Margaret Truman's Deadly Medicine

by Margaret Truman

The VP’s laugh didn’t make Morrison feel any better. But perhaps he was right. It would be better to see what Waksit was all about than to squander time wondering.

  “Yeah, I will,” Morrison said, unable to keep his disappointment at the VP’s lack of concern out of his voice. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll take care of this Waksit character.”

  “Good,” the VP said, slapping Morrison on the back. “Let me know how it comes out.”

  With the VP gone, Morrison stood by the window and peered into the grayness that had settled over the city. As much as he hated to admit it, the VP had been right. He fished the number Waksit had given him and called the hotel, asking to be connected with Mr. Waksit’s room.

  “Hello,” Waksit said after the first ring.

  “Mr. Waksit, this is Eric Morrison.”

  Waksit contained his glee. This had been easier than he’d anticipated. “Yes, Mr. Morrison, thanks for getting back to me.”

  “Free for dinner?” Morrison asked.

  “Dinner?

  “If you have other plans—”

  “Oh, no, nothing I can’t rearrange. Yes, dinner would be fine.”

  “Good. Bobby Van’s Steakhouse, on Fifteenth Street, N.W. The reservation will be in my name. See you there at six.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  “So Robert,” Dr. Fowler said, “how has your week been going?”

  “Not so good. I had a couple of possible clients bail on me.”

  “Sorry to hear it. How are things with Flo?”

  “You really like her, don’t you?”

  Fowler’s expression mirrored his surprise at the comment. “Yes,” he said, “she’s a very nice person. She came to see me because she’s concerned about you and the difficulties you’re going through relating to the death of your daughter.”

  Brixton nodded and smiled. “Yeah, Flo’s okay. She can be jealous though.”

  “Of you?”

  A nod from Brixton. “I spent a couple of nights with a knockout blonde, a former movie actress. Flo’s not happy that I did.”

  “Is this former movie actress—?”

  “It’s strictly business, Doc. I’m involved with something an old friend of mine is into.”

  “Does Flo know that it’s—strictly business?”

  “Sure. I told her all about it. You know women. They get jealous fast.”

  “Have you given her any reason to be jealous, Robert?”

  “I don’t think so. Can we get on to another subject?”

  “Of course, but you brought up it up.”

  “I just don’t want Flo to be jealous. It gets in the way of our relationship.”

  “A relationship you want.”

  “Yeah, of course. We’ve been through a few rough patches but we get along okay. She used to work with me but now she has a dress shop in Georgetown.”

  “So you’ve said. Are you pleased that she has her own career?”

  “Sure. I wish she was still my receptionist but I suppose she needs her space. I realized recently that I’ve been unfair to the woman who works for me now, Mrs. Warden. It’s just that she and Flo are so different.”

  “It’s good that you recognize that.”

  “I miss Janet.” It was as close as he would come to crying during that session.

  “Losing a child is always painful, Robert, especially under the circumstances that took her from you. Do you think that you’re coming to grips with it a little better?”

  “No, I—yeah, I think I am.” He was about to add that it was because he’d been seeing the psychologist but withheld the comment.

  “You strike me as someone who keeps his emotions in check,” Fowler said.

  Brixton shrugged. “I’ve been a cop all my life,” he said. “As a cop, letting your emotions get the best of you can get you killed.”

  “I can understand that. Better to go by the book.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sometimes it’s beneficial to close the book.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Oh, doing something impetuous, on the spur of the moment, something that isn’t written in whatever book you follow.”

  “Yeah? I’ll think about that.”

  “Good. I see that our time is up.”

  The session ended with Fowler telling Brixton that he was pleased with the progress he was making and that he hoped that they could continue seeing each other. Brixton paid the receptionist and made his next appointment four days hence. He walked to his car, leaned against it, fought the urge to resume smoking, and thought about the last forty-five minutes. He felt good, and on his way to the office he stopped in a florist’s and bought two bouquets of flowers. He swung by Flo’s shop and delivered one of them to her. She was obviously touched by the gesture. He handed the second bouquet to Mrs. Warden when he walked into his office.

  “What is this for?” she asked.

  “Nothing special,” he said. “Just thought you would enjoy them.”

  “Thank you,” she said in her pinched voice. “I’d put them in water if we had a vase.”

  “Why don’t you run out and buy one?” he suggested. “Things are slow.”

  He gave her cash and smiled as he watched her walk from the reception area.

  Buying flowers for other than a special occasion?

  A new chapter had been written in Robert Brixton’s book.

  CHAPTER

  23

  Brixton mentally composed the cover story he would use when calling the lobbyist Eric Morrison. He decided on the straightforward approach. He wouldn’t mention Will Sayers as the source of his information, would simply say that he was a private investigator looking into the rumor that Senator Ronald Gillespie had fathered a child out of wedlock in Georgia. Better to rattle Morrison’s cage at the outset than try to sweet-talk him into providing information. The direct approach had always worked better for Brixton when he was plying his trade as a detective in Savannah. Make ’em sweat!

  “Will Mr. Morrison know what this is in reference to?” the receptionist asked, a question she was accustomed to posing.

