An Eye For Justice Read online

  He paused to watch me, assessing the effect of his words. Maybe he was shrewder than he looked. He didn’t know it, but like always, I was trying to wing it, feel things out without doing too much work; laziness I guess you’d call it, and maybe he’d sussed me out already. Maybe he’d even divined that I hadn’t wanted the case in the first place because I was so consumed with sadness over Carmen that it was hard to care about anything else, and I was only there because Emma had press-ganged me into it. I was already floundering, struggling to come up with something to say, to move it forward, and he seemed to have sensed it.

  As the silence stretched out he seemed to nod to himself with satisfaction as if my lack of response confirmed his view. He said, ‘perhaps if I were to elucidate on where we are right now, given that you don’t seem to know, it might help, yes?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer, which was fine with me.

  ‘Some three years ago, in a premature and wholly misconceived action, your client, Hannah Palmer, issued a claim in the Southern District Court here in New York City, against K Corp, its chairman Angel Milken, its CEO David Milken and his wife Kendra. Palmer’s action alleges ownership and return of a distinctive gold and diamond pendant with matching broach, which she alleges went missing, probably in Poland sometime in 1943. Apparently other things went missing as well, but it is the pendant and broach that she seeks return of - or damages in lieu of their return. She says the jewellery holds huge sentimental significance for her, because of its history.’

  As Browder paused to take a sip from a glass of water, I glanced sideways at Helena - she looked okay now, more relaxed, listening carefully. Browder continued. ‘But now it gets a bit tricky, because we’re getting into the realms of evidence, and your client, Mr. Calver. No offence,’ he said, nodding at Helena, ‘doesn’t seem to have any. Or none that would stand up in court. In her depositions Hannah Palmer tells us that three years ago she happened to be watching a US episode of the popular TV series, Lives of the Rich and Famous, when she alleges she positively identified the missing pendant and broach. During a 59 second segment of the program, Kendra Milken, wife of the current CEO of K Corp, can be seen wearing the missing jewellery. In response to an admiring query from the presenter, Kendra says, “yes, they are an original matching set, gold with inlaid diamonds, very old and currently worth around 5 million dollars,”’ Browder said, reading the quote from notes on a tablet he was scrolling through as he spoke.

  He looked up. ‘How am I doing so far, Mr. Calver?’ he asked, cocky as hell.

  I just looked at him. He smiled, and continued. ‘Now, when we served interrogatories on your client. Those are formal written questions, Ms Palmer,’ he said with a nod at Helena. ‘The court allows us to serve them on the plaintiff and she is required to answer them, and answer them she did. One of her quite extraordinary replies was that she currently had no memory of the circumstances of how or even where this jewellery allegedly went missing. She suggests that she and her family were deported from Holland by the Nazi’s in 1943, and that’s it, that’s the extent of her memory. She thinks they probably ended up in Poland, but can’t be sure. To repeat - and I guess you’ll know how well this goes down in a court room,’ he said looking at me with a meaningful smile - ‘she can’t remember.’

  He glanced at each of us in turn, enjoying my frown and Helena’s look of dismay. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘if all that wasn’t enough, here’s the rub: we say she can’t even prove ownership of the jewellery, and that’s fatal in the state of New York. Hell, its fatal in every common law jurisdiction on the planet. You want it back, you gotta prove you own it; and we say she can’t. And if you want more, we can give you more; we can prove that Angel Milken, founder of K Corp, legitimately purchased the jewellery from a licensed dealer in Munich in 1953.’

  Now Browder sat back, satisfied. Even with my sketchy knowledge of our case I knew he’d just delivered a devastating critique, and what made it worse was that he hadn’t needed to exaggerate. Now he sat there watching us, supremely confident, waiting for my comeback, but I didn’t have one; essentially I mostly agreed with him. I could feel Helena’s eyes on me, and I sensed her confidence starting to drain away as she waited in vain for me to say something that suggested I had the slightest grip on the case.

  ‘So tell me, Browder,’ I finally said. ‘If everything is as you say, why are you so desperate to settle?’ Then I sat back too, to study my fingernails.

