Robbie Flak's father purchased the old train station in downtown Slone in 1972, while Robbie was still in high school and just before the city was about to tear it down. Mr. Flak Sr. had made some money suing drilling companies and needed to spend a little of it. He and his partners renovated the station and reestablished themselves there, and for the next twenty years prospered nicely. They certainly weren't rich, not by Texas standards anyway, but they were successful lawyers and the small firm was well regarded in town.

Then along came Robbie. He began working at the firm when he was a teenager, and it was soon evident to the other lawyers there that he was different. He showed little interest in profits but was consumed with social injustice. He urged his father to take on civil-rights cases, age- and sex-discrimination cases, unfair-housing cases, police-brutality cases, the type of work that can get one ostracized in a small southern town. Brilliant and brash, Robbie finished college up north, in three years, and sailed through law school at the University of Texas at Austin. He never interviewed for a job, never thought about working anywhere but the train station in downtown Slone. There were so many people there he wanted to sue, so many mistreated and downtrodden clients who needed him.

He and his father fought from day one. The other lawyers either retired or moved on. In 1990, at the age of thirty-five, Robbie sued the City of Tyler, Texas, for housing discrimination. The trial, in Tyler, lasted for a month, and at one point Robbie was forced to hire bodyguards when the death threats became too credible. When the jury returned a verdict for $90 million, Robbie Flak became a legend, a wealthy man, and an unrestrained radical lawyer now with the money to raise more hell than he could ever imagine. To get out of his way, his father retired to a golf course. Robbie's first wife took a small cut and hurried back to St. Paul.