Law and Vengeance

by Mike Papantonio

  She smiled at the memory of their unveiling of that statue, before a dark thought came into her head: And that makes me who? Dulcinea?

  Gina tried to squash her dark thoughts. Most of the time she kept those judgments under the surface, but they weren’t as far under as she would have liked. She came from a dysfunctional family. No, “dysfunctional” wasn’t a strong enough word. She had hated her father, had been dismayed by the behavior of her mother, and had felt sorry for her younger brother. That’s why she needed the outlet of her work. That’s why Show and Tell invariably made her feel better about her life. Working with amazing people made Gina proud of being with the firm. And there was another reason she liked the meetings. At one time the government would have referred to the Romano household she had grown up in as a nuclear family, but Gina had never thought of it as a family. Not all orphans are without parents.

  Bergman-Deketomis was her only real family.

  Gina arrived five minutes before the meeting was due to begin. The law firm had a number of conference rooms. The one where they were meeting was referred to as the Aerie, or the “Bird’s Nest,” even though it was officially called the ninth floor conference room. Gina preferred the name, Aerie. The setting had the feel of some giant nest atop a cliff. You didn’t need to see like an eagle to feel you had the vision of one. From the Aerie you could see over Spanish Trace and out to the Gulf of Mexico. There was a huge oak table in the Aerie that easily accommodated the fifty or so partners and associates that would be attending, but Gina made it a point of arriving early to get a place near the head of the table.

  Martin Bergman, founder of Bergman-Deketomis, always sat at one head of the table. Usually Deke sat to his right, except on those formal occasions when each man would sit on opposite ends of the conference table. Gina claimed a seat just three down from the head of the table; a moment later she was joined by Cara Deketomis. Smiling, she asked Gina, “Do you mind if I sit next to you?”

  “By all means,” said Gina.

  As Cara settled in Gina asked, “How are you feeling these days?”

  Less than a year had passed since Cara had been hospitalized and almost died from side effects from taking Ranidol. Ironically, at the time her father was pursuing a case against Bekmeyer Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Ranidol. Cara hadn’t at first disclosed to her father that she had been on Ranidol, and not wanting to advertise the fact that she was using birth control only revealed this when it finally became absolutely necessary for him to know. Like so many dads, Deke sometimes had a blind spot when it came to acknowledging his little girl was growing up. Or in the present case, this attractive blond woman was all grown up.

  “I’m doing great,” said Cara. “I’m in this long-term study that monitors the health of Ranidol users, and, so far, all my data has been encouraging.”

  “With all the hours you’ve been putting in here,” Gina told her, “I figured you had to have a clean bill of health.”

  “Yes, you know the life of an associate.”

  “I know the life of a female associate,” Gina said, “and now I know the life of a female partner. You will, too.”

  Despite the advances of women lawyers, the same glass ceiling that was found in business also existed in legal firms. Bergman-Deketomis was trying to be the exception to that rule, but women just didn’t seem to get the same respect as their male colleagues.

  “Now I’m beginning to understand what they say about Ginger Rogers,” said Cara.

  “What’s that?” asked Gina.

  “She did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels, and yet Fred got all the dancing credit.”

  Gina smiled and reached out a hand to the shoulder of her younger colleague. It was no secret that Deke had worked Cara harder than any of the other associates before her illness and was now doing the same thing again. He didn’t want the appearance of favoritism.

  “Learn from my mistakes,” said Gina. “Leave time for a personal life.”

  “Mistakes?” said Cara. “Bryan is a hunk.”

  “Life in the jungle can be fun,” Gina admitted.

  “I hear his show is being syndicated. Is that true?”

  Gina nodded. “Right now it’s being shown in a number of test markets. And they’re trying to get Bryan to agree to travel out of the country so they can film him with different species in exotic locations.”

  “What does he think about that?”

  “He’s sort of torn. His practice is stretched thin as it is, especially with the new clinic. And going out of the country means we’ll have even less time together.”

