Prayers for the Dead (7 page)

“They can’t make it—”

“
What?
” Decameron was outraged. “Azor is…
murdered
, and they can’t see fit to talk to the police?”

“Dr. Fulton couldn’t get a baby-sitter, Dr. Decameron. Her husband wasn’t home when I called.”

“And what was Myron’s excuse?” Decameron raised his brow. “Bad hair day?”

Heather glared at him. “How can you be so awful at a time like this?”

“What better time,” Decameron snapped back. He hugged himself, looked Oliver up and down. “This is truly horrid. What in the world happened?”

Oliver squirmed under Decameron’s intense but rapid scrutiny. Overt, sexual overtones. The man was gay. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out, Dr. Decameron.”

Marge stepped in. “As we understand it, Dr. Decameron, you, Dr. Berger and Dr. Fulton last saw Dr. Sparks at a dinner meeting.”

“Yes, one of our weekly staff get-togethers. Started around six, ended around eight.”

“Anything unusual happen at the meeting?”

It was Decameron’s turn to squirm. “Well, I might as well fess up. Myron’s going to jump at the opportunity to tell you this. It might as well come from me.”

The room fell silent.

“Azor was miffed at me,” Decameron admitted.

“What happened?” Oliver asked.

“Well, our research meetings are ostensibly an open forum to exchange ideas. Sometimes I get a little aggressive in my opinions offending our great Grand Imperial Wizard.”

“That’s not what
I
heard,” Heather piped in.

“I’m getting to that, child. Hold your hair, for goodness sakes.” Decameron turned to Marge. “Azor became miffed at me. I peeked at some of the great doctor’s data on his fax machine before he had a chance to see it. Not a terrible thing. But not courteous, either.” He paused. “Azor was angry. After the meeting… after Myron and Liz had left… I smoothed things over with him. Of course, they weren’t around to witness it. But I am telling you the truth.”

“What time was this, Dr. Decameron?”

“A little before eight. I remember it distinctly because we ended earlier than usual. Azor had received a call from one of his sons and cut the meeting short.”

“Okay.” Marge wrote furiously. “Does this son have a name?”

“Paul.”

“Was Dr. Sparks planning to meet Paul somewhere?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. His sons call often. They’re always hitting him up for money.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Heather interjected.

Decameron paused. “Okay. Paul and Luke are always hitting him up for money. True or false?”

Heather snapped her lips together, folded her arms across her chest.

“How many sons does Dr. Sparks have?” Oliver asked.

“Four,” Decameron said. “The youngest one, Michael, he’s what we call a legacy med student. Someone who gets in because of… connections. I call them capons.”

“Michael’s not bright?” Oliver asked.

“Neon, he’s not,” Decameron replied. “But he is young. He could season if he’d cut the strings. He still lives at home, so the little snot gets whatever he wants—”

“You don’t like his kids, do you?” Oliver said.

“I don’t like anyone, so don’t go by me.” Decameron sighed. “No, I don’t like his children. They’re all suck-ups. Except the priest. He’s independent so far as I can tell. And a good man.”

“Who’s he?” Oliver asked.

Heather said, “Father Bram.”

Decameron said, “Azor was livid when Bram took his orders. First, Bram had the nerve to convert from Azor’s strict Fundamentalist Church to Catholicism without asking Daddy’s permission. And then when he became a priest… well, what can I say? The truth hurts.”

“What truth?” Heather said.

“Darling, what do you think?” Decameron’s eyes roved between Oliver and Marge. “Bram is clearly gay—”

“What are you
talking
about?” Heather said.

“The whole family’s in heavy denial. Because to Azor, et al., homosexuality is still an abomination before the Lord. He couldn’t deal with it — his beloved son being a faggot.”

“Dr. Decameron, there’s no reason to use pejoratives,” Marge said.

“Oh come, come. Surely you can tell I’m talking from personal experience. Yes, Azor can deal with gays like me on a professional level. Just like he can deal with Jews like Myron Berger. But between me and these walls, I’m sure he thought of both of us as hopeless sinners.”

“I think you’re wrong!” Heather exclaimed. “And what does it have to do with poor Dr. Sparks being murdered?”

“I’m just giving them background, Heather.”

“When did he receive this call from Paul?” Oliver said.

“About seven-thirty.”

