Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Dolan seemed suddenly to realize that his father and brother were both waiting on him to speak, and he said, “The inclusion criteria for the Phase I subjects are very strict. The issue isn’t scientific, though. Medical records are confidential. Our preclinical analyses are part of the private data on these subjects, so discussing them with you would be illegal.”

  Tim picked up the stack of folders and fanned them. “Some of your records seem to be more confidential than others.”

  Dean rolled back his chair and pulled himself upright. For the first time since Tim and Bear had entered, they had his full attention. “I don’t like where this started, and I don’t like where it’s headed. We’re doing our best to work with you, and we’re even willing to put the operation of two companies on hold to do it. But everything about your approach—and the entire…worldview of your oversize friend here—would suggest that perhaps you should be dealing with our lawyers, since you have somehow converted this into a grudge match between yourself and Vector. Which it may be, for all I know. But if so, it’s one in which you will not prevail. I will match my resources against those of the Justice Department anytime. And have. If you want cooperation, stop making ludicrous, poorly veiled accusations. We all know that the murder at my house last night is, in all likelihood, unrelated to me, my sons, or this corporation.”

  Tim said, “The victim was a former security employee of Beacon-Kagan. The perpetrator, the uncle of a kid discontinued in a Vector trial. Unrelated? Not even you can sell that, Mr. Kagan. Why else would you add a two-man security detail to the house as of this morning?”

  “Caution, of course.”

  “You sure you don’t know something we don’t?”

  “I’m quite sure I know many things you don’t, Deputy.” Dean’s hand raised from the desktop, tilting toward the door. “Now unless there’s something else…?”

  The door closed behind the deputies, leaving the three Kagan men in uneasy silence. Dolan started to say something, but Dean held up a hand, pausing him until the elevator doors dinged shut in the hall.

  Dolan said, “Walker Jameson blames us for his sister’s death.”

  “Come on,” Chase said.

  “He’s after something else,” Dean said. “Ted Sands hasn’t worked for this corporation for over a year—he certainly had nothing to do with Tess or her son. And besides, what could we possibly be at fault for?”

  “We drove Tess Jameson to her suicide.” Hearing it aloud, even from his own mouth, sent a wash of acid through Dolan’s stomach. Months ago Dolan had been informed of Sam’s discharge in a closed-door meeting with his father, brother, and Chris Huang, his protests quickly dissolved into silent complicity (what was that adage about good men doing nothing?).

  “No one drives anyone to suicide,” Dean said. “If you think so, you’re a fool.”

  “She was hanging on by her fingernails for that kid when she came to us, sir.”

  Biting his lip and sliding his hand up the neck to the tenth fret, Chase played the opening phrase from “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” bending the last note into a whiny vibrato.

  “We’ve been over this,” Dean said. “We didn’t have a choice.”

  “We knew Sam. We used him. I visited him in his own room. And we pulled the rug out on his last option.”

  “Right,” Chase said. “And now some other fucking kid will live and not the one you played checkers with on the local news. We can’t save everyone. Not until we have this product approved. And don’t forget, she brought this on. Not us.”

  Dolan said, “It didn’t look that way when I came into the parking garage.”

  Dean laughed—the dry chuckle that had made Dolan’s palms sweat for more than three decades. “This isn’t test tubes and Bunsen burners. This is the real world.” He jogged a finger back and forth, indicating himself and Chase. “Where we live. Wise up, son. And don’t lecture me about options.”

  “If the Xedral trial goes as smoothly as we think it will,” Chase said, “who’s to say it won’t be to market in time to save the kid?”

  Dolan smoothed the wrinkles at his thighs. “His liver’s deteriorating faster than our business plan’s progressing.”

  “You’re so wrapped up in that kid that you’re keeping tabs?” Dean shook his head. “Guilt is an indulgence, Dolan. It tangles you in the past. Science is forward-looking. Likewise our business. We have a sound product that will save millions of lives. If you have confidence in Xedral—”

  “One of the monkeys is missing,” Dolan said. “From the longitudinal safety study. She just disappeared.”

