I wished Gabriela could have seen her daughter now. How beautiful and strong she was, how brave she’d been when I’d asked more of her than any child should have to give.
Arlen came aboard last, saying something to the crew that was inaudible over the tender’s bubbling engine. He walked aft, taking the seat next to the helmsman. I sat where I was, next to Alicia on the front bench. Her fingers were interwoven with mine.
“Everyone settled in?” the helmsman asked.
“We’re ready,” Arlen answered.
The helmsman nodded and pushed gently on the throttle. We headed westward from Heart and Soul, leaving San Juan Marina behind us.
In open water, away from other boat traffic, the helmsman opened the throttle slightly. The wind was on our stern, and he seemed to be cognizant of Alicia’s and Flor’s hair, and only went fast enough to bring a gentle breeze over the bow. Still, the engine and wave noise prevented any talking unless we shouted.
Nobody did. Each of us was alone with our thoughts. I’d had an amicable time with Arlen—someone who didn’t know the man the way I did might say it was pleasant. But as we went further from Heart and Soul, my mind cruised into a fog of darker memories, which fed my paranoia.
Or maybe it was clarity, because now, as I sped into certain danger with Arlen Burkhart, I was asking myself the one question I should’ve answered before I’d called him: why would I ask him for a favor against Hildon?
Arlen noticed me looking. He flashed his magnanimous smile, and I pretended not to see him, to be looking past him at the water.
The tender slowed. I turned, looking out in front of us. On the coast, a lone building rose over clusters of rectangular houses that seemed as emblematic of Puerto Rico’s identity as coqui frogs. Hildon’s logo blazed from the tower’s crown, white as a full moon, shining down on the low houses sleeping on the dirt below.
Soon, we arrived at a brand-new dock, teeming with small pleasure craft.
“Welcome to the celebration, folks!” a worker on the dock said as he reached for a line being passed by the helmsman. “Once we have your craft all tied up, you’re free to disembark, walk up the dock and take one of the shuttles to the new campus.” He nodded over his left shoulder, toward land, where a trio of passenger vans waited in a parking lot.
The dock worker tied the tender down, then helped us disembark. I let Alicia, Tamara, and DJ go first, then helped Arlen get Flor and her wheelchair out safely before I hopped onto the dock.
I pushed Flor in her wheelchair up to the vans, where the driver helped her into the front seat. The rest of us piled in, the doors shut and the van pulled out of the parking lot.
The van carried us through residential streets, for three or four minutes until it slowed to a stop near Hildon’s new building—a high-rise with their logo glowing neon blue at the top.
I got out first, helping my wife along, then went to the back, pulled Flor’s wheelchair out, and carted it to the front passenger’s door to get Flor.
Our group moved into the concrete courtyard. The space lacked finishing touches, but at the center of the courtyard, a fountain with a bronze family of three—mother, father and daughter holding hands, looked toward San Juan Bay. The fountain was lit but had no water.
Ahead, the lobby shimmered behind large glass windows that must have been six stories tall or more, creating an open feel. An abstract chandelier from MC Escher’s fever dream hung about forty feet over the heads of a couple hundred people milling in the lobby.
As expected, the men were in black tuxedos with dabs of color on a watch or lapel. The women, in their long gowns with gems and precious metals splashed across their bodies, looked like the patrician wives of Roman senators. A string quartet, inaudible from outside, sawed at their instruments. People pecked at food on a row of tables against the glass nearest us. Reminded me of being a kid.
We entered the labyrinth of velvet rope leading to the door. As we waited for our turn to pass through the wall of off-duty cops in dark suits, I felt Flor’s rib jittering against my arm.
I bent close to her and whispered. “You’ve got this. Whatever happens, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
She nodded, but her little body continued trembling.
“Evening, ladies and gentlemen.” A man with dark shades and the calm speech patterns of a veteran police officer stepped in front of us. “May I have the name of the invitee?” His English was perfect, with only the barest hint of a Puerto Rican accent.
