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with gray eyes the color of dark smoke and, with the smallest tilt of his head, motioned me toward one of two beautiful, pine-green leather chairs in front of his desk. I swear I thought I heard his voice in my mind, telling me to sit, even though his lips never moved. He could have that effect on people.
    I sat in one of the chairs, choosing the one that wasn’t already occupied. Sitting beside me was Michael Kidder, a clammy-looking guy about the same age as Lippincott. Kidder was almost completely bald on top with an unusually thick ring of graying hair running from temple to temple around the back of his head. In the center of the bald spot was a small and, to be honest, slightly ridiculous-looking tuft of hair. If it was me, I’d have shaved it completely. His head looked like a domed rock rising out of a meadow of thick grass with a tiny little plant somehow surviving on the rock’s smooth, otherwise inhospitable peak.
    Kidder was the First Assistant U.S. Attorney, making him Lippincott’s right-hand man, which put him several rungs up the ladder from me and just one below Lippincott. He’d outlasted nine U.S. Attorneys, rising up from among the rank-and-file AUSAs, became Chief of the Economic Crimes Unit, then spent the final three years of Lippincott’s predecessor’s tenure in his current position of second-in-command. After twenty-two years with the U.S. Attorney’s office, there was nowhere for him to go but to the top spot, and it was beginning to look doubtful he’d ever get there. It was no secret that he’d openly campaigned for the position that ultimately went to Lippincott. Kidder was disappointed, I heard, but he was a professional. Lippincott’s daughter, Jessica, whom I happened to have been dating for six years, intimated to me that her father didn’t seem to completely trust Kidder, but she thought that might have been him sensing a little resentment—possibly real, possibly imagined—on the part of his lieutenant.
    I hadn’t seen Kidder in a few weeks, so it seemed appropriate to shake his hand. I reached over and he met me halfway. His handshake was just as I remembered it from the few previous ones he’d given me. His grip was weak, his hand slightly moist with sweat. It was like he had pressed a damp sponge into my palm. I was dying to wipe my hand on my pants when we broke our handshake, but managed to keep from doing so.
    I looked back at Lippincott, who stared at me a moment longer. As he did, I’m somewhat proud to say, I didn’t fidget or sweat overly much or yammer something nonsensical to break the uncomfortable silence. Though I wanted to do all those things.
    Finally, he cleared his throat, a small, calculated sound, and began speaking in that voice of his—that deep, rich voice, unusual coming from a man of his modest physical stature, that soothing, confident voice that told judges that he knew exactly what he was talking about, that told jurors he was a man to be trusted, that told opposing counsel he was a man to be respected and, yes, feared a little. He used that voice to say to me, “If you weren’t engaged to my daughter….” He didn’t finish his thought. He didn’t have to.
    I have to admit, I guess, that the main reason for my relative cool around Lippincott was the fact that Jessica, the light of his life, had agreed to marry me one of these days. My relationship with her didn’t make me cocky with regard to her father; it merely meant that I spent more time with him than other AUSAs did—I even saw him in a bathing suit one time…and, I always fervently hoped, it would remain just the one time—so I was less queasy around him than many of the other lawyers in the office were. To be honest, he was actually quite decent to me. I’d graduated in the top twenty percent of my class at Northeastern University Law School, which wasn’t bad, but the school itself isn’t ranked all that highly among law schools. Nonetheless, Lippincott, who was the