  The room went quiet. Browder sat, no change in his expression apart from the involuntary flicking of his eyes up at the camera perched above us. I guessed there was an audience out there somewhere.

  ‘Okay, Mr Calver, we’re both lawyers, so I’ll humour you,’ Browder said, leaning forward in his chair, smirk gone. ‘You know the score, its cheaper for us to settle now than go to trial even though we know we’d win. Yeah, there’s an offer on the table, 2.5 million US, but all it signifies is the economic reality of the situation; it says nothing to the strength of your client’s case, which, without wishing to labour the point, is hopeless. But get this, the offer is strictly time limited now. You got about 8 hours left to accept, failing which we’re withdrawing it, and then we’ll go to trial, and we’ll bury you. And by the way, Calver, I’m sure you have exhaustively gone over the downside of this case with your client, but it might be worth reminding her: if she loses at trial, and she will, we’ll get our costs, which are huge, and that, my friend, will bankrupt her, because we will go after every cent. Incidentally, you seen this?’ he said, sliding a document across the table.

  It was a notification from Hannah’s US attorneys filing notice they were no longer acting for her and terminating their retainer. Without thinking, I slid it across to Helena, trying not to show anything on my face.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked.

  Browder smiled, picking up on the fact we hadn’t known about it. ‘That, my dear, is your US attorneys throwing in the towel.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ I said, trying to shut her down.

  But Browder was enjoying himself now. He said, ‘what it means, my dear, is that even your own US attorneys have lost confidence in your case, but don’t worry, you still have Mr. Calver’s expertise to protect you.’

  I could feel my face flushing as Browder’s heavy sarcasm, on top of his forensic dismantling of our case, finally began to get to me. Time to fly a kite, and if I needed to make stuff up to get it soaring away, no worries. ‘I’ll tell you what, Browder,’ I said, straightening up in my chair and looking him in the eye. ‘How about we forget about your pathetic offer, which by the way works out at about 50% of fair value, and instead, we’ll play a game. Its a game called, what if?’

  Browder sighed theatrically. ‘What if what, Mr. Calver? This is getting tedious and I’m sure your client has better things to do,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘What if—’ I started to say, but was interrupted by the door opening.

  I recognized the guy coming through immediately, his face was all over the business pages, and sometimes the society columns as well.

  ‘I’m David Milken, Mr. Calver,’ he said, holding his hand out to me, but focusing his attention on Helena. He looked like every other fortune five hundred CEO I’d ever seen; wannabe alpha male with an expensive suit and a fake tan, but this guys eyes had a kind of unnerving blandness about them. As we shook he surprised me by not trying to cripple my hand, then he took a seat beside Browder. He leaned forward and locked his eyes on mine. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve been watching the feed, and I want to play Mr. Calver’s game too,’ he said, blank, dead smile. ‘What if what, Mr. Calver?

  It was my turn to smile, my kite was about to soar. ‘What if Hannah Palmer has started to remember,’ I said slowly, letting my smile hang there for a beat, then pushing it some more. ‘What if its…. how can I describe it? Imagine a dam,’ I said, leaning back in my chair and sketching something out in the air
with my hands. ‘A dam with a tiny hole in it, but each day a few pebbles, a few small pieces of concrete wash away. Eventually, if nothing is done, we all know what happens. We get a raging torrent. In this case, a raging torrent of memories, and I’m guessing you guys are not going to want to go anywhere near where that might take us.’

  Milken turned to Helena, ignoring me. ‘Miss Palmer,’ he said. ‘We’ve extended every courtesy to you by agreeing to meet, and we’ve answered your questions, but apparently that’s not enough for Mr. Calver here, although I get the impression you are more sympathetic. You know,’ Milken said, his voice softening and his face taking on a sympathetic sheen, ‘maybe it would help if I could talk to your mother face to face, in person and persuade her she’s mistaken. I mean,’ he said, upping the wattage of his smile, shooting for sincerity, ‘where is she now? We can set up a meet real quick and sort this?’

