Top-notch negotiator; meticulous about details; scrupulously honest and a complete gentleman to boot.

"After the Hilliard case was over, Sam was almost inconsolable He said with all the sexual misconduct Hilliard had against him there'd been nothing he could do; he'd never had a chance The only hope that he'd had was that Geoff d make the kind of dumb mistake young lawyers sometimes make out of inexperience, and give Sam something he could use.

"Didn't happen. Sam said Geoff d known exactly what he had to work with; played his cards perfectly; made no mistakes at all and as a result ended up cleaning Sam's clock for him. After that in this part of the world there were two "best divorce lawyers around." In fact what Sam said about Geoff was what made me hire him. Sam'd gotten close to Ray during that racetrack deal-I thought it'd be too hard for him."

Then she frowned. "Who's the poor guy they're trying to make sink Dancin' Dan? Anyone else I might know?"

"I don't know," Robey said, 'you might. His name's Ambrose Merrion.

Canterbury District Court clerk. Ever got a speeding ticket on the way north to ski on something steeper than you've got right where you live?"

"I don't ski," she said. "People fall down doing that. Break their legs and stuff."

"Not if they know what they're doing," Robey said. "Anyway that's how I met him. Trooper wrote me up for eighty on Route Three-ninety-one in Cumberland. The other way to meet him's being active in politics. All the real Democratic insiders around here, all the way up to the state, even national, level: all of them would know him, know him very well. I doubt any one of them's ever paid a ticket in Amby's district."

"Did you pay yours?" the judge said.

"Truthfully? No, I didn't," Robey said. "It went, away. But not because of my secret life as a Democratic honcho.