He had gone head-to-head with the IRS, financial lawyers, district attorneys, and others who tried to bring down a client. To date, none had succeeded. Part of that was due to his long-lasting commitment to never take on a client with shady business practices. For him, the first principle of accounting was “Never do books for crooks.” Years of hard work and a superior education equipped him for life in the high end of the business world, but an MBA couldn’t prepare him for what he and his family now faced. He sat on the sofa and stared west over the ocean. The sun had burned off the morning clouds, revealing a cerulean sky through which white-and-gray California gulls rode air currents as they searched for food. Their smaller brethren, California least terns, provided competition. Before the Event, the gulls had grown lazy, able to find food from garbage on the beach or in landfills. But there was less of that now. The birds had to hunt the shore the way they had been designed to do.
