The first Thursday in October, 2007
Rep figured he’d never see anything more dramatic in a courtroom than the jury returning its verdict in the sex-or-swim case. If the world had ended three minutes later, he would have been right.
He and Angstrom watched the show from seats just behind the bar, next to Goettinger Corporation’s lawyers. As Rep had hoped, his letter had baited the company into suing Angstrom. Word that the sex-or-swim jury finally had a verdict interrupted a humdrum scheduling conference in Angstrom’s case, so they were able to grab choice seats before the reporters and other spectators rushed in to hear the verdict read.
From no more than eight feet away he saw thousand-dollar suit coats strain against shoulders as Clevenger and his lawyers tensed. After taking the verdict form back from a poker-faced judge, the clerk pulled a sleek, black tube close to her mouth.
“United States v. Clevenger, case number 07-CR-103. On the charge of willfully boarding a vessel on the high seas for the purpose of committing depredation thereon contrary to the law of nations, in violation of section sixteen-fifty-one of title eighteen of the United States Code, we the jury find the defendant, James Taylor Clevenger, guilty as charged in the indictment.”
Forty seconds, half-a-dozen gavel raps, and the brusque eviction of a woman whispering into a Razr smaller than her COURT TV press tag silenced the post-verdict uproar. While the busted reporter exited, Rep heard Walt Kuchinski’s urgent baritone sweep over the courtroom. Kuchinski was only local counsel for Clevenger and his three best suits put together hadn’t cost a thousand dollars, but the dream-team superstars brought in from both coasts as lead counsel seemed stunned into paralyzed silence by the verdict.
“Your honor, I ask that the jury be polled by name.”
The judge handed a stapled jury list to the clerk, who squared her shoulders as she turned toward the jury. When she spoke, a sharply challenging tone replaced the carefully neutral timbre of her verdict reading.
“Robert Ferguson: Is this your verdict?”
“Yes it is.”
“Marilyn Ebelard: Is this your verdict?”
“Yes.”
Rep’s eyes swiveled to the fifth juror in the first row. He was a twenty-something male with hair the color of old straw. His scared-rabbit eyes blinked through wire-rims too big for his face. He seemed to cringe with each lash-like repetition of the question.
“Elizabeth Pitowski: Is this your verdict?”
“It is.”
“Brian Cochrane: Is this your verdict?”
“Yep.”
Rep’s fingernails bit into his palms as he leaned forward.
“Grady Schoenfeld: Is this your verdict?”
The young man’s mouth twisted wordlessly for seven painful seconds.
“Grady Schoenfeld,” the clerk barked, “is this—”
“I just don’t know!” Schoenfeld pounded a frustrated fist on his thigh. “I said I thought he probably did it, but I’m just not sure.”
Another eruption. Gavel raps beat a staccato tattoo from the bench. All the lawyers at both tables were now standing and yammering.
“That’ll do,” the judge said. “Counsel, sit down and shut up. Bailiff, escort Mr. Schoenfeld to my chambers and show the rest of the jurors to the jury room. Everyone else, stand up while the jury goes out, then either sit down or leave—but don’t make a peep while you’re doing it, or you won’t see the inside of this courtroom again.”
As he watched the jury file out, Rep sensed his scheduling conference slipping away, along with any chance of a quick, clean end to Angstrom’s case. He was wrong. The instant the door closed behind the exiting jurors, the judge crooked his index finger at the Goettinger v. Angstrom group, which obediently trooped up to the bench.
“We’re gonna be awhile sorting this out. Since my calendar has probably just been blown to hell for the foreseeable future, I have an idea. The newsies are all going to be here waiting for the next thing to happen in this circus or outside reporting on the last thing. The press room should be nice and quiet. As long as you’re going to be here for awhile anyway, why don’t you go down there and see if you can get this case settled?”
“Your honor,” Rep’s adversary, Jeff Glendenning said hesitantly, “given the lateness of the hour—”
“Despite the delicate politesse of my diction,” the judge said, “that was not a suggestion.”
They obeyed. Sort of. As they approached the elevators, Glendenning started muttering something. Rep turned toward the burly, white-maned man who towered nearly half-a-foot over Rep’s five-nine.
