Froth hung off the corner of Nels’s mouth. I felt sorry for getting him so worked up—the man was obviously suffering from something. I turned around and looked through the small window in the door, praying I’d spot Beth. No luck.
Then again, this might be a cry for help from Nels. If Luc Baptiste really were his only friend, I couldn’t leave him here alone to wrestle with his grief. He needed someone to talk to. Clearly.
The least I could do was stick it out with him for an evening.
“Did either of you two know that LSD was supposed to be a blood thinner?” Nels asked.
I shook my head.
“Didn’t have a damned clue.” DJ took his first beer from the bucket.
“Yup. Some Swiss doctor made the first batch looking for a respiratory and circulatory stimulant. After he figured out what it really was, he started sending packets of LSD to doctors and researchers across the world. When word got out that it expanded peoples’ minds, what happened?” He slapped his open hand on the table. “Illegal!”
“That’s the elites at work again,” he said. “They didn’t want people to see what kinda grip they got the whole world in. They didn’t want John Q. Public to quit worrying about his mortgage and buying a new car every two years. They wanted him to be a white-collar slave.
“But I’m getting off track,” he said, then sipped his beer.
“So, you think there was some big conspiracy of mortgage brokers on failed blood-thinners who killed Luc Baptiste?” DJ asked.
I expected Nels to sock him for being a smartass, but he didn’t seem bothered by DJ’s skepticism. Or mine. I imagine he was used to people not believing him.
“The elites wanted Luc dead because he was always digging in the business of powerful people, and he dug in the wrong spot this time. Or the right spot, I guess,” Nels said. “Those folks got a lotta fingers in a lotta pies—they wouldn’t think twice about killing off an honest man like Luc. Hell, they’d probably kill someone like him as fast as they could.”
My brain searched for any kind of foothold. This was too much to take in right now. So, I leaned my elbow on the two-by-four beside me again and sipped my beer.
“Thanks for cluing us in, partner,” DJ said.
I looked at him, wordlessly letting him know he was crossing a line, but he kept his attention on Nels.
“But you got anything more specific to share with us?” DJ asked. “Like, did you see Luc hanging out with anybody you didn’t recognize? Maybe catch a glimpse of the guys who went through his boat a couple days back? Did he tell you anybody threatened to whip his ass or hurt him?”
“Well, I did see the fellas that tore his place up,” Nels said. “There was three of them, I think. I don’t know. Maybe it was two. Or four.” He brushed his long hair out of his face. “I called the cops. But they got there after the other fellas left. And they just kinda came and went. Nobody said nothing to me.”
Did Collat know that? If the police were called to Luc’s boat, there should be a record of it somewhere, and Collat would have access to it. He’d never mentioned it.
Nels’s expression changed. He’d remembered something.
“You know what?” He put his elbow on the table, coming closer to me, excitement in his eyes. He tapped the table with his index finger. “I did see Luc in this here bar with somebody I seen at the VA once or twice. It was about a week ago, when I… uh…”
“Had an incident,” I said, remembering what Beth had warned Nels about when we sat down. My guess was he’d gotten blind drunk.
“Yeah, an incident,” Nels said. “Luc was having a business meeting with this guy from the VA—what’s his name? Anyway, there was a voice recorder on the table between them.”
“A voice recorder?” I asked. “How big was it?”
“I dunno. Small enough to fit in Luc’s pocket. He always had the thing on him.”
“Small enough to fit inside a DVD case?”
Nels blinked at me, surprised by the odd comparison. “Yeah, I guess it could, if you needed it to.”
I turned to DJ. “Did you see a digital voice recorder on the boat?”
“Man, we tore that thing apart,” he replied. “Who’s this guy Luc was talking to?” DJ asked. “He work at the VA?”
“No,” Nels answered. “No, he’s a vet. A Marine who was in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I know his name’s Marc, but the Iraq guys don’t hang with the Vietnam guys all that much, so I don’t know him well. We talked at the Memorial Day cookout this past May for a minute—I know he was a combat engineer who was caught in an IED blast while cleaning up a street or something. Lost his arm. Maybe he knows something about Luc.”
