Take Down (The Men of the Sisterhood)

by Fern Michaels

  Their arms around each other, the gang trooped back into the family room, where they gathered around the tree, not caring that they were standing in a pile of ribbons, tissue paper, and foil. It was Abner’s idea to sing “Jingle Bells,” which they did. Not a single human person cared that they were shrill and off-key. But Cyrus, music critic that he was, was much less tolerant and ran as far as he could go and hid.

  And as Jack said later, when the last guest was gone, “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Let’s hit the sack, Cyrus, and make sure you stay on your side of the bed.”

  “Woof.” Translation . . . in your dreams.

  Chapter 2

  Jack Emery was winded, sweat dripping down his face even with the freezing temperatures outside. He’d just finished carrying eleven banker boxes into the BOLO Building and depositing them on the floor in the conference room. They all contained material copied and “borrowed” from Nikki’s office in the dead of night. It had taken him three weeks to copy all the files, working four hours each night and getting by on two or three hours of sleep. He eyed what he thought was the solution to all of his and Nikki’s problems, and, of course, those of the loved ones of the unfortunate victims who had used the drug Anmir and died because of Andover Pharmaceuticals’ greed.

  Jack straightened out the boxes and headed to the kitchen, where he made coffee for the gang, which was due to arrive momentarily. He’d stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and loaded up with two bags of the sugary delights.

  His stomach in knots, Jack paced the kitchen. The mission that he and the guys—and Maggie, too—were embarking on was as serious as it got. Add Nikki’s return late tonight, after attending a ten-year-old child’s funeral, plus the wicked weather out of the Midwest, and he was left with what he thought of as a recipe for disaster.

  As always, Cyrus heard the cars in the alley before Jack did. Jack let loose with a sigh of relief. He needed company right now, and support from his colleagues. While yesterday, Christmas Day, had been all things wonderful, considering the circumstances, today was a new day, a business day. A day when they had to map out a strategy to take down Andover Pharmaceuticals and its three greedy owners, all members of the Andover family, who had unleashed disaster on a vulnerable population. Jack intended to make things a little more right in the world they were all living in.

  Jack held the massive door so that the others could enter the building along with the frigid air. He wondered if it was magic, the way they more or less all arrived at almost the same time, considering that they’d traveled from very different parts of the District. To Jack’s weary gaze, his colleagues looked bright-eyed and ready to take on anything Jack brought to the table. He struggled to look positive and fervently hoped that he was carrying it off, because he did not feel all that confident about this matter.

  “You guys go ahead, I’ll do the coffee thing,” Maggie said cheerfully. Ted offered to help. He looked so sappy, Jack fought the urge to smack him. He was instantly sorry for the thought. Ted and Maggie deserved all the happiness in the world after everything they’d been through.

  Jack was the last one to enter the conference room, but he could hear the moans and groans of those who had entered before him as they eyed the banker boxes. Everyone grabbed a seat, eyes glued to the boxes, but no one said a word. Abner flexed his fingers, as though itching to get to work. Espinosa stared at the Jackson Pollock painting on the wall, his thoughts, Jack knew, on Alexis’s return with Nikki at some point that day if the airports out west hadn’t shut down. Harry had a dreamy look on his face, his thoughts probably on his daughter, Lily, and how she’d reacted to Christmas even though she and Yoko were sick. In his opinion, there wasn’t a better father in the whole world than Harry Wong.

  Dennis was sitting the closest to the stacks of banker boxes and inched his booted foot forward to move one of them. Jack could tell that the reporter in the young man was just itching to dive into the boxes to go through their contents.

