Bearing Witness (17 page)

I paused. “Could I see it, Mr. Roth?”

He pursed his lips. “Maybe.”

“Today?”

“No.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” he repeated.

“It's important to me, sir,” I said. “I'll be happy to go with you to the safe-deposit box or wherever you keep it.”

“I'm not saying where I keep it,” he said testily. He studied me for a moment. “Eleven o'clock tomorrow. Give you an hour. No more. One hour and then out.”

I smiled. “Fair enough, Harold. It's a deal.”

He wagged a finger at me. “Eleven o'clock. Don't be late.”

I saluted him. “Yes, sir.”

He studied me for a moment, and then he showed me something I hadn't seen before. He showed me a smile. It was a lovely smile.

Chapter Sixteen

I spent most of that afternoon in the chambers of Judge Catherine Wagner. The occasion was our final pretrial conference—a standard meeting of the attorneys and judge scheduled one week before trial. Typically, the final pretrial conference is an opportunity for the parties to resolve any remaining evidentiary disputes and for the judge to once again explore settlement possibilities. Kimberly Howard was there for the evidentiary disputes, and Stanley Roth was there for settlement discussions. I was there alone, with my client waiting in the courtroom alone.

The judge focused on the areas of contention first, but after two hours of wrangling, the key issues remained in dispute. Kimberly Howard objected to my plan to introduce evidence of the relationships among the various co-conspirators during the decades prior to the period covered by my lawsuit, and I objected to her motion to exclude all evidence of what she characterized as Conrad Beckman's “entirely irrelevant childhood curiosity in certain aspects of German nationalism.” Although Judge Wagner was leaning toward granting Kimberly's motion, she agreed to defer her ruling until the trial began in order to give me an opportunity, outside the jury's presence, to try to demonstrate that Conrad Beckman's involvement in the American Nazi movement of the 1930s enabled him to forge an important link with at least some of his co-conspirators in what became the bid-rigging scheme.

“Time's running out, Counselor,” she told me sternly, “but I'll give you until the first day of trial.”

When Judge Wagner turned to settlement, Stanley Roth took over for the defendant. He gave a lengthy spiel on Beckman Engineering's innocence and then magnanimously announced that in the interest of saving the parties and the court the time and expense of a lengthy, acrimonious trial, his client was prepared to raise its settlement offer from $150,000 to $250,000, the payment to be characterized as an “enhancement” of Ruth's retirement package and paid in full following her dismissal of the
qui tam
claims with prejudice.

I conferred briefly out in the courtroom with Ruth Alpert and returned to chambers to decline the offer.

To say that Judge Wagner was unhappy with our response was an understatement. She sent the other side out of the room, gave me a blistering lecture on the risks of litigation, and demanded that my client and I come up with a counteroffer. I again conferred in the courtroom with Ruth and this time returned with a counteroffer: $10 million, to be treated as a settlement of the
qui tam
claim (under which 30 percent of the settlement would be paid to Ruth and the rest to the government). In the language of diplomacy, our proposal triggered a full and frank exchange of viewpoints followed by a consensus among those present that conditions were not yet sufficiently propitious to justify a continuation of negotiations.

But on the way down the hall toward the elevators, Stanley Roth asked me to join him for a moment in an empty jury room. Once inside, he turned to me and said, “Your settlement position is preposterous.”

I shrugged. “I don't agree.”

“Ten million dollars?” He snorted. “Come on, Rachel. What's your real number?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” I said with a smile. “Come on, Stanley. What's
your
real number?”

“That
is
a real number, Rachel. My God, that's an extraordinary amount of money for your client. And for you. What's your contingent fee deal?”

“None of your business.”

“A third? Do the math. It's more than eighty grand in your pocket. Better yet, both of you get your money today. Look at the alternative: the two of you can spend four grueling weeks in this courtroom and walk out of here with absolutely nothing.”

I shrugged. “Stanley, you're a corporate lawyer. I'm a trial lawyer. Corporate lawyers earn their living resolving matters. Some things can't be resolved.” I looked around the room. “That's why we have courthouses.”

