by Mike Lawson
The expression on Ballard’s face indicated that he’d forgotten all about the Nobel.
“What I want you to do is go back to your lab and tie a bow around all your research. Then, like I said, I want you to apply that big brain of yours to some other problem.”
“Well …” Ballard said.
Orson sighed. The man started every sentence with well.
“… there is an aspect to cervical cancer that’s always intrigued me. You see the cervix—”
“Good, that’s good,” Orson said. “I like diseases that affect women; they pay more attention to their health than men do.” Orson laughed. “I heard this joke that if a man discovers blood in his stool, he’s likely to shit in the dark for the rest of his life rather than go see a doctor.”
Ballard gave him a confused look.
“Anyway,” Orson said, irritated that Ballard didn’t get it, “write up a proposal and we’ll talk about it later.”
Orson had never been sure how much Ballard understood about what happened at the Warwick Care Centers.
One of the things he discovered during his five-year association with Ballard was that the man had no interest in people whatsoever. The thing that interested him was the puzzle, and in order to solve this biological puzzle, Ballard needed data—and a few dead human beings provided the necessary data. But not once in the time they worked together did Ballard ask about the people in the human trials. He would give Orson the equivalent of a shopping list: I need X number of subjects injected, Y number of samples taken to determine the effect on liver, kidney, and lungs, and, by the way, I need the results from three autopsies.
He realized that Ballard was smart enough to not want to know about the clinical trials. Mulray Pharma was responsible for the trials—not Dr. Simon Ballard. Ballard might have thought that ignorance would provide some sort of defense if anyone ever discovered what Mulray Pharma had done—or maybe he just didn’t care.
But he must have wondered how Orson could arrange for autopsy results to be provided in such a timely manner. Did he really believe that people died just to suit his research schedule?
Whatever the case, at this point it was irrelevant.
As soon as Ballard left his office, Orson called Dr. Panyarachun in Thailand. “I want the trials completed by the end of the month. Tell your brother.” He meant the minister of public health. “I’ll send the money to your accounts as soon as I see something in writing.”
Dr. Panyarachun—in his irritating, lilting Thai-accented English—thanked him profusely. Orson had learned that the doctor was building a vacation home on Maui, and the sooner he got his money from Mulray Pharma, the sooner he’d be able to complete it.
Orson looked at his watch. It was almost noon—which meant it was almost time for a long, tedious afternoon with his board of directors.
Not only was Orson pleased with the way the clinical trials had gone, he was equally pleased with the way he’d handled the board. His board of directors had been specifically chosen because they didn’t interfere with the way he managed the company. Some were men his father had selected and old pals from when Clayton Mulray ran the company, and most of these people were in their seventies and could barely stay awake during the meetings. A third of the board consisted of academics—professors at prestigious universities in some field related to medicine. Their resumes were impressive—but they weren’t businessmen. The final third consisted of CEOs of other companies, and none of these companies were involved in the pharmaceutical industry and all these people were too busy worrying about their own operations to give much thought to Mulray Pharma.
The thing about the board members was that it wasn’t in their best interest to rock the boat. They were given twenty-five thousand dollars to attend a board meeting, there were four meetings a year, they flew first class, and were put up in five-star hotels. And the board meetings always began with a long lunch during which the waiters made sure everyone’s wineglass stayed full and, after lunch, when everyone was full, tipsy, and sleepy, the meeting would commence.
All the data provided to the board was, of course, prepared by Orson Mulray’s people, and Ballard’s drug was just one of thirty being developed by Mulray Pharma and one of half a dozen undergoing clinical trials. And Orson would tell them, without getting too specific, that the trials were progressing well. Naturally, he never discussed what was taking place at the Warwick Care Centers. Nor were the costs associated with developing the drug out of line compared with past development efforts, although a little creative accounting helped in this regard. When one of the board members—almost always one of the professors—asked for more detail on some scientific aspect of the drug, Orson would turn to Ballard and Ballard would begin to ramble on in his typically confusing, inarticulate way, and after a couple of minutes, the professor would wish that he’d never asked the question and would drop the subject. And all the board members knew, of course, that it was vital that they not discuss drugs under development outside the boardroom.
The upshot of all this was that in the five years it took to develop Simon Ballard’s drug, Mulray Pharma performed well but not spectacularly. The company was still the eighth-largest pharmaceutical company in the United States, although its stock price had dropped slightly during the recession. More important, Orson Mulray had managed to keep his board of directors informed of what he was doing without telling them what he was really doing, and he fulfilled completely his legal obligations as CEO.
And now all he had to do was get through one final board meeting.
20
DeMarco parked in front of a narrow, four-story office building on the Washington side of the Potomac River. Across the river was the Pentagon. He’d always found the Pentagon ominous; it just looked like a place where conspiracies were hatched. And last year his paranoia about military cabals was proven valid when he was used as a sacrificial pawn in a lethal game being played by a superspy at the NSA and a four-star army general.
