Paul Goldstein - A Patent Lie

Barnum said, “Is that your only loose end?”

“So far,” Seeley said. “I still have two more shelves of depositions to read.”

“Did you get your pro hac motion granted?”

“Chris Palmieri's taking care of it.”

Barnum gave him a doubtful look. “What do you think of him-Palmieri?”

“Why?” Seeley remembered Palmieri's uncertainty about joining him at counsel's table.

Barnum said, “It didn't seem to you that he's maybe… a little light in the loafers?”

As he spoke, Barnum moved and Seeley caught a warning look from Leonard. It took him a moment to understand what was on Barnum's mind. The trim build, the close-cropped hair, the pink pocket handkerchief.

Seeley said, “That's none of my business.”

“If you want to win this case, you'll make it your business. The jury's impression of Vaxtek, what kind of company we are, is what they see when they look at counsel's table. I don't want them to see a queer sitting there.”

Seeley decided not to ask Barnum how many jury cases he'd tried. “If you count up who a lot of the AIDS victims are in San Francisco, I'd think having him at counsel's table would be an advantage.” It was cheap tactical point that Seeley regretted as soon as he made it.

“There's a big difference between the San Francisco you read about in the newspapers and the San Francisco that sits on a federal jury.”

Leonard had come around to the front of his desk. “Mike has a great track record with juries. I'm sure he'll pick his jurors carefully.”

“Not before Ellen Farnsworth, he won't.” Barnum's eyes hadn't moved from Seeley's. “She runs her own voir dire. She picks the jury.”

Seeley reminded himself that he hadn't yet done his research on District Judge Ellen Farnsworth, who would preside at the trial.

Seeley said, “Palmieri's the only one on the team who knows where the evidence is. He has all the exhibits and depositions indexed and cross-indexed on his laptop. If he's not next to me, I can't cross-examine witnesses.”

“Get someone else on the team up to speed.”

“No. I already told Palmieri it's going to be him.”

Barnum turned to Leonard. “Your brother's a real piece of work.”

“I already told you, if you don't want me to run your trial, I can be on a plane tonight.”

“I'm going to be up there with you at counsel's table.”

Barnum would use his bulk, Seeley thought, to hide Palmieri from the jury. “That's fine,” Seeley said. “So long as there's room.”

“I might as well tell you now, I'm not like other GC's you've worked for. They see a trial coming and they run the other way. My first job out of law school was in the San Mateo County DA's office. I like going to trial and, when I get there, I keep a tight grip on the wheel.”

Seeley said, “I'm sure you've taken the company's trial work to a new level.”

After Barnum left, Leonard said, “You haven't lost it, have you? Your talent for pissing off a complete stranger.”

“My only interest is in winning this case. But I'm not going to let your general counsel abuse my team.”

Leonard unfolded and buttoned a sleeve of his sport shirt. “Ed's okay. Give him some room.” He buttoned the other sleeve. “Steinhardt's waiting for you. I'll take you to his office.”

Seeley followed Leonard down a carpeted corridor lined with rows of cubicles, only a few of them occupied.

“Once we scale up and go to market, every one of these desks is going to be busy with marketing and backup.”

They crossed a wide corridor, and linoleum tile replaced the carpeting.

“What you told Ed, that there aren't any holes in the case-you're sure?”

Seeley said, “There's no case that isn't a crapshoot. Things come up. But, as far as I can see, you're in good shape.”

Leonard put a hand on Seeley's arm, pleased. “We can crack open a bottle of champagne tonight.”

Leonard's dismay when Seeley told him that he'd decided to stay at a hotel and not at his house in Atherton left Seeley no choice but to accept his brother's dinner invitation.

The walk to Steinhardt's office took them past laboratories that looked little different from the high-school labs at St. Boniface, where he and Leonard were students thirty years ago. There were more plastic containers than Seeley remembered, and there hadn't been laptops on the scarred black lab counters, but the shelves lined with reagent bottles were the same, as were the spaghetti of tubing that looped down from fat-globed flasks into glass beakers and the neatly labeled drawers, the refrigerator posted with black-and-yellow warnings, and the exhaust hood under which the class clown manufactured his stink bombs. White lab coats hung from hooks along the walls. Somehow science had made all these extraordinary leaps using little more than a high-school junior's lab tools.

Seeley said, “How closely did you monitor Steinhardt's work?”

Leonard heard the concern behind the question. “You just told me there weren't any loose ends.” His good humor had evaporated.

“I want to make sure Warren isn't a problem.”

Leonard took Seeley's arm and steered him around a jumbo-size doormat at the entrance to one of the labs. The white vinyl mat looked as sticky as flypaper and was clotted with shoe prints. “Real high tech,” Leonard said. “It's to get the crud off your shoes when you go into the lab.”

He continued on, holding Seeley's elbow. “I review Steinhardt's work as closely as anybody's. When he started getting results, I looked even more closely. But remember, Mike, I'm running seven fully staffed labs here.”

“Did you review his lab notes?”

Leonard gave him a hard look. “You're not listening, Mike. If I get three or four hours at night to review the science we do here, I've had a good day. Most of my time I spend explaining to the FDA why AV/ AS is safe and effective. Do you know how many trips I had to make to Washington to get us on track for phase-three trials? It's a full-time job just convincing our insurance companies that they're not going to be defending liability lawsuits the day after we go to market. The World Health Organization's watching us. So are the nonprofits. And there's the AIDS activists. You'll see them when you go to court.”

“I'd think they'd be supporting you.”

“This is the globalization crowd. They say we're going to use our patent to gouge the Africans on price. We haven't told them, but in sub-Sahara we're prepared to price AV/AS as low as fifteen dollars a dose.”

“Why don't you tell them that? The AIDS group.”

“Because then I would have to explain to the American AIDS groups how, if we can go to market for fifteen dollars in Kenya, we can justify charging two hundred fifty dollars here. They don't understand that fifteen dollars doesn't support this kind of research.”

Seeley wondered where the money went. Vaxtek certainly wasn't spending it on offices or laboratories.

They were at the door to Steinhardt's office. Leonard, his voice suddenly thick, said, “You don't approve of how I do my job.”

“It's none of my business, Len, to approve or disapprove.”

“I'm looking forward to dinner tonight. Renata, too.” Leonard tried to make it light, the charming host, but the emotion in his voice reminded Seeley that, whatever his accomplishments as a physician and executive, part of his brother was still the kid hiding out behind the living-room couch.

The open box of imported chocolates on the marble end table, not a single piece removed, told Seeley everything he needed to know about Alan Steinhardt. The chocolates, the translucent silk drapes, Oriental rugs, antique furniture, and the scale of the room-the office was at least five times the size of Leonard's-were all for show. Steinhardt might at one time have been a dedicated researcher, but the surroundings made Seeley wonder how much of his energy he now invested at the laboratory bench. A recording of a string quartet played from speakers hidden in the ceiling.