The Delta Factor

by Thomas Locke

“I’ve known Debs since my sophomore year at college,” Cliff replied. “She’s as solid as they come.”

  “If the study continues as it’s started,” Ben proclaimed, “we’ve got a major development on our hands. And I do mean major.”

  Dana leaned back, stripped off her glasses, and rubbed the bruise marks on either side of her nose. “That explains it, then.”

  “Explains what?”

  “The pressure I’ve been getting. Crazy. Yesterday I was called by one of our friends over on Capitol Hill.”

  “Larson?” Martin asked. Congressman Larson of Utah was a perpetual nuisance.

  “No, it was another of the members of Larson’s committee. A congressman from New York.”

  “Pharmacon’s headquarters is in the Big Apple,” Cliff pointed out.

  “Yes, it’s making a lot more sense now. The guy couldn’t even pronounce the drug’s name. And I had no idea what he was talking about, which made him certain I was stalling. We got into a shouting match you could have heard in Manhattan.”

  “It’s a little early to start having the political thumbscrews applied,” the chemist said.

  Ben snapped his fingers. “Now I remember. Something’s been jiggling in my memory since I started reading. There was an article in the Post Saturday morning about a new possible miracle drug. You know, stuck on page sixteen instead of the story about a six-headed dog born in upper Mongolia. I paid it about as much attention as I would have the dog. The only reason I remember it at all was because the claim was supposedly made at a Pharmacon press conference.”

  “The press conference was last Friday,” Cliff said. “I heard about it when I got down there. No advance word from Cofield, which was a surprise.”

  “You’d have thought he would have used it for a three-day trip up here,” Dana agreed. “Drop an expense account bundle on a suite and some nice meals. Camp out in our offices, pass on another thousand pages of data.”

  “Cofield apparently had less than a week’s notice,” Cliff replied. “Debs told me there had been a spate of rumors circulating, and the execs decided to get their own version out. Have any of you heard about these rumors?”

  A chorus of head shakes rounded the table.

  “Sounds like it’s time to batten down the hatches,” Dana said.

  “You’ll need to pass this by the director,” Cliff pointed out. “Sandra won’t let me within a mile of Summers’s office.”

  “I hate these pressure tactics,” Dana muttered. “Can anybody tell me why I took this job in the first place?”

  “You wanted to serve the public,” Martin Corelli replied. “Didn’t I read that somewhere?”

  “Okay,” Dana said, flapping her study closed. “We better stay on top of this. Next week, same time, same place.”

  “I’m going back down there this weekend,” Cliff said, and a sudden thought of Blair sent his heart rate up a notch. He hoped it didn’t show.

  “Maybe you better point out to the suits that the FDA does not appreciate being railroaded,” Dana said. “Not by the press, and not by Capitol Hill.”

  “Nix on that one,” Cliff replied. “I’ve already traded broadsides with Cofield and their new executive VP, a guy by the name of James Whitehurst.”

  “From the look on your face,” Ben said, “it appears that we do not have an ally in either.”

  “Harvey Cofield looks like a hungry vulture. And Whitehurst’s heart wouldn’t power a snake.”

  “But he’s probably very nice to his mother,” Ben said, rising to his feet along with Dana.

  “Doubtful,” Cliff said, following them from the room. “Extremely doubtful.”

  Dana stopped him in the hall. “On the level, Cliff. Does this stuff really do what they say?”

  “My friend Debs says it’s the real thing,” Cliff said. “She also says this study was checked from every possible angle, given the time available. I’ve always found that I can take Debs’ word as solid gold.”

  Dana sighed. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “We’re in for a storm, aren’t we?”

  “What was the name of the typhoon that just gave Japan a close shave?” She replaced her glasses and peered at him through the thick lenses. “This is going to make their storm look like a cloudburst on a pretty summer day.”

  * * *

  Horace Tweedie approached the car lathered in sweat. So close. Closer than he had ever come in his entire life. Too close for everything to be going so smoothly.

