John Grisham - The Associate

No response from Baxter Tate. No response from the girl.

“This is something we can deal with, Joey. It’s frightening, but we can handle it. We need to talk, for hours, but not here, not now. Let’s get away.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

THAT NIGHT, Kyle met his father for dinner at a Greek place called the Athenian. They were joined by Joey Bernardo, who’d had a few drinks in preparation for the evening and was so mellow he was quite dull. Or maybe he was just stunned or scared or something else, but he was certainly preoccupied. John McAvoy downed two martinis before he touched a menu and was soon telling war stories about old trials and old cases. Joey matched him martini for martini, and the gin thickened his tongue but did not lighten his mood.

Kyle had invited him because he did not want his father to launch into a last-ditch effort to persuade him to resist the evils of corporate law and do something productive with his life. But after the second martini, and with Joey barely coherent, John McAvoy made such an effort. Kyle chose not to argue. He ate garlic crackers and hummus and listened. Red wine arrived, and his father told another story about representing some poor soul with a good case but no money, and of course he won, as is true with the vast majority of lawyers’ tales. John McAvoy was the hero of all of his stories. The poor were saved. The weak were protected.

Kyle almost missed his mother.

Late that night, long after dinner, Kyle walked the Yale campus for the last time as a student. He was stunned at the speed at which the last three years had gone by, yet he was also tired of law school. He was tired of lectures and classrooms and exams and the meager existence on a student’s budget. At twenty-five, he was now a fully grown man, nicely educated and all in one piece with no bad habits, no permanent damage.

At this point, the future should hold great promise and excitement.

Instead, he felt nothing but fear and apprehension. Seven years of school, great success as a student, and it was all coming down to this — the miserable life of an unwilling spy.

Of the two apartments Kyle was considering, Bennie preferred the one in the old meatpacking district, near the Gansevoort Hotel, in a building that was 120 years old and had been built for the sole purpose of slaughtering hogs and cows. But the carnage was now history, and the developer had done a splendid job of gutting the place and renovating it into a collection of boutiques on the first floor, hip offices on the second, and modern apartments from there upward. Bennie cared nothing about being hip or modern, and could not have cared less about the location. What impressed him was the fact that the apartment directly above 5D was also available as a sublet. Bennie grabbed it, 6D, at $5,200 a month for six months, then he waited for Kyle to lease 5D.

Kyle, though, was leaning toward a second-story walk-up on Beekman Street, near City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge. It was smaller and cheaper at $3,800, still an obscene amount for the square footage. In New Haven, Kyle had been splitting $1,000 a month for a dump, but one that was three times as large as anything he’d seen in Manhattan.

Scully & Pershing had paid him a signing bonus of $25,000, and he was thinking of using it to secure a nice apartment early in the summer when more were available. He would lock himself away in his new digs, study nonstop for six weeks, and take the New York bar exam in late July.

When it became obvious to Bennie that Kyle was ready to lease the Beekman apartment, he arranged for one of his operatives to suddenly appear, badger the real estate agent, and offer more money. It worked, and Kyle was headed for the meatpacking district. When he verbally agreed to take 5D, for $5,100 a month for a year, beginning on June 15, Bennie dispatched a team of technicians to “decorate” the place two weeks before Kyle was scheduled to move in. Listening devices were planted in the walls of every room. The telephone and Internet lines were tapped and wired to receivers in computers located directly above in 6D. Four hidden cameras were installed — one each in the den, the kitchen, and the two bedrooms. Each could be withdrawn immediately in the event Kyle or someone else started poking around. They, too, were connected to computers in 6D, so Bennie and his boys could watch Kyle do everything except shower, shave, brush his teeth, and use the toilet. Some things should be kept private.

On June 2, Kyle loaded everything he owned into his Jeep Cherokee and left Yale and New Haven. For a few miles, he went through the usual nostalgia of saying goodbye to his student days, but by the time he passed through Bridgeport, he was thinking about the bar exam and what was waiting beyond it. He drove to Manhattan where he planned to spend a few days with friends, then move into his apartment on the fifteenth. He had yet to sign a lease, and the real estate agent was becoming irritated. He was ignoring her phone calls.

As scheduled, on June 3 he took a cab to the Peninsula hotel in midtown and found Bennie Wright in a tenth-floor suite. His handler was dressed in customary drab attire — dark suit, white shirt, boring tie, black shoes — but on June 3 he had an additional article or two. His suit coat was off, and Bennie had strapped around his shirt a shiny black leather holster with a nine-millimeter Beretta snug just below his left armpit. A quick move with the right hand, and the pistol was in play. Kyle ran through all the sarcastic remarks he might make in the presence of such weaponry, but decided at the last second to simply ignore it. It was obvious that Bennie wanted his Beretta to be noticed, maybe even mentioned.

Just ignore it.

Kyle sat as he always sat with Bennie — right ankle on his left knee, arms folded across his chest, wearing a look of complete contempt.

“Congratulations on your graduation,” Bennie said, sipping coffee from a paper cup and standing by the window that overlooked Fifth Avenue. “Did things go well?”

You were there, you asshole. Your boys watched me and Joey eat a pizza. You know what my father had for dinner and how many martinis he knocked back. You saw Joey stagger out of the Greek place drunk as a skunk. When they took my photo in cap and gown, your goons were probably snapping away, too.

“Swell,” Kyle said.

“That’s great. Have you found an apartment?”

“I think so.”

“Where?”

“Why do you care? I thought we agreed that you would stay away from me.”

“Just trying to be polite, Kyle, that’s all.”

“Why? It really pisses me off when we get together and you start this happy horseshit like we’re a couple of old pals. I’m not here because I want to be. I’m not chitchatting with you because I choose to. I’d rather be anywhere else in the world right now. I’m here because you’re blackmailing me. I despise you, okay. Don’t ever forget that. And stop trying to be polite. It goes against your personality.”

“Oh, I can be a prick.”

“You are a prick!”

Bennie sipped his coffee and kept smiling. “Well, moving right along. May I ask when you take the bar exam?”

“No, because you know precisely when I take the bar exam. What am I here for, Bennie? What’s the purpose of this meeting?”

“Just a friendly hello. Welcome to New York. Congrats on finishing law school. How’s the family? That kind of stuff.”

“I’m touched.”

Bennie set down his coffee cup and picked up a thick notebook. He handed it to Kyle. “These are the latest filings in the Trylon-Bartin lawsuit. Motion to dismiss, supporting affidavits, supporting exhibits, briefs in support of, and briefs in opposition to. Order overruling said motion. Answer filed by the defendant, Bartin, and so on. As you know, the file is sealed, so what you’re holding there is unauthorized.”