The Law of the Sea : A Legal Thriller

by Dave Gerard

  “Still saving the world, one billable hour at a time,” I replied.

  Avoulay chuckled. After that, he fell quiet as he became absorbed in his work. I opened up my laptop and answered a few emails.

  Toward the end of the hour, Dr. Avoulay took off his gloves, returned the coin, and sat down. He looked unsatisfied.

  “So?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t tell the origin of the gold. I’ve never seen isotopes like this before. Most gold is mined from China, South Africa, the United States, Australia, and a handful of other countries. By looking at what isotopes occur in the gold, I can usually tell where it’s from. But this gold is not from any of those places,” he said.

  I frowned. “So where is it from?”

  “It could be from another country. A bigger lab might be able to tell you. But the really surprising thing is the age of the metal.”

  “The age? You said it was at least a couple of decades old, right?”

  “Actually, it’s much older than that. This gold coin is several hundred years old, at least. With more analysis, I could be precise. But if I were a betting man, Mr. Carver, I would say this coin is several centuries old.”

  “Centuries?” I said with a start.

  “Yes. Gold has been around since the dawn of human civilization, of course, so there are much older samples. But this is rare nonetheless.”

  I sat for a moment, absorbing this information.

  “I would recommend showing the coin to a numismatist,” Avoulay continued. A numismatist, as I had learned during my last go-round with Dr. Avoulay, was a student and collector of coins. “Once this is cleaned, he or she may be able to recognize the markings on the coin. That could be the best way to determine its origin.”

  I thought about this. “Let’s hold off on showing it to anyone else just now,” I decided. “I’ll ask the client about it.”

  Dr. Avoulay nodded. “Understood. Keep me posted. I’ll be interested to hear what you find out.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  As I left Dr. Avoulay’s office, I wondered. How had David Marcum gotten his hands on centuries-old, unidentified gold coins?

  As I got back into my car, I took out my phone and emailed the firm’s ace researcher, Lyle. I gave him David Marcum’s date of birth and social security number, which Ashley had given me at the clinic. I asked him to run a background report and see what he could find. By the time I got back to the office, an answer was waiting for me.

  Hey bud, read the email from Lyle. Got your background report. Also managed to find a photo and an old resume. Take a look.

  Awesome, I wrote back. Appreciate it. Thanks.

  No problem, came the instant reply. I’m signing off but I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Later.

  I opened the photo first. It was taken a few years ago, and showed David in the middle of two other people. He was handsome, with a fine-boned face and closely-cropped hair. He wore a devil-may-care smile and a black t-shirt that said “Fuck You, Houston’s Awesome.” I could see the resemblance to Ashley.

  Next, I looked at the resume. David Marcum had attended college, and made good marks at a good school. But he had dropped out two or three years in. That was ten years ago, which would have made him around the same age as me. After that, he’d held a lot of different jobs. Sales, bartending, journalism, mechanics. Skilled in Microsoft Word, Excel, and a handful of other basic programs. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. Interests: football, yoga, European history, and scuba diving. A man of many talents.

  The background report told a more troubling story. Marcum had several minor felony and misdemeanor charges on his record. Two DUI’s. Public intoxication. Simple assault. Assault again. Reckless driving. There was nothing really major, like aggravated assault or armed robbery, but it was enough to give me pause. There were also a couple of outstanding judgments against the guy. Small things like unpaid rent, or other minor debts. I wondered again how Marcum had gotten the coins, uneasily this time.

  There was nothing on his resume about Rockweiller Industries. But the company was easy enough to find online. Rockweiller was a multi-billion-dollar oil company, publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It was headquartered in Houston and had lines of business all over the world. Oil and gas exploration, refining, pipelines, minerals, you name it. The company’s website proudly displayed a picture of its founder, Kurt Rockweiller. He had been a titan of industry. I saw a picture of him from the 1930’s. He looked tough. Like the kind of guy who would break a labor strike. Or fire your dad.

