A Patent Lie (5 page)

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.

A side door opened and Steinhardt entered the room, moving quickly but gracefully. He tilted his head and arched an eyebrow in the direction of the room he had just left. The scientist's fingertips no more than grazed Seeley's hand. “You must forgive me. There are always crises in the lab and—I am sure someone told you—I must be on a plane to Paris in three hours. You will excuse me if I keep our meeting brief.”

“That's up to you,” Seeley said. “We can go over your testimony now or the day before trial.” “I don't think a rehearsal will be necessary.”

Steinhardt's narrow face, the neatly trimmed goatee and mustache, the slicked-back gray hair were moderately forbidding. Seeley imagined that it was a long time since anyone had called him Al. Still, he thought that with some sandpapering he could turn the scientist into a passable witness—not lovable but authoritative. A juror who was looking for a father's approval might be persuaded to believe in him.

“As I said, it's your decision. But I'd recommend that you leave yourself some time. Right now, you're my lead witness and St. Gall is going to go after you on cross-examination like you're the only thing that stands between them and a profitable fourth quarter. If you're not prepared, you're going to wind up looking look like a real horse's ass.” He stopped to make sure the scientist was paying attention. “The press loves it anytime a prominent witness gets torn apart on cross-examination.”

“The press?”

“The local papers will be there. I'm sure the
Times
and
Wall Street Journal
will send stringers. This is a big case.
Time
should have someone. Maybe
Newsweek
.”

Steinhardt's expression darkened. He shot the cuffs of his white lab coat. The coat looked like it had been custom-tailored to his small, trim frame. “What would I need to do?”

“You can start by telling me what AV/AS is about.”

“If you need me to explain that to you, I'd say you're not the man to conduct my case.”

“This isn't for me,” Seeley said. “It's for the jury. You're the one who's going to have to explain the science to the jury.”

Steinhardt considered that, and for a moment stood even more erect. He gestured to Seeley to take one of the antique upholstered chairs and took one himself. Then he checked his watch and appeared to change his mind. “I could give you the five-minute version, but I expect you will have questions. This will have to wait until I return from Paris. I promise you, it will be a brief trip.”

“If I were you, I'd cancel the trip.”

“You obviously fail to understand. I have an important paper to deliver. Not to go would be out of the question.”

Seeley had worked with scientists before, and it was a puzzle to him why anyone would spend good money to put these people on airplanes and lodge them at luxury hotels just so they can read papers to each other that they could more conveniently and at less expense read at home. Steinhardt could at least answer one question for him. “What does AV/AS stand for?”

“AV is standard nomenclature. AIDSVAX. One of the first vaccines tested—this was years ago—was AIDSVAX B/B.” Steinhardt's smug expression told Seeley he didn't have to ask what AS stood for.

“And this was entirely your work? No one else contributed to it?”

The scientist didn't flinch. “Of course it was. I have people working for me, assistants, but their work is entirely routine, on the order of cleaning test tubes. None of them does any science.”

“And Lily Warren?”

Steinhardt frowned, and Seeley expected to hear yet again that Warren was a crackpot.

“She was my graduate student at the university.”

“Which university is that?”

“UCSF. The University of California at San Francisco. I had my laboratory there before I brought it here. Surely, you've read my résumé.”

“And Warren worked with you at UCSF.”

“
For
me. We only did the most basic science there. Nothing patentable. In any event, she was little more than a glorified lab technician.”

Seeley had seen Warren's résumé in the black witness binder, as he had Steinhardt's. She did her undergraduate work at Johns Hopkins, took her doctorate at Rockefeller University, and then got a postdoctoral fellowship in Steinhardt's lab at UCSF. She wasn't just his graduate student, as he said; she was a postdoc. And she was not someone who cleaned test tubes.

“You're aware, she's made a claim that she discovered AV/AS.”

“I'm also aware that no one, not even St. Gall, has displayed the poor judgment to take her claim seriously.”

