To Save the Nation

by Robert E Kass

  As he lifted his coffee cup to his lips and calmly took a sip, he remembered another of Green’s negotiating admonitions:

  Agree with your opponent no less than three times, then counterattack.

  He put the coffee cup back on the table, then rose from his chair, stood behind it, made direct eye contact with Friedman, and smiled.

  “Abe, I certainly see your point. It’s definitely a long shot. Really long, I will agree. I thought about this when I first met Ms. Romero. It was an extremely tough case back in the seventies, and it’s got to be harder now that so many years have passed.

  “And on its face, it’s really not a legal case, but an investigation into a missing person. In fact, it’s probably only about closure: She wants to know what happened; what investigations were done; what the reports found. If there was a cause of action for wrongful death due to the plane crash, the statute of limitations probably expired years ago, and we’ll just confirm that for her.

  “She’s not expecting to find any money, and frankly neither am I. The contingent fee aspect is merely an add-on. I felt if someone did collect something here, then we should be entitled to our cut. I really don’t expect that we’ll do much more than a due diligence investigation into the official story, kick the tires on some alternative theories, and report back that we’ve come to the end of our inquiry—”

  A voice from the other side of the table interrupted any consideration of counterattack.

  “And while you’re doing that, David, you’re writing off billable hours some other client would gladly pay for.”

  It was time for the youngest member of the Management Committee to take her turn. Silence was a sign of weakness. To gain respect, Marnie Chu, a highly regarded employment litigator and the first Asian-American member of the firm, had to jump on whatever bandwagon was being espoused by the senior members and voice concerns.

  “Yes, Marnie, I assume we’ll lose some billable time on this. But I contemplate putting an outside investigator on the case, using our legal talent only when absolutely necessary. I took the $50,000 retainer to fund these outside expenses, and possibly some air fare and online research into news articles and other sources we may not be able to get on the Internet for free.”

  “But isn’t the amount of billable time you’ll write off really an open issue? If you’ve taken the case on a contingent fee basis, how do you know when to stop?”

  She wouldn’t let go. He’d hoped to minimize the billable hour issue by focusing on the use of outside resources, but Marnie was always practical and direct in her questioning. She knew this type of case could be a bottomless pit.

  “Yes, it’s possible for it to get out of hand, except I have two controls, so to speak.

  “The first is the amount of the retainer for expenses. When that’s exhausted, we’re done, that’s for sure, unless she tops it up, which is highly doubtful, or we decide we want to continue. I think by that time, we’ll have dug up enough to give her closure.

  “The second is that we can stop working after ninety days, even if there are still funds in the retainer account. I myself was thinking about how long it would take for an outside investigator to do a credible job, and although that’s anyone’s guess, I think ninety days should be enough. That’s part of the engagement agreement. We have no obligation to do anything after ninety days from the time we receive the retainer for expenses, and we only have to give our reasonable best efforts during that time. On the other hand, ninety days seems kind of short to find the answer to a financial mystery that remains unsolved after many decades, but it’s certainly enough time to spend $50,000 looking for one.”

  Winkler hoped that would shut her up. Everyone knew the firm’s litigators could burn through $50,000 with experts in a couple of weeks. But being grilled by the Management Committee was like being attacked by a many-headed serpent, and Abe Friedman was waiting patiently to get in the last word:

  “David, I admire how you’ve thought this through, but you can still rack up a lot of time in ninety days. How can you assure the firm that the number of dollars in billable time, which will undoubtedly be written off as a result of this ‘venture,’ won’t shock us when all is said and done—and that we won’t get a lot of complaints from billable hour clients whose work is put aside during this ninety-day period? Also, who were you thinking of as your outside investigator?”

  Winkler had already been thinking about who to put on the team.

  “As to the investigator, I had two thoughts,” responded Winkler, fully prepared to lay out his game plan. “Our in-house computer network technician runs an Internet research service on the side. He’s top notch and very reasonable. He can probably dig up a lot of material on this story at night and on the weekends. This will tell us what’s been written in public sources—newspapers, magazines, court cases, and administrative proceedings.

  “From there, I think we need a real criminal investigator. I was thinking of a fellow I’ve heard about who used to track down fugitives wanted on felony arrest warrants for the sheriff’s office and has investigated a number of cold murder cases. Now he’s a licensed private investigator with his own company. I believe he can tap into lots of official government sources, particularly if the fellow we’re looking for was ever wanted on a charge that’s still open.”

  The room was momentarily silent. Winkler had come up with answers to most of their challenges, except for the real issue: The case was still going to result in revenue lost to the firm, even in as short a period as ninety days. They hated to see that without any realistic upside potential. The fact that he had some control over the billable hours dedicated to this wild goose chase was no real answer.

  Joshua Green, the sole African-American in the room, had been listening carefully. He took the floor and with the deep voice of a man in his eighties delivered each word with due deliberation in his usual slow and steady pattern.

