The Takeover

by Stephen W. Frey

  11

  Sharon Cruz sat quietly at one end of the long conference-room table. Very soon she would become the center of attention. It was a distinction she did not relish. This was strange for a litigator, because trial attorneys were by definition perpetually the center of attention. It was strange that she could so easily stand before an unknown judge, a hostile jury, the press, and a partisan audience and tenaciously argue the innocence of her client or the guilt of her opponent’s client without a hint of self-consciousness; yet a presentation to her partners caused her such anxiety that she could barely speak by the time she was called on.

  Her stress came because she cared about the partners’ opinion so much. She wanted acceptance. If a jury found her client guilty, so be it. She had tried her best and that was all there was to it. But if the partners were not immediately enthused, she was crushed.

  From her seat, Sharon could see the waters of Baltimore’s harbor glistening in the afternoon sunlight. The harbor was thirty-one stories below this conference room of the renowned law firm of Cleveland, Miller & Prescott. She wished she were down there enjoying the afternoon sun. She wished she did not have to speak to them today.

  Even after nine years at the firm, she was still uncertain about their true feelings toward her. She was Hispanic, and they, except for Grover Tipton, were white. Suddenly, Sharon longed for New York City, where people were more readily accepted. But the money, as a third-year partner, had become addictive. Two or three more years, and she would have the financial wherewithal to begin her own practice. She promised herself she would spend at least fifty percent of her time representing minorities who didn’t have the means to obtain a decent lawyer themselves.

  Sharon’s gaze fell back on the blue-green waters far below. Who was she kidding? The only way she wouldn’t be staring out the same window two or three years from now would be if Cleveland, Miller & Prescott had relocated its offices in the interim.

  “Ms. Cruz?” Turner Prescott’s controlled tone knifed through the room from the other end of the table.

  “Yes, sir.” The image of the blue-green waters evaporated. Prescott stared at her sternly over wire-frame glasses balanced precariously on the end of his nose. “Yes, sir.” Sharon said the words again more slowly, making certain that she enunciated each syllable. In her first few years, the partners had complained that she spoke so rapidly they weren’t able to understand her. She had actually visited a speech therapist to address the problem, and it had been corrected—for the most part. But from time to time, when she wasn’t concentrating, the speed with which her native Spanish was spoken returned.

  “Please update us on the Bradlee matter.” Each Friday the twenty-two partners reviewed every case for which the firm had been retained. It was a benefit of a smaller firm, she felt, that they could all meet together in the same conference room. One of the other partners had been speaking for the last five minutes. Now it was her turn.

  Sharon stared at Prescott for a moment. He was sixty-four but seemed much younger, and he was quite dapper in the matching bow tie and suspenders. As the senior and managing partner of the firm, he was responsible for strategic planning and administration. Despite Prescott’s extra duties, he still managed to originate more business than any other attorney at Cleveland, Miller and logged more than his share of courtroom time. Brilliant, tireless, and quietly commanding, Prescott had guided the firm to national prominence as litigation specialists over the past twenty years. He liked her, but more important, he accepted her, and he continually placed significant responsibility in her hands.

  Sharon felt the eyes of the partnership upon her.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Sharon glanced up from her notes. The speaker was Lyle Frames, an overweight, balding man who appeared older than his forty-four years. He whined when he spoke and was not generally liked by the other partners. But he was a stickler for details and was always one of the top earners at the firm.

  “What is it, Lyle?” Prescott cut in.

  “Turner, I don’t remember a discussion at any of the new business meetings with respect to Bradlee.”

  “There was no discussion, Lyle. I made the decision unilaterally. It is a terribly important case, and it was absolutely essential that confidentiality remain strict until this time. Anyone have a problem with that?” Prescott scanned the room.

  But Frames would not let it go. “I think there should have been at least some back-and-forth about who worked on the case if it is so important.”

  “Are you questioning my judgment with respect to using Ms. Cruz?” There was an edge to Prescott’s normally smooth voice.

  Frames heard the edge, and though he was a stickler for procedure, he was not stupid enough to push Prescott. Cleveland, Miller was a partnership in name only. In reality it was a dictatorship—for the most part benevolent. Frames shook his head.

  “Please continue, Ms. Cruz.” The edge disappeared. Prescott smiled politely at her.

  She smiled back and then began. “Cleveland, Miller & Prescott has been retained by the Bradlee Company to represent it in litigation with regard to a dispute involving environmental problems.” Gradually the perspiration covering her palms began to dry.

  She glanced up from the papers. The partners were staring at her, as she knew they would be. Ogling was a better word. She was attractive. Short and slim with dark hair and a nice figure, she made a pleasant fantasy. She knew that. Half of them probably weren’t listening to her at all, just gazing at her body. Men were so predictable.

  Sharon returned to the papers before her. “Bradlee is located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Until a year ago, it was a dairy farm operated by a husband and wife—a small outfit, only five hundred head of cattle.”

  “I remember reading about that.” Ann Peifer, the other female partner at Cleveland, Miller, interrupted. “The entire herd was poisoned. No one could figure out what happened. That farm is located near Centreville, twenty miles south of Chestertown. Isn’t that right?”

