“Perhaps. I told you that I honestly think we can win.”
“Well, obviously we’re not as sure of that as you are. A pretty young girl with a dead baby and a stump for an arm makes a damn persuasive argument to a jury. And when juries decide for plaintiffs, they tend to decide big.”
“I understand.”
“I’m glad. So, then, what’s your pitch?”
“On behalf of my client, I’m prepared to agree to your offer of a settlement with no admission of guilt. But I’m a bit concerned about my reputation in this whole business. Grayson versus Baldwin has been a high-visibility case. If I go to trial and win, I’m probably set for business for years to come—if not from the MMPO, then either from the other malpractice carrier or even from plaintiffs. Goodness knows there’s a pile more money to be made from suing doctors than from defending them.”
“So?”
“So, I’d like some guarantee of referrals from you. Perhaps a retainer of some sort.”
“Mr. Daniels, you know we don’t do that.”
“There’s always a first time. Believe me, for the right amount, I can be as good or as bad as you want me to be.”
Matt could see that his remark, delivered more or less offhandedly, struck a nerve. Phelps paled visibly, but then just as quickly regained his composure.
“I think you’d best stop right there,” he said.
Matt pushed back from behind his desk and rubbed wearily at his eyes.
“Roger, please. I need your help,” he said. “I’m nervous as hell talking to you like this, but I’m in financial trouble—pretty deep financial trouble.”
“I thought you were a big baseball star.”
“Never that big, believe me. A few years ago, I got talked into this can’t-miss real estate deal and, well, it missed. You know how it is. Right now I’m staying afloat, but just barely. So like I said, I really need your help.”
“Sorry. No can do. No retainer. But I will keep you in mind as cases come in.”
Matt could see the suspicion in the man’s eyes. He was not going to be at all easy to trip up.
“You know,” Matt said, “there’s this question I’ve been asking myself over and over. ‘Why did Roger Phelps hire me for this case in the first place?’ Especially when I was being opposed by Jeremy Mallon, the Michael Jordan of malpractice litigation. ‘Why?’ Finally, when the answer just wouldn’t come, but the question just wouldn’t go away, I started doing some checking. Did you know that Jeremy Mallon goes to trial more than any other malpractice lawyer in Boston? It’s like the man doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘settle.’ ”
“But he’s settling here,” Phelps said.
“You know what else I learned?” Matt went on as if the statement hadn’t been made. He was hoping that if he kept talking fast enough, and with enough authority, Phelps would fail to consider that he might be winging it. “I learned that not one of the lawyers opposing Mallon in those trials had much more experience in malpractice cases than I did. Lambs to the lion—every one of us. Now do you see what I mean about being as bad as you want me to be? Roger, I don’t need a cut of the jury awards or anything like that. I’m not greedy. A retainer will do just fine. Some guarantee that this business will continue rolling my way.”
“Daniels, I don’t take kindly to this sort of innuendo. Besides, what you’re saying is utter nonsense. Like I said before, Mallon is settling in this very case.”
“That’s because he’s going to lose,” Matt responded with icy calm. “He knows it, and you know it. Roger, get it through your head. I’m not out to crucify you. I want to work with you. I need to work with you.”
Phelps eyed him for a time, clearly weighing all the variables, and then said, “Go to hell.”
Damn you, Matt thought. He was getting closer by the moment to Plan B. He stood, slipped on his glove, and began gently flipping the scuffed ball into its pocket.
“The proof is out there, Roger,” he said. “Any board of bar overseers with half a brain will be able to add one and one together and come up with you.” He began snapping the ball with more force. “How much of a cut of the jury awards does Mallon kick back to you? Fifteen percent?”
“Daniels, you’re crazy.”
“Twenty? Twenty-five? Mallon knew about the dentist, Rog—my one other malpractice case. I mentioned it to a couple of the people at the hospital, but they hate Mallon with a passion. There’s no way they would have told him. It was you, Rog. Mallon needed another patsy to win a big jury settlement against, and you fed him me.”
