I wonder where you get off. I mean, Christ, I remember where you came from. I remember the bartender. I remember the bruises."