Fatal Reaction (7 page)

“Michael Childress is a world-class pain in the ass,” announced Carl with real venom. “He thinks he was put on earth for the express purpose of telling everyone else what they’re doing wrong.”

“That must make him very popular,” I observed.

“You notice no one will even sit near him.” Sure enough, there was a ring of empty seats around Childress like some kind of quarantine. “Do you see the woman sitting behind him with the headphones?” Carl continued. My eyes settled on a large, raw-boned woman with a cap of dark curls and a very intense expression on her pale face. Her hands twitched nervously across her lap and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“That’s Michelle Goodwin,” the administrator explained. “She’s the second crystallographer on the project.”!

“Why do you have two?” Crystallographers were a rare and much sought-after specialty. A proven one like Childress was the scientific equivalent of a franchise athlete. “We have her on loan for a year from Purdue. She was originally hired to work on the integrase project, but after it folded Stephen moved her over here.”

“So how do she and Childress get along?” I asked, remembering what Carl had said back in Danny’s office about the rift between academic and industrial scientists.

“She tries to stay out of his way. Actually it’s not that hard because he’s almost never here.”

“Where is he then?” I demanded, remembering how much Stephen was paying him.

“Giving papers, going to site visits, getting interviewed on National Public Radio. It drives Remminger nuts.”

“Who’s that over there?” I asked, chucking my head in the direction of a man with a wild head of brindle-colored hair and a tobacco-stained mustache.

“That’s Dave Borland, our lead protein chemist,” replied Carl with a mysterious chuckle. “I’ll take you down to see his lab later, but I promise we won’t go before lunch.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s the one who isolates ZKBP, the receptor we were talking about back in Danny’s office. It’s a very complicated process that we fondly refer to as
grind and bind.
You start by taking human spleens and putting them into an industrial-size blender.”

“Where do you get the spleens?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

“From a medical supply house.”

“You mean you can just call an eight-hundred number and get body parts?”

“Yes. But they’re expensive. A spleen from a healthy cadaver costs four hundred sixty dollars. Ones that are discarded during transplantation of other organs we get at a discount. Same-day delivery is extra. It takes about forty spleens to make one gram of binding protein.”

“I can see how that would add up,” I remarked faintly.

“Believe me, Kate, one thing you learn in this busines is that there is no shortage of people who are worth more dead than they are alive.”

CHAPTER 6

When Stephen walked into the room conversation evaporated and all eyes turned toward him with the fluid certainty of magnetism. Even Lou Remminger stubbed out her cigarette on the pink frosting of a half-eaten doughnut and offered up the full measure of her attention. I didn’t care what Carl Woodruff had just said about the differences in their backgrounds and motivations, the truth was that the scientists in the room had one very important thing in common. They had all come to Azor because Stephen Azorini had promised them personally that it was here they would have a chance to do the best science of their lives.

“What’s our status with respect to the receptor?” Stephen demanded without preamble, rolling up his sleeves and scanning the room with his pale blue eyes. His shirt was a small miracle of starch. The old Polish woman who did his ironing was in love with him and somehow she managed to channel all her ardor into his shirts.

“Well, for one thing,” sniffed Childress unpleasantly, “there isn’t enough of it.”

Stephen turned to Dave Borland, the protein chemist. “I thought the new process was producing higher yields,” he said, lifting one black brow to eloquently punctuate the question.

“There’s nothing wrong with the supply of protein,” Borland shot back defensively. “The problem is that crystallography is pissing it away. So far they’ve gotten nearly a gram of pure receptor—twice what everyone else has gotten put together—and they haven’t produced a single viable crystal.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” ventured Michelle Goodwin timidly. “I’ve actually had some success with very small crystals.”

“Considering the importance of solving the structure I don’t understand why chemistry and imaging should be getting any at all,” Michael Childress said, talking right over her as if she’d never spoken.

