The Associate (23 page)

“Shut up!” Elaine snarled.

“You want to apologize to her?” the lawyer said.

“Yes. Elaine, I apologize for the misunderstanding, whatever the hell it was. And I think you should apologize for accusing us of something that did not happen. And right now, I want to apologize for even
being here.” Joey sprang to his feet. “This was not a good idea. So long.”

He walked quickly out of the deli, strolled to his car, and left Scranton. Driving back to Pittsburgh, when he wasn’t cursing Kyle McAvoy, he was hearing her voice again and again. “You raped me, Joey.” Her words were painful and free of doubt. She may not have known precisely what happened in their apartment five-and-a-half years earlier, but she certainly knew now.

He hadn’t raped anyone. What began as consensual sex, at her suggestion nonetheless, had now been transformed into something far different, at least in her mind.

If a girl consents to sex, can she change her mind once things are underway? Or if she consents to sex, then blacks out halfway through the act, how can she later claim she’d changed her mind? Difficult questions, and Joey wrestled with them as he drove.

“You raped me, Joey.”

The mere accusation carried a heavy dose of suspicion, and for the first time Joey questioned himself. Had he and Baxter taken advantage of her?

_________

Four days later, Kyle stopped by the mail room at Scully & Pershing and picked up a letter from Joey. It was a detailed summary of the encounter, complete with their choice of sandwiches and a description of Elaine’s hair color and matching tattoos. After setting out the facts, Joey offered his opinions:

He finished with: “I’m not sure what my next little project might be, but I’d rather not go near Elaine again. I don’t like being called a rapist. The entire episode was unnerving, plus I had to lie to Blair to get out of town. I have two tickets to the Steelers-Giants game on October 26. Shall I call you with this news so your goons will know about it? I really think we should go to the game and hash out our next moves. Your faithful servant, Joey.”

Kyle read the letter and summary in the main library while hiding between shelves of ancient law books. It confirmed his worst fears, but he had little time to dwell on it. He quietly tore the sheets of paper into a hundred pieces, then dropped them in a waste-basket as he left the library. Immediately destroy all written correspondence, he’d instructed Joey.

The hotel nearest his apartment was the Chelsea Garden, a fifteen-minute walk. At eleven that night, Kyle dragged himself along Seventh Avenue, looking for the hotel. Had he not been so exhausted, he might have enjoyed the cool autumn night with leaves sweeping across the sidewalk and half the city still
awake and going somewhere. But Kyle was numb with fatigue and capable of only one thought at a time, and that was often too much.

Bennie was in a suite on the third floor, where he’d been waiting for two hours because his “asset” couldn’t get away from the office. But Bennie didn’t mind. His asset belonged at the office, and the more time he spent there, the quicker Bennie could get on with his work.

Regardless, though, Bennie opened up with a nasty “You’re two hours late.”

“Sue me.” Kyle stretched out on the bed. This was their fourth meeting in New York since Kyle had moved there, and he had yet to hand over anything that Bennie wasn’t supposed to have. His ethics were still intact. No laws had been broken.

So why did he feel like such a traitor?

Bennie was tapping a large white poster board mounted on an easel. “If I could have your attention, please,” he said. “This won’t take long. I have some coffee if you’d like.”

Kyle wasn’t about to concede an inch. He jumped to his feet, poured coffee in a paper cup, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Go.”

“This is the Trylon team as it is now assembled. At the top here is Wilson Rush, and below him are eight litigation partners—Mason, Bradley, Weems, Cochran, Green, Abbott, Etheridge, and Wittenberg. How many have you met?”

Kyle studied the eight squares with the names scrawled inside them, and thought for a second. “Wilson Rush spoke to us during orientation, but I haven’t seen him since. I did a memo for Abbott on a securities
case, met him briefly, and I had lunch one day in the cafeteria with Wittenberg. I’ve seen Bradley, Weems, maybe Etheridge, but I can’t say I’ve met them. It’s a big firm.” Kyle was still amazed at the unknown faces he encountered every day in the halls and elevators, the cafeteria and libraries and coffee rooms. He tried to socialize and at least say hello, but the clock was always ticking and billing was much more important.

