The tires chirp-chirped onto the runway, and I taxied to the FBO and shut down. They had a rental agency Ford Taurus — synonymous for rental car — waiting for me.
I drove the Taurus, the wipers sweeping every few seconds, out Airport Road past Forest Hill Cemetery and the chop shops and auto detailers, juked over to Second Avenue North, crossed under the Red Mountain Expressway and into downtown.
CHAPTER THREE
The Tutwiler Hotel occupied a renovated former apartment building a block from the Jefferson County courthouse.
Clad in red brick in understated Beaux-Arts style, the seven-story building, according to a plaque near the front door, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The lobby was trimmed in brass, mahogany, and white marble with black veins. Working fireplaces heated some of the rooms in winter.
Kramer called me on my cell phone while I was checking in. “Slate. Are you in town?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Where?”
“The Tutwiler.”
“I’m at my office. You’re just down the street. I’ll be there in five minutes. Meet me in the dining room.”
“I haven’t checked in yet,” I said, but he was gone.
I booked the room for a week, sent my bags ahead, and walked down to the dining room. I refused a menu and told the maitre d’ I was waiting for someone.
Kramer walked into the dining room through the outside entrance two minutes after I’d entered. He was in a charcoal plaid suit with a yellow tie, and he was carrying a black document case.
“Coffee,” Kramer said to the waiter before he sat down.
Kramer looked around. Only a couple of other morning diners remained in the dining room, and they were seated under another window fifty feet away.
The waiter brought coffee for Kramer and retreated.
“You’re probably going to speak to the Birmingham police, campus cops. I’ll give you the FBI agents’ names, too. Cops do what cops do. They want to do this the traditional way. The cop way. Interview friends, try to figure out a boyfriend angle or a family feud. But my daughter’s disappearance is not about her.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Kris didn’t have the kinds of problems in her life that lead to a runaway or an angry boyfriend. She didn’t hang out in bars or do any of the other stupid things that get girls, get young women her age in trouble.”
Kramer leaned forward, intense but in control. “I think it’s related to a legal matter I’ve been on.”
“I see. What sort of legal matter?”
Kramer took a slug of coffee. He was not a big guy — I had him by an inch of height and probably twenty pounds — but in his hard, calloused hands the china cup looked as delicate as a thimble.
“I’m not able, sitting here right now, to tell you as much as you probably need to know.”
“Privilege?”
“Yes. And even more.”
“What do you mean?”
“Having this information could be dangerous.”
“Danger is an occupational hazard.”
Kramer nodded slightly and looked around. Fifty feet away, the waiter was putting out silverware for the lunch buffet.
“This goes back a long way, Slate. All the way back to when I was in the AG’s office.”
“I knew you were in Montgomery for some time.”
“You were a clerk when I was there.”
I was a little surprised but didn’t show it. Yesterday Kramer had made no indication that he remembered me.
“Yeah, I remember you,” he said, and for a second I thought I’d spoken the thought aloud.
“You worked hard and kept your mouth shut. Most non-lawyers and too many lawyers think talking is the only skill a lawyer needs. There’s an aphorism: ‘An empty vessel makes the most noise.’ When I asked around, your name came up. I figured you still remembered that it’s easier to learn something with your mouth shut.”
Some people might not agree, but I nodded.
Kramer pointed to the document case. “There are some things I can show you and some I can’t. These are my copies of documents from the oil lease cases I worked on when I was with the office of the Attorney General. They’re old and most of the information is public anyway. I could tell you what you need to know, but we’d be here all day, and I’ve got other people to see. It’s faster if you read, and you need the background. There’s a memo to the file and an index. The index is new. But start with the memo.”
“Sounds good. But what’s this got to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”
“My daughter – Kris did the index for me during her Christmas break.”
“Kris was working for you?”
Kramer threw down the rest of his coffee. “Just some clerical stuff during vacations, sometimes on weekends. But she’s smart. Learned a lot. Knew a lot.”
“Do you think she’s been kidnapped?”
Kramer was silent. Then: “That’s a reasonable assumption, don’t you think?”
“But there’s been no contact, no demands. Right?”
“That’s correct.”
“And it’s been — what — three days now. I’m sure you know that’s a long time to go by without a ransom demand.”
“These are not ordinary kidnappers.”
Kramer stood. “Got somewhere to be. Meeting my wife and son at church. Read the file. You’re involved because, if I’m right and Kris’s disappearance stems from my work, I can’t share all my work with every goddamned three-letter agency with a 202 area code. I don’t remember giving you copies of the memo and index. They might be subject to the work product privilege, probably not the attorney-client. Hell. You’re a lawyer, anyway. Finish reviewing the documents today and tonight. You need to meet my wife and my son Paul at my house in the morning. Try to make it around seven-thirty.”
And he was gone.
In my hotel room I sat in a burgundy fabric armchair near the window overlooking a parking lot, opened the document case, and pulled out the memorandum.
