“You need a floor lamp for that corner, too,” Cookie said, pointing, “and maybe a desk lamp and an objet or two and some pictures to make you look smart and tasteful, Mr. Fisher.”

“You’ve got the idea,” Herbie said. “And call me Herb. Keep the whole business under fifty grand.”

“I can do that,” she said. “Now I have to get organized.”

“Me too,” Bobby said.

“The two cubicles across the hall are yours,” Herbie said. “Keep them looking neat.” He handed Cookie a typed list. “These are people whose calls I will take immediately,” he said. “Others, I will call back, and I always return my calls, so keep after me about that.”

Cookie left the office reading the list, her lips moving. She was memorizing them.

“Oh, and Cookie, order me some firm stationery with my name on it, no title, and some business cards. Order cards for Bobby, too.”

Herbie returned to situating his belongings in the office.

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK, Herbie and Bobby dropped Cookie off at ABC, then continued downtown.

“What are we going to say to these … gentlemen?” Bobby asked.

“Let’s play it by ear. Mainly, we want to give an impression of listening, then doing everything we can to help them, and not limited to the law. The CEO’s name is Mark Hayes. I don’t know who his partners are.”

High Cotton Ideas was situated on the top floor of a shabby-looking industrial building way downtown, in a corner of SoHo that did not appear to have become fashionable yet. They rode up in a freight elevator and walked into a huge, open room with desks and tables scattered about. Each desk had at least three monitors on it, and cables were strung haphazardly everywhere.

Herbie stood still for a moment and waited for someone to notice them: nobody did. “Mark Hayes?” he shouted. He saw a hand go up across the room. The head of the young man never turned from the computer screen. Herbie and Bobby strolled over to the desk and took in its owner. He was, apparently, tall and obviously skinny. He was dressed in very old jeans and a short-sleeved chambray shirt that had not been ironed and may not have been laundered for a while.

“Mark?”

Finally, he looked up at them. “Yes?”

“I’m Herb Fisher, this is Bobby Bentley. Marshall Brennan sent us to see you.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re our new lawyers.”

“Can you give us a few minutes?”

“Sure,” Mark said, rising from his chair and taking his eyes reluctantly from the screen. He led them across the room to a beat-up picnic table, swept half a dozen empty foam cups off it, and offered them a bench. “This is our corporate dining room,” he said. “What can I tell you? I can’t tell you about our software, but anything else.”

“Tell us what your ambitions are,” Herbie said, “and we’ll see if we can help you get there.”

“My ambition is to get our software out of beta and on the market,” Mark said. “And frankly, I don’t have any idea how to do that. At some point after that I want to do an IPO and get impossibly rich, then write lots of new software.”