Matt turned his back on the claims adjuster. He was totally improvising now, but it really didn’t matter.
“You have no damn proof of that. Not a bit of—”
Matt whirled and, without so much as a flicker of hesitation, gunned the ball at Phelps’s head. There was no time at all for the man to react. The pitch tore past him, perhaps two inches from his ear, and shattered the protective glass on a huge print of the Boston skyline at night. The ball was already bouncing back toward Matt by the time Phelps threw himself onto the carpet.
“Jesus!” he screamed. “You really are crazy!”
“But fortunately, I am also very accurate.”
Matt scooped up the rolling hardball with his bare hand and whipped it sidearm at the chair Phelps had just vacated. The cherrywood back of the chair exploded like balsa.
“Now tell me, Roger. What does Mallon pay you?”
Phelps tried to get to his feet, but Matt easily pushed him back onto the floor. He picked up the ball once again and backed across the office. The claims adjuster was cowering against the desk.
“I’m very accurate with this, Rog,” he said. “Only one point nine walks per nine innings pitched. But I promise you, I’m going to keep at it until I miss—or I run out of furniture. You’ve tried to make me just another one of the patsies. But unfortunately for you, it didn’t work this time. Now I want in. I want to be part of this little scam you and Mallon are running.”
“Go to hell!” Phelps shouted again.
“Okay. I think I’m going to do this one off a full windup. We relief pitchers never get to use full windups very much. I need the practice. And I don’t need that paperweight right there by your head.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Here we go.… It’s a tie game, fans. Bottom of the ninth. The bases are loaded, there are two outs. Here’s Daniels’s windup …”
“Wait. Don’t!”
“Stay right there, Rog,” Matt said, freezing his arms with the glove and ball at shoulder height. “Just talk.”
“Okay, okay. You’re right. Mallon and I have an agreement. He lets me know when he gets a good case, and I assign a … um …”
“Go ahead. Say it, Rog. A loser.”
“An inexperienced attorney to oppose him.”
“And then you refuse to settle and insist on going for a jury award. Oh, you are beautiful, Rog. Just beautiful. Has Mallon ever lost one of those cases?”
“Never.”
“Until now. How much do you get?”
“That’s none of your business. Now let me up.”
“The tension’s so thick, baseball fans, you can cut it with a knife,” Matt said, adopting his announcer’s voice again. “A walk means a run.… A hit batsman means a run.… The runners are leading off.… Daniels is going into the windup—”
“A third of Mallon’s forty percent,” Phelps said quickly.
Matt lowered his glove. “That can add up.”
Phelps scrambled to his feet, carefully brushing slivers of wood and glass from his suit.
“Listen,” he said, still hyperventilating, “you want in, you’ll have in. Just give me a few days to work out the details.”
Matt slipped his hand from his glove. “Do I have your word on that?”
“Yeah, yeah. You have my word. You are really crazy, do you know that?”
“I want to hear from you within the week, Rog.”
; “Just be cool about this.”
“I will. I will.”
Phelps backed toward the door.
“I mean it,” he said. “Just be cool.”
“Roger, why don’t you think about starting me off with a little portion of this settlement? You’re offering two hundred K. Chances are Mallon will represent the other two families and get the same settlement. How about I get half of your third of Mallon’s forty percent? That would be … let’s see … forty thousand. Not bad math for a dumb jock, eh?”
“Okay, okay. After all three cases are settled. Just let me the hell out of here.”
“Go ahead,” Matt said simply.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. I trust that if you say we’ve got a deal, we’ve got a deal.” Matt waited until Phelps had opened the office door, then added, “Of course, I will have to charge you an additional two dollars and ninety-eight cents for your souvenir copy of the tape.”
Smiling broadly, he opened his suit coat. The miniature tape recorder was strapped to his belt—right next to a rabbit’s foot and a small, blue ribbon.
