The Rooster Bar (3 page)

S
he met them at the stoop in front of the building and they followed her up the stairs to her apartment on the second floor. When they were inside she closed the door and thanked them for coming. She was obviously worried, almost frantic.

“Where is he?” Mark asked.

“Over there,” Zola said, nodding toward the hall. “He won't let me in and he won't come out. I don't think he's slept much in the past two days. He's up and down and right now he's bouncing off the walls.”

“And no meds?” Todd asked.

“Evidently not, at least none from the pharmacy. I suspect there's some self-medicating going on.”

They looked at one another, each waiting for someone to make the next move. Mark finally said, “Let's go.” They stepped across the hall and Mark knocked on the door. “Gordy, it's Mark. I'm here with Todd and Zola and we want to talk.”

Silence. Springsteen could barely be heard in the background.

Mark knocked again and repeated himself. The music died. A chair or a stool was kicked and fell over. More silence, then the doorknob clicked. A few seconds passed, and Mark opened the door.

Gordy was standing in the center of the cramped room, wearing nothing but an old pair of yellow Redskins gym shorts, the same pair they had seen a hundred times. He was staring at a wall and ignored them as they eased into the room. To their left, the kitchenette was a wreck with empty beer cans and liquor bottles left in the sink and strewn along the counters. The floor was littered with paper cups, used napkins, and sandwich wrappers. To their right, the small dining table was piled high with papers in random stacks around a laptop and printer. Under it, the floor was covered with papers and files and discarded magazine articles. The sofa, television, recliner, and coffee table had been shoved as tightly as possible into one corner, as if to clear everything away from the wall.

The wall was a maze of white poster boards and dozens of sheets of copy paper, all arranged in some crazed order and secured with colored pushpins and Scotch tape. With black, blue, and red markers, Gordy was in the process of piecing together a gigantic corporate puzzle, some grand conspiracy that led to the ominous faces of a few men at the top.

Gordy appeared to be staring at the faces. He was pale and emaciated and had obviously lost a lot of weight, something Mark and Todd had not noticed two weeks earlier during final exams. He was an athlete who loved the gym, but the toned muscles were gone. His thick blond hair, the source of immense vanity, was stringy and had not been washed in days. Sizing him up, and taking in the condition of his apartment, they knew instantly that their friend had gone over the edge. They were in the presence of a manic artist, secluded and deranged and hard at work on an enormous canvas.

“What's the occasion?” Gordy asked as he turned and glared at them. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow, his beard a week old.

“We need to talk,” Mark said.

“Yes we do,” he said. “But I'm doing the talking because I have a lot to say. I've got it all figured out now. I've caught the bastards and we have to move fast.”

Tentatively, Todd said, “Okay, Gordy. We're here to listen. What's up?”

Gordy pointed to the sofa and calmly said, “Please have a seat.”

“I'd rather stand, Gordy, if that's okay,” Mark said.

“No!” he barked. “It's not okay. Just do as I say and we'll be fine. Now sit down.” He was snarling, suddenly angry, and seemed ready to throw a punch. Neither Mark nor Todd would last ten seconds in a fistfight with Gordy. They had seen two in their law school days, both quick knockouts in bars with Gordy still on his feet.

Todd and Zola sat on the sofa and Mark pulled a stool over from the snack bar. They stared at the wall in disbelief. It was a maze of flowcharts with arrows jutting in all directions and linking together dozens of companies, firms, names, and numbers. Like schoolchildren who'd just been admonished, they sat, waited, and absorbed the wall.

Gordy stepped to the dining table, where a half-empty fifth of tequila was in the works. He poured some into his favorite coffee cup and sipped it as if having tea.

Mark said, “You've lost a lot of weight, Gordy.”

“Haven't noticed. I'll get it back. We're not here to talk about my weight.” Holding the coffee cup, and evidently giving no thought to offering his pals anything to drink, he stepped to the wall and pointed to the top photo. “This is the Great Satan. Name's Hinds Rackley, Wall Street lawyer turned investment crook, worth only four billion, which barely gets the poor guy on the
Forbes
list these days. A lesser billionaire, I guess, but nonetheless one with all the toys: Fifth Avenue mansion with a view of the park, big spread in the Hamptons, a yacht, couple of jets, trophy wife, the usual. Law school at Harvard, then a few years with a big firm. Couldn't fit there so he hung out his own shingle with a few buddies, merged here and there, and now he owns or controls four law firms. As billionaires go, he's rather shy and loves his privacy. Operates behind the veil of a lot of different companies. I've only tracked down a few but I've found enough.”

