“So you’re the grubby little shyster who’s chasing my money,” Winston Osbourne said to me when I first hauled him into my office in search of his assets. He was wearing a perfect gray suit, Gucci loafers, his sandy hair was trimmed close and neat, a gold Rolex flashed from beneath his cuff, and he actually said that. Well, not in those exact words, maybe, but that’s what he was thinking. It was as clear as the cleft in his chin. What he actually said was, “I’ve lost almost everything I ever had, Victor, and what little I have left is judgment proof. But I’m willing to pay you ten thousand dollars to end this. Believe me, Victor, that is the most you’ll ever get from me.”

I rejected his offer, and though I had a chip with which to bargain him higher, to Jew him up as it were, I thought the wiser play was to hold onto it, to flash it elsewhere in an effort to pry loose the entire million. I had no intention of letting him off the hook that was buried deep within his properly locked jaw. Winston Osbourne represented something to which I knew I could never ascend but my exclusion from which I could never quite accept. His old-line family name, the glorious prospects handed him at birth, his natural charm, even his bland sandy good looks, I resented it all, and for all of it he would pay. That was why that very day the process server was delivering a subpoena to Osbourne’s house in exclusive Gladwyne, ordering his wife to appear in my offices for deposition. I had plans for Mrs. Osbourne.

She was a handsome woman, elegant tweed suit, skin surgically tight around her blue eyes, pearls, hair that was done, I mean really done, a hundred and forty dollars’ worth of done, and I had her just where I wanted her, in our conference room, across the table from me, required to answer all my questions and sworn to tell the truth. She had chosen to come without counsel, which pleased me.