Trial and Error

Twenty-seven

Victoria headed off for lunch with one of her witnesses, and Steve searched for his posse. He found Marvin (The Maven) Mendelsohn and Teresa Torano, those septuagenarian lovebirds, coming out of the cafeteria.

Steve quickly asked Teresa to use her prodigious Internet skills-she’d signed up for AOL the first day of its existence-to help him figure out who owned Wellfleet Dynamics, Inc.

“Only if I tell Victoria everything I tell you,” Teresa replied. “Quedamos parejos.”

“Even-Stephen, Stephen,” Marvin added. “We gotta stay neutral.”

“Jeez, Marvin. I’m at war here, and you’re going Switzerland on me.”

“If we were gonna choose sides, Stephen, it’d be the shayna maidel, not you.”

“Marvin, what are you saying? You and I go way back.”

“Nothing personal, boychik, but those animal rights guys are just thugs and terrorists.”

“Forget my client,” Steve implored him. “What about me?”

For years, Steve had bought corned beef sandwiches-“with extra fat, if you don’t mind, boychik”-for Marvin and the Courthouse Gang. And now this. Steve considered The Maven a pal. More than that, a grandfather figure, and a terrific asset in trial. Marvin used forty years’ experience selling women’s shoes to help Steve in jury selection.

“Women with open-toed sandals are good for the defense. Conservative black pumps, good for the state.”

Marvin had some theories about purses, too, but Steve couldn’t tell a real Gucci from a knockoff, so that didn’t do him much good.

“I can’t believe you two are bailing on me,” Steve complained.

“You’re asking too much,” Teresa said. “A nosotros nos encanta Victoria.”

“Teresa’s right,” Marvin agreed. “It’s not that we don’t love you. We just love Victoria, too.”

An hour later, having agreed to his posse’s Even-Stephen terms, Steve huddled at the defense table with his client. Ten feet away, Victoria flipped through her color-coded note cards. The judge and jury had not yet returned from the lunch recess. Marvin and Teresa sat in the front row of the gallery, equidistant from the state and the defense tables. Marvin thumbed through a copy of Ladies’ Footwear Quarterly. Even though he’d sold his shoe store many years earlier, he kept up with the trade. Teresa, her fingers still nimble, and perfectly manicured, worked on her laptop computer. She wrote a daily blog called “Abuela Cubana,” where she’d been extolling the virtues of organic arthritis medicines and giving out the recipe for roasting a whole pig for Christmas Eve dinner.

Before she’d retired and turned over her businesses to her children, Teresa had owned a chain of funeral homes-Funeraria Torano-a jai alai fronton, and a Chevrolet dealership. She was an astute businesswoman and often helped Steve in cases that required some knowledge of accounting.

Teresa was a handsome woman with charcoal hair, thanks to regular salon visits. She wore a strand of pearls with a stylish black silk dress. Marvin, bald since he was a corporal in the Korean War, wore plaid pants, a turquoise Banlon shirt, and a madras sport coat that had been very briefly in style in the 1970’s. The two were madly in love.

Teresa glanced at Marvin, who waved to get their attention. “Stephen. Victoria. Come back here. Both of you.”

Steve hustled through the swinging gate, then belatedly held it open for Victoria.

Teresa smiled up at both of them. Her laptop computer rested just where it belonged, in her lap. “This is very fast, mind you, so I don’t have all the answers. But if you cross-reference Wellfleet Dynamics and all those other Wellfleets on file in Tallahassee with similar names incorporated in other states, you’ll find they’re all owned by a holding company called ‘Cheyenne Range, Inc.,’ a Delaware company.”

“What’s Cheyenne do?” Steve asked.

“Nothing. It’s just a holding company. But it’s owned by a Bermuda trust called ‘Island Group Investments.’ Whoever formed that company made it hard to trace back, but whoever owns Island owns Cheyenne and therefore owns all the Wellfleets.”

“And the owner of all the Wellfleets is…?”

Teresa waved a finger at him. “A publicly traded corporation. A big one. Four billion in sales. Hardcastle Energy Services.”

Teresa clicked a key on her laptop, and the Hardcastle website flicked onto the monitor. Rugged men in hard hats, oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, tankers at sea.

“The oil company?” Victoria said.

Steve was puzzled, too. Hardcastle owned chemical plants, refineries, and pipelines. The company was in the news when it helped put out the fires in Kuwait’s oil wells after Desert Storm.

“Not just an oil company,” Teresa told them. “They’re a defense contractor, too. Submersibles, body armor, night vision goggles. Hundreds of items for the military.”

“Fine,” Steve said. “But why would Hardcastle send two guys to roust me? Why do they care what Gerald Nash knows?”

“No se. But they also make communications equipment for the military.”

“So does AT amp;T,” Steve said. “So what?”

“Ten paciencia, Stephen. Have patience.”

Teresa clicked the “Defense Subsidiaries” button on the screen. An instant later, a new picture appeared. Two dolphins arcing from the water, both with white harnesses circling their bodies. One harness was fixed with an antenna, the other with a camera.

“The communications gear is for dolphins,” she said, hitting another button. The image changed. Six dolphins in a turquoise sea, all swimming fast enough to leave foamy wakes. Printed over the image were the words: “Keeping Ports Safe at Home and Abroad. The Marine Mammal Strike Force.”

“Holy shit,” Steve said. “There’s a new villain in the courtroom. Hardcastle Energy Services. Big, rich, powerful. What more could I ask for?”

“A defense based on the evidence,” Victoria suggested tartly.

“Sanders was an ex-Navy SEAL who handled dolphins. He worked for two guys from Hardcastle, a defense contractor that provides dolphins for the military. Like I said before, A leads to B, and B leads to C.”

“Okay. Keep going. Where’s C lead?”

“Jeez, give me a couple hours. By dinner tonight, I’ll have my theory of the case, and I’ll spell it out for you.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“Here’s the crazy thing, Vic. My client’s always railing about the military-industrial complex. An unholy alliance between big business and warmongering politicians. The State Attorney is just a tiny cog in a big wheel of conspiracies and corruption. All that left-wing boilerplate from a guy who’s not very bright. But you know what, Vic? Gerald Nash is right. The bastard’s been right from day one.”