Was it possible, Seeley wondered, for this man to utter one word without condescension? In theory, Pearsall's decision to make Steinhardt Vaxtek's leadoff witness was correct. Corporations may pay for the research and development that it takes to produce a new drug, but jurors want to see the invention's human face, the scientist whose genius and tireless effort produced a miracle out of nothing more than an idea and a few cell cultures. Seeley revised his estimate of Steinhardt's prospects as a witness. In the hands of a capable trial lawyer, which he knew Thorpe was, arrogance like this was going to destroy Steinhardt in the courtroom. If Seeley kept him as the leadoff witness, the damage to Vaxtek's case could be irreparable.

Seeley said, “If new facts come out, St. Gall can still change its mind and call Warren to testify. I need to know if we're going to find her fingerprints anywhere near AV/AS.”

“I can assure you, Lily Warren has no claim to my discovery.”

Steinhardt saw that this didn't satisfy Seeley, and with a curt gesture motioned him closer. “You are my lawyer, is that right? Anything I tell you is confidential?”

“I'm Vaxtek's lawyer, not yours.”

“A technicality.” Steinhardt drew closer. The eyebrow arched; the shoulders shrugged. “You are a man of the world, Mr. Seeley, so you will understand. This young woman was infatuated with me. Such things happen. She is attractive, and she can even be charming, but of course it would have been unprofessional of me to take an interest. This ridiculous claim of hers is revenge, nothing more.”

“Did you tell Leonard about this? Ed Barnum?”

“What is there to tell? As I said, I don't want to injure her professional opportunities.”

Even if Seeley believed Steinhardt, Warren must have had a substantial enough claim to the invention that St. Gall had not initially thought her a crackpot. Why, then, had they so precipitously dropped her and stipulated that Steinhardt was the sole inventor?

“Is there anyone else who might make a claim to AV/AS?” Seeley knew the question would infuriate Steinhardt.

Steinhardt shook his head.

“You are the sole inventor of AV/AS?”

“Of course I am!” He came out of the chair, directly at Seeley, his face twisted in anger and dark from the rush of blood. “What have I been telling you?”

“You're going to have to learn to control your temper. I'm being gentle with you. Emil Thorpe, who will be cross-examining you, will not. The jury will turn against you if you can't do better than this. But, if it's a consolation, the press will love it.”

“Have you looked at my laboratory notebooks?”

Seeley remembered asking Palmieri to review Steinhardt's notebooks.

Behind Steinhardt, a slender woman came into the office. Her suit and the way she wore the scarf knotted at her neck told Seeley that she was either European or had mastered the look. She had a small stack of euros in her hand and a slender envelope.

Steinhardt took the bills and envelope and placed them on the desk. The exchange was wordless, and she left.

“You need have no concerns, Mr. Seeley. I will return from Paris on Sunday, in ample time to testify. It is imperative that I be the one to explain my discovery to the court.” He started to unbutton the starched white jacket. “You do have me on your list as the lead witness?”

Pearsall had already told him he was. The man's insecurity was as staggering as his ego.

“He left you instructions to put me first, didn't he—the poor fellow who jumped in front of the train?”

“Rest assured,” Seeley said, “you will be the most important witness in the trial.”

THREE

The last week before the start of a major trial rises and falls on ocean swells of crisis—exhibits to be readied, last-minute motions to be filed, witnesses to be prepared—but the crises had become predictable over the years, their resolution as inevitable as their occurrence, and Seeley had left to Palmieri all but the most daunting of them: where to place Alan Steinhardt in the lineup of witnesses and how to rebut any last-minute claims by Lily Warren.

Still, Seeley knew that he could make better use of his time than chasing down Highway 280 after a gold BMW with Leonard, one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the open window, deftly changing lanes three and four cars ahead of him. Leonard had promised that his house in Atherton was no more than twenty minutes from Vaxtek's offices and gave Seeley rapid-fire directions in the event they lost each other in traffic. “I want you to get to know Renata and me,” Leonard said. “You've changed. I want to get to know you.”

