Grave Designs

by Michael A. Kahn

“That’s proper,” I said.

  “Wait. So then I say to the witness, it’s up to you. You decide whether you want to answer my question or whether you’d prefer to follow the advice of that colostomy bag you call your lawyer. Well, his lawyer went ape-shit. He screams at me, I yell back at him, and then he stomps out of the deposition with his client.”

  “Who’s the partner on the case?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask. Kent Charles. He was real pleased when I reported it all to him.” Benny rolled his eyes. “This place is driving me nuts.” He took a pack of Life Savers out of his shirt pocket and offered me one.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I gotta go over to the public library this afternoon,” he said, crunching on his candy. “One of the Bottles and Cans plaintiffs filed a new claim. Listen to this: copyright infringement. They’re pissed about some advertising materials some of our clients allegedly copied.”

  “Copyright?” I said. “God, that case is the Black Hole of litigation.”

  “No kidding. Anyway, I’m going to the library to find the magazine ads they base their copyright claim on. While I’m there, I’m gonna see what I can dig up on Canaan, Massachusetts. It’s got me a little curious. I’ll just bill the time to Bottles and Cans. No one will ever know the difference.”

  “Thanks, Benny. I kind of doubt that some seventeenth-century Puritan village has anything to do with Marshall’s pet. But I’m curious about it, anyway.”

  There was a shout from the other side of the door. “Out of my way, grandma!”

  The door flew open and Maggie Sullivan stomped into the office, red-faced and angry. “Listen, you,” she started, her voice rising in volume, “did you have anything to do with it? ‘Cause if you did, I’ll get you thrown in jail!”

  “What are you talking about, Maggie?” I asked.

  “That grave, dammit!” Her hands were resting on her broad hips, fists clenched. “That’s my property. There’s laws out there that protect it too. And if you had anything—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  She stood there glaring at me, breathing heavily. Helen Marston was behind her, standing slack-jawed at the door.

  “The Canaan grave,” Maggie finally said. “It’s been dug up.”

  “What?”

  “Last night, I guess. Someone must have come out in the middle of the night and dug it up. There’s just a big hole in the ground, and the coffin is gone!”

  Chapter Eight

  By the time Maggie and I reached my office, I had convinced her that I had nothing to do with the grave robbery. Mary was at her desk leafing through a Cosmopolitan as we walked in. She handed me my telephone messages and I introduced her to Maggie. Maggie grunted a hello as she walked into my office. I followed her, pausing at the door to look back at Mary, who was staring with raised eyebrows. I shrugged and closed the door.

  Maggie was pacing back and forth. “I’m really pissed off,” she said. “Someone sneaks onto my property in the middle of the night, digs up one of my graves, and walks off with the coffin. I’m so angry, I can’t tell you. And it’s not just the trespassing and the theft that gets me. I run a pet cemetery. A damn fine pet cemetery. And I got people buried out there too. Including my Carl, rest his soul.” She stopped pacing and shook her head. “Word of this leaks out and I’m in big trouble. All pet cemeteries are in trouble. People get spooked by grave robbers. The least they can expect is that when they bury their pet out there, it stays buried. You buy a plot out there, you bury your pet—or your husband, for chrissakes—and you expect them to stay put. You have any idea what this does to people?”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about it.” Maggie paused to light a cigarette with a kitchen match. “I can’t go to the cops. First of all, they’re not going to do anything about it. They’ll send out two bozos in a squad car, and they’ll clomp around and write up a report and that’s the last I’ll hear from them. Second of all, it might get into the papers. That’s the real problem. I don’t want publicity for this. It’s not just that it’s bad for future business, including that hippo out at Brookfield Zoo, which I might just nab, knock on wood. But it’s just terrible, I mean terrible, for all the people, for all the poor families that have pets out there.” Maggie shook her head and took a drag on her cigarette. She exhaled the smoke through her nose. “I have some sweet old ladies who’ll have a stroke if they hear about it. The high point of their week is their visit to Wagging Tail. I have to look out for them too. For their peace of mind.” She stared at me for a moment and then sat down on the couch. “Which brings me to you.”

  “Me?”

  “You. Just what is it you’re doing with this Canaan stuff?”

  “Up until an hour ago, I was trying to figure out what was in that grave.”

  “And now?”

  “And now—well, I guess I’ll advise the client and—”

  “Who’s the client? That Marshall fellow?”

  “No.” I paused. “Marshall’s dead. His law firm retained me to see what I could find out about Canaan.”

  “Why?”

  “Some estate matters they’re looking into.”

  “What does that mean?” Maggie asked.

  “Before we get to that, let’s talk about what you plan to do.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll hire a private eye, or maybe a lawyer. Maybe you.”

  It might work, I thought. The law firm wanted to keep this Canaan matter quiet, and so did Maggie. Abbott & Windsor certainly wouldn’t want Maggie hiring some outsider to start snooping around, bugging Marshall’s family, asking questions.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  Maggie studied me. “I’m not sure. I don’t know any good lawyers, and I don’t know any private eyes. I wouldn’t know how to find a good one. If that big law firm is happy with you, I guess you can’t be all bad. But I got to know more about your job on this case.”

