A Patently Thrilling Legal Drama

Tag : Steel Die Sets

The last time Michael Seeley saw his brother it was in a hotelkitchen in San Francisco and Leonard was arguing with the hotel'scatering manager over the bill for his wedding reception. Workerswere cleaning up and the pulsing bass from the dance band in thenext room echoed over the clatter of silverware. Seeley had tocatch red-eye back to New York City, but the caterer was implacableand Leonard wouldn't let up, even when Seeley signaled that he wasgoing to leave. Only after Seeley started out the door did Leonardstop, flinging his arms open to pull him into an awkward embrace.
"Let's stop being strangers, Mike." Leonard's breath tickled hisear.
Seeley broke away without answering. He loved his younger brotherin the sense that he cared about his well-being, but he neitherliked nor trusted him.
In the nine years since the wedding Leonard had called three orfour times and sent his annual Christmas card. There was a printedannouncement when he moved his medical practice from Palo Alto toSan Francisco, and another last year when he took a job as chiefmedical officer at a biotech company in South San Francisco.
The announcement, mailed to Seeley in Manhattan, caught up with himin Buffalo, where he had moved his law practice. His first job outof law school had been in Buffalo. However, this time he waspracticing not in the city's largest firm but by himself, and notin a steel-and-glass officetower but in a small office in theEllicott Square Building, an ancient pile of bricks in the centerof the city's half-deserted downtown.
Seeley's feet were up on a corner of his desk. Behind him, thesingle window looked out onto Swan Street, four stories below. Hislarge shoulders hunched forward as if he was trying to warm himselfagainst the chill scene outside. Rudy, the building's boiler man,was maneuvering a giant wrench beneath the decrepit steam radiatorby the door and offering his views on whether the radiator was theoldest in western New York or in the Western world when a movementof yellow and gold flashed by the open door.
Seconds later, Seeley's part-time receptionist leaned into theoffice. "Someone to see you." There was an unfamiliar thrill inMrs. Rosziak's voice, as if the visitor were a celebrity, or atleast a client more prosperous than the ones who usually came tothe office. " From California ." She underlined the words. "Your brother."
It was Leonard's sandy hair and the lemon V-neck under abrass-buttoned blazer that created the impression of yellow andgold. The wariness in Leonard's eyes when he came into the roomdidn't match the broad smile and outstretched arms. His armsdropped when he saw Seeley's frown. Leonard transferred a thickmanila envelope to his left hand and reached the other across thedesk. Seeley's single thought as he took his brother's hand was howquickly he could get him out of the office. He had already plannedhis day: reviewing client files, preparing for two courtappearances in the early afternoon, visiting a jailed client whohad been unable to make bail.
Rudy packed his toolbox and, going through the door, saluted Seeleywith a promise that the radiator would be fine for at least anothercentury. Seeley gestured for Leonard to take the client's chairacross from him.
"It's nice to see you, Len, but I'm busy, and if you flew out hereto pitch your case, you wasted your time."
"I left a message with your girl that I was coming."
The thought of Mrs. Rosziak being called a girl amused Seeley, butnot enough to make him smile. "She told me."
Leonard had been leaving messages with Mrs. Rosziak for a week. Hiscompany, Vaxtek, had filed a lawsuit against St. Gall, the giantSwiss drug producer, for infringing the patent on Vaxtek's entry inthe race for an AIDS vaccine. With the trial three weeks away,Vaxtek's lead lawyer suddenly died. Seeley understood that thecompany's future depended on winning the lawsuit, but he also knewthat any one of hundreds of lawyers could try the case. Leonard waslooking for something more.
"Why didn't you call back?"
"I didn't want to encourage you."
"Always looking out for your little brother." Leonard smiled aroundthe words. "Still the college quarterback. A little thinner, maybe,but still a full head of hair." He patted the top of his own headwhere, Seeley guessed, the hair had been carefully barbered to hidea bald spot. The color, though Leonard's as a boy, now surely camefrom a bottle.
Leonard's eyes moved around the office, taking in the metalbookshelf stuffed with a worn, black-bound set of McKinney's NewYork Code, the half-dozen vintage prints of the Buffalo harbor thatleaned against the bottom shelf waiting to be hung, two ancientfile cabinets, and the window with its gray outlook.
