Fatal Reaction

by Hartzmark, Gini

  “Do you mind telling me what the two of you talked about?” I knew there was no way he would tell me the truth, but there was something about the arrogance of his manner that made me reluctant to just let it go.

  “Certainly,” sniffed Childress with apparent satisfaction. “Danny promised me that as soon as he got back he would see to it that I was moved into a larger and more conveniently located office. A promise I have every intention of forcing this company to honor.”

  “Thank you very much for your time,” I said.

  “Is there anything else you wanted to know?”

  “No. But I’m sure the police will have their own questions.”

  “The police?”

  I did not answer him. Instead I turned on my heel and left his question hanging in the air.

  I spent the rest of the day immersed in matters Japanese. My counterparts at Takisawa were clamoring for Azor’s unaudited financials and the three-year budget projections I’d promised to send them last Friday. The foot-dragging on our part was deliberate. We wanted to honor their request to receive the information before they departed for the States, but I wanted to do it so close to their departure date that they wouldn’t have enough time to come back with another round of requests for information.

  I worked straight through the afternoon, interrupted only by a phone call from Elliott.

  “We got the fingerprint results back,” he reported.

  “The ones from the glass we took from the sink in Danny’s apartment or the ones from the coffee cup that Tom Galloway drank out of?”

  “Both.”

  “And?”

  “They don’t match.”

  “That figures.”

  “I knew you’d be disappointed.”

  “Have you talked to Joe recently?”

  “Not since the weekend. I called his house last night and his wife said he’s down in Georgia interviewing some woman who claims she was raped by Sarrek and managed to escape.”

  “Is the woman telling the truth?”

  “Joe thinks so. The only problem is she doesn’t want to talk to the cops. She’s afraid of what the media will do when they find out who she is.”

  “Can’t they protect her privacy?”

  “You mean like they did with the Central Park jogger?”

  “You have a point.”

  “Believe me, what the press will do to her will make her wish that Sarrek had finished the job.”

  “I went to see Dr. Gordon at the medical examiner’s office this morning. She’s come up with something,” I said and told him everything I’d learned so far about PAF as well as what Carl Woodruff and Michael Childress had said when I asked them about the phone calls.

  “So that explains the syringe cap in his apartment,” observed Elliott once I had finished.

  “I’d forgotten all about that.”

  “Whoever gave him the shot must have dropped the cap. He either forgot about it in the excitement or it rolled someplace where he couldn’t see it and had to leave it.”

  “I also think it means that whoever killed Danny either worked at Azor or knew someone who did.”

  “I thought you said the place where it was stored was kept unlocked.”

  “Yes. But the building itself is buttoned up tight. Stephen hires his security guards from Paranoids ‘R’ Us. There’s only one way in and out, and every employee’s ID is checked.”

  “At least that narrows it down some.”

  “Yeah, to one of the three hundred people who work here.”

  “Do you know whether employees are fingerprinted when they’re hired?”

  “No. They’re not drug tested either. Stephen doesn’t believe in Big Brother.”

  “If he’s serious about finding out what happened to Danny he’s going to have to let me start conducting interviews of his employees.”

  “Do you think the fingerprints on that glass belong to whoever killed Danny?”

  “I think there’s a good chance. But that’s not really the question that’s got me bugged right now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about how whoever killed him managed to get him to sit still while they shot him up with the stuff that killed him?”

  * * *

  When Lou Remminger found me I was standing in front of the vending machine in the lunchroom with a dollar bill in my hand, trying to decide whether to have cheese crackers or a Snickers bar for dinner. I had a terrible headache from peering at columns of numbers for hours and my back ached from hunching motionless over my desk.

  “There you are,” she drawled, smiling. She was wearing an army surplus jacket with what I recognized as an Oxford University scarf wrapped around her neck. “Get your coat on, girlfriend. It’s time for you to further your scientific education.”

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked, fearing that it was something that involved the cold room and pulverizing body parts.

  “Borland’s called a mandatory project council meeting,” she replied, “and we’ve got to get a move on because he gets pissed off when people are late.”

  It turned out that Borland’s weekly meetings were held at the bar of the El Torito Mexican restaurant, an establishment located next to the Oak Brook mall, that served an all-you-can-eat taco bar. After-hours drinking had long been a company sport at Azor, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why Remminger had gone out of her way to include me.

  “I talked to a friend of mine. A woman I met in graduate school. Her husband works for Mikos,” she said as we pulled out of the parking lot. “She says they don’t have diffraction-grade crystals yet, but the internal rumor mill is that they’re close.”

  “How close?”

  “Close.”

  “What about us?”

  “Michelle says she’ll have a new batch of crystals to try on Friday.”

  “And Childress?”

  “Nobody knows. Childress doesn’t tell anybody what he’s working on.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s a paranoid asshole, that’s why.”

  “Do you think Michelle’s new crystals will diffract?”

  “I hope so, because if they don’t the odds are that Mikos will beat us.”

