John Grisham - The Associate

“Is that all?”

“Bankrupted, humiliated, it’s a long list.”

“You need more than friends.”

The turtle crawled onto the sand and disappeared into the roots of a dead tree. “We’d better get back,” Kyle said.

“We gotta talk some more. Let me think about this.”

“We’ll sneak away later.”

They followed the river to the campsite. The sun had dropped below the mountains, and night was approaching quickly. Clem stoked the coals and added wood to the fire. The crew gathered around and opened beers, and the chatter began. Kyle asked if anyone had heard from Baxter. There was a rumor the family had locked him away in a high-security rehab unit, but this had not been confirmed. No one had heard from him in three weeks. They told Baxter stories for far too long.

Joey was notably quiet, obviously preoccupied. “You got girl trouble?” Clem asked at one point.

“Naw, just sleepy, that’s all.”

By 9:30 they were all sleepy. The beer and sun and red meat finally caught up with them. When Clem finished his third long joke in a row with a lame punch line, they were all ready for their sleeping bags. Kyle and Joey shared a tent, and as they were arranging two rather thin air mattresses, Clem yelled across the campsite, “Be sure and check for snakes.” Then he laughed, and they assumed it was another attempt at humor. Ten minutes later they heard him snore. The sound of the river soon put them all to sleep.

At 3:20 a.m., Kyle checked his watch and saw the time. After three rough weeks of bar review, his nights were erratic. The fact that he was essentially sleeping on the ground didn’t help matters.

“You awake?” Joey whispered.

“Yes. I assume you are too.”

“I can’t sleep. Let’s go talk.”

They quietly unzipped the front tent fly and eased away from the campsite. Kyle led with a flashlight, moving carefully, watching for snakes. The path led up to a rocky trail, and after a few minutes of tentative hiking they stopped near a huge boulder. Kyle turned off the flashlight, and their eyes began to focus in the darkness.

“One more time,” Joey said. “Describe the video.”

Since it was seared into Kyle’s memory, he had no trouble replaying it — exact times, camera location, angle, the people involved, the arrival of the police, and the presence of Elaine Keenan. Joey absorbed it again without a word.

“Okay, Kyle,” he said finally. “You’ve lived with this since February. You’ve had plenty of time to think. Right now I ain’t thinking real clear. Tell me what we should do.”

“The big decision has been made. I’m officially employed by Scully & Pershing, and at some point I’ll get around to the dirty work. But there are two things I want to know. The first concerns Elaine. I know where she is, but I’d like to know who she is now. Is she capable of dragging this up again, or has she moved on? Does she have a life, or is she living in the past? According to Bennie, she has a lawyer and she still wants justice. Maybe so, maybe not, but I’d like to know the truth.”

“Why?”

“Because Bennie is a liar by trade. If she’s still angry, or if she’s dreaming of squeezing money out of us, especially Baxter, it’s important to know. It could impact what I do at the law firm.”

“Where is she?”

“She lives in Scranton, but that’s all I know. For about two thousand bucks we can hire a private investigator to do a background on her. I’ll pay it, but I can’t arrange it myself, because they’re watching and listening.”

“So you want me to do it?”

“Yes. But you have to be careful. No phones or e-mails. There’s a reputable investigator in Pittsburgh, not too far from your office. I give you the cash, you give it to him, he does the snooping, gives us the report, and nobody will know about it.”

“Then what?”

“I want to know who Bennie is and who he works for.”

“Good luck.”

“It’s a long shot. He might work for an opposing law firm, or a client involved in a big lawsuit, or he might work for some intelligence operation, domestic or foreign. If I’m being forced to spy, I would like to know who I’m spying for.”

“That’s too dangerous.”

“It’s very dangerous, but it can be done.”

“How?”

“I haven’t got that far yet.”

“Great. And I’m guessing that I’ll be involved in this plan that has yet to be created.”

“I need help, Joey. There’s no one else.”

“I got a better idea. Why don’t you just go to the FBI and tell them everything? Tell them this creep is trying to blackmail you into stealing secrets from your law firm?”

“Oh, I’ve thought of that, believe me. I’ve spent hours upon hours walking through that scenario, but it’s a bad idea. There’s no doubt whatsoever that Bennie will use the video. He’ll send a copy to the Pittsburgh police, a copy to Elaine, and a copy to her lawyer with clear instructions on how to use it to inflict as much misery as possible on me, you, Alan, and especially Baxter. He’ll put it on the Internet. The video will become a big part of our lives. You want Blair to know about it?”

“No.”

“This guy is ruthless, Joey. He’s a professional, a corporate spy with an unlimited budget and plenty of manpower to do whatever he wants. He would watch us burn and have a good laugh, probably from someplace where the FBI can’t touch him.”

“A real prince. You’d better leave him alone.”

“I’m not doing anything stupid. Look, Joey, there’s an even chance that I can survive this. I’ll do the dirty work for a few years, and when I’m no longer useful, Bennie will disappear. By then, I’ve violated every ethic in the book, and I’ve broken laws too numerous to mention, but I haven’t been caught.”

“That sounds awful.”

And indeed it did. Kyle listened to his own words and was hit again by the folly of it all, and by the bleakness of his future.

They talked for two hours, until the sky began to change, and never once thought about returning to the tent. It was cooler on the ridge.

The old Joey would have jumped in with both feet, looking for a fight. This later version was much more cautious. He had a wedding to think about, a future with Blair. They had already bought a new condo together, and Joey, without the slightest trace of embarrassment, claimed that he was enjoying the decorating. Joey Bernardo, decorating?

Breakfast was scrambled eggs with hot sauce and bacon with onions. Clem cooked over the fire while his crew broke camp and loaded the raft. By eight o’clock, they were off, floating leisurely on the New River, headed nowhere in particular.

After a month in the city, Kyle savored the fresh air and open spaces. He envied Clem, a good ole boy from the mountains who earned little and needed even less. Clem had worked “these rivers” for twenty years and loved every minute of it. Such an uncomplicated life. Kyle would trade with him in an instant.

The thought of returning to New York made him ill. It was July 6. The bar exam was in three weeks. Scully & Pershing was two months away.

Tuesday morning, September 2, 8:00 sharp. A hundred and three nicely dressed and quite apprehensive new associates congregated on the law firm’s forty-fourth-floor mezzanine for coffee and juice. After signing in and receiving name tags, they chatted nervously, introduced themselves, and looked for friendly faces. At 8:15 they began to file into the large meeting room, and on the way in each was handed a four-inch-thick notebook with the bold Scully & Pershing Gothic logo printed on the front. It was filled with the usual information — a history of the firm, a directory, pages and pages on firm policies, health insurance forms, and so on. In the “Diversity” section there was a breakdown of their class: Male, 71, Female, 32; Caucasian, 75, African-American, 13, Hispanic, 7, Asian, 5, Other, 3; Protestant, 58, Catholic, 22, Jewish, 9, Muslim, 2, Undeclared, 12. Each member had a small black-and-white photo with a one-paragraph bio. The Ivy League dominated, but there was fair representation from other top schools such as NYU, Georgetown, Stanford, Michigan, Texas, Chicago, North Carolina, Virginia, and Duke. There was no one from a second-tier school.