Leonard was perspiring. Was he wearing a great deal of gold, or didit just seem that way? It struck Seeley that the charm on whichLeonard survived as a boy had lost some of its polish.
"This is your kind of case, Mike. Little guy takes on big guy.David against Goliath. You get to be David's lawyer."
"Your little guy is a publicly held corporation. I don't representcorporations anymore. I sue them."
Leonard said, "In a single day, St. Gall makes more off its curefor erectile dysfunction than we make on all of our products in ayear. They're a thousand times our size. In broad daylight theysteal our biggest patent, and do you know what they say? I'm at aconference in Miami, giving a presentation, and when I finish, St.Gall's vice president for research — an MD, the guy with thesame job as me — comes up and says, 'We're going to crushyou.' That's it. He doesn't say hello, or I slept through yourspeech, or your patent's no good. Just, 'We're going to crush you.'Then he walks away."
Across the room, the radiator banged as if it had been struck by ahammer. The hiss of steam that followed had a rusty, boiled smell.
"You could take them down, Mike. I followed every one of your caseswhen you were in New York." He patted the hidden bald spot again."You didn't know I did that, did you? I took subscriptions to acouple of legal newspapers just so I could keep track."
That wasn't the kind of thing Leonard would do.
"I clipped out the stories and gave them to Mom."
"That's the past, Len. I don't do that kind of case anymore." Hisbrother's persistence was making Seeley repeat himself, and heresented it.
"I went out on a limb for you. I had to sell you to our generalcounsel, and then the two of us sold you to our chairman. He'scounting on you."
"Then he's going to be disappointed."
"I thought that if I could make you understand how important thisis to me, you'd take it."
Leonard removed a handkerchief from an inside pocket of his jacketand wiped his forehead. When he unbuttoned the jacket, Seeley sawthat he had put on weight since the wedding nine years ago. Seeleyfelt a moment's sadness for Leonard and for his brother's dream ofrepairing a family that was broken from the start.
Seeley said, "I never saw you as a corporate type. I pictured youin a white coat, healing the sick."
"Or telling them they're going to die. I spent four years doingthat. Half my patients in San Francisco were HIV positive. Theother half already had AIDS. It's why I took the job at Vaxtek.What we have is as close as anyone's come to a real AIDS vaccine.Do you know how many lives this is going to save when we get ourFDA approval? Here. Africa. Around the world. How many lawyers getthe chance to defend a patent like this?"
"How did he die?" If he changed the subject, Seeley thought,Leonard might give up and leave. "The lawyer who was trying thecase."
"Bob Pearsall was a fine lawyer. He was in your league, Mike. Heorchestrated the case like Beethoven. A family man, too. Everyoneloved him."
What Seeley heard was, a beloved family man, unlike MichaelSeeley.
Leonard waited, and when Seeley didn't speak, said, "He threwhimself in front of a train."
"How do you know that?"
"How else does a fifty-eight-year-old man end up dead on therailroad tracks?"
"Do you know why?"
"Who knows? His health was perfect — I know his doctor. Hewas an outdoors nut. Camping. Bird-watching."
"What do the police say?"
"What I said. Suicide. One of life's mysteries. Who knows what'sbeneath the surface?"
When Leonard read in the legal newspapers about Michael Seeley'scourtroom triumphs, could he have imagined the dark corners thathis older brother was navigating on his own precipitous slide?Trying big cases back to back, winning trials that he had no rightto win, all the time retreating deeper into shadows that werevisible only to him. It was no mystery to Seeley that despair couldso engulf someone riding the crest of his career that he woulddecide to end his life.
"What time of day did it happen?"
"Early in the morning. Before dawn. Why would it matter?"
Seeley said, "I was wondering if anyone saw him do it." He couldalmost hear the wheels turn as Leonard calculated whether thelawyer's death might be the hook that would bring his brother toSan Francisco. "Where did it happen?"
"A half hour south of San Francisco. He lived in the city. Thereweren't any witnesses."
"Why would he go that far from home? Was it close to a station?"
"Somewhere between stations, I think. Would it make any differencefor you taking the case?"
"I was just wondering why someone would go so far out of his way totake his own life."
"Like I said, who knows what he was thinking? Look at thephotographs in the obituaries. Half the time, a guy kills himselfand in the picture he's got a big smile on his face."