  “Why’s that?” I demanded. x

  “Because Michelle will lose two days when the power goes out,” snapped Remminger, pounding her fist against the steering wheel for emphasis, “and then she’ll have to flush the next three or four days sucking up to the Japanese. At this point in the process, in this kind of race, days matter. Fucking hours matter.”

  “I can’t do anything about the electricity,” I told her. “And the Japanese?”

  “At this point there’s not a damn thing I can do about them either.”

  In a country where more people consult a psychic hot line than realize that matter is composed of atoms and molecules, the fierce clannishness of scientists is only to be expected. But I hadn’t anticipated the way their peculiar insularity mirrored that of the very rich. Having grown up in what was for all intents and purposes a closed society—one in which a person could be immediately excluded on the basis of their shoes—I found observing another strictly delineated group endlessly fascinating.

  When Lou and I arrived, we found a dozen or so investigators crowded around a long table being presided over by Borland. El Torito, with its faux south-of-the-border ambiance, struck me as a bizarre setting for what could alternately be described either as a gathering of the world’s brightest organic chemists or the revenge of the nerds.

  Someone pulled up a couple of chairs and we squeezed in at the far end of the table between Bryan and Bill, twin chemists from Remminger’s lab who lifted weights in their spare time and looked for all the world like a set of matching fireplugs.

  “I’d keep my distance from Borland if I were you,” whispered Remminger, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. “His hands have a tendency to wander after he’s had a f
ew.” Remminger and I were the only women at the table. I was the only person wearing a suit.

  “Ladies! You need a drink!” boomed the protein chemist, from the other end of the table. He poured us both margaritas from the pitcher in front of him and passed them down. “Better enjoy these while you can. I hear that by next week we’ll all be drinking sake.”

  “Only if we’re lucky,” grumbled someone I didn’t recognize. “I hear that Mikos is close to having diffraction-grade crystals.”

  “And Elvis has just been recruited by Glaxo. I believe only what I read in Nature. Besides, once our sushi buddies ante up we’ll have the money to cook up all kinds of new drugs. That is, for those of you who care about making drugs.”

  “What does he mean by that?” I asked Remminger. “It’s a dig against academics. You see, where we come from making new drugs isn’t exactly considered that big a deal. I mean, hey, I wouldn’t mind finding a cure for cancer, but scientifically speaking the big prize in all of this is solving the structure of the receptor molecule and synthesizing the new compound.”

  “The Japanese don’t give a damn whether we turn ZK-501 into a drug,” complained someone named Kurt, who worked in the protein lab.

  “And it’s a good thing,” a man with a wild black beard who was sitting next to him interjected, “because at the rate we’re going we have about as much chance of making a drug as Kurt here has of getting lucky with lovely Kasandra behind the bar.” This remark was met with a chorus of hoots.

  “Would you just shut up and let me finish,” shouted the unfortunate Kurt above the din. “The reason the Japanese don’t care whether we make a new drug is that’s not what they’re really interested in. They could care less if we make money with ZK-501. Don’t you see? They already have plenty of money. What they really want is to see how we do it.” It occurred to me that Kurt was probably right. “You mark my words. It’s all part of their master plan. Ten years from now we’re all going to be taking Japanese pills the way we watch Japanese TVs and drive Japanese cars. These guys don’t want one new drug, they want the know-how to make lots of new drugs, and if you ask me, whatever they’re gonna end up paying us for it, we’re selling it to them too cheap.”

  The next morning I woke up feeling exhausted and vaguely hungover. I dragged myself miserably out of bed and reflected that if there was one thing the scientists of the ZK-501 project excelled at it was putting away tequila. With Danny’s funeral set for ten I was grateful that it didn’t make sense to even try to get out to Oak Brook.

  With my lawyer’s wardrobe of dark suits I could have dressed for an infinite number of funerals, but I made a special effort for Danny’s sake, selecting a black Armani suit he had often complimented me on.

  When I got to my office even Cheryl voiced her approval. “You look very nice,” she said.

  “Thank you, I’m going to a funeral.”

  “I’ve got everything set for your trip to New York. I called and spoke to Mr. Hiroshi Toyoda’s private secretary. They will be expecting you at four o’clock. Here are your tickets and your itinerary. Of course Bud Hellman called and said he’d love to take you to lunch or dinner if you have time, but I explained that you were hoping to just get in and out. He also said to be sure and let him know and that they’d make an office available to you if you needed it, etc....”

  Hellman was the managing partner of the firm’s New York office and within the last year he’d traded in a perfectly good wife for a social-climbing Texas beauty half his age named Babs. Babs made no secret of her social aspirations and practically panted to be in the same room with my mother. The fact that the last time they actually spoke my mother accidentally called her “Boobs” pretty much summed up the matter. Nevertheless, Hellman, with the optimism of a man of sixty who thinks he’s going to bed at night with his second youth, always fell all over himself whenever I came to New York.

  “What else is new?”

  “Not much. The draft-offering documents on Nuland Petroleum were finally messengered over yesterday afternoon. I’ve given them to Sherman to look over, but there’s another set on your desk in case you wanted to read through them on the plane.”

