Margaret Truman's Deadly Medicine

by Margaret Truman

  “No, thank you, I’ll find my way. I know where the Watergate is. Doesn’t everyone?”

  Flo said, “The infamous Watergate, Richard Nixon’s downfall.”

  Flo wrote down the Smith’s apartment address and phone numbers for Jayla. “Be there at seven. It’s informal. The Smiths are down-to-earth people despite being lawyers, and Will Sayers defines informal. Maybe sloppy is more apt.”

  Jayla left Flo’s Fashions with mixed emotions.

  On the one hand Flo was right: an evening of good food and conversation could be therapeutic. On the other hand she didn’t know if she was up to making pleasant chitchat, especially with a judge, lawyers, a private investigator, and a journalist.

  Too late now to back out. She’d force herself to shed the shell she’d developed since returning from the other side of the world, at least for one evening.

  * * *

  Jayla arrived at the Smiths’ apartment at seven and was welcomed by Mac Smith, who’d donned an apron with an abstract drawing of jazz great Duke Ellington on it. “Pardon my appearance,” he said, “but Annabel has pressed me into kitchen duty.”

  “I think it looks nice,” Jayla said. “That’s Duke Ellington, isn’t it?”

  “Ah, you know your jazz, I see,” said Mac. “I’ve been a jazz lover my whole life. The Duke was one of my favorites. He was from Washington, you know. Come in. Most of the other guests have arrived.”

  He led her into the kitchen and introduced her to Annabel.

  “It’s a pleasure meeting you,” Annabel said. “We’re pleased that you could make it.”

  “It was good of Flo to invite me,” Jayla said.

  “Any friend of Flo’s is always welcome.”

  “This is a lovely apartment.”

  “Thank you. We enjoy it. We gave up a house in Foggy Bottom to move here.”

  “That’s where I live,” Jayla said. “Foggy Bottom. It’s a nice area.”

  “Drink?” Mac asked. “The bar is pretty well stocked, and I make a mean mojito.”

  Jayla opted for a club soda with lime. Mac escorted her to the terrace overlooking the Potomac River where Brixton and Flo conversed with the federal judge, Karl Wilson, and his wife, Emily. Introductions made, Emily Wilson complimented Jayla on her dress.

  “Thank Flo,” Jayla said. “I bought it at her shop.”

  “Flo tells me that you’re a scientist,” the judge said.

  “I work for Renewal Pharmaceuticals in medical research,” Jayla said. “It’s a smaller but up-and-coming firm in Bethesda.”

  “Exciting work, huh?” Brixton said. “Finding a cure for some weird disease.”

  “I’m not sure that ‘exciting’ is the right word,” Jayla said. “Developing a new drug that ends up with FDA approval can take years of experimentation, clinical trials, thousands of hours running experiments, and testing different compounds.”

  “Sounds exciting compared to what I do most of the time,” Brixton said. “I spend my days following errant husbands cheating on their wives, or vice versa.”

  “That’s not what I hear, Mr. Brixton,” Judge Wilson said. “You were involved in solving the murder of that congressional intern, as I recall.”

  “Robert likes to play down what he does,” Flo said. “He was also stabbed by a psychopath, and ended up in Maui breaking up an illegal arms dealer’s operation. Hardly a dull way to make a living.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Brixton said, laughing to indicate that he didn’t mean it. “The truth is that as long as there are yahoos out there doing dumb things, I’ll always have an income.”

  Mac, who’d retreated to the kitchen, reappeared with Annabel, drinks in hand.

  “We were talking about Robert’s escapades,” Flo said.

  “I’d rather hear about Ms. King here and how she’s conquering rare diseases,” said Brixton.

  Jayla was in the process of disabusing them of that notion when the doorbell rang.

  “That must be Will,” Annabel said, leaving the terrace to greet the final guest of the evening, journalist Will Sayers, Brixton’s close friend from his days as a cop in Savannah. While Annabel made a detour to the kitchen to pour their latest visitor his usual bourbon on the rocks, Mac introduced him to the other guests.