  He had spent the past three sleepless nights terrified there might be a double-cross. He had tossed and turned and sweated through visions of being tricked, hoodwinked, kidnapped, disappeared. But every time he turned on the light and stared at the suitcase already packed and waiting, he stopped, held by the thought of the money he had been promised. The money he might get. No, would get.

  The Infiniti’s darkened window lowered at his approach. A sudden mental picture of a long-barreled silencer sliding out left Horace so weak-kneed he could barely stand. His bow tie felt tight as a noose. Horace stood half a dozen paces away and died a dozen deaths until the stranger poked his head through the window and impatiently motioned Horace closer.

  The stranger wore what he had always worn, from the first time Horace had met him in the Circular File, a local bar frequented by FDA employees—cream-colored suit, white-on-white shirt, muted pastel tie. Horace could not see, but he assumed the man still wore those strange pale shoes. The shoes had fascinated Horace at their several meetings in the bar. They had looked thin and supple enough to be rolled up like socks. The man had worn them with ultra-thin yellow silk socks like Horace’s grandfather used to wear.

  Everything about the man, from the shoes up, had seemed slightly effeminate to Horace. He had very slender, almost delicate features and dark eyes so large they would have been better suited to a woman. But the way he looked at the cocktail waitresses, and the way they looked back, had left no doubt in Horace’s mind where the stranger’s interests lay.

  “Well?” the stranger demanded.

  “I have it,” Horace squeaked. He swallowed and tried again. “The money?”

  The stranger slipped a thick manila envelope out through the window.

  This time the man would just have to wait. This time Horace had to be sure. He tore at the envelope with fingers that trembled so badly he could scarcely work the paper. When the stacks of hundred-dollar bills came into view, Horace knew a surge of adrenaline so strong he wanted to shout, laugh, dance, run screaming down the street.

  Instead he found himself calming. Free. The word was there so big in his mind there was no longer room for nerves. Free.

  Horace slid a hand inside his pocket and handed over the three rolls of film. “It’s all there. I photographed each page twice to be sure.” Free.

  Silently the man accepted the rolls. He turned his head away from the window as he stashed the film, then searched for something.

  A gun. Horace felt the world drop away with his stomach. The man was going for a gun. Horace wanted to run, flee, hustle for cover, but his legs wouldn’t have carried him to the other side of the street.

  But when the stranger turned back to the window, he held only another envelope. It was twice as big as the one he had just handed over. Which was twice as big as the one Horace had received the week before. The stranger asked, “How would you like to earn this?”

  Horace’s heart could not possibly have beat faster without exploding. A roller-coaster ride was swooping him along, out of control. Nights of terror, a moment of freedom, panic-horror again, and now this. More money.

  His mind screamed run! His gut, though, his gut saw the envelope and hungered.

  Horace reached.

  The envelope was withdrawn. “I need more information.”

  Horace licked dry lips. “I don’t have—”

  “The review team,” the man said in his strange fluid accent. “I want information on them. What is the status of the study
? How far are they from approval?”

  “Information,” Horace repeated weakly. His mind screamed the constant frantic cadence, run. But his eyes were glued to the envelope in the stranger’s hand. It was as fat as a square balloon.

  “Weaknesses,” the stranger told him. “I want to slow things down. Find me a lever.”

  The stranger hefted the envelope. “Do so, and this is yours.”

  7

  Cliff was less preoccupied on the second trip south to Edenton and more aware of his surroundings. This time he took pleasurable note as his way carried him through gradual stages of countrification.

  The Washington metropolitan area barely gasped its last shopping-mall breath before the interstate broadened to enter Richmond. From there it was two traffic-clogged hours across Virginia to Portsmouth and Norfolk. Once the North Carolina line had been passed, however, the road and the surrounding life took a soft and gentle curve to bygone days. The way straightened, the landscape flattened, and suddenly the breeze was laden with the perfumes of a country summer.

