For forty-three workdays in a row Dismas Hardy had put on his suit and tie and made a point of coming downtown to the office that he had rented. The office was an interim setup, not a commitment. He wasn't quite ready to go to work for a corporate law firm – not yet, at least, not without first seeing if he could work for himself and make a decent living involving the law.

He was beginning to doubt if he could.

His landlord was David Freeman, another attorney who had hung up a shingle to make a go of it – except Freeman had done it. Sixty years old and crustier than San Francisco's famed sourdough bread, the old man had become a legend in the city. His shingle now was a burnished brass plate – David Freeman amp; Associates – riveted to the front of the Freeman Building, a gracious four-story structure on Sutter Street in the heart of the financial district.

Freeman and Hardy had met as adversaries in a murder case a year before. Before it was over, they had begun grudgingly to admire one another for the traits they shared – a certain relentless doggedness, a rogue streak regarding how the law game was played, a passion for details, a personal need for independence. The admiration had gradually turned into friendship.

Over the next months Freeman had courted Hardy, subtly, counseling him on the perils of life in the big corporate firms. Oh sure, the money was great but there was also the tedium of the paperwork, the burden of having to find forty billable hours week after week after week, the dependence on some partner you'd have to kiss up to (who was probably younger than Hardy's forty-one). You lived in a beehive and every decision you made – from where you indented the paragraphs in your briefs to what you were going to plead for your clients – was subject to some committee's approval. Did Hardy want all that?