"Or what?" asked Merci.
"Or they'd cut out my tongue and replace it with my balls."
"Direct quote?"
"Word for word, minus the Russian accent."
"Who said that?"
"AI. That was pure AI, once you got to know him."
Rayborn made sure she had the words right in her blue notebook. She underlined them, but there was no reason to write CK next to a quote like that.
"Dr. Moss, describe the cerastes problem," she said.
"Fairly simple. Viper venom is mainly hemotoxic, it destroys blood and tissue. But it also has neurotoxic components, which means it also attacks the nervous system. The key to MiraVen wasn't so much the way it attacked cancerous cells, but the process that allowed us to use sufficient levels to destroy the cells almost instantly. That's important in surgery, for obvious reasons. The riddle was, how do you kill the malignancy quickly but spare the healthy cells? The solution was actually my idea. I'd read about the human antivenin process, where horses are injected with low doses-then increasingly higher doses- of venom. Then, when their immune systems had reached a certain strength, their blood was then taken and used to create antivenin for humans. When a human is envenomed by snakebite, then administered the horse blood serum, the venom is very quickly neutralized. Our key was developing a strong immunity in the test subjects before introducing the venom to the lesion. That way, the collateral damage was minimized, the side effects were small and the tumorous cells were destroyed, like, extremely quickly. But here's the deal-you don't want to immunize mammals with high levels of neurotoxic venom because it's too dangerous. And you don't want neuro levels too low, or the overall effect on the lesion-for reasons I still don't understand-isn't sufficient. So the right neuro-hemo mix, that was the goal.
Crotalus cerastes had the right proportions. But it's hard to get. We tried to collect it, breed it, replicate it and synthesize it. I just couldn't get the results. I thought a cloning program might work. Millions of dollars, to do that. We left that to Sistel."
"Without really spelling out the problem ahead of time."
"Right."
"Sonny and Al made you rewrite the promotional literature and revamp the research to hide that problem."
"Well… no, not exactly. We just omitted the species cerastes from the genus
Crotalus.
Sistel never thought to get down to that level of taxonomy."
"Until a couple of months ago."
"I guess."
"Why did you do what SunCo asked? You knew it was at least misleading, possibly illegal."
"Exactly."
"Then why? The tongue thing again?"
"They were more subtle back then. They said it had to do with hundreds of millions of dollars."
"And they were right about that, weren't they?"
Moss nodded. "The thing is, I really believed that our harvesters would come through on a breeding program. We tried collecting enough sidewinders. We tried breeding them. We tried buying them. We tried every viper venom we could get our hands on to equal the cerastes reactions. We bought two hundred hand-collected eyelash vipers from Costa Rica to see how their serum would work. Too weak in terms of anaerobic capacity. We tried water moccasins from a snake farm in Florida. But the neurotoxins were high. I went out to the desert with our harvesters myself, to see if I'd have any luck finding the sidewinders. I stepped on a cholla cactus and had a minor heatstroke. What I'm saying is, the harder SunCo pushed us to adjust the test results the faster I tried to find a solution. I always thought I'd find that solution."
"But you agreed to keep quiet about the problem."
He sighed and nodded. "I can still make a legitimate case for the research, the way it was presented. I mean, it's kind of complicated but you can organize trials to emphasize or minimize-even exclude-certain variables. It's like… if you change the angles a little, you get the same amount of square footage, but in a different shape. I also think I could make a case for SunCo coercion. They threatened to report us for defrauding them unless we downplayed the serum problem enough to bring in the big, big money. They made physical threat, too."
"Such as?"
"Al dropped a tooth in one of my beakers in the lab one day. Rolled it out of a handkerchief. A silver amalgam filling. Meat and blood o: the root."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing."
Moss looked down at the backs of his hands.
"Then came CEIDNA, Trident, Brown Brothers," said Zamorra. "Around fifty-six million in venture capital."
"Yes."
"Bringing OrganiVen to the auction block at a cool four hundred million."
"Four ten, actually."
"What was your take?"
He looked at the table. "Twenty-eight."
"Twenty-eight at twenty-eight," said Zamorra. "Set for life."
"Exactly."
