Cold Winter Rain (3 page)

After this information the word Relator appeared, underscored twice.  The notes described a pattern of bribery and corruption in the operation of oil and gas wells on state lands in the State of Alabama which, if true, not only would support a cause of action in a
qui tam
lawsuit but might also implicate current and past holders of constitutional offices in Alabama in criminal activity.

No link between the name Michael Godchaux and the information about wrongdoing appeared in the notes.  Godchaux’s address provided the only hint of any connection to Kramer’s oil lease cases from years before.

I memorized the telephone number.  Some facts are better left out of the electronic memories of computers or cell phones.  Memorizing numbers is something I can do, though I have no idea why or how.  Names of people, not so much. Numbers, like music, have a rhythm that names rarely manage.

Qui tam. 
The Latin words literally mean “who comes.”

Historically, kings and lesser rulers in Europe from time to time would set aside a day or a few days when they would allow any subject a private audience for the purpose of offering evidence that someone entrusted with the property of the crown was stealing.  “Who comes” before the king?

Today
qui tam
litigation is often initiated by an employee who becomes aware that her employer, a defense contractor, or a pharmaceutical company, or a healthcare provider, is violating federal law, or is overcharging the Department of Defense or Medicare.  Such lawsuits have gained in popularity among plaintiffs’ lawyers as tort reform legislation and rulings in federal courts have shrunk the envelope of viable class action litigation.

Qui tam
complaints are filed under seal to protect the identity of the plaintiff, who is called the relator.  After the complaint is filed, the government agency alleged to be cheated by the defendant is notified and provided the opportunity to take over the litigation.

The relator receives fifteen per cent of any funds the government collects.

The eleven pages of notes included information about numerous small operators of oil and gas companies, employees of those entities, and state employees.

The notes also set out dates and times when representatives of these entities had meetings scheduled in the state capital with two lobbyists and with the attorney general and governor of Alabama.

No wonder these notes were maintained in a sealed file.  If the information in the notes were true, the relator here might be eligible for the federal witness protection program.

The Birmingham Public Library, a modern glass building of seven stories, stood directly across Richard Arrington Boulevard from the hotel.  After sifting through files for six hours, I needed a break.

Before leaving the room, I placed the eleven pages of handwritten notes back in their folder, and, on an impulse, placed them in the room safe.  The information could be valuable or even dangerous, and someone had taken the precaution of sealing the envelope.  A little security seemed reasonable.

I took the stairs down to the hotel lobby, crossed the street, entered the library through the glass doors, and weaved my way past the bums and winos pretending to be respectable street people hanging out in the atrium.

The library’s escalator carried me to the reference room on the third floor.

The librarian at the desk, a tall, skinny guy with granny glasses and a ponytail going gray, fetched volume 1 of the current
Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory
out of a back room.  I gave him my driver’s license, signed a card, and carried the three-pound book to the nearest table.

Martindale-Hubbell
, in its many volumes, lists lawyers in the United States and most other countries by name, date of birth, college and law school attended, location, law firm, and type of practice.  The information in the book was available online, but I’d spent enough time in the hotel room, and no one hacks into eyes on paper.

For the law firms that buy subscriptions – most of them --
Martindale
includes a description of the law firm’s practice and a mini-resumé for each lawyer in the firm.

Other volumes contain precise and detailed descriptions of the law of each listed jurisdiction – contracts, corporations, procedure, criminal law.  Compiling the outlines is a prestigious assignment for a law firm.

Volume 1 contained listings for Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas.

Kramer’s law firm kept its offices downtown at Park Plaza, a glass and concrete office tower overlooking Linn Park, Birmingham’s courthouse square.  The firm’s entry listed around fifty lawyers.  William Francis Woolf was the managing partner.

Woolf was fifty-five, a Tulane Law School graduate.  The Woolf in the firm’s name appeared to be William’s father, one of the founders of the firm, now retired or deceased.

The office building was only two blocks away.  I could walk down there tomorrow and drop in unannounced to see my client.  I knew much less at this point than he did about Kris’s disappearance, and neither of us seemed to know much about her whereabouts.  I had more documents to review.

I closed the heavy book and returned it to the John Lennon wannabe at the desk and walked out of the library and across the street to the hotel.  Back in the room I called room service and ordered a turkey sandwich and two cups of coffee.  After they arrived, I settled in to read.

At seven I took a break to turn on the room’s flat-screen TV monitor and find a cable news channel.  Kramer had told me the case had attracted media interest, and I knew that after the media frenzy surrounding the young woman from Mountain Brook who’d disappeared in Aruba in 2005, another missing young blonde woman from Birmingham would be irresistible to the piranhas of sensationalism who pass for today’s journalists.