  Dean settled back in his chair. Same dry chuckle. “Test subjects don’t just disappear.”

  “Well, this one did.”

  “You watch your tone.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Dolan moistened his lips nervously. “The thing is, this isn’t the only monkey that disappeared. I checked the safety study trial data, and we also lost two subjects in X3 trials and one in X4s that aren’t accounted for. I now require the Lentidra data—not reports, not summaries, but all of it, in raw form—so I can gauge the comparison—”

  “Trust me,” Dean said. “The data’s sound.”

  “Sir”—Dolan took a moment to still his voice—“you’re not…”

  “I’m not what? A scientist? Qualified to assess data? No. I’m an entrepreneur who’s done approximately forty billion dollars of business in pharmaceuticals. I believe that I—and your CEO—can be trusted to know if there’s a problem with some standard data.”

  Dolan kept his hands together in his lap, his gaze on the union of his knuckles. He couldn’t push any further, but he also didn’t want to capitulate. He heard some rustling and figured that Chase and Dean were exchanging glances—puzzlement, contempt—and then Dean said, “Jesus Christ,” and snatched up the phone. “Get me Huang. Upstairs. Now.” He turned his attention to Dolan. “I’ll tell you what. If there is, in fact, a problem with Huang’s numbers as you claim, we’ll get you anything you need. If not, can we stop this endless cycling through old data on discontinued products?”

  By the time Huang had arrived and Dean had impatiently brought him up to speed on the impasse, Dolan had settled his nerves enough to remain calm and—he hoped—confident on the couch.

  Huang turned to him with evident irritation and said, “Yes, we took a hit in X3 animal trials, two subjects gone. And one in X4. And their deaths aren’t noted in the main body of data.”

  Dolan shifted to the edge of the couch.

  Huang held the pause, stoking Dolan’s anticipation. “It was simian hemorrhagic fever, Dolan. Not a conspiracy. This shouldn’t be news to you. You know we lost two subjects to it at the outset of our X5s.”

  “Now three. If you count Grizabella.”

  “Grizabella reached through her cage and drank a beaker of sodium hypochlorite last night. I don’t think that cause of death figures prominently in our areas of concern. Nor does SHF, which is why it’s not factored into the stats for transgene effectiveness.”

  “Okay. Fine.” Dolan caught himself backpedaling. “That begs the issue—”

  “Which is?” Chase asked impatiently.

  “Which is not that monkeys are dying—fourteen percent of our Xedral monkeys die—it’s that they’re disappearing from the subject suite and the staff refuse to tell me how.”

  “What is going on in that test-subject suite downstairs will reverberate around the world,” Huang said, “both medically and financially. I hold my team to the highest level of confidentiality. They clear everything through me. That they won’t answer the random questions of a scientist from another department—”

  “I am the principal investigator and senior scientist of Vector Biogenics. I started this goddamned company, Chris. You’re my employee. And your employees are my employees.” Dolan felt his face growing hot. “I’ll ask whatever questions and take whatever data I require to advance our work.”

  Huang glanced at Dean, and Dean
offered him a patient tip of his head. “Of course you can. And of course you will,” Huang said. “But you, like me, have to answer to a board. And adhere to corporate policies for internal communication. I would’ve been happy to tell you about Grizabella and the other test subjects we lost if you’d simply come to me and asked.” A pause, and then Huang pressed on, “How did you get that data from earlier trials anyway?”

  Dolan polished his glasses to give his hands something to do. “I pulled it off your computer.”

  Dean made a soft noise low in his throat, and Huang sank back in his chair.

  “Well,” Huang said after a measured pause, “I’ll be sure to log off my computer every time I leave my station. Any more questions, or can I get back to my work?”

  The door swung shut behind his angry exit. Dean ruffled papers at his desk, and Chase strummed a few chords before his cell phone chimed, summoning him into a Net meeting with investors in Asia.

  After a few minutes, Dolan rose, mildly unsteady on his feet, and walked out.

