“Why didn't you call back?”

“I didn't want to encourage you.”

“Always looking out for your little brother.” Leonard smiled around the words. “Still the college quarterback. A little thinner, maybe, but still a full head of hair.” He patted the top of his own head where, Seeley guessed, the hair had been carefully barbered to hide a bald spot. The color, though Leonard's as a boy, now surely came from a bottle.

Leonard's eyes moved around the office, taking in the metal bookshelf stuffed with a worn, black-bound set of McKinney's New York Code, the half-dozen vintage prints of the Buffalo harbor that leaned against the bottom shelf waiting to be hung, two ancient file cabinets, and the window with its gray outlook.

Leonard was perspiring. Was he wearing a great deal of gold, or did it just seem that way? It struck Seeley that the charm on which Leonard survived as a boy had lost some of its polish.

“This is your kind of case, Mike. Little guy takes on big guy. David against Goliath. You get to be David's lawyer.” “

Your little guy is a publicly held corporation. I don't represent corporations anymore. I sue them.”

Leonard said, “In a single day, St. Gall makes more off its cure for erectile dysfunction than we make on all of our products in a year. They're a thousand times our size. In broad daylight they steal our biggest patent, and do you know what they say? I'm at a conference in Miami, giving a presentation, and when I finish, St. Gall's vice president for research-an MD, the guy with the same job as me-comes up and says, ‘We're going to crush you. ’That's it. He doesn't say hello, or I slept through your speech, or your patent's no good. Just, ‘We're going to crush you. ’Then he walks away.”