  “Where’s the mail?”

  “On your desk. Also your messages. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “I would love some,” I replied.

  It felt wonderful to be back in my own office, behind my own desk, surrounded by my own things. I flipped through the mail, stopping to read items that seemed timely or important. I dictated a few notes and replies.

  As Cheryl appeared with my coffee a thought suddenly occurred to me. I quickly picked up the phone and dialed Tom Galloway’s number.

  “I was wondering if you were planning on going to the funeral this morning,” I said, once I’d gotten him on the line.

  “Yes. I’m going,” he said in a voice so guarded I found it almost impossible to read.

  “With John Guttman out of town I thought maybe we could represent the firm together.”

  “Fine.”

  “And if you wanted we could probably go early....”

  “I’d like that,” he said, this time more softly.

  “Fine. I’ll meet you in reception in twenty minutes. In the meantime I’ll give the funeral director a call and let him know to expect us.” I assumed there would be no difficulty in arranging what I wanted—a private moment of farewell from a friend who did not wish to draw attention to himself.

  CHAPTER 20

  When we arrived at the funeral home Mr. McNamara was waiting for us at the door, ready to conduct Tom Galloway into the nether regions of the mortuary. I waited for them in the back of the chapel and tried to drive back the tide of memory that always threatened to overwhelm me on these occasions. I became a widow when I was twenty-five years old and everyone—from people I barely knew to those who stood with me as my husband’s body was lowered into the ground—insisted that time would heal me. Now that time has passed I have come to understand that healing is a painful and uncertain process. In five years I have laid down many layers of scar tissue. Waiting for Danny’s funeral to begin I was confronted by the fact that it wasn’t enough.

  A door to the outside creaked open. Through it slipped a sliver of gray winter light and Elliott Abelman. He was dressed for the occasion in a black suit, blue shirt, and wing tips polished to a Marine Corps shine.

  “You’re early,” I said.

  “I love funerals,” said Elliott, with a grin that drove the darkness from the room. “You never know who’s going to turn up. I called the funeral director yesterday. He’s going to try to make sure that everyone signs the guest book. I also have a photographer with a telephoto lens on the roof of the building across the street so that he can catch people coming out of the building.”

  “Did you talk to Stephen about coming out to Azor to question people?”

  “He says no. Scientists are apparently very temperamental. He doesn’t want their delicate psyches disturbed.” I could tell by his tone what he thought of the scientists and their psyches. “I did talk to Joe though. As soon as he gets back he’s going to give the Wohl file to his lieutenant.”

  “Any chance they’ll reopen the investigation?”

  “That’s hard to say. The wheels of justice always grind pretty slowly in this town, but even more so these days.”

  “Then I want you to be sure to go ahead and check out Michael Childress.”

  “Is he the crystallographer you were telling me about?”

  “Yes. I’ve been asking around. Supposedly Danny hated his guts, but Childress was always in Danny’s office for one thing or other.”

  “So you think it might have been window dressing?”

  “That’s what I want you to find out. The other guy is a protein chemist by the name of Dave Borland. There was a lot of animosity between the two men on account of an EEOC suit against Borland.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll turn their lives inside out for you.”

  �
��Did you ever find out anything about Hiroshi Toyoda?”

  “Yes. He’s in the country right now, by the way.”

  “I know. I’m flying to New York to meet him this afternoon.”

  Elliott reached into his inside pocket and came out with a small spiral notebook, which he flipped open and consulted before speaking. “Hiroshi Toyoda, age thirty-four, born in Santiago, Chile.”

  “Chile?”

  “His father was attached to the consulate. He lived in Latin America until he was eleven, then his father was assigned back to Tokyo for two years. When he was thirteen, Hiroshi’s dad began a six-year stint in Washington, D.C. By all accounts our friend is a pretty cosmopolitan fellow, fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and naturally Japanese. Smart, too—Georgetown, Harvard Law, M.B.A. from Wharton. Comfortably well-off until he married his wife, Fumiko, who is Takisawa’s only daughter. Now he’s rich, big-time rich. The couple live in Tokyo. They have a country house outside of Nagasaki and a place in Hawaii where they get away a couple times a year to play golf.”

  “Children?”

  “One. A son. His wife is ten years older than he is, by the way.”

  “Was he in the country when Danny died?” I asked, though with what I now knew about PAFI was even less inclined to suspect Hiroshi of any involvement.

  “We’re still working on that. But he travels to the U.S. a couple times a month, usually to New York, and always with his private secretary.”

  “Really? Has she been with him for a long time?”

  “You mean him. The secretary is a man. I called the house detective at the St. Regis, which is where he always stays when he’s in New York. It seems he always travels with a personal secretary, always a young man in his twenties, but...”

  “But what?”

  “But never the same one twice.”

  The minister who officiated at Danny’s funeral was a downy-faced probationer who offered up a generic service filled with platitudes about eternity and redemption while a plump woman in a green dress played the piano and exuded the humid scent of alcohol.