  “Coffee’s here!” Ted bellowed as he set the heavy tray down on a sideboard under the Jackson Pollock painting. Maggie set the tray of doughnuts alongside and offered to pour. For some reason, Ted and Maggie’s cheerfulness set Jack’s teeth on edge. He was too uptight, and he knew it. He had to loosen up or he was going to make a hash of this entire presentation. It was Nikki’s situation that was bothering him. Big girl or not, he knew she could take care of herself, but she had no control over the weather and flying through a storm, if she even got off the ground. Cyrus nudged his leg, a signal that the big dog was picking up on his master’s mood. He reached down to rub the shepherd’s head and immediately felt calmer for some reason. Cyrus always had that effect on Jack.

  Abner clapped his hands. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Time is money, gentlemen and one lady.”

  Jack set his coffee cup down on a coaster and looked around at the expectant faces observing him as they all waited for the enlightenment he was to provide them. He immediately obliged.

  “Okay, in these boxes, which I lugged in here this morning, are the files for Andover Pharmaceuticals. I have spent the last several weeks copying Nikki’s files in the dead of night. I also went through her briefcase at home, while she was sleeping. We have here in our possession every note, every scrap of paper relating to the class-action suit against that nest of corporate vipers. We need to wade through it all before we make our move. That’s to assure all of us that what we’re about to embark on is okay with each and every one of us. If, for any reason whatsoever, one of you doesn’t want to participate, now will be the time to back out. This is, after all, vigilante justice.”

  Abner was the first to offer up a comment. In the past, the computer genius had always worked behind the scenes in his own little high-tech world. He broke the law a hundred different ways in the interest of seeing that people got their just deserts, but he’d never been in on the physical end of dispensing their particular brand of justice. “So you just marched into the law firm and stole all the records, is that right?”

  Jack grinned. “Well, no, I actually did not steal anything since I left all the files the way they were. What I did do was make copies of everything. And, since I have a key to the place, there was no breaking and entering. So, with that understood, do you have a problem with what I did?”

  “I don’t, but the FBI might,” Abner said. Everyone laughed uproariously.

  “Guess who is going to be the new director of the FBI in a few more days!” Ted said.

  Abner slapped his forehead. “Ah, forgive my stupidity. Jack Sparrow, of course. Okay, I’m good.”

  “Anyone else have any comments, questions?” Jack asked.

  “A quick overview I think would help,” Dennis said. The others agreed.

  “Sure. As you all know, Nikki and Alexis are in the great state of Minnesota. They left before Christmas because one of the children took a turn for the worse, and they had to . . . to get it on video. I know how that sounds, but the parents insisted that the girls go out there because the little girl wasn’t expected to make it through Christmas. I’m sorry to say she did not. The funeral was this morning. She was only ten years old. The drug, which Andover calls Anmir, was touted as the drug that would stop leukemia in its tracks. Anmir stands for Andover Miracle. Some miracle.

  “Moving right along here, three years ago, somehow, someway, the drug was shipped before the FDA gave its final approval, but that was pretty much swept under the rug. They had been touting Anmir as the miracle it was supposed to be. The company, as you know, is privately held by the three Andovers. With all the hype, the stock market went crazy with speculation about their issuing an IPO and cashing in, probably becoming instant billionaires. Of course, they never did, expecting that the company would just get more valuable as Anmir sold more and more.

  “And things looked good for the first year, but then the dark stuff started hitting the fan. By that I mean that a significant number of patients went from bad to worse. Death
s started to mount up. Private lawsuits were filed but never got to trial, where the very nasty truth might come out, because Andover always settled out of court. For millions. I saw a memo in there somewhere that the powers that be felt it was better to pay out a few million here or there rather than let things get out of hand with their billion-dollar drug.

  “The doctors, the scientists who worked on the drug, were either fired or left on their own. From the records we have, it appears that Nikki was not able to track any of them down. There were three. One was a Pakistani doctor, another was Japanese, and the third one was an American, from Rhode Island. A new team of doctors was brought in, but Nikki was unable to make any contact with them. She tried the subpoena route, to no avail. Andover is buttoned up tight. They also have the resources to fight her tooth and nail, and that’s what they did and are still doing. The bottom line is the side effects of the drug. So far, if what I read is right, nineteen children have died in the last year and a half. Very painful, horrific deaths. Children. No parent should have to bury a child. I did see documents in the files from various doctors who said if the children had not been given the drug, they would have had a longer life span.”

