“You know Madeline Burroughs, Victor, I’m sure,” he said as he led me to the living room set beneath the painting of the boxers.

I hadn’t seen her there, my attention drawn so completely to Prescott and his presence. “Yes, of course.”

“Hello, Victor,” said Madeline. She was a round-faced, frumpish woman who dressed and acted like a spinster though still in her twenties. She smiled awkwardly for a moment; it was like a fist opening and closing.

“Sit down, please, both of you,” said Prescott. His voice was precise, graveled with age but still charmingly formal, like the wide unpaved driveways leading to Versailles. He came from the same world as Winston Osbourne and that was in his voice too, but where Osbourne’s voice betrayed all his innate snideness, in Prescott’s it was well hidden if it existed at all. I sat in one of the easy chairs, he sat directly across from me on the couch, leaning back and crossing his legs in a way that put me immediately at ease. Madeline sat tensely in the bend of the couch off to the side.

“I may call you Victor?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Normally I love the autumn, don’t you? But the grayness of the skies this year takes all the pleasure out of it. It might be time to visit our Miami office.” His blue eyes smiled at me and then turned cold. “Saltz v. Metropolitan Investors, Victor. That’s why we’re here today. How long have we been tangling over this case?”

“Three years, sir,” I said. The “sir” came instinctively, drawn out by his very demeanor and appearance. He seemed to accept my deference as his due.

“You’ve been hanging on all that time like a bulldog. Three years on a complaint not worth the filing fee. A bulldog. Good for you, Victor. Now Madeline here, one of our toughest litigators, has filed four motions to dismiss but the judge has kept it alive out of mercy.”