His supervising partner was Doug Peckham, and he was relieved Peckham’s name was not on the board.

There were a bunch of smaller squares under the partners. Bennie tapped an index finger near them. “There are sixteen senior associates, and under them another sixteen younger ones. The names are in that binder over there. You need to memorize them.”

“Sure, Bennie.” Kyle glanced at the binder, this one a two-inch blue one. The last three were black and thicker. Then he studied the names on the board.

“How many of these associates have you worked with?”

“Five, six, maybe seven,” he said with no effort at being accurate. How would Bennie know whom he’d worked with? And how Bennie knew the names of all forty-one lawyers assigned to the Trylon case was a question Kyle didn’t even want to consider. A few of the names would appear in the court file, but only the big boys. How many sources did he have?

He pointed to a smaller box. “This is a senior associate named Sherry Abney. You met her?”

“No.”

“A rising star, fast track to partnership. Two
degrees from Harvard and a federal clerkship. She reports to Partner Mason, who’s in charge of discovery. Under her is a second-year associate by the name of Jack McDougle. McDougle has a cocaine problem. No one at the firm knows it, but he’s about to get busted, so everybody will know it. His departure will be quick.”

Kyle stared at the box with McDougle’s name and thought of so many questions he didn’t know where to start. How did Bennie know this?

“And you want me to take his place?”

“I want you to schmooze it up with Sherry Abney. Check her out, get to know her. She’s thirty years old, single but committed to an investment banker at Chase who works as many hours as she does, so they have no time for any fun. No wedding date, as of now, at least nothing that has been announced. She likes to play squash, when she can find the time, and as you know, the firm has two courts on the fortieth floor beside the gym. You play squash?”

“I guess I do now.” Kyle had played several times at Yale. “Not sure when I’ll find the time.”

“You figure it out. She just might be your entrée onto the Trylon team.”

Go, team, go. Kyle planned to avoid Trylon and its litigation team as diligently as possible. “Small problem here, Bennie,” Kyle said. “Nice homework, but you’re missing the obvious. There are no first-year grunts anywhere near this case. A couple of reasons. First, we don’t know anything—five months ago we were still in law school—and, second, the smart boys at Trylon probably told their lawyers to keep the rookies away from this case. That happens, you
know. Not all of our clients are stupid enough to pay $300 an hour for a bunch of kids to stick it to them. So, Bennie, where is plan B?”

“It takes patience, Kyle. And politics. You start angling for the Trylon case, networking with the upper associates, kissing the right asses, and we might get a lucky break.”

Kyle wasn’t finished with the discussion about McDougle. He was determined to pursue it, when another man suddenly appeared from the sitting room adjacent to the bedroom. Kyle was so startled he almost dropped the half-filled cup of coffee. “This is Nigel,” Bennie was saying. “He’ll spend a few minutes on systems.” Nigel was in his face, thrusting forward a hand to shake. “A pleasure,” he sang in a cheery British way. He then moved to the tripod and mounted his own display.

The sitting room was twelve by twelve. Kyle looked through the open double doors into it. Nigel had been hiding in there and listening to every word.

“Scully & Pershing uses a litigation support system called Jury Box,” he began quickly. All movements were rapid and precise. British, but with a strange accent. Forty years old. Five feet ten inches, 150 pounds. Short dark hair, half gray. Eyes, brown. No remarkable features but slightly elevated cheekbones. Thin lips. No eyeglasses.

“How much have they taught you about Jury Box?” Nigel wanted to know.

“The basics. I’ve used it on several occasions.” Kyle was still reeling from Nigel’s unexpected appearance.

“It’s your typical litigation support system. All
discovery is scanned into a virtual library that can be accessed by all lawyers working on the case. Quick retrieval of documents. Super-quick search of keywords, phrases, contract language, anything, really. You’re up to speed?”

“Yes.”

