well turn in your bar card.”
McKee reddened. “Like I said, I'll get to it when I can.”
Seeley watched McKee's back go through the door. He had made no friends at Vaxtek yesterday, and it seemed that he wasn't making any at Heilbrun, Hardy, either. But it was none of his business what these people thought of him. Sitting at Pearsall's desk, Seeley sensed that he was doing exactly what Pearsall himself would have done were he alive. What he didn't know was whether that was a good or a bad thing.
The telephone rang.
“Mr. Seeley?”
“Yes.”
“This is Lily Warren.”
SIX
Over the course of his practice, Seeley had read the resumes of dozens of scientists-mostly expert witnesses testifying for or against his clients-men and women in their fifties and sixties at the top of careers filled with academic appointments, government consultancies, and awards, including in two cases a Nobel Prize. From the resume Seeley found in the witness file, Lily Warren was at thirty-six on the same path as these other scientists, one of those rare individuals who can set a goal and then pursue it undistracted by physical or emotional limits. When he explained to her on the telephone that he was Vaxtek's lawyer and that there were facts about the discovery of AV/AS he needed to confirm, the pleasantly husky voice at the other end had the measure of authority. Seeley also thought he detected a British accent.
“If you're their lawyer, you know that everyone's decided that Alan Steinhardt got there first. Whatever I did, it doesn't matter.”
Seeley had said only that he wanted to confirm facts about the discovery, not her role in it. “I also know about your visit to Steinhardt's lab.”
“I promised I wouldn't talk about this to anyone.”
If she didn't want to talk, she wouldn't have returned his call. “Did you sign a confidentiality agreement?”
“There's nothing in writing.” She sounded surprised that he didn't know. “They didn't make me sign anything.”
If St. Gall didn't think it was necessary for her to sign a secrecy agreement, that meant the company had some grip on Warren stronger than a lawsuit for breach of contract.
She said, “You're taking over for the lawyer who killed himself.”
“Robert Pearsall. I won't ask you anything he didn't already know.” Seeley would take it one fact at a time. “I know St. Gall conceded that Steinhardt was the first to invent AV/AS.”
“That's what St. Gall and your client agreed.” Seeley imagined a foot tapping with impatience.
“And at the time Steinhardt made his discovery, you had already stopped working for him.”
“ With him. I worked with Alan, not for him. When he left UC to go to Vaxtek, I went to St. Gall.”
“Before St. Gall and Vaxtek made their agreement, did someone from Pearsall's law firm interview you?” Seeley was still a long way from what a St. Gall employee was doing at a competitor's laboratory alone, after hours, but he was certain that Pearsall wouldn't have accepted the stipulation unless he had satisfied himself that no one had coerced Warren.
“Pearsall interviewed me himself.”
“What did you talk about?”
There was a long silence. “You're persistent, aren't you?” The tone wasn't unfriendly, but it wasn't amused, either.
“I just want to know what you told Bob.”
Again, silence. Was she calculating, or had she concluded that it was a mistake to have returned his call?
“I'd prefer not to do this, Dr. Warren, but I could get a subpoena requiring you to testify.”
Seeley would not subpoena Warren. Forced to testify, she could easily say things that would damage his case. But if he didn't know why she went to Steinhardt's lab that night, he also wouldn't know why St. Gall so unexpectedly surrendered its claim to have invented the vaccine first. That lack of knowledge could turn out to be even more damaging. “I promise you, nothing you tell me will go any farther.”
Finally, she said, “How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don't. But if you think about it, you really don't have a choice.” Seeley gave her some time to take that in. “Just tell me what you were doing alone in Steinhardt's lab.”
“I'll meet you, but I won't promise to answer your questions.” She seemed about to say something more, but stopped.
Seeley looked at his watch. It was past noon. He hadn't eaten since an early breakfast, before seeing Judy Pearsall. “Anywhere you like. Just make it someplace we can get lunch.”
She gave him the name of a restaurant in Princeton-by-the-Sea, off the coastal highway south of San Francisco. Seeley wrote it down and hung up.
On his way out, Seeley knocked at the open door of Palmieri's office. The young partner looked up from a thick stack of deposition summaries. There was no sign of the laboratory notebooks that Seeley asked him to review.
“Did you go through Steinhardt's notebooks?”
“I'm almost finished. When do you need them?”
Seeley wondered if he had even looked at them. “Did you find anything?”
“Nothing unusual. The trail of invention is seamless. All the experiments and results look like they're logically connected.”
Palmieri's office had no windows, but the lighting was indirect and the museum-white walls were hung with neatly framed posters. The one Seeley was looking at advertised a benefit concert at a San Francisco arena two years ago and was in the style of a World War II recruiting placard. The colors and lines were classic Norman Rockwell, but the girl, in halter top and tight shorts with a sailor's cap askew on auburn curls, was strictly pinup art. join us the top line read and in the same large letters at the bottom, fight aids.
Seeley said, “How far back did you look?”
“All the way to the beginning, with the basic science he was doing at UC.”
“Was there anything about co-inventors?”
Palmieri shook his head. “Some of the UC entries are signed by Lily Warren, but none of them are concrete enough to qualify for a patent. Steinhardt did all the patentable work at Vaxtek.”
Do your basic research at a university, Seeley thought, but when you're ready to turn it into something you can get a patent on and make some money, move to the private sector. “And after UC, the entries are all Steinhardt's?”
“Every one of them.” Palmieri hesitated and studied Seeley for a long moment before continuing. “There was one strange thing. The UC notebooks look like what you'd expect-lots of mistakes and cross outs. But the ones from when he started at Vaxtek are different.”
“No corrections?”
“They're as buttoned-down as Steinhardt himself. Not a line crossed out, not even a sentence fragment or grammatical error.” Palmieri held his thumb and forefinger the smallest fraction of an inch apart. “Every word in his teeny-weeny handwriting.”
Seeley said, “Maybe his lab methods suddenly improved when he got to Vaxtek. Or-”
“Or,” Palmieri said, “maybe when he didn't have his postdoc looking over his shoulder, his methods changed.”
“You think he kept two sets of books.” Seeley thought of the words below the portrait in Pearsall's sketchbook: What else is A. S. hiding?
Palmieri closed his eyes and pushed back from the desk.
