Fatal Reaction (30 page)

“When will they be done?” I asked.

“What?”

“When will they be finished?”

“They said they’d be here all day.”

I looked at my watch and decided to just get it over with. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Before I left I wrapped my sandwich in a napkin so that I could eat it in the car, but it had started snowing so badly that I didn’t want to take my eyes off the road. I switched on the radio to see if I could catch the weather and was dismayed to learn another six inches were predicted.

“Please God,” I prayed, “just as long as they don’t close the airport.”

When I arrived at Danny’s apartment, Elliott met me at the door. It seemed as though the biohazard crew had taken over the entire floor. Elliott reported that between the noise and the scary biohazard apparatus the neighbors had for the most part cleared out.

Inside the apartment the bloodstained furniture had been wrapped in heavy black plastic and was being carried out one piece at a time. The carpet was being ripped out in sections and put into an enormous orange dumpster with a large biohazard warning symbol on all four sides. Warnings in Spanish and English declared the contents to be extremely hazardous. No wonder the neighbors had fled. Other workers were busy scrubbing the walls with some kind of high-pressure solvent. They were dressed in bulky biohazard suits like astronauts.

Elliott and I, in search of a quiet place to talk, found a seat on the deep sill of the window at the far end of the corridor adjacent to the elevators.

“So what did you find out about Childress?” I asked. “Very interesting man, our friend Dr. Childress.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde.”

“Meaning?”

“While his professional life is stellar, his personal life is a mess.”

“What kind of a mess?”

“Well, for one thing, he has a criminal record.”

“You’re kidding! Dr. Michael Childress?”

“The very one. We did some checking and he has a sheet in Boston.”

“That’s where he lived while he worked for Baxter. What did he get busted for?”

“Two counts of assault and battery, both of which looked like they were a result of bar fights. One DWI and, get this, an arrest for having sex with a minor. Charges for that last one were later dropped.”

“Why?”

“Hard to tell. Lots of times those cases are. The kid gets cold feet about testifying in court, some kind of out-of-court settlement is reached, the D.A. decides he doesn’t have enough evidence to make a case. Lots of reasons. Unfortunately there’s no way to find out because when a case involves a minor the court records are sealed.”

“Was it a boy or a girl?” I asked, in a flash of inspired thinking.

“The arrest docket doesn’t say. But take a look at his mug shots.” Elliott handed me copies of Childress’s arrest record. Clipped to the first page were several photographs, all mug shots. In the pictures he looked younger—and drunk—but there was no denying it was Childress. In one of the pictures he had a black eye and a split lip. I flipped to the next one.

“What’s he wearing in this?” I demanded.

“I was sort of wondering about that myself,” replied Elliott. “It looks like it could be the top of a dress, doesn’t it?”

I stared at it for a few minutes. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “This copy is kind of dark, so it’s hard to say. It could just be a T-shirt that somehow got ripped in the scuffle. Do you think he could be some kind of cross-dresser?”

“We haven’t turned up anything like that yet, but believe me we’re still digging.”

“Does he know you’re checking him out?”

“No. I’ve got one operative working in the guise of a freelance journalist preparing a story on him. He actually had lunch with her Thursday and he gave her an interview.”

“What did she say he was like?”

“The word she used most often was
asshole.”

“I’m not surprised. You hear that said a lot about Childress.”

“As far as the former colleagues she’s talked to, it’s pretty clear he was not what you’d call well-liked.”

“Why?” I asked, wondering whether their reasons might differ from the ones currently in vogue at Azor.

“Well, it seems like he’s a pretty hateful guy,” replied Elliott, consulting what looked like a typed report. “The consensus seems to be that he likes to take credit for the work of others. There’s been a lot of bitterness about that almost everywhere he’s been since graduate school. He’s also got a reputation for being a busybody—you know, always complaining about his coworkers’ conduct. I guess when he left Baxter for Azor there were a lot of people who were happy to say good riddance.”

“Can anybody link him with Danny outside of the office?”

