The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison air
It is only what is good in man
That wastes and withers there
                  —Oscar Wilde

Chapter 1

They call me Billy Strobe, but not for long, thank you. Soon as I become a lawyer, I plan to go by William, mainly because it's got a more professional ring to it. I can't expect to help folks if they don't take me seriously.
      I realize people don't think much of the law profession these days, and I reckon I can't blame them. But it's the system—a machine designed by the rich to chew up the poor—that folks should be down on, not the law. The system is religion, the law is spirituality. Take your pick.
      Anyways, I'm set on becoming a lawyer, and not just because that's what my daddy was, but more in spite of what he was—what people back home thought he was—which I'll get to later on.
      Lucky for me, I've never put much stock in what people think. Hell, those same people back in Enid, Oklahoma, were all the time telling me I was setting my sights too high. But take a look: I've already made it two-thirds the way through UCLA Law School and finished in the top 10 percent both years. My piece in the law review on injustices in the California Penal Code made the Metro section of the L.A. Times a year ago.
      I don't mean to be bragging. The truth is, I had a head start on my classmates, being as how I grew up in the law, nursed at the titty of the blindfolded Lady of Justice, you might say. When other dads were teaching their kids how to shoot a basket or bat a ball, I was reading writs of habeas corpus and memorizing the Bill of Rights. I think even Ma knew Dad's first love was the law.
      Dad was a courtroom movie buff, too, and he was always quoting things about the law from books and films, like what Paul Scofield said in A Man for All Seasons: "I'd give even the devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." Dad also liked that letter Dana Andrews wrote before they lynched him in The Ox-Bow Incident, where he said, "Law is the very conscience of humanity." Words like these stuck to me like money in a rich man's pocket.
      So between my upbringing with Dad and seeing nearly every courtroom movie ever made, no big surprise that the law was in my bones, and when I got a shot at a scholarship out West, I took to law school as natural as a tick to a cat's ass. For me, the law was not a living; it was life. All my heroes were lawyers, my dad of course, but also guys like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and Henry Fonda in the first Twelve Angry Men. (Jack Lemmon was good, too, but I preferred the original version.)
      Anyways, law school was just another movie for me, and I loved every minute. Being realistic, however, I knew that my last year of law school was going to be tougher than the first two, seeing as how I'd have to finish by correspondence.
      Once I'd started serving my three-to five-year sentence at Soledad Maximum Security Prison for grand larceny.

      Maybe I should explain this last thing, a piece of bad luck that landed on me a few months ago—July 26, at 3:30 in the afternoon, to be exact about it.
      I was hoeing up weeds outside the Westwood rooming house I managed for free rent and ten dollars a day when these four UCLA frat rats—popular guys who had never paid me any mind when we were all in undergraduate school together—showed up in Harmon Alexander's cherry-red Jaguar, all smiling and shouting Hey, Billy, and What's up, Billy, like I was their best friend.
      It was hot that day, too damn hot to be outside hoeing up weeds. Looking back, I should have been suspicious right off because it was also too hot to be driving around in an open convertible shouting What's up, Billy, to an outsider like me.
      Mr. Dog, my brown-and-white mini-mutt, got to his feet and hauled in his tongue long enough to growl at them. I should have done the same.
      You're wondering how I could testify at my trial as to the exact time of day and the place where I was standing when the four of them approached me with their harebrained idea. I guess it was like the way my dad, Joe Strobe, knew right where he was when President John F. Kennedy was killed. And like the way I can remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the shot that killed my dad. Twelve years old, coming out of the kitchen, carrying a Coke and a hot dog with melted cheddar and grilled onions that Dad always claimed was as good as Nathan's at Coney Island, where he took Ma on their honeymoon. Anyways, that's where I stood when the gun went off and Ma let out a scream that has lasted fourteen years so far.