  Sharon smiled at the other woman. They were close friends, out of necessity. “That’s right.”

  “Please continue,” Prescott said impatiently.

  “As Ann mentioned, the entire herd died within a few days. With the help of local authorities, the Bradlees were able to trace the catastrophe to a poison in the cattle’s water supply. Fortunately, the barns’ wells were supplied by a different underground stream than was the Bradlee home. Anyway, the authorities found that the underground stream from which the well drew its water was poisoned. However, they were unable to locate the source of the contamination.

  “The Bradlees were ruined. They had business-interruption insurance, but the insurance company had gone bankrupt, and as it turned out, the insurance broker had been simply pocketing their checks. He never told them that the insurance company had gone down.

  “The insurance broker is now in jail, but the Bradlees were unable to collect anything from him. They were forced to declare bankruptcy themselves. They were completely wiped out as a result of this.” Sharon paused and looked up.

  The partnership was breathless. They trusted Prescott. They knew there was more to this than just the death of a dairy farm. They sensed a deep pocket from which the Bradlees could extract a huge sum of money and, more important, from which Cleveland, Miller could extract its pound of flesh.

  Sharon continued. “Several months after the cattle died, Roger Bradlee received an anonymous telephone call. It came at night, and it lasted only about thirty seconds. The caller simply told him that they ought to dig in a certain place on the farm next to theirs. That if they did, it might be the answer to their prayers.”

  The room was as quiet as a tomb.

  “Bradlee and his two sons went out immediately with a front-end loader to the spot. Apparently the caller was very specific with respect to the location. They didn’t bother calling the Parke
r family, the owners of the property, because they were afraid that if they notified the Parkers, whatever the anonymous caller had told them about might somehow disappear. As it turned out, they didn’t have to worry. It only took the Bradlees about fifteen minutes to find what they were looking for.” Sharon looked up again.

  The partners were on the edge of their seats.

  “Fifty-five-gallon drums filled with toxic waste.”

  There was a collective murmur from the partnership.

  Sharon continued. “As soon as they hit the first few drums, Roger Bradlee had the good sense to stop digging. He sent one of his sons into Centreville for the authorities. He sent the other one home for shotguns and rifles. Somehow he knew that he had uncovered something very big and very bad. Something for which a number of parties were probably responsible and probably would do anything to cover up. He also realized that this might be his family’s salvation, and he did not want it to slip away. The site was on a fairly remote part of the Parker property, so no one saw them working.

  “The local sheriff was at the site in a half hour. He determined that there was indeed cause to investigate further and obtained a search warrant from the local judge at three in the morning, enabling him to proceed. He then called members of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Maryland Environmental Safety Board at home. Woke them up out of a sound sleep. At five in the morning, the EPA arrived, and by four that afternoon they had discovered over five hundred fifty-five-gallon drums filled with some of the nastiest stuff known to mankind.”

  Grover Tipton intervened. “So the Parkers were using at least part of their property as a hazardous-waste dumping site.”

  “Well, someone was using the property that way. The practice has become widespread on the Eastern Shore. It’s still pretty desolate out there. Mostly dairy cattle, chicken farms, and crops. The locals have figured out that they can bury a couple of loads of hazardous waste on their property and make more from that in a night than they can farming all year. And with a lot less effort.”

  Lyle Frames broke in. “So then the Parkers allowed someone to dump toxic waste on their property for a fee?”

  “The Parkers have owned the land for years. They claimed to know nothing about the site. They own about four thousand acres outside of Centreville, and they said that someone must have directed trucks to that location and buried the waste without their knowledge. It seems far-fetched that they wouldn’t know, because it would take lots of truckloads to transport five hundred drums. But to give them the benefit of the doubt, it is a very remote location. I visited the farm. Of course, the EPA doesn’t believe they didn’t know. The EPA has searched the entire property with metal detectors, but they haven’t found anything else yet. The EPA has also searched another two thousand acres the Parkers own farther down the Eastern Shore, near Cambridge. But they’ve found nothing there either. The IRS is performing an audit to review the Parkers’ cash receipts over the past few years. They are looking for unusually large deposits.”

  “The poison in the Bradlees’ water supply. Did it come from those drums?” Frames asked.

  “Tests carried out by the EPA show conclusively that the waste in the cattle’s drinking water was the same as was contained in the drums on the Parker land. And it gets better. The EPA tracked the underground stream that supplied the Bradlees’ cattle herd. It went directly beneath the illegal dump site, at a depth of less than a hundred feet.”