  Sayers was dressed in what was almost a uniform: baggy chino pants, vividly colored red-and-white striped button-down shirt, wide red suspenders, and a red-and-white railroad handkerchief hanging out of his rear pants pocket. He navigated the group in search of a chair that would accommodate his three hundred pounds, accepted his drink from Annabel, and eased down next to Jayla.

  “Robert tells me you’re from Papua New Guinea,” Sayers said.

  “I was born there,” she said. “My father was from Australia and moved to Port Moresby to open a clinic and laboratory.”

  “I know Port Moresby,” Sayers said. “I wrote a series of articles years ago about World War II and how the natives of New Guinea fought the Japanese. I got to spent a few days there.”

  “I’d enjoy reading your articles,” she said. “Are they online?”

  “Isn’t everything these days? I’m sure I have a printout I can give you, save your having to look it up.”

  Conversation turned to many topics on the terrace until it was time for dinner. Mac and Annabel had whipped up veal martini as an entrée, accompanied by a salad, freshly baked bread from the Watergate bakery, and Mac’s favorite vegetable, broccoli cooked in his special garlic and pepper sauce. Drinks had been replenished and spirits were high at the table. Jayla had abandoned her nonalcoholic drink for a glass of Chablis, and Sayers was on his third bourbon; his ability to consume alcohol without showing the effects always amazed Brixton and the Smiths.

  “What’s the latest in drug research?” the judge asked Jayla during dinner. “It seems that someone is always coming up with a promising new cure for one disease or another.”

  “Or one that’ll kill you if you take it,” Sayers said. “I see those ads on TV for medicines. They spend most of the time telling you all the serious side effects you’ll suffer if you take any of them.”

  This brought a round of laughter from the guests.

  Sayers adopted his best TV announcer voice: “If you take this drug for your hemorrhoids you might get dizzy, throw up, lose weight, have heart palpitations, develop ulcers, rashes, muscle weakness—and die.” He drew out the last word for emphasis.

  “The FDA requires that advertisements include mention of side effects that occur above a certain threshold, even if it’s only a fraction of a percent,” Jayla informed him.

  “What drug are you working on?” Brixton asked Jayla.

  “My company’s involved in a few things,” she answered, “trying to develop a drug for hepatitis, a skin cream for eczema, and a new painkiller. I’m on the team looking for a better pain med.”

  “You mentioned your father,” Emily Wilson said. “Is he involved in medical research, too?”

  “He was,” Jayla said, “until his recent death.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know,” Emily said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Jayla said. “But yes, besides running his clinic in Port Moresby he was also involved in trying to develop a more effective pain reliever, one with greater potency and fewer side effects.” She looked at Sayers. “Side effects like the ones you mentioned.”

  “Addiction to prescription painkillers is a growing problem,” the judge said. “OxyContin, Percocet, other opioids. Highly addictive.”

  “Me, I take an aspirin every day,” Sayers said, “one of those little ones they say help stave off heart attacks and strokes.”

  “Eighty-one milligram,” Jayla said. “Aspirin is a wonderful drug, but it only goes so far in alleviating pain.”

  “Aspirin must make Bayer filthy rich,” the judge said. “They own it, don’t they?”

  “Bayer owned the rights to aspirin until a German company bought them out years ago, after the First World W
ar,” Jayla said.

  “I was reading the other day that Americans consume something like eighty million aspirin pills a year,” Sayers said.

  “And you’re working on the next aspirin?” the judge’s wife asked Jayla.

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Jayla said. “Actually we’re trying to synthesize an aspirin-like compound. My father was working differently. He was convinced that a powerful painkiller could be created using only native plants.”

  “It’s hard to imagine that effective medicines can be made from simple plants that grow wild in the ground,” Annabel said.

  “Many of our drugs come from chemicals derived from plants,” Jayla said. “They always have. Aspirin was originally made from salicylic acid that’s found in the bark of willow trees, and a possible cure for ebola looks like it could come from tobacco leaves.”

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” Sayers proclaimed. “Every couple of years the medical profession changes its mind. Cholesterol is bad for you, then it’s good for you. Drinking is bad for you, then it’s good for you. Smoking is bad for you but maybe tobacco will cure ebola.”

  “Drinking in moderation,” Annabel said.

