The Associate (11 page)

Blair had turned him to mush. Kyle was astonished at the transformation.

They eventually tired of their wedding plans and potential honeymoon destinations, and the talk turned to careers. Blair, a chatterbox who began every sentence with either “I” or “me” or “my,” worked for
an advertising agency and spent far too much time detailing some of their latest marketing maneuvers. Joey hung on every word while Kyle began glancing at the clock behind them, high above a row of windows. As she prattled on, Kyle worked hard at maintaining enough eye contact to feign interest, but his mind drifted to the video.

“Is she awake?” Joey asks as Baxter has sex with a dangerously intoxicated Elaine Keenan.

“Blair travels to Montreal quite often,” Joey said, then Blair ricocheted onto the subject of Montreal and its beauty. She was learning French!

Is she awake? Joey, sitting there with his hand under the table no doubt rubbing some flesh, had no earthly idea that such a video existed. When was the last time Joey even thought about the incident? Ever? Had he forgotten it completely? And what good would it do for Kyle to bring it up now?

After the Pittsburgh police quietly closed the file on Elaine and her rape, the brothers of Beta buried it, too. During his last two years of college, Kyle could not remember a single instance when the episode was discussed. Elaine disappeared and was quickly forgotten.

If Bennie Wright and his operatives had been snooping around Duquesne and Pittsburgh in recent weeks, Kyle wanted to know about it. Perhaps Joey might have seen or heard something. Perhaps not. Joey wasn’t noticing much these days except for Blair.

“Have you talked to Baxter?” Joey asked when Blair finally stopped for air.

“Not in a month or so.”

Joey was grinning as if a joke was on the way. “He finally got in a movie, you know.”

“No kidding. He didn’t tell me.”

Blair giggled like a first grader because she undoubtedly knew the rest of the story.

“That’s because he doesn’t want you to know,” Joey went on.

“Must be a great movie.”

“Yep, he got drunk one night—and by the way, the drinking is now in no-man’s-land—so he called and told me he’d made his debut. It was a cheap cable flick about a young girl who finds a human leg washed up on a beach, and for the rest of the movie she has nightmares about being chased by a one-legged killer.”

“Where does the great Baxter Tate fit in?”

“Well, you have to watch real close or you’ll miss him. There’s a scene on a boat where the cops are gazing at the ocean, presumably looking for the rest of the body, though this is never clear. The movie has a lot of uncertainties. One of the deputies walks over to the sheriff and says, ‘Sir, we’re low on fuel.’ That’s our movie star.”

“Baxter is a deputy?”

“And a bad one. He has only that one line and delivers it like a frightened sophomore in the school play.”

“Was he sober?”

“Who knows, but I would say yes. If he’d been drunk, as usual, he would’ve nailed the line.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“Don’t, and don’t tell him I mentioned it. He
called the next morning, begging me not to watch it and threatening me if I told anyone. He’s a mess.”

And that reminded Blair of one of her friends who knew someone “out there” who landed a role in a new sitcom, and away she went. Kyle smiled and nodded as his brain switched compartments. Of the three roommates, Joey was the only one who could possibly help, if indeed help was possible. Baxter Tate was in dire need of intensive rehab. Alan Strock was thoroughly consumed with medical school at Ohio State and, of the four, was clearly the least likely to get involved.

For Joey, the stakes were high. He was on the tape, wondering aloud if Elaine was awake and conscious while Baxter did the deed, then Joey himself took a turn. He was currently handling accounts at a regional brokerage firm in Pittsburgh and had two promotions under his belt. He was goofy in love with Air Blair here, and any hint of an old rape charge would upset their perfect lives.

On the one hand, Kyle felt as though he was taking the fall for Joey. He hadn’t touched Elaine that night, yet it was his life and career now getting hijacked by Bennie Wright and his dirty little video. Shouldn’t Joey at least know about it?

And on the other hand, Kyle couldn’t convince himself that he should drop the bomb on Joey at this point. If he, Kyle, took the Scully & Pershing job and met the demands of Bennie Wright, and didn’t get caught, there was a decent chance the video would eventually be forgotten.