He shook his head, exasperated. “You're being completely irrational.” He paused lowering his voice. “And this American Nazi nonsense is preposterous. Worse than preposterous—it's a totally unjustified diversionary tactic. Conrad Beckman is a great American citizen. Your allegations are nothing short of defamation. Do you truly believe he's the only man of stature to have made a mistake in his youth? His story is no different from dozens of great men. Look at Supreme Court Justice Harlan Black, a man who rose above his racist youth to become one of our country's greatest defenders of civil liberties. Look at St. Augustine. Look at Moses, for God's sake.” He shook his head angrily. “Same with Conrad Beckman. So what if he had an adolescent flirtation with Nazism? Look at him now.”

“It was more than a flirtation, Stanley.”

He snorted. “Says who?”

I gazed at him calmly. “For starters, your uncle Harold.”

That answer seemed to stagger him. “Harold Roth? What in God's name would Harold know?”

“Enough,” I said.

He gave me a puzzled look, and then he shook his head in disbelief. “Oh, for God's sake. Not that old Jewish Defense Alliance nonsense? Harold's unreliable. He's a bitter old paranoid.”

I shook my head. “I don't agree.”

“Come on, Rachel,” he said impatiently. “This is a federal trial. You're going to need more than the ramblings of an old man. You're going to need real evidence.”

He paced around the room, shaking his head as he did. He stopped in front of me. “Look at me, Rachel.” He patted his chest. “I'm a Jew. Just like you. I understand what it means to be a Jew. I understand that the Nazis tried to exterminate us, to wipe us off the face of the earth. Do you honestly believe that I would represent a man that I thought was once
seriously
involved in the American Nazi movement? It's ludicrous. It's unthinkable.”

I shrugged. “Then you may be in for a surprise, Stanley. That's all I can say.”

He nostrils flared in anger. He straightened up and pointed a finger at me. “And you may be in for a surprise yourself, young lady, if you start throwing around baseless allegations in court.”

I stared at him. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”

He stared right back. “I don't make threats.”

I tried to keep my voice calm. “And I don't throw around baseless allegations.”

After a moment he stepped back and took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. “I apologize, Rachel. I didn't ask you in here to pick a fight. Look, talk to your client. Please. Beckman Engineering is offering a lot of money. A quarter of a million dollars, Rachel. That's far more than she could ever have hoped to win on that age discrimination case.” He paused. “I might even be able to squeeze another fifty grand out of the company if that's what it'll take to get the deal done. Talk to her, Rachel. Please.”

I walked out without responding. I found Ruth seated in the courtroom with her knitting on her lap. “Well?” she asked.

I gave her a wink. “They're starting to worry.”

***

“How are you feeling?” Jonathan asked, studying me with concern.

“Okay, I guess.” I sighed. “I need someone to clone me. Trial starts next Monday and I have too much to do.”

It was eight-thirty that night and I was sitting in Jonathan's breakfast room. I took of sip of my second cup of tea with honey and lemon. I'd come by for dinner. Leah and Sarah were upstairs getting ready for sleep; the housekeeper had just finished the dishes. I glanced at my watch. I had to leave for the airport in about thirty minutes to pick up Benny, who was coming back from Chicago after taking the deposition of Otto Koll.

It had started snowing again. Out the window I could see the wispy flakes floating by. I thought for a moment of Ozzie. I'd put him in the backyard after dinner. He'd be okay. It wasn't supposed to snow hard, and if it did he could find shelter on the back porch. I reached for another piece of homemade
rugalach
, a yummy Jewish cookie that Jonathan baked on Sundays with his daughters.

I leaned back in my chair. The breakfast room was a circular nook that protruded from the edge of the house with windows on all sides. Jonathan had left the light off so that the room was only dimly lit from the kitchen. The shades were open. With the snow gently falling all around us, it seemed that we were all alone in a snug igloo in the middle of a fairyland.

“I love this room,” I said.

We sat in silence. It was a cozy silence. After a while, I noticed that he was staring at me. I gave him a wink.

He smiled. “What?”

“Distract me, handsome. Tell me about Spider. How goes it with those bank subpoenas?”

“Slow.”

“What now?”

