The footwork for a case this size entails months of depositions, reviewing mountains of interrogatories, camping out in chilly warehouses to examine documents, researching the applicable law, and arguing motions in court. St. Gall had overstaffed the case the way giant companies usually do, with lawyers drawn from firms in Zurich, New York, and Chicago, as well as San Francisco. Pearsall, by contrast, had staffed the case leanly, with no more than two dozen lawyers, paralegals, document clerks, and typists. Although Seeley and Chris Palmieri, Pearsall's second chair, would be Vaxtek's only trial lawyers in the courtroom, the team from the office would feed them facts, research, and law as needed.

Running big cases had not been part of Seeley's dream when he set out for law school, but, like the conference room in the sky, responsibility for a case like this offered a reassuring familiarity. He was still uncertain about his motive for coming to San Francisco. It could have been to prove that Leonard, and Seeley's own deepest fears, were wrong, that his professional edge was as sharp as ever. Or perhaps it was no more complicated than escaping the onset of another gray Buffalo winter which, if it was like the last one, would hold a perfect mirror to his soul. In either case, coming to San Francisco was the only way he was going to find out.

Before leaving Buffalo, Seeley spent a week of eighteen-hour days working through the binders that Palmieri express-shipped to him, all the while arranging continuances for his cases in the state and county courts. By the end of the week, as he began to connect the jigsaw pieces of Vaxtek's case, Seeley had a good measure of Pearsall's qualities as a lawyer. He would not have assembled the case the same way, but neither could he find anything to fault in the shrewd care with which Pearsall had gathered his facts and witnesses.