• • •
Dr. Dimitri Athanoulos, the president of BIO-Vir, welcomed Rosa Suarez and Ken Mulholland cordially. His office was on the fourth floor, river side of a somewhat dated building, typical of the glass and brick high-tech showpieces of the early 1980s. He was in his late fifties, Rosa estimated, handsome and urbane. His thick, wavy hair was the color of his lab coat.
“So, you are both with the Centers for Disease Control?”
“Yes,” Rosa said. “I’m a field epidemiologist. Ken is a microbiologist.”
“A virologist, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Some would say so.”
“From Duke.”
“That was twelve years ago,” Mulholland said, quite obviously impressed.
“If I recall correctly, you did some wonderful work on tobacco virus phage infection.”
“Cater to my ego and I am yours,” Mulholland said.
“Well, I am a DNA biochemist, primarily,” Athanoulos said. “But I have always had an interest in viruses … and in bacteriophage. In the three years since I left academia to become director here, my interest in both has become more intense and, how should I say, more proprietary.”
Rosa, seeing how quickly the two men connected, sensed that the BIO-Vir chief, urbane or not, tended to take men more seriously than women. Ken’s decision to stay overnight was turning out to be yet another break in the investigation. She sat patiently through five more minutes of scientific small talk and do-you-knows? then shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. Athanoulos immediately picked up on the cue.
“So now,” he said, “what can BIO-Vir do for our friends in Atlanta?”
“I’ve been in Boston for most of four months now,” Rosa said, “investigating three unusual obstetrics cases at the Medical Center of Boston.”
“The young resident who gave toxic herbs of some sort to her patients, yes?”
Rosa sighed.
“La potencia de las prensa,” she said. “The power of the press. Dr. Athanoulos, despite what you and a million or so others have read, it does not appear that those herbs are playing a major role in this drama. Although I should add that the possibility remains. Ken, do you want to review your studies thus far?”
“Dimitri,” Mulholland said, “Rosa here is far too modest to admit it, but she has done a damn thorough job of evaluating these cases. For many years she’s been the best field person at the CDC.”
“Go on.”
“She sent me some serum from one of the victims of this DIC bleeding problem—the one of the three who survived. We’ve gotten viral growth and identified an antibody indicative of a smoldering infection. Yesterday we finished sequencing the DNA of the bug. Its composition matched a virus created in your lab.”
Athanoulos’s thick white brows rose a fraction. Mulholland passed over the printout describing CRV113, and the lab director scanned it.
“Come,” he said, standing abruptly. “Let us take a walk to our primate unit. I know absolutely nothing of CRV113. The date of its patenting precedes my arrival here. And assuming we once were, we are no longer involved with such a virus. Of that I am certain. Since I took over, we have focused on building viruses that make gamma globulin and viruses that make certain hormones. But nothing like this. Cletus Collins has been in charge of the primates we use since BIO-Vir opened in ’80. If anyone would know about this CRV113, it is he.”
They took the elevator to the subbasement. Even before the doors opened, Rosa could smell the animals. The nearly silent corridor outside the elevator was lined with glass, which was quite obviously thick. For behind the glass wall were three long tiers of cages, virtually every one of them occupied by an active monkey. A stoop-shouldered old man was swabbing the floor in front of the cages. Athanoulos rapped on the glass.
“Where’s Clete?” he said.
The old man, lip-reading, strained to understand the question. Then he smiled. He pointed down the corridor and mouthed what seemed to Rosa to be “the rec room.” Athanoulos opened a door at the end of the corridor, and the three of them stepped into a glass cage, five feet square and perhaps ten feet high. Surrounding the cage was a huge room, rising two stories, and packed with toys, ropes, tree limbs, and climbing bars. At the center of the room, with one good-size chimpanzee riding on him piggyback and another, smaller one clinging to his leg, was Cletus Collins. Rosa noted the man could almost have passed for one of his charges, with his simian features and posture. Ken Mulholland had clearly made the same observation.