“Was he upset when he came back to the meeting?”

“Well, he was upset with
me
. But he didn’t seem upset by the call.”

“What’s this project you’re working on?” Oliver asked. “This Curedon?”

“So you know about Curedon.” Decameron squinted at Heather. “We’ve been talking, haven’t we.”

Marge said, “Dr. Decameron—”

“All right, all right. What do you know about Curedon?”

Oliver said, “It’s an antirejection drug, whatever that means.”

“You know what Azor Sparks is noted for, don’t you?”

“Heart transplants,” Marge said.

“Yes.” Decameron looked upward. “Heart transplants. The man is… was one of the greatest surgeons ever to land on our fair planet. Even I can’t joke away his genius.” He gazed at Marge. “Because Azor was a genius in every sense of the word. Terrible. For someone to cut him down… and with his death, dies all his skill and knowledge. Too bad Azor didn’t live long enough to set up a protocol for a brain transplant.”

Decameron cocked a hip.

“Now that might have been interesting. His brain in my body.”

“That would have been obscene!” Heather muttered.

Decameron rolled his eyes. “Curedon was just one of Azor’s many contributions to medical science. One in which I was privileged enough to participate. May I sit?”

Marge pointed to an empty upholstered chair. “Please.”

Decameron sat. “How to explain this.” He thought. “Whenever a transplant of any kind is effected, the human body has a natural tendency to reject it.”

Oliver said, “I’m lost.”

“Our bodies are amazing inventions. It almost makes you believe in God.” Decameron paused. “Almost. We have a wonderful invention called the immune system. It recognizes the Huns out there, the invaders of our bodies, and wipes them out. Any foreign substance — a virus, a bacterium, a cancer cell — will eventually be discovered as an interloper and destroyed if one has a properly functioning immune system. A very good thing. Without it, we’d all take the route of AIDS patients.”

Decameron looked at Oliver.

“Okay, so far,” Oliver said. “Go on.”

“Well, sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Sometimes the immune system is overactive. For most of us, if we get an irritant up our noses or get a bee bite, we might sneeze a bit… or swell up locally. But eventually everything settles down. A few unlucky souls have immune systems that overreact — send out droves of histamines to fight off a little interference. Cellular walls break down, fluid is poured into the tissues, and the body swells up.”

“An allergic reaction,” Marge said.

“Exactly,” Decameron said. “The most dangerous sequela of an allergic reaction is in the lungs. The breathing apparatus can become so inflamed that often air can’t pass through.”

“So what does this have to do with Curedon?” Marge asked. “It prevents an allergic reaction?”

Decameron nodded. “In a sense, that’s what it does. When a heart is transplanted into a body, the body’s in-place immune system doesn’t recognize the heart as a necessary part of the body. It sees it as a foreign substance, and sends out white cells to destroy it.”

Oliver said, “So it’s like the patient has an allergic reaction to his or her new heart.”

“Essentially, yes,” Decameron said. “Without proper medication, the immune system would eventually eat the heart away.”

Marge said, “I thought that transplant patients are tested to make sure there’s a fit between the new heart and the old body.”

“Of course, we type-match, Detective. We do the best we can. But often it isn’t enough. There’s a sad shortage of hearts and lots of people with heart disease. We have to make do. That being the case, we have to work around the immune system. We have to undermine it. Hence, the class of drugs known as immunosuppressants. Cortisone for example.”

“You give heart transplant patients cortisone?”

“No, but surgeons give them related immunosuppressants. Like prednisone. The most commonly used drugs are Imuran and Cyclosporin-A. With severely compromised renal patients, surgeons often use the more experimental class of immunosuppressants — Orthoclone or OKT3 — and the other Ks like FK506. Sorry to bore you with details, but it will help you understand the importance of Curedon.”

The room fell quiet. Marge wrote as fast as she could.

“Curedon has a completely different chemical structure from the other immunosuppressants. The way it binds and interacts with T-cells through the production of interleukin 2… Curedon seems to subdue the immune system without suppressing it. What that means is, we see far less unwarranted side effects. This is very, very important. Because transplant patients are on immunosuppressants for
life
.”

“Forever?” Oliver asked.

“Ever and ever,” Decameron said. “We put them on as minimal a dose as possible. But even so, there are side effects.”

