The Associate

The Associate Page 23

Sunday, with most of the litigators nursing hangovers, Kyle was up early with a clear head, a tall coffee, walking shoes, and five hours to do nothing but hike the city. The FirmFone was in his pocket, but the FirmFone would not be ringing, because the Sunday after the picnic was a day off as well. A few of the gunners and diehards would be at the office, but most of the firm's litigators would savor another beautiful autumn day without billing an hour.

He worked his way south, through the Village and into Tribeca, then east into the frenzy of Chinatown. In SoHo, he managed to get a seat at the bar at Balthazar, a popular restaurant modeled after a Parisian bistro and raved about in all the guides. He had eggs Benedict and tomato juice, and was thoroughly entertained by the rowdy crowd. Then he found the Brooklyn Bridge, climbed to the top, to the promenade, and hiked across the East River to Brooklyn. It took forty minutes, and then forty minutes back into Manhattan, where he made his way to Broadway and followed it through the garment district, the theater district, Times Square, and on to Columbus Circle.

Brunch was at eleven thirty, at the Upper West Side apartment of Doug and Shelly Peckham. It was an old building on Sixty-third, two blocks off Central Park, and as Kyle rode the stuffy elevator to the third floor, he caught himself doing what most New Yorkers do in their spare time and even while they're working. He pondered real estate. Doug Peckham, as a forty-one-year-old full equity partner in the firm, earned $1.3 million the previous year. His income was no secret. Scully & Pershing, like most mega-firms, published their numbers. Peckham could expect to earn at least that much for the rest of his career, so he could afford a nice place. But $1.3 million a year in New York was not exactly in the big leagues. Not even close. The heavy hitters were the investment bankers, hedge fund whizzes, high-tech entrepreneurs, and corporate executives who were worth billions and thought nothing of dropping $20 million for a midtown apartment. And of course each had the obligatory weekend home in the Hamptons for the summer and one in Palm Beach for weekends in the winter.

The Peckhams had a place in East Hampton. Kyle hoped Shelly and the kids enjoyed the summer house because he knew Doug certainly did not. He was at the office most Saturdays and often on Sundays.

Shelly greeted him with a hug, another old friend now, and welcomed him into their open and unpretentious apartment. Doug was in jeans, sockless, unshaven, and pushing Bloody Marys on his guests. Four other associates were present, all under the supervision of Partner Peckham. The brunch was another effort by him and the firm to soften the edges and make Scully seem like a humane place after all. The goal of the get-together was to talk. Doug wanted to hear their problems and concerns, their ideas and plans, their impressions, and their goals. He also wanted to hurry up and finish brunch so they could watch the Giants versus the 49ers and drink beer, kickoff at 1:00.

Shelly did the cooking herself, and Doug helped serve and pour the wine.

After an hour of useless chatter about the same boring lawsuits they'd slaved over all last week, it was time for the Giants. Kyle, the only first-year associate at the table, contributed less than anyone. Halfway through brunch he was already planning his return hike downtown. After dessert, they gathered in the den, where a small fire made things cozy and Doug fiddled with the controls to his high-def, flat-screen TV. In an effort to liven up a dying party, Kyle claimed to be an avid 49ers fan, a hater of the Giants, and this succeeded in generating some trash talk. Two of the older associates were asleep by the end of the first quarter. Doug began to nod off, too, and at halftime Kyle made a clumsy exit and hit the streets.

At five on Monday morning, he was at the office, digging in for another long week.

THE GIANTS' next game was on the road, at Pittsburgh, and two hours before game time Kyle and Joey Bernardo settled into their seats at the forty-yard line and tried to stay warm. A cold front had chased away autumn and a freezing mist hovered above the new stadium. It didn't matter. As die-hard Steelers fans, they had shivered through many games at Three Rivers Stadium, the old place that was gone now. They welcomed the cold. This was real football weather.

Mercifully, Blair had little interest in football. Now five months pregnant, she had gained an enormous amount of weight and was not handling prospective motherhood too well. Joey was having second thoughts about marriage, but for some reason felt trapped. Kyle had little useful advice. If she wasn't pregnant, he would tell his friend to run. But you can't abandon a pregnant fiancee, can you? It just didn't seem right. What did he know about such matters?

As the crowd settled in and the teams warmed up, Kyle was ready to talk. "Speak softly, and tell me about Elaine Keenan," he said.

Joey had a flask filled with vodka, his antifreeze. He took a swig, grimaced as if it tasted awful, and said, "Nothing but trouble."

Their only correspondence about Elaine had been Joey's written summary of his encounter. Kyle needed all the details, and they needed a plan.

"She is one bitter young woman," Joey said. "But she's not nearly as mean as her lawyer."

"Start at the beginning, and tell me everything as it happened."

Another swig, a good smacking of the lips, a glance around to make sure no one cared, and then Joey launched into a slow, thoughtful, detailed reenactment of his trip to Scranton. Kyle interrupted with questions, but the narrative moved along. Just before the coin toss, with the stadium packed and rocking, Joey finally finished with the admonition, "If they have the slightest opening, they'll attack us with a fury. Don't give them the opening. Let's just bury this little episode."

They watched the game for a while and talked about nothing but football. During a time-out, Joey said, "So what's the plan?"

"Can you come to New York next weekend? Steelers-Jets. Four o'clock Sunday at the Meadowlands. I'll get tickets."