Gordy was talking to the wall, his back to his audience. When he lifted his cup for more tequila, the indentions between his ribs were visible. His weight loss was astonishing. He spoke calmly now, as if spouting facts he alone had uncovered.

“His main vehicle is Shiloh Square Financial, a private investment operation that also plays with leveraged buyouts and distressed debt and all the usual Wall Street games. Shiloh owns a chunk of Varanda Capital, how much we don't know because their filings are bare-bones, everything about this guy is deceptive, and Varanda owns a chunk of Baytrium Group. As you might know, Baytrium owns, among many other companies, our dear Foggy Bottom Law School. Us and three others. What you don't know is that Varanda also owns an outfit called Lacker Street Trust, out of Chicago, and Lacker Street owns four other for-profit law schools. That's a total of eight.”

On the right side of the wall in large squares were the names of Shiloh Square Financial, Varanda Capital, and Baytrium Group. Below them in a neat row were the names of eight law schools: Foggy Bottom, Midwest, Poseidon, Gulf Coast, Galveston, Bunker Hill, Central Arizona, and Staten Island. Below each name were numbers and words in print too small to read from across the room.

Gordy stepped to the table and poured another measured serving of tequila. He took a sip, stepped back to the wall, and faced them. “Rackley began piecing together these schools about ten years ago, always, of course, hiding behind his many fronts. It's not illegal to own a for-profit law school or college, but he wants to keep it under cover anyway. Guess he's afraid someone will catch on to his dirty little scheme. I've caught him.” He took another sip and glared at them, his eyes wide and glowing. “In 2006, the bright people in Congress decided that every Tom, Dick, and Harry should be able to vastly improve their lives by getting more education, so the bright people said, basically, that anyone, including the four of us, could borrow as much as needed to pursue professional degrees. Loans for everyone, easy money. Tuition, books, even living expenses, regardless of how much, and of course all backed by the good word of the federal government.”

Mark said, “This is well-known, Gordy.”

“Oh, thank you, Mark. Now, if you'll just sit there and be quiet I'll do the talking.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What's not well-known is that once Rackley owned the law schools, all eight of them, they began expanding rapidly. In 2005, Foggy Bottom had four hundred students. By the time we arrived in 2011, enrollment was at a thousand, where it remains today. Same for his other schools, all have roughly a thousand students. The schools bought buildings, hired every half-assed professor they could find, paid big bucks to administrators with passable credentials, and, of course, marketed themselves like crazy. And why? Well, what's not well-known are the economics of for-profit law schools.”

He took another sip and moved to the far right of the wall, to a poster board covered with numbers and calculations. He said, “A bit of law school math. Take Foggy Bottom. They clip us for forty-five thousand a year in tuition, and everybody pays. There are no scholarships or grants, nothing real schools have to offer. That's a gross of forty-five million. They pay the professors about a hundred grand a year, a far cry from the national average of two-twenty for good schools, but still a bonanza for some of the clowns who taught us. There is an endless supply of legal academics looking for work, so they're lined up begging for the jobs because, of course, they just love being with us students. The school likes to brag about its low student-to-teacher ratio, ten to one, as if we're all being taught by gifted pros in small, cozy classes, right? Remember first-semester torts? There were two hundred of us packed into Stuttering Steve's classroom.”

Todd interrupted with “How'd you find out about their salaries?”

“I talked to one of them, tracked him down. He taught admin law for third years and we never had him. Got fired two years ago for drinking on the job. So we got drunk together and he told me everything. I got my sources, Todd, and I know what I'm talking about.”

“Okay, okay. Just curious.”

“Anyway, Foggy Bottom has about 150 professors, its biggest expense, say $15 million a year.” He pointed to a jumble of figures they could barely read. “Then you have the administration on the top floor. Did you know that our incompetent dean makes $800,000 a year? Of course not. The dean at Harvard Law makes half a million a year, but then he's not in charge of a diploma mill where someone is watching the bottom line. Our dean has a nice résumé, looks good on paper, speaks well whenever he speaks, and has proven rather adept at fronting this racket. Rackley pays all his deans well and expects them to sell the dream. Throw in another, say, $3 million for the other bloated salaries up there and it's safe to say the administration costs $4 million a year. Let's be generous and make it $5, so we're at $20 in costs. Last year it cost $4 million to operate the place—the building, the staff, and, of course, the marketing. Almost $2 million of it was for propaganda to entice even more misguided souls to sign up, start borrowing, and pursue glorious careers in law. I know this because I have a friend who's a pretty good hacker. He found some stuff, didn't find some other stuff, and was impressed with the school's security. He says they work hard at protecting their files.”