“That would be me, Arlen Burkhart. I’ve come with Ms. Tamara Price, whom you may know. We’ve brought along four exceptionally fine people as guests.”
An officer to our right flipped through a few pages on his clipboard, then stopped, finding Arlen’s name.
“Dos personas,” he said to the officer in the shades.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Burkhart, but the list says you’ve only been approved for one guest, as has Ms. Price.”
Arlen slipped on his billion-dollar smile. “Gentlemen, surely we can come to some kind of arrangement to allow all of my guests entry. They’ve all come a long way to join me here tonight, and I would be disappointed if our evening were ruined over something as inconsequential as a guest list.”
“Mr. Burkhart, we were specifically told to keep to the list. I apologize, but that was Ms. Little’s rule.” Sunglasses motioned toward the clipboard. “You may bring one guest—the rest are free to take the shuttles back to the docks and enjoy San Juan’s nightlife.”
“And it is a beautiful city that you folks have kept here,” Arlen said, as he reached into his pocket and approached Sunglasses. “We’d be so lucky to spend an evening out on the town for a second night in a row. But, as I said, these people are my guests, and I feel an obligation to see that they are allowed into a celebration for a company that is so near to my heart.” He held out his hand, inviting Sunglasses for a handshake, which was accepted.
When his hand slipped out of Arlen’s, it went straight into his own pocket. Arlen had paid him off.
“You’ve made a very strong point, Mr. Burkhart.” He unlatched the velvet rope across the entrance to the lobby. “And those of us here with La Uniformada appreciate the respect you’ve paid our city. I think my fellow officer simply misspoke. The list says you’re cleared for four guests—I checked it this morning, myself.”
The officer with the list must’ve spoken a little English. He riffled through the pages, confused, as Sunglasses let us all in.
Arlen stopped at Sunglasses, again digging into his pocket as I passed with Flor.
“These things happen,” he said. “I hope the language barrier doesn’t keep us from working together in the future.”
I looked over my shoulder to see him passing another wad of cash to Sunglasses.
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t,” Sunglasses said, grinning amicably.
“Good man.”
I stopped with Flor, waiting for Arlen to rejoin us.
“How much was that?” I asked him as I looked at Sunglasses to make sure he didn’t hear me.
“Oh, it was a petty sum. Nothing to get too excited about.”
“Couldn’t Tamara have gotten us in?” She was ahead of me, already glad-handing with a silver-haired man and his much younger wife.
“No, I think we’re asking enough of Tamara tonight, don’t you?” Arlen clapped me on the back and ushered Flor and I inside. “Consider the money as a donation to the cause.”
We walked alongside each other through the lobby. The upper floors were walled with glass, letting a person look down onto the lobby while they worked or sat in a waiting room.
“It is a nice piece of architecture,” Arlen said. “Shame that it’s all for nothing.”
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
Arlen stopped, then put a hand on my shoulder.
“I never commit myself to a cause without intending to see it through.” He looked at me with a grim expression. “You know that about me, Jerry.”
I
did. But what I didn’t know was which cause Arlen had committed himself to.
Once more, I had to hurry up and wait.
The day on Heart and Soul was hard enough, but now that I was swallowed up by a sea of black neckties and bow ties, shoes, and accessories, I thought I might split open with anticipation.
Still, I forced myself to pick up a hampagne flute and clink glasses with Alicia. From the far end of the room, we watched a string quartet play on the stage, beneath a projection of Hildon advertisements about changing the future for the better and helping people improve their lives.
All the while, I hovered near Flor, who sat at a table and poked at caviar and pâté hors d’oeuvres, drawing curious glances by aristocratic men and women who probably wondered what in the hell some kid was doing at a high-society soiree.
I remembered my days of getting those looks and poking at that same food. It sucked.
Still, she held on. Then, Rachel Little, dressed in a ruby red gown, took the stage. Applause erupted around us.