Or, at least, he knows what he and Luc had talked about.
“Is the VA open right now?” I asked, looking for Beth over my shoulder.
“They’d be closed by now,” Nels answered. “But they open up tomorrow morning at eight sharp.”
Looked like DJ and I had somewhere to be in the morning.
From her office’s vantage point in the Hildon Building, Tamara Price could have looked down into the heart of Santurce, San Juan’s most populated barrio. If Miss Price were to spin her chair around, she’d have a perfect view of the Bay of San Juan, and all the swollen cruise ships waddling into port near the historic district, spilling out passengers greased up with money, oblivious of small, sick people like Gabriela’s daughter, Flor. From Miss Price’s lofty office, San Juan was as clinical and orderly as one desired. At this height, there were no street vendors on sidewalks, roasting in the Puerto Rican sun as they fried up mashed plantains for mofongo and prayed to catch tourists’ eyes and a few dollars. None of the buildings below moldered or stunk of mildew after Hurricane Maria had blown the island down to its skin.
No one was lame. No one was sick. No one was poor, except through their own failures of effort. People were not jammed into the poorhouse randomly. Misfortune was a compass, always pointed in the right direction.
On the eighth floor of the Hildon Pharmaceutical building, one could look down and see a perfect world of majestic white sail boats, gleaming black cars, and people with money to burn. To be Gabriela Ramos, sitting in front of Miss Price, was to be inspired by a young woman’s capacity for self-determination, wits, and above all else, hard work—the fuel for all fortunes.
If Gabriela had only had the focus and the guts when she was younger—if she hadn’t chased boys as a young teenager and sniffed out alcohol in her mother’s hutch the way other kids hunted for Christmas presents, maybe she wouldn’t have had to come to her boss, begging for charity.
Even before showing up at this meeting—if asking for a handout could be considered a meeting—Gabriela knew her place in relation to Miss Price—six floors down and two promotions up. A supervisor’s office held fast to the rung between Miss Price, newly hired vice president of special projects at Hildon, and Gabriela Ramos, Team Lead for Event Planning.
The two of them were of an age. Gabriela was almost thirty. And regardless of what her corporate bio might say, Tamara Price was only thirty on a bad day. Her eyebrows perfectly groomed, her skin radiant under a dusting of foundation, she looked closer to twenty-four, and would probably age at half the rate of Gabriela.
A good face to have for a company, and not only on account of her God-given, wide, clear eyes, and dark, silky hair that always fell just the right way over her shoulders, or her fetching smile that nabbed everyone, or that she was a swatch of “diversity” for a company with a board overwhelmingly stuffed with balding white men.
No, Miss Price was also as sharp as they came. She had an unparalleled knack for pitching ideas to the rest of Hildon’s board, perceptively guessing sticking points and objections in the planning phases for each new project, when team leads like Gabriela did dry runs of their presentations on new ideas in Tamara’s office.
And Miss Price’s eye for talent was unmatched. Gabriela had worked under three different VPs over her six years with Hildon. None
of them hired the way Miss Price did. None saw the potential in an applicant’s portfolio as clearly, or seemed to understand how personalities fit together on a team, or how best to motivate them to meet the teams’ goals.
Meeting goals might’ve been Miss Price’s strongest talent. She always got results.
Put it all together, and you had what seemed an inevitability; one of the youngest vice presidents to ever serve on a major pharmaceutical company’s board. So, if anyone, short of the Lord God, could help wiggle Gabriela’s daughter into the Anthradone trial, it was Miss Price. After all, the trial was being run by a contractor on Hildon Pharmaceuticals’ behalf. An up-and-coming VP would have to have some sway.
“I just don’t see how I can do anything to help,” Miss Price said. “I’m sorry—I truly am, Gabriela—but I’m simply not in the position to interfere with a trial.”
