Seeley said, “It's a work in progress.” He had left New York and the big-stakes corporate cases that fueled the life of his law firm at the bottom of a long alcoholic slide that undid not only his practice but his marriage. The rent in the Ellicott Square Building was reasonable and Mrs. Rosziak worked for little. But the paying clients were few and, with the recent county budget cuts, court appointments, even for felony cases, barely paid for the paperwork. The irony was that it had been easier for Seeley to attract $100 million intellectual property cases in New York City than it was to get a client to sign up for a no-money civil rights case in Buffalo. More than once it occurred to him that the rivers of alcohol which had brought him to the bottom had also flattened his acuity the way water smooths a stone.
A single snowflake, as thin as a wisp of smoke, landed on Leonard's collar and, in the same instant that Seeley felt the impulse to brush it off, dissolved.
“You're in cold storage, Mike.”
“It's a transition.”
“Purgatory's a transition. This is a rut. No matter how good you are, you never hit better than the guy you're playing against.” Leonard's sport had been tennis, Seeley's football; Seeley drilled hard passes over center while Leonard's every return had a topspin on it. “Who do you go up against here? Government lawyers counting the days until they retire? Kids two years out of law school?”
Was this was why Leonard had come-to rescue him? As a boy, Seeley protected his younger brother, then abandoned him. Now it was Leonard's turn to be the hero.
“You're afraid you've lost your edge, aren't you? That you're not up to handling a big case.”
Leonard was here to save him, and to remind him that no one knows your fears better than a kid brother.
Two joggers in velour suits, mufflered against the cold, passed them on the asphalt path that traced the contours of the lake. The brothers continued past the Naval and Military Park where a guided missile cruiser, a destroyer, and a submarine as black as carbon clustered like tamed, implausible beasts. It had taken years for Seeley to observe the incongruity of it: none of these oceangoing vessels, now mothballed, would ever have seen action on Lake Erie.
Out on the lake, a few rubber-suited kids were hotdogging hydroplanes, oblivious to the cold, and a tugboat made its careful way through the small sailboats that flitted across the water. Farther out, a low unmoving barge could have been of a piece with the horizon, and on a deserted jetty was a Chinese-roofed pavilion, its former painted brilliance now a rusty gray. One of Seeley's aunts, or sometimes a neighbor family, would bring Leonard and him here for evening picnics as children, and the pavilion, its lively dance music audible on the shore, had embodied for Seeley all of the exotic possibilities of grown-up life. Years later, he learned that it was a weekend dance hall for workers from the Bethlehem Steel and Chevrolet plants in nearby Lackawanna.
Leonard was thinking about the past, too, because he said, “Was it really that bad for you?”
“I don't think about it much.”
“Mom does.” Leonard checked for a reaction, but Seeley's eyes were fixed on the horizon. Leonard's last Christmas card reported that their mother had moved to a retirement home in Palo Alto, not far from where Leonard and his wife lived in Atherton. Other than at Leonard's wedding, Seeley hadn't talked to her since he left home.
Leonard said, “She still feels sorry about your leaving.”
If that was true, his mother had changed. “Feel” and “sorry” had never been part of her vocabulary.
Finally, Seeley said, “Some wounds can't heal.”
“I'm a doctor, Mike. I like to think they can.”
An iron railing and a narrow strip filled with concrete picnic tables separated the Hatch from the lake. The squat cinder-block structure was locked and shuttered, closed for the season. The tables were empty, except for one at which three ancient, animated black women, dressed as if for church, were holding on to their hats against the gusts coming off the lake, shooing the gulls that swooped over the tall thermos and sandwiches from their picnic basket.
The brothers leaned on the railing, looking out at the water. Seeley knew he had no good reason to ask, but he did anyway. “When does your case go to trial?”
“October twenty-sixth. Two weeks from today.”
“You're kidding, right?” Except that, for all his smiles, Leonard rarely joked.
“The case is in shape to go to trial tomorrow. Our law firm has a whole team working on it. It's a purring engine, just waiting for you to shift it into drive.”
“Who's your firm?”
“Heilbrun, Hardy.”
Heilbrun, Hardy and Crockett had roots in post-gold rush San Francisco and was known for its strong litigation practice. Seeley said, “Pearsall must have had a second chair. Why can't he take over?”
Leonard didn't understand.
“A lieutenant. Another lawyer at the firm who helped him run the case.”
“There's a young partner, Chris Palmieri. I'm sure he's competent, but he doesn't have the experience to take the lead on a case this size. We need someone with your instincts. Your judgment.”
“San Francisco's a trial lawyer's town. There have to be two dozen lawyers there who could do the job.”
“You don't know our general counsel. There are only four lawyers in town Ed Barnum thinks are any good. Two of them are already booked, and another's a prima donna who won't work with a team that some other lawyer put together. The fourth one is representing St. Gall.”
Seeley turned his back to the lake. “I've handled big patent cases, but most of them were mechanical inventions. Railroad couplers. Dumpsters. Stents. I've done some electronics and chemicals, but vaccines are science.” By the time biotech suits were first reaching the courts, Seeley's law practice in New York had already collapsed.
“Do you think Bob Pearsall knew anything about immunology? You can learn the science the same way he did. We wouldn't want you if we weren't certain you could do it. We have an expert witness from UCSF who can fill you in on anything you can't figure out for yourself. If you want, I'll tutor you.”
A gull came in low past the railing, distracting Seeley. Ignoring the gloved, shooing hands of the three ladies, it snatched a crust from their table and continued on, out over the lake, all in a single sweep. A
warning stenciled on the railing read DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS. To himself, Seeley filled in the punch line: BECAUSE THEY CAN FEED THEMSELVES.
“When your lawyer, Pearsall, got hit by the train, Lenny-you didn't push him, did you?”
Seeley didn't know why he asked the question. Maybe it was Leonard's lecturing him about the poverty of his life in Buffalo, or maybe it was Leonard's having an answer for every excuse Seeley could give for not taking the case. Seeley knew the excuses were weak. Who was he angry at, Leonard or himself?
Leonard said, “You wouldn't even have to drop your practice here. The trial won't be more than three weeks. You don't seem particularly
… busy.”
“Why are you pushing so hard on this, Lenny?”
The look Leonard gave him could have been part of the landscape, it was that parched.
Seeley said, “This dream you have about the family. Let it go.”
Leonard looked at his watch. It was a relief to Seeley that his brother now wanted their meeting to be over as much as he did.
“I left the envelope in your office. A paralegal at Heilbrun, Hardy put it together. Everything you need is there-witness list, deposition summaries, Chris Palmieri's number. Ed Barnum's number is there so you can work out the details-your fee, whatever you want. My number, in case you've lost it.”
They walked to the short line of taxis on the corner where two sweeping marble slabs made up the city's Vietnam memorial.