I exchanged a glance with Alicia, who nodded, and separated from me. Go time. First point in the plan was to get Alicia upstairs into the AV room. In addition to the makeup in her clutch bag, she’d packed a taser and a USB flash drive carrying the presentation Macy Lane had whipped up for us the night before.
Arlen assured us the AV room was unmanned. Hopefully, he was right. If there happened to be an underpaid sap on AV duty upstairs, he or she was about to catch a few thousand volts.
To my left, in her chair, Flor’s eyes were bigger than caviar crackers.
“This isn’t going to go the way we planned, okay?” I whispered in her ear. “But if you stay with me, you’ll be okay. I promise.”
She looked at me, confused. She’d understand soon.
“Good evening, everyone!” Rachel Little couldn’t hold in her excitement. If she’d known about the bottle we were about to open, she’d be screaming like a banshee. The applause died down.
“Welcome, all, to Hildon Pharmaceuticals’ new headquarters!” The applause came roaring back like a jet engine. Even I joined in, to keep up appearances.
Behind and above Rachel, an image of an old couple blowing bubbles changed to a mother holding her newborn baby, with some kind of patch stuck to her shoulder.
“Thanks to your wise investment in this company’s future, we’re going to use this state-of-the-art campus to bring Hildon Pharmaceuticals to new heights, and to push the pharma research industry into a new dawn of discoveries, improving the lives of people around the world.”
More applause. They were like trained monkeys.
“Before I go any further, I would like to extend a special thank you to Tamara Price.”
The mother and newborn were replaced by a blue screen.
“Without her tireless effort, leadership, and vision, we wouldn’t be standing here today.”
Black text on a white background appeared over Rachel’s head. Macy had put up the most damning memo first—the one in which Rachel had acknowledged that Poraxim had given Li-Fraumeni Syndrome to “some test subjects” in later clinical trials, but that it was too late, and too costly to pull the therapy now. A year later, she would reverse course, and Hildon would discontinue Poraxim without explanation.
I looked at a balding man to my right, the screen reflected in the lenses of his glasses, his mouth agape as he read.
Rachel said something, but no one heard.
“Excuse me?” she raised her voice. She turned and looked up at the screen in time for the next slide—a doctored version of her corporate headshot, blood oozing from her mouth and eyes. “What on earth is that? Who’s in the AV room?”
She spun around, squinting at the beam of light coming from the projector.
“Turn that off!” she screamed into the mic. “Turn that off now!”
The next slide came up. Another memo from Rachel. A short one. Macy had blown up the words and underlined them for emphasis: WHAT INVESTORS DON’T KNOW WON’T HURT THEM.
A murmur rolled through the crowd. Killing children was one thing but lying to investors was an unforgivable sin.
“That’s taken out of context!” Rachel yelled. “Please! You have to understand! I didn’t—”
All the bluebloods in front of the stage had started booing her. She gave up trying to explain herself and left the stage in a huff.
That was my cue.
“Ready?” I said to Flor, as I scooped her in my arms.
“I’m scared, Jerry.”
“I know, kid. Me too. But we’ll get through this.”
She cinched her thin arms around my neck, burying her face against my shoulder. I hurried to the stage.
Every eye turned to me. In the dim room, I saw the confusion, felt the panic simmering. No one knew who I was or why I was here.
“Lift your head up, sweetie,” I said to Flor. “Let them see you.”
She did. The audience’s attention shifted from me to her, as if they knew something was wrong with Flor.
“This little girl was given Poraxim at the age of eight,” I said into the microphone. “Her name is Flor Ramos. She has Li-Fraumeni syndrome, and she’s had cancer three times.”
The room went silent. I’d sucked all the air out.
“Hildon knew what their drug—”
A scream cut me off. It came from the AV room.
I deposited Flor on the stage, whispering to her to stay put, jumped down, and elbowed my way through the crowd.
“DJ!” I’d lost sight of my partner. “DJ, it’s Alicia!”
