The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  “Why? What had you done?”

  “General attitude, I think, more than anything. Lack of respect. I kind of took the lead in standing up for the patients over money.”

  Ann jumped in to qualify that. “Tim would say in resisting the company—”

  Hardy cut off the potential argument. “So how did the secretary get involved in all this? He had no real power, did he?”

  “How did Rasputin get in?” Eric asked. “He had no real power, either.”

  The dynamic was still eluding Hardy. “But the guy’s just a secretary, right?”

  For the first time, Ann and Eric shared the same reaction—a shared joke. “Mr. Driscoll,” Eric explained, “was an executive assistant. Never, ever, ever a secretary.”

  “And I hope that’s clear,” Ann added, a wan smile flickering.

  “As to how he got where he did,” Eric kept it on point, “as Ann’s mentioned, he was the detail guy. Well, you take care of enough details, pretty soon it looks like you run the shop.”

  Ann started to say something, perhaps defend Markham again, but Eric held out his hand, stopping her. “Look, this is what happens. You get called to the office of the CEO, you’re uptight to begin with. So you’re waiting outside Markham’s office by Brendan’s desk, and his attitude tells you that whatever trouble you might have thought you were in, in fact it’s worse.

  “Then, while you wait and wait, and you do, Brendan the very well-dressed and extremely formal executive assistant basically explains the ground rules. Mr. Markham doesn’t like personal confrontation. He prefers to keep meetings short. Within a week, he tells you, you’ll receive a written pre´cis of the main points covered and actions you discussed that would be taken. You should then sign this letter to acknowledge its contents and return it to the office.

  “The point got made. The guy had developed this just unbelievable array of rules and protocol, all designed to insulate and protect his boss. I mean, he’d write in unsigned postscripts at the bottom of letters, and you’d think they were from Tim.”

  Suddenly, hearing the specifics, Hardy understood completely. David Freeman’s receptionist, Phyllis, was a lesser version of Brendan Driscoll. Hardy had been humorously pressing Freeman to fire her for about five years, but the old man wouldn’t hear of it, saying he’d never get his work done without her. And perhaps he believed it. But Hardy had on several occasions seen Phyllis restrict access to Freeman so thoroughly—and with such sincere compassion and sympathy—that associates she didn’t like had finally quit the firm over it, thinking all the while it had been Freeman who’d been stiffing them. “And Tim was okay with this?” Hardy asked.

  “Actually, no,” Ann said. “When he finally started seeing the extent of it. I think it was one of those things that started small, you know, then over time got out of hand.”

  “Enough to get Driscoll fired?” Hardy asked.

  Ann hesitated. She brushed some hair back away from her forehead. “The truth is that Tim felt he was having some kind of midlife breakdown. The business was falling apart around him, then his marriage, his kids, all that. That’s why he went back to Carla, to see if he could save something he’d worked years to build, but it’s also why he couldn’t fire Brendan, though he knew he should. But he couldn’t while everything else in his life was in such upheaval. He depended on him too completely.”

  Hardy didn’t know how much of it was true, how much was a function of Markham’s rationalizations to his mistress so that he could appear sensitive and caring. One thing was sure, though—Ann believed it.

  “Did Tim talk to him?” Hardy asked. “Give him any kind of warning?”

  “Sure. Brendan knew, I think, that Tim had made up his mind to let him go. It was just a question of the timing. Tim couldn’t hide that from him if he wanted to, I don’t think. If that’s what you’re asking.”

  And suddenly, Hardy was thinking that Driscoll was at least some kind of suspect. “How did he feel about Carla?”

  “You mean would he kill her? And the kids? What for?”

  “That’s my question.”

  She was still thinking about her answer when Kensing had one. “If he felt that Tim was personally dumping him, I could see him wanting to wipe out any trace of him. The whole family.”

  But this was San Francisco. Hardy had to ask the question. “And you’re convinced, Ann, that Tim was completely straight. Sexually. He and Brendan didn’t have something else going on?”