  “Hey buddy,” said a sly voice, interrupting my train of thought. I looked up. “What are you doing all dressed up today?” It was Harder.

  T. Richard Harder III was an associate, like me. Harder stood about five-ten, with dark hair and a preppy expression. He was a year or two ahead of me at the firm. Harder had gone to an Ivy league school and thought pretty highly of himself. One of those people who like to refer to themselves as “type A.” We called them gunners in law school. Always sitting at the front of the class, always raising their hand, always the first to throw you under the bus.

  I swiveled my chair around and sat back, clasping my hands behind my head. “Had to go to a pro bono clinic today,” I said casually. “Kruckemeyer asked me to cover it last minute. I’ve got to go to court this week on a case I picked up there.” I said this like it was no big deal, but Harder wasn’t fooled. He narrowed his eyes, jealous. Court was always a big deal, even in a pro bono case. I grinned.

  “Pro bono, huh?” he said. “That probably won’t make your 1099.”

  My expression soured. Harder was referring to my independent contractor status. You see, technically, I wasn’t a regular employee at the firm. After law school, I had worked for a law firm for a few years. Then I had decided to hang my own shingle. Set my own hours, be my own boss, and all that. I rented office space and put out a press release that got about three hundred likes on Facebook.

  Unfortunately, the likes didn’t translate into clients. I managed to eke out a few cases, but no one was beating a path to my door. I shut down after less than a year, and took a job with HH&K (Holland, Haroldson, & Kruckemeyer). I was still trying to get LegalZoom to cancel my LLP fees, and they were being real assholes about it.

  HH&K was an average, mid-sized law firm in Houston. There were a hundred just like us. We had some good lawyers, some bad lawyers, and a lot of mediocre lawyers. We weren’t as glamorous or high paying as the big law firms in town, where everyone wanted to work (except those who actually worked there, who hated it). But we were a cut above the mom-and-pop shops that littered the billboards and benches.

  As an independent contractor, I got paid the same as the other associates, and worked full time, so it wasn’t like it made any difference that I was a contractor. It was just a tax thing for the firm. At least that’s what they told me.

  “Thanks, Dick,” I said pointedly. This annoyed him. He preferred to be called “Richard,” or “T. Richard,” or “just Rich,” although he couldn’t get anyone behind that last one.

  “Ah, don’t be like that,” said Harder, slapping me on the back. “I’m only joking. Tell me about the case!” He pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning forward expectantly.

  Reluctantly at first, but then with increasing interest, I told him about the clinic, the girl, the death, and the gold. It was fun to get it all out. Even to Harder. He was a good audience, and suitably impressed.

  “Is that what Kruckemeyer was yelling at you about earlier?” he asked. “The expenses?”

  “Yeah. But he’ll get over it.” Kruckemeyer had given me grief over Dr. Avoulay’s fee. He said it was a pro bono case, and I ought to have used a pro bono expert. As if those existed. But he calmed down after I reminded him that it was for charity and would make us look good. I also told him that Ashley had a bunch of gold coins. “Gold, eh
?” he had mused. “In a pro bono case? Maybe we’ll bill her after all. Don’t need pro bono if you’ve got gold,” he said with a chuckle.

  Harder nodded. “So what happens now?”

  “I fill out the paperwork to get her appointed independent executrix of the estate. Then I go to court to get it approved. After that, I’ll call up Rockweiller and find out what happened to her brother.”

  “Sounds simple enough. Good luck. Let me know if you need any help.”

  “Will do.”

  The next morning, I got up early to look up probate procedures. To get Ashley appointed as executrix, I had to fill out some paperwork, give notice to creditors, and file a list of assets with the court. It was easy enough, and I got everything done by noon. The case was randomly assigned to the 375th district court. They had a general docket at 9:30 a.m. on Fridays. The Judge would deal with small matters like this, and I set it for hearing then.