Seeley was curious about Renata. He had met her at the wedding nine years ago, a period when he was drunk or hungover most of the time, and he remembered only fragments of the event. He assumed that the attractive woman in the snapshots in Leonard's office was Renata, but could not connect these images to the young bride who had pressed her body into his as they moved across the ballroom floor.

One other memory stood out. As Seeley was leaving to find Leonard in the hotel kitchen, Renata took his hand and, rising to her toes, whispered a message—a goodbye? a wish? a secret?—in his ear. With the music and the noise, Seeley had not made out a single word. From Renata's expression when she drew away, he at once saw the urgency and consequence the words had for her, but he was too drunk or embarrassed, for her or for himself, to ask what she had said. From time to time in the years since, when he passed a wedding party or saw couples dancing, Seeley thought about what Renata's words might have been. He wondered, too, whether he owed her an apology for not fulfilling whatever promise his silence had implied.

Leonard's street in Atherton, when Seeley found it, was a well-shaded cul-de-sac. Magnolia, eucalyptus, and chestnut trees, even an improbable palm here and there, formed a canopy over the narrow lane, and there were no sidewalks. Seven-foot hedges hid lawns and houses from view. Seeley asked himself what these people were hiding and what they were hiding from. The evening had turned cool, and the dusty medicinal scent of eucalyptus filled the rental car.

Leonard's house was at the end of the lane and, from the boundaries marked by hedgerows, was more modest than its neighbors. Leonard was waiting at the front door.

“You didn't get lost, did you?” He already had a drink in his hand.

Seeley said, “I had your directions.”

Leonard put an arm around Seeley's shoulder and led him through the hallway into a tall room that, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and encompassing skylight, could have been a solarium or a green-house. Set into the one wall that wasn't glass was a massive stonework fireplace. In front of it, a slender figure crouched, adjusting logs. Seeley had the sense of a cat ready to spring.

“Well, here he is,” Leonard said. “The prodigal brother.”

Renata turned to face them and, after staring at Seeley for a moment, gave him a hasty, vexed smile. “I'm just setting a fire.” She struck a kitchen match against the stone, put it to the newspaper crumpled beneath the logs, and replaced the screen. The tinder flared behind her and, rising, she momentarily lost her balance. Seeley steadied her with the hand he had extended in greeting.

Leonard gave Renata an unhappy glance. He said, “I'll get the champagne.”

Seeley took a chair close to the fire and Renata sank into the has-sock beside it, drawing her knees up and positioning herself so she could watch both Seeley and the flames. Fair and fine-boned, with a mass of dark hair that fell to just below her shoulders, she was more glamorous than in the photos. Yet, even this close, Seeley had no memory of her as the bride on tiptoe with an urgent message.

She gave Seeley an amused, quizzical look and he wondered if she, too, was thinking of the whispered words.

“Time flies,” she said, not inviting a reply. She seemed to be comfortable just sitting there, watching him and the fire.

A painting crowded with nude figures hung on the wall above the fireplace. The figures were clustered in groups of two and three and, although the faces were indistinct, the painter had artfully used the bodies to convey emotions of sadness, joy, repose. It was far from the bold abstract expressionism that Seeley liked, but there was a sensual quality in the painting that intrigued him.

Renata said, “With all the glass, there aren't many places to hang paintings.”

“Who's the artist?”

“Do you like it?”

The way she asked told Seeley that the painting was hers. “Very much.” The words surprised him.

“I stopped a few years ago. Orthopedic surgery doesn't leave much time for painting.”

Seeley had thought she was a nurse.

She must have seen his confusion. “I was still a nurse when I met you.” She gave him a crooked smile. “That's what a girl did in those days if her father was a doctor and her mother was a housewife. I met Leonard at a med-school mixer at Stanford. There weren't enough women, so they brought in nurses. We discovered we were the only ones there from upstate New York. In California, that's enough of a reason for two people to get together.”

“You're from Buffalo?”

