Extraordinary Powers (3 page)

“Ben ” Herb interrupted.

Lyons handed me a legal file folder. “Take a look,” he said.

“Here’s a copy of a newsletter put out by the Big Apple Health Club in Manhattan that shows their latest piece of equipment-the Alpine Ski—almost a year and a half before Mr. Schell applied for his patent And an invoice.”

I took the folder, glanced at it without interest, and handed it back.

“Ben—” Herb said again. “Can we talk for a minute?”

I left Lyons and Sommer in my office while Herb and I talked in a nearby vacant conference room.

“What the hell is this all about?” I asked.

“It’s true. They’re right.”

“You sold this thing more than a year before you applied for a patent?”

“Two-years before, actually. To twelve personal trainers at health clubs around the country.”

I stared at him evenly. “Why?”

“Christ, Ben, I didn’t know the law. How the hell are you supposed to test these things out unless you get it out there? You have no idea the kind of abuse machines like this take in gyms and health clubs.”

“So you were able to make improvements along the way?”

“Well, sure.”

“Ah. How fast can you get me a document from your corporate headquarters in Chicago?”

Steve Lyons was beaming with triumph as we came in. “I assume,” he said with what he probably took to be sympathy, “that Mr. Schell has filled you in.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said.

“Preparation, Ben,” he said. “You ought to look into it.”

The timing was exquisite. At that moment my personal fax machine rang and squealed and began to print out a document I walked over to the fax, watched it print out, and as it did so, I said: “Steve, I only wish you’d saved us all the time and expense by doing a little reading in your case law.”

He looked at me, puzzled, his smile dimming somewhat.

“Ah, let’s see,” I said. “It would be 917 Fed Second 544, Federal Circuit 1990.”

“What’s he talking about?” Sommer audibly whispered to Lyons. Lyons, unwilling to shrug in my presence, merely stared at me, uncomprehending.

“Is that true?” Sommer insisted.

Lyon’s facial expression did not change. “I’d have to look it up.”

The fax machine cut the paper, a staccato punctuation mark. I handed it to Lyons. “Here’s a letter from the manager of the Big Apple Health Club to Herb Schell, containing his thoughts about the Alpine Ski, his notes on how it was holding up and what about it might be reconfigured. And suggestions for modifications.”

At that point Darlene walked in, silently gave me a book Federal Reporter 917, 2d Series and left. Without even looking at it, I handed it to Lyons.

“This some sort of game you’re playing?” Lyons managed to slammer.

“Oh, not at all,” I replied. “My client sold prototypes during a period of testing, and gathered performance data from the sold version.

Therefore the ‘-sale’ doctrine doesn’t apply, Steve.”

“I don’t even know where you’re getting this “

“Manville Sales Corp. v. Paramount Systems, Inc. Fed Second 544.”

“Oh, come off it,” Lyons retorted. “I never even heard of ” “Page 1314,” I said as I returned to my chair, leaned back, and folded my legs. “Let’s see.” In a monotone, I recited: “The policies that define the on sale and public use bars do not support invalidation of the patent even though, more than one year prior to filing a patent application, the paten tee installed a fixture at a state highway rest station under construction. A period of outdoor testing of the invention was necessary to determine whether it would … “

Lyons, in the meantime, sat with the book open on his lap, following along, mouthing the words. He finished the sentence for me: “it would serve its purpose.”

He looked up at me, slack-jawed.

“See you in court,” I said.

Herb Schell left that morning much happier and almost ten million dollars richer. And I had the pleasure of a parting colloquy with Steve Lyons.

“You knew that fucking case word for word,” he said. “Word for word. How the hell did you do that?” “Preparation,” I said, and shook his hand firmly. “Look into it”

TWO.

“VEry early the next morning I had breakfast at the Harvard Club in Boston with my boss, Bill Steams.

Which was when I learned I was suddenly in some serious trouble.

Steams had breakfast there every morning: Mrs. Steams, a wan Wellesley housewife, apparently did little else beside serve as a volunteer for the Museum of Fine Arts. I imagined that she slept late, with an eye shade on, and that since the time their two kids had left the nest for their foreordained lives as junior Boston Brahmins (Deerfield, Harvard, investment banking, alcoholism), he hadn’t had a single breakfast at home.

