Authors: Eileen Dreyer
This seemed to deserve a clucking sound. "Nonsense. He was hurt because there are evil men out there."
Molly took another sip of her vodka and thought about how much she'd missed that feeling of fire in her throat, the cold, sweet hit of numbness.
"Well, I'll tell you what. The evil men sure took this round."
For a minute Sam just peered at her. Then, yanking his cigarettes out of his pocket, he hauled himself to his feet and toward the kitchen. "Maybe I'll have tea after all."
Molly just nodded.
"It's this suicide business,
nu?"
he asked as he clattered around at her stove, the cigarette already lit and producing toxic clouds.
Molly went right on sipping. On the screen, Katie Couric was leaning toward some silicone-inflated blond who looked as if she'd run mouth-first into a wasp's nest. Obviously the latest in the thinking man's women.
"It's the suicides."
"And you still think they're not right?"
Molly wanted to laugh. "I think they're not right."
He appeared back in the doorway, a shriveled, squat old man who looked like a gnome intruding on the elegance of the Burke household. Molly liked the image. As if he were a household god from ancient times come to re-acquaint the present with its baser beginnings.
"Did those five people commit suicide?"
"Yes."
He carried his mug over to the chair and carefully bent to pick up her vodka bottle. For a second, Molly thought he was going to take it away. He only wanted his share, though.
"And does this thing that isn't right affect more people than just these five unfortunates?"
"Yeah, Sam. I think it does. I think it might affect a lot of people."
"Why?"
"I think there's something wrong with a drug that's being tested and the company doesn't want anybody to find out."
"Like what?"
"Well, you invest in pharmaceuticals. What do you think would happen if a company found a drug that could put them right at the top of a very big heap. They develop it, spend a fortune publicizing it as the new, revolutionary drug that would undoubtedly take over as the number one-prescribed medication in the world, bringing in revenues probably well in excess of a billion dollars a year. And all the while they realize that there's something wrong with it."
"I think that if I were the head of the company, I'd try and keep that news to myself for as long as I could."
Molly opened her eyes, surprised. What she found was the man Sam used to be sitting on her couch, the corporate chief with a razor intelligence and carnivorous ambition.
"But people would be at risk."
Sam placidly sipped at his tea. "You're talking about a worldwide company,
nu?
Big investments, big lay-outs. If they could hold on for six months with the drug doing the business they thought it would, they'd still be rich and they could still pull out."
Molly couldn't manage to close her mouth. "Six months."
"Of course. After that time, all they have to say is that the side effects didn't show up in their trials. Then they can forestall the inevitable for as long as possible by promising studies and investigations. Presto, another fortune until the drug eventually just disappears from the market."
"You're not a virgin at this, Sam."
He grinned. "Hardly. The other popular thing, of course, is a simple warning about rare side effects on the medicine bottle. Have you read one of those things lately?"
"Oh yeah, that'd work," Molly retorted. "They're marketing this stuff to general physicians. If this thing has contraindications, how soon do you think the docs are going to find out?"
Sam's hoary eyebrows raised like humored question marks. "You mean these doctors don't learn about a drug before they give it?"
Molly did laugh then. "Are you kidding? With all the new drugs out there and all the drug companies pushing them like fast-food, all most doctors get is a quick sell, a free gift, and the drug company's own write-up in the
Physician's Desk Reference
on drugs that tells them that side effects are minimal. It's an old song, but a popular verse."
Sam started clucking again, this time amused. "Such a cynic, you are."
"You're the one who can't afford your own medicine."
"I'm also the one who gets steady income from the conglomerates who make them. Could I ask, by the way, which company I maybe shouldn't be investing in?"
"Argon."
Sam seemed to have been waiting for that.
"Gevalt!"
He sighed, sucking down the rest of his tea.
Molly didn't necessarily know Yiddish, but she knew that tone of voice. "A brand name you obviously didn't want to hear."
Sam was watching Katie Couric himself now. "Did you know the stock went up four points this week?"
"I know."
Sam considered the empty condition of his mug. "I've watched that stock for a year waiting for this time. This new drug is going to help me keep Myra and myself in our nice homes."
Molly didn't have anything to say. So she picked up the vodka bottle and just poured another dose for both herself and Sam. "Well, don't worry about it yet. I seem to have been cut off at the pass, Sam."
For a second, silence, as Sam worked through the problem. "Just what seems to be wrong with this drug?"
"I don't know. Enough to send five people to their deaths in a matter of a month, though. "
The phone began to ring. Molly had no intentions of answering it. Unfortunately, it was Sam who was sitting next to it.
"You had a call out to someone at a tox lab?" he asked, handing over the receiver.
Molly stared at the phone as if it could bite. She was sure she'd wanted this news yesterday. Maybe the day before. She sure as hell didn't want it now, because now she was sure what it was going to be.
"You want me to tell her you're under the weather?" Sam asked.
"No." Molly took the phone and prepared herself for the worst.
"You win," the tech told her.
"A matter of opinion," Molly had to answer. "I was right then?"
"I got the final results just now. At least qualitatively. All five suicides were on synapsapine."
Obviously the tech was waiting for some kind of excitement. Molly just closed her eyes.
"So, what do we do now, Molly?"
Nothing. We sit here in the corner until this all passes over. Until some other schmuck finds out that synapsapine can be dangerous and takes the company to trial. After the drug's been on the market six months and Sam and Myra's future is safe and no more of Molly's acquaintances are hurt.