  “Tobacco leaves, not smoking,” Mac added.

  “Sounds like what you’re doing is a noble undertaking,” Emily Wilson said. “You say your father was involved in the same sort of research to develop a better aspirin?”

  “He was experimenting with plants native to PNG. The country has thousands of them. The trick is to come up with the right combination. That’s what he was working on when he died.”

  “Had he gotten very far?” Mac asked.

  “I think he was well on his way to succeeding,” Jayla said, thinking of the long letter and packets of seeds that he’d left for her with the housekeeper, Tabitha, that Jayla had secured in a safe deposit box at her bank. “He used what he’d developed on some of his patients at the clinic. He said it alleviated their pain without side effects.”

  “Maybe you could carry on his work,” Emily Wilson said.

  “I might,” Jayla said.

  Mac sensed her discomfort with the subject and changed it. He asked Will Sayers, “What’s the latest scandal in D.C.?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” the corpulent journalist said. “Let’s see. The VP opened his mouth again and said something stupid about Russia, breaking the rule that he’s never to say anything in public unless he’s reading what somebody else wrote for him. That congressman who is accused of having plagiarized the thesis he wrote to get his advanced degree is in the news again. Seems he not only plagiarized his thesis, he stole what somebody else wrote for the op-ed piece he supposedly penned for the New York Times. Oh, and our esteemed senator from Georgia, the honorable Ronald Gillespie, might have gone too far in accepting money and other favors from his favorite lobbying group, Big Pharma. Everybody knows that he’s on their payroll—he’s never seen a piece of legislation favoring them that he doesn’t love—but looks like he’s gone overboard this time. That’s the story I’m in the process of running down.”

  “Business as usual in the nation’s capital,” Brixton commented.

  “Robert’s not a fan of our nation’s capital,” Mac said.

  “What’s to be a fan of?” Brixton said. “Lawmakers don’t make decisions that are good for the country. They’re for sale to the highest bidder.” He turned to Sayers. “Like your Georgia senator Gillespie. Pay me and I’ll vote for anything that’s good for you and the hell with what it might do for the citizens.”

  Mac and Annabel could see what was coming, a rant from their jaded friend about politics and the political system.

  “Dessert?” Annabel asked. “Key lime pie.”

  “Key lime pie, my favorite,” Sayers said. “And is there any of that good bourbon left?”

  Brixton and Flo offered to drive Jayla home, but she’d taken her car to the Watergate and didn’t need a lift.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you,” Mac said.

  “Please don’t be a stranger,” said Annabel.

  “If I need a lawyer I know who to call,” Jayla said.

  “Anytime you need legal advice,” Mac said, “just yell.”

  “You look great in that dress,” Flo said, hugging Jayla.

  “Thanks to you, Flo. Good night everyone. And thanks again.”

  Karl and Emily Wilson left right after Jayla, and the remaining guests repaired to the terrace for after-dinner drinks.

  “She’s a knockout,” Sayers commented.

  “As nice as she is beautiful,” Flo said.

  “Tragic what happened to her father,” Mac said.

  “How did he die?” Sayers asked.

  “He was murdered,” Mac said. “Stabbed to death. Do you know much about it, Flo?”

  “No, just that he was a physician and ran a clinic and lab in Papua New Guinea.”

  “Maybe some druggie looking for a fix,” Sayers offered. “The doctor confronts him and the druggie pulls a knife. Not unheard of, even here in our nation’s capital.”

  “But Jayla said that someone bulldozed the land where her father grew his plants. Could that possibly be just a coincidence?” Flo asked.

  “It could be,” Mac said. “If you believe in coincidences.”

  “There has to be some connection,” said Annabel. “It sounds like his murder and the destruction of his property happened at about the same time. What do you think, Will?”

  “Papua New Guinea is a strange place,” the large newspaper editor and reporter replied.

  Brixton had retreated to a corner of the terrace. As Mac passed, the attorney said, “You’re unusually quiet this evening, Robert, although we did enjoy your view of government and politics.”

  “I’ve got stuff on my mind,” Brixton said.