Zamorra, leaning forward: "Gwen didn't like the research redrafts, or the changes in the promo lit. She loved the idea of curing cancer. And she loved the idea of making some money at it. But she was wise to what Sonny and Al were doing."
"Yes," Moss said quietly.
"Dr. Moss," said Merci, "listen very carefully to this: we've got her e-mails to you. We've got your e-mails back to her. To us, she sounded ready to talk. She sounded capable of blowing the whistle on SunCo. To your knowledge, did she do that, or threaten to do that?"
Moss looked at her, then at Zamorra, then back at Rayborn. "I don't know."
"You must have seen that she was thinking about it."
"Yes. We became good friends."
"What did you tell her about SunCo? Did you encourage her, discourage her, what?"
"I told her that Charles and Apin were definitely not to be messed with. That we'd work out the problem. That she should be happy with the thousand percent return she made for herself and her husband and their friends and family. And pray the FTC doesn't open a probe. And if it did, to just say she didn't know there was any problem at all. Let them come to the founders. We were the ones who brought in SunCo. We were the ones who… fuckin' haired out when they got tough on us."
"I don't understand," said Rayborn. "Gwen knew early last that there was a supply problem. She e-mailed you about it in April. She knew SunCo was pushing for the cover-up. But she didn’t do anything. She played along, collected her money. Bought a nice house. A couple of nice new cars. Then, months after the deal, Sistel finds the problem, Sonny and Al hit the campaign trail. They threat you on Monday and kill Gwen on Tuesday. What did she do, Sean?
What did Gwen do?"
"Sonny and Al were afraid of an investigation. I don't know what their information was, or how they got it. But what did Gwen do?
I can't answer that. I don't know."
"When was the last time you talked to her?"
"Monday evening. I called to tell her about the visit."
"What did she say?"
"They'd talked to her that day, too. Told her to forget any irregularities she might have seen if anyone asked her about the cerastes problem. She laughed and badmouthed them."
"After they threatened you with a tongue-dick transplant, laughed?"
"I didn't tell her they said that."
And Rayborn began to understand. It came over her just fleetingly at first, like a cool draft in an old room. Then she understood it all at once as the truth broke over her in a cold wave.
"You didn't tell her much of anything, did you?"
"She never took them seriously. Not seriously enough, anyway. Funny Sonny and Al the Apeman, she called them. I… the total worst thing I've done in my life is I didn't impress upon her how dangerous those men were. I… believed that if Gwen knew that OrganiVen being eaten alive by Russian gangsters she'd head straight for the cops. She'd probably start with her own husband. So I… never came right out with what I thought of SunCo. I actually, maybe sort of covered for them a little. Told her they came from a different culture, to different way of doing things
."
"So you let her discover it just a little at a time, figuring she'd in too deep financially to back out."
Moss was nodding again. "That's how they got me. It wasn't they came in and announced they were animals. They were actually quite knowledgeable and occasionally funny and charming. They put up more money than we'd ever seen. And I knew Gwen was going to get rich. I wanted the best for her."
"And you wanted her to see you as an honorable research scientist on the verge of a cancer treatment."
Dr. Sean Moss looked at Merci. She saw a look of painful nostalgia in his eyes. "I actually was that, once. I can almost remember it. I was relatively poor and honest and proud of myself and what I was doing."
He reached an accommodation with himself. "Yeah," he said. "In the beginning, that's what I was. Proud to be me, and in the same room as Gwen. I loved her. I don't mind admitting it. Never told her. Never told anyone. Never did anything about it, that way. I just loved her."
"But not enough to tell her she was working with gangsters."
"I couldn't admit I'd become a greedy coward."
"Oh, man," said Rayborn.
"Exactly," said Sean Moss.
Zamorra tapped the tabletop with his fingers and sat back. Moss looked at him then away, shaking his head.
"I was trying to warn her when I called," said Moss. "Not trying to get her killed."
"She was your warning, Moss."
"Exactly."
"Have you talked to Wright, Carlson and Monford?"
"Well, two of them. Sonny and Al looked them up, too. Told them what they told me. Cody's surfing down in Fiji. Man, I wish I was, too."
Merci looked out at the glistening ocean, at Sean Moss's private playground, at the gnarled Torrey pines winding their way down his drive.
