The Associate (8 page)

_________

Complete fidelity had been agreed to months earlier, and once Olivia was convinced Kyle had not cheated, her attitude thawed a little. The story he’d been working on for several hours went like this: He’d been struggling with his decision to pursue public-interest law instead of taking a big job with a big firm. He had no plans to make public-interest law a career, so why go there to begin with? He would eventually work in New York, so why delay the inevitable? And so on. And last night, after his basketball game, he decided he had to make a final decision. He turned off his phone and took a long drive, east for some unknown reason, on Highway 1, past New London and into Rhode Island. He lost track of time. After midnight, the snow picked up and he found a cheap motel where he slept for a few hours.

He had changed his mind. He was going to New York, to Scully & Pershing.

He spilled this over lunch, over a sandwich at The Grill. Olivia listened with skepticism but did not interrupt. She seemed to believe the story about last night, but she was not buying the sudden change in career plans. “You must be kidding,” she blurted when he hit the punch line.

“It’s not easy,” he said, already on the defensive. He knew this would not be pleasant.

“You, Mr. Pro Bono, Mr. Public Interest Law?”

“I know. I know. I feel like a turncoat.”

“You are a turncoat. You’re selling out, just like every other third-year law student.”

“Lower your voice, please,” Kyle said as he glanced around. “Let’s not have a scene.”

She lowered her voice but not her eyebrows. “You’ve said it yourself a hundred times, Kyle. We all get to law school with big ideas of doing good, helping others, fighting injustice, but along the way we sell out. Seduced by big money. We turn into corporate whores. Those are your words, Kyle.”

“They do sound familiar.”

“I can’t believe this.”

They took a couple of bites, but the food was not important.

“We have thirty years to make money,” she said. “Why can’t we spend a few years helping others?” Kyle was on the ropes and bleeding.

“I know, I know,” he mumbled lamely. “But timing is important. I’m not sure Scully & Pershing will defer.” Another lie, but what the hell. Once you start, why quit? They were multiplying.

“Oh, please. You can get a job with any firm in the country, now or five years from now.”

“I’m not so sure about that. The job market is tightening up. Some of the big firms are threatening layoffs.”

She shoved her food away, crossed her arms, and slowly shook her head. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

And at that moment Kyle couldn’t believe it either, but it was important, now and forever more, to give the impression that he’d carefully weighed the issues and had arrived at this decision. In other words, Kyle had to sell it. Olivia was the first test. His friends
would be next, then his favorite professors. After he’d practiced the routine a few times and the lying was finely tuned, he would somehow muster the courage to visit his father and deliver the news that would lead to an ugly fight. John McAvoy detested the idea of his son working for a corporate firm on Wall Street.

Kyle’s selling job, though, did little to convince Olivia. They traded barbs for a few minutes, then forgot about lunch and went their separate ways. There was no goodbye peck on the cheek, no hug, no promise to call each other later. He spent an hour in his office at the law journal, then reluctantly left and drove back to the motel.

_________

The room had changed little. The video camera and laptop were gone, no sign of electronics anywhere, though Kyle was certain every word would be recorded in some fashion. The folding table was still ground zero, but it had been moved closer to the windows. Same two folding chairs. The setting was as stark as a police interrogation room somewhere deep in the basement.

The headache was back.

Kyle flipped the card Ginyard left behind onto the table and began with a pleasant “Please tell this son of a bitch to stop following me.”

“We’re just a little curious, that’s all, Kyle.”

“I’m not going to be followed, Bennie, do you understand?”

Bennie gave a smart-ass smile.

“The deal’s off, Bennie. I’m not going to live my life with a bunch of goons watching everything I do.

Forget the surveillance, forget the wiretaps and hidden mikes and e-mail snooping, Bennie. Are you listening? I’m not walking down the streets of New York wondering who’s behind me. I’m not chatting on the phone while thinking some bozo might be listening. You’ve just wrecked my life, Bennie, the least you can do is allow me some degree of privacy.”

