Barrett chuckled. “So he said. I read that brief. It showed excellent scholarship, which of course I’d expect from anyone in your shop. But it had that something extra, I don’t know what to call it—” He waved a hand as if to catch the missing word out of the air.

“Conviction,” I supplied.

“Yes!”

“You can’t hope to persuade the court unless you first persuade yourself.”

“So you believed in Rand’s position.”

“I always believe everything I need to for my client to prevail.”

Barrett leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “I think you were up against Mark Ivins in that case?”

“That’s right.”

“Ever meet him?”

“Yes, many times.”

“Any insights you could offer? We’re up against him in a case now.”

Mark Ivins was famous—or, in some quarters, infamous—for filing shareholder derivative lawsuits. Rumor had it he kept a stable of potential plaintiffs on tap, friends and neighbors and maybe even passersby who together owned nominal holdings in virtually every public corporation in the country. This enabled him to file suit within hours of any report of corporate malfeasance and thereby win the race to the courthouse. He was married to a DuPont, and the couple appeared often in the New York society pages. His wife was a painfully thin blonde with hair pulled back tight and skin pulled back even tighter. Ivins had a full head of gray hair and a dazzling smile. He was one of those men who shone with sexual self-confidence well into their fifties and didn’t hesitate to flirt with much younger women. I’d been on the receiving end of his charms a few times.

“Mark likes to think he’s playing you,” I said. “He’s enormously proud of his own wiles. And that’s his Achilles’ heel. He never realizes that you’re actually playing him until it’s too late.”

Barrett laughed. “Like jujitsu.”

“Exactly. Use what he considers his greatest strength against him.”

“What I don’t understand,” he said, suddenly serious, “is what made you leave Jackson Rieders.”

I leaned forward to show my eagerness to answer. I could make myself believe whatever I needed to prevail, too. “I did some pro bono work for the Innocence Project while I was at the firm,” I said. “And one case in particular really seized me. A death row case down in Georgia. The evidence convinced me that the man was innocent, but none of the staff attorneys agreed, at least not strongly enough to take on the case. So I really felt I had no choice but to go full-time at the Innocence Project and handle it myself.”

“What happened?”

I lifted my chin in a gesture designed to look both proud and defiant. “It took five years, but today he’s a free man.”

“Good for you. Good for you. But I have to wonder, with that kind of success, why not stay on and do it all again?”

“Truthfully? My heart was all in for that man, but not my mind. The work wasn’t an intellectual challenge. I needed to get back to the complexities of corporate law.”