Seeley rose. “This is good work, Boyd. Thanks.” He tapped the folder. “This complicates the decision whether to keep Steinhardt as our lead witness. If he really was a pioneer-”
“You can't drop him,” Palmieri said. “Do you know one patent case where the plaintiff didn't lead off with the inventor?”
Before Seeley could answer, McKee said, “Who would you use instead?”
Seeley said, “Nicolas Cordier. The South African. He's a physician, he can tell the frontline story of AIDS, and he can communicate better than anyone how important this discovery is.”
“That's my point,” Palmieri said. “It was Steinhardt who made the discovery.”
Seeley added McKee's folder to the pile of laboratory notebooks, and nodded to the two lawyers to follow him out the door. “Steinhardt's a pompous ass. He's going to thump his patent like it's the Bible and he's God. That he created this field. The jury's going to hate him.”
In her cubicle, Tina was on the telephone. When Seeley gestured to ask whether the call was for him, she shook her head and placed a hand over the receiver. “It's Mrs. Pearsall-about some partnership papers.”
From behind Seeley, as they continued down the corridor, Palmieri said, “I think you're making a mistake.”
Seeley stopped, and said to McKee, “What do you think, Boyd?”
“I think if you're going to use the South African, you should get him here real fast.”
“He's in New York.” Seeley remembered that he hadn't returned Cordier's call. As much to himself as to the others, he said, “I can work with him over the weekend.”
After McKee left them, Seeley said, “Judy Pearsall told me you had dinner with Bob the night he died.”
“And?”
“Did he say anything about the case that seemed unusual?”
“A long time ago, Bob taught me that when you're going to trial there's only one thing you should think about-”
“Sure,” Seeley said. “The trial. And you think my looking into this is a distraction.”
“That and chasing after Lily Warren.”
“Steinhardt's notebooks are going to be a big part of the trial. She may know something about them that we don't.”
“Okay,” Palmieri said, “but shadowing a police investigation-”
“What if Bob's death is connected to the trial?”
“Connected how?”
They had arrived at the workroom.
“That's what I'm trying to find out,” Seeley said.
Tina had sent an e-mail about the meeting to everyone involved in the case, and paralegals, secretaries, and document clerks filled the bare-walled workroom along with the lawyers, standing and talking in groups or perched on the low gray file cabinets, having their morning coffee. The moment Seeley came through the door, the room went quiet.
Seeley thought to apologize for keeping them waiting, decided that wasn't what they needed to hear, and instead explained the responsibility he felt, taking over a case that, working with every person in the room, Bob Pearsall had created. He then described the day-by-day path-he stayed clear of calling it a “path to victory”-that, building on Pearsall's plans but with changes of his own, he had laid out for the trial, and told them that they could expect continuing demands for exhibits, document review, and last-minute legal research over the coming days. He ended with the short speech he'd given dozens of times before. No one's job was too small to be critical to the team's success. If everyone did all that they were asked to do, and maybe ten percent more, victory was possible. This was supposed to be Pearsall's victory, he said. Now it's going to be yours. He saw no evidence in the coffee-sipping crowd that he had stirred or even connected with them. Palmieri motioned to him, tapping his watch, and Seeley said that they had to leave for a meeting with the judge. There was a sprinkle of applause, and Seeley was back in the corridor.
Judge Farnsworth was going to ask for his witness list at the meeting in her chambers, but Seeley still had not decided whether to keep Steinhardt as his lead witness or to drop him to a place in the lineup where he would do less harm. He forced himself to concentrate on the decision as he and Palmieri walked to the elevators. But, behind it, another question tugged at him: How many more potholes was he going to find in Robert Pearsall's path to victory?
NINE
The moment the taxi turned onto Market Street and Seeley saw the traffic backed up in both directions, he knew that they were going to be late for the meeting in Judge Farnsworth's chambers. The driver caught Seeley's anxious look in the rearview mirror and turned up the foreign-sounding music on the radio; zithers, it sounded like, and low chanting voices. Palmieri saw Seeley's expression, too. “I don't know about New York, but in San Francisco they don't hold you in contempt for being a few minutes late for a pretrial conference.”
They arrived fifteen minutes late at the Phillip Burton Courthouse, a glass-and-granite high-rise that filled an entire block at the edge of the Civic Center, and spent five minutes getting through the security gate. On the nineteenth floor they had to wait for a buzzer to let them into a narrow corridor. Palmieri led Seeley past a warren of offices, courtrooms, jury rooms, more dim corridors, and, finally, to Judge Farnsworth's chambers.
The anteroom had the worshipful hush of a cloister. Barnum was already there. Ignoring Palmieri, he introduced Seeley to Rachel Fischler, who Seeley guessed was Thorpe's second chair, and to a young lawyer from St. Gall's headquarters in Switzerland. Barnum butchered the man's name, which Seeley deciphered as Philippe Dusollier.
Fischler was pear-shaped and had a frizzy thatch of black hair that looked as if no amount of effort would bring it under control. She apologized for Thorpe, who was finishing a trial in Akron, but would be back in time for jury selection on Friday. Her voice was high-pitched, almost a whine. The Swiss was slender and precise in a narrow-cut gray suit and steel-rimmed glasses; he had a porridgy complexion and, oddly, the otherwise thin face showed the beginnings of a double chin. He didn't speak, but the complacent gray eyes told Seeley that Dusollier was judging him, and would be throughout the trial for daily reports back to the home office in St. Gall.
The judge's secretary, who had been watching from a desk in the corner, asked if anyone else was coming. When Seeley told her no, she knocked on the door next to her desk, then opened it without waiting for a response.
Judge Farnsworth's office was softly lit and, with several easy chairs arranged in a semicircle around a sofa, looked more like a well-furnished living room than the heart of a judge's chambers. Fresh-cut flowers were on the end tables and Seeley recognized the framed prints on the walls as coming from small editions by contemporary masters. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with tan, black, and red volumes of the Federal Supplement and Federal Reporter-along with the American flag in the corner, the only government issue in the room-occupied one wall. Another wall, entirely of glass, framed the gray buildings and domed roofs of the Civic Center and, in the distance, glimmering behind a confusion of stalky construction cranes, the bay. It occurred to Seeley that, when they came to San Francisco, even government architects were seduced by the view.
Ellen Farnsworth rose from a small desk that, like her secretary's, was in an inconspicuous corner, and introduced herself to Seeley, greeting the others by name, pronouncing the Swiss lawyer's name fluently. She was attractive in a dark, heavy-featured way and her suit was elegantly cut; the skirt-shorter than Seeley would have expected on a federal judge-showed off long, well-shaped legs. Federal judges are usually smarter and more able than most of the lawyers who come before them and, with their lifetime tenure, possess a detachment not unlike the composure of a beautiful woman who knows the effect that her good looks have on men. Judge Farnsworth had both. Thorpe was shrewd to select Rachel Fischler for his second chair. Unlike any man he could have chosen, Fischler would implicitly stroke the judge's vanity.