“We have no plans—”

“That’s a lie and you know it. Here’s the new deal, Bennie. We agree right now that you and your goons stay out of my life. You don’t eavesdrop, you don’t follow, you don’t hide in the shadows or stalk or play your little cat-and-mouse games. I’ll do what you want me to do, whatever the hell that is, but you have got to leave me alone.”

“Otherwise?”

“Oh, otherwise. Otherwise, I’ll take my chances with Elaine and her bogus rape charge. Look, Bennie, if my life is going to be ruined, then what the hell? I get to pick my poison. I have Elaine on the one hand, and I have your goons on the other.”

Bennie exhaled slowly, cleared his throat, and said, “Yes, Kyle, but it is important for us to keep up with you. That is the nature of our work. That is what we do.”

“It’s blackmail, pure and simple.”

“Kyle, Kyle, none of that now. That doesn’t move the ball.”

“Please, can we forget about the ball? That’s so tiring now.”

“We can’t just turn you loose in New York.”

“Here’s my bottom line—I will not be stalked or watched or followed. Do you understand this, Bennie?”

“This could pose a problem.”

“It’s already a problem. What do you want? You’ll know where I live and where I work—they’re basically the same place for the next five years anyway. I’ll be at the office eighteen hours a day, if not more. Why, exactly, will it be necessary to keep me under surveillance?”

“There are procedures we follow.”

“Then change them. It’s not negotiable.” Kyle jumped to his feet and headed for the door. “When do we meet again?”

“Where are you going?” Bennie asked as he stood.

“None of your business, and don’t follow me. Do not follow me.” Kyle had his hand on the doorknob.

“Okay, okay. Look, Kyle, we can be flexible here. I see your point.”

“When and where?”

“Now.”

“No, I have things to do, without being watched.”

“But we have so much to talk about, Kyle.”

“When?”

“How about six, tonight?”

“I’ll be here at eight, and for only one hour. And I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

A
t the New Haven train station, Kyle boarded the 7:22 for Grand Central. He wore the better of his two suits, a plain white shirt with an utterly boring tie, and black wing tips, and he carried a handsome leather attaché case his father had given him last Christmas. He also carried the morning’s editions of the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
, and he was indistinguishable from the other sleepy-eyed executives hustling off to the office.

As the frozen countryside blurred by, he ignored the papers and let his mind wander. He asked himself if he would one day live in the suburbs and be forced to ride a train three hours a day so his children could attend fine schools and ride their bikes down leafy streets. At the age of twenty-five, that was not very appealing. But now most of his thoughts about the future were complicated and dreary. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get himself indicted and/or disbarred. Life in the big firms was brutal enough, and now he would have the impossible chore of grinding through the
first years while stealing confidential information and praying daily that he didn’t get caught.

Maybe commuting wasn’t such a bad deal after all.

After three days and many hours of talking, haggling, bitching, and threatening, Bennie Wright had finally left town. He had receded into the shadows but, of course, would soon materialize again. Kyle hated his voice, his face, his mannerisms, his calm hairy hands, his slick head, his confident, pressing manner. He hated everything about Bennie Wright and his company or firm or whatever it was, and many times during the past week he had changed his mind in the middle of the night and told them all to go to hell.

Then, in the darkness, as always, he could feel the handcuffs, see his mug shot in the newspapers, see the looks on the faces of his parents, and worst of all he could see himself afraid to glance at the jurors when the video was played to a hushed courtroom.

“Is she awake?” Joey Bernardo asks while Baxter Tate has Elaine down on the sofa.

Is she awake? The words echo around the courtroom.

The countryside vanished as the train sped through suburbs and towns, then it went underground, at some point dipped under the East River and entered Manhattan. Kyle strolled through Grand Central and hailed a cab at the corner of Lex and Forty-fourth. Not once had he looked over his shoulder.

Scully & Pershing leased the top half of a building named 110 Broad, a sleek glass edifice with forty-four floors, in the heart of the financial district. Kyle had spent ten weeks there the previous summer as an intern—the typical big-firm seduction routine of
socializing, lunching, barhopping, watching the Yankees, and putting in a few light hours of work. It was a joke of a job and everybody involved knew it. If the wining and dining worked, and it almost always did, the interns became associates upon graduation and their lives were basically over.

