A Patent Lie (30 page)

Palmieri came from behind the desk. “It's been good working with you, Mike. I never thought I'd meet a trial lawyer as good as Bob Pearsall.”

“It was a privilege to work with you.” Seeley offered his hand, and resisted the impulse to hug Palmieri, or even to touch his shoulder as a way of embracing what they'd accomplished together. “I couldn't have done this without you.”

Palmieri's eyes didn't let Seeley go. He seemed unembarrassed by the quiet intimacy of the exchange. Finally, he withdrew his hand. “I learned a lot from you.”

“Like what?”

“How hard it can be to lose a case.”

Seeley said, “Only when you're trying.”

“You have great timing, Seeley.”

For some reason, he liked the sound of Lily calling him by his last name.

“I don't have to be back in the lab until Sunday afternoon. That gives us three days for ourselves.”

The night was clear, and from the chaises on Lily's terrace they could see all the way to where a procession of trawlers, their lights strung like Christmas trees, crossed the dark horizon.

“We need to talk about what happened.”

“You're the silent one,” Lily said. “I don't mind.”

“You had a lot of courage, going to the newspaper.”

“Not really. Five minutes after you left, I knew I didn't have a choice.”

“Why did the story take so long to come out?”

“You're the most impatient person I know!”

“What do you mean?”

“Gail had to check facts and give Vaxtek and St. Gall a chance to return her phone calls. Alan, too.”

She rested her fingers on the back of his hand. “You better stick to law. You don't have the patience to make it as a scientist.”

Seeley said, “Neither does Steinhardt. He couldn't wait for his own results, so he stole yours.”

“What's going to happen to him?”

“In the courts?” It was absurd, but Lily's interest in Steinhardt made him jealous. “Nothing. As much as he wanted to commit perjury, and as close as he came, in the end he didn't.”

“Only because you stopped him. Do you regret that?”

As usual, Lily was at least a step ahead of him. “He won't get his reputation back, but he'll try. Don't be surprised if his lawyer calls and offers to put your name next to Steinhardt's on the AV/AS patent.”

“If he does, will you be my lawyer?”

“Sure,” Seeley said. The thought of helping to attach Lily's name to her discovery pleased him. “The Patent Office also has a procedure for removing a person's name from a patent and replacing it with the name of the true inventor. Yours.”

Lily sipped at the jasmine tea that she had brought out to the balcony, but said nothing.

Seeley said, “Think about it.”

“I know you can't understand, but there's a part of me that still feels loyal to Alan.” After a long moment, she said, “Do it. Don't wait for his lawyer to come to us. Go to the Patent Office and do it.”

Seeley knew that there would be no opposition from Vaxtek or St. Gall. Follow-up stories had appeared under Odum's byline and there were others in the national press, but the news of Dusollier's arrest had shut down any plans that the two companies might have had to question Lily's part in the discovery of AV/AS. They now had other battles to fight in the press. This morning's
Chronicle
article had mentioned Lily's role in only a single paragraph, and by the time indictments started coming in and the prosecutions got under way, she would be forgotten.

Seeley said, “What are you going to do next?”

“There've been some phone calls. E-mails. A few of them look serious.”

“Any of them interesting?”

“One from Rockefeller University in New York. It's where I got my doctorate. Another from the Scripps Institute in La Jolla.”

“Why do I hope you'll choose the Atlantic over the Pacific?”

“There's also a nonprofit in Illinois, near Carbondale, that's talking about giving me my own lab. It's small, but it's well funded. I'm visiting there next week.”

Seeley felt the same panicky flutter in his stomach as when he was on the phone with Mrs. Rosziak and imagined the collapse of the Ellicott Square Building. This was a new feeling for him. He knew that he had no claim on Lily, but why did the thought of losing her make him feel this way?

She took his hand in hers.

Seeley said, “What's it like for you, looking at the ocean every day and knowing that your home is on the other side?”

“What was it like for you to look at all those bottles of beer lined up on the wall at Barbara's Fish Trap?”

“I could always take a drink. But I won't. Just like you won't go back to China.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I'm not sure,” Seeley said. “I'm thinking about moving back to New York.” He let her fingers interlace his.

“What about San Francisco? Your brother's here.”

Seeley shook his head.

“Are the two of you close?”