  “My friends, I think we’re looking at this case all wrong. I’ve been sitting here thinking about why our partner, N. David Winkler, would have taken this case without the required approval of the Management Committee, when he himself knew there was no real potential for our firm to be appropriately compensated. We haven’t seen a picture of Ms. Maria Theresa Romero, and though my guess is that she is probably very attractive, I won’t even suggest that had anything to do with it.”

  The comment brought faint smiles from the other members around the table. Though several of the partners had been divorced for having affairs, they all knew Winkler was enamored with Eve as much as the day they were married and would never stray off the straight and narrow. He certainly would never take a case solely because the client was beautiful; in fact, he’d turned away a number of extremely wealthy, beautiful, grieving widows because of perceived conflicts of interest he could just as easily have overlooked. These high profile cases had been the talk of the office at the time.

  “So, I’m going to assume there was some other appeal here. Some sense that ‘justice’ ought to be pursued on behalf of Ms. Romero.

  “David, you haven’t told us any details of how it came to pass that a woman born to an Argentinian banker happened to grow up the daughter of someone in Uruguay. Is there something deeper going on here, something more than just a mysterious disappearance or plane crash?”

  Green was a lawyer from the old school who felt sometimes you just had to take a case, even if you couldn’t see how you could make a buck. He also had an uncanny sense of a story within a story, probably from his early years as an investigative reporter.

  “Well, as I said earlier, I was just giving you an overview. There is another aspect: The people who adopted Ms. Romero weren’t your normal adoptive parents. Her adoptive father was an officer in the Argentine military, and she’s been told her real mother was the wife of the banker. She also believes her real mother was a prisoner in Argentina during the period known as the Dirty War. She believes her adoptive father may have been involved in the killing of her
real mother.

  “Thirty thousand or more of these people vanished—disappeared—at the hands of the military, simply because they were suspected of being threats to the regime. Pregnant mothers lost their babies in C-sections performed in prison and were either killed or told their babies died in childbirth. There are several groups of people still trying to find out what happened to their relatives—the mothers, grandmothers, and children of the disappeared people. When I agreed to take on her case, I suppose I was sensitive to the fact that Ms. Romero was a child of one of those disappeared people.”

  “Tom, how much do we spend every year on that public relations company we always complain about, just to get our names and faces in an occasional newspaper article?”

  Green knew where he was heading, and it didn’t bother him a bit to put Kelly on the spot. He knew Kelly was the one pushing for PR exposure, and the firm’s big problem was that, even though it did quality work, it was reluctant to go public with the results. The partners were always concerned about offending in-house counsel of its major corporate clients, whose bonuses depended on the perception that they, and not outside counsel, won their cases.

  “I think our retainer agreement with Billings Ryan and Partners now provides for $50,000 a year, Joshua, if memory serves me,” said Kelly.

  Green continued. “So, what if we consider this a pro bono case, with disbursements paid, and take advantage of the tremendous PR potential? I’m sure if we let Billings Ryan have at it, they’ll get us into The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and all the local and major national newspapers, prime time TV news, CNN—the whole nine yards! I’m afraid we’ve been so fixated on fees that we’ve lost sight of a real gold mine in terms of positive exposure for our firm.

  “David, do you think Ms. Romero would have any objection?” asked Green.

  “Not at all. In fact, I provided a publicity release in our engagement agreement. My only concern is that, if there is someone else interested in knowing about Ricardo Guttmann or the missing fortune, by saying too much we may be attracting them to her, or to us, but we’ll be careful and keep that risk in mind.”

  “Well then, I think we’ve taken enough time on this case and should move on to other matters.”

  Green gave a friendly nod to Winkler, who heaved a sigh of relief. Kelly seemed satisfied with the grilling Winkler had received and was anxious to take up other matters.

  “Next item on the agenda: Staffing issues in the public utility class action. You’ll remember we recently took on several defendants in a mammoth consumer class action against hundreds of major electrical utilities, arising out of the recent series of power blackouts that swept the eastern half of the country. If we don’t pull our clients out of this one, we may lose power ourselves!”

  Winkler had hoped to handle the Romero case quietly, without major press exposure, but had now committed to exploit its public relations value for the firm’s benefit. For now, he was glad to get off the hot seat. He hadn’t given a thought to who else would be interested in the results of his investigation. He had to focus quickly on getting his team together; his ninety-day clock had begun to tick.

  CHAPTER 12

  SEATED AT HIS DESK in his large corner office, Winkler mapped out his preliminary game plan on a yellow pad. “Emma,” he called, “I’m going to need some help on this one.”

  Emma had been his assistant for more than a dozen years and was the angel every lawyer needed and most could only dream of. She was his right hand, his confidant, and a beacon in every storm. Mid-fifties, extremely well-put together and well-spoken, she was at ease with everyone from the messengers to Winkler’s multi-millionaire clients, whom she could identify by the sound of their voice over the phone and greeted by name. Officious when necessary, she could protect him from anyone, inside the firm or out. Able to find anything at a moment’s notice, she kept his perpetual backlog moving.

  Emma sat down in the chair across the desk from him, armed with her steno pad and a handful of pens. She was one of the last of the “old school” assistants who still took shorthand.

  “Before we start, David, Joshua Green called and asked that you drop by his office when you have a moment.”

