CONSIDERATION
Come to my office. We need to talk.
This was the sum total of the message I discovered in my voicemail. No hello. No goodbye. No identification. None of these things were necessary for Sam Aiello, attorney-at-law. Sam went through life ordering the world around according to his whims, and the world largely obeyed.
I hated the feeling of being summoned, but I obeyed too. If Sam was commanding my presence, then it was important. Time was money and both were too precious to Sam to waste. He charged by the minute.
The corporate law offices of Aiello, Crowe, Eldritch and Fay occupied an entire upper floor of the Lyric Opera house: a throne-shaped office building overlooking the river. Sam’s office commanded the southwest corner of the building, overlooking the Madison Avenue b
