Flashback

by Michael Palmer

  "Frank, are you all right?"

  "Huh? Oh, sure. I'm just furious, that's all."

  "I'm not too happy about it, either. Any idea why your father wouldn't have spoken to you about this?" Frank snorted a laugh. "Only dozens," he said… Regional director… Leigh… the flexibility… the leverage… the power… He had driven down with such high hopes. He would be driving back with nothing-nothing but headaches. Fuck em, he thought viciously. The Judge and his brother. Fuck em both. "Do you have anything to drink in this place? " he asked. "Just coffee, Frank. You want that?"

  "Yeah, okay. No, no, forget it."

  He stood and stalked to the window, his fists opening and closing at his sides. "Frank, " Leigh said evenly, "you have to calm down. We've got to know we can count on you to take care of this. Ultramed has too much at stake right now to take any backward steps. The competition is just waiting for a screw-up that they can use to turn prospective acquisitions against us. So just stay calm. This isn't such a big surprise, if you think about it. We expected when your father insisted on a buy back clause that he'd probably make some sort of move like this. He's a controller. That's his style."

  "Tell me about it, " Frank said bitterly, still staring out at the Atlantic., The question is whether he's just playing his game, or whether he really intends to fight. Any ideas about that?" Frank turned back to her. "It's a bluff, " he said. "And that business about Beaulieu's widow?"

  "Also a bluff. If Beaulieu had anything of substance, I would have heard about it long before this. It's the same sort of crap my father's been pulling since as far back as I can remember."

  "Can you handle him?"

  "You're damn right I can. There isn't going to be any goddamn audit."

  "What?"

  "I said I'll take care of it." He cursed his slip, and silently cautioned himself to be more alert. "This is just another of his little tests, " he said. "I've taken them before."

  They were underestimating him. Zack, the Judge, even Leigh. They were underestimating him badly, and they would see. They would all see. He was younger and stronger than his father, and he had learned the lessons of the man well. "We're counting on you," Leigh said. "We want this whole business resolved before the board meets."

  "It will be."

  "Good. I'll be watching. It means a great deal to me to have you do this right. And it goes without saying that it means a great deal to you, too, yes?"

  "When this is all over, " Frank said stonily, "I want my goddamn brother out of Ultramed. I would fire him right now, but until this business with my father is resolved, I don't want to make any moves that might set off the Judge all over again."

  "I agree. Above all, you've got to keep things cool. Her tone softened.

  "… Listen, Frank, you deal with this smoothly and you'll have our blessing to get rid of your brother if that's what you want. In fact, prove you can handle your father, and you can consider your potential with this company unlimited."

  She smiled at him. "Unlimited, Frank…"

  "I understand."

  "Good."

  She stood then. "I want to be kept abreast of what's going on."

  She nodded toward the Judge's letter. "I don't like surprises."

  "I understand, " he said again. "There won't be any."

  "In that case, Frank, you have a very bright future with our company. 5@ A minute passed after the door to suite 200 closed behind Frank. Leigh Baron poured a weak bourbon and water from the room's well-stocked credenza. Then she turned to the intercom, inconspicuously placed on an end table. "It's okay, Ed, " she said. "He's gone."

  Edison Blair, the CEO of RIATA International, entered the room from the inner office where he had been listening and crossed directly to the bar. He was nearing fifty but looked ten years younger, with close-cut, sandy hair, a lean, almost slight frame, and a deceptively boyish face.

  His personal worth, estimated by various sources to be between twenty and thirty million, was actually closer to twice that, and was growing as rapidly as his young corporation. "Unlimited potential. I like that little touch at the end, " he said. "He thinks you were referring to yourself, you know."

  "Of course I know. I picked up all the tools I needed to deal with Frank Iverson in Men 101. Take away his vanity, and he's got nothing. With men like him, you've always got to leave the carrot."

  "I'll remember that. So, " he went on, "what do you think?"

  "Dunno. I have my doubts."

  "I've only met this Judge Iverson once, but from what I sensed of the man, my money's on him."