Marge asked, “Such as?”

Decameron ticked off his fingers. “Pulmonary edema, ulcers from mucosal sluffing, chills, nausea, fever, dyspnea.” He shook his head. “It’s a long road for these patients, and our goal, as members of the healing arts, is to make them as comfortable as possible. Curedon is as close to any miracle drug as I’ve ever seen in my twenty years as a physician and researcher. Azor had worked years on it. I learned more about 2.2 resolutions and X-ray crystallography than I’d ever wanted to.”

Decameron fell quiet.

“But I did learn.” His eyes became moist. “I did
learn
. And it was an honor for me to be part of something so cutting edge.”

“What’s going to happen with Curedon now that Dr. Sparks is gone?” Oliver asked.

“Not much probably. The initial trials of Curedon have been quite successful in general.” Decameron’s smile was tight. “Although we have had a few ups and downs lately. That’s why I was so pleased when I saw Azor’s data coming through his fax. I just couldn’t wait for him to come out of surgery. But it was wrong. An invasion of his privacy.”

Marge tapped her pencil against her pad. “What do you mean ‘ups and downs’?”

Decameron looked pained. “A small rise in the mortality rate—”

“That’s death rate in common folk language,” Marge interrupted.

Decameron smiled. “Yes. Death rate.”

“With Curedon.”

“Yes, with Curedon.” Decameron looked at Marge pointedly. “The patients aren’t dying from the drug, they’re dying from heart and renal failure. The sharp rise is puzzling, but kinks aren’t uncommon. Ah, the glamorous life of a research physician. Probably data error. Or a transcription error… or, alas, it could actually be a problem with the drug.”

“And if it is a problem with the drug?” Oliver asked.

“We’ll work it out. Curedon’s been a marvel. Too good to be true. Some bumps are inevitable. But mark my words. The drug will come on the market within the next five years.”

He paused.

“For Azor not to see the fruits of his labors… that is a tragedy of Greek proportions.”

Oliver asked, “Who do you do the trials on?”

“Actually, our team doesn’t run the trials. The FDA — Food and Drug Administration — analyzes the numbers in conjunction with Fisher/Tyne, which actually runs the trials.”

“Wait a minute.” Marge turned to Heather. “I thought you said Fisher/Tyne bought the drug from Sparks.”

“They did buy it from Sparks,” Decameron stated. “I don’t know how much they paid for it. But I do know Sparks received a huge initial cash deposit and was promised a percentage of the profits after the drug hit the marketplace.”

“Who will get Sparks’s percentage now that he’s dead?” Marge asked.

“I don’t know,” Decameron said. “Certainly not me. Effectively, Fisher/Tyne owns the rights to produce and market Curedon. Those rights were sold to them by the cash deposit.”

Oliver looked over his notes. “I’m confused about something.”

“Sorry. Teaching isn’t my forte.”

Oliver asked, “What do you mean when you say that the FDA is testing the drug in
conjunction
with Fisher/Tyne?”

“Fisher/Tyne, under our guidance and protocol, is running the lab tests for Curedon. The FDA gets copies of the results and analyzes them. At the moment, I’m the liaison between Fisher/Tyne, Dr. Sparks, and the FDA.”

“Fisher/Tyne is running the FDA tests for a drug it
owns
?” Marge was taken aback. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

“Happens all the time, my dear,” Decameron said. “Who do you think ran the tests for Prozac? Eli Lilly, of course. The FDA doesn’t have the skill, manpower or knowledge to test all the
thousands
of drugs that get put on the market. The FDA is the drug police. They determine policy and safety, but in general, they do
not
test. They rely heavily on the drug companies for their results.”

Oliver and Marge traded looks.

“That’s incredible!” Marge shook her head. “Who protects the consumer?”

“The integrity of the drug company.”

“We’re in big trouble,” Oliver stated.

“Actually, it’s not as bad you think,” Decameron said. “It’s not that drug companies are the bastion of honesty. But they are practical animals. An unsafe drug goes on the market, it spells L-A-W-S-U-I-T-S. They have a vested interest in making sure the drug is safe.”

“How about safe and
effective
?” Oliver asked.

“Effective?” Decameron raised his brow. “Of course, the drug must be effective.” He paused. “
How
effective? Well, that’s another issue entirely.”