Each took a breath and looked at Dr. Boone. It was time for judgment, for the sentencing, for a final word in this horribly expensive facility. “I want your frank opinion,” Walter said.

Dr. Boone nodded, and without taking his eyes off Baxter, he began, “You’re not ready. You’re not ready, because you’re not angry, Baxter. You must reach a point where you’re angry at your old self, your old life, your addictions. You have to hate the way you were, and when this hatred and anger consumes you, then you’ll have the determination not to go back there. I can see it in your eyes. You’re not a believer. You’ll go back to L.A., back to the same friends, and then parties, and then you’ll take a drink. You’ll tell yourself that one drink is okay. You can handle it, no problem. That’s what happened before. You start with a couple of beers, then three or four, and then it spirals down. Booze at first, but the coke quickly follows. If you’re lucky, you’ll come back here and we’ll try again. If you’re unlucky, you’ll kill yourself.”

“I don’t believe this,” Baxter said.

“I’ve talked to the other counselors. We’re all in agreement. If you leave now, there’s a good chance you’ll screw up again.”

“There’s no way.”

“Then how much longer?” Walter asked.

“That depends on Baxter. We haven’t broken through yet, because he’s not angry at his old self.” Dr. Boone’s eyes met Baxter’s. “You still have this fantasy of making it big in Hollywood. You want to be famous, a star, lots of girls, parties, magazine covers, big movies. Until you get that out of your system, you cannot stay clean.”

“I’ll find you a real job,” Walter said.

“I don’t want a real job.”

“See what I mean?” Dr. Boone said, pouncing. “You’re sitting here now, trying to talk your way out so you can hustle back to L.A. and take up where you left off. You’re not the first Hollywood casualty I’ve seen, Baxter. I’ve been around the block a few times. If you go back there, you’ll be at a party within a week.”

“What if he goes somewhere else?” Walter asked.

“When he’s finally discharged, we’ll certainly recommend a new place of residence, away from his old friends. Of course there’s booze everywhere, but it’s the lifestyle that has to change.”

“What about Pittsburgh?” Walter asked.

“Oh, hell no!” Baxter said. “My family’s in Pittsburgh, and look at them. I’d rather die on skid row.”

“Let’s work here for another thirty days,” Dr. Boone said. “Then we’ll reevaluate.”

At $1,500 a day, Walter had his limits. “What will you do for the next thirty days?” he asked.

“More intensive counseling. The longer Baxter stays here, the better his chances of success when he reenters.”

” ‘Reentry’.” I love the term,” Baxter said. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Trust me, Baxter. We’ve spent hours together, and I know that you’re not ready.”

“I’m so ready. You don’t know how ready I am.”

“Trust me.”

“All right then, let’s meet again in thirty days,” Walter said.

The orientation dragged on through Thursday and became as dull as most of the litigation files the new associates would soon be assigned to. On Friday, they finally got around to the issue that had been conspicuously ignored the entire week — office assignments. Real estate. There was little doubt that their space would be cramped, sparsely furnished, and hidden from view, and so the real question was, how bad will it be?

Litigation was concentrated on floors 32, 33, and 34, and somewhere in there, far away from the windows, were cubicles with the new names mounted on small plates and stuck to the movable walls. Kyle was shown to his on the thirty-third floor. His cube was divided into four equal shares by canvas partitions so that it was possible for him to sit at his desk, talk quietly on the phone, and use his laptop with some small measure of privacy. No one could actually see him; however, if Tabor to his right and Dr. Dale Armstrong to his left rolled their chairs back no more than two feet, then they could see Kyle and he could see them.

His desk had enough surface area for his laptop, a legal pad, the office phone, and not much else. A few shelves finished off the design scheme. He noted that there was barely enough room for a man to unroll his sleeping bag. By Friday afternoon, Kyle was already tired of the firm.

Dr. Dale was a female mathematics whiz who’d taught at the college level before deciding for some reason to become a lawyer. She was thirty, single, attractive, unsmiling, and frosty enough to be left alone. Tabor was the gunner from Harvard. The fourth member of their little cube was Tim Reynolds, a Penn man who’d been eyeing Dr. Dale since Wednesday. She did not seem at all interested. Among the torrent of firm policies and dos and don’ts that had been carped on all week, the one that rang loudest was a strict prohibition against interoffice romances. If a love affair blossomed, then one of the two had to go. If a casual affair was discovered, there would be punishment, though its exact nature was not spelled out in the handbook. There was already a hot rumor that a year earlier an unmarried associate had been fired while the married partner who’d been hounding her got sent to the office in Hong Kong.

A secretary was assigned to the four. Her name was Sandra, and she had been with the firm for eighteen long and stressful years. She had once made it to the major leagues as an executive secretary for a senior partner, but the pressure proved too much, and she had slowly been demoted down through the minors, all the way down to the rookie league, where she spent most of her time holding the hands of kids who were just students four months earlier.

Week one was finished. Kyle had not billed a single hour, though that would change come Monday. He found a cab and headed for the Mercer Hotel in SoHo. The traffic was slow, so he opened his briefcase and pulled out the FedEx envelope sent from a brokerage house in Pittsburgh. Joey’s handwritten note read: “Here’s the report. Not sure what it means. Drop me a line.”

Kyle found it impossible to believe that Bennie could monitor the avalanche of mail in and out of Scully & Pershing every day — fifteen hundred lawyers cranking out paperwork because that’s what they were supposed to do. The mail room was larger than a small-town post office. He and Joey had decided to play it safe with snail mail and overnight delivery.

The report had been prepared by a private security firm in Pittsburgh. It was eight pages long and cost $2,000. Its subject was Elaine Keenan, now age twenty-three, who currently lived in an apartment in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with another female. The first two pages covered her family, education, and employment history. She attended Duquesne for only one year, and a quick check of her birth date confirmed that she was not quite eighteen when the episode occurred. After Duquesne, she attended classes off and on at a couple of schools around Erie and Scranton, but had yet to finish her degree. During the previous spring semester she had taken some classes at the University of Scranton. She was a registered Democrat with two campaign stickers on the rear bumper of her 2004 Nissan, which was titled in her name. According to the available records, she did not own any real estate, firearms, or stock in foreign banks. There were two minor incidents with the law, both involving underage drinking and both handled expeditiously by the courts. The second scrape required counseling for alcohol and drug use. Her attorney had been a local female named Michelin Chiz, better known as Mike. This was notable since Elaine worked part-time in the law offices of Michelin Chiz & Associates. Ms. Mike Chiz had a reputation as a fierce divorce lawyer, always on the side of the wives, and always ready to castrate wayward husbands.