His table at die Harvard Club was always the same, against the plate-glass window overlooking the city. Invariably he’d have the Harvard Club’s special shirred eggs (Steams considered the late twentieth-century aversion to cholesterol an evanescent fad, like the sixties). Sometimes he’d eat by himself, with The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe, sometimes with one or more of the senior partners, to discuss business and golf.

Every once in a long while I’d join him. In case you suspect we engaged in conspiratorial, old-boy-network chitchat about the Central Intelligence Agency, I should make it plain that Bill Steams and I normally talked about sports (which I know just enough about to banter) or real estate. Occasionally—this morning, for instance—there was something of gravity Bill wanted to discuss.

Steams is the sort of person who’s considered avuncular by those who don’t know him. He’s in his late fifties, gray-haired, ruddy-faced, bow-tied, somewhat potbellied. His two thousand-dollar suits from Louis of Boston look, on him, as if they came off the wrong rack at Filene’s Basement.

The truth is that after those two nightmarish, violent years of clandestine CIA work, I found the very safeness of my legal career at Putnam & Steams deeply reassuring. But it was my service at CIA that got me recruited to Putnam & Steams. Bill Steams was formerly Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency under the legendary Alien Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence from 1953 to 1961.

When I was hired at Putnam & Steams nine years ago I made it very clear that my intelligence background notwithstanding, I would refuse to have anything to do with the CIA. My brief CIA career was the past, I told Bill Steams, and that was that. Steams, to his credit, had shrugged theatrically and said, “Who said anything about CIA?” There was, I’m convinced, a twinkle in his eye. I think he figured that in time I’d relent, that it would be easy business for me. He knew that the Agency feels much more comfortable in dealing with its own, that there’d be all kinds of pressure on me to do whatever legal work the Agency wanted, and that I’d give in. Why else would an ex-field officer like me come to work for an old boy firm like Putnam & Steams? The answer, of course, was the money, which was substantially more than any other firm was offering me.

I didn’t know why Bill Steams had invited me to breakfast that morning, but I strongly suspected something was up. I busied myself with my blueberry muffin. I’d had way too much coffee already, and I figured a little solid matter in my stomach would anchor me. I’ve always hated business breakfasts; I believe Oscar Wilde had a point when he said that only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

As our food arrived, Steams pulled a copy of The Boston Globe from his briefcase.

“You read about First Commonwealth, I assume,” he said.

His tone immediately alarmed me. “I didn’t see the Globe this morning,” I said.

He slid it across the table.

I scanned the front page. There, just below the fold, was a headline that made me feel immediately queasy.

INVESTMENT FIRM CLOSED BY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT it read.

And in smaller letters: first commonwealth assets frozen by sec. First Commonwealth was a small money-management firm based in Boston which managed all my money. Despite the grandiose name, it is a tiny place, a boutique firm run by an acquaintance of mine, with fewer than half a dozen clients. It was the firm that paid my mortgage each month, the place where virtually all my money was stashed.

Until this morning.

Unlike Steams, I am not rich. Molly’s father left an insignificant amount of cash, some stock certificates and bearer bonds, and the title to his house in Alexandria, which was mortgaged to the hilt. He also left her, curiously, a document he’d signed and notarized, giving her full and absolute right of beneficiary to all accounts in his name foreign and domestic under the laws of blah blah blah … The details would numb your brain, as would most details pertaining to the law of estates and trusts. I say “curiously” because, as Harrison Sinclair’s only surviving heir, she Was automatically entitled to beneficiary rights. No piece of paper was necessary. All right, so maybe Sinclair was the overly cautious type.

Me, he left exactly one item: an autographed copy of the memoirs of CIA director Alien Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence. It was a first edition, and it was inscribed “For Hal, With deepest admiration, Alien.”

A nice bequest on Sinclair’s part, but hardly a fortune.