  As Annabel carried dishes from the terrace to the kitchen she stopped to talk with Brixton. “Emily Wilson suggested that Jayla carry on her father’s work,” Annabel said. “Maybe that’s what she’s doing at the pharmaceutical company she works for.”

  “I’m not a fan of Big Pharma,” Brixton said. “They gouge people who need their medicines and can’t afford to pay for them. These pharmaceutical companies own Congress with their lobbying and the big bucks they throw at the politicians to keep medicines from other countries getting here.”

  Neither Mac nor Annabel were in the mood for another pontification from their friend, and simply nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Mac’s final words to Brixton were, aside from a pleasant good night, “I’m thinking that if Jayla’s father did succeed in inventing a better pain reliever without side effects and addictive qualities, there would be a lot of pharmaceutical companies shaking in their boots.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Jayla was glad that she’d accepted the invitation to the Smiths’ Watergate apartment. Aside from the brief conversation about her father’s work, the other trains of lively conversation had distracted and amused her, a welcome respite.

  But now, as she walked through the door of her Foggy Bottom apartment, it was as though darkness had followed her inside, like the black cloud that always hovered over a cartoon character in the L’l Abner comic strip.

  She responded to the flashing red light on her answering machine.

  “Jayla, it’s Nate Cousins. I thought that you might be up for dinner tonight but I see that you’ve already gone out. Hope it’s a pleasant evening. Please call me at home if it isn’t too late, or at my office tomorrow.” He left both numbers.

  * * *

  Nathan Cousins had been vice president of public affairs at Renewal Pharmaceuticals when Jayla went to work for the company, but resigned a little over a year ago to open his own PR agency servicing the pharmaceutical industry. Some people, Jayla included, wondered why he made that move considering the generous salary, stock option plan, and package of perks he received as an executive at Renewal. But his motive became clear once it was learned that before leaving he’d cut a sw
eet deal with the company paying him four times what his salary had been.

  Cousins had brought to Renewal an eclectic background. Like Jayla he’d been born into a mixed marriage. A native of Oakland, California, mother white, father black, he had excelled in sports while attending high school. Upon graduating he’d been signed to a minor league baseball contract by the San Francisco Giants, and played a year for the San Jose Giants, the Giants’ A-level team. He’d performed well enough to be elevated the next season to the AA-level team, the Richmond Flying Squirrels, but that step up proved too much of a hurdle for the slick-fielding, light-hitting prospect.

  Upon his release he enrolled as a marketing major at the University of California, San Francisco with an eye toward applying his education to an administrative position in professional sports. But the university was particularly known for its graduate-level health sciences curriculum, and a professor who’d become a mentor persuaded him that the pharmaceutical industry offered greater opportunity. Cousins took several elective science courses, and upon graduating applied to a number of pharmaceutical firms around the country. He landed an entry-level job with one in California, moved from there to a better paying one in Chicago, and eventually ended up with Renewal Pharmaceuticals in Bethesda, Maryland.

  His rise up the corporate ladder was swift. Tall and slender, clothes draped on him as though he was a runway model. An easy laugh, and the useful attribute of making everyone feel as though he or she was the most important person in the room, served him well. He was universally liked by everyone at Renewal, and when he was tapped as the replacement for the departing VP of public affairs the congratulations from co-workers were numerous and heartfelt.

  Cousins had never married, which spawned some snide comments about whether he was gay. He attended company functions on the arms of an assortment of attractive ladies, and office scuttlebutt had it that one of them represented a serious relationship. But she faded from the picture as he continued to play the field. He’d made it known to certain colleagues at Renewal that he considered Jayla King one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met—certainly the most beautiful PhD medical researcher—and he’d made overtures to her about going out. She’d refused his advances, not because she didn’t find him appealing but because she wasn’t interested in dating anyone at that juncture. She threw herself into her work and had a bare-bones social life, something she questioned at times when in a reflective mood. She and Cousins had their mixed parentage in common, although his complexion was fairer than Jayla’s. He was often assumed to be Hispanic. Her darker looks suggested that less cream had been added to the coffee than his. He was successful, engaging, and intelligent—“What a catch,” a friend often told her. But she continued to turn down his requests that they get together socially, and he eventually shelved the pursuit.