Coldwater Revenge

by James A Ross

  “What do you know about children?”

  “I was one.”

  Joe glared at the windshield. The patrol car gradually decelerated.

  “Sometimes you’re too fucking smart for your own good, Tommy.” Joe bit his lip and glanced sideways. “So how do you speak this Pig Latin gibberish? I forget.”

  Tom put Joe through his remedial language paces until he could carry on a simple conversation without misplacing half the nonsense syllables. Then he dozed the rest of the way down the Northway and Thruway until they reached Manhattan.

  “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.” Joe slowed the car for the ‘Cash Only’ toll both on the George Washington bridge. “I ran into Susan Pearce a few months ago out on Watermelon Hill, near one of Cashins’ dope patches.” Tom sat up and rubbed his eyes. “She was sitting on a picnic blanket. With her shirt off.”

  Tom groaned. “I’m not sure I want to hear this.”

  Joe kept his eye on traffic. “I go up the Hill every spring just to see where the new dope patches are. But I leave the plants alone until just before harvest. That keeps the Cashins busy and out of trouble weeding and guarding their turf all summer. Then I go back a few weeks before the plants are ready and I pull most of them up.”

  “No booby traps?”

  “Simple stuff. I think they all read the same Mother Jones handbook. Besides, I don’t even think they know it’s me. They probably suspect the competition.”

  The cash lane line was a hundred cars deep. Couldn’t the town spring for an EZ Pass?

  “So there she is, lying half-naked in all that greenery, little khaki shorts, blond ponytail, hiking boots and a smile. Reminded me of Jane Goodall in one of those old National Geographic magazines. Only topless.” Joe grinned. “I know she heard me coming. She must have seen me too. But she didn’t even look up. Cool as a cucumber.”

  “I definitely don’t want to hear this.”

  “How do you know what it’s about?”

  “Non-overlapping immune system markers.”

  “What?”

  “Opposites attract.”

  Joe lifted a hand from the wheel. “No. Listen. Your ex is up there planting something. I’m certain she took her shirt off just to distract me. Quick thinking, too. It nearly worked.”

  Joe had Tom’s attention now.

  “But it was still early enough for the grass to be wet, and I could see tracks that led from the blanket to a couple of spots across the clearing. So being a good little ‘do be,’ instead of going first to where she was all sprawled out on that blanket grinning at me, I started over to where the tracks came from. And as soon as I did, she sat up. ‘Hello, Sheriff,’ she says to me. ‘Come over here and sit.’”

  Tom felt his stomach clench.

  “I waved. But kept following the tracks in the wet grass. So then she stood up. God, what a body! Forget what I said about Jane Goodall.” Joe grinned. “Anyway, what do you think I found there?”

  “A personal dope patch. So what?”

  “That’s what I expected. But no. There’s a bunch of rocks scattered around there. And the clearing sort of slopes south a bit. So it’s an okay spot for growing something. But not great, unless you’re trying to hide it too. The rocks make good cover, and you’d have to look hard to see the one or two seedlings she put in front of them and behind some sort of little shrub she put in, too.”

  “Not dope?”

  “Not dope.”

  Tom’s curiosity began to replace the initial urge to turn on the radio and find some loud music.

  “So after I checked out the plants, I go over to where she’s sitting. Only now she’s got her shirt back on.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I did ask her if we could start over again. This time I’d stop at her blanket first. ‘You made your choice, Sheriff,’ she says.” Joe laughed and shook his head. “That’s some woman you let get away, brother.”

  Tom could feel his patience waning. “All right. Now that she’s got her clothes back on, what happened next?”

  “Naturally I asked her what she’s doing. And does she know that she’s just a hundred yards downhill from a couple of semi-commercial dope patches? She’s got this sketch book out and she’s making penciled drawings of her plants and not even looking at me. ‘Yes,’ she says. She’d noticed them. But her plants would be ready at different times from the cannabis sativa, so she doesn’t think she’ll run into any trouble. Cool as you please.”

