They had a drink and dawdled over the menu. Eggers seemed in an expansive mood, relieved over the resolution of his Los Angeles case. “It was a bastard,” he said. “A bicoastal divorce case of one of our biggest clients. He was claiming New York residence, and she claimed they lived in California—she wanted community property.”

“Who won?”

“I did. The LA office is mostly into entertainment work, so I did the dog work while they fronted for me in court. Don’t worry about the lady; she’s doing very well out of this, but she’s not getting the thirty million that community property division would have given her. She’s pissed off now, but she’ll get used to living on the income from six million.”

“You do a lot of divorce work?”

“I’m sort of the firm general practitioner. I have a lot of clients whose personal legal work I handle, and that often leads to divorce work. It’s nasty sometimes, but, if you can keep a certain detachment, you can live with it.”

“Must be lucrative.”

“Not all that much. We only do divorce work for the firm’s existing clients, and we don’t charge them the earth. In the case of the men, when they see what the wife’s lawyer is demanding, they’re grateful to us for not taking them to the cleaners; in the case of the women, they’re grateful to us for not demanding high fees. That builds client loyalty.”

“I should think so.”

They ordered their food, and Eggers chose what Stone thought must be the most expensive bottle of wine on a very expensive list. If Stone had been interested before in what Bill Eggers had to say, now he was really interested.

Eggers tasted the wine and nodded to the sommelier. When the man had gone, he turned to Stone. “What do you know about Woodman & Weld?”

“Not very much,” Stone admitted. “I get the impression that it’s a prestigious firm, from what I read in the papers, but I’m not very clear on why it might be so.”

“Good. That’s pretty much the impression we like to convey. We see that the people who might need us know a lot more, but we keep a fairly low public profile.”

Stone sipped the wine; he thought he had never tasted anything so good. “It’s a lovely burgundy,” he said to Eggers. “Thank you.”