  “Tim wasn’t gay,” Ann said, dismissing the idea out of hand. “Promise.”

  Which, Hardy knew, did not make it a certainty by any means.

  Eric spoke up again. “But if Brendan kills Tim, he’s unemployed.”

  “But he’s not fired, is he? He’s the loyal and hardworking executive assistant up until the very end. He gets another job in fifteen minutes.” Another thought occurred to Hardy, another tack. “When you threw him out of the ICU, where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. Off the floor, anyway.” There must have been very little pleasure in the original situation, but Kensing relished something about the memory of it. “He didn’t seem to believe that I could do that to him. Order him out of there. He found out.”

  “And you’re sure he didn’t return before the code blue?”

  “I don’t think he did. I can’t say for sure. I told you, I was busy out in the hall.”

  “But he was definitely still in the hospital, at least.”

  “Oh yeah. After Tim died…” He sighed again. “He didn’t take it well. It was pathetic, in fact. Embarrassing.”

  Hardy checked his watch. He had forty-five minutes before he needed to be home and he didn’t want to start something he couldn’t finish. But putting these two together was turning out very well, and Ann—as Markham’s lover—had access to parts of his psyche that would be unknown to anyone else. “Let me ask you, Ann,” he began. “What was in those original memos to Ross that made Tim so mad?”

  “Let me guess,” Kensing said. “Sinustop?”

  Ann nodded. “That’s it.” She looked at Hardy. “Have you heard of it?”

  “It’s a new hay fever pill, isn’t it?” Hardy had a vague memory. “But there was some problem with it?”

  “Not for most people,” Kensing said. “Some people, though, developed the unfortunate side effect of death. This was after the reps dumped thousands of samples on us and the directive came down from the corporate office—”

  “From Dr. Ross,” Ann interrupted. “He made those decisions. Not Tim.”

  “If you say so.” Kensing’s look told Hardy he wasn’t buying that. “Anyway,” he continued, “this stuff was so inexpensive and miraculous that we were strongly urged to prescribe it to all of our patients with any and all allergy symptoms. You know about samples?”

  “Not enough,” Hardy replied. “Tell me.”

  “Well, any new drug comes out, their reps go out and try to get doctors to give them to patients for free. The idea, of course, is brand-name recognition. The stuff works, it’s on the formulary, we prescribe it. Bingo, a wonder drug is born. But the sample campaign for Sinustop was just unbelievable. Nationwide, they must have given away a billion pills.”

  “And this was unusual?”

  Kensing nodded soberly. “The numbers were unusual, yes.”

  “So what was the problem between Markham and Ross?” Hardy asked.

  Ann looked over at Eric, then back to Hardy. “Tim heard about the first death and got a bad gut feeling. He asked Ross to call back all the samples and take it off the formulary until they could check it out further.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  Ann shook her head. “Worse than that, really. He and Tim had had these fights before, but Ross was really super-invested in this one. He tells Tim he’s the medical director, he knows this stuff. Tim just runs the business side. Why doesn’t he stick to that and keep his nose out of the medicine, which he doesn’t know anything about?”

  “So
they went at it?”

  Kensing seemed jolted out of his silence. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You’re not saying Tim was the good guy here, I hope?”

  She faced him with an angry and pitiless look. “What’s he supposed to do, Eric? Tell me that.”

  Hardy didn’t want to let any more friction develop. Kensing had enough reasons to hate Markham on his own—he wasn’t going to change his mind because maybe Tim had been a better CEO than he’d thought. “So how long had Tim and Ross been together?”

  “They were two of the founders.” She shrugged. “You could look it up.

  “And recently they’d had more than one of these Sinustop-type fights?”

  She frowned. “A few. Tim thought Ross’s decisions weren’t good medicine. He believed we had to keep delivering a good product—”

  “Product,” Eric said, snorting. “I like that.”

  Hardy ignored the interruption. “But then with Sinustop, things got worse? What finally happened?”