  Maggie made no attempt to wipe away the tears rolling down her cheeks. The others blinked away their own tears, their faces solemn.

  “Who is the person or persons responsible?” Harry asked through clenched teeth.

  “According to the files, there are three people who own and run the company: Otto Andover, Philip Andover, and Martha Andover Gellis. Otto is fifty-nine, Philip is fifty-seven, and Martha is fifty-five. There are three grandchildren, but obviously they have nothing whatsoever to do with the company.

  “Nikki was really excited about a week or so ago when she found out that Otto has two grandchildren, ages ten and twelve. Martha has no grandchildren, and Philip has a five-year-old grandchild he seems to dote on. All three families live with serious security, even Philip. The ten-and twelve-year-olds are driven to a very private, upscale academy by a chauffeur who packs heat. I don’t know how Nikki found that out, but somehow she did. If I read it all correctly—and I admit I did so on the fly, as I was copying everything—the security really didn’t start to get serious until the fourth lawsuit was filed.”

  “Is the drug off the market?” Ted asked.

  “Hell no!” The words exploded from Jack’s mouth like a gunshot.

  “How can that be?” Maggie demanded.

  “I don’t frigging know, Maggie. How about the thousands of other people who took the drug who didn’t die? All the talk about the company’s going public died fairly soon after the lawsuits were filed. You see, if the company tried to go public, it would have to release all the information it was trying so hard to sweep under the rug. Nikki said that, to be sure, doctors stopped prescribing the drug. But it’s still on the market.”

  “And those three have never issued a statement of any kind?” Dennis asked.

  “Not to my knowledge. I didn’t see anything in the files, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t in there,” Jack said.

  “How did this class-action suit start?” Abner asked.

  “It’s my understanding that there is an organization online—a support group of sorts, I’m thinking—of parents whose children have leukemia. The parents share photos of the kids, talk about what they and the kids are going through, the progress or lack of progress they’re making with the ongoing research, that kind of thing. They bolster one another’s spirits in their collective fight against the disease. Nikki said the kids participate, and it’s a good thing. Terribly sad, especially when one of the children passes on.

  “But to answer your question, one of the parents whose child died researched the drug, didn’t like what she found out, talked with a number of oncologists, then talked ad nauseam to the others online, and someone gave her Nikki’s number. The woman lives in Falls Church. So she went to see Nikki, and the rest is history. She gave Nikki the names of the parents who had settled privately. Nikki went to talk to all of them. All four sets of parents told her they would willingly testify if she needed them, even though they had signed nondisclosure agreements as a condition of the settlements. They all said they were willing to give back what they called the blood money they had been paid for what basically was their silence. Anything else?”

  “So that drug . . . it was all about money, the bottom line. Those three Andovers who call the shots were only interested in how much money they could make. How much did they make before things bottomed out?” Harry asked.

  “Billions!” Jack said, bitterness ringing in his voice. “I forgot to tell you this: The day after Nikki filed the class-action suit, the two oldest Andover grandchildren began homeschooling. Abner, I want you to hack into the academy where those kids went to school and get their pictures from the yearbooks. Can you do that?”

  “If they have yearbooks, then the answer is yes. What about the five-year-old? Does he go to a play school or kindergarten?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that we need pictures of all three of them. In the files, Nikki compiled a gallery of the kids who . . . didn’t make it.” Jack was so choked up, he got up from his seat and walked over to the sideboard to pour more coffee that he didn’t want, just to give himself a moment to pull it together. He looked up at the splash of color on the Jackson Pollock painting, drew in a deep breath, then turned around. “We need to get those bastards. And we have to bring down their company.”