  Blair poured a shot of Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila, sniffed it once, and downed it in a single, quick gulp. "I agree, " Leigh said, "but I think it's worth waiting a bit before we play out our hand. Who knows? Maybe Frank'll pull it off. He's been a hell of a surprise so far-to everyone but me, that is."

  "It's lucky we don't have too many more surprises like him working for us, Leigh. It's not exactly optimal business practice to carry an administrator who embezzles a quarter of a million dollars from you."

  "Come on, Ed.

  He's made ten times that much for us already, and you know it. Our accountants haven't found so much as a missing penny since that one time. From the scrambling he's been doing, they think he's buying time to replace that money, and so do I. Either way, it's our ace in the hole."

  "So we wait?"

  "We wait."

  "Leigh, I don't want us losing that hospital."

  "We're not going to lose anything. You can count on it."

  Edison Blair eyed her for a moment. "I am, " he said. DISAPPOINTMENTS AND hard times had dogged Jack Pearl most of his life. From as far back as he could remember, he had been different-an outsider. For one thing, he was an insomniac, a pathologic insomniac. As a youth, his parents would scold him for being in the basement at four o'clock in the morning, fiddling with his chemistry set. Later that same day, he would be reprimanded and sent home for falling asleep in class. His condition had led to threats of expulsion on any number of occasions, and he well might have been expelled were he not, thanks to an 10 in the 160s, the best student in his school. Making matters even more difficult for Pearl during those school years was the gradual emergence of his homosexuality. And even within that subset he was a fringe player, preferring mueh younger boys and their photographs to any more threatening entanglements. In college, no roommate lasted more than a few weeks with his bizarre biologic rhythms and deepening melancholia.

  His dormitory room walls were decorated with posters and photos of his special heroes, Napoleon, Dickens, Edison, Churchill, Kafka, and Proust, none of whom, according to the first of his therapists, had ever enjoyed so much as one normal night's sleep. That an insomniac should have chosen anesthesia as his life's work was one of the few pleasant ironies in Pearl's life, that one should have developed Serenyl, the quintessential sleep-inducing agent, was the ultimate irony of all. The Screnyl odyssey had begun years before, in Iquitos, a jungle village by the headwaters of the Peruvian Amazon, where Pearl had accepted a six-month medical mission appointment as a means of escaping yet another disastrous situation in yet another hospital. Within a few weeks of his arrival, he had developed an intense fascination with the drugs used by medicine men, and in particular, with a plant alkaloid used by the most mystical "doctors" in the region to induce a purgative state of deep hypnosis in their followers. The moment Pearl first witnessed the incredible substance in action, the lack of direction and purpose in his life was at an end. Two years of meticulously dissecting the active component in the alkaloid and modifying its composition led him to the synthesis of Serenyl-a structurally unique anesthe ic, fully as remarkable as was its chemical forebear. Now, for the first time since he conceived of its application, synthesized it, patented it, and adjusted its delivery and dosage in actual O. R. situations, Pearl's Serenyl was under attack. It was five in the morning. An hour before, Pearl had given up trying to sleep and had brewed himself a pot of coffee. In the nearly twenty-four
hours since his confrontation with Zack Iverson, he had slept, perhaps, two. Familiar feelings of loneliness and isolation-feelings he had been able to keep reasonably in check since moving to Sterling-had surfaced and were beginning to smother him. The first glow of dawn was spilling over the valley as he wrapped himself in a blanket, padded across his dew-sliced yard, and settled onto a slat-backed chair. He wondered if a sleeping pill of some sort might be in order. With Mainwaring gone to Atlanta, the surgical load was light enough for his associate and their nurse anesthe ist to handle. He could call in sick and take a couple of hundred milligrams of Seconal. It had been years since he had taken a drug of any kind-he hated feeling the loss of control-but this might well be the time. He had been thinking too hard, his mind poring over and over the evidence Frank's brother had thrown at him, frantically trying to assess the extent of the threat and to find fault in the man's logic. Pinpointing even potential errors in Zack Iverson's reasoning had not been easy.