“Remarkable,” he murmured.
“Yes, isn’t it,” Athanoulos said.
“I’m surprised you let him commune with the primates like that.”
“You mean because of the viruses the animals carry? I assure you, Kenneth, after all these years, any virus they have, he has.”
“Clete, can we see you for a moment?” he said into a speaker on one wall.
The primate keeper freed himself from the monkeys, came over, and accepted the introduction to the visitors from Atlanta. Concern darkened his striking face.
“We exercise these animals good, real good,” he said in a midwestern twang that was several times more defined than Mulholland’s. “Every day. I take care of them like they was kin. I promise you that.”
“Mr. Collins, we’re not with any animal rights group,” Rosa said. “We’re trying to learn about some research that was done here a few years ago on a virus named CRV113. It was related to—”
“Clots. I know the work you mean.”
“Are there any records of it?” Athanoulos asked.
“Who knows? There should be. At least the animal records. Probably in the old metal cabinets in the storage closet next to the boiler room.”
“I did not even know that room or such files existed.”
“Abandoned projects, mostly. No one’s ever been much interested in them.”
“I am interested. Would you please take us there, Clete?”
“Sure. You wait in the outer corridor while I get these fellows back in their cages. They’d just as soon bite and scratch your face off as look at you. Everyone except me ‘n’ old Stan the cage man out there, that is.”
The trio of scientists watched from behind the protective glass as he returned the two animals to their cages. Rosa could have sworn that just before one of them let go of Collins’s neck, it kissed him on the cheek.
“I sort of liked Fezler,” Collins said as he led the three to the storage closet. “But I hated what his damn experiments did to my monkeys. You sure you’re not with one of them animal groups? Believe me, I take good care of these guys. Real good care. It’s hard on me when they … you know, when they don’t make it.”
“You have nothing to worry about,” Rosa said. “Who’s Fezler?”
Collins searched out the storage closet key from a belt ring that might have been holding a hundred.
He connected on the second try.
“Warren Fezler. CRV113 was one of his projects. He had about a dozen of ’em, it seemed. Not a damn one worked out right as far as I know. Too bad his job wasn’t to come up with a way to kill monkeys. He’d a been a big success then.”
Collins’s mucusy laugh was cut short by a spasm of coughing. Rosa instinctively backed away from him a step. She wondered how many job-related diseases he might have contracted over the years. He flipped on the light, revealing a small, concrete room, barren save for half a dozen file cabinets.
“Fezler wasn’t the best record keeper in the world,” he said. “But he was one hell of a worker. Weekends. Two in the morning. Holidays. It didn’t matter none to ol’ Warren.”
“I’m only the director here,” Athanoulos mumbled, clearly dismayed. “Why should I know this room exists? Or that we once employed a monkey-killer named Fezler?”
“What happened to the monkeys?” Rosa asked as Collins used one of his keys to unlock a cabinet.
“Just got sick ’n’ died. Fezler would put them under with anesthesia, then cut them with a scalpel in some weird way and draw some blood. Then he’d measure how quickly and how well their wounds healed.” He flipped through one drawer with no success, and went to the next. “You sure you’re not from one of those wacko animal groups?”
“Positive,” Rosa said.
“Well, I can’t really tell you what happened to the monkeys. They just kinda shriveled up ‘n’ died. It wasn’t on purpose, though. I can tell you that much.” He skimmed through the files in that drawer and went to the next. “Fezler liked the monkeys. They liked him, too. He was the only one besides me and Stan that they ever took to like that. He always wore the protective suits when he was in the rec room with them. But suit or no suit, they never bit him that I recall. Not once. They played with him just like they do with me. They liked bouncing on his belly. And believe you, me, he had a whopper. Maybe it was sort of like one of them Moon-walks for the chimps. You know, like at the carnival.”
Again, his laugh became a choking cough.
“What’s the problem?” Athanoulos asked, still irritated and now a bit impatient as well.
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