I was not disappointed.  One network featured a wolfish graying man who called himself a psychiatrist and specialized in diagnoses of crime victims and perpetrators he’d never met and never would meet.  Another cable news platform offered a fat bleached blonde who alternated between gushing sentimentality and a practiced sneer at every comment offered by her guests, all of whom seemed to be either lawyers or psychologists.  Disgusted and a little ashamed, I hit the Power button and went back to the documents.

It was still raining when I finished the last folder a few minutes before midnight.  I closed the file, threw my zabuton on the floor, and sat for ten minutes.  Then I undressed, took a quick shower, and lay down to a sleep without dreams.

CHAPTER FOUR

Monday January 23

When I woke up at four-thirty and pulled apart the curtains at the window, I could see light rain streaking past the streetlights in front of the hotel.

By five I was in the hotel’s small exercise room.  I warmed up on a Schwinn Airdyne and then did a hundred sit-ups and three sets of reps on eight stations on the Universal machine.  By six I was showered, shaved, and dressed, and I went down to the hotel dining room and ordered two scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee.  I ate in ten minutes and went back upstairs to finish preparing for the day.

I called Kramer around seven.  He answered his cell before I heard a ringtone.  “Slate.  Come on out now.  You know where we are?”  He recited the address.  “FBI is due here any minute.  You may as well say hello to them.  I’m sure they’ll be happy to meet you.”  The sarcasm dripped from his voice.

Kramer lived in Mountain Brook, a wealthy enclave of hills and suburban forest a few minutes southeast of the city.  The exterior of the house was stucco and brick, with timbered eaves, in what might be called English Arts & Crafts in a real estate brochure. 

Across the street from the Kramer home, a CNN satellite truck and a truck from the local NBC TV station were illegally parked.  I left the rental car in the driveway behind a black Ford sedan that could have worn a vanity tag with the initials FBI.  I walked up the wet brick path and rang the front doorbell.  My arrival did not launch any investigative journalists from their dry seats in the satellite trucks.  I didn’t blame them.  I wouldn’t get out in the weather for me either.

A thin boy about fifteen with acne and black hair in bangs so long they covered his eyes answered.  I introduced myself, and he asked me to step inside the foyer.  He closed the door.

“
I’m Paul Kramer,” the boy said.  “My father told me you would be here this morning.  I’ll go and tell him you’re here.”

I waited less than a minute.  Kramer bounded through the archway leading from a hall that appeared to provide access to the other rooms of the main floor.  “Slate,” he said.  “Glad you’re here early.  FBI wants to talk to my son Paul right now, so it’s a good time to meet Susan.  Come on back.”

Kramer led me through the hall and into a large kitchen with a central island encircled by barstools.  In a nook at one end of the kitchen stood a massive leather and walnut booth worthy of a private club.

A woman with ash blonde hair, her face as smooth and unlined as a ten-year-old’s, sat on one of the barstools.  She wore a black jogging suit with some sort of gold fabric belt.  A heavy gold crucifix hung between her breasts.  Her feet were bare except for black tennis footies.  I wondered if I should have taken off my shoes before entering the house, but I noticed that Kramer was wearing his wingtips.  Lawyers’ shoes.

If Susan Kramer was her husband’s age, she had engaged the services of an excellent plastic surgeon.  Or maybe it was heredity.  Or good bones.

“
Slate,” Kramer was saying.  “This is my wife.  Susan.  Susan, meet Mr. Slate.  Mr. Slate has agreed to help us find Kris.”

“
I see,” Susan Kramer said.  She didn’t stand or offer her hand.

“
Slate is here to help us, Susan.”

“
I’m sorry.  I don’t mean to be rude.  But FBI agents are here in the house.  They have the resources of the government at their disposal.  I trust them.  I trust the police.  And I place my ultimate trust in the power of prayer and in the power of miracles and in the Blessed Virgin.  I just don’t see. . . .”

“
No.”  Kramer cut her off.  “No, you don’t see.”

“
Now who’s being rude?”

“
Folks, maybe this is a bad time.  I can come back later.”

“
No, Slate,” Kramer said.  “Susan, I’ve watched this man’s career.  He’s a smart lawyer, and now he takes on situations like ours.  I’ve seen the FBI screw up too many kidnapping cases.  The two members of my law school class who joined the FBI could not have gotten a job in the county DA’s office.  I’ve hired him, and he stays.”

Susan Kramer stood and said, “I’ll be upstairs.  Father Kelly is waiting in the salon.  We will pray together.  It was nice to meet you, Mr. Slate.”

“Whatever,” Kramer muttered to her retreating back.  “Sorry, Slate.  Susan handles stress with anger and sessions with the priest.  And I’m the one with high blood pressure.  Let’s go in the library.  Maybe the fibbies are finished interviewing Paul.”

One room on the front of Kramer’s house jutted past the remainder of the house’s facade.  Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered one wall.  An antique writing desk of dark wood with painted Oriental figures sat under the double windows facing the street.  Paul Kramer sat near the bookshelves in a wing chair covered in solid red fabric.  Facing the boy, the two FBI agents, a man and a woman, occupied the ends of a couch covered in a red fabric that appeared to be silk.