  “Tell him that I’m a private investigator looking into Senator Gillespie’s extracurricular activities in Georgia,” Brixton said sternly.

  “Please hold.”

  She returned a minute later. “Mr. Brixton? I’m afraid that Mr. Morrison is tied up at the moment.”

  Sounds kinky Brixton thought but didn’t say. “When won’t he be tied up?” he asked.

  “If you’ll give me your number I’ll pass it on to Mr. Morrison.”

  “Sure,” Brixton said, rattling it off for her. “You might also tell Mr. Morrison that I’ll be talking with his friend, Howie Ebhart.” Brixton had researched Ebhart, who billed himself as a political consultant.

  “All right,” she said. “Thank you for calling Morrison Associates.”

  Brixton grinned as he sat back in his swivel desk chair. He’d been told that Ebhart was the one who had put Morrison in touch with the abortionist. If true—and he had no reason to doubt it—he could envision Morrison placing a fast call to Ebhart to get their stories straight.

  He hadn’t felt this charged up in too long a time. He knew a man, now deceased, who’d been in and out of prison multiple times for burglaries and grand theft. The last time he’d been released he was sixty-seven years old and should have enjoyed freedom in his dotage. But within two weeks of his release he’d been arrested again for masterminding a break-in of a manufacturing company’s offices in search of payroll cash. Brixton had visited him in prison and asked why he’d done it.

  “I missed the action,” was the reply.

  Brixton understood. Action was good. It was healthy—provided you didn’t end up in jail or take a bullet.

  * * *

  Brixton’s vision of Morrison calling Howie Ebhart was prescient.

  “Howie, it’s Eric.”

  “My man,” Ebhart said pleasantly. “How are things?”

 
“Things are not good.”

  He told him about Brixton’s call.

  “That’s a problem,” Ebhart said.

  “A big one. Why the hell is he calling me?”

  “I don’t know, Eric. Somebody in Georgia must have tipped him about you.”

  “Tipped him about me? What the hell did I do? I didn’t do anything illegal in setting up the abortion. It was your contact.”

  “You laid out the money, Eric.”

  “That’s—what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just stating the obvious.”

  “That’s not important,” Morrison said, despite knowing that it was. If this investigator can implicate Gillespie, the senator’s in trouble was his unstated follow-up.

  Ebhart laughed, which annoyed Morrison.

  “You’re involved in this, too, Howie,” the lobbyist said.

  “Me? All I did was introduce you to somebody. What you and that person decided to do isn’t my problem.”

  Morrison thought of another introduction Ebhart had made, George Alard.

  “Look, Howie, this investigator, Robert Brixton, says that he intends to call you, too.”

  “Let him. I have nothing to hide.”

  “Really? You set me up with that abortionist and with Alard.”

  Another annoying laugh from Ebhart. “I do get around, don’t I? And what’s Alard got to do with it?” He cut off Morrison’s next comment. “Look, Eric, there’s nothing to be upset about. It’ll pass. Believe me, it’ll pass.”

  “When he calls, stonewall him, Howie. You say that it’ll pass. I say that we’ve got a potential mess on our hands.”

  “We’ve got a problem?”

  “Let me know if he calls you,” Morrison said, and ended the conversation.

  He summoned a young lobbyist he’d recently hired into his office. “I need you to do something and do it fast,” he told him. “Find out what you can about a private investigator here in D.C. named Robert Brixton.”

  “What’s this about, Eric?”

  “Just do it, okay? Get back to me by the end of the day. And while you’re at it check out a guy named Eugene Waksit. I need it before I leave for dinner.”

  Calm down, he told himself when his assistant had left. The fact that some private investigator was looking into Senator Gillespie’s love life wasn’t necessarily the end of the world. But it could be troublesome—for him. If Gillespie were to lose his seat in Congress, that would mean having to cultivate a new champion in the Senate, someone on the right committees and with the clout that came with that. Too, having Gillespie in his pocket helped ensure that PAA didn’t decide to seek another lobbying organization to advance its agenda. No elected official had a greater influence on legislation that benefited the pharmaceutical industry than Senator Ronald Gillespie.

  The arrangement he’d made with the abortionist to end the young woman’s pregnancy was decidedly sub rosa, money paid under the table, no strings attached. Politicians were forever on the receiving end of scurrilous rumors and politically motivated smears. Gillespie had plenty of political enemies back in Georgia.

  Had some political foe come across the nasty episode with the teenage girl and was now trying to use it to smear Gillespie’s reputation and reelection chances? Had that same person hired a sleazy private investigator to build a case against Gillespie? What had politics become? he mused. Ronald Gillespie was a respected member of the United States Senate. To have some down-and-out gumshoe—that’s what private investigators were called in trash fiction, weren’t they?—poking his nose into something that was none of his business was intolerable to Morrison. The sob sister talking heads on cable TV denounce the role of lobbyist money in the political system. What do they know? Gillespie needs the money provided by lobbyists like me, Morrison often told himself, to retain his pivotal role in the Senate and stand up for pharmaceutical companies that create the medicines that keep people alive. Lobbying is honorable. Lobbying is American. Lobbying is crucial to keeping the nation going forward.