When I reached the edge of the crowd, I saw DJ running into the hall, ahead of me. He hit the door for the stairs first, and I came right behind him.
“I told you I shoulda been security for Alicia,” he said as we ran up the steps.
“You were right,” I said. “Now help me save my wife.”
We cleared the stairs faster than I thought possible. I rammed through the third-floor door, then spilled into a half-finished hallway. Based on the projector in the window overlooking the lobby, I knew the AV room had to be to my right. I cut around a corner, and saw an open door, the projector sitting on a stack of boxes.
I sprinted toward it.
Two steps into the room, I saw Alicia wasn’t there. Before I could turn around, I heard a pop like a circuit breaker blowing and an electric hiss, when something bit me in the neck. My body tightened, the popping stopped, and my knees turned to jelly.
No sooner had I collapsed to the floor than I felt a knee against my spine. On my belly, I tried to fight against it, but the shock had taken everything out of me. A cord tightened around my wrists, binding them behind my back.
“Don’t struggle too much. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
I didn’t recognize the man’s raspy, accented voice. His hand pulled at the cord around my wrists, forcing me to either break my shoulders, or get to my knees.
“Where’s Alicia?”
“Is that your woman, bro?” He clicked his teeth. “That dress she’s wearing is killer. Know what I mean?”
“Where is she?”
“Don’t worry about that now. You got bigger problems.” He pulled me up. My feet were uncooperative, but I got them under control by the time DJ was marched in, also with his hands behind his back, escorted by security. Blood clung to DJ’s lips.
The guy holding me laughed. “What happened to your neck?” he asked DJ’s guy.
“Crazy bastard bit me,” he said. “Can you believe that? I hit him square with the stun gun.”
“I’m impressed.”
The guy holding DJ grunted and pushed him toward a door in the AV room opposite from where we entered. I was forced to follow.
We entered another hallway, then were taken to the right, then left around another corner, and right again. It appeared we were zigzagging toward the building’s corner. We hit a fire exit door, and walked the stairs down, coming out of the side of the building.
Two SUVs idle
d in the alleyway, guarded by three or four men dressed in black suits.
DJ was stuffed into the first car and my guy took me to the backseat of the rear car. He buckled me in on the passenger side.
“Where’s my wife?”
He shook his head. “You’re getting worked up over nothing.” He slammed the door.
I watched him, as well as the guy who’d restrained DJ, go back into the building through the fire exit. My heart pounded in my ears, and my veins throbbed in my wrists. By the time they came out with Arlen, in handcuffs, and Flor, who was carried out and handcuffed, my hands were numb.
As she was carried to the seat in front of me, I saw the tears streaking down Flor’s cheeks.
“It’s all right, honey,” I said after she was loaded in. I tried to lean forward to put my chin on her shoulder but couldn’t reach. “Just stay with me, okay?”
She nodded.
“We’ll get through this.”
To my left, the door ripped open, and the officers loaded Arlen in.
“Now, Jerry,” he said, as a seatbelt was looped over his lap, “remind me. Was this part of the plan we discussed last night? Because I don’t seem to recall this coming up.”
“This wasn’t part of the plan we discussed,” I confirmed. “Sit tight.”
“I’m not excited by the prospect of fighting off a jail sentence for a second time.”
I said nothing.
The officer who arrested me opened the driver’s door and got behind the wheel.
“What’s your name, son?” Arlen asked him.
“Officer Abalos.”
“Officer Abalos, do you know who I am?”
“I don’t care, Grandpa. Shut your mouth and keep it shut.”
Arlen looked at me, exasperated.
“Officer, you should—”
“Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do.” The muscles in his hands rippled as he grabbed the wheel and held on.
“That little stunt you all pulled is for nothing, you people realize that?” The faux leather on the steering wheel squealed as his hands clamped and twisted. “Hildon is evil? They’re all evil. Every single big corporation out there. So, what do you care? What’s the difference?”
Wayward Sons Page 40