One of Kyle’s favorite professors was an old radical who’d spent most of the 1960s marching for or against something, and he was still the first one to organize a petition against whatever he perceived to be the latest injustice on campus. When he heard the news that Kyle had flipped, he called and demanded lunch. Over enchiladas at a taco bar just off campus, they argued for an hour. Kyle pretended to resent the intrusion, but in his heart he knew he was wrong. The professor railed and hammered and got nowhere. He left Kyle with a disheartening “I’m very disappointed in you.”
“Thanks,” Kyle retorted, then cursed himself as he walked to campus. Then he cursed Bennie Wright and Elaine Keenan and Scully & Pershing and everything else in his life at that moment. He was mumbling and cursing a lot these days.
After a few rounds of ugly encounters with his friends, Kyle finally found the courage to go home.
THE MCAVOYS DRIFTED into eastern Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century, along with thousands of other Scottish settlers. They farmed for a few generations, then moved on, down to Virginia, the Carolinas, and even farther south. Some stayed behind, including Kyle’s grandfather, a Presbyterian minister who died before Kyle was born. Reverend McAvoy led several churches on the outskirts of Philadelphia before being transferred to York in 1960. His only son, John, finished high school there and returned home after college, Vietnam, and law school.
In 1975, John McAvoy quit his job as a lowly paid pencil pusher in a small real estate law firm in York. He marched across Market Street, rented a two-room “suite” in a converted row house, hung out his shingle, and declared himself ready to sue. Real estate law was too boring. John wanted conflict, courtrooms, drama, verdicts. Life in York was uneventful enough. He, an ex-Marine, was looking for a fight.
He worked very hard and treated everyone fairly. Clients were free to call him at home, and he would meet them on Sunday afternoons if necessary. He made house calls, hospital calls, jail calls. He called himself a street lawyer, an advocate for clients who worked in factories, who got injured or discriminated against, or who ran afoul of the law. His clients were not banks or insurance companies or real estate agencies or corporations. His clients were not billed by the hour.
Often, they were not billed at all. Fees were sometimes delivered in the form of firewood, eggs and poultry, steaks, and free labor around the house. The office grew, sprawled upstairs and down, and John eventually bought the row house. Younger lawyers came and went, none staying more than three years. Mr. McAvoy was demanding of his associates. He was kinder to his secretaries. One, a young divorcee named Patty, married the boss after a two-month courtship and was soon pregnant.
The Law Offices of John L. McAvoy had no specialty, other than representing low-paying clients. Anyone could walk in, with an appointment or without, and see John as soon as he was available. He handled wills and estates, divorces, injuries, petty criminal cases, and a hundred other matters that found their way to his office on Market Street. The traffic was constant, the doors opened early and closed late, and the reception area was seldom empty. Through sheer volume, and an innate Presbyterian frugality, the office covered its expenses and provided the McAvoy family with an income that was in the upper-middle class for York. Had he been greedier, or more selective, or even a bit firmer with his billing, John could have doubled his income and joined the country club. But he hated golf and didn’t like the wealthier folks in town. More important, he viewed the practice of law as a calling, a mission to help the less fortunate.
Patty had twin girls in 1980. In 1983, Kyle was born, and before he started kindergarten, he was hanging around his father’s office. After his parents divorced, he preferred the stability of the law office to the strains of joint custody, and each day after school he parked himself in a small room upstairs and finished his homework. At the age of ten he was running the copier, making coffee, and tidying up the small library. He was paid $1 an hour in cash. By the age of fifteen he had mastered legal research and could hammer out memos on basic subjects. During high school, when he wasn’t playing basketball, he was at the office or in court with his father.
Kyle loved the law office. He chatted up the clients as they waited to see Mr. McAvoy. He flirted with the secretaries and pestered the associates. He cracked jokes when things were tense, especially when Mr. McAvoy was angry with a subordinate, and he pulled pranks on visiting lawyers. Every lawyer and every judge in York knew Kyle, and it was not unusual for him to slip into an empty courtroom, present a motion to a judge, argue its merits if necessary, then leave with a signed order. The court clerks treated him as if he were one of the lawyers.
Before college, he was always around the office at five on Tuesday afternoons when Mr. Randolph Weeks stopped by with a delivery of food — fruits and vegetables from his garden in the spring and summer and pork, poultry, or wild game in the fall and winter. Every Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. for at least the past ten years, Mr. Weeks came to pay a portion of his fee. No one knew exactly how much was owed or how much had been paid, but Mr. Weeks certainly felt as though he was still in debt to Mr. McAvoy. He had explained to Kyle many years earlier that his father, a great lawyer, had pulled a miracle and kept Mr. Weeks’s oldest son out of prison.
And Kyle, though only a teenager, had been the unofficial lawyer for Miss Brily, a crazy old woman who’d been run out of every law office in York. She trudged the streets of the town with a wooden file cabinet on wheels, boxes of papers which she claimed proved clearly that her father, who had died at the age of ninety-six (and she still suspected foul play), was the rightful heir to a huge tract of rich coal deposits in eastern Pennsylvania. Kyle had read most of her “documents” and had quickly concluded that she was even nuttier than most lawyers suspected. But he engaged her and listened to her conspiracies. By then he was earning $4 an hour and worth every penny of it. His father often parked him in the reception area to screen those new clients who at first glance showed the potential to waste a lot of his time.
Except for the usual adolescent dreams of playing professional sports, Kyle always knew he would be a lawyer. He wasn’t sure what kind of lawyer, or where he would practice, but by the time he left York for Duquesne, he doubted if he would return. John McAvoy doubted it, too, though, like any father, he often thought of the pride he would have if the firm name became McAvoy & McAvoy. He demanded hard work and excellent grades, but even he was a little surprised at Kyle’s academic success in college and at Yale Law School. When Kyle began his interviews with the big corporate law firms, John had plenty to say on the matter.
KYLE HAD CALLED and told his father he would arrive in York late Friday afternoon. They had agreed on dinner. As usual, the office was busy at 5:30, when he arrived. Most law firms closed early on Friday, and most lawyers were either in bars or at the country club. John McAvoy worked late because many of his clients got paid at the end of the week, and a few stopped by to write small checks or see about their cases. Kyle had not been home in six weeks, since Christmas, and the office looked even shabbier. The carpet needed replacing. The bookshelves sagged even more. His father couldn’t stop smoking; therefore smoking was permitted, and a thick haze floated near the ceiling late in the day.
Sybil, the ranking secretary, abruptly hung up the phone when Kyle walked through the door. She jumped to her feet, squealed, grabbed him, and thrust her gigantic breasts at him. They pecked on the cheeks and enjoyed the physical greeting. His father had handled at least two divorces for Sybil, and the current husband would soon be on the street. Kyle had heard the details during the Christmas break. The firm currently had three secretaries and two associates, and he went from room to room, downstairs first, then upstairs, where the young lawyers were kept, speaking to the employees as they packed their briefcases and purses and tidied up their desks. The boss might enjoy staying late on Fridays, but the rest of the firm was tired.