John Grisham

Huddled to one side I see the Honorable F. Franklin Donaldson the Fourth gossiping with three of his buddies, all priclash sorts who write for the Law Review and frown upon those of us who don’t. He notices me, and seems interested in something. He smiles as I walk by, which is unusual, because his face is forever fixed in a frozen scowl.

"Say, Rudy, you’re going with Brodnax and Speer, aren’t you?" he calls out loudly. The television is off. His buddies stare at me. Two female students on a sofa perk up and look in my direction.

"Yeah. What about it?" I ask. F. Franklin the Fourth has a job with a firm rich in heritage, money and pretentiousness, a firm vastly superior to Brodnax and Speer. His sidekicks at this moment are W. Harper Whittenson, an arrogant little snot who will, thankfully, leave Memphis and practice with a mega-firm in Dallas; J. Townsend Gross, who has accepted a position with another huge firm; and James Straybeck, a sometimes friendly sort who’s suffered three years of law school without an initial to place before his name or numerals to stick after it. With such a short name, his future as a big-firm lawyer is in jeopardy. I doubt if he’ll make it.

F. Franklin the Fourth takes a step in my direction. He’s all smiles. "Well, tell us what’s happening."

"What’s happening?" I have no idea what he’s talking about.

"Yeah, you know, about the merger."

I keep a straight face. "What merger?"

"You haven’t heard?"

"Heard what?"

F. Franklin the Fourth glances at his three buddies, and they all seem to be amused. His smile widens as he looks at me. "Come on, Rudy, the merger of Brodnax and Speer and Tinley Britt."

I stand very still and try to think of something intelligent or clever to say. But, for the moment, words fail me. Obviously, I know nothing about the merger, and, obviously, this asshole knows something. Brodnax and Speer is a small outfit, fifteen lawyers, and I’m the only recruit they’ve hired from my class. When we came to terms two months ago, there was no mention of merger plans.

Tinley Britt, on the other hand, is the largest, stuffiest, most prestigious and wealthiest firm in the state. At last count, a hundred and twenty lawyers called it home. Many are from Ivy League schools. Many have federal clerkships on their pedigrees. It’s a powerful firm that represents rich corporations and governmental entities, and has an office in Washington, where it lobbies with the elite. It’s a bastion of hardball conservative politics. A former U.S. senator is a partner. Its associates work eighty hours a week, and they all dress in navy and black with white button-down shirts and striped ties. Their haircuts are short and no facial hair is permitted. You can spot a Tinley Britt lawyer by the way he struts and dresses. The firm is filled with nothing but Waspy male preppies all from the right schools and right fraternities, and thus the rest of the Memphis legal community has forever dubbed it Trent & Brent.

J. Townsend Gross has his hands in his pockets and is sneering at me. He’s number two in our class, and wears the right amount of starch in his Polo shirts, and drives a BMW, and so he was immediately attracted to Trent & Brent.

My knees are weak because I know Trent & Brent would never want me. If Brodnax and Speer has in fact merged with this behemoth, I fear that perhaps I’ve been lost in the shuffle.

"I haven’t heard," I say feebly. The girls on the sofa are watching intently. There is silence.

"You mean, they haven’t told you?" F. Franklin the Fourth asks in disbelief. "Jack here heard it around noon today," he says, nodding at his comrade J. Townsend Gross.

"It’s true," J. Townsend says. "But the firm name is unchanged."

The firm name, other than Trent & Brent, is Tinley, Britt, Crawfbrd, Mize and St. John. Mercifully, years back someone opted for the abbreviated version. By stating that the firm name remains the same, J. Townsend has informed this small audience that Brodnax and Speer is so small and so insignificant that it can be swallowed whole by Tinley Britt without so much as a light belch.

"So it’s still Trent & Brent?" I say to J. Townsend, who snorts at this overworked nickname.

"I can’t believe they wouldn’t tell you," F. Franklin the Fourth continues.

I shrug as if this is nothing, and walk to the door. "Perhaps you’re worrying too much about it, Frankie." They exchange confident smirks as if they’ve accomplished whatever they set out to accomplish, and I leave the

lounge. I enter the library and the clerk behind the front desk motions for me.

"Here’s a message," he says as he hands me a scrap of paper. It’s a note to call Loyd Beck, the managing partner of Brodnax and Speer, the man who hired me.

The pay phones are in the lounge, but I’m in no mood to see F. Franklin the Fourth and his band of cutthroats again. "Can I borrow your phone?" I ask the desk clerk, a second-year student who acts as if he owns the library.

"Pay phones are in the lounge," he says, pointing, as if I’ve studied law here for three years now and still don’t know the location of the student lounge. "I just came from there. They’re all busy." He frowns and looks around. "All right, make it quick." I punch the numbers for Brodnax and Speer. It’s almost six, and the secretaries leave at five. On the ninth ring, a male voice says simply, "Hello."

I turn my back to the front of the library and try to hide in the reserve shelves. "Hello, this is Rudy Baylor. I’m at the law school, and I have a note to call Loyd Beck. Says it’s urgent." The note says nothing about being urgent, but at this moment I’m rather jumpy. "Rudy Baylor? In reference to what?" "I’m the guy you all just hired. Who is this?" "Oh, yeah. Baylor. This is Carson Bell. Uh, Loyd’s in a meeting and can’t be disturbed right now. Try back in an hour."

I met Carson Bell briefly when they gave me the tour of the place, and I remember him as a typically harried litigator, friendly for a second then back to work. "Uh, Mr. Bell, I think I really need to talk to Mr. Beck." "I’m sorry, but you can’t right now. Okay?" "I’ve heard a rumor about a merger with Trent, uh, with Tinley Britt. Is it true?"

"Look, Rudy, I’m busy and I can’t talk right now. Call back in an hour and Loyd will handle you."

Handle me? "Do I still have a position?" I ask in fear and some measure of desperation.

"Call back in an hour," he says irritably, and then slams down the phone.

I scribble a message on a scrap of paper and hand it to the desk clerk. "Do you know Booker Kane?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"Good. He’ll be here in a few minutes. Give him this message. Tell him I’ll be back in an hour or so."

He grunts but takes the message. I leave the library, ease by the lounge and pray that no one sees me, then leave the building and run to the parking lot, where my Toyota awaits me. I hope the engine will start. One of my darkest secrets is that I still owe a finance company almost three hundred dollars on this pitiful wreck. I’ve even lied to Booker. He thinks it’s paid for.

Chapter Three

IT’S NO SECRET THAT THERE ARE TOO MANY lawyers in Memphis. They told us this when we started law school, said the profession was terribly overcrowded not just here but everywhere, that some of us would kill ourselves for three years, fight to pass the bar and still not be able to find employment. So, as a favor, they told us at first-year orientation that they would flunk out at least a third of our class. This, they did.

I can name at least ten people who’ll graduate with me next month and after graduation they’ll have plenty of time to study for the bar because they have yet to find work. Seven years of college, and unemployed. I can also think of several dozen of my classmates who will go to work as assistant public defenders and assistant city prosecutors and low-paid clerks for underpaid judges, the jobs they didn’t tell us about when we started law school.