Double Tap

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Like so many disputes in the law, the cases on trade secrets all seem to fall between the cracks. There are boatloads of appellate opinions dealing with civil lawsuits and even a few in which the theft of such secrets has been the subject of hefty criminal prosecutions, but nothing that seems to help our cause.

Harry and I scoured the casebooks until just before five, when a courier delivered what little we could find to Judge Gilcrest’s courtroom. We have been unable to locate a single decision addressing the question whether, in a murder case, trade secrets belonging to a third party are available as evidence. We are now dabbling in the dark, our defense teetering on an issue of first impression for which the court has no guidance.

Left to his own devices, Gilcrest has had to play Solomon, giving a little bit to both sides. The result is that Harry and I, as well as any agents in our employ, including Herman, are now under a temporary restraining order, at least until the court can sort it all out. We are barred from talking to anyone at Isotenics without first obtaining court approval by giving notice, thereby giving Isotenics the opportunity to block our investigation in court.

For our part. Gilcrest ordered Sims and the company to turn over all of the subpoenaed documents to the court for review. Not that the judge has staff sufficient to examine these-or that it even matters, since Sims has filed an appeal to the district court. Until this is resolved, nothing will be delivered. An eleventh-hour motion by Harry for a continuance to delay the start of trial has been denied. In short, all of this has the makings of an early disaster.

The court may be leaning over backward to accommodate Isotenics and their claim of trade secrets, but Gilcrest is a fox with a lot of hunts behind him. I sense that he knows that Templeton is behind this.

As if we need more bad news, our attempts to subpoena General Satz have failed one more time. When the process servers couldn’t find him, Harry directed a letter to the legal office at the Pentagon in an effort to have them accept it on behalf of the general. This morning we received their written reply notifying us that, since the general is retired from the military and is a civilian appointee of the Department of Defense, his attendance at trial is a personal matter not involving the Pentagon or Satz’s official position. Therefore they have refused to accept the subpoena and have returned it to us in the envelope.

“If we can’t get Satz, we don’t have squat,” says Harry.

“Maybe even if we do get him, we don’t have squat,” I tell him. “From what I’ve read, he’s not likely to lie down and roll over-not if his performance in front of Congress ten years ago is any measure.”

“I remember.”

I have put Satz on our witness list, but without solid documentary or other evidence to nail his feet to the floor, I would be a fool to put him on the stand. Given his tenacity in front of a panel of crusty politicians who didn’t even have to contend with the rules of evidence, Satz is likely to do a tap dance on us.

We are now deep into jury selection, eight days in court huddled at the table with our jury consultant, trying to mind-meld with strangers whose names have been churned out from computerized voter lists and driver’s license records at DMV.

In view of the fact that Templeton has never lost a death case in eighteen outings, a jury consultant with a track record on him does not exist. In two other cases that Templeton has tried, defense lawyers brought in one of the crackerjacks in the field, a psychologist from Berkeley with a résumé to shame the gods. Both times Templeton dealt them black queens by way of a verdict, and the death penalty to go along with it.

“What we need is a giant flyswatter so we can grind the little fucker into the carpet the next time he moves,” says Harry.

“You find one, I’ll give it to the judge,” I tell him. “At this point I think Gilcrest might use it. It was the last thing he needed. This is probably Gilcrest’s final big case before retirement. And I doubt that he was hoping for a hundred-page treatise and a seminar on business law and the fine points on the exacting science of trade secrets.”

“Then why didn’t he just tube Sims? Deny his motion to quash?” says Harry.

“Because if he was wrong, the downside was too steep. Don’t forget, we asked for a pile of technical data in our last request.”

A second set of subpoenas sent out after my meeting with Havlitz at Isotenics demanded information on the IFS software. Jim Kaprosky helped us draft it. After listening to his history and researching his background, I am convinced there is no one in the world more qualified. After slamming his head against a wall for twelve years with the government over the issue, if anyone would know how to press this particular balloon without popping it, it is Kaprosky.

Harry chews on this for a moment.

“Besides,” I tell him, “we can criticize Templeton but we can’t stop him from talking to the jury, and we can’t object because he’s managed to turn physical disability into an advantage. He bonds with juries like he was welded to them. I’m afraid we’re going to have to live with him.”