“It’s fairly secure, pretty standard stuff these days. And like all smart law firms, Scully also uses a more secure system for sensitive files and cases. It’s called Barrister. You in on this one?”

“No.”

“Not surprised. They keep it quiet. Works pretty much like Jury Box, but much harder to access, or to hack into. Keep your ears open for it.”

Kyle nodded as if he would do precisely as he was being told. Since February, on that awful night when he’d been ambushed after a youth-league basketball game on the cold streets of New Haven, he had met only with Bennie Wright. Or whoever he really was. He had assumed, without really thinking about it, that Bennie, as his handler, would be the only face of the operation. There were other faces, to be sure; in particular, a couple of the street pounders who followed him night and day and who’d made enough mistakes so that Kyle could now spot them. But it had not occurred to him that he would actually be introduced to someone else with a bogus name who worked for the operation.

And why was he? Bennie was certainly capable of handling Nigel’s little presentation.

“And then you have the Trylon case,” Nigel was singing. “A completely different matter, I’m afraid. Much more complicated and secure. Whole different
batch of software, really. Probably written just for this one lawsuit. Got the docs locked up in a warehouse down south with Uzis at every door. But we’ve made progress.” He stopped long enough to allow himself a quick approving smile at Bennie. Aren’t we clever?

“We know that the program is code-named Sonic, as in B-10 HyperSonic Bomber, not very creative if you ask me, but then they didn’t, did they? Ha-ha. Sonic cannot be accessed by the nice little laptop they gave you greenies on day one, no sir. No laptop can have a peek at Sonic.”

Nigel bounced to the other side of the tripod. “There is a secret room on the eighteenth floor of your building, heavily secured, mind you, with a bank of desktop computers, some really fancy stuff, and there is where you will find Sonic. Pass codes change every week. Passwords every day, sometimes twice a day. Must have the proper ID before logging in, and if you log out without quitting to a tee, they’ll write you up and maybe show you the door.”

Show me the door, Kyle almost said.

“Sonic is probably a bastardized version of Barrister, so it will be incumbent upon you to master Barrister as soon as you’re given the opportunity.”

Can’t wait, Kyle almost said.

Slowly, through the shock and the fatigue, it was sinking in that Kyle was crossing the line, and doing it in a way he had not envisioned. His nightmare was to walk out of Scully & Pershing with secrets he was not supposed to have, and deliver them like Judas to Bennie for thirty pieces of silver. Now, though, he was receiving firm secrets from an outside source. He had
yet to steal anything, but he damned sure wasn’t supposed to know about Sonic and the hidden room on the eighteenth floor. Perhaps it wasn’t criminal and maybe it wasn’t a violation of the canons of ethics, but it certainly felt wrong.

“That’s enough for now,” Bennie was saying. “You look exhausted. Get some rest.”

“Oh, thank you.”

Back on Seventh Avenue, Kyle glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight.

A
t 5:00 a.m., the usual hour now, the alarm clock exploded at full volume and Kyle slapped it twice before it shut off. He hurried through the shower and the shave, and fifteen minutes later he was on the sidewalk, fashionably dressed because he could certainly afford fine clothes. His life had quickly become a harried, fatigued mess, but he was determined to look nice as he stumbled through the day. He bought a coffee, a bagel, and a copy of the
Times
at his favorite all-night deli, then caught a cab at the corner of Twenty-fourth and Seventh. Ten minutes later, he’d finished breakfast, scanned the newspaper, and gulped half the coffee. He walked into the Broad Street entrance of his office building at 6:00, on schedule. Regardless of the hour, he was never alone during the elevator ride up. There were usually two or three other bleary-eyed and gaunt-faced associates, all sleep deprived, all avoiding eye contact as the elevator hummed and rocked gently upward and they asked themselves several questions.

What was I thinking when I chose law school?

How long will I last in this meat grinder?

What fool designed this method of practicing law?

There was seldom a word because there was nothing to say. Like prisoners riding to the gallows, they chose to meditate and put things in perspective.