Strong Medicine

by Arthur Hailey

  Sam said irritably, “I’ll decide that.” Then he conceded, “All right, she won’t know.”

  Lord was relieved. Celia Jordan had a way of asking penetrating questions. Also, she might disagree with what he proposed to do.

  Later the same day Vincent Lord received a company check. A voucher showed the amount to be reimbursement for “special travel expenses.”

  Lord converted the check to cash before leaving Morristown for Washington, and had brought the cash with him to this bar. It was in a pocket of his jacket, in an envelope.

  A waiter came to the booth. His manner matched that of Redmond, whom he addressed as “Tony.” Lord ordered himself a gin and tonic.

  “A nice place, don’t you think?” Redmond observed when the waiter had gone. “It’s considered chic. People who come here are mostly from government and the university.”

  “I don’t give a damn who comes here,” Lord said. “Let me see those papers.”

  Redmond countered with, “Did you bring the money?”

  Lord nodded curtly and waited.

  “I suppose I can trust you,” Redmond said. There was a briefcase on the seat beside him which he opened; from it he removed a large manila envelope. He passed the envelope to Lord. “It’s all in there.”

  Lord’s drink arrived as he began to study the envelope’s contents. He sipped twice while reading.

  Ten minutes later he looked across the table and said grudgingly, “You’ve been thorough.”

  “Well,” Redmond acknowledged, “that’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me.” His face creased in a knowing smile.

  Lord sat silently, weighing possibilities.

  The scenario concerning Dr. Gideon Mace was clear. Redmond had sketched in some of it during the phone talks. The papers Lord was reading explained the rest.

  It hinged on United States patent laws, generic drugs, and FDA procedures. Vincent Lord was familiar with all three.

  When the patent on any major pharmaceutical drug expired—normally seventeen years after patent registration—a number of small manufacturers sought to produce that drug in generic form, afterward selling it at a cheaper price than the originating company. When that happened, the cash rewards to a generic company could be counted in the millions.

  However, before any generic drug could be manufactured, application had to be made to the FDA, and approval given. This held true even if the same type of drug was already on the market, with FDA approval long since given to its original developer.

  The procedure by which a generic company was authorized to manufacture and sell a previously patented drug was known as an abbreviated new drug application—ANDA for short.

  For any important drug whose patent was about to run out, a dozen or more ANDA’s, from different generic manufacturers, might be filed with FDA. And, as with regular NDA’s, such as Felding-Roth’s for Staidpace, ANDA processing took time.

  Exactly how FDA dealt with all of these ANDA’s internally was never entirely clear. What was clear was that one approval was usually announced first. The others followed later, usually singly, sometimes at widely spaced intervals.

  Thus, the manufacturing company that was first to receive approval of an important ANDA had an enormous advantage over competitors, with the probability of matching rewards. Also if that company’s stock happened to be traded, it could jump in value, sometimes doubling overnight.

  However, because small generic companies were not listed on major exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange, their shares were traded on the Over-the-Counter market. Thus while professional traders might notice a sudden price surge in an O-T-C stock, the public mostly didn’t, and individual O-T-C stocks rarely garnered headlines in daily newspapers or The Wall Street Journal.

  For all these reasons it was a situation made to order for someone dishonest and “in the know.” That same someone, aware of which generic company was about to receive approval of an ANDA, could make a lot of money quickly by buying the company’s shares low before FDA made the ANDA announcement and selling them high immediately after.

  Dr. Gideon Mace, inside FDA and privy to confidential information, had done just that. Twice. The proof was in photocopies which Vincent Lord held in his hand. It was all there:

  —broker’s “buy” and “sell” transaction slips on which the customer’s name appeared as Marietta Mace. Lord had already learned from Redmond that this was Mace’s spinster sister, obviously a stand-in for Mace as a precaution, but one which hadn’t worked;

  —two dated FDA announcements of ANDA approvals affecting generic companies called Binvus Products and Minto Labs. Both names corresponded to shares described on the brokerage slips;

  —two canceled checks of Gideon Mace’s, payable to his sister and for the exact bottom-line amounts on the two brokerage “buy” orders;

  —two bank statements belonging to Gideon R. Mace, showing large deposits shortly after the dates of the “sell” orders.

  Lord had done a quick penciled calculation on the envelope in front of him. Mace, after his sister had deducted what appeared to be a ten percent commission, had reaped a total net profit of some sixteen thousand dollars.

  Perhaps more. It was possible that Mace had done something similar, more often—this being something a criminal investigation would reveal.

  “Criminal” was the operative word. Precisely as Redmond had promised in his original phone call, if Dr. Mace were exposed, he would almost certainly go to jail.

  Lord had been about to ask Redmond how all the material was obtained, then changed his mind. The answer was not hard to guess. Most likely, Mace had kept everything in his desk at FDA, perhaps believing it to be a safer place than at home. But Redmond, who was clearly resourceful, could have found a way of getting into the desk in Mace’s absence. Of course, Redmond must have had suspicions to begin with, but an overheard phone call would have been sufficient to set them off.

