A Patent Lie (23 page)

Schroeder's was on Front Street, around the corner from Tadich, its fresh blue-and-white façade and gothic heraldry evoking old Bavaria. Inside, pillars lost themselves in the murky heights of the dining room. Waiters scuttled about in the amber light below and there was a faint malty scent about the place. Thorpe ordered his Koenigsberger Klopse and a dry martini. It startled Seeley how just the word “martini” shot adrenaline into his heart. He asked for a steak sandwich, rare, and a glass of water.

When Thorpe started in again about the legendary Jake Ehrlich, Seeley said, “I'm sure this is fascinating, but I could be back in my office preparing for your next witness.”

Thorpe's laugh sounded genuine, but the eyes, wary as ever, told Seeley that there was a point to the story, and that he should listen closely.

“Back then,” Thorpe said, “the really great trial lawyers like Jake had a single ideal: represent your client as shrewdly and strenuously as you humanly can. They played fair, but that was their ideal. They didn't get mixed up with
causes
. A lawyer today, representing people who care about the environment or abortion or access to medicine, nine times out of ten, he'll sacrifice his client if he thinks it will serve the cause.”

It astonished Seeley that this profoundly immoral man should rebuke him for what he was doing, but the message was unambiguous. Thorpe knew that Seeley had discovered the collusion.

“Jake and the others lived rewarding lives—and long ones.” Thorpe studied his manicured fingers spread out on the table. The nails, bluish at the edges, glowed against the dark, scarred wood. This time, when Thorpe looked up, he was smiling.

Seeley said, “And this is why your courtroom work for St. Gall has been so aggressive.”

If Thorpe caught the irony, he didn't reveal it. “You know how this kind of litigation works, Michael—or do you? For a drug company like St. Gall, every one of its patents represents millions of dollars in R&D, hundreds of millions for the blockbusters. So any time a court rules that a patent is invalid—not just a St. Gall patent, but a Vaxtek patent, too—it makes for . . . let us say, a precedent, a legal climate, that is unfavorable to my client's patents.”

Thorpe waited for the white-aproned waiter to place the cocktail glass in front of him before continuing.

“Today a jury in a San Francisco courtroom holds your client's patent invalid and, who knows, tomorrow, maybe in Boston, or London, or Amsterdam, it will be my client's turn to have its patent struck down.”

Thorpe couldn't expect him to believe that this was how St. Gall plotted its litigation strategy. On this premise, no pharmaceutical company would ever sue for patent infringement.

“If that was your client's strategy, you wouldn't have stipulated priority.”

“As you know”—Thorpe sipped at his martini, but kept his eyes on Seeley—“we have a small problem with a witness on the question of priority.”

“How's that?”

“I know about your lunch with Dr. Warren. That was inappropriate, of course, for you to talk to an adverse witness without going through me.”

“She wasn't an adverse witness when I talked to her.” How did Thorpe know about the meeting? “You'd already dropped her from your list.”

“Well, I suppose we had.” Thorpe looked around the room. Most of the lunch crowd was gone. “What do you think of this place?”

“Very . . . old world.”

Thorpe tilted his head and gave Seeley a silly grin that didn't fit the haggard features. “Old San Francisco.”

The waiter arrived with the food. Thorpe's Koenigsberger Klopse were two large meat dumplings under a layer of cream sauce mixed with capers. A small mountain of red cabbage crowded one side of the plate, a pile of fried potatoes the other. Thorpe sampled a forkful of dumpling. “This is wonderful. Would you like some?”

Seeley shook his head. He'd had another sleepless night and was exhausted from the morning's cross-examination. Thorpe's winks and grins chafed at him. The dregs in the martini glass looked like salvation.

Seeley said, “I wonder if Jake Ehrlich would have done any of the harebrained things you tell me you've been doing for your client.”

Thorpe's smile disappeared. “At the end of the day, Michael, you're out of your element here, and you would do well to take instruction about this case.” He went back to his meal.

For all of the lawyer's chatter, Seeley realized, Thorpe had said nothing expressly to admit that Vaxtek and St. Gall were colluding, or that he had a part in it.

Thorpe took his time chewing, and when he finished, said, “You think I invited you to lunch to talk about settlement.”

Ten days ago, when they made the lunch date, that had been the object.