  Helena smiled. ‘She’s in—’

  I gripped her leg sharply under the table. ‘Hannah is being well looked after – we’ll let you know if she wants to talk,’ I said.

  I watched Milken struggle to keep his anger under wraps. I guessed he was a guy who didn’t do rejection well. He stood up. ‘We’re done here, Charlie,’ he said glancing at Browder, words clipped.

  Browder was standing now as well, collecting up his papers. He said, ‘offer of 2.5 Mill. expires at midnight. Last chance. If we hear nothing back from you, I hope you’ve got your ducks lined up for Monday morning…’

  ‘Monday morning……?’ I said. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I guess you haven’t studied the court papers too closely, right? That’s when this case is listed to start,’ he said, turning to smile at Helena. ‘You really want to go to trial with this clown? He doesn’t even know your mothers case is due to start in 3 days time.’

  I said, ‘we’ve had no notice of trial dates.’

  ‘Well you wouldn’t,’ Browder said patiently, as if speaking to a child. ‘This was agreed with John months ago at the last pre-trial hearing, to give time for settlement talks. Judge insisted we actually list the trial start date, to concentrate our minds on settlement, and stop us dicking around. Mind you, when we agreed it, no one thought you would be reckless enough to take it to trial, but its your funeral.’

  ‘Yeah, its your funeral,’ Milken echoed him, looking hard at Helena and adding, ‘and so soon after your brothers. How about that?’

  No one answered. Then we left.

  * * * *

  Later after we got back to the hotel I ordered up some room service, simple steaks. They came up good and bloody, like only the Americans seem to know how to do. Then we sat around and talked. Helena sipped red wine as I took occasional shots from a bottle of spring water. My first impression had been that she was pretty buttoned up, but now she was hanging loose, probably a combination of wine, different time zone and pent up emotion. As I listened to her I couldn’t help my eyes sliding unerringly to the half full glass in her hand.

  ‘Boy, have you got it bad,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you have one?’

  ‘Better not,’ I said, then, ‘Anyway, you got a decision to make. What about their offer?’

  She giggled, the wine starting to kick in. ‘We got till midnight,’ she said, taking another sip. Then, sombre, ‘that Milken guy is one scary character. You see his face when you were winding him up about mum remembering? Boy, what a crock that was, but he looked like he’d seen a ghost.’

  ‘Yeah, I did see, so the real question becomes: why? Why would they worry? And what Browder said about settling for economic reasons is true. Big corporations get rid of low level litigation like this all the time, even when they hold all the cards, because it works out cheaper. So the offer doesn’t really mean shit.’

  ‘2.5 million dollars is low level?’

  ‘It is to them; its peanuts, small change. K Corp, on current stock prices on the Dow, is worth around sixteen billion dollars.’

  Helena whistled. I reached over and topped her glass up. There were things going on in this case, under the surface, that I really couldn’t get a handle on. So I needed to try change that, and I guessed a good place to start would be the person at the centre of it all. ‘Tell me a a bit about Hannah,’ I said. ‘Back in the day, she must have been quite a woman.’

  A shadow crossed her face. ‘She was, is….’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But, nothing. She’s my mother, and I love her, of course – but she can be difficult, you know, hard, unyielding’

  ‘I guess you’d have to be to endure what she did.’ I said, thinking back over the story, albeit sketchy, I had read in Emma’s briefing notes. ‘How did she actually get away from all the chaos of the war, and then to Britain,’ I asked.

  ‘You know, for years, I knew nothing about mums history, where she came from, all that,’ Helena said, a kind of puzzled look on her face. ‘Its taken a long time to get even the little we now have. Partly I guess because she’d either blocked it out or wouldn’t or couldn’t remember. Then she saw that ridiculous TV program with what she certainly genuinely believed to be the long lost family heirloom, and it kind of opened the door of memory, just ajar, and I don’t know whether that’s been a good or a bad thing. Since then little bits and pieces have been coming back to her, and maybe one day we’ll get it all. So far we’ve got her family deported from Holland, and then nothing. She can’t remember anything else. Nothing until she’s liberated, living in the forrest with Partisans in 1945 from where she finally makes her way to Britain, marries, and me and John turn up.’