      Back to those four frat rats approaching me. As the Jag's tires settled into the curb, I spotted the Alexander brothers sitting up front but couldn't make out who was in the back. I shielded my eyes with the hand not holding the hoe because the late afternoon sun, unchecked by so much as a puff of a cloud, was ricocheting off that Jag's windshield and flying at me like splinters of burning glass.
      Harmon Alexander—he's the fat brother—cut the engine, which kept on popping and crackling over the awkward silence as they all sat there for a minute. I began to feel silly standing there leaning on my hoe and squinting at them through the shimmering waves of heat dancing off the Jag's hood. I could hear them talking among themselves and could smell oil burning on the engine's manifold, smell the softening asphalt out on the street.
      L.A. was having a bad air day.
      "What's shakin, Billy?" said Steve Alexander, Harmon's younger brother, teeth white and perfect as piano keys and holding out his hand as he unwound himself from the passenger side of the car. "How 'bout you taking a break and having a beer with us?"
      As Steve approached, Mr. Dog commenced to barking, so I had to ask him to sit and be still. Still shielding my eyes, I'd run out of hands, so I dropped the hoe and shook with Steve and said hey back, then made mistake number one and said sure I could use a beer. Looking back, I reckon the idea that these hotshots wanted me to hang with them threw me off balance. Truth be told, I didn't even feel like a beer right then, but off we went to the Rose Queen, me squashed in the back between two blond surfer types. The hot wind blew cold on my damp skin, and I worried I had dark rings showing under the armpits of my denim tank top. I doubt any of these white-shoes had ever sweat much in their whole damn silver-spooned lives except maybe for Milton Janson—the guy squashing me from my left—who had made third-string all-American defensive cornerback his senior year.
      The Rose Queen was a throwback to the college hangouts of another time, reeking of sawdust, testosterone, and old beer, shin-banging dark despite a hanging garden of fake Tiffany lights. Serious conversation was discouraged by the booming bass sound of heavy metal music, waves of window-rattling laughter, and earsplitting shouts of Yesss followed by high fives that pierced your brain like cracks off a bat, followed by the obligatory clanging together of beer mugs. I never could abide this undergraduate bonding ritual, which I guess was modern kin to the sharing of blood, but considerably less painful, at least until the next morning.
      The waitresses at the Rose were all hot young ladies in minis and halter tops who made peanuts for hopping their assigned pockmarked wooden tables, dreaming about getting "discovered," Westwood being only a few miles outside Hollywood. A minority of them were local girls also known to be willing to stir up something with a college boy that might lead to security and wedded bliss. I felt sorriest for these townies, who fantasized that all roads led to Rome but were more likely to end up on a beach blanket in Venice—the one in California—lucky to be spared the clap.
      Anyways, there we were, me still feeling uneasy and ready for that beer though I never hankered much for drinking, despite being 100 percent Irish. There was some more What-you-been-up-to-Billy bullshit—as if they gave a rat's ass—then toasting to "success" with mugs of beer delivered by a semi-cute girl with a round, grown-up face, who reminded me of Bonnie Bedelia in Presumed Innocent. She also had a nice rear end that Steve patted without repercussions other than a dirty look. Then the boys got to the point, which was a plan to make a lot of money without having to kill anybody.
      The idea was that these four rich kids would steal confidential corporate information from their dads' briefcases and desk drawers—legal opinions about proposed mergers and acquisitions—and then buy up a bunch of stock in anticipation of big run-ups when the news became public. Since the guys were going to provide the secret stuff and the capital, I was wondering what they expected me to contribute other than guilt and anxiety, which as an Irish Catholic I had plenty of to spare, or my corporate legal knowledge, which was in short supply since I hadn't taken the third-year trade regulation seminar yet. They were all staring at me now, even Steve, waiting for my reaction, my sophisticated expert opinion, which I told them was that they were all crazier than a pack of rats in a coffee can. I guess I was already feeling my beer and remembering how much I disliked privileged punks like these guys.
      "We didn't bring you here to insult us, Strobe," said Steve Alexander, turning to stare at a waitress's fine legs as she walked by.
      "Shut up, Steve," said Fat Harmon, "we brought him here to listen to him. Go on, Billy. What's the problem?"
      I glared at Steve, but his eyes—half-closed, like a snake eyeballing a field mouse—were still busy trailing the waitress while his head bobbed to a deafening Pearl Jam tune. Fat Harmon saw my disgusted look and shrugged in tacit agreement, plainly wishing he had been born an only child. I guess I liked Fat best of the four of them, though that wasn't saying much. He had the same curly blond hair and dark blue eyes as Steve and would have been as good-looking but for an accident of metabolism leading to an extra hundred pounds or so.