  “I hope the two of you can work it out,” said Cara.

  “I do too,” said Gina.

  And she really did, Gina thought. That surprised her. And it also made her feel vulnerable. She hated the idea of being dependent on someone else for her happiness.

  Martin Bergman and Nick Deketomis walked through the door together at three o’clock exactly. Those outside the firm thought the two men were the odd couple. Bergman projected the tough, worldly grandfather role. He was the cynicism countering Deke’s optimism. Bergman was Jewish and old enough to have experienced some of Florida’s entrenched anti-Semitism firsthand. Deke was the outgoing Greek; Bergman was more reserved, more intellectual. But the sum of the two men had proved to be far more than their individual parts. They complemented each other perfectly.

  Gina watched them as they took their seats. They had worked together so long now that their movements looked like those of synchronized swimmers. Each knew their routine. The Bergman-Deketomis building was the largest edifice in Spanish Trace, with the top six floors of the building taken up by the law firm. Here in the Aerie, Gina felt as if she could see the whole world. It was an overcast day in the Sunshine State. Low, gray clouds hung over Spanish Trace and extended out to the Gulf of Mexico.

  Deke gestured for Martin to open the meeting.

  “Are we done yet?” growled Bergman, drawing laughs from all those assembled. “I need a smoke.”

  He looked down to his index and middle finger which were holding the remains of a chewed but not lit cigar. “This building has my name on it,” he said, “and yet the only place I can smoke is on the balcony upstairs.”

  “Diana says you can’t even smoke there,” said Deke, drawing even more laughter.

  Diana was Bergman’s longtime administrative assistant.

  “Evil woman,” said Martin.

  “She loves you,” said Angus Moore, “and is trying to keep you alive to see your eightieth birthday. The doctor told her that won’t happen if she doesn’t stop you from smoking.”

  “I keep telling her it’s my special imports that are keeping me alive,” Martin replied.

  “But let’s move away from the topic of Cohiba cigars and talk about something that is far more important than my smoke-saturated old body. Got a call from a friend who told me that the law firm of Peterson and Price in Cincinnati closed their doors last week after defaulting on a seventy million dollar loan that they accepted from a Wall Street school of sharks operating a high risk mezzanine fund.”

  Bergman appeared to take a bite out of his cigar and then continued with a slight chuckle, “There’s a new trend developing where investment finance groups on Wall Street want to own law firms that have regularly sued them and their corporate pals over the years.” His chuckle grew into a full belly laugh.

  “Three weeks ago a couple of the prickly predators came to our office and made a proposal to me and Deke that you all will appreciate. They wanted us to accept one hundred and fifty million dollars in a nonrecourse arrangement that had interest and points at close to twenty two percent. Their pitch was that we could use the money to begin building Bergman, Deketomis law firms all over America and become the Walmart of lawyering.”

  Deke joined in, saying, “I’ll point out, gang, that the conversation didn’t end well. Let me see if I remember all the details. I believe it started out with Martin making th
em one of his creative counter offers. It involved a suggestion that would have required the shorter character of the two to place his head up the butt of his partner and carry him on his shoulders out the front door of our building into oncoming traffic. And to add more drama to the moment he pointed out that we could actually buy both of them and the entire mezzanine fund they were managing if we had any desire to do business with junk-yard dogs.”

  As the laughter in the room subsided Martin added, “Please wait until Deke and I are six feet under before anyone in this room seriously considers any kind of partnership with a pack of Wall Street body snatchers that are trying to sink their grubby claws into law firms, lawyers, and the people we are supposed to represent.”

  Deke added, “Let talk about a case that’s going to cost a group of Wall Streeters a bunch of money before it’s all over.”