"Tough it out right here, Sean," she said. "Be ready to take a stand, tell what you know. Show everybody you're not the gutless little dweeb you seem to be."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Archie pushed Dr. Sondra Pearlman's "Harnessing Your Subconscious-Adventures in Auto-Hypnosis" into the tape player of Durango. He liked that he was in an auto. He listened to the soft then to Dr. Pearlman's soothing voice.
"Welcome to the world of auto-hypnosis," said the doctor of psychology. "Welcome to yourself. In the next hour I'll be showing how to put yourself into a deeply relaxed state so that you can access to the thoughts, memories and emotions that are with you all the time, but you never know about. This is your subconscious. Unlocking your subconscious can give you insight into who you really are, and who you can become…"
The night was warm and humid and he could see the neon of the Air Glide Limousine sign in the parking lot across the street. The letters were hot aqua blue and the Air Glide logo-a long car tilting upward, with contrails wisping off it to suggest flight- red and pink. At least it looked that way to Archie.
He was parked in front of a surfboard shop down on Pacific Coast Highway, near the border of Newport and Huntington Beach. The shop was closed but Archie had found a spot beside a listing Volkswagen van that looked like it hadn't been moved in years. The traffic on PCH was steady and fast, but from the high interior of the SUV he could see perfectly the Air Glide lot and the front door of the business.
This was the same lot but not the same space where he'd parked the night before. He'd seen what he wanted to see then, a few minutes after midnight. Just terrifically good luck, he'd thought. He hadn't quite known what to do so he didn't do anything. Just went back to the hotel that used to be a packinghouse, stared at pictures of Gwen and thought about it.
The Air Glide window blinds were down but not closed and he could see a counter and a desk behind it and the same pudgy, dark haired man sitting at the desk. A row of shining silver stretch cars waited out front, angled in unison like a school of barracuda, facing the highway. He wondered if he was seeing them wrong and they were actually black, or if Air Glide favored silver to fit in with the flight theme.
"This is what we'll need to get started," said Dr. Sondra Pearlman. "First, make yourself comfortable and get ready to relax. I'd suggest a reclining chair or a comfortable sofa in a darkened area. You can lie on a bed or on the floor with a pillow under your knees and head for support. The key is to be comfortable. If you're prone to falling asleep, don't try the bed or floor positions. Once you're comfortable, you can either choose a small, preferably bright object to concentrate upon, or you can simply close your eyes and imagine a candle flame, an orange-and-blue lilting candle flame."
Archie reclined the driver's seat. Not far, just enough to ease his head against the rest and give him a level sightline to the red neon car zooming through the sky. Without even moving his eyes he could see the front door of the business and the guy at his desk, now nodding, a phone to his ear.
One week ago tonight, he thought. We were here in Newport, at the Rex. Now he could remember how beautiful she was, how surprised and embarrassed, then grateful and happy. Only a few days ago, that memory-and its emotional echoes-would not have come to him. Thank God for modern medicine, thought Archie. Thank God for pills. He remembered the way her dress clung to her body, the great volume of her life pressing against thin fabric. He remembered being impatient and worried and nervous inside, and he was sorry to have spent her birthday that way. The truth was, he was like that a lot.
Sometimes she called him Worry King, as in welcome to
Worry King Live…
He tasted Gwen's sweat and lotion in his mouth, though that happened hours later.
"I'm still here," she said.
"I know," he said back. He looked at her and smiled. Gwen wearing a short yellow dress and yellow sandals, dark hair pulled on one side. She had her dark August tan. "I wish I could touch
"Soon, Arch. Don't worry."
Now Dr. Pearlman asked Archie to focus on his chosen object, just close his eyes, and imagine his favorite place. It should be a place outdoors, a place of stillness and beauty. It should be a place of peace and understanding. She told Archie to include his chosen object into the landscape as a focal point. For instance, if he was staring candle, the candle could become the sun, or the reflection of light off a lake.