  “Did you offer to help her harvest, just in case?”

  “I did. But she said, ‘No thank you, officer. There are just a few of them and they’re very delicate.’”

  “What did she say they were?”

  “Brain food, I think. Now that we’ve talked to that guy from NeuroGene, I understand what she said better than I did then. She went on and on about brain chemicals, keys and locks and stuff. It sounded a lot like what Willow was talking about. But since it was coming from someone who’d just ripped off her shirt to keep me from noticing her stash, I had a hard time concentrating.”

  Tom tried to drag the narrative to higher ground. “So what kind of plants were they?”

  “She told me some names, but I wasn’t really listening. I figured I’d just pull a few of them up when I came back to rip out Cashin’s stuff, and then send them to the lab for identification.”

  Tom gestured at the fresh gouges on his brother’s arms. “And you did that just a few days ago?”

  It was a simple question. But instead of answering it, Joe pulled a sheet of paper from the glove compartment and handed it over. Tom read the note clipped to the front:

  ‘You’re losing it, Sheriff. Looks like you’ve staked-out an amateur herbalist. Attached is a full report. But the bottom line is you can get this stuff, or its active ingredients, in any health food store. Actually, you could get better and cheaper there. The only thing you can’t is the rosary pea. It’s an ornamental, but it grows wild all over Florida. It’s also a poison. Your gardener probably added it to the mix to keep animals away. Is she pretty?

  Max’

  Tom skimmed the report:

  Plant Common name

  Scutellaria lateriflora - Quaker bonnet

  Valerian Officinalis - Valerian

  Tabernanthe iboga - Iboanine

  Abrus precatorius - Rosary pea

  Tom read the list twice, but could see no connection between the innocuous herb garden it described and his former girlfriend’s sudden impulse to disrobe for his younger brother. “Did she explain why she was going to all the trouble planting her garden way out in the boonies?”

  Joe shrugged. “Sort of. She said that everybody in research tries to keep what they’re working on secret until they publish. Otherwise other people glom onto it. She said something about there being four different brain chemicals that influence behavior, and that each of the plants had a different ‘uptake inhibitor’.” He laughed. “I remember that phrase ‘uptake inhibitor.’ I asked her if she was working on some sort of anti-date-rape drug.”

  Tom groaned.

  “Yeah. You laugh, smart guy. But do you want to know what she did then?”

  “No.”

  “She just about took all her clothes off again. Gave me a big, wet kiss and started blabbering about Newton and his apple and about great discoveries usually being some sort of accident.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Take her clothes off again?”

  “You figure out what I’m missing in that report and I’ll let you know.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Joe found a garage in mid-town where it cost more to park for three hours than it did to rent a car in Coldwater for a month. His meeting with Sharp was at two o’clock. Tom’s was across town at four, and he agreed to sit in on Joe’s and keep his mouth shut.

  The bronze elevator doors opened as smooth as a mother’s hand on a baby’s butt. A 30-something receptionist in a
smoke gray skirt and white silk blouse open to the sternum led them down a hallway lined with worker bee offices to a conference room the size of a small house. A few million dollars of exotic hardwoods and 19th century oil paintings covered three of its walls. The fourth was floor to ceiling glass with a panoramic view of lower Manhattan, New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. It was all designed to impress and intimidate. It cost bucks to step in here, it said, and sometimes more to get out.

  Joe ran a hand over the intricate inlay of the maple and anegre conference table and fiddled with the seat height adjustment on his leather chair, practicing his hick cop act. Tom didn’t doubt his brother’s abilities, but he hoped Joe understood that this was no place to get cute.

  A young man arrived pushing a cart of soft drinks and water, followed by the former NeuroGene partner, and his lawyer. Michael Sharp stood about five foot seven and carried close to three hundred pounds. His lawyer was a head of thick silver hair taller and country club lean. His perfunctory introduction segued into a twenty-minute ramble about his own advisory role, his client’s rights and the limited purpose and scope of the meeting. To Tom it was the familiar drone of an airline attendant’s canned speech about keeping your seat belt buckled and noting the nearest emergency exit – impossible to listen to after you’ve heard it a million times.