  As Deke talked about his toxic pollution case against DuPont, the room grew transfixed. Gina knew that whenever the firm used focus groups or mock juries, the participants invariably commented that what they liked about Deke was his passion and sincerity. That meant when he worked a courtroom, Deke could just be himself. Deke’s southern accent was homey and without affect. Gina often thought that it was amazing how he’d grown up mostly on the streets and managed to become this person she so admired today. Gina saw something in the way Deke worked a courtroom that reminded her of an Atticus Finch.

  Before she even took a job with the firm, Gina learned that To Kill a Mocking Bird influenced Deke as much as it did her. From the start this helped to establish a strong bond between the two.

  Gina had always been curious about the author. Not surprisingly, Harper Lee’s father was an attorney. Not only that, but he had defended two black men accused of murder. Gina felt even more kinship with Lee when she’d learned that her mother was mentally ill, most likely with severe bipolar disorder, which resulted in her being mentally and emotionally absent for her daughter.

  Been there and done that, thought Gina.

  Deke wove the parts of the DuPont story together. “We have documentation that proves DuPont poisoned the drinking water of seventy thousand people living along the Ohio River,” he said. “Carol Morris and her team are gathering all sorts of solid data showing the spiking cancer rates.”

  Carol was the senior investigator for the firm. Always polite and pleasant, and the picture of a loving, older aunt, she was able to get information out of even the most reluctant people. And Carol also had an unparalleled confederation of resources in and out of law enforcement that she called upon when needed.

  “Because of DuPont’s run-off,” continued Deke, “we have already established that the groundwater in five riverside communities was made toxic and that virtually anyone who drank from those community water facilities for more than a year has hugely elevated chances for getting cancer, thyroid disease, and lifelong ulcerative colitis. Everyone here knows my philosophy: shoot someone with a gun, it’s murder; kill someone with toxic chemicals, and it’s still murder.”

  Deke opened up his briefcase and pulled out a familiar looking item, an old frying pan. He held up the pan for everyone in the room.

  “Exhibit A,” he said, “a nonstick frying pan. It doesn’t look like a killing machine does it? It’s not even like one of those heavy iron skillets you sure don’t want to get hit over the head with. But this frying pan is a lot deadlier than one made with iron. That’s because making its nonstick surface comes with a terrible price, namely perfluorooctanoic acid, or C-8 as it is called by DuPont scientists.

  “I am sorry to say this, but I can confidently tell everyone in this room that there are traces of C-8 in your blood. That is because C-8 persists in the environment for at least two million years, if not indefinitely. DuPont let that evil genie out of the bottle. And they kept manufacturing C-8 even after they positively knew it could cause kidney and testicular cancer. In heavy doses, like those released into the Ohio River, C-8 has ravaged like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Even remote areas of the world aren’t safe from its predation. Researchers in the Arctic have found C-8 in the livers of polar bears. There really is no escaping it, is there? And all because it was more convenient to use a frying pan that didn’t require butter or oil. Had we known, like DuPont, that such convenience could kill us, I doubt very much we would have signed on.”

  “It’s too bad we couldn’t have a polar bear on the jury,” said Martin.

  Four other lawyers spoke. They were all fact situations where a corporation chose not to obey the law because it was not cost-effective. There were ongoing cases involving everything from blood thinners causing fatal bleeding, to BPA hazards in everything from juice boxes to milk bottles, to the use of nanotechnology causing cancers at the molecular level, and banks washing money for terrorists.

  Angus Moore was the last lawyer to speak. Deke had personally recruited Angus, just as he had Gina. Most of the other lawyers in the firm had come to Bergman-Deketomis through more traditional routes. It was easy to see why Deke had wanted Angus, thought Gina. She had more trouble in figuring out why he’d wanted her. Last year, Deke had paid Gina the highest possible compliment by asking her to represent him as his criminal defense lawyer on a murder case in which his far-right enemies had conspired to bring him down. Winning that case had been Gina’s proudest moment as a lawyer.