  Chapter 42

  Tim screeched his Explorer around overburdened gardener trucks clogging Wilshire’s left lane. With a swipe of his hand, Bear pulled the loose skin of his face into a droop, no doubt shoring up his enduring argument that himself at the wheel was the better default setting.

  Tim screwed his cell phone’s earpiece in another half turn, as if transmission were the problem. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Denley’s voice hid an element of amusement. “She will only do it in exchange for an exclusive interview with you.”

  “No way.”

  “She promised us the B-roll.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Neither did I, but now I like saying it. It’s the tape that has all the background stuff for the segment or ‘package’”—Denley’s rustling, Tim figured, was his squiggling air quotation marks—“anything that might be a story element. In other words, lots of footage that may have wound up on the cutting room floor. Connective clips of Tess, with the kid, the Vector guy. Pretty critical nexus, that segment. I don’t know that we can afford to pass it up.”

  Ever since Ginny’s murder and Tim’s highly publicized ouster from—and then reentry to—the Service, KCOM’s Melissa Yueh had been determined to interview him. At various significant periods during the past four and a half years, she’d left him messages, FedExed written requests, even stooped to dating the Service’s public information officer in an attempt to bring bureaucratic pressure to bear.

  “Give me her goddamned number.” Tim wrote it down angrily at a stoplight, the pressure of his notepad against the horn causing it to honk. His call-waiting was going, so he signed off and clicked over.

  Dray’s voice asked, “How attached were you to that vase on the coffee table?”

  “Not very attached?”

  “Good answer. Ty knocked it over.” A pause. “With the other vase.”

  “We need to declaw him.”

  “I’ll get some quotes. What gives with the case?”

  He gave her the rundown. When he got to Melissa Yueh’s request, his vehemence even drew Bear’s interest from the UCLA girls bobbing on elliptical trainers behind LA Fitness’s comprehensive windows. Tim waited for Dray to express her disbelief—which he presumed would caption Bear’s expression—but instead she said, “Not a bad idea.”

  “I’m sorry, is my wife there, please?”

  “Listen, Timmy”—she only led with the hated nickname when she knew she was charging uphill—“think of this as an opportunity.”

  “Come again?”

  “Yueh’s a ratings slut like the rest of the meat puppets. She wants a scoop and she wants your ass in her guest chair—that’s all. Now, Walker’s a strategist, as you pointed out. Put yourself on the board. You’ve got more pawns at your disposal. And rooks. And horses.”

  “Knights.”

  “Them, too. Get Walker to contact you. You’ve got information he wants. Use Yueh’s show to tease him with it. Put out a phone number. Go through the command-post switchboard and use some detailed questions about the escape to screen out the wannabes. Use yourself as bait.”

  In the background he heard Tyler say, “Fishie bait! Fishie bait!”

  Tim said, “It scares me that our child spends his whole day alone with a mind like yours.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What about all the National Enquirer shit she’s gonna dredge up?”

  “Set boundaries with her. It’ll only up the wattage of her crush on you.”

  “You think Melissa Yueh has a crush on me?”

  “Jesus. While we’re at it, maybe I should point out that Freed owns the complete boxed set of Will & Grace.”

  “Freed is gay?”

  “Aren’t people in your line of work supposed to be observant?”

  “But Freed was married,” Bear said, straightening Tim’s collar as they sat on the plush maroon couches of KCOM’s third-floor lobby. Having already called in the Vector party’s guest list to the command post, Bear had toted along the Beacon-Kagan files to ensure that they were as useless as they appeared.

  Plasma TVs hung on the walls like works of art, offering best-of eye bites, the weeks’ news strained through KCOM’s yellow filter and abbreviated by flash cuts. A basketball brawl took to the—. A columnist at the Gray Lady under inspection for falsifying—. Four adult-film stars tested positive for—. Each tale conveyed with wild-eyed drama, thundering moral indignation, bereft pauses. The Endgame of Western Values. The Demise of America as We Like to Believe We Knew It. And viewers, tuning in from households with grown children on deployment and dying parents and windows overlooking homeless people foraging in trash cans, shook their heads and tut-tutted at all that packaged heartbreak.