Hours later, during a break in the game, with Blair off in the ladies’ room, Kyle suggested they meet
Sunday for breakfast. He needed to leave town early, he said, and might it be possible to get together without Blair for an hour or so? Let her sleep in, maybe?

They met for bagels at a shop owned by a chain, a place that had not existed when Kyle was at Duquesne. Blair was still asleep somewhere, and Joey admitted to needing a break. “Sweet girl,” Kyle said more than once, and each time felt guilty for lying. He could not imagine a life with such a windbag. She had great legs, though, the type Joey had always coveted.

They talked about New York for a long time—life in a big firm, the grind of the city, the sports teams, other friends who were there, and so on. Kyle eventually brought the conversation around to the old Beta gang, and they played catch-up for a while. They laughed at pranks and hazing and parties and stupid stunts pulled by themselves and others. They were twenty-five now, far removed from the craziness of their early college days, and the nostalgia was fun for a few minutes. Several times, the “Elaine thing” was at the surface, waiting for a comment or a question, but Joey did not mention it. It was forgotten.

When they said goodbye, Kyle was convinced Joey had buried the episode forever, and, more important, no one had brought it to his attention recently.

He drove north to Interstate 80, then headed east. New York was not far away, neither in time nor in distance. A few more weeks in the cozy world of academia, then two months prepping for the bar exam, and in early September he would report for duty at the largest law firm in the world. There would be a hundred associates in his class, all bright kids from the finest schools, all polished and decked out in their
newest clothes, all anxious to jump-start their brilliant legal careers.

Kyle felt lonelier each day.

_________

But he wasn’t exactly isolated, not even close. His movements to, in, and around York and Pittsburgh were closely monitored by Bennie Wright and his gang. A small magnetic transmitter, the size of a man’s wallet, was tucked away under some mud and dirt in the rear bumper of Kyle’s red Cherokee. It was hotwired from the left taillight and emitted a constant GPS signal that kept track of the vehicle anywhere it went. From his office in lower Manhattan, Bennie knew precisely where the Jeep was located. He was not surprised by Kyle’s visit home, but the trip to see Joey Bernardo was far more interesting.

Bennie had no shortage of gadgets—some hightech, some low-tech, and all very effective because he tracked simple civilians and not real spies. Corporate espionage was far easier than that of the military or national security variety.

Kyle’s cell phone had long since been compromised, and they listened to every conversation. The kid had yet to mention his predicament to anyone on the phone. They were also listening to Olivia’s chatter, as well as that of Mitch, his roommate. So far, nothing.

They were reading Kyle’s e-mails. He averaged twenty-seven a day, and almost all were law school related.

Other efforts to listen were far more difficult. An agent had eaten at Victor’s in York, at a table twenty feet from Kyle and his father, but heard almost nothing.
Another had managed to land a seat two rows away at the Penguins game, but it was a wasted effort. At Boomerang’s, though, one of Bennie’s stars, a twenty-six-year-old blonde in tight jeans, managed to secure the booth next to Kyle, Joey, and Blair. She sipped one beer for two hours, read a paperback, and reported that the girl talked nonstop, and about nothing.

Bennie was generally pleased with the progress. Kyle had abruptly declined the legal services job in Virginia. He had hustled over to New York and cleared things with Scully & Pershing. He was seeing less of Olivia, and it was obvious, at least to Bennie, that the relationship was going nowhere.

But the sudden trip to Pittsburgh was bothersome. Had he planned to confide in Joey? Had he in fact done so? Was Alan Strock next? Would Kyle attempt to contact him and/or Baxter Tate?

Bennie was listening in all the right places, and waiting. He had leased two thousand square feet of office space in a building across Broad Street and two blocks down from Scully & Pershing. The tenant’s name was Fancher Group, a financial services start-up domiciled in Bermuda. Its registered agent in New York was Aaron Kurtz, also known as Bennie Wright, also known as a dozen other men, with perfect identification to prove any alias he chose. From his new perch, Bennie could glance out his window and gaze down Broad Street, and in a few short months he’d be able to actually see their boy Kyle enter and leave his place of employment.

