Chapter 4 - The Legal Wolves Arrive
Mara felt the air leave her lungs. She gripped the back of an old wooden stool to steady herself. ""You cast it?""
""I did,"" Koenig said, his voice dropping into a raspy, gravelly cadence. ""Three years ago, around late September. Richard Baines came down here himself. That was unusual. Usually, Baines sends an intern or an apprentice down to 47th Street to pick up rough castings. But that morning, he walked down these stairs alone, wearing a camel-hair coat that cost more than my annual rent on this shop.""
Koenig set the brass mold down on an asbestos soldering pad. He pushed his optivisor up onto his bald head and rubbed his watering eyes with the back of his thumb.
""He had a green jeweler's carving wax wrapped in tissue paper,"" Koenig continued. ""It was the most intricate asymmetrical halo I’d seen in twenty years. The prongs were carved directly out of the wax block, tapered like needles. I looked at it under the scope and I told him, 'Richard, you didn't carve this. Your hands shake too much, and your design team hasn't had an original thought since 1994.' He laughed, threw two hundred-dollar bills on my bench, and told me to cast it in eighteen-karat white gold, quench it in water, and not ask stupid questions.""
""Did you see the engraving?"" Mara asked, her heart hammering against her ribs.
""Not then,"" Koenig replied, shaking his head. ""When you carve wax, you carve the letters into the inner band with a microscopic graver. When the hot gold hits the plaster mold, the metal takes the shape of the negative space. The letters were there, but until you clean the oxidation off the raw casting, you can barely read them. I handed him the raw gold casting three hours later. He took it to his private bench in Midtown to do the final polish and set the stones himself. He must have missed the engraving until he had already set the center diamond. And once you set an antique diamond into an asymmetrical bezel, you can't grind down the inner band without risking the prongs warping.""
""He knew,"" Mara whispered. ""He knew it was mine from the very beginning.""
""Of course he knew,"" Koenig grunted. ""Where did he get your wax carving, Mara?""
Mara closed her eyes as the memory surfaced like a lead weight. ""Three years ago, Baines & Co. ran a national talent search. 'The New American Artisan Competition.' They advertised in every design trade school from Providence to Savannah. First prize was twenty-five thousand dollars and a six-month apprenticeship in their master workshop. You had to submit an original, finished carving in wax along with technical schematics.""
""And you entered.""
""Grace helped me pack the box,"" Mara said, her voice catching for the first time that night. ""We spent three weeks carving that green wax ring under a ten-power lamp. Grace had arthritis so bad she couldn't hold the knife for more than ten minutes at a time, but she checked every single prong seat with her loupe. We mailed it registered delivery to Richard Baines personally, just like the contest instructions said. Four months later, I received a form letter signed by a secretary saying the competition had been suspended due to administrative restructuring. They never returned the wax. I wrote four letters asking for my submission back. They ignored every single one.""
""They didn't ignore them,"" a new voice spoke from the doorway behind them.
Mara and Koenig turned simultaneously.
Standing in the basement doorway was a tall woman in her late forties, wearing an impeccably tailored charcoal-gray wool coat over a crisp white shirt. Her dark hair was cut into a sharp, architectural bob, and she carried a slim black leather briefcase. Her eyes were sharp, analytical, and entirely focused on Mara’s portfolio.
""Who are you?"" Koenig barked, reaching instinctively for a heavy brass hammer on his bench. ""The building doors are locked.""
""The night superintendent let me down,"" the woman said calmly, taking out a plain white business card and setting it on the edge of the tool rack. ""My name is Claire Vance. Senior partner at Vance, Sterling & Croft.""
Mara looked at the card. Even with her sixteen-dollar bank balance, she recognized the firm name. They were one of the most formidable intellectual property litigation practices in New York, known for representing independent inventors and creators against massive multinational corporations.
""I can't afford you, Ms. Vance,"" Mara said flatly. ""I can't even afford the cab ride down here.""
""I didn't come here to bill you by the hour, Ms. Brooks,"" Claire Vance said, stepping into the room and closing the steel door behind her. ""I came here because Richard Baines’s chief corporate counsel called my office ninety minutes ago, offering our firm a fifty-thousand-dollar monthly retainer to represent Baines & Co. in an upcoming intellectual property dispute.""
Mara’s stomach dropped. ""So you work for him.""
""No,"" Vance said, a cool, razor-sharp smile touching the corners of her mouth. ""I turned him down. And then I took an Uber down to 47th Street to find you.""
Vance set her briefcase on an empty metal stool, popped the chrome latches, and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
""Richard Baines didn't just steal your ring, Ms. Brooks,"" Vance said. ""His company went public on the junior exchange eighteen months ago based almost entirely on the projected revenue valuations of the Halo Collection. Over forty million dollars in retail and licensing contracts depend on the validity of his design patent. If you prove that patent was acquired through fraudulent submission materials, Baines & Co. isn't just facing a civil copyright judgment. They are facing corporate dissolution, patent invalidation, and federal wire fraud charges.""
Vance pulled an expensive fountain pen from her coat pocket and laid it beside the legal pad.
""I will represent you on complete contingency,"" Vance said. ""Not a dime out of your pocket. We sue for full design restitution, retroactive royalties, punitive damages for false arrest, and the complete revocation of their commercial patent. But before I file the complaint in Federal District Court tomorrow morning, I need one thing.""
Mara looked at her. ""What?""
""I need the physical master mold,"" Vance said. ""The original vulcanized rubber mold you used to create that wax carving. In design disputes, sketches are evidence, but the rubber mother-mold is an absolute death sentence in front of a federal judge. Do you have it?""
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Mara let out a slow, trembling breath.
""My grandmother didn't trust paper,"" Mara said. ""The rubber mold isn't in Sunnyside. It’s in the vault at the Queens County Trust on 82nd Street. And nobody has opened that safety deposit box since the week she died.""