DeMarco wanted to know what Phil Downing had done in Peru, and there was a man in the office building who could help him. Yesterday he had concluded—with no facts to support his conclusion —that Hobson had lied to him. When he’d told Hobson that he knew Downing had been to Peru, Hobson wasn’t surprised—he was shocked. He was so shocked he almost choked to death on his coffee. And although the story Hobson gave him for why Downing went to Peru made sense—that Downing, to keep his job and impress Hobson, had gone there to develop a pitch to showcase Lizzie Warwick’s work—DeMarco had the feeling that Hobson was making up the story on the spot.
But why would Hobson lie? The answer to that question had to be because he was trying to cover up the real reason Downing went to South America. Remembering what Clive Standish had said about embezzlers working for charities, maybe Downing went to Peru to prove Hobson was pilfering money from Lizzie Warwick. Or drugs. Cocaine was South America’s best-known export; maybe some of Lizzie’s do-gooders were drug mules for a Peruvian cartel. Well, that was a stretch, but whatever the case, he needed some facts regarding Downing’s trip across the equator.
DeMarco entered the lobby and proceeded to the elevator, where there was a reader-board that identified the building’s occupants: four lawyers on the first floor, a PR firm on the second, and three more lawyers on the third. Washington was infested with lawyers. The sign in the lobby, however, gave no indication as to who worked on the fourth floor—and that’s where DeMarco was headed.
The fourth floor was occupied by a man named Neil. He was also the owner of the building—although none of the building’s tenants knew this. Neil didn’t even want to talk to his tenants, much less listen to their complaints, so he used a property management firm to collect the rent and deal with maintenance issues. Another thing his tenants didn’t know was that Neil bugged their offices.
Neil called himself an information broker. This meant that
for a substantial fee he would gladly invade the privacy of his fellow citizens and tell you anything you wanted to know about them. To this end, he had people on retainer in places that warehouse privileged data—the IRS, Social Security, Google, credit card and cell phone companies; he even had a guy at Amazon—and if these people couldn’t tell him what he needed to know, he and his small staff were adept at hacking, bugging, and spying. Neil did a lot of work for the U.S. government —including the people who resided in the five-sided building across the river—and it was most likely his federal clients who kept him from going to jail. DeMarco met Neil through Emma, and she knew him from her days at the DIA.
Neil was irritating, arrogant, obnoxious—and very smart. He was a balding, fat man who tied his remaining gray-blond hair into a small, thin ponytail that touched his collar, and he dressed—unless there was snow on the ground—in baggy shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and sandals. As it was June, DeMarco was likely to be treated to the sight of Neil’s very stout, very hairy legs protruding from his shorts.
Neil was seated at his desk, flipping through a stack of black-and-white photographs, when DeMarco walked into his office. He turned the photos over as soon as he saw DeMarco, which made DeMarco wonder who Neil was planning to blackmail.
“Four years ago,” DeMarco said, “there was an earthquake in Peru and the Warwick Foundation … Have you heard of them?”
“Of course,” Neil said. “I donate to them.”
Sheesh. “Anyway, after this earthquake, Warwick sent a team down there to help the victims. Two years after the quake, a guy named Phil Downing, who was Warwick’s lobbyist, supposedly went to wherever this earthquake happened to do a follow-up on Warwick’s work.”
“Supposedly?” Neil said.
“Yeah. I’m not too sure about the guy who gave me the info. I do know from talking to Downing’s secretary that he booked a flight to Lima, so I’m guessing he really made the trip. Anyway, a month after Downing gets back from Peru, he’s allegedly killed by his partner, another lobbyist, named Kincaid.”
“Allegedly?” Neil said.
“Yeah. That’s a word us lawyers use. I want you to see if you can find out what Downing was really doing in Peru. Check his phone records and see—”
“Phone records for a dead guy from two years ago?”
“Yeah. See if you can figure out who he talked to down there. I’d be really interested if he was talking to somebody in the Peruvian government or somebody tied in with drugs. Check his banking transactions and see if he sent money to someone who lives there, maybe someone he paid to get information. I don’t know. Just get me whatever you can on this trip he made.”
“This might not be easy,” Neil said, rubbing his meaty chin. “I’m guessing Peru isn’t the sort of place where everybody has a computer that’s connected to the Net.”
“I don’t need to hear all the reasons why you’re gonna pad your bill, Neil. Just get me what you can.”
Neil smiled—thinking, no doubt, about how much he was going to pad his bill.
DeMarco left Neil’s office and drove to Alexandria to get a haircut. He’d been going to the same place for the last three years and he always used the same stylist: a blonde in her thirties with large, soft breasts that she pressed against DeMarco’s back the whole time she was trimming his hair. She always cut his hair too short—and he always gave her a five-dollar tip.
While waiting his turn to have his hair cut, he read the Washington Post. The front-page story that morning was about a congressman who had been pulled over by a cop for driving erratically. The problem, however, wasn’t just that the man failed the Breathalyzer test—the problem was that he was dressed in women’s clothes. The Post speculated that the congressman’s Jimmy Choos, with their four-inch stiletto heels, might have contributed to his demise, as they would have made it harder for him to maintain his balance when the cop administered the field sobriety test. The article also included the politician’s mug shot. In the photo he wasn’t wearing the blonde wig he had on when he was arrested but he did have mascara on his eyelashes.