  “Well, Ross got his way. They didn’t pull the samples—”

  Kensing supplied the ending. “And sixteen other people died around the country. Two of them with Parnassus.”

  In the telling, Hardy had come to remember the scandal clearly now. But although it had been prominent in the news, he didn’t recall that Parnassus had been any part of it, and he said as much.

  Ann jumped to Markham’s defense. “Tim covered for Ross, that’s why.”

  Kensing was shaking his head. “Not.” He turned to Hardy. “Tim released a statement that the two patients who had died had taken samples they’d gotten here from before the first death had been reported—apparently this was true—and that we’d recalled all the samples and taken Sinustop off the formulary at the first indication of any problem. Not true. And if you call that covering for Ross…”

  “That’s what he did,” Ann snapped at him.

  Hardy jumped in before the smoldering anger in the room could erupt again. “Okay, good,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing I want you both to keep thinking about.” He turned to each of them in turn. But tension remained high.

  He was afraid to push his luck any further. Standing, he kept up his patter to keep them from each other. “I’m afraid I’ve got another appointment. Mrs. Kensing, thanks for your time. We’re settled in terms of the kids, right? All good there? Eric, I’d like a few words with you on our way out. I’ll wait while you tell your children good night.”

  “Honey, I’m home!” Ricky Ricardo he wasn’t, but for years early in their marriage, Hardy had come through the front door with his dead-on imitation. He’d made it with four minutes to spare by his watch, and considering the ever-escalating demands of the case that had been consuming his hours, he felt he’d done well.

  All lanky arms and legs, Rebecca came flying down the hallway. “Daddy! I’m so glad you’re home.” She jumped at him and knocked him back, but he held on and gave her a spin.

  In the dining room, the table was set. Frannie came to the door of the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest, but she was smiling. “Cutting it close, buster. Very, very close.”

  “I’ll get better, I promise.”

  They shared a chaste married kiss. Vincent, hanging back by the family room, said, “Gross.”

  So the two adults made eye contact and suddenly had their arms around each other, making out like teenagers. He picked Frannie all the way up off the ground and she kicked back her heels.

  “Gross me out,” Vincent shouted.

  “C’mon, you guys! Please. Just stop, okay.” This was Rebecca, arbiter of social correctness to the whole family.

  “I can’t help it,” Hardy said, finally stopping. “Your mother makes me crazy.”

  “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,” Frannie begged.

  Hardy complied. The romantic assault drove the two kids to the front of the house, gagging at peak volume. The last kiss turned into a semireal one, and when it ended, Frannie caught her breath for a second, then said, “Oh, that reminds me. Treya called this morning. We talked for nearly an hour.”

  Hardy was thinking this was swell. The wives were going to referee, and that would end with them all hating one another.

  “What about?” he asked.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  24

  Malachi Ross sat kitty-corner to Marlene Ash at a large table in the Police Commissioner’s Hearing Room, facing the members of the grand jury. When Ross had first come in, he took the oath and sat down, declining to remove the jacket to his suit. This had been a mistake. Once the initial opportunity had passed, no other appropriate moment presented itself. He didn’t want to seem nervous. Which he was. By now he was sweating heavily.

  Rooms in the Hall of Justice were traditionally far too hot or way too cold. Due to the state power crisis, maintenance crews had adjusted each and every one of the thermostats in the building. Now all the rooms that had been too cold were too hot and vice versa. It must have been eighty degrees in the airless chamber.

  Ross’s original plan was to cooperate fully with the investigation into Tim Markham’s death, and to that end his time in the witness chair began amicably enough. For nearly a half hour, this attractive and competent woman walked him through the many years of his and Tim’s relationship, the founding of Parnassus, the social contacts shared by the two men. Ms. Ash was looking for the person who had killed Tim. He had expected this sort of background drill, had even mentally prepared himself for it.

  He’d just given the grand jury a couple of minutes on the nature of his professional relationship with Mr. Markham. He’d told them that there had been very little friction between the two of them over the course of a dozen years, although of course they’d had their disagreements. But basically, they respected and trusted each other.