“There’s one more thing we need to factor into all this,” interjected Carl, trying to be heard above the others. “We’re still having problems with the power.” The ZK-501 labs were so crammed with high-tech equipment that, within three months of moving in, Azor Pharmaceuticals’ power demands had outstripped the available supply. For months Commonwealth Edison had been promising to install additional transformers, but in spite of twice-daily calls from Carl Woodruff, no date had as yet been set for the upgrade.

“The electricity is not the problem,” announced Lou Remminger, glaring contemptuously at Childress. Despite her punk persona her voice was straight from the Smoky Mountains. The effect was as incongruous as her fingernails. “The supply of receptor is not the problem either. The problem is that Dr. Childress is doing every other goddamned thing in the world besides his job.”

“How dare you!” sputtered Childress, obviously stung by such a direct attack.

“Well,” drawled the chemist sweetly. “Would you mind telling me when was the last time you spent a weekend in the lab—or better yet, a full week? Let me see, last week it was a site visit at Johns Hopkins, the week before it was the small-molecules conference in Brussels....”

“Enough,” announced Stephen, evidently deciding he had let things go too far. “As the saying goes, as of today all shore leave is canceled. That goes for you, too, Michael. Our friends the Japanese are coming. Takisawa is sending a dozen of their people to visit our labs a week from Monday. That gives us nine days to prepare for a full-blown site visit.”

The scientists of the ZK-501 project received this news in stunned silence. Dave Borland, the protein chemist, looked like he’d just been punched in the stomach and I saw a flicker of something very close to panic cross Michelle Goodwin’s face. Only Michael Childress seemed unperturbed by the news. Sitting by himself, buffered by empty chairs, he stroked his chin with mandarin-like indifference.

“What I want to know is why, when we have Mikos breathing down our necks, are we wasting time on some damn dog and pony show for the Japanese?” demanded Remminger.

“Because before we make a drug we have to make a deal,” replied Stephen impatiently. “Right now this project, which is at least two years away from having a drug to sell, is burning through money at the rate of sixty-five thousand dollars a day. There’s no way that this company can continue to absorb those costs without some kind of outside revenue. If anyone here knows someone who has forty million dollars they’d like to gamble on this molecule, speak up now. If not, I suggest we think seriously about how we’re going to impress our visitors from Tokyo.” He looked hard around the room and waited for a reply before he continued.

“During the next several days each lab head will be meeting with Kate Millholland to go over the information and cost projections. Some of you may have already met Kate in her role as outside counsel and member of the company’s board of directors. She has graciously agreed to help us through this negotiation, filling in for the unfortunate vacancy left by Danny Wohl.” While Stephen’s voice had faltered as he’d uttered his dead friend’s name, the other scientists in the room seemed curiously unmoved.

I nodded to the room at large to acknowledge Stephen’s introduction, but no one took any notice. Attorneys, I was forced to conclude, were definitely not part of the tribe. From the scientist’s perspective, lawyers as a category were a necessary evil—and as such, interchangeable.

“That’s all very well,” piped a heavily accented German voice from the back, “but while we’re busy showing off to our Oriental friends, aren’t we in danger of giving ourselves away? I mean, what’s to stop Takisawa from taking a peek at what we have so far and going back home and deciding to try their hand on making a new drag themselves?”

“They won’t do it because the only people who can make this drag are sitting in this room,” pronounced Stephen with more certainty than I knew he felt. From the beginning the negotiation with Takisawa had been one long calculated risk, an elaborate dance of veils with each side seeking to gain the upper hand while revealing tantalizing glimpses of what it wanted and what it was willing to give up to get it.

“Not meaning to sound like a nervous virgin embarking on a date with a drunken sailor,” ventured Borland, from beneath his walruslike mustache, “but how far do you think it’s safe to go with these guys? I mean, up until now we’ve been signing lab books every day and having our bags searched every time we leave the building. Are you telling us that now you expect us to just lie back and let them lift up our skirts?”

“Let’s put it this way,” replied Stephen. “We have to do whatever it takes to make them want us. That means clean white lab coats will be required for all personnel.” He stuck his hands deep into his pockets and grinned. “Fishnet stockings will be optional.”