“That's $24 million,” Mark said.

“You're quick. Round it off to $25, and the Great Satan nets $20 million a year off dear old Foggy Bottom. Multiply that times eight and the math will make you sick.” Gordy cleared his throat and spat at the wall. He took another sip, swallowed slowly, and paced a few steps.

“So how does Rackley do it?” he asked. “He sells the dream and we took the bait. When his eight schools expanded overnight, they opened their doors to everyone, regardless of qualifications or LSAT scores. The average LSAT for entering first years at Georgetown, which we know for sure is a top-tier school, is 165. For the Ivies it's even higher. We don't know the average LSAT at Foggy Bottom, because it's a military secret. My hacker couldn't penetrate the file. But it's safe to say it's well below 150, probably closer to 140. A major flaw in this defective system is that no LSAT score is too low to be admitted. These dipshit law schools will take anybody who can borrow the federal money, and, as stated,
anybody
can borrow the federal money. The ABA will accredit a kindergarten if it calls itself a law school. No one cares how dumb an applicant might be, nor does the federal loan program. Don't want to offend anyone in this room but we all know our scores. We've all been drunk enough to talk about them, with the exception of Zola of course, who happens to have the highest of the four. So to be diplomatic I'll say that the average of our little group is 145. Based on percentages, the chances of passing the bar exam with a 145 is about 50 percent. No one told us this when we applied because they care nothing about us; they just wanted our money. We were screwed the day we walked in.”

“You're preaching to the choir,” Mark said.

“And the sermon is not over,” Gordy shot back, then ignored them for a moment as he studied his wall. Again, they exchanged looks that conveyed apprehension and fear. The sermon was interesting, and depressing, but they were far more worried about their friend.

He continued, “We're in this mess because we saw the opportunity to pursue a dream, one that we could not afford. None of us should be in law school and now we're in over our heads. We don't belong here, but we were scammed into believing we were cut out for lucrative careers. It's all about marketing and the promise of jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs, big jobs with nice salaries. The reality, though, is that they don't exist. Last year the big firms on Wall Street were offering $175,000 to the top grads. About $160,000 here in D.C. We've heard about these jobs for years and somehow convinced ourselves that we might get one. Now we know the truth, and the truth is that there are some jobs in the $50,000 range, something like you, Mark, managed to get, though you still don't know the salary. These are at smaller firms where the work is brutal and the future is bleak. The big firms are paying one-sixty plus. And there is nothing in between. Nothing. We've suffered through the interviews, knocked on doors, scoured the Internet, so we know how bad the market is.”

They nodded along, primarily to placate him. Gordy took another sip, moved to the left side of the wall, and pointed. “Here's the really nasty stuff, the part you know nothing about. Rackley owns a New York law firm called Quinn & Vyrdoliac; you might have heard of it. I had not. In the trade it's referred to simply as Quinn. Offices in six cities, about four hundred lawyers, not a top one hundred firm. A small branch here in D.C. with thirty lawyers.” He pointed to a sheet of paper with the firm's name in bold lettering. “Quinn works primarily in financial services, the gutter end. It handles a lot of foreclosures, repossessions, collections, defaults, bankruptcies, almost everything related to debts gone bad. Including student loans. Quinn pays well, at least initially.” He pointed to a colorful brochure, a trifold opened and pinned to the wall. “I saw this four years ago when I was considering Foggy Bottom. You probably saw it too. It features the smiling face of one Jared Molson, a grad who was supposedly happily employed at Quinn with a starting salary of $125,000. I remember thinking that, hey, if Foggy Bottom is turning out guys who get jobs like that, then sign me up. Well, I found Mr. Molson, had a long chat with him over drinks. He was offered a job at Quinn but didn't sign a contract until after he passed the bar exam. He worked there for six years and quit, and he quit because his salary kept going
down
. He said that each year the management would study the bottom line and decide that cuts were necessary. His last year he earned just over a hundred and said screw it. He said he lived like a bum, whittled down his debt, and now he's selling real estate and driving part-time for Uber. The firm's a sweatshop and he says he got used by Foggy Bottom's propaganda machine.”