"Oh, boy. I don't know." The problem was Blair, with money also a concern. Joey made a nice salary with commissions, but he wasn't getting rich. Now he had a baby on the way and a wife sometime after that, or vice versa, they couldn't decide. One day Blair wanted to postpone the wedding until the baby arrived so she could regain her figure. The next day she wanted to hurry up and get married so the birth wouldn't be out of wedlock. Joey was just straddling the fence, hanging on by his fingernails, and getting whipsawed from both sides. They were now paying for an expensive new condo. He couldn't afford to spend too much time watching football.

"Why do you want me in New York?" he asked.

"Because I want to try to get a photo of Bennie."

"And why do you want a photo of this guy? These people are dangerous, right?"

"Oh, yes. Lethal."

"So why are we messing with them?"

"I want to know who they are."

Joey shook his head and looked away, toward the scoreboard, then he took a sip and leaned close to Kyle. "I say we leave them alone. I say you do what they want you to do, play their games, don't get caught, keep the damned video buried, and life will be good for all of us."

"Maybe. Can you come to New York?"

"I don't know. I'll have to figure it out."

"It's very important. Please."

"How, old buddy, do you plan to get a picture of this guy Bennie? He's a professional operative, right?"

"Something like that."

"You're a lawyer, I'm a stockbroker. We have no idea what we're doing, and we could easily get ourselves in trouble."

"Yes, we could."

Kyle took a small package from a pocket of his bulky black and gold Steelers parka. "Take this," he said, keeping it low so that no one could see it. Joey took it and stuffed it into a pocket of his own black and gold Steelers parka. "What is it?"

"It's a video camera."

"Doesn't feel like a video camera."

"It's a video camera, but not one you're likely to see in a store window."

The Steelers scored on a long pass, the game's first touchdown, and the crowd celebrated for five minutes. During the ensuing timeout, Kyle continued: "It's not much larger than an ink pen. It goes in the pocket of either a shirt or a jacket, with a thin wire running to a control switch in your left hand. You can talk to someone face-to-face and video the conversation without their knowledge."

"So I just walk up to Bennie, who's probably heavily armed and has several other heavily armed pals nearby, and introduce myself and ask him to smile."

"No. There's a better way. But this week you need to practice with it."

"Does it have a name?"

"It's all there in the paperwork  -  specs, instructions, all that stuff. Just bone up on it this week and learn how to use it. If things go perfectly, you'll have about three seconds to video Bennie."

"And if they don't go perfectly?"

"I'll rescue you."

"Great." A long, nervous swig from the flask. "So, Kyle, let's say we get Bennie on video. How do you, not me, but you, go about identifying him?"

"I haven't figured that out."

"There's a lot you haven't figured out."

"I'll e-mail you Tuesday, tell you I've got tickets, the usual drill. Are you in, Joey, old pal?"

"I don't know. I think you're crazy, and you're making me crazy."

"Come on. You need to have some fun while you can."

KYLE WAS hard at work in the main library when the FirmFone rattled softly at four on Thursday afternoon. The e-mail described itself as urgent and commanded the first-year associates to congregate immediately on the forty-fourth-floor mezzanine, the largest gathering place at Scully & Pershing. The message meant only one thing  -  the bar exam results were in. And the fact that Kyle was being summoned meant that he had passed.

For weeks they had labored against the clock and suffered the often unbearable pressure of adjusting to life in the big firm, and added to that misery was the bar exam hanging over them like a dark cloud. It was always there, seldom discussed because the exam was over and talking about it only made life worse. But it woke them up when they desperately needed sleep. It followed them to the table and could ruin a meal in an instant. The bar exam. What if they flunked the bar exam?

The ritual varied from firm to firm, but Scully & Pershing had a rather pleasant way of breaking the news. They gathered the lucky ones together and threw a party. Though it was supposed to be a surprise, by the second week of September every new associate knew the drill. The cruel part of the festivities was that the unlucky ones were simply not invited. They were left to retreat, to sneak out of the building and go wander the streets for the rest of the day.

As Kyle ran up the stairs and raced along the hallways, he searched for his friends. There were high fives, yelps for joy, people running in shoes that were not meant for running. He saw Dale and gave her a hug, and they walked quickly together. Once on the mezzanine, the crowd was already in a raucous mood before Mr. Howard Meezer, the firm's managing partner, stepped to a small podium and said, "Congratulations. Let's have a party. Not another hour can be billed today."

Champagne corks were soon flying. Bartenders were busy, and waiters began passing delicious antipasto. The general feeling was one of euphoria, even giddiness, because the nightmare was over and they were now lawyers forever.

Kyle was enjoying a glass of champagne with Dale and a few others when the conversation shifted to their less fortunate colleagues. "Does anybody see Garwood?" And they began searching the party for Garwood, who was unaccounted for and soon presumed to be on the other list.

Tim Reynolds approached them with a nasty smile, a drink in one hand and a printout in the other. "Tabor flunked," he announced proudly. "Can you believe it? A Harvard casualty." Kyle wasn't as pleased. Sure, Tabor was obnoxious and opportunistic, but he was their cube mate, and flunking the bar would kill him. He wasn't a bad guy.

Word spread; the body count rose. In all, there were 8 failures out of 103, a pass rate of 92 percent, an excellent number for any class at any firm. Once again it was clear that they were the brightest stars and were now destined for even greater things.

They got as drunk as possible, then rode home in private sedans arranged by the firm. Kyle had only two drinks and walked to Chelsea. Along the way, he called his father with the wonderful news.