The seriousness in her voice forced Seeley to think about the answer, and he realized that, as much as he might want to obliterate it, the bond between Leonard and him would be there forever. “Like two peas in a pod.”

“What's going to happen to him?”

“If the government indicted people for being cowards, Leonard would need to hire a lawyer. He knew about the collusion. But nothing will happen.” Nothing, Seeley thought, unless he knew of the plan to murder Pearsall.

Neither of them spoke for what seemed like minutes, and then Lily slipped her fingers from Seeley's. “Have you talked with him since the trial?”

“No.”

“Where does he live?”

“Atherton.”

“It's only a thirty-minute drive.” As she spoke, Lily moved her head slowly from side to side. “You weren't planning to say goodbye to him, were you?”

Seeley frowned.

“You need to do that.”

“I'll think about it.”

“No,” she said, “I mean now.”

“Why?”

“How many big brothers does he have?” Her face came close to his. “I'll still be here when you get back.”

“I don't even know if he's home.”

“Come back as soon as you can.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. “We'll watch the fog come in.”

Water spun from sprinklers on Leonard's lawn, draining into pools on the black pavement. The now-familiar scent of eucalyptus, field grass, and wood smoke reminded Seeley of the pumped-in perfume at a suburban mall. He preferred the yeasty scents of San Francisco, the iodine smell of the ocean.

Leonard must have heard the car because he was at the door.

“I'm glad you came.” He had an open bottle of beer in his hand. Behind him, lights burned in the living room and a fire blazed in the huge stone fireplace. “I wish you'd called. Renata's on rounds.”

Seeley followed his brother into the room.

“She won't be more than half an hour.”

It struck Seeley that Leonard lied even when he had nothing to gain.

“Do you want a drink? Beer? I can get you something stronger.”

“I just came to say goodbye.”

“Stay until Renata gets back. You're part of the family. She'll want to see you.”

“Why do you keep pressing that button, Len?”

Leonard shook off the question. “Well, then, take a good look.” He threw his arms wide to encompass the glass-walled room. “This is the last you're going to see of the place. The bank will let us stay for another two, three months, but the equity's gone.”

When Seeley looked at Vaxtek's stock price that afternoon, it was down more than forty percent. It might rise a few points on Monday, when the two companies announced the settlement of their lawsuit, but Leonard had bought on margin, and his account had to be wiped out by now.

“Still, with Renata's salary and mine, we're fine. The company, too. We're shutting down Steinhardt's lab—no one's seen him since that newspaper article—but we have other products in the pipeline.”

If Leonard believed that, he was kidding himself. In less than a week, disappointed shareholders would begin filing lawsuits against Vaxtek's management and, with AV/AS producing no more than the modest royalties approved by Judge Farnsworth, Warshaw would put the company up for sale for whatever he could get from one of the large multinationals.

“I wouldn't count on it, Lenny.”

Leonard winced. “Why not?” He took the hassock by the fire and tilted the green bottle to his mouth. Seeley took the couch opposite him.

“Your chairman's going to be spending more time talking to his lawyers than running his company.”

“Criminal?”

“That depends on how high the DA thinks he can go. The killer, Baptiste, is going to try to make a deal by implicating Dusollier. If he does, and if Dusollier's got anything on Warshaw, I'd say your boss is in trouble.”

“Joel always lands on his feet.”

“I don't think the DA is going to give him special treatment for being a juvenile.”

A light snapped on in the entryway, and Seeley started.

“The timer,” Leonard said.

“What about you?” Seeley said. “Did you do anything the DA would be interested in?”

“You mean that crack you made about my pushing Pearsall in front of the train? I thought you were kidding.”

“You tell me.”

“Come on, Mike. Sure, I lied about Steinhardt. I knew about the collusion. But I don't go around killing people.”

It wasn't Seeley's best judgment, but he decided to believe his brother.

Leonard drained the beer. “Stay for Thanksgiving. Mom will really be excited to see you.”

“You've got to give up on this, Len. It won't work.”

“What do you mean? This is family.”

“What family?”

“You. Mom. Me. Renata. It's not perfect, the way you always want things, but it's good enough.”

“There never was a family,” Seeley said.

“Whose choice was that?”

“Why is this so important to you?”

Leonard slumped on the hassock, and Seeley caught a glimpse of what his brother would look like as an old man.