T
he lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, Manhattan Division, at ten minutes before five on a Friday afternoon, a time chosen so that the filing would attract as little attention as possible from the press. A “late Friday dump.” The lawyer who signed it was a noted litigator named Wilson Rush, a senior partner with Scully & Pershing, and throughout the day he had telephoned the clerk to make sure it would be properly received and docketed before the court closed for the week. Like all cases, it was filed electronically. No one from the firm was required to walk into the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse on Pearl Street and hand over a thick pile of papers to commence the action. Of the forty or so civil lawsuits filed that day in the Southern District, it was by far the most serious, most complex, and most anticipated. The parties involved had been feuding for years, and while much of their bickering had been well reported, most of the issues were too sensitive to bare in public. The Pentagon, many senior members of
Congress, and even the White House had worked diligently to prevent litigation, but all efforts had failed. The next battle in the war had begun, and no one expected a quick resolution. The parties and their lawyers would fight with bare knuckles for years as the dispute crept its way through the federal judiciary and eventually landed at the Supreme Court for a final ruling.

The clerk, upon receiving the complaint, quickly rerouted it to a secure bin to prevent its contents from being exposed. This procedure was extremely rare and had been ordered by the chief district judge. A bare-bones summary of the lawsuit was ready and available to the press. It had been prepared under the direction of Mr. Rush, and it, too, had been approved by the judge.

The plaintiff was Trylon Aeronautics, a well-known defense contractor based in New York, a privately held company that had been designing and building military aircraft for four decades. The defendant was Bartin Dynamics, a publicly held defense contractor based in Bethesda, Maryland. Bartin averaged about $15 billion a year in government contracts, a sum that represented 95 percent of its annual revenue. Bartin used different lawyers for its different needs, but for the biggest fights it was protected by the Wall Street firm of Agee, Poe & Epps.

Scully & Pershing currently had twenty-one hundred lawyers and claimed to be the largest firm in the world. Agee, Poe & Epps had two hundred fewer lawyers but boasted of more offices around the world; thus, it claimed to be the largest. Each firm spent far too much time jockeying with the other and boasting
of its size, power, prestige, billings, partner profiles, and anything else that might jack up its rankings.

The core of the dispute was the latest Pentagon boondoggle to build the B-10 HyperSonic Bomber, a space-age aircraft that had been dreamed about for decades and was now closer to becoming a reality. Five years earlier, the Air Force had launched a contest among its top contractors to design the B-10, a sleek bomber that would replace the aging fleet of B-52s and B-22s and serve the military through the year 2060. Lockheed, the largest defense contractor, was the expected front-runner in the competition, but it was quickly outpaced by a joint venture put together by Trylon and Bartin. A consortium of foreign companies—British, French, and Israeli—had smaller roles in the joint venture.

The prize was enormous. The Air Force would pay the winner $10 billion up front to develop the advanced technologies and build a prototype, and then contract for the procurement of 250 to 450 B-10s over the next thirty years. At an estimated $800 billion, the contract would be the richest in the Pentagon’s history. The anticipated cost overruns were beyond calculation.

The Trylon-Bartin design was astounding. Their B-10 could take off from a base in the United States with a payload the same size as a B-52, fly at seventy-six hundred miles per hour, or Mach 10, and deliver its payload on the other side of the world in an hour, at a speed and from an altitude that would defy all current and foreseen defensive measures. After delivery of whatever it happened to be hauling, the B-10 could return to its home base without refueling either
in flight or on the ground. The aircraft would literally skip along the edge of the atmosphere. After ascending to an altitude of 130,000 feet, just outside the stratosphere, the B-10 would turn off its engines and float back to the surface of the atmosphere. Once there, its air-breathing engines would kick on and lift the plane back to 130,000 feet. This procedure, a skipping motion much like that of a flat rock bouncing across still water, would be repeated until the aircraft arrived at its target. A bombing run that originated in Arizona and ended in Asia would require about thirty skips with the B-10 popping through the atmosphere once every ninety seconds. Because the engines would be used intermittently, significantly smaller amounts of fuel would be required. And, by leaving the atmosphere and venturing into cold space, the heat buildup would be dissipated.