  After that, I turned back to Kruckemeyer’s motion to compel. Then I knocked out a few things in my employment discrimination case. I left the office around six, worked out at the gym for an hour, and ordered a burger and fries for dinner. I cracked open a beer and settled down to watch some B-grade Netflix series called The Dominator. I went to sleep contented.

  At some unknown hour of the night, I woke up to the sound of my phone vibrating insistently.

  THREE

  It took me a few moments to pass from sleep to wakefulness. I stared at the clock blearily. It was half-past three. My phone vibrated again. I grabbed at it blindly, trying to shut it up. Who was calling me at this hour?

  I checked the phone and saw seven missed calls from Bob Kruckemeyer. That made me go cold all over. Kruckemeyer was demanding, but he wouldn’t call this late, or this many times, except in an emergency. I bolted up straight in bed and called him back. He picked up right away.

  “Jack,” he said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “At home. Sleeping. What’s going on?”

  “Sleeping? Haven’t you seen the filings in the Marcum case?”

  I fell out of bed and stumbled my way to the kitchen table. I quickly opened up my laptop and pulled up the filing notifications. There was a notice, filed just after midnight, in the Marcum probate case. It said “Request for Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and Emergency Injunctive Relief.” It had been filed by Rockweiller Industries, and sought the immediate return of thirty-seven gold coins. It said that David Marcum had stolen the coins and illegally given them to his sister, Ashley Marcum.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “What the hell did you do?” said Kruckemeyer. “Did you steal the coins? I thought you said she was going to pay our bill with those.”

  “I didn’t steal the coins,” I muttered.

  “Dammit, Jack, what the hell have you gotten us into?”

  I refrained from pointing out that it had in fact been Kruckemeyer who had sent me to the pro bono clinic, thereby getting us into this. “I don’t know.”

  “Well you’d better figure it out. Fast. Look at the attorneys who filed this thing.”

  I scrolled down to the end of the filing where the attorneys’ names appeared. It said Badden & Bock, New York, NY. I knew of them.

  Badden & Bock was a big law firm out of New York with hundreds of attorneys. They were known for their corporate work on Wall Street, and also for their vicious litigation practice in high-stakes cases like securities fraud and antitrust. They hired the best law students out of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, paid them huge salaries, and tried their best to work them to death. If they couldn’t, that person would eventually be made partner and perpetuate the cycle.

  “Badden and Bock,” I said. “What are they doing mixed up in this?”

  “Good question,” said Kruckemeyer. “A better one is, when’s the hearing?”

  I looked for it. “It says tomorrow morning at eight a.m.,” I said.

  Kruckemeyer chuckled. “You sure about that, cowboy?”

  I looked again. “Yes. Tomorrow morning. Wait. Oh God. It’s already tomorrow. The hearing is today. In…” I checked my watch but didn’t have it on. “In five hours? Is that even legal?”

  “Heh. Nasty trick. They’re trying to pull a fast one. File the TRO at midnight and get it heard before we can show up. They set it ex parte. But they didn’t count on me burning the midnight oil. No sir.”

  Ex parte meant that they were going to try to do it without us. Usually, you have to have both sides present to get a court ruling on anything. Ex parte relief is reserved for extraordinary situations.

  “How can they set this ex parte for this morning?” I asked. “Where’s the emergency? There’s no way this will work, right?”

  “Eh. Depends on the judge. State court’s a crapshoot. What court are we in?”

  “The three seventy-fifth,” I said.

  “That’s Judge Gleeson. He’s okay. Older. Up for reelection this year, I think. He’s no star, but he tries to do the right thing. Usually.”

  “Well the right thing is that you need an extraordinary situation to warrant an ex parte TRO. Right?”

  “Right. Yeah. Look, can you do it?”

  “What? Me, do this hearing? Against Badden and Bock? Are you crazy?”

  “You wanted court time, didn’t you? Well here it is. Just go in there and give it your best shot. It’s pro bono. Not like any money is riding on this for us. I’ve got a client meeting at nine. I can’t miss it.”

  “They filed a forty-page legal brief,” I said. “How am I supposed to figure out what’s going on and respond in the next four hours?”

