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ventured out on his own as a “ham-and-egger,” someone who took any and all kinds of cases. As a general practitioner, he took on husbands trying to short their wives in divorce cases, insurance companies refusing claims, and criminal defense cases, with some wills and trusts thrown in for kicks.
    To start his small law office, Drew had used the inheritance he had gotten from his grandfather, and after paying school loans there was not much left for a fancy office. He found that the ability to take on the cases he wanted to and to run his business his way was far more satisfying to him than all the trappings of the corporate firms.
    To make ends meet, Drew also took on assigned cases from the court. These cases were all criminal defense for which he was paid a flat fee per case, cases that the public defender’s office could not handle because of conflict of interest or because of overflow. Almost every case ended up with a plea deal and the defendant copping to a lesser crime in exchange for considerations from the court in sentencing, so what he got paid for those cases wasn’t much.
    It was rare that an assigned case would go to trial, but when it did Drew held nothing back; he used every resource at his disposal to defend his clients to the end.
    He had only tried seven murder cases, and the truth was that the clients had flat out confessed to him and asked him to try and get the best deal possible. Drew explained that in order to do that, they would have to put on some sort of defense to motivate the prosecutor to offer some sort of deal.
    In the end, the cases usually went on for three or four days before the prosecutor made an offer of second-degree murder with a minimum of 25 years in prison, which was not at all bad considering his clients had been looking at anywhere from 40 years to a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
    His persistence and performance in the courtroom had also garnered him some high-profile felony cases, mostly involving drugs and gang activity.
    Drew was also the type of person one couldn’t help but like, even when he was the opposition. He had good relationships with most of the assistant district attorneys (ADAs) and judges with whom he worked, in large part because even when dealing with the most uptight and dry personalities he was able to keep a semblance of levity in the situation.
    His practice was doing well, as well as a small firm in New York could expect to do, but truth be told, Drew wanted more. He wanted to get something to really sink his teeth into, and he knew in order to do that he would have to keep his ear to the ground and use every relationship he had with the judges’ clerks, court clerks, district attorney’s office, and the public defender’s office.
    As was the case with every attorney, he could not out and out solicit cases, but he could certainly position himself to catch better cases, cases that were not going to just walk into his office.
     

    Detective Robert Grady stood in his office looking out the window. Had anyone walked in, they would have most likely made the observation that he looked like a character out of a Dick Tracy comic. He was just shy of 250 pounds and just north of five foot six. He was clearly overweight, but he was one of those men on which the weight looked solid. He had thick, powerful forearms and hands that conveyed his strength every time he shook someone’s hand. He wore his hair in a crew cut, now more salt than pepper, and always seemed to have a five o’clock shadow, even when he had just shaved. The suspenders he wore to hold up his pants were legend around the office, but only his closest friends ever mentioned them in jest, and his tie was never done up all the way. His eyes were narrow, the color of steel and wrinkled beyond his years. The crap he had dealt with over the years and the cruelty and violence he had seen human beings capable of inflicting upon one another had left him with a heavy dose of