The problem with Templeton is compounded by the fact that he seems to have a rare gift for reading crowd dynamics, as if he can anticipate juror response before they do. This is no shell game. I’m convinced that the man has a sixth sense.

“And he has one big advantage over vaudeville.”

“What’s that?” asks Harry.

“Most comedians can’t evict members of the audience with a peremptory challenge.”

“True, but he’s already burned more than half of his peremptories. Pretty soon he’s going to be shooting blanks,” says Harry.

“Yes, but he’s also softened his tune to harmonize with the audience he already has. The man’s adaptable. He knows where he is, never loses his place. He knows exactly how many challenges he has left and what he has to do when he starts running dry. Unless I miss my bet, by the time he’s finished, our jury’s going to be in his pocket.”

“Well, I’m glad to see we’re on top of things. So how do you propose to deal with him?”

I see Janice, my secretary, coming this way through the half-open blinds at the window nearest the door. She wouldn’t bother us unless it was something important.

“If we’re lucky, maybe we won’t have to.”

“What are you talking about?”

I get up out of the chair and head toward the door.

“If you have a plan to push Templeton out of the case, I’d like to know what it is,” says Harry.

“Not exactly. Bear with me.” I give him a wink, then open the door before Janice can knock.

“There’s somebody here to see you,” she says. “I wouldn’t have bothered you, but I didn’t know if you’d want to see him. Says he’s an old friend.” She hands me a business card.

I rub my thumb over the embossed gold seal to see if it is still hot from the press. Representative, 42nd Congressional District. Leave it to Nathan Kwan to have his congressional cards printed before the election results have hit the wire services in the southern part of the state.

As I enter the office half a beat behind my secretary, Nathan is sitting on the couch. He greets me with a big smile as I come through the door.

“Hey, buddy. Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.” He’s up off the couch, leaving the newspaper he was reading behind him on one of the sofa cushions.

“No, no. There’s never a bad time to see an old friend. Especially an important one.”

“What can I say? Cream always rises to the top.” We both laugh. “Along with bullshit.” We shake hands. It was a saying we had when Nathan and I shared space in the Capital County DA’s Office more than twenty years ago now, a way of laughing at the overlords who shuttled us around, giving us case assignments and bragging about their brilliance in court when they used to try cases.

“I know you’re up to your ass in the trial of the century. I was just reading about it in the newspaper,” he says. “So I’ll make the visit short. I guess we’re both famous. Or should I say infamous.”

“More like it,” I tell him.

Nathan always has a warm smile, one of his best features, and a good sense of humor. His quest for power has never left him without a laugh and healthy appreciation for self-deprecation.

“I guess congratulations are in order!” I’m holding up his business card, reading it. “Impressive.”

“Yep, gold seal and all,” he says. “Pretty soon I’ll have congressional cuff links. I’m told that if I can survive one term and get reelected, they’ll give me the decoder ring.”

Nathan has won the special election for the open seat in Congress created by the death of the incumbent. The last time I saw him he was nibbling at the edges. Two weeks later he jumped into the campaign with both feet. According to tidbits in the papers, he had been leaning toward the race quietly for some time, apparently sizing up the man’s office in D.C. with a measuring tape right after he died.

“It was an opportunity, so I seized it.” He pauses a second. “Okay, don’t tell anybody, but I carpetbagged.” Nathan’s comic timing has always been pretty good. This has been all over the news up in Capital City for months. I’ve seen his opponent’s charges in the headlines on the Internet. Nathan moved his residence into the district, large portions of which seemed to neatly coincide with his old Senate seat in the legislature.

“I’d like to say I planned it. The fact is, it was a godsend. I think I told you the last time we met I was about to tap out in the Senate. Term limits.”

“I remember.”

“Under the circumstances it pains me to say I got lucky. Did you ever meet Troy Olders, the congressman who passed away?”

“I don’t think I ever did.”

“He was a very nice guy. Died of Hodgkin’s. It was a long illness.” The way Nathan says it, I get the sense maybe it was a little too long. “He was a friend. He told me when he was dying that if he could pick anybody to succeed him in Congress, it would be me. I cried. Can you believe it?”