  Pearl lit his fifth cigarette of the hour, searched about for a packet of Kleenex, and finally wiped his nose on the corner of the blanket. Why was it, he wondered, that every time life had started looking the least bit bright for him, every goddamn time, something or someone had come along to screw it up? "y?

  Most aggravating of all to him was that this time, from the very beginning, he had seen the potential for trouble and had discussed his concerns with his partners. He had warned them that Serenyl's marvelously diminished recovery time-the most distinctive of its many attributes-was also its Achilles' heel. The rest of the properties that set it apart from other anesthe ics, injected or inhaled, were all unwanted side effects it did not have. He had even suggested using the anesthe icon other surgeons' patients, so that should questions arise, his technique, and not the drug, would be the focus of any suspicion.

  But Frank and Mainwaring had been obstinate in their demand for absolute secrecy. In fact, both men had pooh-pooh ed his concerns and had laughed at the notion that anyone at Ultramed-Davis might be sharp enough, or interested enough, to put things together. They hadn't counted on Zachary Iverson. Pearl knew that he was drifting in over his head. Over a lifetime of turmoil he had developed something of a sixth sense about such things. He should have been on the phone to Frank the moment Zack Iverson walked out of his office. But he had needed time to think-not so much about the gallbladder cases Iverson was reviewing, or even about the implications of the possible discovery of Serenyl, but about the chances that this child, this Toby Nelms was, in fact, suffering from a complication of his anesthesia. Serenyl was the achievement of Pearl's lifetime-the validation of his entire chaotic and harried existence. It simply had to be flawless. It was Mainwaring's promise, in writing, that Pearl would eventually receive credit for his work, that had brought him to Sterling. That Prank Iverson had arranged for him to be paid handsomely for his discovery when others had threatened to prosecute him for even working on it, was only icing on the cake. Of course, Pearl acknowledged grudgingly, Frank Iverson had also smoothed over his past difficulties-most notably a dicey piece of business involving a politican's son in Akron. But without Mainwaring's promise, even the lure of escaping that mess would not have been enough to make him move to a place like Sterling, much less to share the Serenyl patent. But share that patent he had. And now, like it or not, Pearl knew that he had to talk to Frank about his brother and Toby Nelms. They had looked at every possible immediate complication of Serenyl-renal effects, liver function, pulmonary function-and had found none. It had been sloppy not to have been conducting a long-range retrospective survey as well. But dammit, Pearl rationalized, the drug had persistently functioned so perfectly… Well, now he would simply have to make his partners understand that they had made a mistake, thank God it was not a fatal one. They merely had to go back and do the study they should have been doing from the beginning. With just a little investigation, just a hundred or so calls to patients who had received the anesthe ic, Pearl knew he could determine if Toby Nelms was a coincidence or a problem.

  Nobody would even have to know why he was conducting the survey. And if there was a problem with Serenyl-if a second case like Toby Nelms was identified-almost certainly, he could fix it. He knew every molecule of the drug. All he needed was the chance. Pearl stood and paced nervously about the yard, mindless of the damp, which had already soaked through his cloth slippers. He had a decent handle on Jason Mainwaring. In a sense, they were allies. The surgeon was a haughty, privileged bastard, but he was far more bark than bite. In fact, with his company's money on the line, he would probably demand that this loose end be tied up before consummating their deal. Pearl stubbed his cigarette into the lawn and shakily lit another. It was Frank Iverson he feared. For as long as he could remember, wherever he had lived, whatever he had been doing, there had been Frank Iversons. They had pushed him in the schoolyard and called him names, they had sent flunkies to trip him and had stood laughing with their girlfriends as he clutched at the bloody scrapes on his knees and elbows, later in life they had loomed behind their desks, shaking their manicured fingers at him and telling him that there was no room in their institutions for "his type."

  And however much this Frank Iverson's outward concern and intervention had helped him, Pearl knew better than to trust him. It was Serenyl, and Serenyl alone, that maintained the man's civility and support. For nearly two years their work had gone on without a single hitch.

  It would take care and patience to convince Iverson of the need to hold off on the sale. But what were a few weeks, Pearl reasoned desperately, or even a few months, compared with the importance of the anesthe ic to medicine? In the end, even Frank would have to understand that.