"I'll get back to you."
"You want me to find out more?"
"No. Keep it under your hat for now. Just send me a copy of the results, okay?"
"Okay."
For a long time Molly sat with the phone in her lap, her attention drawn from the TV to the Picasso on the far wall. All jagged edges, open mouths, and huge, naillike tears. Painted during one of his more violent divorces, all hard line and muscle and raw emotion. Bought as an investment, hidden away where the Burkes wouldn't have to see it, since none of the other Burkes had ever really made use of a family room or violent emotions.
"So?" Sam said. "What do we do?"
Molly looked over at him plumped on the edge of her couch like a lumpy cat. She thought about how the vodka she'd already had seemed to weight her to her chair. It was so seductively easy. Just sit here until everybody forgot where she was. Just keep her eyes on the television, because nothing really happened on the television anyway. She could hypnotize herself with vodka and sitcoms until she grew moss.
"I have to call Rhett," she said.
"Rhett?" Sam echoed. "That police detective who looks like Andy Hardy?"
"Yeah."
Sam nodded. He, too, looked over toward the Picasso. He seemed to study it as if it were entrails predicting the future. "I think," he said softly, "I'm going to have to sell my stock."
Molly didn't know how she'd come to her decision. She just knew that Sam was right, and she'd do anything in the world to keep from putting that old man in peril.
"I haven't really decided anything, Sam," she lied. "I'm just going to check with him."
With a harrumph and an odd sighing sound, Sam pushed himself to his feet. Before he left, though, he walked over and bent down to pick up Molly's hands. He held them in his own, patting them like a parent and smiling for her. "You've decided. Get these
chozzerim.
Just don't let them get you."
Molly couldn't move. "I'm sorry, Sam."
He just waved off her apology and headed for the back door. "Don't be silly. You think I haven't come back before? Now, you call Mr. Hardy and I'll call my broker. It's a beautiful day out,
nu?"
* * *
Molly called Rhett, but he wasn't in. She called the FBI, but they weren't interested in her anymore. Yes, they said, they knew that a friend of hers had been attacked. But the men they were following had all been under surveillance and therefore incapable of committing the crime. So, they said, take it up with the police.
Molly was getting set to call Gene when the phone rang. The raspy, smoky voice on the other end was easily recognized.
"Ms. Burke, this is Peg Ryan's secretary, Marsha Trenton."
"Yes, I remember. How are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm okay, I guess. Look, I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but Frank Patterson asked me to give you a call."
Molly didn't know whether to be interested or angry. She was doing her best to negate the effects of early morning alcohol with a couple of protein-loaded sandwiches and raw soda, and she still wasn't really sure whether she was still trying to figure out what was going on or just tying up loose ends. Even so, Molly had always been taught to be polite.
"Of course. What can I do for you?"
"Well, it's Peg's family. They called in asking about her daykeeper. The house was robbed, evidently, and all Peg's other personal items were missing. It seems this is all they have left, and they, uh, were wondering if you were finished yet."
"Oh, yes." Molly looked into the playroom where she'd left the big black leather binder on her end table. "Sure. I can..."
She'd been through it twice and found nothing more interesting than
a meeting.
Since it finally dawned her that that had meant Argon meeting, she had nothing else to go on but that damn computer disk full of case notations about defective incubators.
"I can come by and pick it up if you want," the woman said in a tone that betrayed just how anxious she was to do that.
"No, that's okay. I know where they live. Listen, Marsha, I was wondering. You were Peg's secretary. Do you know if she kept a personal journal or anything?"
"Oh, sure. She was always entering notes to herself. I imagine that's gone, now, though. We gave that stuff to her parents."
Gone. As in wiped clean. "Um, could you tell me if her computer at work suffered any... um, did you lose any of her files?"
"Funny you should say that. All her personal stuff was gone. I went to look right after she died."
Just like Peter VanAck's personal computer at home where he kept his personal notes. So she'd been right. It hadn't been just a terrible coincidence after all. Molly wondered how many of the victims had lost their files or had their computers accessed and wiped clean. She wondered what kind of organization was that big, that powerful, and that paranoid that they would consider going to those kind of lengths.
Peg had kept a diary. And then it had been stolen.
"That's too bad," Molly admitted. "Do you know what it looked like?"
"What?"
"Her diary."
"It didn't look like anything. She kept it on disk."
"Then it's gone for sure. I didn't see anything like it in her things that first day I was there."
"Oh, it isn't labeled 'my diary' or anything. She had it mislabeled so nobody'd peek into her stuff."
"Mislabeled?"
"Yep. I saw her do it myself. Put 'Veldux Notes' on the front because she said it was so boring nobody'd think to look at it."
Her personal notes. Something that might track her psychological decline. Something that might identify where she got the Transcend, why she took it, what it had done to her.
Under the label "Veldux Notes."
"Hold on a second."
Molly dropped the phone and ran for that black binder. She almost hoped she'd find it empty, just like she'd found Peter VanAck's computer. It would have been easier. It would have been safer.
It was there, tucked into the back leather cover, just as it had always been. The ticking bomb somebody had been trying to pull out before it was found.
Molly returned to the phone. "Marsha, if you talk to Peg's family before I get there, tell them I'll be by as soon as I can, okay?"
"Yeah, sure."
Molly forgot the protein. She slammed down some antacid instead and headed upstairs to change for work.