“Not so far, but like I said, we’re still checking. But while we’re on the subject, I remember you mentioning before that Childress used to work for Baxter. Do they do AIDS research there?”

“I don’t know, but Baxter is an enormous pharmaceutical house, and not only that, but Childress is well connected, if not well liked, throughout the scientific community. If he came to Danny and said he could get his hands on a new AIDS drug, then it’s more than likely that Danny would believe him.”

“Interesting.”

“Have you compared the fingerprints from his rap sheet against the ones that were found on the glass in the apartment?” I asked.

“I woke up the guy from the forensics lab this morning and made him come in to run the comparison.”

“And?”

“They don’t match.”

“You’re kidding,” I said, disappointed.

“Don’t take it too hard, Kate,” said Elliott, putting his arm around me and giving me a friendly squeeze. “After all, it was only a hunch.”

“I know,” I replied in my best spoiled-little-rich-girl voice. “But it was my hunch and I liked it.”

The next morning Stephen and I arrived at O’Hare almost an hour early. Stephen had woken in a nearly manic state, panicked that the roads would be bad and terrified of being late. Fortunately, the snowplows had been out all night and the roads were clear and nearly deserted because it was Sunday. With time to kill before the JAL flight came in, Stephen paced up and down the curb in front of the international arrivals terminal, frantic that the limo drivers wouldn’t show up.

After my years with Guttman I recognized these symptoms of type A overload. I left him to make a spectacle of himself in front of the skycaps and went into the terminal in search of a cup of coffee. By the time I located the closest Starbucks and came back outside, the cars had arrived, and Stephen, in his relief, was shaking hands with all the drivers, assuring them how much he appreciated their efforts. We left them shaking their heads behind his back and headed for international arrivals.

The JAL flight landed precisely on time, which struck me as incredible considering the distance it had flown. While we waited for the passengers to clear customs Stephen arranged for four porters with their big carts to help with the luggage. Most of the other people who were meeting the flight were Asian, no doubt waiting for relatives or friends. Standing among them Stephen looked like a big, nervous giant. I found myself wishing I had one of those tranquilizer guns they use on large animals.

After all the frenzied preparations I must confess the actual arrival of the Takisawa delegation was something of an anticlimax—seventeen tired Japanese businessmen in identical black suits that looked like they’d been slept in. They all came up to right around Stephen’s waist. Old man Takisawa was the last one past the barrier. He was older than I expected—stooped, graying, and almost frail after the long flight.

After an orgy of bowing we got their luggage loaded into the cars with a minimum of fuss. Stephen rode with the chairman in the first car. I went in the second limo and sat up front with the driver. Traffic was picking up, but it was still not bad. The snow was over, and the sun had come out. When we got close enough to catch our first glimpse of the downtown skyline, I turned around to tell the Japanese and found them already leaning out the windows taking snapshots of the view.

When we arrived at the Nikko, the general manager of the hotel, three of his assistants, and the entire bell staff were lined up outside the front door awaiting our arrival. Old man Takisawa seemed pleased by his reception. Stephen and I stayed long enough to make sure everyone was comfortably settled into their rooms and that there were no complaints.

As we walked back out through the lobby I had to concede that, so far, Mother had done quite a job.

My parents’ house is one of the most beautiful on the North Shore. A gem of Georgian architecture designed by Louis B. Sullivan, it sits, surrounded by majestic elms, on a deep lawn of verdant green atop a dramatic bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. I had spent the afternoon at my mother’s hairdresser’s, albeit against my will, and arrived at my childhood home as coiffed and manicured as I had been on my wedding day.

I got there early not only because I knew that Mother expected it, but in order to be able to enjoy the grand spectacle of her inevitable preparty hysteria. In certain circles Mother was as famous for her temper as for her sense of style, and it was the rare person who got a chance to see her lose it more than once.

By the time I crossed the threshold I knew she had already cranked it up to high gear. Not only could I hear her in the kitchen chewing out one of the caterers for some imagined oversight, but the door to my father’s study was firmly shut. Father, of course, never actually studied anything in his life, but this was the one room in the house where he was permitted to smoke cigars and watch what he wanted on TV. From beyond the closed door of this sanctuary I could hear that he had already turned the volume up to drown out the shouting.

