On Borrowed Time (24 page)

Gates put down his phone and laughed.

“There must be a God. I’m still richer than Lassiter.”

That’s how Robby Devine started our phone conversation at nine o’clock in the morning. My connection to the riches of Wall Street reached me on my cell phone in a doctor’s waiting room. There were four signs in the room forbidding cell phone use, almost as many as there were insisting that copayments be made at the time of the visit.

I stepped out into the hall and took the call. “What does that mean?”

“It means the drug test was el floppo. No chance to make it to stage three.”

“That can’t be,” I said.

“Oh, it be. It definitely be.”

“It was announced?”

“Announced?” he asked, as if wounded. “Who am I, John Q. Public? I am not without connections.”

“And you’re positive? Because this makes absolutely no sense,” I said, still trying to understand how this was possible. Lassiter’s manipulation of the trial to send his company’s stock up was the one thing I was positive about, and now that theory had just been shown to be totally wrong.

“Richard, Lassiter’s stock certificates aren’t worth the paper you wipe your ass with. Whoever gave you your information is not someone you should be relying on for your future investments.”

I thanked him and went back into the waiting room, just as I was being called. That, of course, didn’t mean I was going to be seeing the doctor anytime soon; it just meant I had made it to stage two of waiting-room hell.

I had never actually bothered to get a regular New York doctor, so I was seeing Dr. Stacy Fairbanks on a recommendation from my across-the-hall neighbor. I had always been slightly uncomfortable with the idea of going to a female doctor, but this time it didn’t bother me. My pants weren’t coming down, and I wasn’t even putting on a paper robe.

It was twenty-five minutes before Dr. Fairbanks came in, smiling and offering her hand in introduction. After maybe twelve seconds of chitchat, she asked what seemed to be my problem.

“Were I to answer that, I’d be here all month,” I said. “So I’d like to limit this visit to one specific problem area.”

“What’s that?”

“My head.”

I showed her the area just at the edge of my scalp. “You can see the scar. I cut my head in an auto accident. It bled some, but not that much.”

She looked at it, and confirmed that she could see it. “It’s healed quite well. Is it bothering you?”

“No, not at all. I just want to know if you can tell if it’s a wound consistent with an auto accident.”

She pulled back, puzzled by my statement. “I don’t understand. You just told me you were cut in the accident, and now you’re asking if that’s possible?’

“I think it might have happened another way, but I need you to tell me if I’m right.”

“What other way?”

“Surgery. And then possibly the cut was reopened sometime after that and made to look like it happened in the accident.”

She looked like she had about a hundred more questions, but didn’t ask them. Maybe she was thinking about all the other rooms filled with patients she had to see, patients with real, normal problems. No doubt by now she thought I certainly had a problem with my head, but it was not on the surface.

Instead of asking more questions, she just moved forward and checked out my head again, feeling the scar gently with her fingers as she looked.

“If I had to guess, I would lean towards surgical incision, but that is just a guess. It could have happened either way.”

“How can I find out for sure?”

“That depends. What kind of surgery might you have had?”

“Brain surgery.”

“Mr. Kilmer, I’m sorry, but this is not making any sense.”

I explained that it was a police matter, and I gave her Kentris’s number if she wanted to contact him. I also assured her that I would be willing to pay for whatever was required to answer my question.

“A CAT scan would probably do the trick,” she finally said. “It would at least show the presence of scar tissue, which would be present after surgery of that kind.”

“Could you set it up and read it?”

“I can certainly set it up,” she said. “Between the radiologist and I we could read it, as long as what you’re describing is all you want to know.”

“That’s it.”

I hassled her until she made a phone call that set up the procedure at three o’clock in the afternoon, in the radiology lab of the hospital she was affiliated with. She said I could come in or call her for the preliminary results at five o’clock.

That gave me a couple of hours to obsess and worry about the still-missing Allie, and I did exactly that.

I showed up at the lab at two forty-five, filled out the paperwork, and was called in right away. The scan itself took less than a half hour, and was less uncomfortable than I had expected. I was reminded of the joke that my father used to tell when I was little, that claustrophobia was the fear of Santa. I never thought it was particularly funny back then either.

Instead of waiting, I immediately went back to Dr. Fairbanks’s office. The results weren’t there yet, and the receptionist told me they would be transmitted by computer. I was offered a seat in the dreaded waiting room, and told that the doctor would call me when she had the results and had gone over them.

It wasn’t until five-fifteen that I was called in, and it wasn’t by the receptionist or nurse. Dr. Fairbanks herself came out to get me, asking me to come into her office.

When we got to her office, she walked me over to the computer, which had an image on it that I assumed was the inside of my brain. “Mr. Kilmer, you are not aware of ever having had brain surgery?” She seemed incredulous at the prospect, and I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“By your question, I take it that I’ve had the surgery?”

“You absolutely have.” She took her pen and pointed to an area on the left of the screen. “You can see the scar tissue here.”

“And there can’t be any other explanation?” I asked.

“I’m not a neurosurgeon, but I would certainly say no. And my reason for saying that is more than just the scar tissue.”

“What else is there?”

She pointed again, a little higher up on the screen, at what looked like a small dark area. “Can you see this?”

“Yes. What is it?”

She looked away from the screen and directly at me. “It’s a foreign object lodged in your brain.”