Leonard said, “After everything else is gone—your job, your friends—who else is there but your family?”

“Why does there have to be anyone?”

“I suppose that's the difference between us.” For an instant, a spark of acceptance flickered into Leonard's tired eyes, then disappeared. “The story in the
Chronicle
—that was your idea, wasn't it?”

Seeley had told no one, not even Palmieri, what he had done to sabotage Vaxtek's case, and he was not going to start with his brother. “On Friday the judge is going to approve a settlement agreement that will commit Vaxtek to licensing AV/AS to any company that wants to produce it. It's not why I took the case, but I can't say I'm unhappy about the result.”

“Why
did
you take the case?”

Seeley started to answer, but the memory of his brother hiding behind their bedroom door stopped him. “Because you asked me to.”

Leonard's spirit recovered. “So family does count for something.”

“I thought I owed you after walking out thirty-two years ago.”

“You count the years, too.”

“Did you know that I had my finger on the trigger? That if it weren't for the safety catch, I would have killed him?” Not Father, or even Lothar.
Him
. Seeley reached for his rage—at Leonard, at his father—but found nothing there.

“I didn't know that.”

Seeley rose. “I need to go.”

Leonard followed him into the hallway. “You realize,” he said, “leaving was the best thing you ever did for me.”

That jarred Seeley. “How's that?”

“Do you think I liked being your kid brother? You judging me all the time? Always being measured against you? Why do you think I went out for tennis? It was the only sport you didn't play.”

“I was only trying to protect you, Len.”

“Well, if you want a doctor's opinion,” Leonard said, “that's the worst thing you can do to someone. If he messes up, let him fix it for himself.”

Seeley smiled to himself. Leonard hadn't lost his alchemist's ability to turn his own faults magically into someone else's responsibility. Seeley looked around the large glass room. The wind had picked up, rattling tree branches across the skylight. He moved to the brightly lit entry, but Leonard was quicker and blocked the door.

Leonard appraised Seeley with the same clinical eye as when he had examined the bruises from his Chinatown beating. “Did you ever think that maybe it was us who abandoned you?”

When Seeley didn't answer, Leonard said, “No, you only think about things that you can fix.”

“I'm nothing if not practical.”

Leonard grinned. “If you believe that, you're a dreamer. You're the most romantic idealist I'll ever know.”

“Then that's another difference between us.”

“Are we going to see each other again?”

“I don't know,” Seeley said.

“Whatever happened, Mike”—Seeley didn't know if Leonard meant the trial or what happened thirty-two years ago—“it was good to see you. It was good for us to get to know each other again.”

Seeley reached out a hand, as did Leonard, but at the last moment—a boxer's fake—Leonard threw his arm around Seeley's neck and drew him into a clumsy embrace. When Seeley tried to pull back, Leonard's lock on him was that of a wild man. Seeley thought, Was this in fact why I came to California? To reconcile with my brother? He looked about, as if the house might reveal an answer, but the windows, the skylight, the hall mirror all reflected back the same baffling image: a grasping thing; some prehistoric being; a benign beast from a dark fable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their generous help with this book, I am grateful to friends and colleagues Judge William Alsup, Shantanu Basu, Matt Doyle, Meg Gardiner, Dan Ho, Pam Karlan, Don Kennedy, Gladys Monroy, Alan Morrison, Robert Reinhard, Stephen Sherwin, Jayashri Srikantiah, and Bob Weisberg.

Two books—Jon Cohen,
Shots in the Dark:The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine
(2001) and Patricia Thomas,
Big Shot: Passion, Politics, and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine
(2001)—provided useful background, as did Patricia Kahn, ed.,
AIDS Vaccine Handbook
(2d ed. 2005). The AV/AS patent—but certainly not the story behind it—is modeled on U. S. Patent No. 6,261,558B1, Synthetic Human Neutralizing Monoclonal Antibodies to Human Immunodeficiency Virus, invented by Carlos F. Barbas, Dennis R. Burton, and Richard A. Lerner.

Gerald Howard and Katie Halleron at Doubleday, and Wendy Strothman at the Strothman Agency, provided valuable editorial suggestions, as did Karla Eoff and Lynne Anderson. Lynne Anderson also typed the manuscript with a timely assist from Mary Ann Rundell.