By the time Stephen arrived all was serene. The house was filled with the eloquent calm that is so famous for always following the storm. One of the maids had tearfully given notice, and the catering manager, mistaking me for one of the staff, had confided that the way you could tell God had a sense of humor was by whom he had given money to. As usual my mother was completely unrepentant. In her mind, her outbursts were not just par for the course, but the price you had to pay to make a party perfect.

While she would never admit to it, Mother loves to show off her house. It is, after all, a tribute to her taste, not to mention my father’s pocketbook. The rooms are grand but beautifully proportioned. Precious objects draw the eye. Some of the antiques have been passed down through generations of Prescotts and Millhollands, while others were specially chosen for a particular spot on shopping trips to France and England. There were just enough China trade heirlooms, masses of blue-and-white porcelain, and old paintings of sailing ships to demonstrate our Yankee lineage. The fresh flowers had been flown in the day before from Hawaii and sumptuously arranged.

Stephen arrived looking like the god of Armani, perfect from the bottom of his hand-sewn Italian shoes to the top of his freshly barbered head. Mother beamed at him as she offered her cheek to be kissed. It struck me, watching from the top of the stairs, that the two of them looked like they belonged together. I, on the other hand, looked like a refugee from a fire sale at Chanel. My mother, who invariably had her dressmaker remove the trademark buttons from her Chanel jackets because she thought them tacky (and besides, anybody who mattered would recognize the designer without having to resort to anything so crass as checking the buttons....), had insisted that I be outfitted in head-to-toe Chanel, buttons and all, in order to impress the Japanese. For herself, she had chosen an elegant Issey Miyake dress in deference to our foreign visitors.

Needless to say, our Azor guests were as oblivious to all of this as I was to particle physics. They started trickling in, in dribs and drabs, unfashionably early and in obvious awe at where they found themselves. In addition to the ZK-501 scientists, Stephen had invited the members of Azor’s scientific advisory board. The SAB scientists advised the company in their area of expertise, but more important lent the weight of their credentials to the upstart company. It was interesting to watch my mother size them up, dismissing with a brief lowering of her lids a Nobel prizewinner because he was wearing polyester pants.

The five limousines bearing our Japanese guests pulled into the circular drive at the stroke of seven. Mother, who had entertained three presidents and several foreign heads of state under her roof, afforded them the same treatment. Cocktails were served in the northeast parlor, a heartbreakingly pretty room with enormous mullioned windows that looked out over the lake. In the distance, the lights of the city seemed to glimmer expressly for our pleasure.

This was really my first chance to observe Chairman Takisawa, and I confess my eyes followed him with the concentration of an assassin. If the negotiation with Takisawa could be likened to a high-stakes game of chess, then old man Takisawa was my opponent and whatever impressions I could glean from him before the games began had the potential for being enormously valuable.

That he would prove a daunting adversary I had no doubt. That afternoon I’d finally had a chance to read through the sheaf of articles Cheryl had dug up about him. More than one alluded to the fact that as a young man he’d spent much of World War II interrogating American prisoners of war. Several authors in the business press also pointed out that while Takisawa was fluent in English, he often feigned ignorance of the language in order to maneuver for advantage.

Like most of his countrymen he was diminutive in stature, yet there was definitely nothing small about him. A tough nut was my first impression—a very tough nut. The level of deference he commanded from his subordinates was remarkable, even for a Japanese. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to me as if his subordinates almost feared him. When he left the room to accompany my mother on a tour of the house, the rest of the Takisawa group relaxed palpably.

Mother and the chairman returned from their tour almost forty-five minutes later. I don’t know what went on, but they were both beaming. She introduced Takisawa to Herbert Magnuson, the former Japanese ambassador, and his wife, who were happy for a chance to practice their Japanese. Hiroshi, who had arrived that afternoon from New York sans secretary, chatted amiably with Stephen in front of the fire.