  Much like Deke, Angus was eminently likable. People called him a gentle giant. Gina thought if Hollywood was looking to remake Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Angus would make a great Jimmy Stewart, except for the fact that he was much more muscular than the actor. She had heard Angus played Division I football in college, but not from him. Unlike most jocks, Angus didn’t dwell on his former glory days. Almost all the personal effects in his office were from his family life; there weren’t any mementos from his football days. And unlike most other college football players, Angus hadn’t gone to fat. If anything, he’d gone the opposite way, probably because of all the triathlete training he enjoyed doing. Right now, because he was in the middle of a case, Angus barely had time for his half hour daily cardio and weight training in the Bergman-Deketomis workout facilities. He’d convinced Gina to join him in working out a few times, but trying to keep up with him had been impossible.

  “As everyone knows,” said Angus, “gun control legislation in this country is all but dead. It has been more than twenty years since the Brady Bill, the last piece of significant legislation to pass through Congress, was signed into law. And since that time, the Brady Bill has been weakened and undermined at every turn.

  “The NRA and the Gun Control Institute have bought Congress lock, stock, and gun barrel. They have stretched the boundaries of the Second Amendment and lobby against anything they believe infringes upon it. That has resulted in weapons manufacturers basically doing anything they want. These manufacturers have presumed they are either above the law, or are absolved by the law. In most cases they are right, but what the Arbalest Corporation has done can’t even be protected by their very expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment.

  “Four years ago, Arbalest brought Sight-Clops on the market. The Sight-Clops was supposed to be the latest and greatest hologram gunsight. All you had to do was get a bead on the target and pull the trigger. Gun enthusiasts ate it up. Everyone swore it did its job perfectly. Of course, shooters are just like anyone else. They prefer to do their shooting from the inside of an air-conditioned shooting range, or in the great outdoors on perfect weather days when there is little humidity. Maybe that’s why the Sight-Clops defect didn’t show itself right away. This defect even varied from product to product. But on hot, humid days some Sight-Clops malfunction in a way that has too often proved fatal. The Sight-Clops set up the shooter to fail. According to our information, the shooter was locked onto a target, but after pulling the trigger that round could end up five to ten degrees away from its intended target.”

  “That’s rigged even more than the gun sights at a carnival,” said Ned “Threepio
” Williams.

  Ned, who had recently been named a partner at the firm, was assisting Angus on the case. Even though he was approaching forty, Ned was still carded every time he was in a bar. Like Threepio from Star Wars, Ned spoke a number of languages. And his recall was about as good as Threepio’s as well.

  “As most of you know,” said Angus, “some months back we submitted a letter to the Department of Justice asking the US federal government to use the information we had gathered from the person we believe is a credible whistle-blower to file a False Claims case against Arbalest, the manufacturer of Sight-Clops. In our letter, we asserted that Arbalest had scammed both state and federal governments out of hundreds of millions of dollars. We said the evidence of their culpability was overwhelming, and their conduct rose to a level of clear criminality.”

  “And let me take a wild guess at what’s happened since,” said Deke. “To quote from the movie Cool Hand Luke, ‘What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.’”

  “Pretty much,” said Angus. “Getting anything out of the DOJ has been like pulling teeth.”

  “Who are you going through?” asked Deke.

  “Assistant US Attorney Eva Trench has been assigned to our case,” said Angus.

  “We call her ‘Stonewall Trench,’” admitted Ned.

  Martin made a disparaging sound. “We’ve had dealings with her before,” he said. “She’s in the Fraud Division of DC. Main Justice, right?”

  At the nods of Angus and Ned, Martin shook his head. “AUSA Trench is a remnant from Holder’s Department of Justice. During his tenure, it should have been called the Department of Expediency. Holder never met a whistle-blower he liked, and Trench is probably of the same mind. The DOJ allowed Wall Street banks to steal trillions of dollars from the American economy in 2008, and in the end, not one of those bankers spent time in jail.”