There
is an establishment approximately three blocks north and two avenues west
from the Supreme Courthouse in Manhattan. It will take you ten minutes
to walk there, if there is no lunchtime traffic. There is, however, always
lunchtime traffic. Once you get there you might not notice it at first;
this site has enough patrons, thank you, and doesn't need more to keep
going, so standing out is not a priority. It sits on the corner of the
street, with a broad wooden door and high, thin, frosted windows along
the walls, topped by delicate stained glass. A passerby might think it
a refectory, even some sort of school. A less casual observer might stop
and wonder at the book open behind thick glass that advertises several
dishes and refreshments. There are no prices. Someone who knew what they
were looking for would then stare more closely and see the numbers carved
into the heavy oak door: a five-inch high "6" and a five inch high "7".
This is not an address, it is the name. And the discreteness with which
the place announces itself speaks of everything that goes on inside of
it. Not quite a club, not just a restaurant, Sixes and Sevens allows anyone
who wants to come in and dine.
But
you have to find it first.
In
the back of Sixes and Sevens is a room. To enter, you not only have to
find it, but you have to have the cachet to be permitted to use it. The
Back Room is always booked. Even when there are empty tables, it is always
booked. On this day, the room has no empty tables; every one of the privately-designated
booths holds two, three, four people who want nothing more than to be left
alone. That is, left alone with their pheasant, their wine, their souffle.
Most are City Hall types, some are bankers: Salomon Brothers has one booth
permanently rented out, not unlike a parking space. Some are private citizens
whose boats are docked down at the harbor. Scan the room and you will find
faces you might not recognize the same way you would know actors and actresses,
but ones vastly more wealthy and wield a enormous power. In the far right
corner two people have been lunching for three hours. They will stay just
a few minutes more; the man is signing an acknowledgment for the meal.
Again, there are no prices, no money is exchanged. For regulars, the bill
comes to their address once a month. All that is needed is a signature.
"Thanks,
Ben," the woman says to the man. "We'll make this work."
Ben
gives her an approximation of a smile and sits back against the seats,
pocketing the pen. Then he nods slightly. "Claire, of that, I have no doubt."
She
exited the restaurant with her legs slightly stiff from not walking, leaving
Ben back inside, wanting to be by herself. She felt dazed, winded, knocked
in the head.
Ben
wanted her.
Ben
Stone wanted her to run against Jack McCoy in the election.
Ben
wanted her to take his place.
District
Attorney Claire Kincaid.
District
Attorney Claire Kincaid-Duffy.
DA
Duffy.
That
was taking it a bit far.
She
stared up into the glaring early winter sun and squinted, letting her retinas
burn, wanting to feel something other than the unreality that encircled
her. She stepped from the curb to cross back to Hogan and was nearly run
down by a car. The twenty-mile an hour swish of the metal monster made
her skirt ripple forward and she caught herself, abruptly alert.
All
right, she thought, that did it. I'm awake now.
She
had never had such a lunch in her life. Length was nothing: she had once
sat at Sixes and Sevens for, well, six or seven hours when they were going
over Masucci transcripts and needed privacy beyond even the office. Years
ago. But this lunch had only been half that length, and packed a much greater
wallop. Clarence...then Benjy...then this... Claire carefully looked
both ways and crossed the street, trotting now, anxious to get back with
her own desk and tell Caleb the news. "I have to tell him," she had pleaded
with Ben during the meal. "Don't ask me to keep him in the dark."
He
had looked severely at her and not until he had said the words did she
think he would agree. "All right," he had said, finally, in his slow, measured
tones. "But nothing cute. None of this gets out until the press conference."
"Of
course," Claire had agreed gravely. If the subject matter alone had not
been enough, the restaurant location in which they were speaking and the
dark focused hue of Ben's normally clear eyes told her of the importance
of secrecy. She knew Caleb would keep his mouth shut; he had not gotten
to where he was today without developing a perfect straight man pose. They
all had one. And Caleb did need to know; there was much he needed to know
that Claire had never found a way to tell him.
There
was, for one, the fact of Jack McCoy.
Back
in her office she was relieved to find Caleb still out at arraignments;
according to her secretary he had left about an hour ago, which meant she
would have a while to get organized and figure on a strategy before he
showed up. He would have to be told. Tonight. Strike the iron, as the proverb
went. But Claire's stomach churned at the thought -- she was fairly sure
he would be enthused about her almost assured ascension into the highest
office at Hogan, and she doubted it would affect their marriage plans.
Caleb had long known she intended to run for the office after Jack McCoy
had his turn, and they had already discussed how that would affect children
if they decided to have them. And once Caleb heard of why the timetable
had been speeded up, that the future of an innocent ten year old hung in
the balance, well, then, she knew she would be able to count on him for
support above and beyond that which he had previously intended. This would
be a cause, not just an election.
But
she would, finally, have to tell Caleb that he was not the first interoffice
relationship she had ever had. All this time Claire had kept the brief
time she had spent with Jack McCoy to herself; parts of it had been quite
wonderful and for a time there she had lost her perspective completely.
There was something about Jack McCoy that utterly enveloped a person, an
invisible net of tough nylon threads that looped around you until you had
no choices left. For a while, that mesh had been very tangible for Claire,
and she had not tried to shrug it off right away. She had found a true
mentor in Jack, or so she thought, and the fact that they were sleeping
together made it all the more instructive. Those had been strange days,
ten years ago, when she was still such a child running around doing important
things in a very important position, and she wondered how anyone had ever
been able to take her seriously.
Ben
had, from the start: with Ben Stone you initiated from a platform of utmost
competency and could only slip from there. He demanded much because he
assumed that if you were working in the prosecutor's office you were there
for one function -- to defend the people en masse against the people individually.
With Jack, the rules were more relaxed, the ladder of success more like
a cradle. He was argumentative, but Claire came away from fighting with
him feeling she had won something, that he had perhaps taken some of her
knowledge and intended to use it. Jack made Claire feel useful and necessary.
Ben often made her feel like another cog in the great machine. And for
an ego-hungry young woman in a mostly-male driven, competitive office,
Claire had wanted very much to think she was indispensable.
None
of this had been conveyed to Caleb yet. Claire thought that during his
time in the offices he might hear some gossip or old rumors, with which
he would then confront her, and she could explain...but her life had not
been made so easy. As far as she knew Caleb remained blissfully ignorant
of her time with Jack. Claire glanced at the office clock.
Time
to clear the shelves.