      "It's called illegal insider trading," I told Fat, and laid out the basics of Securities and Exchange Rule 16b, a law that makes it both a state and federal felony to use insider tips in buying stock. The fourth kid, named Oliver Sutton, piped up and said so what, nobody was going to get hurt and there's no way we could get caught anyway.
      I tried to explain how the market did get hurt by insider manipulation, but my arguments sounded hollow even to me, the "market" being a pretty impersonal thing to get all worked up about. So I ended up focusing on the getting caught part.
      "That's where you come in, Billy," said Steve Alexander. "Your name can't be traced to any of our fathers' names, plus everybody knows you're some kind of ace on criminal law, and that could come in handy. We'll cut you in for a full twenty-five percent share."
      I must have raised my eyebrows at that, there being five of us at the table, so Milt Janson—he was the all-American cornerback—explained that the Alexander brothers were splitting a twenty-five percent share because they had only one father to steal secrets from.
      Steve Alexander quit looking at the waitresses long enough to give Milt a hard look, but Fat Harmon and Oliver Sutton kept smiling agreeably. I could tell Steve and Milt seemed at odds, but the semi-cute waitress arrived with our second round of beers and Steve was all smiles again, laying on a tip that could have paid for my dinner.
      After the waitress left, they all sat there staring at me again, and it's stupid, but I guess I was still a little flattered at being hustled by these campus celebs, plus they hadn't even used their best argument for sucking me in, which was that I was about to lose my scholarship because of cost-cutting at UCLA. I was working a short night shift as a warehouse security guard to help support my kid sister and a mother who had picked up in the alcoholic department right where Dad had left off when he died. Joe's suicide had left me head of the household, aided only by food stamps and ANC—Aid to Needy Children—as in me and Lisa. But that gets into a whole 'nother story that concerns what happened to my father, the most notorious trial lawyer in the history of Enid, Oklahoma. Like I said, I'll get more into that later, except to say now that he got set up and framed by a shiftless partner and an evil client and that clearing my dad's name would be my first project when I became a lawyer. Anyways, the point is, these fat cats had got me to thinking what it would be like to have my family set for life and for me to be able to stay in school and follow my dream.
      Cutting to the chase, get this: During the four-week trial, the Los Angeles Times dubbed yours truly, Billy Strobe, the "brains" behind the Billionaire Boys Club II, which is what the press began calling us when the story broke. I thought that was a bit much, since we were never accused of killing anybody like the original Billionaire Boys Club was, plus which we never got past $1,300,000, though we had high hopes. At least we'd made it well over the $500,000 minimum for qualifying as an aggravated white collar crime under Penal Code Section 186.11 (2), thus entitling each of us to up to five years in state prison and a fine of up to ten million dollars if we got caught, which of course we did.
      As for me being the brains, hell, if I'd had any brains, I would have listened to Mr. Dog and not gone for beers that day in the first place and—here's mistake number two—wouldn't have been the only one whose name the Club's trading account was registered in. Of course it had to be that way, and I'll admit it had made me feel good to see my name—William Joseph Strobe—right there on the monthly broker's account reports, and doing pretty damn well, too, until the roof fell in. Milton Janson's father turned us in.
      His own goddamn father! My dad wouldn't have done that with a loaded gun to his head. Loyalty was everything to him. He understood loyalty, and say what you want about Joe Strobe, he always put his mouth where his money wasn't—never once denying a person in need—and winning nearly every case he took on except, unfortunately, his own.
      Anyways, my problem with the Billionaire Boys Club II was that though I may have been the smartest, I was also the least connected, and when the scam went south, my four new best friends quickly caved and confirmed the press's notion that I was the big dog with the brass collar, the architect of the whole damn scheme. Their parents paid huge fines and each of them pulled a year of misdemeanor county time, which they only served four months of. But the judge made an example out of Billy Strobe, Boy Master Mind, and hit me with a felony. Guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Dad taught me a long time ago that the system will beat you six ways to Sunday if you're short on money and long on guilt.

—Reprinted from Billy Strobe by John Martel by permission of Dutton, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.
Copyright © 2001 by John Martel. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.