" Actually,” he said, “that brings me to the subject of this meeting, your future.”

“It’s secure as long as there’s crime in the streets.”

“There’s crime in the boardrooms, too, Henry. My firm is interested in hiring an associate with a criminal law background. I’ve circulated your name. People are impressed.”

“Why would your firm dirty its hands in criminal practice?” Gold put his coffee cup down and said, “Corporations consist of people, some of whom are remarkably venal. Others still are just plain stupid. Anyway, they’ve come to us often enough needing a criminal defense lawyer to make it worth our while to hire one. We’d start you as a third-year associate, at sixty thousand a year.”

I answered quickly, “Well, thanks for thinking of me, but I’m not interested.”

Gold said, “Look, if it’s the money, I know you deserve more, but that’s just starting pay.”

“You know it’s not the money, Aaron,” I said, reflecting that the sum he named was almost double my present wage.

He sighed and said, “Henry, don’t tell me it’s the principle.” I said nothing. “You’re wasting yourself in the public defender’s office. You knock yourself out for some little creep and what you get in return is a shoebox of an office and less money than a first-year associate at my firm makes.”

“So I should exchange it for a bigger office and more money and the opportunity to defend some rising young executive who gets busted for drunk driving?”

“Why not? Aren’t the rich entitled to as decent a defense as the poor?”

“You never hear much public outcry over the quality of legal representation of the rich. "

― Michael Nava , The Little Death (Henry Rios Mystery, #1)