  That was his mantra when questioned by those with a jaundiced view of money and its pervasive role in politics.

  Privately, he didn’t believe a word of it. He was well aware that politics had become a business in which money talked and the only goal was to retain power. That was okay with him. He was in the business of buying politicians, and it had provided him and his family an upscale lifestyle. Nothing else mattered. End of internal debate.

  * * *

  Jayla and Nate Cousins were seated at the same table they’d occupied the last time they were at Bistro Du Coin. Cousins was pleased that Jayla had agreed to be picked up at her apartment. It felt more like a real date than meeting up separately. He thought that she looked especially beautiful that evening, and was aware of the admiring male glances as the maître d’ showed them to the table. The lavender dress she wore provided a lovely scrim for her dusky complexion.

  “I’m glad that you called and suggested dinner,” he said.

  “I don’t usually initiate a dinner date,” she said.

  “Why the change?”

  “Because I have something to discuss with you.”

  “So you said when you called. A problem?”

  “Probably not, but I need some good advice.”

  “I’m flattered,” he said.

  She unfolded her napkin and placed it on her lap.

  “Is this about what I said the last time we were here?”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “When I said that I’d fallen in love with you?”

  “Oh. No, it has nothing to do with that.”

  He masked his disappointment. He would have liked to continue that conversation.

  “What is it then?”

  “Let’s order first,” she suggested.

  They shared a bottle of Cabernet.

  “Nate,” she said, “I want to talk with you about my father’s research.”

  While he would have preferred to expand on the more personal topic, he was also quietly pleased that the subject of her father’s research had come up. He’d not had a chance to pursue what his boss, Walt Milkin, had requested of him. Maybe Jayla was about to hand him the information without his having to work for it.

  They clicked the rims of their wineglasses and sipped.

  “Frankly, Nate, I’m in a quandary,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “I also haven’t been honest with Walt Milkin. I know that you’ve been interested in my dad’s research. So has Mr. Milkin. He asks me about it every time I see him.”

  Cousins shrugged. “I can understand that,” he said. “As for me, my interest in it is because it involves you. As his daughter, his work must have special meaning.”

  “Of course. I take tremendous pride in what he accomplished. You thought that a placebo effect might be responsible for any anecdotal success he had with his clinic patients. That isn’t true. My dad left me a package that our housekeeper, Tabitha, gave me when I was home. According to what he left me—a long letter detailing the work he did, and packets of seeds for plants that he used to compound his pain medication—he conducted his own personal clinical studies with patients.” Her smile was reflective. “It bothered him that some of his patients received a placebo. He wanted every one of them to benefit. And don’t misunderstand. I know that his small, personal clinical trial won’t mean anything to an American pharmaceutical firm because it involved only a few patients. But the results were impressive. Those who received the real thing had a dramatic lessening of their pain, while those receiving the placebo reported only minor relief, if any.” She leaned closer to him, her hand on his arm. “Nate,” she said, “the medication worked. It really worked.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a minute, Jayla.”

  “I haven’t discussed this with anyone because, frankly, I don’t know what to do with the in
formation my father left me. You know that the field where he grew his plants was destroyed at the same time he was murdered.”

  Cousins nodded.

  And he had an assistant named Eugene, Eugene Waksit.”

  “We talked about him the last time.”

  “Fortunately, my father left me his long and detailed account of his research, fortunate because his official logs and notes disappeared when he was killed.”

  “Presumably taken by this fellow Waksit.”

  “I don’t know that for certain. He did inform my father’s attorney that he’d been granted my father’s results before he died.”

  “Which you feel is a lie.”

  “Yes. It must be.”

  “Does he have anything in writing?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. It certainly isn’t in his will. I’ve just learned that Eugene is here in the United States.”

  Cousins sat up straighter. “He is? How do you know that? Has he contacted you?”

  “No. My father’s attorney told me.”

  “Where in the States?”

  “Los Angeles, as far as the attorney knew.”

  “Do you think he’s come to the States to try and sell your dad’s research findings?”

  “That’s why I decided to discuss it with you. I—well, I trust you, Nate.”

  “I’m glad I’ve earned that trust, Jayla. What would you like me to do?”

  She paused before answering. “I’m wondering whether I should take what my father accomplished and have Renewal Pharmaceuticals pick up where he left off.”

  Cousins, too, paused before replying. When he did he said, “I know that Walt Milkin would be overjoyed if you did. But I hope you’re not doing it just because I suggested it the last time we were together. This should be your decision and your decision only. Are you serious about it?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately.”

  Their dinner arrived. Jayla asked, “So, what do you think of my sharing the research with Renewal?”

  “I think you have to do what you’re comfortable with,” he said. “I mentioned the last time we were together that your father’s assistant, Waksit, is likely to try and sell the research to a pharmaceutical company. He obviously won’t approach Renewal because he knows that you work there. Besides, there are plenty of other pharmas with more money and clout than Renewal. One thing you might consider…”