  “Were the drums leaking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who dumped the waste on the Parker farm?” It was Tipton who asked the vital question. Cleveland, Miller wasn’t going to earn a huge fee from a judgment against the Parkers—even if they could prove that the Parkers knowingly buried the waste. It sounded as if they were land rich, with six thousand acres on the Eastern Shore, but that could be meaningless. Farmland outside of Centreville and Cambridge might not be particularly valuable, and there might be a hefty mortgage attached to the property that would have to be repaid before the Parkers could use the net proceeds of a land sale to make restitution to the Bradlees. What the Bradlees, and therefore Cleveland, Miller & Prescott, needed was a deep corporate pocket: a multimillion-dollar industrial corporation, preferably headquartered outside the state of Maryland, unquestionably guilty of sending the drums to the Parker land and, by logical extension, guilty of poisoning the Bradlees’ cattle herd. Even if the large corporation produced legions of attorneys to proclaim their client’s innocence, in the end the local jury would find the corporate defendant guilty and award the Bradlees a large judgment. The corporation would appeal the judgment, and Cleveland, Miller would recommend that the Bradlees settle for a lesser amount. It always happened that way. Depending on the size of the corporation and its financial wherewithal, Cleveland, Miller might be able to settle at ten to twenty million dollars for the Bradlees. And Cleveland, Miller & Prescott would receive a third of that amount. That was standard. Three to seven million out of one case. Maybe much more if the corporation responsible for the waste was large. The partnership licked its chops. But everything was contingent upon being able to identify that corporation.

  “Have you been able to determine who sent the waste to the Parker farm?” Tipton asked the question again.

  “We have. But before I continue, let me say this. There is a restraining order on all of the parties with respect to publicly discussing the case. That is why none of you has heard anything about it in the press. That order will be in effect until the trial begins, but since you are all partners, Turner feels you should know what is going on, especially in light of the fact that we are going to trial next week.”

  She paused for effect and then addressed Tipton’s question again. “Of the five hundred or so drums, only two had any identification. Names on the rest of the drums had been filed or sanded off. However, two drums bore the name Penn-Mar Chemical Corporation.”

  “For those who may not be familiar with Penn-Mar Chemical Corporation,” Prescott interjected, “why don’t you give them a little background, Sharon?” He wanted to make certain that the partnership was duly impressed.

  “Penn-Mar is a multinational chemical corporation with properties all over the world. For the fiscal year ended December thirty-first, 1995, Penn-Mar reported worldwide revenue of over forty billion dollars and net income after taxes of over a billion. Ranked by revenues, it is the second largest chemical company in America.”

  Another audible murmur raced around the conference room. The partners leaned toward one another and nodded. A settlement far in excess of ten to twenty million dollars might be possible.

  “But before we all start thinking about new beach houses in the Virgin Islands and so forth, I think you should know that there are a few problems with the case.” Sharon spoke loudly to restore order. “We have been able to specifically link only the two drums with Penn-Mar’s name on them to the company. The contents of the other drums were exactly the same as the contents of the drums bearing Penn-Mar’s name; however, the waste at the site in Centreville is common to many commodity chemicals produced by a wide variety of U.S. chemical companies and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign chemical companies. In addition, neither of the marked drums was leaking. Only about half of the drums at the site had leaked, and the two traceable to Penn-Mar were not among them.”

  The partnership began to settle back in its seats. Suddenly the ten- to twenty-million-dollar settlement was looking very iffy.

  “All is not lost, though.” Sharon was taking the partnership on a roller-coaster ride, and she was enjoying it. “Penn-Mar has a large facility located on the outskirts of Wilmington, Delaware—a facility which, in the manufacturing process of its chemicals, produces the exact same waste found at the Centreville site. We believe that the toxic waste found in Centreville came from this facility. Penn-Mar’s next closest facility is in Pittsburgh, and we’re pretty sure it didn’t come from there. Anyway, we h
ave found a truck driver who will testify that he made at least three trips from the Penn-Mar facility at Wilmington to the Parker property in Centreville. That’s at least a hundred drums. He has received immunity from prosecution. That’s why he’s willing to testify.”

  “He’d better be under twenty-four-hour police protection too,” Tipton said emphatically.

  “As a matter of fact, we have hired several bodyguards for him. Not that we really think Penn-Mar would try to interfere with his testimony. All in all we believe we have a pretty good case. Penn-Mar has offered the Bradlees a settlement amount.”

  “How much?” Frames asked.

  “A million,” answered Sharon. “Frankly, we had no problem recommending to the Bradlees that they not accept the offer. That kind of money would just barely pay off the debts they have incurred over the past year and leave them with nothing else.”

  “Where is Penn-Mar headquartered?” Frames wanted to know.

  “Toledo, Ohio.”

  “Have you been able to determine whether or not the corporate officers knew about this toxic dump site?”

  “At this point we have not been able to establish a link between senior management and the illegal dumping. If we could establish that conspiracy, and if we could establish that all of the drums at that site were Penn-Mar drums from the Wilmington facility, we’d probably be able to win a huge settlement. Right now it appears that we’ll be able to prove only that there were several very irresponsible employees at the Wilmington facility who sent two containers to the Parker land.”

  “Has anyone been able to figure out who the anonymous source was? Who made the telephone call that led the Bradlees to uncover the toxic waste that night?”

  Sharon shook her head. “We don’t know.”

  * * *

  —

  The manila folder lay on Prescott’s desk. It was the key to the Pleiade Project. The key to everything. Without it, they could not bring down the President. With it, they would throw the financial markets into chaos, and destroy this heinous administration.