  “You can do it. I believe in you. Listen, just harp on irreparable harm and extraordinary remedy. Judge can’t grant a TRO without that. I’ve got to go. Going to catch a little shut-eye. Go handle this. Keep me posted. And don’t fuck it up.” Then he hung up the phone.

  I stared at Rockweiller’s motion with dread. In addition to the forty pages, it also had fifteen attachments. I quelled a panic attack as I tried to figure out what to do. I decided I would just have to do my best. I called and texted Ashley, telling her that she needed to be in court first thing in the morning. I hoped she would get it in time. Then I sat down in the darkness and tried to make sense of things.

  A few hours later, I was hurrying up the steps of the courthouse. I was exhausted, but had managed to stop for coffee on the way, which helped. I had been able to reach Ashley. She was waiting for me, sharply dressed despite the late notice. We hurried through security. These days, you had to take off your jacket, belt, and shoes to get into the courthouse, like a TSA line at the airport.

  “How did they know about the coins?” Ashley asked me as I put my shoes back on. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Kruckemeyer thinks they were tracking the probate filings. I had to list the coins as assets of your brother’s estate. They could have been watching the filings for any mention of David Marcum.”

  “But how can they just set a hearing like this at midnight? Don’t they have to give us time to prepare if they’re accusing my brother of stealing? It seems so unfair.”

  “It is. And it’s not supposed to work like this. But unfortunately, sometimes it does.”

  “What are the chances that they win?”

  “In theory, small. They are supposed to have to show an extraordinary need to get a temporary restraining order, which they don’t have. But I don’t know. State court in Texas is a rodeo.”

  “Okay,” she said. Ashley wore a look of calm concern. Overall, I thought she was handling the situation well. Better than me.

  We took the elevator up to the eighteenth floor. This took a while, because the elevators were slow and half of them were out of service. But when we arrived and opened the door to the 375th, the courtroom was empty.

  “Shit,” I muttered, fumbling with my phone
to check that I had the court right. “Are we in the wrong place?”

  “No. Look.” Ashley pointed to a notice posted on the door. It was a handwritten note saying that the 375th district court had temporarily moved to the 234th, and the 234th had temporarily moved to the 188th. These mix-ups were the result of flooding from a recent hurricane, which forced the courts to share space.

  I cursed and ran to the directory. I traced my finger down the list, looking for the 234th. It was on the thirteenth floor. I checked my watch.

  “The elevator is going to take too long,” I said. “Come on. We’ll take the stairs.”

  We rushed down five flights of stairs and arrived at the 234th. Breathing hard, I straightened my tie, pushed open the doors to the courtroom, and walked in. It was a few minutes after eight.

  Normally, the courtroom would have been peopled with lawyers sitting around and waiting for the judge to call their case. But today, it was almost empty. They must have sealed the hearing. The only lawyers there were three figures in dark suits, sitting at the right-hand counsel table and eyeing me coldly. Badden & Bock.

  Judge Gleeson was already on his bench, reading some papers. He frowned down at me as I walked in. The atmosphere was tense.

  “You’re late, counselor,” he snapped. Not a good start.

  “I apologize, Your Honor,” I said. “This TRO was filed at midnight, and there was a courtroom change at the last minute, and—”

  The Judge waved this away brusquely and turned to the Badden & Bock attorneys.

  Their leader stood up and addressed the judge. He was a tall man who looked to be in his late forties. He was impeccably dressed and had an intense, unpleasant look on his face. “Zachary Bock, Your Honor, for Rockweiller Industries,” he said in a deep baritone. “And these are my colleagues, L. Lucius Quinto and Kathleen Loudamire.” He gestured toward the other two, who stood up in turn.

  They were younger, about my age. Associates, probably. Lucius Quinto was tall and handsome and looked like he had played lacrosse at boarding school. Loudamire was short and heavy, with a forced rictus of a grin on her face that looked to be hiding deeper issues.