  Joe caught his eye, his expression openly contemptuous. This is as phony as it gets, brother. How can you stand it? When the lawyer finally finished, Joe announced that Tom was there to help with some questions on the corporate structure of NeuroGene and that otherwise he would be keeping his mouth shut. Then he spoke directly to Sharp.

  “I’m not sure I understand all that mumbo jumbo about limited scope and so forth. I came here as a courtesy so that you didn’t have to come back to Coldwater. I’m going to ask what I came to ask, and you can answer, or not, as you please. But if I have to get a warrant to haul your ass to my home turf, I will.”

  Sharp’s lawyer started to speak, but his client raised his hand. “That’s all right, Walter. We’ve been over this. I’ve got nothing to hide from the Sheriff and I’d like to be helpful, if I can. I’d also like to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

  “All right then,” said Joe. “Why don’t we start by you telling me how you came to be associated with NeuroGene and how and when you came to leave it?”

  The lawyer shrugged. Sharp began to talk. “Fair enough. I don’t know how much you know about biotech start-ups, Sheriff. But the vanilla profile goes something like this: scientist with a bright idea hooks up with his buddy the sales guy. If the sales guy can keep the cash coming in long enough for Mr. Wizard to get his idea out of the lab, you’ve got the beginnings of a company.

  “But even with money coming in the door, most start-ups don’t survive; because often neither the science guy nor the sales guy have ever heard of a budget, cash flow, burn rate or any of the other boring stuff that goes along with keeping a business afloat. Add a financial guy to the mix and then the company may have a chance. Mr. Salesman brings in the clients, Mr. Scientist cooks up the next wonder drug in the lab and Mr. Finance makes sure that ends meet, so that the company doesn’t have to fold in a fire sale when it can’t make rent or payroll.”

  Tom nodded to confirm Sharp’s synopsis. Joe looked away.

  “NeuroGene is a variation on that basic theme. I was the finance guy. Dave Willow was, or is, a kind of combo science/sales guy. We had a bunch of rent-a-scientists working on some of his ideas. Paid them as little as possible and kept them around by promising them a piece of the action, if we succeeded.”

  “And why did you leave?” Joe asked.

  “Dave triggered the shotgun.”

  “He threatened you?”

  Sharp’s lawyer snorted. “A ‘shotgun’ is an exit mechanism in a partnership agreement,” he explained. “One partner proposes an amount at which he is willing to sell his interest in the company or to buy his partner’s. The other partner gets to choose which it is: buy or sell.”

  Tom nodded again. “And you sold?” asked Joe.

  “That’s right. I don’t know if Dave had stars in his eyes about the future of the business, or what. But my bean-counter’s brain told me that the price he put on the table was way too high.”

  “Or he knew something you didn’t,” said Tom.

  Client and attorney swiveled to face each other, their expressions like opposite sides of a drama mask: Pissed! and Surprised! Joe looked annoyed.

  “That’s possible,” Sharp admitted. “Though I think it more likely that Dave just got frustrated with my financial controls. But you’re right. He could have downplayed something on the research side that I might not have known about.” He turned to his lawyer. “I don’t remember you mentioning that possibility, Walter.”

  Tom smiled.

  Joe produced a copy of the photo he had shown to Sharp’s former partner, Dave Willow, and asked if Sharp recognized the man in it. Sharp held the blown-up copy of Billy Pearce’s New York State driver’s license close to his face. When he looked away, his eyes moved up and to the right. His head moved from side to side.

  “Are you sure?” Joe asked.

  “Pretty sure. This guy looks kind of scruffy.”

  Joe put the photo back in the folder. “Do you know a Susan Pearce?”

  “Dave’s girlfriend?”

  “What!” Tom blurted.

  Joe glared again.