“Based on your previous interest, I thought you were the person to call,” Gates said. “I appreciate your coming over so quickly.”

“What have you got?” Kentris asked.

“Well, we’ve just concluded the drug trial for Mr. Lassiter’s company, the one you asked about. You had gone over the data.”

“I know which one you’re talking about. How did it come out?”

Gates hesitated. “It’s been turned over to the FDA and will be announced publicly soon. So I would ask that you keep what I am about to say confidential until that announcement is made.”

“I’ll do my best. How did it come out?”

“By any standard, it was a failure. The drug demonstrated no efficacy at all.”

Kentris didn’t know what “efficacy” meant, but by the context in the sentence, efficacy sounded like a bad thing for drugs not to have. “Did that surprise you?”

“I try and shy away from predictions, but in general terms, a failed trial is not a surprise. The majority of them end in this fashion, as evidenced by the fact that cures for intractable diseases are so rarely found. But Mr. Lassiter was certainly surprised.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s industry courtesy for the submitting company to get an advance copy of the report, and that was done in this case. I was out the morning Mr. Lassiter received his, and he left me a series of near-hysterical messages. I’ve saved the tapes, which I can play for you.”

“I would have expected him to be upset. Wouldn’t you?”

“Upset and professional, yes, but that’s not how he sounded. In any event, when I returned to the office, I called him. Because of his tone on the messages, out of an abundance of caution I recorded the call. If I may, I’d like to play a portion of it for you now.”

“Go ahead,” Kentris said.

Gates moved the mouse on his computer to “play” and clicked it once. A part of the conversation between him and Lassiter came through the speakers.

The conversation ended with the sound of Lassiter slamming down the phone, after which Gates turned to Kentris.

“I don’t know if the threat itself is actionable, but it is certainly worrisome.”

“Did you know him prior to this?” Kentris asked. “Is this reaction at all typical?”

Gates shook his head. “We’ve seen each other at business functions, but that’s about it. I certainly never oversaw a test of one of his drugs before.” He smiled. “And never will again. I’ve heard stories about him being volatile, but nothing that would have led me to expect this.”

“What are you asking me to do?” Kentris asked.

“I don’t know, but at the very least I would appreciate any advice you can offer. I’m sure you have more familiarity with this kind of thing than I.”

“You can file charges, though that should be with your local police. It may be necessary, but it may just prolong the incident. He might have been blowing off steam, and that would be the end of it. If you file charges, it will be something for you to deal with for a very long time. Having said that, I am not in a position to advise you either way.”

Gates nodded and thought about it for a few moments. “I think I’ll hold off for now. But may I forward copies of this tape to you?”

“For what purpose?”

Gates shrugged. “I don’t know.… I’d just like you to have it.”

Kentris said that it would be fine, and then left. On the way back to the station, he took time to reflect on his certainty that Gates was lying, and why that might be.

He believed that the test was a failure and that the phone conversation was real. But that was all he believed. He did not see Gates as an innocent; Lassiter’s reaction was such that he probably had good reason to believe the fix was in on the study, and that Gates had not lived up to his end of the bargain.

But that wasn’t all he didn’t believe. There was no way that Gates chose Kentris to confide in because he was seeking advice, or because of Kentris’s previous interest in the case. If Gates were really worried, he would have gone to the local cops, the people he knew would be empowered to take action that could help and protect him.

And either way, as the head of a large company, by now he would have surrounded himself with security guards.

The most logical explanation was that Gates was setting Lassiter up for something, and was using Kentris to facilitate it.

He didn’t know what Gates was setting Lassiter up for, but it scared the hell out of him.

There are a number of advantages to an Ivy League education. One that most people don’t focus on is that it provides one with a group of friends, often lifelong friends, who are usually smart, accomplished, wealthy people.

I hadn’t remained close with too many college friends, though the emergence of e-mail had rectified that somewhat. But I had been in a fraternity, and I felt that even though I had not seen or heard from many of them over the years, they would be there for me if I needed them.

I needed at least one of them now, though I didn’t know which one.

I dug out my college yearbook, as well as my old copies of my fraternity newspapers that I had kept. Armed with all this, I turned on my computer, went to Google, and started to work.

I made a list of all the names that I remembered as friends or even acquaintances, and looked up each name on Google. By the fortieth name, I was completely astonished by how prominent my classmates already were, in many different fields. As a person known only as a magazine writer/nut job, I felt a little embarrassed by how completely they had outdistanced me. But this was not the time to worry about it.

Unfortunately, I was not finding anyone whose chosen field fit my needs, at least not until I got to name number forty-seven, Daniel Lovinger. Dan was a fraternity brother of mine, though because he was two years ahead of me, we weren’t close friends. Basically the only time I remember seeing him was at the Friday night parties, and we were both invariably drunk.

But Dan must have sobered up pretty well, because according to Google he had become a prominent neurosurgeon, specializing in the brain, at Mount Sinai Hospital. I figured he must be good at it, since his name got 467,000 hits on the search.

I called his office, gave my name, and asked for him. The receptionist put me on hold before I could add the phrase,
we were friends in college
, since I didn’t think he would remember my name.

I was wrong. He got on the phone, and within thirty seconds we were laughing and reminiscing about times I barely remembered, and he was telling me about other fraternity brothers he had remained friends with.