With Nathan I can believe it. For a man steeped in the cynical world of politics, who has come a long way from a hard-scrabble beginning, his emotions run to the sentimental side. Before law school he had been a cop for a few years on the Capital City force. This was after a stint in the Army. Nathan is a man with a million former lives. I am told he dug deep into his pockets on more than one occasion to help people in trouble. To Nathan, old-world liberalism is real, a kind of religion: Christian charity imposed through the ballot box. The product of an Asian father and an Irish mother, he is a man with dreams that, for the most part, he has realized-though if I had to guess, based on the card in my hand, he is not quite finished whipping that horse.

“I really didn’t mean to interrupt, but it may be the last chance I have to get down here for a long time-my last trip south before I resign from the State Senate-so I wanted to stop by. I have something for you.” He has a big grin on his face.

I glance at Janice. This is why she interrupted to bring me his card.

Nathan turns around and reaches under the newspaper on the couch behind him. He comes out with a package. It is gift-wrapped in striped foil with a wide red ribbon tied in a bow. He hands it to me.

It is flat and heavy. I’m guessing maybe a coffee-table book.

“Open it,” he says.

I peel the ribbon off of one corner and let it drop, then tear the foil paper. Janice and the receptionist are looking on, smiling, trying to get a glimpse.

“What is it?” With Nathan I can never be sure. Whatever it is, it’s boxed in cardboard under the paper. I split the cellophane tape holding the fold closed on one end of the box.

“Be careful.” Nathan puts a hand down to make sure it doesn’t slide out onto the floor. Heavy wood and glass, the picture frame is upside down as I flip the empty box onto the couch. When I turn it over, I am startled to see myself under glass, a younger face and twenty pounds lighter. In the photo I am standing in the kitchen of our old home in Capital City. Standing next to me behind the center island is Nikki, my wife who has been dead nearly ten years now. She is holding our daughter, Sarah, in her arms.

“Sarah was only eighteen months old when I took that,” he says. “I remember because you told me. You were a proud papa,” he says.

I have a lump in my throat. My eyes are watering. It is perhaps the best picture of the three of us I have ever seen, and one of the few I have left from that period of my life.

“Remember the old Olympus thirty-five millimeter? I used to carry it in my pocket. That’s what I shot it with. Look at the detail. That was a good camera. Wish I still had it,” he says.

“I remember,” I tell him. “You used to take pictures of everything in sight.”

“That’s my Asian half,” he says.

I do the only thing I can think to do at this moment: I reach out and hug him, holding the picture tight in one hand as we stand in the center of my reception area, two guys, arms around each other, choking back sniffles. Nathan pats my back with one hand and holds the coffee cup away with the other so that it doesn’t slosh on my shirt.

“Tell me it doesn’t bring back memories,” he says.

“It brings back memories. Good ones,” I tell him.

“The best,” he says. “I found the print in an old album. I had a negative made. I thought you’d want it.”

“It’s beautiful,” I tell him. “And to think you came all the way down here to deliver it personally.” We let go of each other. I’m wiping my eyes.

“I’d like to say that was it, but the fact is, I was tying up loose ends on committee business out at Isotenics.” He can tell by my look that I perk up with the mention of the company name. “Do you have time for lunch? For old times’ sake,” he says.

I look at my watch: eleven-twenty. “It’s a little early, but what the hell.” I hand the framed photo to Janice for safekeeping. “Would you tell Harry we’ll pick it up again this afternoon? I should be back by one.”

We slip out of the courtyard through a service entrance in Miguel’s Cantina, skirting the handful of reporters out on Orange Grove in front of the office. Nathan and I dodge a few cars and hoof it across the street to the Del Coronado. Within minutes we are cloistered in one of the corner booths in the restaurant on the hotel’s main floor, out of sight, nursing drinks.

“You never told me what brings you down here.”

“Oh, that,” he says. “That’s nothing. Senate Committee on, Redistricting.” He touches the side of his nose with his finger. “A lotta BS. I’ll be glad to be rid of it. Pain in the butt, all the members constantly crying on my shoulder about their districts and where they want the lines drawn for the next election so they can do in all the competition.” Nathan talks as if he’s never done this himself.

Politics is its own form of insanity. In California, beds in this asylum are assigned in the state legislature and Congress every ten years, with district boundary lines redrawn based on the last federal census. Ever since term limits were imposed on the legislature by voters, political panic on the order of a hotel fire has raged through the state capitol, with members of both parties eating their own in an effort to survive. The hallowed ground is Congress, where term limits don’t apply.