  “So do I,” I said. “I’m going to let the firm know about the theft and see if they want me to continue working on the case. If not, I might be able to work for you, assuming they have no genuine objection.”

  “And if they want you to still work on it?”

  “Then I’ll stick with it,” I answered.

  “And what about me?”

  “Well, up to a certain point your interests and the law firm’s interests are the same. But there is a possible conflict down the road.”

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  “Well, it relates to future payments for care and maintenance of the gravesite—”

  “Look, I don’t care about the maintenance money.” Maggie stood up and started pacing again. “That money isn’t what bothers me. I got an empty hole in the ground out there, and that could hurt my cemetery bad. I want you to find that coffin and get it back to me. Period. And I’m willing to pay you for it.”

  “Let me first check with the firm,” I said. “Then I’ll get back to you.”

  “Good.” She sat back down.

  “How are things going with the zoo?” I asked.

  “Hard to tell,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m going to see them again today and tell them it’s time to piss or get off the pot. The museum turned them down yesterday. I think I have a chance. Their only other option is to sell it to a rendering plant.” Maggie stood up and started for the door. “Give me an answer today.”

  “I will. And good luck with the zoo.”

  After she left, Mary stuck her head into the office.

  “So that’s the cemetery lady?” she asked.

  “Yep. Someone stole Canaan.”

  “My God. You’re kidding!”

  “I wish I were. This case is bizarre.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked
.

  “Well, I’ll tell Ishmael Richardson what happened and see if he wants me to keep on it.” I started flipping through the earlier telephone messages.

  “I have another message for you,” Mary said. “Mr. Marshall’s widow called back. She said she could meet you at two-thirty at her home. Do you need her address?”

  “No. I have it.”

  “Jesus, Rachel, why would anyone rob a pet cemetery? How long was the pet buried there?”

  “Since 1986.”

  “Weird.”

  Mary was out getting our lunches when a messenger from Abbott & Windsor arrived with a large thick envelope for me. Inside was a copy of the last will and testament of Graham Anderson Marshall III, a copy of the first codicil to the last will and testament of Graham Anderson Marshall III, and a short cover note from one of Ishmael Richardson’s secretaries: “Mr. Richardson requested that I send you the enclosed.”

  The will was thirty-two pages long and printed on legal-size paper. It seemed to sag under the leaden jargon of the trust and estates lawyer. In the belt- and-suspenders world of a will drafter, it is hardly sufficient for the testator merely to give his stamp collection to his son; instead, he must give, devise, bequeath, surrender, assign, settle upon, convey, transfer, set over, and otherwise direct that said collection of postage stamps, as hereinbefore described hereinabove, be delivered, free and clear of any and all claims, liens, and encumbrances, to said male issue. In other words, take the damn stamps.

  I skimmed through the various provisions of the will, most of them boilerplate, pausing to underline a $50,000 bequest, grant, devise, etc., to Barrett College and a $50,000 bequest to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

  The codicil was just three pages long. It had all the odd provisions Ishmael Richardson had described: the appointment of the managing partner as co-trustee of the trust, the request that the co-trustee supervise the care and maintenance of the gravesite, the direction to pay Abbott & Windsor a fee of twice the standard hourly rate for the managing partner’s services, the provision terminating the trust twenty-one years after the death of the last attorney who was a member of the Executive Committee of Abbott & Windsor at the time of Marshall’s death—a provision needed for compliance with the ancient and virtually incomprehensible (to a litigator, at least) rule against perpetuities.

  I reread the provision governing the delivery of flowers to the grave four times a year: on March 19, July 27, September 11, and November 29. I stared at those dates and then copied them onto a yellow legal pad.

  The closing paragraph of the codicil must have given Ishmael Richardson pause. Marshall “implored” his law firm “to honor and carry out my simple but heartfelt requests, as expressed in this, my codicil. Even if the civil law does not make binding the terms of this trust, I hope and pray that my partners, and especially the managing partner, will deem as binding the moral obligations I hereby call upon them to honor. I seek only to memorialize the small role I played in the eternal life of Canaan.”

  I read that last sentence a second time, aloud.

  The codicil was dated July 15, 1986, and was witnessed by two file room clerks at Abbott & Windsor. I recognized both names. No doubt Marshall called them into his office, had them witness his signature, and then had them sign as witnesses. Neither one would have any idea of what he had been asked to witness.

  The telephone rang. It was Kent Charles. He said he had a new case he wanted to discuss with me in person. I agreed to meet him for drinks tomorrow at five at the Yacht Club.

  I called directory assistance in New York and asked for the telephone number of the publisher of the American Language Dictionary. I dialed the number and asked for the customer relations department. Someone named Ralph Pinchley answered. Posing as the newly appointed purchasing agent for several large Chicago law firms, I asked him for information about their latest edition of the dictionary. I told him that I had two copies of their dictionary on my desk. Although the two copies appeared identical, I had made a random check and discovered that the definitions for Canaan were different. I read him the definitions in my dictionary and then I read, from my notes, the definitions in Graham Marshall’s dictionary. He must have had his own copy of the dictionary before him, because he sounded confused when I reached the reference to Canaan, Massachusetts.