The memo began with the standard SUBJECT/TO/FROM/DATE heading. Written three months earlier, the memorandum was addressed to the Minerals Investigation file and to “DRK” – Don Kramer. No pride of authorship had driven this document; the “FROM” line was blank. The memo began with an introduction and background including a quotation from an obscure journal of geology:
Citronelle Oil Field, Mobile County, Alabama
Everett Eaves
AAPG Special Volumes
Volume M 24: North American Oil and Gas Fields, Pages 259 - 275 (1976)
The Citronelle field was discovered in 1955 by the Zack Brooks Drilling Company No. 1 Donovan, SW 1/4, NW 1/4, Sec. 25, T2N, R3W, Mobile County, Alabama. The well produced from the lower Glen Rose Formation at a depth of 10,879 ft (3,315.9 m). During the next 10 years, 434 productive wells were drilled. The productive limits completely enveloped the town of Citronelle, 32 mi (51.5 km) north of Mobile, Alabama. Forty-acre spacing, low gas-oil ratio, and rapid bottomhole-pressure drop, necessitating pumping of all wells, resulted in slow and spasmodic development. Unitization of 139 wells for waterflood was initiated in 1961, and a saltwater-injection program proved successful. Later, fresh water from the Wilcox Formation was used for injection fluids. By May 1966 all wells were unitized, and on December 31, 1973, the field had produced over 107 million bbl of oil.
The memorandum continued with an overview of the oil and gas business in Alabama:
The discovery of the Citronelle field in what is called the Glen Rose Formation focused attention on the potential for oil and gas development in southwest Alabama. Today, the extent of the oil reservoir off the coast of Alabama, due south of Citronelle, is well known. One-fourth of U.S. oil production now flows out of the Gulf of Mexico. In the late 1970s, large deposits of natural gas were discovered underneath the sea floor off the Alabama Gulf Coast. Alabama ranks ninth out of the fifty states in natural gas production and tenth in proven res
erves. The retail value of the petroleum produced onshore and off exceeds $1.2 billion dollars annually. Alabama receives almost $300 million annually in the form of lease bonuses, royalties, trust-fund investment income, and severance taxes.
Moreover, the Gulf of Mexico is perhaps the only part of the continental United States where new substantial petroleum deposits could remain to be discovered. As late as 1999, British Petroleum drilled a discovery well 25,770 feet deep 155 statute miles due south of the Mississippi coastline in what geologists call the Mississippi Canyon and found the largest petroleum field in the Gulf. Petroleum geologists estimate that this field (originally named Crazy Horse but now for the sake of political correctness called the Thunder Horse oil field), contains one to three billion barrels of oil.
I didn’t know the details about the discovery well or the Citronelle field, but to say the least, BP had become a household name, and during the summer of 2010, the nom du jour on cable TV and Facebook and in the Twitterverse.
Some substantial but unknown portion of that three billion barrels had flowed into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken pipe at the bottom of the sea below BP’s collapsed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
A few brown spots of it had ended up on the beach sand below my bar.
I had spent too much time at the Alabama Gulf Coast not to understand the back story for the file Kramer had left with me. At night the platforms out in the Gulf resembled large fishing boats at anchor.
But I was curious about the missing attribution for the author. One thing I knew: Kramer was not the author. I knew the man to be a thorough lawyer who would have demanded and appreciated the kind of work that someone had put into the introduction, but as a lawyer, Kramer was no scholar.
As a lawyer, Kramer was a killer. Figuratively speaking.
I skimmed the remainder of the memorandum and returned it to its place in the document case. Kris Kramer’s index was next. I laid the index on the table and called room service to order a sandwich and a pot of coffee.
Reviewing these files reminded me of law practice. I couldn’t help thinking I should be recording my time, noting “Review file” in the billing software. I’d have plenty to record this afternoon. I had a lot to learn, and I settled in to read.
By three I had reviewed half the documents and had made a few notes on a legal pad someone had left in the document case, perhaps for me, but more likely because lawyers leave legal pads everywhere.
First, these documents related only tangentially, if at all, to the oil lease cases Kramer had prosecuted twenty years earlier. Those cases were securities swindles where some crooks from New Orleans sold partnerships on properties in Texas and Oklahoma that had never existed. Assessments, legal opinions, all the pieces of paper had been in place, but the deals were wholly fraudulent.
The documents in Kramer’s document case instead related to an ongoing, present-day legal matter.
Kramer and the Woolf firm were investigating information they had learned from two independent sources about underreporting, or under-recording, of gas and oil pump volumes by small independent production companies operating in several sites in Alabama, all south of Birmingham.
Gas and oil leases were priced based on volume, and underreporting these volumes and thereby shortchanging landowners on lease revenues had generated lawsuits since someone thought to drill a well where oil seeped out of the ground.
Recording production volume remained to this day in the hands of the production companies, not the landowners, and the temptation to cheat proved difficult to resist.
The file looked interesting enough from a plaintiff’s lawyer’s perspective; more than one potential class action suggested itself, though the size of the alleged losses would not rival the Bernie Madoff scandal.