“You remember. I used to tell you about the games played. Somebody running their district boundaries thirty miles along a railroad track so they could circle a university or capture some ethnic ghetto while they registered all the hobos along the way.”

“You must have done that one and forgot to tell me about it.”

“Well, those were the good old days. Back when Machiavelli was writing the legislative ethics rules. When every vote cast in an election had an actual voter behind it.”

To listen to Nathan, the state legislature is now the third ring of hell. He can’t wait to get out.

“But that’s not the reason I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been following the trial in the papers,” he says. “Your Ruiz case. I don’t know the details, but I heard something you should know. I was out at Isotenics. They crunch numbers for us, do the district maps. And I heard some comments about this IFS thing. It came up in connection with the trial. IFS has been in the papers.” Nathan tells me this as if I’m from Mars. “I know some members,” he says, “people in Congress who are very upset about it. As they should be. I don’t know how you feel about personal privacy. You know that I’ve always felt very strongly about it. Computers. High tech. It’s eroding any sense of civil liberties. Pretty soon corporations and the government are going to know more about us than we know about ourselves.”

Nathan is now cutting to the chase. I can smell him trying to get a jump start to some committee in the House of Representatives. He is probably telling them that he has an inside track with the lawyer trying the case and that if they can pump enough heat and fire up my skirt, they can use the illumination to expose the White House. It’s what you love about Nathan: he never quits.

“Check out the nurse over there. I think I need more medicine,” he says. Nathan’s talking about the cocktail waitress.

“When did this meeting occur?”

“Hmm?”

“Out at Isotenics?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Couple of days ago. We were meeting with these two execs out there. One of them was midlevel type. I’ve been dealing with this guy for a couple of years. You know the kind: makes the company go. Jack lives in the corporate synapse, between executive decisions and action, if you know what I mean. Kinda fella who puts the spark in the gap that usually makes things happen.” He pauses. “Good idea man, and he usually knows what’s going on. The other guy I didn’t know. Never met him before. Jack’s boss.”

I nod knowingly as I listen. Nathan has a way of making a short story long.

“Anyway, there were several of us at the meeting: two members of the assembly, myself, and some congressional staff sent out to cover their interests. The two executives knew I’d just been elected to the House. They were overflowing with congratulations. Isotenics can use all the friends they can get in Washington right now, as I’m sure you’re aware. If there was a fire hose long enough, they’d be pumping water from the Pacific to try and reduce the heat on themselves.”

I nod again and take a sip from my glass.

“I suppose they were trying to impress me, so you can probably take it with a grain of salt, for what it’s worth,” he says. “But one of them, the boss, gets a phone call during the meeting. We were in a rush to finish up since the assemblymen had to catch a plane.

“So this guy decides to take the call on the extension in the conference room where we’re gathered. All I can hear is half the conversation, but he’s talking about the case. Ruiz’s name comes up, so of course I’m all ears. Something about when the case is over they can ramp up again, but not until, he says. He’s talking under his breath and I guess whoever’s on the other end can’t hear him, because this guy keeps saying he can’t talk any louder, he’s in a meeting. Fortunately I had my back to him, sitting right in front of the side table where he was talking. If I’d leaned back any further I’d have been on the phone with him,” says Nathan.

“Then he says-the guy on our end-he says something. . ” Nathan’s reaching with the fingers of one hand as if he’s trying to pluck the precise words from the air over our table. “He says something: they’re understaffed, that DOD is all pissed off, something to that effect. That if she had left it alone, everything would have been fine. But now that she’s dead somebody’s going to have to go pick up the pieces because she wouldn’t leave it alone.” He looks at me to see if this is producing any revelations. “I don’t know if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, but if you are, I’m thinking the dead person they’re talking about has to be Madelyn Chapman, and the project DOD is involved in has to be IFS. Does it make any sense to you?” he asks.

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“It sounded to me like maybe they are caught in a whirlpool of shit at the moment and they can’t get out of it until your case is over. That when that happens they’re back in business. Doing something. God knows what,” he says. “I may stick around and watch the trial. I have nothing going on up in Capital City. And it sounds like all the fireworks may be happening down here.”

“Do you have names? The two executives at your meeting?”

“Yeah. Jack Hansen is the guy I’ve been meeting with for years. The other guy, the guy on the phone, I’d never met him before. His name was Harold Klepp. Head of research and development.”