  Tim threw Bear’s hands away. “Would you knock it off! And just because Dray says Freed’s gay doesn’t mean he’s gay. Not that I care if he is gay.”

  “C’mon, Seinfeld. When’s Dray been wrong about anything?”

  In the dismayed pause that ensued, a voluptuous assistant with a clipboard and a radio entered and said, “Tim Rackley.” At Tim’s weak nod, she added, “Ready for makeup?”

  “I don’t need makeup.”

  “Freed,” Bear said, “might beg to differ.”

  Tim followed the young woman’s trail of perfume back through a tangle of cords and control rooms, heeding her silent example. She knocked briskly at an office door and stepped aside. Melissa Yueh glanced up from her call script, the ravenous touch of her eyes augmented by blush sharpening the rise of her cheeks. A paper collar stippled with foundation dust ringed her neck. Eye shadow picked up the hues of her plum-colored suit, and her sienna eyes reminded Tim, as always, of a cat’s.

  Her hand moved into her purse in her lap, and her shoulder tensed.

  “Turn it off,” Tim said. “Understand?”

  Her arm flexed again, and a muffled click issued from the confines of her purse. “Understand.” Without embarrassment she rose and breezed past him, smelling of hair spray. Her suit seemed impossibly pinched at the belt line. As he followed her, an entourage developed swiftly around them, underlings rotating forward to powder her face, proffer scripts for her perusal, hold mirrors for her approval. Not once did she slow her charge to the studio. At a break in the action, she cast a flirtatious glance over her shoulder. “I spoke with Tess Jameson three days before she died, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I was in Baghdad. Did you see my coverage?”

  “Missed it.”

  “I was embedded with the First Marine Division, saw some spectacular firefights.”

  “Spectacular,” Tim repeated.

  “Do you want to know what she wanted?” Yueh didn’t bother to wait for a reply. “Well, I’d like to know what’s going on with Vector and the murder at the Kagan estate. The unauthorized account.”

  “I’m not talking now.”

  “I’d like to help this woman if there’
s more to her suicide…?”

  “I think she’s past help, but your empathy is genuinely moving.”

  “Will you take care of me later? When you do talk?”

  “That depends on how well you take care of me.”

  She half turned so he could catch the gleam of her smile. “She wanted to see me. She said she had something to show me.”

  Tim did his best to downplay his reaction, not wanting Yueh to home in on it. But they both knew the obvious implications of Tess’s seeking out an appointment with a reporter a few days before her suicide—assisted or otherwise.

  “I told her I’d meet with her on my return,” Yueh continued, “but I got back the day after her death.”

  “Any idea what she had? Did it have to do with Vector?”

  “Something she was too nervous to discuss over the phone. Granted, I was in Iraq and fairly rushed. The generator by my barracks made my sat phone blink in and out.” She halted abruptly, and the minions around them bumped into one another. “If those Vector guys wind up being assholes, I’m gonna be furious. I was really pulling for them, this new technology. My goddaughter has cystic fibrosis.”

  “So that’s a yes. Did you seek them out? For the interview?”

  She resumed her pace, the crew lurching back into motion. “No, it came from the top down. Their daddy company books twenty million dollars of airtime with the network annually. I wasn’t forced to do the story, certainly, but it was suggested.” She added quickly, “And it was a strong story.”

  She strode across the set, cameramen and producers silencing like students when the teacher returns from a bathroom break. For interviews, Yueh forwent the anchor’s desk for Charlie Rose seating at a wooden table, the background dressed with a few broad-leafed plants. They sat, and an audio tech threaded a mike through Tim’s shirt.

  “We’ll be live, the lead story for the five o’ clock. And we’ll reair on prime time and for the morning shows.” She practiced her on-air smile, her cheeks dimpling just so. “Ready to do this?”