The Pelican Brieg

The Pelican Brief, an irresistible story that begins with the simultaneous assassinations of two Supreme Court Judges.

One October night one of the liberal Judges, A. Rosenberg, is shot in the head while sleeping in his Georgetown home. Two hours later G. Jensen, the Court's youngest and most conservative judge, is strangled, possibly by the same assassin. America is in shock, the F.B.I. has no clues.

Darby Shaw is a brilliant law student at Tulane University in New Orleans when she heard about the two murders. One of the victims, Rosenberg, is the most admired and often quoted law scholar by Thomas Callahan, her constitutional law professor and also her lover. The speculation is that conservatives will be appointed to replace the two Judges.

Darby secluded herself for four days in a law library, digging through briefs, dissents, books, newspapers, essays, and law opinions, trying to discover what the two murdered Judges had in common. By accident, she stumbles upon a topic that the two assassinated Judges had in common: the environment. She has a theory about who's responsible for the killings so she develops what is later called "The Pelican Brief." She gave the brief to her law professor who shared the suppositions with a lawyer friend from his law school days, Gavin Verheek, who now works for the F.B.I. The head of the F.B.I. discovered the suspect had donated money to the President's last re-election campaign, all of which was deemed legal. The accusations against the suspect were dismissed as more speculation by the White House.

Darby's suspect has powerful friends. One evening, outside a New Orleans restaurant, she narrowly escapes an assassin's car bomb. Someone has read her brief. Someone who wants her dead. Alone and frightened, Darby disappears.

After reading an alarming story about the assassinations, including Thomas's, in the Washington Post, she contacts investigative reporter Gray Grantham and convinces him that the F.B.I., the President, and the whole country try to cope with the deaths of two powerful men.

One day Grantham receives a call from a guy nicknamed Garcia who has heard apparently something important about the Judges murders. Grantham didn't put a lot of attention in the calls because this guy didn't say anything relevant. So with no much information that Garcia give him, Grantham met with a security guard that works in the White House, this guard named Sarge gave to Grantham a copy of a document that has information of Khamel an assassin that has to many faces, names, costumes and it was one of the most important targets from the F.B.I.

When she was a little bit calm down, she contacted Verheek and told him about the car bomb, Thomas, the brief and she couldn't hide her fear so Verheek went to New Orleans to rescue her, but Darby was scare and she continue hiding in different hotels. She finally was going to meet Verheek in a very concurrent place, the assassin of the Judges killed him in his hotel and he took the place of Verheek. Darby arrives early to the meeting and Khamel (the assassin) arrives looking like Gavin; they had a walk and suddenly Khamel fell down, somebody killed Khamel but Darby didn't know that Khamel was taking the place of Verheek so she thought that the person was Gavin so she was practically hysteric.

Grantham and Darby were going to start a new investigation by themselves but before that they chatted for a while about what he brief said. She told her about Victor Mattiece, a very rich owner of and oilfield; he wanted the area of the Mississippi River because in 1930 it was discovered oil there; but since the discovery of oil, tens of thousand of acres of Louisiana marshland has gone. He knew that others would buy the surrounding land if they heard there was a major oilfield there, so he pretended that nothing had happened. He created new companies, lot of them; so that no one would know that he was the buyer. At last he was ready to begin drilling.

Then a small environmental group called Green Rescue made a legal request to the courts to stop drilling. The request was unexpected, because for so long Louisiana had profited from the oil companies.

Mattiece knew that this could take years. People were sympathetic to Green Rescue's case. A lot of wildlife was at risk. The marshland where Mattiece wanted to drill was home to a great many rare and beautiful sea birds including brown pelicans. There were very few of these pelicans left. Al last the case came to trial. Green Rescue lost, and that was not surprising: Mattiece had spent millions of dollars and had the best lawyers in the country but the pelican was a protected bird under Louisiana law, and Green Rescue weren't finished yet: they would take the case all the way to the Supreme Court. The trial would take to reach the Supreme Court between 3 and 5 years, by then Rosenberg would be dead anyway, but it might be a Democratic President who was choosing the judge to take his place; Mattiece couldn't take