  She looked away towards the window and the lights from the city below were reflected onto her face. She looked sad and her eyes seemed to have lost their lustre.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking about John,’ she said.

  I sighed. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’

  She looked down into her glass, eyes hooded, then she started to speak in a kind of dull, matter of fact monotone. ‘They say he drove his car into the harbour. Take your pick; accidental death or suicide. It was a five year old Lincoln, and the brakes were patchy, but not enough to fail unless you were doing a hundred and twenty, and they reckon he was doing about forty. There were no marks on the body apart from a bump on the forehead from the steering wheel, and there was no airbag until it hit the water, so no earlier impact. His clothing, as well as water, had traces of whiskey in it and there was a large broken bottle on the floor of the car. There was alcohol in his blood stream, and barbiturates.’

  She had delivered her words in a flat unemotional tone, and her face looked troubled, as if she was trying to understand something, grasping for something, but it wouldn’t quite come.

  ‘But something doesn’t sit right with you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said slowly. ‘John didn’t drink.’

  I felt a far away alarm bell start to ring in my head, but only fools jump to hasty conclusions. ‘Well, maybe he’d started to drink, or he did drink, just for this. It happens with suicides, for courage, or whatever, to deaden the pain.’

  ‘No, not John,’ she said firmly. ‘He got drunk once when he was ten years old, broke into dads drinks cabinet. I think they had to pump his stomach, and he was so sick, he never touched alcohol after that, never. Drugs, yeah, maybe, recreational, occasionally; nothing heavy.’

  Our eyes met and held for a moment. Then she looked down at the table top, looking like she was in a trance, eyes unseeing. I was still unnerved by her comments about John’s death. We both sat for a while, silent, but it was a comfortable, companionable kind of silence. It seemed natural when I lifted the bottle and poured a generous shot of red wine into my glass and took a long, deep pull. Helena watched me, eyes smoky, distant, non-judgmental.

  ‘What about the offer?’ I finally jogged her, pulling her back to the now. I knocked back another slug, feeling more relaxed with each mouthful, but Helena just looked more mournful.

  After a moment she mur
mured, ‘fuckem.’ Then repeated it louder, and then she burped. She turned to me and our eyes met, and she said, ‘lets take them to trial, Jonas, for John, and for mum. I don’t care if we do lose.’ Then she stood up unsteadily and started towards the door. ‘Look I……. I better go…… back to my room and get some sleep,’ she said. I got up and followed her to the door.

  Close up she seemed preoccupied, conflicted, a sad smile playing on her lips. I felt light headed. I stumbled a bit as I leant up to kiss her goodnight. She looked into my eyes; all I could see was loneliness and vulnerability. I put my arms around her and she turned her lips up to mine, and it just seemed natural, a long lingering kiss.

  Chapter 3

  At first I thought it was a dream, loud banging and buzzing sounds echoing around inside my head, then insistent calling, coming from a long way off. Then I opened my eyes. At first I couldn’t remember anything, then it started to come back, and then it turned into a torrent of flashing images: Helena talking, sad, then happy, and then making love, arching her body against mine, then later, whispering softly and then leaving, going back to her room to sleep.

  I looked around; some of my clothing was strewn across the floor, and on the sideboard were three empty wine bottles standing like sentinels, judging me. As my eyes slowly traversed the room, I felt uneasy; something was missing but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then something else registered; someone was getting pretty pissed outside, banging and pressing on the buzzer. I got up gingerly and went over, pulled the door open and stood dumbly trying to rub the sleep from my eyes.

  ‘NYPD. Detective Daly,’ the guy standing there said, flicking a badge at me. He was big, athletic and the suit looked good, but the eyes were cold and suspicious. He came into the room leaving the door open, a patrolman standing outside. ‘Better wake up, buddy,’ he said. ‘You Jonas Calver?’