Hoo-boy.
Neil called as he was leaving the barbershop.
“I got what I could on Downing’s trip to Peru, but it’s not much. Per his credit card statement, he charged a flight from Dulles to Lima, then another flight from Lima to someplace called Arequipa, and he rented a car at the Arequipa airport. There were no other credit card charges the whole time he was in Peru, so if he paid for a hotel or any other kind of service, he paid in cash. He made no calls from his cell phone to anyone in Peru while he was down there, and when he got back from Peru he made no calls from his home, office, or cell phones to Peru. He wrote no checks to anyone in Peru or, for that matter, to anyone outside the United States in the three-month period prior to his death. If he sent someone cash, I can’t tell you that.
“I called the rental car company in Arequipa, talked to some lady, gave her a bullshit story, and she pulled the records for Downing’s rental car. He rented a four-wheel-drive Honda SUV and put down on the form that his destination was a place called Pinchollo—I guess that’s how you pronounce it—which I could barely find on a map. Pinchollo was one of the towns hit by the earthquake in 2007, so maybe he really did go there to see how things had improved after the quake. So I don’t know what else to do, Joe. It looks like you may have to go down there if you want more.”
“To Peru? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Hey, what can I tell you?”
Irritated, DeMarco asked, “So how much do I owe you?”
Neil told him.
“You gotta be shittin’ me!” DeMarco screamed. “You spent less than an hour doing what you did.”
“Hey, you know my rates. And send cash.”
If DeMarco knew anyone else that could do what Neil did, he would have refused to pay him. And it wasn’t like the money was coming out of his own pocket—the American taxpayer was footing the bill. Still, it pissed him off.
As might be expected, the minority leader of the United States House of Representatives wasn’t immediately available to see his lowly subordinate. DeMarco told Mahoney’s secretary that he needed to see the man, and then went to his office, put his feet up on his desk, and took a nap. An hour later, Mavis called and said he’d be granted an audience if he could get there in the next five minutes—but he’d better hurry because Master Mahoney was extremely busy.
When DeMarco entered his office, he could see that Mahoney was indeed busy. He had his suit jacket off and was standing in front of his desk putting golf balls into one of those office putting cups, the type that returns the ball to you. There was a glass filled with bourbon on his desk and in between putts, he would sip from it.
DeMarco waited impatiently for Mahoney to stroke the next ball. It missed the cup, but not by much. He had played golf with Mahoney once and the guy played well. He also cheated.
As Mahoney lined up his next putt, he said, “Got a game with the VP tomorrow and a couple of Japanese politicians we’re trying to schmooze. The VP said we should let one of the Japs win but I say, fuck ’em.”
And this was a guy the president called upon for advice on how to run the country.
“How much time and effort do you want me to spend on Brian Kincaid?” DeMarco asked.
“I already told you: not much. Just go through the motions, tell Kincaid’s mom you worked your ass off, and be done with it. I just want Mary Pat to leave me alone. She asked me again last night if you’d found anything to help the guy.”
“Well, in order for me to do anything more for Kincaid I may have to hire a detective in Peru.”
“Peru? What in the hell are you talking about?”
DeMarco gave him the whole story: how Downing had been about to get fired as Warwick’s lobbyist, took a trip to Peru, and maybe found something down th
ere he used to blackmail Warwick to keep his job. Then a month later, he gets killed and Brian Kincaid is—maybe—framed for his murder.
Mahoney was only half listening as DeMarco spoke, more interested in his putting. At one point, while DeMarco was talking, he landed a ball in the cup and said, “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna kick some ass.” When DeMarco finished, Mahoney said, “That’s a whole bunch of fuckin’ maybes. You don’t really know anything.”
“I know that,” DeMarco said. “But I’m pretty sure Hobson lied to me. And if Kincaid was framed for killing Downing, then Ed Talbot’s chief of staff might have been in on it.”
“What do you mean?” Mahoney said, and he stopped putting. He was suddenly interested in what DeMarco had to say.
Since Mahoney hadn’t been paying attention the first time he told the story, DeMarco had to explain again how the conference call that was supposed to have taken place between Hobson, Downing, and Congressman Talbot’s chief of staff, Stephen Linger, put Downing in the office at the same time Kincaid was there—and how that was one of the main reasons Kincaid was convicted.
“But why would Talbot or Linger want Downing killed?” Mahoney asked.
“I don’t know that they did,” DeMarco said. “I’m just saying it’s a possibility, but I haven’t found anything that shows that Congressman Talbot is connected in any way to the Warwick Foundation other than voting against some bill that Lizzie Warwick wanted passed.”
“The little prick’s been busting my balls lately,” Mahoney said.
Uh, oh. This wasn’t good.
Talbot was a Republican and Mahoney was a Democrat, so the fact that Talbot had been busting Mahoney’s balls was understandable. But now DeMarco had a problem. Until this moment, Mahoney hadn’t given a rat’s ass about Brian Kincaid, but if Kincaid’s situation could be used to cause problems for a rival politician, then that was something Mahoney cared about.