  Understand. Pearl shuddered at the notion. One of the more unpleasant constants in life had been that, where he and the things that were important to him were concerned, the Frank Iversons had never understood. There were still several hours before Iverson would even be at his office. Until then, there was nothing he could do. He badly needed to relax. Glancing at his watch, he crossed the yard and entered the cellar of his rented bungalow through the metal bulkhead. The basement, dusty and unfinished, was illuminated by a single, bare bulb, suspended from the ceiling. Pearl took a screwdriver from his toolbox, knelt down behind the oil burner, and pried out a loosened segment from the cinderblock wall. Creating the hiding place had been one of his first priorities after moving in. He moved several dozen vials of Serenyl and the notebook outlining its synthesis off to one side of the space and withdrew one of two cigar boxes stuffed with photographs.

  Next, he carefully replaced the cinderblock and shuffled to his room.

  Settling onto his bed, he undid his robe, and then, one at a time, drew certain photos from the box. By the third one, Pearl's hand had slipped down the front of his pajama pants and begun gently to massage himself.

  Iverson had demanded, none too kindly, that he steer absolutely clear of any involvement with boys, or for that matter, with any men in the area.

  Without the photographs, he would have gone insane. The ones he selected this morning were the very best in his collection-those he had taken himself. In minutes, his growing arousal had begun to dispel some of the fears and loneliness. It would all work out, he told himself. Whatever words he had to find to convince Iverson, he would find. He produced a five-by-seven in which three beautiful boys were frozen in a montage he had carefully designed. That afternoon in East St. Louis had been incredible-one of the very best. Slowly, Pearl's eyes closed, his movements intensifying as his fantasies took flight. Being different wasn't easy. It never had been. But as best he could, as he always had, he was making do. And for once in his life, for once in his goddamned, troubled life, something was going to work out. "Frank, come in, come in."

  Judge Clayton Iverson's chambers, a huge, high-ceilinged room with dark oak paneling and three walls of immaculately, aligned tomes, was as somber and intimidating as was the man himself. On the wall behind the desk, surrounding a portrait of the c
hief justice of the Supreme Court, were dozens of framed photographs of the Judge in variations of the same pose with three presidents, half a dozen governors, and virtually every New Hampshire politician of substance for the past half century. There was also, near the center of the display, a color photo of Frank, dressed in his purple and gold Sterling High School uniform, his left arm extended, his right cocked behind his ear, ready to throw. The draperies were drawn against the midday sun. Seated behind his massive oak desk, his thick, silver hair fairly glowing in the dim light, the Judge looked bigger than life. Frank had feared it was an error not to have pushed for a meeting in some more neutral site. And now, as he sensed the awe that had always accompanied his visits to that room, he cursed himself for not having been more insistent. Well, no matter, he decided. It was time for a new Iverson to take charge. He had set passing records on the fields of a dozen different rivals, his play had quieted scores of enemy crowds. He would meet the man in his lair, or anywhere else for that matter, and he would prevail. "So, Judge, " he began, matching, then just exceeding the firmness f the man's handshake.

  "How goes it? Mom okay?"

  "She's still upset about Annie, but otherwise, she's fine. In it up to here in that garden of hers."

  "She certainly does love that ol' garden. Lisette's been working on one, too, you know. You and Mom'll have to come see it. Speaking of Annie, have you by any chance seen her today?"

  "Nope, tonight. I promised your mother I'd take her over."

  "Well, you're in for a pleasant surprise. She's doing great. Don Norman tells me they'll probably operate on her hip before the week's out. Now Suzanne Cole is back on the case, so Annie's got the benefit of both doctors."

  "That's good to hear, Frank. It's a shame, though, a crying shame that she had to fall like that."

  Frank tensed. As always, the man had gone right for the jugular. No bullshit, no finesse. The key to handling him would be to stay cool and not allow himself to get rattled. "No one feels worse about what happened than I do, Judge, " he said. "But what's done is done. Now, our job is to get her back on her feet, right? And thanks to Ultramed, we've got one of the best physical therapy departments in the state."