A Patent Lie Read Online Free PDF Page B

into the room—“but you'll have to talk to the client about my being at counsel's table.”
    “Why?”
    “Ask Ed Barnum when you see him.”
    As Vaxtek's general counsel, Barnum was the person Seeley was supposed to answer to.
    “It doesn't matter what Barnum says. I want you there.”
    “Just ask him.” Palmieri started out the door.
    “Have you taken care of the pro hac papers?” Because Seeley wasn't a member of the California bar he would have to be admitted, just for this trial, pro hac vice.
    “One of the paralegals is taking care of it.”
    “Good. If I don't get admitted, you'll be sitting at counsel's table all by yourself.”
    For the first time since he met him, Palmieri smiled.
    Seeley checked his watch. Vaxtek was in South San Francisco, a half-hour drive from downtown. On his way out, he stopped at Tina's desk. She wasn't there, but had left a message slip for him with Judy Pearsall's address and phone number on it.
    Lawyers occupy forty-story office towers to inscribe their presence on the skyline. Scientists stay closer to the ground. Vaxtek's building in South San Francisco was two floors of glass and polished stone, one of dozens of such façades along the commercial boulevard that exited from the freeway. Signs on some of the buildings indicated biotech companies, but others were more mundane—a restaurant-supply firm, a marble-and-granite works, outlet stores for several big retail fashion brands. A temp agency was next door to Vaxtek. For a long stretch of boulevard, the grass was overgrown and clogged with windblown debris, but the lawn in front of Vaxtek's building was neatly trimmed. Low hedgerows separated the parking lot from the street.
    Seeley signed in at the security desk and let the receptionist clip a laminated visitor's pass to his lapel. The sparely furnished lobby could have been an airport waiting area with its empty walls and industrial gray carpeting. A slender potted tree guarded two chairs and the carpet gave off a chemical smell as if it had been recently installed. There was no movement in the broad corridor on the other side of the glass double doors leading into the building's interior. After a while, an attractive middle-aged woman in jeans and a turtleneck sweater came through the doors to take Seeley to Leonard's office.
    Seeley had heard somewhere that cramped quarters were common in biotech, even for senior executives, and Leonard's office was no larger than Seeley's in the Ellicott Square Building. The desk was a slab of blond wood, part of a combination cabinet-bookshelf. The desktop was empty and the bookshelf nearly so. A beefy man in chinos and polo shirt had propped himself against the desk's outer edge, facing the open door. His bulk partially obscured Leonard, who was sitting behind the desk. There was a tension in the room, as if the two had been arguing.
    “Ed Barnum,” Leonard said, introducing them. “Michael Seeley.”
    Barnum studied Seeley unhurriedly through aviator glasses and said nothing while Seeley walked around the office. The photographs were mostly of Leonard on vacation, posed against a ski slope or beaming under a baseball cap on a fishing charter. A woman was with him in the photographs. The view out the wall-sized window was of a succession of mud-brown hills, relieved in their monotony only by a bright ribbon of cheap-looking houses.
    Leonard started to speak, but Barnum said, “Ray Crosetto sends his regards. So does Sandy Eyring.” The two were well-known trial lawyers, Crosetto from Los Angeles and Eyring from Salt Lake City. Seeley had litigated against them in a couple of long trials before he left his New York firm. This was Barnum's way of letting Seeley know that he had asked around before agreeing to take him on as his new trial counsel.
    “They said you're a good lawyer, but that you have an independent streak. I don't know if Leonard impressed on you how important this case is to our company.”
    “All my cases are