She shifted on the hassock to see him better and tugged at her skirt, where it had ridden above her knees. “Schenectady.”

“Like Daisy Miller.”

“You don't look like a Henry James fan.”

“I'm not,” Seeley said. “I read it in a college lit class. What would a Henry James fan look like?”

“I don't know. Thin, neurotic. Maybe pale and bloated. Anyway, not like you ”

In the kitchen a cork popped.

Even before he stopped drinking, wine was at the very bottom of Seeley's choices. He didn't mind the taste as much as he did the inefficiency, the whole bottles he had to consume just to come within striking distance of the oblivion that three or four quick tumblers of gin could deliver in far less time. It was more than a year since he'd had a drink; Buffalo's enveloping familiarity had cosseted him well. Sometimes he went whole weeks without thinking about alcohol. Other times he could think of nothing else. The smallest mishap could set off the craving. He successfully navigated a long and difficult disbarment proceeding that threatened to finish off what was left of his career without once having the urge to drink. But, a week later, a shoelace broke and all he could think of was alcohol. A sound, like ice being scooped into a glass, could set off the craving. Or a cork popping.

From the doorway Leonard gestured at the painting with the open champagne bottle. “It's good, isn't it?” He set the glasses on the coffee table, filled them, and handed them around, touching his glass to Seeley's—“A toast to Mike on his first visit to our home”—and then to Renata's. Renata tipped hers in Seeley's direction.

Leonard sipped at the champagne, his eyes on Renata.

Renata drained her glass and said to Seeley, “Which is more important to you, to be loved or to be admired?”

Leonard said, “What kind of question is that?”

Seeley laughed. “Why would I have to choose?”

“It's always a choice,” Renata said.

Seeley said, “I never thought about it. What about you?”

Renata touched the empty champagne flute to her lips. “You really should think about it. You'd be amazed how much the answer will tell you about yourself.”

“Right now,” Leonard said, “I just want Mike thinking about one thing—our case. He told me there's no way we can lose.”

“Then you're in good hands,” Renata said.

“Drink up, Mike. Can I give you a tour of the house?”

Seeley was aware that Renata was watching him. “Thanks, I'm fine here.”

Leonard said, “How do you like it? The house.”

Seeley looked around. “It's a lot of glass.”

“You mean, too much for earthquake country.”

Seeley hadn't meant anything.

“The structure is cantilevered,” Leonard said. “It was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Do you want to hear a story? Wright designed a house a couple of miles from here on the Stanford campus, and when the owners discovered it was on top of the San Andreas fault they sent him a frantic letter. Do you know what Wright sent back? A telegram: ‘I built the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo’! This house is the same. The earth would have to split to its core before you even heard a rattle.”

Seeley knew nothing about earthquakes, and didn't know if this was the usual California bravado or just his brother's.

Leonard lifted the bottle and Seeley thought he was going to fill Renata's glass, but instead, he started back to the kitchen.

“Make the steaks rare,” Renata called out. “Not dead.” She turned back to Seeley and, so Leonard could hear, said, “My husband used to be a fine doctor, but he doesn't know the first thing about broiling meat.”

She placed her empty glass on the coffee table next to Seeley's still-full one, asking his permission with a look before lifting his glass.

“To Henry James,” she said.

It occurred to Seeley that Renata's drinks had started much earlier. The scariest drunken times for him were when he was aware that, behind his rigid mask of sanity, he was entirely out of control, and he wondered now if that was how it was for Renata. Stone-faced drunk, he had once called a sitting justice of the New York Supreme Court a toad. A pompous toad. Other lawyers had called the judge worse, but not to his face, and not in his chambers. The incident had brought him to the brink of being disbarred.

“Your mother says you've had an amazing career, that you win all your cases.”

Seeley wondered how much Leonard told her about their life growing up.

“I didn't know she was keeping track.”

“She subscribes to a couple of legal newspapers just so she can see how you're doing.”

Seeley remembered Leonard telling it differently in Buffalo.