It was almost 10:00
A.M.
, and the elevator was empty. The lawyers had been at their desks for hours. He stopped at the thirtieth floor, the firm’s main lobby, and paused for a second to admire the massive bronze lettering that informed all visitors that they were now on the hallowed turf of Scully & Pershing. Attorneys-at-law, all twenty-one hundred of them, the largest law firm the world had ever known. The first and still the only firm to boast of more than two thousand lawyers. Counsel to more Fortune 500 companies than any other firm in the history of American law. Offices in ten U.S. cities and twenty foreign ones. A hundred and thirty years of hidebound tradition. Magnet to the best legal talent money can buy. Power, money, prestige.

He already felt like a trespasser.

The walls were covered with abstract art, the furniture was rich and contemporary. Some Asian whiz had done the decorating, magazine quality, and there was a brochure on a table that went into details. As if anyone who worked there had the time to stop and ponder the interior design schemes. A gorgeous little receptionist in stiletto heels took his name and asked him to please wait. Kyle turned his back on everything and became entranced in a work of art so bizarre he had no idea what he was looking at. After a few minutes of mindless gazing, he heard the receptionist call, “Mr. Peckham is waiting. Two floors up.” Kyle took the stairs.

Like many Manhattan law firms, Scully & Pershing spent money on the elevators, reception areas, and conference rooms—the places clients and other visitors might actually see—but back in the bowels of the firm where the grunts worked, efficiency ruled. The halls were lined with file cabinets. The secretaries and typists—all women—worked in tight cubicles within reach of each other. The copyboys and other gofers worked on their feet; New York real estate was simply too expensive to provide them a spot or a nook of any significance. The senior associates and junior partners were awarded small offices on the outer walls, with a view of similar buildings.

The rookie associates were stuffed in tight windowless spaces; three or four of them wedged together in cramped cubicles, nicknamed “cubes.” These “offices” were tucked away and kept out of sight. Lousy accommodations, brutal hours, sadistic bosses, unbearable pressure—it was all part of the blue-chip law firm experience, and Kyle had heard the horror tales before he finished his first year at Yale. Scully & Pershing was no better and certainly no worse than the other mega-firms that threw money at the brightest students, then burned them up.

At the corners of each floor, in the largest offices, the real partners anchored things and had some say in the decor. One was Doug Peckham, a forty-one-year-old litigation partner, a Yale man who had supervised Kyle during his internship. They had become somewhat friendly.

Kyle was shown into Peckham’s office a few minutes after 10:00
A.M.
, just as a pair of associates were leaving. Whatever the meeting was, it had not gone
well. The associates looked rattled, and Peckham was trying to calm down.

They exchanged greetings and pleasantries, the usual banter about good old Yale. Kyle knew that Peckham billed $800 an hour, at least ten hours a day, and therefore the time that Kyle was now wasting was quite valuable. “I’m not sure I want to spend a couple of years doing legal aid,” Kyle said, not too deep into the meeting.

“Don’t really blame you there, Kyle,” Peckham said in a quick, clipped voice. “You have too much potential in the real world. This is your future.” He spread his arms to take in his vast empire. It was a nice office, large by comparison, but not a kingdom.

“I really would like to work in litigation.”

“I see no problem there. You had a great summer here. We were all impressed. I’ll make the request myself. You know, though, that litigation is not for everyone.”

That’s what they all said. The average career of a litigator is twenty-five years. The work is high pressure, high stress. Peckham may have been forty-one, but he could easily pass for fifty. Completely gray, dark circles, too much bulk in the jowls and around the waist. Probably hadn’t exercised in years.

“My deadline has passed,” Kyle said.

“When?”

“A week ago.”

“No problem. Come on, Kyle, editor in chief of the
Yale Law Journal
. We’ll be happy to cut you some slack. I’ll talk to Woody in personnel and clear it. Our recruiting has gone very well. You’re joining the best freshman class in years.”