Miss Price’s eyes pulled Gabriela’s attention from the high windows beyond her. So clear and young, and looking into them brought a pang of knowing Gabriela would miss a young woman’s will and energy. All that determination, and earnest seeking.
No crying. No whining. No feeling sorry for yourself. Lord, Jesus, grant me the strength to endure in Your name.
“You understand, don’t you?” Miss Price asked. “My hands are tied. You’ve been like family to me, and to everyone else at Hildon, Gabriela. I, of course, want the best for your daughter, but using my position to do what you’ve asked calls into question our entire organization—it’s problematic.”
Gabriela swallowed the lump down her throat and blinked her eyes clear.
“I wouldn’t want to cause a problem.”
“It would compromise the nature of the scientific study,” Miss Price said. “A drug like Anthradone, with all its promises and potential to cure such a rare disease without any other effective treatments—think of how many people have waited for that. Any outside interference could set it back years, and meanwhile, the people who need it won’t get it.”
Miss Price spoke like a grief counselor. Soft, but firm, giving measured doses of bitter, jagged reality. The world couldn’t stop for one little girl.
“There’s also a personal risk for you, Gabriela. Even if someone were to know that we discussed this, it would be a serious black mark on your record.”
Gabriela’s spine stiffened. Her fingernails prodded at the heels of her palms. Lord save me from myself. Don’t let me lose this job. Please, if it is Your design.
“Hildon would have to let you go, and you’d have a difficult time getting work in the pharmaceutical industry ever again—no one wants to risk undermining science. Think of all the capital we have to invest on an orphan treatment like Anthradone. Research is our biggest exposure to risk, and to open ourselves up to further exposure because an employee pushed too hard from the inside—the margins are already slim, and the consumer base is going to be infinitesimal.”
“No—I didn’t mean to—”
Miss Price held up a perfectly manicured hand.
“I know you didn’t—you’re a good mother trying to do everything possible for her daughter. Who among us wouldn’t do that? That’s why I’ll keep our meeting off the record. That, and respect for the work that you’ve done here. We watch out for our Hildon family members.”
Like family. It felt good to be protected by someone who cared. Even if Miss Price didn’t have any kids.
“We can’t taint the blind nature of a drug trial,” she said. “You understand.”
“I understand. Of course.”
Miss Price smiled sadly from the other side of her big desk. She folded her hands, only to spread them again.
“I’ll do anything else I can to help you,” she said. “I can dig up referrals for another pediatric oncologist—we can relocate you to any major city in the continental U.S., any city with an outstanding children’s hospital—but I can’t meddle in a study. It’s unethical.”
Gabriela took Miss Price’s words as well as any mother in her position could have. A new doctor wouldn’t do it. Moving across the country with a daughter as sick as Flor might kill her. Her fingernails bit into her palms again, but she didn’t make a scene. She wouldn’t let herself cry in front of her boss. She had a good job, even if her paycheck didn’t cover all of Flor’s bills; she was already paid in the eighty-fifth percentile of people who’d held her position for the same number of years she had.
“Gabriela, honey, you seem stressed,” Miss Price said. “Do you need to take a personal day?”
“I’m out of vacation days.” Gabriela set her eyes on her feet. The tips of her shoes were dulled with age—something that never would’ve happened to her four years ago.
“Then you have my permission to take unpaid days,” Miss Price offered. “I’ll clear it with HR.” She picked up the receiver on her desk phone and started to bring it to her ear.
Unpaid vacation? No, that was worse than working—without work to distract her, she wouldn’t be able to focus on anything. Not with the knowledge of crippling debt creeping closer and closer by the hour while Gabriela did what? Slept on the couch next to Flor’s bed and watched TV?
“That’s all right.” Gabriela forced herself to look Miss Price in the eyes. She flexed her cheeks, jaw, and every other muscle in her face until her lips formed something resembling a grin.
She pushed herself up from Miss Price’s Italian leather couch.