“Whenever there's something about you, she clips it out for Leonard. She's tremendously proud of you, but I don't think she knows how to tell you.” She sipped at Seeley's champagne. “She told me about your wanderlust, how you left home when you were fifteen.”

In the fireplace, a log dropped and sent up a shower of sparks.

“She says you're like mercury, that you're impossible to grab hold of. First you go to New York, then you go back to Buffalo. She didn't say it, but I got the impression she thinks you waited until she left Buffalo before you moved back.”

“I moved to New York because I wanted more challenging cases. I went back to Buffalo because I wasn't getting the kind of cases I wanted.”

Renata emptied Seeley's glass. “Did Leonard tell you she's in Mexico with her church group? Somebody dropped out at the last minute and she took her place. I think she was afraid you wouldn't want to see her.”

This was the kind of conversation women liked, and Seeley lacked the words, the grammar, even the tone of voice it required. “I only came here to try a case.” He took the empty glass from her and returned it to the end table next to him. “Did you know Robert Pearsall?”

She followed his lead as closely as if they were dancing. “Do you mean, do I think he killed himself ?”

Now that Renata had turned on the hassock to be closer to him, Seeley found it unsettling, the way she looked directly in his eyes as she talked.

“When I was an intern, I tried out a psychiatry rotation for three months before I decided to be a real doctor. There's something about suicidal patients that you don't see in the others, even the most depressed ones. There's an emptiness in the back of their eyes that just goes on and on; there's nothing there.”

“And Pearsall?”

“I don't know. I saw him at one or two parties up in the city and a couple down here. His wife's on the board of a private school we support. He always seemed agreeable, but you could see he had a deeper, serious side.” Renata hesitated. “No,” she decided, “there was always a light in his eyes. He didn't have that hopeless look.”

Leonard called out that dinner was ready, and Seeley followed Renata into another glassed-in room. Three chairs were at the end of a long table, and place mats, silver, and glasses were set in front of them along with a green salad and an open bottle of Bordeaux. The steak, sliced and heaped on a platter, was rare.

Renata said, “We were just talking about Bob Pearsall.”

Leonard filled no more than a quarter of Renata's glass, and Seeley waved him away from his.

“You only had a glass of champagne.”

“I have an early meeting tomorrow.” Leonard didn't need to know that the meeting was with Pearsall's widow, to search through the lawyer's belongings for a missing trial notebook, anymore than he needed to know that it was Renata, not he, who had emptied the glass. It was a reflex. He did the same when they were boys, protecting Leonard from anything that he thought might upset him.

“One of the mysteries of the human soul,” Leonard said. “You look at a guy like Pearsall, he seems fine to you, but you never know what's going on inside.”

Seeley said, “I was thinking about what you said, that the train was between stations when it hit him.”

Renata sipped at her wine. “Why should that be important?”

Leonard said, “You wouldn't believe my brother's sense of humor. When I went to see him in Buffalo, he asked me if I pushed him. Pearsall.”

“Mike!” Renata laughed.

It was the first time she had spoken his name, and the sudden cry felt as intimate as if she had slipped her hand into his.

Leonard speared a slice of steak from the platter. “Do you remember Billy Elrod, Mike?” He turned back to Renata. “Elrod was a little hoodlum when we were at St. Boniface, the kind of kid who picked wings off flies. Once, for a week, he went around the playground with what looked like one of those narrow jars olives come in, but filled with a clear liquid. Billy swore it was nitroglycerin, and that if anyone told the teachers, he would drop it and blow the place up. We all knew he was lying, but still with Billy you couldn't be sure. Finally, my brother here—how old were you, Mike, ten? eleven?—goes up to him and says, ‘Hey Billy, look up in the sky, there's a blimp’”—Leonard pantomimed, pointing to the ceiling—“and when Billy looks up, Mike pokes a finger into his stomach”—again, Leonard playacted the move—“so that he drops the bottle and it smashes on the ground. Of course it was just water. That's my brother's sense of humor.”