  Cyrus threw his head back and howled his agreement. The others nodded silently.

  “Whatever it takes,” Dennis said softly. “Whatever it takes,” he asserted a second time, to make sure everyone knew he was definitely on board.

  “Okay, then, this is what we’re going to do: Abner, you know what we need, so you can get to work. If you run into any problems, let us know ASAP. Ted, you and Espinosa are assigned to Otto Andover. He’s their big gun.” Jack referred to his notes. “All his stuff is in boxes two and three. Maggie, I want you to do Philip; he’s in box four. Dennis, you get Martha; she’s in box five. Harry and I are going to go through the . . . the files on the kids, the deceased children. At some point, we’re going to have to come up with a PowerPoint presentation, and I’m not the best person for that. I know Nik and Alexis were working on one, but they haven’t done it yet. When we take out those bastards, I want to ram it down their throats in living color. And I want pictures of their grandchildren included in that. I want to see how they deal with the contrast between their healthy grandkids and grandnephews and grandniece and the kids they helped to kill.”

  “Do we have a time limit, Jack?” Dennis asked.

  “We do. I want to put this to bed before the New Year. That gives us six days, counting today. I want this done before Sparrow takes office. And by the way, I scheduled a webcam meeting with Bert and Sparrow for later this afternoon, so make sure you’re all back here if any of you are planning to leave.”

  “I just have to check in at the paper; then I can stay the rest of the day,” Maggie said. “This is our easiest week of the whole year. That means the paper runs itself more or less, rehashing the year, yada yada yada.”

  Everyone said they were good and could spend the day.

  The banker boxes were opened, the doughnuts disappeared, as if by magic, and the work started in a sea of paper and comments as the boys and one gal got to work with a vengeance.

  Cyrus found himself boxed in under the table. He barked and backed out, then headed for more neutral ground, the kitchen, where he started to work on a Greenie that would clean his teeth and freshen his breath, his ears tuned to any and all sounds that were the slightest bit unusual.

  Chapter 3

  Jack looked up from what he was doing and glanced at his watch. He could hardly believe it was already past noon, but his stomach was telling him it was definitely time for lunch. He looked around at the others, all of whom were diligently making notes or reading files. He walked out to the kitchen a
nd called the Bagel Emporium to order lunch: pastrami on rye all around, with tubs of potato salad and coleslaw. He was told it would be forty-five minutes before it could be delivered. To pass the time, he brewed some fresh coffee and tried once more to call Nikki. He was stunned when she picked up after the second ring. His heart fluttered. That had to mean she was still on the ground, stuck somewhere.

  “Where are you, Nik?”

  “Kansas City. We’re grounded. There is no chance, we’re told, of getting out today, so Alexis and I are going to go to a hotel and hope we can get an early flight in the morning. How’s everything?”

  Jack sighed. “You know, same old, same old. Christmas is over. We missed you. It wasn’t the same, but we were together; the guys, I mean. And Maggie. How was yours?”

  “God, Jack, don’t even ask. If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget this disaster of a Christmas. Never!” she said vehemently. Her voice was so shrill, Jack blanched. “Do you believe those creepy bastards at Andover sent some . . . some flunky to the funeral? They sent a ton of flowers and a . . . and a . . . goddamn teddy bear. A teddy bear. Do you believe that? Oh, and they sent a fruit basket to the house. A fruit basket!” Her voice was so strident coming through the cell phone, Cyrus reared up and howled.

  Jack struggled to find some comforting words, but they wouldn’t come. It didn’t matter since Nikki wasn’t listening anyway. “You know what else, Jack? Those bastards are not going to settle. I know that now for sure. We’re going to have to go to court. These families are worn out. All their fight is gone. Like Molly’s dad said, once you see your child go into the ground, it’s all over. And he’s right. I want to pack it in myself. So does Alexis. But if we do that, then those bastards win. Tell me what to do, Jack. Please, tell me what I should do.”