  “Would you read that last definition again,” he said. “Slowly.”

  I did.

  “And you say that’s from our dictionary, ma’m?”

  I said it was.

  There was a pause. “Well, uh, I’ll have to check with the dictionary division.”

  “Certainly,” I answered. “Before I place my orders, I’d like to know if that dictionary is available. The one with the three definitions. My law firm clients prefer the most comprehensive dictionary available.”

  I then called Ishmael Richardson and told him about the theft and about Maggie’s request that I also represent her. After a long pause he told me to continue the investigation. We discussed Maggie’s request and agreed that it was better for me to represent Maggie than to force her to turn to someone else. He asked a few general questions about my practice and then ended the conversation by asking whether I had any interest in returning to the firm to work on In re Bottles & Cans. I politely declined.

  I shuffled through my telephone messages for the second time and then put them back on the desk, reached into the top drawer, and pulled out a cigarette—my second of the day. I was down to four a day. I lit it with a match and leaned back in the chair.

  In re Bottles & Cans. To a nonlawyer it sounded like an antilitter statute. But to any of the 132 law firms across the nation involved in it, Bottles & Cans was the motherlode, producing annual legal fees in an amount greater than the gross national products of several member nations of the United Nations.

  Bottles & Cans had started thirty-one years before with the filing of a run-of-the-mill six-page civil antitrust complaint in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Missouri. In that complaint—the original of which is now on display in a glass case in the United States Court and Custom House in St. Louis—two Southeast Missouri bottling companies accused a Southern Illinois bottler of attempting to monopolize the regional market. The case, Ames Bottle, Inc., et al. v. King of Peoria Bottling Co., was, in the jargon of the antitrust litigator, just a garden-variety Section 2 claim.

  What happened then, however, can best be analogized by that awful moment in any one of dozens of 1950’s horror films: The mad scientist has just trudged up the basement stairs to bed, leaving behind the little blob of protoplasm in the petri dish in his subterranean laboratory. As the distant church bells chime midnight, the camera moves in tight on the petri dish. The little blob has started to quiver and glow. Cue the organist.

  The case was just three months old when a Kansas bottling company intervened in the lawsuit, accusing the two plaintiffs of predatory pricing. Then a Nebraska canner entered the battle, accusing the others of a group boycott and joining two more bottlers as defendants. Two Indiana canners joined next, alleging violations of the Robinson-Patman Act. By the end of the first year there were sixteen parties in the lawsuit. In succeeding years scores of bottling and canning companies have entered the case, switched sides, or settled out. In 1974 the case was officially recaptioned In re Bottles & Cans. At last count there were eighty-one plaintiffs, ninety-three defendants, and over nine hundred pages of claims, counterclaims, cross-claims, and third-party claims alleging virtually every antitrust violation, unfair trade practice, and business tort invented by modern capitalism.

  In re Bottles & Cans is now the largest civil lawsuit in American legal history. After more than thirty years it is still in the preliminary discovery stages. More than one billion documents have been exchanged and over eight hundred depositions have been taken. Optimists predict the trial might begin in about a decade. Pessimists are fond o
f quoting a recent article on the lawsuit which appeared in the University of Virginia Law Review: “At its current pace, the tail end of this brontosaurus of a lawsuit will drag past the bench seventy-five years after the snout first appeared at the courtroom door.”

  In re Bottles & Cans has made four trips to the Supreme Court and more than two dozen trips to the appellate courts. During my last year at Harvard Law School the reading list for a Harvard seminar in advanced civil procedure consisted entirely of the appellate opinions in In re Bottles & Cans. Indeed, an entire generation of professors of civil procedure earned tenure at the trough of In re Bottles & Cans. At last count, 723 law review articles, notes, and comments have been written about the litigation.

  Of course, the real battle of In re Bottles & Cans has been waged not in the courtroom but in three cavernous warehouses in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and two giant warehouses on the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas. The plaintiffs’ documents are stored in Iowa, the defendants’ in Texas. Eight hours a day, six days a week, dozens of paralegals and young lawyers from across the nation sift through mountains of documents, preparing abstracts of each one. Thirty-two computer programmers take those abstracts and type them onto computer terminals that are connected with the main computer in Chicago.

  Presiding over this Gargantua of a lawsuit is District Judge Harold Greenman. Judge Greenman heard the first motion in the case thirty years ago, and has lived with the litigation throughout its entire history.

  Three years ago, after Judge Greenman suffered a mild stroke and thereby introduced the dreaded wild card of his mortality into the proceedings, the defendants’ central steering committee held a special meeting. Three hours into the meeting the committee members realized that no one in the room really knew what the case was about anymore. Accordingly, they asked the head programmers to instruct the computers to examine all the stored information and produce a summary of the most significant and material facts in the litigation. Twenty-three lawyers crowded in the hallway outside the terminal, waiting for the results. The computer hummed and whirred for two hours, and then began to print. And print. And print. For ten hours straight. The result numbered close to five thousand pages.