When my father died some years back, I inherited a little over a million dollars, which after estate taxes immediately became half a million. I transferred all of it to First Commonwealth because of its good reputation. The head of the firm, Frederick

“Doc” Osborne, I knew from various legal dealings, and he always struck me as shrewd. Was it Nelson Algren who said, Never eat at a place called Mom’s and never play cards with a guy named Doc? And that was before the days of money managers.

You may wonder, of course, why someone as shrewd as I’m supposed to be would put all his money in one place. I have often wondered the same thing myself, to be frank, and still do. The answer, I suppose, is twofold. Doc Osborne was a friend, and he had a terrific reputation, and therefore it seemed unnecessary to diversify. And I had always treated my inheritance as a nest egg, a chunk of money I preferred not to touch, since I was making a decent salary. And I suppose, too, it’s like that old saw about the shoemaker’s children never having any shoes: the guys who work with money are often pretty mindless about their own.

I dropped my fork, felt sick to my stomach. Rapidly calculating, I realized at once that unless I could somehow wrest my money back from First Commonwealth, I would immediately go bankrupt—my salary, generous though it was, wouldn’t even cover my mortgage. In the present soft real estate market in Boston, I’d be unable to sell my house except at a tremendous loss.

The veins at my temples throbbed. I looked up at Steams.

“Help me out here,” I said weakly.

“Ben, I’m sorry—” Steams said through a mouthful of shirred egg.

“What does this mean? This stuff isn’t my expertise, you know that.”

He took a swallow of coffee and set down the cup noisily in the saucer.

“Here’s what it means,” he said with a sigh. “Your money’s frozen, along with that of all other First Commonwealth clients.”

“By whom? Who has the authority to do that? And for what?” I ran my eyes wildly up and down the Globe article, trying to glean some sense from it “The Securities and Exchange Commission. Plus the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston.” “Frozen,” I said dully, disbelieving.

“The U.S. attorney’s office isn’t saying much—they said it’s a pending investigation.”

“Investigating what?” “All they said was something about securities law violations and RICO statutes. They said it might take at least a year to release the assets, pending the outcome of the SEC’s investigation.” “Frozen,” I said again. “My God.” I ran a hand across my face. “All right. What can I do about this?” “Nothing,” Steams said. “Nothing except wait this out. I can have Todd Richlin talk to a friend of his at the SEC”—Richlin was Putnam & Steams’s resident financial genius—“but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

I looked out the window at the miniature streets of Boston thirty-some floors below us—the green of the Public Garden and the Common resembling the green-sprayed lichen of a toy train set; the magnificent tree-lined Commonwealth Avenue; and running parallel to it, Marlborough Street, where I lived. If I were the suicidal type, it would have made a good spot from which to jump. “Go ahead,” I said.

“Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, acting through the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston, have shut down First Commonwealth, apparently for alleged drug ties.”

“Drug—”

“Well, the word is that Doc Osborne’s involved in some kind of money-laundering scheme for drug types.”

“But / have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever shit Doc Osborne is into!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he replied. “Remember when the Fed shut down that big discount brokerage in New York, Drexel Burnham? They literally went in and put handcuffs on people and put a sticker on the door. I mean, you could take a tour of the place a year later and you’d see cigarettes still in ashtrays, half-full cups of coffee, all that.”

“But Drexel’s clients didn’t lose their cash!”

“Well, look at Marcos of the Philippines, or the Shah of Iran—sometimes they just seize all the money and let it earn interest—for good old Uncle Sam.”

“Seize all the money,” I echoed.

“First Commonwealth literally has a padlock on the door,” Steams went on. “Federal marshals have seized all the computer equipment, all the records and documentation, sequestered —”

“So when can I get my money?”

“Maybe in a year and a half you’ll be able to pry the money loose.

Probably longer.”

“What the hell am I going to do?”

Steams exhaled noisily. “I had a drink last night with Alex Truslow,” he said. Then, daubing his mouth with a linen napkin, he added casually: “Ben, I want you to tree up time for Truslow Associates.”

“My schedule’s a little cramped, Bill,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Alex could mean upward of two hundred thousand dollars in billable hours this year alone, Ben.”

“We’ve got half a dozen attorneys as qualified as I am. More qualified.”