Jules Kroll's corner office on the seventh floor of 900 Third Avenue in Manhattan comes as a surprise if you're used to visiting investment bankers, attorneys and other corporate executives - most likely clients of his. At first, it's as if you're in some fancy parlour. There's a tufted brown-leather sofa, and a couple of high-backed chairs around the obligatory coffee table in a room full of windows through which you can almost hear the heartbeat of New York City's traffic.
What's missing, of course, is the intrusive giant desk, the usual reminder that you're in the chairman's office. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see it: a slice of opaque glass partitioning off a far corner, a small chamber of its own, with a long desk and a telephone facing the far wall. The scene doesn't quite conjure up Sam Spade, that quintessential hard-boiled hero of American detective fiction. But it is very private - and unique.
So is licensed private investigator Jules Kroll and the corporate investigative business, Kroll Associates, that he has spent more than two decades building. After working as a state prosecutor, followed by a period running his father's printing business, Kroll finally found his calling when he started Kroll Associates in 1972.