“You know,” Thorpe said, “a case can settle at any time—five minutes before the jury returns, or five months before the complaint is even filed.”

“What are you getting at?”

“What I'm saying”—Thorpe was as tired of Seeley as Seeley was of him—“is that you know nothing about this case. What if—and I'm only speaking hypothetically of course—what if this case that you want us to fight like two gladiators has already settled? Say that our clients signed off on it months ago. In that event, we would be no more than actors, you and I. Actors in a charade. We'd do well, wouldn't we, to play the part we've been assigned?”

Seeley said, “Two parties can settle a case, but they can't turn an invalid patent into a valid one.”

“Validity. Invalidity. This is a gray area, a swamp. Wise men stay clear of swamps.” Thorpe speared a home fry. “This is a good time to be wise rather than smart.”

“There's an issue of principle here.”

“No, in my hypothetical case there's only an issue of money, and when the case is over all that will happen is that money will move from one party's bank account to another's—”

“But only because patented vaccines cost more than unpatented ones. What about the millions of AIDS victims in Africa who can't afford AV/AS?”

“Who's talking about AV/AS? This is just a hypothetical situation I'm describing. What you're talking about is international politics. That's way over our heads—who's going to subsidize access to the vaccine, who's going to lobby for condoms, who's going to insist on abstinence. This is way beyond the reach of two trial lawyers.”

“Did you have this little heart-to-heart with Robert Pearsall before he was killed?”

For the first time since he started eating,Thorpe put down his silverware. Two tables away, a head turned. Thorpe's voice was quiet but pitiless. “You know even less about Bob Pearsall than you do about his case. He was a complicated man.”

“Studying philosophy never killed anyone.”

“Then you have forgotten your
Dialogues
, what Plato had to say about the trial and execution of Socrates.” Thorpe took in Seeley's surprise. “You attended a Jesuit college. Of course you read the
Dialogues
.”

The old lawyer surveyed the almost empty dining room. “You have also mistaken San Francisco's surface charms for its substance. This city can be a very dangerous place for lawyers who let their ideals get in the way of their pragmatism.”

Seeley said, “We really deceive them, don't we? You, your buddy Jake, and me.”

“Deceive who?”

“We let people think that some lawyers are good, doing their pro bono work, while others just chase after money. But that's only a distraction so that people don't consider the real harm we can do, the corruption, the profound evil that a lawyer can commit.”

After that, they could have been strangers, or a father and his son, the way that they finished their meal in brooding silence.

Seeley spent the rest of the day preparing for tomorrow's witnesses. He needed a break from Palmieri, and the young partner didn't complain when Seeley sent him off to write the first draft of his closing argument. McKee was in and out of Seeley's office, educating him on technical details of the AV/AS patent that Seeley would need for his cross-examination. It was almost 11:00 when Seeley filled his briefcase with papers and turned out the lights.

As much as he enjoyed his solitary morning walks from the Huntington down to Heilbrun, Hardy's offices, it was retracing that route at night, the great dark bay at his back, that truly gave Seeley pleasure. Except for Grant and Stockton, still a blaze of neon with streams of shoppers and late-night diners, the maze of streets spidering out from the Embarcadero along and across the borders of Chinatown was deserted at this hour. The signs on the darkened storefronts mixed Chinese characters with English words and, in the shuttered tenements that rose above them, Seeley felt the presence of alien lives, sleeping, eating, watching the Chinese soap operas on cable. He felt safer on this empty street than he did across a restaurant table from Thorpe.

He thought of Lily, as he had throughout the day. If he could persuade her to tell the
Chronicle
what she knew about Steinhardt and his work on AV/AS, that could be the trigger for the mistrial that he needed. Each time, though, Seeley dismissed the thought of asking her for help. It wasn't Judge Farnsworth's order not to talk with the media, directly or through others, that concerned him; he could handle those consequences if he had to. No, he admitted to himself, what stopped him was the simple thought of picking up the phone. Asking for help was Leonard's weakness, not his.

As he crossed Joice Street, a dim alley off Sacramento, Seeley felt his skin prickle. He sensed that he was no longer alone. A sound like the rattling of dry leaves swept up the alley—his thoughts shot back to the dark sedan by the railroad tracks—but the tempo was pointed and rhythmic and had an unmistakably human source.