  “Maybe that’s a bit strong,” said Sharp. “Before the entrepreneurial bug bit him, Dave was just another randy junior professor at Stanford. Miss Pearce was one of his graduate students, I think. They had something going on back then. Whether Dave managed to revive it at NeuroGene, I don’t know. He sort of let on that he did. But that could have been wishful thinking.”

  Though the conference room air conditioning was balanced to perfection, Tom felt his shirt absorb sweat like a sponge.

  “Do you know if Miss Pearce has any brothers or sisters?” Joe asked.

  Sharp looked up and away. “Not really.”

  “Does NeuroGene sell only its own products or does it sometimes act as a reseller or distributor for third parties?” Joe read from the list of questions that Tom had scribbled in the car.

  “Only its own products,” said Sharp.

  “Does it sell any of its products outside the United States?”

  “No.”

  Joe ran through the list, his mouth occasionally contorting over a legal term-of-art, like a schoolboy struggling with a vocabulary assignment. But Sharp’s answers were consistent and Joe didn’t follow-up. Sharp’s lawyer seemed ready to suggest that they finish. At the risk of stepping too boldly on his brother’s turf, Tom interrupted and started to ask the follow-up questions that Sharp’s answers suggested. “Did NeuroGene have any non-research income?”

  “Once in a while we’d scratch some extra revenue by renting our mailing list and providing access to our distribution network. To keep the cash coming in, we basically leveraged what we had by making parts of it available to smaller companies in the same field.”

  “And which companies did you deal with on that basis?”

  Sharp paused. “HGP Associates rented our customer list. The owner invented a piece of testing equipment that he hoped might catch on in the Human Genome Project. It didn’t. He went belly up before I left. U- Labs used us every once in a while for secure mailing.”

  “What’s that?” Joe interrupted.

  Sharp shrugged. “There are a lot of paranoid researchers in our space,” he explained. “They put their whole lives and piggy banks into the contents of one little petri dish. Then they try to keep their colleagues and competitors from finding out what’s in it until they can prove it works and lock in commercial rights. But it’s a community of very bright people, who keep close tabs on who’s doing what with whom and where. In this crowd, something as simple as an address on an envelope can be a tip-off to what a colleague or competitor is working on and with wh
om.”

  “So this U-Labs used NeuroGene as kind of a post office box?” Joe asked, trying to nail it down.

  “Basically, yes.”

  Sharp’s lawyer interrupted. “Sheriff, I thought you were here to get my client’s assistance in your investigation of a homicide. I don’t see the relevance of this line of questioning.”

  “Noted.”

  “It’s okay, Walter,” said Sharp.

  Joe nodded at Tom to continue.

  “Did this rent-a-mail-room bring in any meaningful revenue?”

  “Not at first,” said Sharp. “In fact, it was hardly worth the trouble. But remember, I was the finance guy. So I did what finance guys do with a marginal supplier, I raised prices.”

  Joe asked, “Did you ever consider that one of these outfits might have been using NeuroGene to distribute controlled substances?”

  “You mean narcotics?” asked Sharp.

  “Yes.”

  Sharp’s lawyer interrupted. “Sheriff, is this a murder investigation or something else?”

  Sharp waved a hand. “We’re talking about a few dozen petri dishes here, Sheriff. A couple of boxes of stoppered lab glass, that sort of stuff.”

  “Did you ask?” Joe demanded.

  “I didn’t have to. Every time I raised our handling fee, I got a call from Dr. Hassad with some new sob story. The next big cancer breakthrough… an off-license AIDS cocktail for some friend’s sick son. Whatever he thought might get me to hold the price down for one more shipment.”

  “Did it?”

  “Sometimes. But he always paid if I made him wait, so it was a question of how badly we needed the cash. In the end it’s a judgment call on how much the market will bear. I never felt like I squeezed him all that hard. It was more like he just enjoyed haggling.”

  “Did Dave Willow participate in these negotiations?” Tom asked.