Paul Goldstein - A Patent Lie

“Who delivered this?”

“An Asian boy, a couple of hours ago.”

“Have you seen him before?”

The clerk shook his head. “I remembered because none of our usual messengers are Asian. It was the first time I've seen him.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“He wasn't here for more than a second or two.” The man was still studying Seeley's injuries. “Are you sure there's no way we can be of assistance to you?”

Sure, Seeley thought, tell me who set me up to be attacked and then sent this clipping so that I'd know it was a warning, not a random act. He rubbed the flimsy newsprint between his fingers as if it were the wrapping of some absent magic lantern whose genie might yet appear.

Seeley went to his room and dialed Lily's number. There was no answer, so he left a message on her machine for her to call him when she returned.

Seeley was dressing slowly and painfully when the telephone rang. He felt as if last night's beating hadn't missed a square inch of his body.

“Mike?”

He started to speak, but his jaw stiffened.

“Are you okay? I got your message. Gail Odum said you were in some kind of trouble.”

A newspaper reporter sees you follow a judge into chambers alone and she concludes, correctly, that you have a problem. Seeley massaged his jaw, but to no effect.

“The trial's gone off the rails. I need your help.” The word left his lips with surprising ease.

“This is about Alan's notebooks?”

Of course Lily wouldn't know about the collusion between Vaxtek and St. Gall. It was a week since Seeley last saw her, when he hadn't even known of Steinhardt's double bookkeeping. “You knew he kept two sets of books, didn't you?”

“Gail didn't say anything about it coming out in court.”

Seeley stretched one shoulder, then the other. A boiling shower had done nothing to ease the soreness. “Lily, in this country you can't play around with the judicial system like that. People go to jail. Lawyers get disbarred.”

“But nothing happened, so no one's hurt.”

“People are going to be hurt because it didn't come out.” He thought of Pearsall. “People have already been hurt. That's why I called.”

“I'm sorry, I was in the lab all night. I-”

“Lily, I could use your help.” Again, that word. There's nothing like a beating to enlarge the vocabulary. “I need you to tell Gail Odum everything you know about Steinhardt's work on AV/AS.” He had decided that if he couldn't destroy Vaxtek's case from counsel's table, he would do it in the press.

“I already told you. This is none of my business.” Her voice tightened into a knot. “I can't get involved.”

“Well, now you have no choice.”

“I like you, Mike. I want to see you again. But the fact that we slept together doesn't give you any claim on me.”

Seeley realized that, from the moment he picked up the phone, he had been waiting for her to say something about their night together. But this was all he was going to get.

Lily said, “I already told you. I can't testify.”

“You don't have to testify. I just want you to tell Gail Odum how Steinhardt keeps his records.”

“We've been over this-” She caught herself, apparently remembering that they had not discussed this. “How could it help your case for me to tell the Chronicle that Steinhardt is a fraud?”

Seeley looked at his watch on the night table. “I have to get to court. Can you come into the city?”

The phone went dead, as if she'd hung up. Then she came back on. “Sure, if it's not at your office or anywhere we'd be seen together.”

“One o'clock?”

She gave him an address on Dolores Street in the Outer Mission. “It's a friend's apartment. She'll be at work.”

Barnum, when he saw the bruises on Seeley's face, asked if he'd fallen off a barstool. Palmieri gave him a concerned look. Thorpe was in a banker's pinstriped suit this morning, his starched white collar as sharp as a knife against his neck. The dead black eyes examined Seeley and his twisted eyebrows rose in a pantomime of sympathy. Didn't I warn you, they seemed to say. Dusollier was not in the courtroom this morning.

The reality struck Seeley that virtually everyone of consequence in the courtroom knew that Vaxtek, Inc. v. Laboratories St. Gall, S. A. was a collusive lawsuit. Thorpe knew, as presumably did his second chair, Fischler. Barnum knew. For all of his objections, Palmieri knew as well. And, as the mock trial progressed and the evidence of collusion accumulated in front of her, Judge Farnsworth-whose expression showed genuine worry when she saw Seeley's battered face-now had to believe in the truth of what he had told her in chambers. Yet the charade went on, a corrupted show trial of the sort practiced in Lily's country but not, Seeley had implied to Lily, in his own. The only people who didn't yet know of the collusion were the jurors, and Farnsworth would stop at nothing to protect them from that knowledge.

Thorpe's witnesses today were testifying that even if Vaxtek's patent on AV/AS was valid, St. Gall's product did not infringe the patent. Seeley decided that if he couldn't control the jury's decision on the validity of the patent, then he could at least tar St. Gall as an infringer. He savagely went after Thorpe's witnesses-an immunologist from Johns Hopkins and a biologist from Columbia-starting his cross-examination slowly, sharpening the rhythm of his questions, forcing the witness to speed the pace of his answers, all the time moving faster, yet giving Thorpe no ground to object, until the witness's answers spilled over themselves in contradiction. The performance delighted Barnum, and at the end of the morning session, when Seeley returned to counsel's table, the general counsel vigorously clapped his injured shoulder.

Before he could press the bell at the street door of the yellow-and-white Victorian, Lily buzzed Seeley through. She was waiting for him on the second-floor landing in a white, man-tailored shirt and slender black pants; high-heeled pumps showed off her long legs. She looked as cool and carefully made-up as if she were ready for a fashion shoot, but her eyes were weary from her late night at the lab and when she showed him into the apartment her voice was as strained as it had been on the phone that morning. She studied Seeley's bruised face, probing it gently with cool fingers. “Can I get you something?”

“I have a taxi waiting. I can't stay long.”

She settled into a white-cushioned rattan chair and didn't stir as Seeley explained how Vaxtek and St. Gall had conspired to control the outcome of their lawsuit. She asked questions, each a step or two ahead of Seeley. “If they killed Robert Pearsall for what he found out, what makes you think they're not going to come after you?”

“Pearsall must have confronted them. I didn't. They don't know that I know.” After yesterday's lunch with Thorpe, and last night's assault, he no longer believed that, but Lily might. “Right now I'm thinking that Nicolas Cordier's patients in Lesotho are going to die because whether it's Vaxtek or St. Gall that gets the exclusive rights to Africa, they're going to price AV/AS out of their reach.”

She gave him a small, pensive smile. “So this is something else I get to learn about Michael Seeley. You're an idealist. I didn't expect that.”

A truck rumbled by outside and the windows of the grand old room rattled in their frames.

“I want you to tell Gail Odum about how Steinhardt backdates his notebook entries.”

She shook her head. “I didn't say that I liked your idealism. Remember, where I come from it only gets you in trouble. You're trying to wreck your own client's case.”

“And you're the only person who can help me.”