The rattling stopped, and an instant later a sharp blow at the back of Seeley's knees sent him crashing to the pavement. A second blow stung a shoulder, and his chin struck the asphalt. A burst of high-pitched chatter like a quarrelsome flock of birds flew up from his assailants, and at once pointed sticks expertly dug and prodded at his body. The voices were harsh and nasal, and the words—it sounded like an Asian language—were as sharp as the probing sticks. His attackers were rebuking him for some offense.

In English, one cried, “DO NOT ENTER! DO NOT ENTER!”

Seeley turned in the direction of the screeching demand and raised himself, crooking an arm to protect his eyes from the continuing blows. He was looking at a boy, no older than seventeen or eighteen, his long dark hair streaked with blond, frantically shaking a bamboo rod in the direction of a street sign where the alley began. Seeley was stunned that the blows had already driven him this far from the intersection.

“DO NOT ENTER! DO NOT ENTER!”

The traffic sign at which the boy was pointing displayed a red circle with a slash through it, warning drivers not to enter the one-way alley. The boy's cries turned to shrieks of hysteria as he gestured with the bamboo to his companions. All three were in T-shirts and baggy chinos cut off above the ankle, rubber flip-flops on their feet. At a whoop from the leader, there was a flurry of lashings, several striking Seeley across the ribs, others pummeling his sides. The pain of each blow was excruciating, but Seeley forced himself not to cry out; he would not give them that satisfaction.

“DO NOT ENTER!” the leader jeered, his laughter pure idiot hatred.

The alley was empty, as was the crossing where the sticks first brought him down. Seeley could make out figures moving along Clay Street at the other end of the alley, but they were too distant to hear him even if he did call out. Street grit scraped at his jaw; the stench of garbage rotting at the curb sickened him. From his dog's-eye view the long brick wall of a building stretched across from him. Behind him, he remembered, was an empty parking lot surrounded by a torn chain-link fence. Even if anyone was watching from the dark tenements, no one would call for help. He had to get up; lying on the street like this, he could not possibly maneuver. But when he moved to rise, the beatings quickened.

Seeley felt a tug of nausea, the taste of copper at the back of his throat. These are kids, he told himself. If they were going to rob or seriously injure him, they would have done so by now. Ignoring the pain, he pushed himself up, forced his body into a crouch, waited for his strength to gather, then lunged at the youth closest to him, the leader. He caught the boy's wrist and, twisting it against his back so that the bamboo dropped, Seeley lifted and hurled him against the chain fence. The surprise of the boy's weightlessness threw Seeley off balance. When the dazed youth came back at him—a rebound, not an act of will—Seeley circled one arm around a thin neck and with the other again pulled the boy's arm up behind his back.

While his captive gasped and whimpered, the two other youths froze, staring at Seeley, uncertain of what the rules now were. Panic replaced the empty looks and one, then the other, dropped their bamboo rods and ran off in the direction of Clay Street. So much for loyalty, Seeley thought. The leader was shivering in Seeley's grip, his entire body exhaling a spoiled, meaty smell. Breathless, Seeley said, “What's this about?”

The panting youth didn't answer.

Through the cheap T-shirt, Seeley felt the boy's heart beating frantically, like a small bird's. He said, “Your friends aren't coming back to help you.” Against his will, Seeley felt sympathy for the terrified boy—why did he take pity on his tormentors?—and thrust him away. “Get out of here!”

Staggering, the boy went down the alley where the others had gone. Pain seeped into Seeley's bones as he bent down, lifted the bamboo rods, and threw them over the chain-link fence. Then he walked to the corner and retrieved his briefcase.

The traffic on Sacramento was light and none of the few pedestrians noticed as Seeley made his slow, unsteady way up the hill. He thought about the strangeness of the encounter. The boys had demanded nothing from him. Not a word they said, in English at least, indicated racism. He would have expected a street thug to be strong, a scrapper, yet the leader was a weakling and his companions were cowards; had he restrained the boy any more strenuously, Seeley was certain that he would have snapped his bones. The oddest part was how dispassionately, almost casually, the attack unfolded, even the leader's rant about the do not enter sign. It was as if the boys were amateurs reading a script for the first time. Their panic, when Seeley struck back, was as much from ignorance as fear.