"In Pearsall's photograph — was he smiling?"
"Like he was having the time of his life."
Leonard leaned forward and with his index finger pushed the thickmanila envelope on the desk toward Seeley. "What can I say to getyou to come to San Francisco?"
Two questions fought in Seeley's mind, one asking why he would lethimself slip into his brother's plans for him, the other, why hewouldn't. When Leonard first called, Seeley turned him down atonce, making the decision even before his brother could describethe lawsuit. After that, from the messages Mrs. Rosziak passed onto him, Seeley knew that, although the case was big, it could betried in less than a month. For that short a time he could easilyarrange continuances for his few cases in Buffalo. Wasn't this whyhe left his large corporate firm in New York City—not just topick his clients and have no partners to answer to, but to be freeto take cases of moral consequence. How many of his current casescame close to the heft of this one? Vaxtek was hardly the helplessvictim that Leonard painted, but the multinational St. Gall was awar machine, and if Leonard was telling the truth his company'ssurvival depended on this patent.
Seeley said, "I'm not admitted to practice in California." IfLeonard was in fact following his career, he knew that his brotherregularly tried cases outside New York State. A simple motion tothe court, granted virtually as a matter of course, was all that itwould take for him to appear.
"You've done it before — practiced in other states."
Seeley said, "Why are you smiling?"
"Because you're —"
"I didn't say I'd take the case."
Leonard lifted his hands, placating. "I was just going to say I'mglad you'll consider it. That's all I'm asking for. Willingness."He pressed his palms against his lap and rose. "Let me take you tolunch. Give me a chance to find your weak spot."
Leonard's confidence annoyed Seeley. "I have to be in court attwo."
"My flight's at three-thirty. Is the Hatch still open?"
"The places on the lake close down after Labor Day."
"Let's go and look. It's worth a try."
The Hatch was little more than a lunch counter on a built-up partof the Lake Erie shore, locally famous for its grilled bolognasandwiches—a massive slab of meat tucked into a hard rollalong with a pile of grilled onions and a slathering of brightyellow mustard. Seeley remembered childhood outings when Leonardwould inhale the sandwich as greedily as if it were a communionwafer.
Seeley again thought about motives-Leonard's in pursuing him, hisin resisting-as he lifted the camel-hair coat from the stand by theanteroom door and handed it to his brother. He took a maroon scarffrom the other hook and threw it around his neck. At her desk, thesurface filled with a collection of creams and lotions, Mrs.Rosziak beamed. The office's exterior walls were the original lathand plaster, but the partition that divided Seeley's office fromthe receptionist's anteroom was thin wallboard, and from theofficious bustle of papers Seeley knew that she had eavesdropped onthe conversation. As soon as the door closed behind him, she wouldbe on the phone to the airlines, checking on flights to SanFrancisco.
***
The sky had been a muddy gray since the beginning of October, andBuffalo wouldn't see the sun again for months. Over the past week,an errant snowflake or two would materialize out of the crisp airand as quickly disappear. Any day could bring the first snowfall.But more than the snow and bitter cold, it was the prospect of thisunrelenting, joyless sky that defined the season for Seeley.
The cold slowed Leonard's chatter as they walked, and he seemedalmost contemplative. The three or four blocks that radiated southand west from the Ellicott Square Building resembled a bustlingdowntown, but once the brothers passed the city's policeheadquarters, a squarish afterthought of dirty yellow brick, theoffice buildings gave way to a grim patchwork of low anonymousstructures, weed-choked lots behind chain-link fences, and here andthere a darkened church. The bundled-up pedestrians disappeared,and closer to the thruway overpass the downtown traffic dwindled tothe occasional car cruising Erie Street, hip-hop blasting frombehind rolled-up windows. In the shadow of the overpass, thetemperature suddenly dropped ten degrees. Thruway traffic drummedthe vaulting concrete.
Leonard huddled into his topcoat. "One thing I'll take to the gravewith me is the bleakness of this place. I can be at the beach inthe middle of July, but if I think about Buffalo, I feel the coldin my bones."
Seeley said, "Austerity has its virtues."
Excerpted from A Patent Lie by Paul Goldstein Copyright © 2008 by Paul Goldstein.Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of thisexcerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission inwriting from the publisher.