Such cases were grist-of-the-mill civil litigation. Similar lawsuits were probably pending in every state with working oil and gas wells, and I could see little that should make anyone desperate enough to kidnap the daughter of a lawyer.
And why had Kramer told me these files related to the work he’d done a generation ago?
But then I reached a subsection of the file containing information a little outside the workaday findings of a law firm preparing to represent a client in a business dispute. One dark brown folder, the type with a ribbon that could be tied for security, was marked Confidential — Qui Tam.
Inside the folder were the usual files marked Drafts, Notes, Research, as well as a thin tan envelope marked Client Information. The envelope was sealed, and, redundantly, bore the legend SEALED in heavy black marker.
So I opened the envelope with my lockblade knife.
Inside were eleven pages of handwritten notes on yellow legal paper. Nothing else. The notes began with a name and address: Michael Godchaux, 123 Royal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. A cell phone number and email address followed.
After this information the word Relator appeared, underscored twice. The notes described a pattern of bribery and corruption in the operation of oil and gas wells on state lands in the State of Alabama which, if true, not only would support a cause of action in a qui tam lawsuit but might also implicate current and past holders of constitutional offices in Alabama in criminal activity.
No link between the name Michael Godchaux and the information about wrongdoing appeared in the notes. Godchaux’s address provided the only hint of any connection to Kramer’s oil lease cases from years before.
I memorized the telephone number. Some facts are better left out of the electronic memories of computers or cell phones. Memorizing numbers is something I can do, though I have no idea why or how. Names of people, not so much. Numbers, like music, have a rhythm that names rarely manage.
Qui tam. The Latin words literally mean “who comes.”
Historically, kings and lesser rulers in Europe from time to time would set aside a day or a few days when they would allow any subject a private audience for the purpose of offering evidence that someone entrusted with the property of the crown was stealing. “Who comes” before the king?
Today qui tam litigation is often initiated by an employee who becomes aware that her employer, a defense contractor, or a pharmaceutical company, or a healthcare provider, is violating federal law, or is overcharging the Department of Defense or Medicare. Such lawsuits have gained in popularity among plaintiffs’ lawyers as tort reform legislation and rulings in federal courts have shrunk the envelope of viable class action litigation.
Qui tam complaints are filed under seal to protect the identity of the plaintiff, who is called the relator. After the complaint is filed, the government agency alleged to be cheated by the defendant is notified and provided the opportunity to take over the litigation.
The relator receives fifteen per cent of any funds the government collects.
The eleven pages of notes included information about numerous small operators of oil and gas companies, employees of those entities, and state employees.
The notes also set out dates and times when representatives of these entities had meetings scheduled in the state capital with two lobbyists and with the attorney general and governor of Alabama.
No wonder these notes were maintained in a sealed file. If the information in the notes were true, the relator here might be eligible for the federal witness protection program.
The Birmingham Public Library, a modern glass building of seven stories, stood directly across Richard Arrington Boulevard from the hotel. After sifting through files for six hours, I needed a break.
Before leaving the room, I placed the eleven pages of handwritten notes back in their folder, and, on an impulse, placed them in the room safe. The information could be valuable or even dangerous, and someone had taken the precaution of sealing the envelope. A little security seemed reasonable.
I took the stairs down to the hotel lobby, crossed the street, entered the library through the glass doors, and weaved my way past the bums and winos pretending to be respectable street people hanging out in
the atrium.
The library’s escalator carried me to the reference room on the third floor.
The librarian at the desk, a tall, skinny guy with granny glasses and a ponytail going gray, fetched volume 1 of the current Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory out of a back room. I gave him my driver’s license, signed a card, and carried the three-pound book to the nearest table.
Martindale-Hubbell, in its many volumes, lists lawyers in the United States and most other countries by name, date of birth, college and law school attended, location, law firm, and type of practice. The information in the book was available online, but I’d spent enough time in the hotel room, and no one hacks into eyes on paper.
For the law firms that buy subscriptions – most of them — Martindale includes a description of the law firm’s practice and a mini-resumé for each lawyer in the firm.
Other volumes contain precise and detailed descriptions of the law of each listed jurisdiction – contracts, corporations, procedure, criminal law. Compiling the outlines is a prestigious assignment for a law firm.
Volume 1 contained listings for Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas.
Kramer’s law firm kept its offices downtown at Park Plaza, a glass and concrete office tower overlooking Linn Park, Birmingham’s courthouse square. The firm’s entry listed around fifty lawyers. William Francis Woolf was the managing partner.
Woolf was fifty-five, a Tulane Law School graduate. The Woolf in the firm’s name appeared to be William’s father, one of the founders of the firm, now retired or deceased.
The office building was only two blocks away. I could walk down there tomorrow and drop in unannounced to see my client. I knew much less at this point than he did about Kris’s disappearance, and neither of us seemed to know much about her whereabouts. I had more documents to review.
I closed the heavy book and returned it to the John Lennon wannabe at the desk and walked out of the library and across the street to the hotel. Back in the room I called room service and ordered a turkey sandwich and two cups of coffee. After they arrived, I settled in to read.
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