“We've traced the Spider funds through a series of bank accounts all the way back to 1955, but that's where the trail ends.”

“Why?”

“From 1955 until 1964, the funds were at Mercantile Bank. That account was opened on May 23, 1955, with a deposit of nine hundred fifty thousand dollars. I've seen the microfilm of the check. It was drawn from an account at the Gravois State Bank and Trust.”

“Where's that?”

“It used to be on the south side, down by Bevo Mill.”

“Used to be?”

He nodded. “It went under in 1962. We've traced the bank's records to a microfilm storage facility in a Utah salt mine.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. Actually, lots of old Utah salt mines have been converted into storage facilities. Anyway, the only records on microfilm for that bank were its loan accounts and certain types of trust accounts.” He shook his head in frustration. “There are no records on this account. We don't know who opened it or where the money came from.”

“Maybe that sleazy lawyer can tell you. What's his name?”

“Paulie Metzger. We'll find out on Wednesday.”

“Is that when he goes before the grand jury?”

Jonathan nodded. “Grand jury in the morning, and if that doesn't pan out, me alone after lunch.”

I giggled. “Someone better tell Paulie to eat a light lunch. Oh, wait,” I said, suddenly remembering. “That's going to be in Jefferson City, right?”

He nodded. “Why?”

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

I mulled it over. “I've got to go down there, too.”

“What for?”

I explained. Two months ago I'd served written requests for disclosure on various state and federal agencies seeking to find out whether any of them had ever investigated Beckman Engineering for business misconduct. It was a total fishing expedition, a shot in the dark, but two weeks ago I'd received a response from the Missouri Trade Commission: in 1978 they'd conducted an investigation of Beckman Engineering regarding “certain averments of antitrust infractions.” I called the commission's general counsel the day I received their response. Although he was reluctant to disclose the results of an investigation that had been closed for almost two decades, he finally agreed to let me, and only me, review the file, but only if I did so in his office in Jefferson City. He refused to tell me anything in advance about the contents of the file. I realized that the materials would most likely prove irrelevant to my lawsuit, but I couldn't be sure without examining them, and that fact kept pestering me as the trial date approached. With so much at stake in the case, I'd never forgive myself if it turned out that there was something valuable in a file that I'd neglected to examine.

“Would you like to drive down with me?”

I shook my head. “I can't take that much time. But maybe I'll take the train down Wednesday morning. I could bring along some pretrial stuff to do on the ride, review the commission's file when I get there, and hitch a ride home with you.”

He smiled. “Sounds great.”

***

As Jonathan was saying good-bye to me in the foyer, Leah came down the stairs in her pajamas. She was carrying a gift-wrapped package.

“Daddy,” she said, holding out the package, “I forgot about this. It was in my backpack.”

He kneeled down. “What is it, honey?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. It's for you.”

Jonathan's smile faded. “From you?”

She shook her head. “A man gave it to me.”

I tensed.

“Who was the man?” Jonathan asked in a calm, fatherly voice. He took the package from her.

She shrugged again. “I don't know. He came up to me on the playground at recess.”

“At school, honey?”

She nodded. “He asked me if I would give you this present.”

Jonathan held the package to his ear in an almost casual way. “Did he know who you were?”

She nodded. “He called me by my name.”

I could feel my heart pounding.

“He called you Leah?” he asked, not a trace of alarm in his manner.

She nodded.

“Did he tell you his name?”

She shook her head. “He said you'd be able to figure it out when you opened your gift.”

He gave her a reassuring smile. “What did he look like?”

She shrugged. “Big.”

“Do you remember his hair?”

“No, he was wearing a ski cap.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

She frowned for a second and then shook her head.

Jonathan kissed her on the forehead. “Thanks, honey. You can go up to bed now.”

“Aren't you going to open your present, Daddy?”

“Later. Good night, Leah.”

“Good night.” She turned to me. “Good night, Rachel.”

I forced a smile. “Good night, Leah.” My voice was hoarse.

Jonathan waited until he heard her enter her bedroom upstairs.

“Oh, God,” I said.

He felt around the edges of the package. “I think it's a book.”

***