  Untouched pine forests sent out fragrant invitations to slow down, sit back, forget the city hassles, and just rest a spell. Well-kept farmhouses sported cool-looking front porches and a host of hickory rockers. Butterflies and dragonflies coasted in lazy circles alongside the road. Cars kept to the speed limit not because they had to, but because fifty-five was simply fast enough.

  He passed a final pine grove, and suddenly the Pharmacon facility loomed up like a burnished copper space station. He pulled into the parking lot, unfolded himself from the Jag, and stretched before walking up to the entrance. When the first set of bulletproof doors glided shut behind him, the only sound he could hear was the air conditioning’s constant sigh and the reception guard’s metallic voice through the speaker system. The outside world was suddenly a thousand miles away.

  Cliff gave his name and was pointed toward a leather bench running down the hall’s opposite side. He declined to wait there and asked instead to be let back outside. The doors glided open and he escaped into the brilliant afternoon sunlight. He much preferred to bake outdoors than feel he was seated in a carpet-lined petri dish.

  Deborah came out and greeted him with a hug and the words, “Hot enough for you?”

  “Better than sitting in there under the gun.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, taking him by the arm, “but you should see what the treatment does for salesmen. An hour of waiting out there, and they’ll agree to just about any deal.”

  He allowed her to lead him over to her jeep. “Where are we headed?”

  “I want to stop by and check on something,” she said, “then we’ll swing back and collect your car. I’m cooking dinner for you at home tonight. I invited Blair, but she’s got some family emergency and has to drive to Norfolk. So it’ll just be you and me.”

  “Sounds great,” Cliff said, trying to hide his disappointment.

  Deborah patted his arm. “She said to tell you she’s sorry and she’ll be back tomorrow. Brace up, Junior. She was as broke up about it as you are. More.”

  “Really?” The thought cheered him.

  Deborah started the Cherokee and gave Cliff her lopsided grin. “Not falling off the deep end, are we?”

  They drove along a pretzel of narrow country roads. “The distance we’re covering is only a mile or so as the crow flies,” Deborah explained, “but to get there we’ve got to cover about five times that. You get off the main roads in this area and you’re entering a time warp. Nobody’s in enough of a hurry to feel the road’s got to go in a straight line.”

  “What’s that?” Cliff pointed to smoke scarring the otherwise blue sky up ahead.

  “I’m not sure.” Deborah searched through the windshield. “It looks like Hank is burning some fields. They better not be ours.”

  “Hank works for you?”

  “Hank Aaron Jones is a local farmer. If you’ll take some friendly advice, don’t ask him about his name. And yes, he works for us. In a way. He grows crops under our direction.”

  “The crop?”

  Deborah nodded distractedly, her concentration focused on the blackened field. “What on earth is that man doing? That’s not even his land.”

  As they approached, Cliff saw that Hank Aaron Jones wore a heavy towel wrapped tightly around his mouth and nose. He spotted Deborah’s Cherokee and waved them toward his own drive. The fire was almost out. Hank stumped across the smoldering field, crossed the road, and stepped up to the jeep. “Morning, Miss Debs.”

  “Hank, what in the world?”

  “Bought me some more land. You said you wanted me to put in another fifty acres.”

  “Yes, but not for another month or so.”

  Hank shrugged. “Feller was ready to sell. I bought.”

  “But those fields look ready to harvest.” She shielded her eyes and looked out at the golden acres. “What is that, rapeweed?”

  Hank nodded. “It was, yes ma’am.”

  “You bought the field closest to your own a few weeks before harvest and burned up the crop? Why?”

  Cliff pointed out beyond the still-standing fields to where a group of people milled about. The sound of rock music drifted in the still air. “What are all those tents over there?”

  “Oh, excuse me,” Deborah said. “Hank, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Cliff Devon.”

  “Howdy.”

  Cliff accepted a hand as firm as aged teak. The man smelled of smoke and hard work. “Your neighbor having a party over there?”