  Marlene Ash took this moment to stand up and move off a few steps into the center of the room. This was when the focus of the interrogation began to change. “Dr. Ross,” she said, turning back to where he sat, “how is Parnassus doing financially right now?”

  He took a misdirected shot at some levity. “We’re doing about as well as most health organizations in the country, which isn’t saying much. But we’re still afloat, if that’s what you mean.”

  A frigid smile. “Not quite. I was hoping you could tell us with more specificity. One can be afloat and still sinking at the same time, isn’t that right? Wasn’t that the entire second half of Titanic? Aren’t you now the acting CEO of the corporation?”

  “Yes.” He composed himself, looking down at his linked fingers. When he raised his gaze to the grand jury, the effect of the tragedy he’d endured was apparent. “After last Tuesday, after Tim—Mr. Markham—died, the board appointed me CEO on an interim basis.”

  “So you’re intimately familiar with the company’s financial situation, are you not?”

  “Well, it’s been less than a week. I wouldn’t say I’ve got the handle on it that Mr. Markham had, but I’m reasonably conversant with the numbers, yes. And frankly, have been for some time.”

  “Then you would know if, in fact, Parnassus is under some financial duress, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has the company, in fact, considered filing for bankruptcy?”

  Understanding that financial pressures at Parnassus would clearly appear to the DA to be a possible motive for Markham’s death, Ross had expected his inquisitor to get to this line of questioning sometime, but now that it was here, he felt somewhat unprepared. He ran a couple of fingers over his damp forehead, considered whether he should ask permission to take off his coat, or simply do it. In the end, he did nothing. “It’s certainly been discussed. It’s an option we’ve considered.”

  “Do you know if Mr. Markham had considered it, as well?”

  “Yes. The matter has been on the table now for some time.”

  During the next forty-five minutes, Ash led him on a grueling journey through the Parnassus books, through the intricacies
of incomes, copays, expenses, payrolls, premiums, and corporate salaries. The damned woman seemed to know enough to cut through his obfuscation and get to the real nuts and bolts of how the place worked. Ross knew that many other employees had also gotten subpoenas, and figuring that on balance they would tell the truth, he had no choice but to stay close to the facts himself.

  “So, Dr. Ross, to your knowledge is Parnassus going bankrupt in the next six months? If not, please explain how you plan to keep the company solvent.”

  The sheer effrontery of the question made him want to snap back that it was none of her goddamn business, but he realized that he was trapped.

  Now began a cat-and-mouse game where he provided as vague and general a version as possible of his plans for Parnassus, from which Ash—calm, collected, and apparently with all the time in the world—pried out details, one by one and piece by piece. He felt as if he were being very slowly ground to sausage.

  By the time they finished, the water pitcher in front of him was empty, and he was so wet with perspiration he might well have dumped its contents over his head instead of drinking it. The only good news was that the questions about the formulary had centered on the dollars and cents, details such as how much items cost and the volume of prescriptions. Ash didn’t really probe how new drugs got listed in the first place. Ross found it agonizing to wait for that shoe to drop—what if they knew? Or even suspected? Wouldn’t they have had to tell him he was under investigation? Would he have to stop and insist on seeing a lawyer?

  But these fears remained unrealized. Ash moved along to her own priorities. “So, Dr. Ross, to summarize. It is your testimony under oath that you do not expect Parnassus to go bankrupt within the next six months, whether or not the city pays the thirteen-million-dollar bill it has presented.”

  Ross put on a fresh face for the nineteen citizens seated in front of him. He was surprised to see such a focus, an apparent interest, in most of them. They were waiting for his answer, although he had a sense of gathering impatience. But maybe, he realized, that was him. “Well, never say never. Bankruptcy protects the corporation from its creditors, true, and we could indeed use some relief there if the city defaults on its obligation. But with a group like us, when our biggest client is the city and county of San Francisco, it would also negatively impact our credibility, which is not too high as it is. As some of you may know, we’ve been getting a lot of bad press lately.”