  How could Gideon Mace, Lord wondered, have been so incredibly stupid? Stupid in believing he could do what he had and not be caught. Stupid in trading shares in a name identical with his own, then keeping incriminating papers in a place where someone like Redmond could reach and copy them. But then, clever people often did foolish things.

  Lord’s thoughts were interrupted by Redmond’s voice, petulant.

  “Well, do you want all that stuff? Do we do business, or don’t we?”

  Without speaking, Lord reached into his jacket for the envelope containing the money and handed it to Redmond. The younger man lifted the envelope flap, which was unsealed. As he withdrew the cash and handled it, his eyes and face lighted with pleasure.

  “You’d better count it,” Lord said.

  “I don’t need to. You wouldn’t cheat me. This is too important.”

  For some time Lord had been conscious of another young man, seated on a bar stool a few yards distant, who had occasionally glanced their way. Now he looked at them again, and this time Redmond returned the look and smiled, holding up the money before putting it away. The other smiled back. Lord felt a sense of distaste.

  Redmond said cheerfully, “I guess that’s it, then.”

  “I just have one question,” Vincent Lord told him. “It’s something I’m curious about.”

  “Ask away.”

  Lord touched the manila envelope whose contents he had bought. “Why did you do this to Dr. Mace?”

  Redmond hesitated. “Something he said to me.”

  “Like what?”

  “If you must know,” Redmond said, his voice shrill and spiteful, “he called me a lousy fag.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Lord said as he rose to go. “You are one, aren’t you?”

  Before leaving the bar, he glanced back. Tony Redmond was glaring after him, his face contorted, white with rage.

  For a week Vincent Lord debated within himself what to do, or not to do. He had still not decided when he encountered Sam Hawthorne.

  “I hear you were
in Washington,” Sam said. “I presume it had something to do with that money I authorized.”

  Lord nodded. “Presumption right.”

  “I’m not one for playing games,” Sam said. “And if you think you’re protecting me, forget it! I’ve a natural curiosity. I want to know.”

  “In that case I need to get some papers from my office safe,” Lord told him. “I’ll bring them to you.”

  A half hour later, when he had finished reading, Sam whistled softly. His face was troubled. “You realize,” he told the research director, “that if we don’t do something about this immediately, we’re accessories to a crime.”

  “I suppose so,” Lord said. “But whatever we do, if it comes out in the open it will be messy. We’d have to explain how we got those papers. Also, at FDA, no matter who was right or wrong, they’d hate us and never forget.”

  “Then why in hell did you get us into this?”

  Lord answered confidently, “Because what we have here will be useful, and there are ways of handling it.”

  Lord was unperturbed; for reasons he was unclear about, he felt at ease in this situation, and in control. He had decided now, within the past few minutes, what was the best course to pursue.

  He told Sam, “Look, there was a time when I thought something like this would help move Staidpace along, but that problem is behind us. There will be other problems, though, and other drugs, and other NDA’s we’ll want approved without the unreasonable delay we had with Staidpace.”

  Sam said, shocked, “Surely you’re not suggesting …”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. Except that sooner or later we’re certain to come up against Mace again and, if he gives us trouble, we’ve ammunition we can use. So let’s do nothing now, and save it until then.”

  Sam was already standing. While considering what had just been said, he moved restlessly around the room. At length he growled, “You may be right. But I don’t like it.”

  “Neither will Mace,” Lord said. “And permit me to remind you that he is the criminal, not us.”

  Sam seemed about to say something more, but Lord spoke first. “When the time comes, let me do the dirty work.”

  As Sam nodded reluctantly, Lord added silently to himself, I might even enjoy it.

  3

  Early in 1975, Celia was again promoted.

  Her new job was as director of pharmaceutical sales, a post that made her a divisional vice president and positioned her one notch below the vice president for sales and marketing. For anyone who had begun working in sales as a detail person, it was an excellent achievement. For a woman it was extraordinary.

  But there was one thing Celia noticed nowadays. Within Felding-Roth, the fact that she was a woman no longer seemed to matter. Her sex was taken for granted. She was judged—as she had always wanted to be—on how well she performed.

  Celia had no illusions that this acceptance held true in a majority of business firms, or for women generally. But it showed, she believed, that a woman’s chances of reaching the top echelons of business were growing and would improve still more. As with all social changes, there had to be pioneers, and Celia realized that she was one.

  However, she still took no part in activist movements, and some of the newcomers to women’s rights groups embarrassed her with their stridency and clumsy political pressures. They appeared to view any questioning of their rhetoric—even an honest difference of opinion by a man—as chauvinist. Also apparent was that many such women, without achievements of their own, were using women’s activism as substitute careers.

  Although, in her new job, Celia would have less direct contact with Sam Hawthorne than she’d had for the preceding three years, Sam made it clear that she still had access to him at any time. “If you see something in the company that’s important and wrong, or think of something we ought to be doing and aren’t, I want to hear about it, Celia,” Sam told her during her last day as special assistant to the president. And Lilian Hawthorne, during a pleasant dinner for Celia and Andrew at the Hawthornes’ home, had raised a glass and said, “To you, Celia—though selfishly I wish you weren’t moving on because you made life easier for Sam, and now I’ll worry about him more.”