  “You’ll have to go ask him about that.”

  Deborah’s confusion deepened. “I thought you told me you and your neighbor were old friends. Isn’t that the one you asked if we could use some of his fields?”

  “Times change,” Hank Aaron Jones replied, biting off the words. “Right now, ma’am, the only thing Jude Taylor and me got in common is a prevailing wind. You had something special you wanted to talk about?”

  “No, I just wanted to show Cliff what we’re growing here.”

  Hank lifted his face as though tasting the air. “I guess that’ll be okay. Y’all excuse me, I gotta make sure the fire stays out.”

  They watched him fit the towel back over his face and stride away. Deborah asked, “What was that all about?”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he was testing the wind,” Cliff answered. “He reminds me of how a sailor looks when he’s worried about a storm.”

  She watched the farmer stamp around his smoldering new field. “This doesn’t make any sense. None at all.”

  * * *

  Cliff followed Deborah’s jeep a long winding route away from Edenton. Each turning led them onto a narrower, more rural road. Eventually she pulled onto a small graveled track and stopped. She stepped out as he pulled up beside her and said, “I’d like you to see my place for the first time on foot.”

  “Fine with me.” He looked around as they crunched down the gravel. Here and there small country houses emerged from the pine groves. Small front gardens shone like new pennies in the afternoon light. “Why out here, Debs?”

  “Cash,” she replied simply. “Same as the car. I wanted a place, my own place, with a view that would stay good and fresh for all my remaining days. And I needed it bought and paid for.”

  “I think I see,” he said slowly.

  “I can’t afford the risk of loans. I need everything I own to be free and clear of any debt. Just in case.”

  “Hey there, Miss Deborah.” An elderly black man with a face as seamed as a freshly plowed field walked over. “How you doin’?”

  “Fine, Reuben. Is that daughter of yours feeling better today?”

  “Yes ma’am. She’s had herself a right peaceful night. Looks like that fever’s done broke for good.”

  “You be sure and let me know if you see any of those symptoms I told you about.”

  “Surely will, Miss Deborah. Can’t thank you enough for all you done.”

  “It wa
s good to have a chance and repay you, at least in part.”

  “Shoot. Ain’t done nothin’ ‘cept be a neighbor.”

  She smiled. “I’d like to introduce an old friend of mine, Cliff Devon. Cliff, this is Reuben Haskins. He lives down the road a ways.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  The old man nodded briefly in Cliff’s direction but kept his gaze on Deborah. “Anything you need, Miss Deborah, you know where to come.”

  “Thank you, Reuben. Give my best to Hannah.”

  “Surely will. You take care, now.”

  Deborah watched him amble away and said, “That man defines what a giver should be.”

  “He didn’t have much time for me,” Cliff observed.

  “Black people in these parts don’t pay much attention to their first impressions of a white person.”

  “Are all your neighbors black?”

  She pointed away from the direction Reuben was walking. “Down that side road is pure country. A couple of fishermen, two brothers who own a local gas station, some I haven’t met yet. You learn that out here. Some people just want to keep to themselves, and it’s best to let them be.” Her eyes remained on the elderly black man in his well-worn overalls. “Some of the black families won’t have anything to do with me. But most of them are coming to be good friends. You know what brought about the biggest change?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  Deborah returned the waves of three children carrying poles and scampering down the road on muddy feet. Two were black, the other a tow-headed white boy. “I had a bad attack a few months back. First time my legs ever gave out completely. Couldn’t get up my three front stairs. Reuben’s sister happened by and found me sprawled on the ground. She managed to carry me inside and settle me in my chair. The next day Reuben came over and built me a ramp.”

  She squinted and looked into the sunlight. “These people understand tragedy. I’ve discovered that since coming to live here. The good sorts of country people have a deep understanding of suffering, and they respond to it in others.”

  “It sounds like you’ve made a home for yourself, Debs.”