She clicked the next patent, also issued to Giovanni Saracone, the year before. It was a patent for the same hatch, now issued to keep light out of certain industrial applications, such as commercial darkrooms. She read on, clicking each one, and in time discovered the myriad applications of the original patent: pressure relief hatches, vehicle sunroofs, telescopic winch drives, whatever that was, and underground shelters. She thought a minute. Saracone didn’t manufacture any of these things – or indeed anything at all – which meant that he had to have sold licenses for all of these doohickeys to others to manufacture.
Mary could barely wrap her mind around it. There had to be hundreds of licenses, each requiring the license holder to pay money to the Saracones for the use of the invention. It was the key she had been looking for. No wonder they were rich as sin. Licenses for these applications – in addition to the marine applications from the earlier patent – would bring in millions and millions of dollars. First to Giovanni Saracone, then to Justin.
For doing absolutely nothing.
Then she made another connection. Saracone hadn’t filed the original patent application on his own; he couldn’t have. Mary was willing to bet that it had been prepared and filed by Joe Giorno. They had been in it together, from the beginning. That was why Giorno made Amadeo the gift of the house on Nutt Street and later went to Missoula to tell him about his wife’s death. Giorno and Saracone were pretending to be his friends, cultivating him for the invention. They were smiling, all the while they buried a knife in his back. Then Amadeo’s son Tony had died, both ordering and funding the lawsuit by his will. Frank Cavuto must have taken over for Giorno, and when Mary started to expand her investigation into Amadeo’s death and close in on the truth, Frank must have panicked, and they’d killed him.
The scope of the scheme took Mary’s breath away. No wonder that Giovanni, stricken with guilt, had sat up on his very deathbed at seeing her, an avenging angel. He had carried that terrible secret his whole life – murdered his friend for his inventiveness, for his creativity, and stolen it to further his own ends. And Justin had to know that his father hadn’t invented a deck hatch, or anything else over the years. What had Justin said, before he hit her?
Mind your own business.
Mary clicked to the oldest patent on the screen, in 1976. At the end, it contained a reference to the original patent and its patent number. She clicked the blue link and held her breath. A patent, with a series number in the two millions, appeared on the screen:
UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE, it read in the center, and underneath, the title of the patent was Hatch Frame and Hatch Cover, next to the name of the inventor: Giovanni Saracone.
Mary felt her breath catch. She had been right. Saracone had killed Amadeo for his invention, then patented it. She had it in front of her and she still couldn’t believe it. She felt tears come, with anger and with relief. She had been right, which was amazing, because she was never right about anything.
Her gaze fell on the first line under the title:
Application: July27,1942.
Mary blinked. Why did that sound familiar? Then she knew. She searched through the file on the conference table and found the accordion of the documents and notes she’d brought from Missoula. She pulled out the death certificate and double-checked the line:
Date of Death: July 17, 1942.
My God. Saracone had killed Amadeo and only ten days later had told Giorno to file the application for the patent in his name. A patent application was so technical, it would take months to draft, and they probably had to engage a patent lawyer, at least as a consultant. Saracone and Giorno had to have been planning this for a long time, maybe years. Then World War II and the internment intervened, which Saracone exploited to his advantage. He used the camp as the perfect opportunity to get away with murder.
Mary’s eyes blurred with bitterness, then she refocused on the first lines of the patent description: “My invention, which in general, relates to the closures has been devised as a deck hatch…”
His invention? She read the rest with a growing fury. Saracone had stolen the invention, every word, and claimed it for himself. She read to the end and clicked onto the exhibits, which were two technical drawings. They were Amadeo’s circles, with the funny closing on the side. Now she knew it was a special type of closing, so original and practical that it was patentable. And Saracone had exploited the patent and its many applications, from shelters to telescopes. It was ingenious, and evil. And at the bottom right of the second page of the drawings, Mary’s supposition about the lawyering was confirmed by the signature:
Inventor, Giovanni Saracone. By Joseph Giorno, Attorney.
She leaned forward, clicked back to home, and searched under Patent. In a few clicks, the words of the patent statute came onto the screen:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor…
Mary read it again and again, inspired. The law had a force of its own, even a beauty. Its letter was clear, as was its intent. She was finally glad she had become a lawyer, because she knew just what to do next.
Less than an hour later, she was writing like a girl in a fever, surrounded by open law books, photocopied cases, and a stack of tentative exhibits. She had written two pages and only had fifty-six more to go. It would take all night, but she would get it done. Most lawyers would have balked at the task, but not Mary.
“You need a break, Mare,” said a cheery voice from the threshold. It was Judy, grinning in her hot pink sweatshirt, clashing cobalt sweatpants, and red clogs with black fake-ostrich dots, all topped by a Stanford backward-baseball cap. Her ensemble was Cirque du Soleil meets Best-Friend-Forever, and Mary didn’t say a thing, because Judy had dropped everything to come and help her. Also she was carrying a brown bag that smelled like take-out lo mein, chicken curry, cold sesame noodles, and spring rolls.
Mary smiled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. “I love you, you know that?”
“About time you realized it, girl,” Judy said, with a crooked grin, and set the bag on the table. “Let’s eat.”
In time, Mary filled Judy in on all the details of her plan, the lawyers got down to work, and the night sky outside the conference room window lightened to streaky gray. The take-out containers littering the table were joined by Styrofoam coffee cups, empty Diet Coke cans, discarded cellophane from two packs of chocolate Tastykakes, a tiny plastic tub of Light ’n Fit strawberry yogurt, and an organic apple, which came pre-bruised, so Mary refused to eat it. By dawn, Judy was getting tired and looked up, red-eyed from the law books.
“You know what we need, Mare?” she asked.
“Fruit with pesticides.”
“No.”
Mary thought of the case. “A miracle?”
“No. Tunes! We need TUUUUUUNES!” Judy yelled, throwing up her arms, because she was beyond punchy. She leapt out of her swivel chair, leaving it spinning, flew out of the conference room, and before Mary could protest, returned with a white Bose CD player from her office and a stack of slippery CDs, which she set on the credenza. “Tunes have arrived!”
Mary peered over her laptop with suspicion. “Got any Sinatra?”
“No way. I have Steven Tyler and Aerosmith! Yeeeesss!” Judy giggled, slipping a black CD into the tray, hitting some buttons, and cranking up the volume. An earsplitting guitar riff blasted the conference room, ten thousand drums thundered, and Judy started dancing around, shaking her tight butt in her loose sweatpants, and clicking off her clogs so she could jump around better. Aerosmith started singing at full volume.