I had never met William Prescott III but I had heard of him, everyone had. He was a great man, this William Prescott, the pride of his old and revered family. Skull and Bones at Yale, the law review at Harvard, he was a former deputy attorney general, a former ambassador to some obscure country in South America, a former Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar. He was a pillar of the Republican Party and served on the boards of the Art Museum, the Free Library, the Philadelphia Orchestra. And now he was the top trial lawyer, the prime rainmaker, the managing partner at Talbott, Kittredge and Chase. One had to wonder what price he had paid for such success. He had everything a lawyer could ever want, but was he happy? Well, to tell from the pictures, he was ecstatic. I had never met this William Prescott but already I despised him.

“Victor, thank you for coming up to see me,” said a grayer version of the man in all the photographs.

I stood quickly, like a thief caught in the act, when William Prescott swept into the room. He entered like an emissary from some great nation-state. Very tall, very thin, with narrow lips and high prominent cheekbones, he peered from beneath bushy black eyebrows with blue eyes of startling clarity. He was not a classically handsome man, his nose was too long and his lips too thin, but he was a compelling presence, the very image of integrity. He wore a navy blue pinstriped Brooks Brothers suit, a banker’s suit, which he kept formally buttoned as he reached out in greeting. My hand was swallowed by his. Despite his slenderness, I had the unpleasant sensation that had he wanted to squeeze my hand until the bones crumbled he could have.