  Also at dinner that night was Juliet Hawthorne, now nineteen and home briefly from college. She had become a beautiful, poised young woman who seemed to have suffered not at all from the attention lavished on an only child. Escorting her was a pleasant, interesting young man whom Juliet introduced as “Dwight Goodsmith, my boyfriend. He’s studying to be a lawyer.”

  Celia and Andrew were impressed with both young people, Celia reflecting how short a time ago it seemed that Juliet and Lisa, as small children in pajamas, had chased each other through this same room where they were dining.

  After Lilian’s toast to Celia, Sam said with a smile, “What Celia doesn’t know yet, because I only approved a memo about it late today, is the real promotion. She now has her own parking slot on the catwalk level.”

  “My God, Daddy!” Juliet said, and to her friend: “That’s like being selected for the Hall of Fame.”

  The so-called catwalk level was the top floor of a garage and parking structure alongside the Felding-Roth headquarters building. The level was reserved for the company’s most senior officers who could park their cars, then use a convenient glassed-in ramp to reach the opposite story of the main building where a private elevator whisked them to the eleventh floor and “executive country.”

  Sam was one of those who used the catwalk level and parked his silver-gray Rolls-Bentley there each day, preferring it to a chauffeured limousine to which, as president, he was entitled.

  Others in the company with lesser status used lower parking levels, then had to take an elevator downward, cross to the other building in the open, and go up again.

  There was more good-natured banter about Celia’s “double elevation” before the evening ended.

  In their car going home, Andrew, who was driving, said, “It turned out to be a wise decision you made, years ago, to hitch your career to Sam’s.”

  “Yes,” Celia said, then added, “lately I’ve been concerned about him.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s more driven than he used to be, and he agonizes when something doesn’t go right, though I suppose both things go with big responsibility. But there are also times when he’s secretive, as if there are things he’s worrying about but doesn’t want to share.”

  “You’ve enough responsibility of your own,” Andrew reminded her, “without taking on Sam’s psyche too.”

  “I suppose so. You get wiser every day, Dr. Jordan.” Celia squeezed her husband’s arm gratefully.

  “Quit making sexual advances to the driver,” Andrew told her. “You’re distracting him.”

  A few minutes later, he asked, “Speaking of hitching careers to stars, what’s happened to that young man who hitched his to yours?”

  “Bill Ingram?” Celia laughed; she always remembered the first time Ingram had come to her favorable attention—at the Quadrille-Brown advertising meeting in New York. “Bill has been working in International as Latin-American Director—the job I had. Now we’re thinking of bringing him to pharmaceutical sales with a promotion.”

  “Nice,” Andrew said. “Looks as if he made a good star-choice too.”

  Amid Celia’s happiness about her promotion, a note of grief intruded. Teddy Upshaw died, while working at his desk, from a heart attack.

  Teddy had remained as O-T-C sales manager, having found his niche, which he filled successfully and happily. At his death he was less than a year from retirement. It grieved Celia that she would never again hear Teddy’s lively voice, watch his energetic stride, or see his bouncing-ball head while he talked enthusiastically.

  Celia, with Andrew, and others from the company, attended Teddy’s funeral and accompanied the cortege to the graveside. It was a miserable, blustery March day, with showers of freezing rain, and the mourners huddled in their co
ats while sheltering under wind-besieged umbrellas.

  Some, including Celia and Andrew, went to the Upshaws’ home afterward, and it was there that Teddy’s widow, Zoe, took Celia aside.

  “Teddy admired you so much, Mrs. Jordan,” Zoe said. “He was proud to work for you, and he used to say that as long as you were at Felding-Roth, the company would always have a conscience.”

  Celia, moved by the words, remembered the first day she had become aware of Teddy—fifteen years earlier, immediately after her speech to the Waldorf sales convention, when she had been ordered from the meeting hall in apparent disgrace. His was one of the few sympathetic faces she had seen on the way out.

  “I loved Teddy, too,” she told the other woman.

  Afterward Andrew asked, “What was it Mrs. Upshaw said to you?”

  Celia told him, adding “I haven’t always lived up to Teddy’s ideal. I remember that fight, the argument, you and I had in Ecuador when you pointed out some places where I’d ignored my conscience, and you were right.”

  “We were both right,” Andrew corrected her, “because you brought up some things that I’d done, or hadn’t done, too. But none of us is perfect, and I agree with Teddy. You are Felding-Roth’s conscience, I’m proud of you for it, and I hope you’ll stay that way.”

  The following month brought better news, for the world at large and, in a narrower sense, for Felding-Roth.

  The war in Vietnam was over. It was a crushing defeat for America, a nation not accustomed to defeats. Yet, the tragic slaughter had ceased and the task ahead—formidable but less bloody—was the healing of national wounds, more divisive and bitter than any since the Civil War.

  “In our lifetimes the bitterness won’t end,” Andrew predicted one evening, after he and Celia had watched on television the final, humiliating exodus of Americans from Saigon. “And historians, two centuries from now, will still be arguing the rights and wrongs about our being in Vietnam.”