“I’ll be just fine, Miss Price.” She held the smile. “I appreciate you watching out for me.”
Miss Price slowly hung up the phone, cheerfully meeting Gabriela’s smile with one of her own.
“Thank you for sparing your time,” Gabriela said.
“Sparing my time? Gabbie, we know each other better than that.”
Gabriela forced a smile. If she could’ve seen her own face, she was sure she would’ve seen the smile as a cold, twitching thing, a fish trying to gulp down its last few breaths.
“Try your best to take it easy, honey,” Tamara said. “Everything you are, your clothes, your smile, the way you wait in line at the grocery store—your whole person reflects on the company.”
“It does.” Then, Gabriela turned to the door, took the lever handle in her stinging hand, and twisted it until the latch let go. She scurried out of Miss Price’s office before her whole person reflected the thoughts and feelings, she felt bubbling up inside.
Gabriela strode past the secretary, Luis, without giving him a first look. She felt his eyes on her as she cut toward the small hallway beyond his desk. She felt him watching, taking pity on her, tasting the despair that must’ve been peeling off her skin until she moved right, into an intersecting hallway, and ran for the nearest bathroom.
Inside the first stall, she gave herself five minutes. Not an extra second would be wasted on tears, on feeling bad for herself or for Flor. There were precious few seconds left.
When the timer beeped on Gabriela’s phone, she unspooled a wad of toilet paper. She blotted the running mascara as best she could. A quick prayer to the Lord for strength and guidance, then, she emerged from the bathroom stall, and caught an eyeful of herself in the long mirror over the vanity.
Terrible. Awful. Unpresentable, uneven smudges of mascara under her eyes—it was no wonder she hadn’t climbed Hildon. She pulled a paper towel from the dispenser, wet it, and scrubbed.
Before long, all the mascara was erased. She’d left her makeup in her purse at her desk. If she wanted to fix it, she’d have to emerge from this secluded bathroom and face the world again.
Outside, the bathroom, the halls murmured with distant phone calls and the hollow clicks of computer keyboards. No one noticed her. No one cared. They had their own problems.
She wound through the halls, reached the elevator bank, and rode it down six floors.
As soon as the doors opened, the stench of burnt coffee hit her nose, and the chatter of people taking their first fifteen of the day assaulted her ears.
She continued down t
he main hall of the second floor, toward her team office—the tiny room she shared with her two subordinates, Paul and Martina—a space far too small for two people, let alone three. Thank God the new campus would be opening in a week, sparing them all another summer of swimming through each other’s body heat for nine hours a day.
What did body heat matter to Gabriela now? Would Flor still be with her next summer? Would she comment on the sweat stains around the collars of her mother’s shirts when the laundry came back?
Or would she be gone?
Gabriela understood why putting Flor in the trial would be frowned upon. But didn’t she have Li-Fraumeni Syndrome too? Which was more unethical? Picking out a single person to add into a trial that would probably include hundreds of people? Or letting a little girl die when you had a cure available, because innovation was hard and drug development cost too much money to risk?
Year-end balance sheets meant everything to Hildon. The bottom line must hold. Did their cures pay enough to cover advertising? How about construction of the new campus, and the new hires’ salaries? Was the income stream fat enough to satisfy the stockholders’ profit margin? And what about compensation packages? Lord help them if they forgot about compensation packages.
Income was soft this year? Buy up another lab. Figure out a new way to use an old drug—and if you could use that old drug to treat an orphaned disease like Li-Fraumeni, you’d go home with a two percent raise. Salami-slice every formula and compound until you had customers using antibiotics to treat gout. Did it matter if Flor were in one trial? Would Hildon’s vast corporate web tear from its supports and drop them all into freefall?
No, it wouldn’t. But Gabriela needed her job. And, in any case, Miss Price wouldn’t help her. Who else could she beg for help?
Nobody.
When she turned into the open door of her team’s office, she found Paul hunched over his computer, their team’s budgetary spreadsheet open on his screen.
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