Kramer walked in and stood over the couch.  I hung back near the door. “Not finished yet?” Kramer asked the room in general.

“
Almost.”  The female FBI agent glanced up at Kramer.  “Paul was just telling us about going with his mother to pick up Kris from school.”

“
And that’s all I can remember,” the boy said.  “May I go now?”

“
Yes,” Kramer and the female agent said simultaneously.  Paul got up, and the two agents both stood and shook the boy’s hand.  He nodded to me as he walked past.

“
Agent William Alston, Agent Patricia Sanders, meet Mr. Slate.  Mr. Slate is a lawyer, and I’ve hired him to help with the effort to locate Kris.”

The two FBI agents turned toward me as I followed Kramer to the center of the room.  Both had been issued straight from the twenty-first-century federal law enforcement handbook.  The man, Alston, about six-three, 205.  Dark thinning gray-blond hair, trim, cheap suit, black cap toe shoes with thick soles.  Probably an ex-jock.  The woman, Sanders, probably five-seven, 135, wore her brown hair shoulder-length and pulled back with a shell clasp.  Dressed better than the man: dark blue suit, pink shirt, probably Brooks Brothers or Ann Taylor.  Odd eyes: one green, one brown.  Heterochromia iridium.  Anna used to tell me I read too much.

I shook their hands in turn.  “It’s just Slate.”

Agent Sanders nodded.  “Slate, then.  You were retained to advise the family on legal issues related to Kris Kramer’s disappearance?”

Before I could answer, Kramer spoke.  “The fact that Slate has been retained is not privileged.  But any question as to the nature of any legal advice he may offer falls squarely within the privilege.”

“
And the fact that you find it necessary to retain counsel when your daughter is missing raises interesting issues,” Sanders said.

“
Well, I’m sure what Agent Sanders means is that it is a little unusual for a family with a missing child to hire counsel this early when law enforcement has no reason to suspect a family member might be involved,” Alston said.  He turned to Sanders.  “I’m sure Mr. Kramer is just being thorough and careful, and after all, he is himself a well-respected attorney.  Natural for him to retain counsel during any difficulty.”

“
Does your practice include criminal law, Attorney Slate?” Sanders asked.

“
No,” I said.

“
Media law?”

“
Nope.”

“
Domestic relations?”

“
Missed again.  Sorry.  No more guesses.  Three strikes.”

“
You’re out,” Bill Alston said.

Patricia Sanders rolled her eyes.  “Why is it that the testosterone levels and the sports metaphors multiply geometrically when the number of men in a room increases arithmetically?” Sanders asked.

“That is a mathematical conundrum on par with Fermat's Last Theorem,” I said.

“
Well.  Way too much of both in here for me,” Sanders said.  “I’m going upstairs to speak with Mrs. Kramer.”

“
She’s with the priest,” Alston reminded her.

“
Good.  I’ll speak with him too.  We’ll take all the help we can get.”

Don Kramer and Agent Alston spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the avenues of investigation they were pursuing:  speaking with Kris’s friends and teachers, interviewing her family, reviewing posts on social media.  The FBI treated all such disappearances as possible kidnappings until proven wrong, but so far no communications from kidnappers had surfaced.

Agent Sanders’ footsteps on the stairs prompted Alston to check his watch and to suggest that it was time for them to head back downtown.  Sanders and Alston shook Kramer’s hand.  Alston clapped him on the shoulder.  I followed them into the hall.  Kramer opened the door for the agents; they looked back, nodded to me, and walked out into the rain.  One media cameraman in bright red rain gear hustled out of his van and filmed them getting into their government sedan and driving away.  That footage would make for scintillating television.

Kramer led me back into the library.  “I apologize for Susan earlier,” he said.  “She’ll come around.  She always does.  She just has to understand things are moving too fast for me to consult with her every thirty seconds.”

“
Not a problem,” I said.  “But I do need to speak with her about that afternoon when she picked Kris up at school.  So I hope she comes around soon.”

“
Count on it,” Kramer said.  “How’s the reading going?  Draw any conclusions?”

“
It’s clearly a good lawsuit.  But most good lawsuits don’t drive defendants to commit criminal acts before they’re filed.  What makes this one different?”

“
It’s different because one defendant, or group of defendants, is the New Orleans Mob.” Kramer nodded.  “Same bunch twenty years later.  Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.”

After the meeting with Kramer, I spoke briefly with Paul Kramer about the afternoon he’d last seen his sister.  That conversation revealed nothing useful.  Kramer gave me a little more background on the relator in the
qui tam
matter and why he’d placed the notes in a sealed envelope.  I returned to the hotel, spent the afternoon reviewing my notes and reading the file, and ate a passable dinner of broiled red snapper and steamed vegetables downstairs in the hotel restaurant.