“Gerry and I are going out for some fresh air,” he said. “Thirty-thousand for a bullet-proof muzzle, plus we’ll drop our claims. Best I can do. Talk it over with your client and we’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Just walked away and started down the stairs with Geraldine Lindner, Goettinger’s in-house general counsel.
“Does he piss you off as much as he does me?” Angstrom asked.
“He’s not having a good day,” Rep said. “Let’s go down and talk.”
The judge was kidding about the press room. Milwaukee’s federal courthouse doesn’t have one. Ordinarily, reporters camp forlornly in the corridors or on the front steps along with everyone else. Rep and Angstrom went to a conference room behind a first-floor bankruptcy court, whose own judge would be busy with insolvencies in Green Bay for a month or so. Given the press attention that the sex-or-swim case had generated, the chief judge had grudgingly allowed the media to base themselves there during the trial instead of cluttering up the rest of the courthouse.
Rep usually enjoyed negotiations, but he couldn’t see the point of these. Negotiation is based on information and fear. Rep didn’t have enough of the first, and Goettinger Corporation didn’t have enough of the second.
“The answer to thirty-thousand is no, by the way,” Angstrom said as they worked their way toward the conference room. “But you knew that.”
“Best case, you win two-hundred-fifty-thousand on your counterclaim. Worst case, they win their claims and bankrupt you. Lawyers call that an asymmetrical risk. So think hard about your counteroffer.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Seventy percent of two-fifty is one-seventy-five.” Rep opened the conference room door. “There’s no such thing as a seventy percent chance of winning a civil jury trial unless you’re in a wheelchair.”
“Only twenty-two percent of American adults still smoke,” Angstrom said in unruffled disgust as they stepped inside, “and apparently they’re all reporters assigned to this case.”
“Counteroffer. Focus.”
“Well would you look at that? What have we here?”
Rep followed Angstrom’s gaze. In the center of the scarred and mottled conference table, surrounded by Styrofoam cups used as ashtrays and evidence of hastily digested pizza, lay a thick, cardboard, aqua-colored file-folder with “GOETTINGER—RISK MANAGEMENT (2004)” written on its tab in bold felt-tip.
“An anonymous benefactor, perhaps,” Angstrom said.
“No one could have known that we’d be down here alone,” Rep said. “If someone planted that folder they weren’t leaking it to us. They left it for reporters covering the sex-or-swim case.”
“All the better for us then, no?”
Rep gazed at the folder’s opaque cover, as if it were a work of art whose deeper meaning would yield to patient study. Angstrom watched him for a few moments, then pulled a chair out and got comfortable, leaning back to balance it on its two rear legs and bracing his forearm against the table’s edge.
“You’re thinking it’s odd that a Goettinger file turns up in the middle of the sex-or-swim case on the day we have a court appearance in a separate case against Goettinger, aren’t you?”
“The word ‘coincidence’ had crossed my mind.”
“It’s a mystery.”
“So is the doctrine of the trinity—or so my wife tells me.”
“Well, however it got there, the file is within reach. Perhaps if we page through it the price of poker will go up.”
“If we find nothing we will have compromised ourselves to no purpose. If we find something ugly enough to make a difference, on the other hand, we’ll have a legal obligation to disclose it. We might make some work for the FBI but because Goettinger would have no reason to pay you to keep it secret, we wouldn’t help your case a bit.”
“In other words, two things can happen if we look at the file, and both of them are bad.”
“Right.”
Rep pulled a thick, brown envelope holding a copy of the pleading file out of his saddle-leather briefcase. He stuffed the pleadings themselves back into the briefcase, and then fussed the Goettinger file folder into the envelope. Looking around for a writing instrument more muscular than his blue Bic, he found only a green Magic Marker. He shrugged, sealed the envelope, and then signed his name in garish strokes across the seal.
“Your turn,” he said to Angstrom.
“We’re not actually going to return this to Goettinger without looking at it, are we?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what’s this rigamarole all about?”
“We found this on federal property, outside Goettinger’s custody and control. We’re going to give it to the first deputy marshal we can track down, and tell Goettinger to ask the court if it wants the file back.”
“And we’re doing this business with the Magic Marker to prove we didn’t peek?”
“No. We’re doing this to make Goettinger think we did.”