  “What’s that about? I just left him a couple of minutes ago, at the Management Committee meeting. I suppose he wants to offer a post-mortem.”

  “He said it would just take a second, and there’s no rush.”

  “Fine, but let me first tell you what’s going on with that new case for Maria Theresa Romero. There’s never a dull moment around here, Emma.”

  This was the first chance Winkler had to talk with Emma since he returned from Aruba. He briefly outlined the scope of the assignment, building on what she already knew from the conflict sheet and signed retainer agreement, which he’d left for her to open a file. He described the grilling by the Management Committee, sharing his frustration with how some of his partners reacted.

  “I don’t suppose any of that was a surprise to you, David, was it?” Emma asked with a knowing smile. This was certainly not the first case she’d seen him take because of the principle, regardless of fee potential.

  “Probably not, except now we’ve got to treat this as a PR opportunity for the firm, which isn’t a terrible notion, but I would have preferred just to go about our business. On second thought, maybe the publicity will bring some information out of the woodwork—and probably some wackos and gold diggers as well.”

  “Let’s go over these names,” Winkler said, running his finger down the list on his yellow pad.

  “First, I’d like you to call our computer network guy. I don’t know his first name, but we just call him by his last name, Afzam. He’s been away for a while, for his brother’s wedding in India, but I think he’s back now. Tell him I’d like to meet tomorrow at noon in my office on a new case. I’d like him to be our main researcher, and my guess is, he’d like to earn a few bucks in the evening and on weekends. He’s an absolute wizard on the Internet.

  “We’ll run that as a reimbursable expense, against the $50,000. His charges will be in addition to his normal salary for computer work for the firm. Make sure he keeps time records, and you can prepare pro forma invoices for him weekly. Get him an assumed name, Afzam Information Services.”

  “What address should I use on the registration?” Emma asked. She was always thinking a step ahead. “Doesn’t he live across the river in Canada?”

  The firm’s offices in downtown Detroit attracted a few employees from Windsor, Ontario, which Winkler could see from his vantage point on the twenty-fifth floor of a high-rise one block from the Detroit River. Since 9/11, the number of terrorist attacks around the country had continued to grow; as a result, it had become difficult for them to make the daily commute, as security at the Windsor Tunnel and Ambassador Bridge often resulted in waits of an hour or more to cross. Most of the firm’s Canadian employees couldn’t put up with the long lines and had opted to leave the firm and find work in their own towns.

  Afzam was an exception. Hard working, ambitious, and extremely talented, his U.S. dollar salary as computer guru for Kelly, Friedman & Green was much more than he could ever earn on the Canadian scale.

  “Use our office address as his place of business. It should be fine; he’s a Canadian citizen but has a permit to work here. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll just set up a limited liability company for him. Check with our Immigration Law Department to make sure we aren’t breaking any laws. What’s important is that we show the money going out to a third party, not to the firm.

  “Next, please call Andrea Poppo, our Lexis-Nexis rep, and make sure Afzam gets an ID to use their services under our contract. Andrea will be happy to set that up for you, and make it operational immediately. Whatever Afzam can’t find through general Internet searches, he’ll find through Lexis-Nexis—news articles, as well as court cases and administrative proceedings. Afzam will be able to search an incredible universe of published articles through Nexis. I
t’ll cost, but it’s worth every penny, and the Lexis-Nexis charges will come out of the $50,000 as well. We’ll start by reading every word that’s been written in the press about Ricardo Guttmann since the mid-1970s.”

  “I’ll get Andrea working on access for Afzam immediately,” replied Emma. Once she said she was taking care of something, Winkler could take it off his mind completely.

  “The other person I’d like at the meeting is a guy—a private investigator—who is, shall I say, an ‘old friend’ of my personal trainer, Frankie Zuccarrelli. I’m going to see Frankie at the gym on the way home tonight, and I can probably get his number then. I promised our new associate, Ray Adams, I would introduce him to my trainer.”

  Winkler ran his hand lightly over his stomach, trying briefly to hold it in.

  “Vacations are great, Emma, but pigging out on three gourmet meals a day, sleeping, and lounging around for a long weekend on a tropical island sure doesn’t help muscle tone.” He sighed, then turned the conversation back to business.

  “From what I’ve heard, this guy recently left the sheriff’s office, where he hunted down fugitives wanted on felony warrants, and he may still have access to information that’ll be useful to us. Emma, I sure hope I’m not going off the deep end here. Maybe it was stupid to take this case after all. Here I am, orchestrating a search for a man declared dead over fifty years ago, about to hire a P.I. I’ve never met, and it’s virtually certain we’re going to come up dry. Am I nuts or what?”

  “Look at it this way, David. You only agreed to use your ‘reasonable best efforts’ to find out what happened, what investigations were done, and what the reports found. If you determine her father is officially dead, you tell her that, and if you find evidence that he may still be alive, you pass that along. You find out what happened to Guttmann’s Argentine properties. You advise as to a possible wrongful death claim. That’s what you told the Management Committee—and Ms. Romero—right?”