I had hoped to catch a word with Stephen after the meeting, but the minute it was over he was immediately surrounded by scientists all jockeying for his attention. I decided to try to catch him later and headed back to Danny’s office. It was still so disgustingly early that I figured I’d spend an hour or two getting my bearings. That way by the time I headed back into the city I would have missed the worst of the morning rush hour. My first day Working in Oak Brook and already I was developing a commuter’s obsession with traffic.

While Danny was in Japan and in the days following his death, a small tide of work had washed up on his desk. Besides the scores of phone messages from people I’d never heard of concerning matters that were completely unknown to me, there were dozens of faxes from Takisawa, some received as recently as that morning, all requesting information in preparation for their upcoming visit. Scanning them, I could see there was nothing Takisawa didn’t want to know about the ZK-501 project in particular and Azor Pharmaceuticals in general. Even taking into account the well-known appetite of the Japanese for detail, their inquiries struck me as excessive. Budgets, both actual and projected, personnel records, and depreciated equipment costs were all respectfully requested as a prelude to further discussions.

Putting the faxes in my briefcase to take back to Callahan Ross with me, I turned my attention to the mail, which was stacked a foot high. Flipping through the junk mail and the routine correspondence I came upon a certified letter that had been received and signed for in Danny’s absence. I scrabbled in the top drawer of the desk looking for a letter opener and, with a growing sense of dread, slit it open. One look at the contents confirmed my worst fears.

It was another lawsuit.

Azor Pharmaceuticals was currently defending itself against a suit involving its newest drug offering, a compound used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Serezine, tortuous to develop and expensive to produce, had been a controversial drug from the first. Azor had taken its hits in the press when it was announced that a year’s treatment with Serezine would cost $10 thousand. Despite the fact that this was only a fraction of what it cost to institutionalize these patients, the media had fed on stories of greedy drug companies for weeks.

Six months after the drug was first made available, Azor was served with a lawsuit, filed in Texas by plaintiffs alleging that the drug had improved the condition of a previously institutionalized nineteen-year-old man to the point where he could be returned home to his family. Unfortunately, once there, he proceeded to murder both his parents and a furnace repairman who had the bad luck to be in the house at the time. Although it appeared that the patient had stopped taking the drug soon after his discharge from the hospital, Azor had nonetheless already racked up close to $100 thousand in legal fees defending itself.

As I read through the complaint in my hand my stomach churned. The family of an East Lansing woman was bringing suit alleging that she had become so despondent while taking Serezine that she killed her three-day-old infant, then took her own life. Feeling sick, I dialed Stephen’s extension only to have Rachel tell me smugly that Stephen was in a meeting with the Hemasyn clinical trial group and had left explicit instructions not to be interrupted. Nothing I said was able to sway her, so I hung up the phone and called Callahan Ross to speak to Tom Galloway.

Tom was the litigator at the firm who was preparing the Texas suit for trial. While Tom and, more important, Azor’s insurer were both convinced the first suit was baseless, the existence of a second suit could under no circumstances be construed as good news. When I got Tom’s secretary on the line she explained that Tom was out of the office for a few days due to a death in the family.

“Just my luck,” I thought to myself callously as I slammed the receiver into the cradle. Now I had another crisis that was mine to deal with because someone else had inconveniently dropped dead.

* * *

I arrived back downtown in a foul temper without having managed to speak to Stephen and with the news of the second Serezine lawsuit nagging at me like a sore tooth. As soon as I got in I had to spend a couple of hours putting out fires in the Nuland Petroleum deal. After that I devoted the rest of the day to a series of thirty-minute meetings with the various associates to whom I was delegating my routine cases. It was nearly four o’clock before I finally found myself with five free minutes for the corned beef sandwich that my secretary had brought me as either a very late lunch or an early dinner. I had managed to wolf down half of it when Cheryl buzzed to say that Elliott Abelman was in reception wanting to know whether I had time to see him. I told her to go ahead and bring him on back, while I quickly consulted the mirror in my top drawer to make sure I didn’t have mustard on my chin.