Archie stared at the neon sign and imagined it was a bank of nightlights at a big-league baseball park. He imagined the other light banks to the left and right, then moved his mind's eye downward to the empty grandstands, the dark green wall with the white numbers on it, warning track and the outer edge of grass, the crosscut emerald expanse of the outfield, the orange gravel of the infield, the white bases in holy shape and the perfectly chalked baselines and boxes. The flawless infield, crowned by the pitcher's mound with its neat white rubber and the concentric furrows of the groundskeeper's rake. Finally, the elegant pentagon of home plate.
"Now," said Dr. Pearlman. Her voice had become softer slightly more commanding. "As you imagine your place of peace and understanding, breathe deeply and slowly. In and out. In and out. With every breath you take in, let go of all your thoughts. With every breath you let out, let go of all your thoughts once again. In and out. Thoughts going, thoughts vanishing. All you see is your place of peace.
A
ll you hear are the sounds of peace, if there are any sounds at all. Breath in. Breathe out. Thoughts going, thoughts vanishing. Again. Again And as you continue, imagine that you are not just visiting this place of peace and understanding, you are becoming a part of it. You are joining it. You are becoming peace. You are becoming understanding."
"I apologize," he whispered. "For being so uptight on your birthday. I wanted everything to be just right."
"You can't apologize for anything that generous and wonderful, Arch. I won't allow it."
"That's a beautiful ballpark."
"It really is."
"I always loved the crunch of the gravel under my cleats. The first step I took onto the mound, if we were home. The mounds were perfect then."
"I liked the first time I saw you against Domin
guez Hills. I couldn't believe you looked at me during a game. But you did."
Archie smiled. "Two-hit 'em that day."
"It was gorgeous. I was sixteen years old and in love with the most beautiful man God ever made."
"I'd have died for you then. And on any day since then."
"Oh, Arch. Don't get on a bummer. Not now, when we have so much to be thankful for."
Archie thought about that as a seagull flew through the outfield lights, white against the blue plastic seats of the grandstand.
"They want me to give up. Go back to the hospital. Probably arrest me."
"You have to do what you think is right."
"I want to be together."
"We'll be together soon. Then always together. Listen to this tape. It really sounds good…"
"… this state of total relaxation, you will allow your thoughts to speak to you. Try not to direct your thoughts. Try not to order them. Simply experience this peace that you have become. Simply feel the understanding that is you. Let your mind wander relaxed, like a deep wide river, and follow it to the places it is inviting you to go."
Archie looked at Gwen beside him, pretended for a moment that he didn't know her. He'd been doing that for ten years, since the first time she'd sat in his car beside him. Such a funny, subversive little thrill to see someone who moved your heart like Gwen moved his, and wonder what it would be like to touch someone like her. Well, not like her, but her.
To touch her. To touch her every way you dream of. Then again. Year after year after year. What a game, then you suddenly unpretend and let the memories flood back. Let them carry you along your own past, rush away with you like a river. Dr, Sondra is right on about a river:
Gwen looking at me outside the theater that first time with eyes that took away some of what I was and back some of what she was, holding her hand in the living room of her parents' house in Norco, and that first time I brought my face hers to see if she would let me kiss her and she dug her nails into the scalp above my ears and kissed me so hard and after that it was a storm that didn't happen all at once but still a storm like the laundry room of the Kuerners' place that first summer so damned hot and steamed up from the dryer and we locked the door and let the dryer pound away while we did the same with the washer groaning thumping under my bare ass and Gwen deep in my lap and oh that had to be one of the strongest I ever felt but there was also the tent in Yosemite and the sleeping bag in Sequoia and the beach at Thousand Steps and Crescent Bay and Diver's Cove and the bench seat of my pickup at the drive-in and the motels her senior year when we were engaged but didn't have a good place to go and we'd make love five or six times in four or five hours and still get to laugh eat fast food and drink a little beer and tell each other every dumb little thing that had happened since the last time we’d seen each other and still be back in Norco by midnight and don't forget the Hotel Laguna and the Newport Marriott and the Hyatt Newporter on those special nights when we had enough bucks for a good room and room service breakfast at midnight and eight in the morning and definitely don't forget the first honeymoon night in the Disneyland Hotel the black lacy things and the great champagne, oh man, all you men out there who were not loved by Gwen Ellen Kuerner Wildcraft that night have never been loved at all and as long as I'm alive you never will be.
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