by Linda Barnes
Not likely. I checked my cell battery, called Roz.
“Yo.”
“You probably meant to say ‘Carlyle Investigations,’ right?”
“Hey,” she said cheerfully.
I gave up. “What can you tell me about Improvisational Technologies?”
“First off, Paolina called to remind you she’s going to Adele Guzman’s quinciana tonight. Is that right, quinciana?”
“Yeah, Sweet Fifteen. Listen, when we finish, call Fannie Guzman and check it out. She’s in my Rolodex.”
“Check it out?”
“Make sure it’s a legit party. Make sure it’s girls only for the sleepover part, or else make sure they’ve got a wall between the guys and the girls. Chaperones, shotguns, whatever.”
“You don’t trust your little girl?”
“I was fifteen once, Roz. Were you?” By the time I was fifteen, I’d given birth to a child and given her/him up for adoption without ever knowing the gender of my child. It was an experience I never mentioned, and I sure as hell didn’t want Paolina to repeat it, didn’t want her ever to have to make such a devastatingly irrevocable choice.
“Improvisational Technologies,” I said.
“Okay, well, up till 1980, you worked for a university, you invented something, the university owned it. So the universities were having a brain drain. Professors would invent things, yeah, but they’d keep them a secret, take a leave of absence or quit entirely, and then they’d have a product and the university could whistle for its share of the profits.”
“What’s this got to do with—”
“I’m giving you background. In 1980, we got the Bayh-Dole Act specifically to encourage the translation of university research into useful products and services and shit. So now every university has got an Office of Technology Transfer or an Office of Technological Advancement, or something like that.”
“What’s it do?”
“Helps professors set up ways to market the stuff they invent on company time. The university gets its share, but the professors make enough moola that they’re not tempted to split for the private sector. The universities play it like, Why should you have to learn to market your product? Stay in the ivory tower. We’ll handle all the nasty details for you. They take a fat cut, but their point of view is that the guy invented it on company time, right?”
“Okay, so what did Chaney invent?”
“He’s a hotshot in brain chemistry, but with the educational psych background, too, and he’s looking for chemicals, drugs, that ease psychological conditions. ADHD is one biggie, but they’re so many fucking brain disorders, you know? Autism and depression and anxiety, bipolar syndrome, all that shit. Improvisational Tech is Chaney’s baby, with Harvard’s support. Oh, and I didn’t mention that Harvard will also put you together with venture-capital firms because they don’t want to bear the whole cost. I mean, this stuff is freaking expensive.”
“On what order of magnitude?”
“First of all, time. We’re talking ten years, and then there’s money, two hundred and fifty million to get one drug from start to finish. Even after you file with the FDA, it can take another ten years for them to approve the drug.”
“Ten years?”
“It’s more like thirty months, average. And it’s not like there’s only one guy working in a little office, either. It’s the biotech boom. There’re more than three thousand clinical trials taking place right now in Boston-area hospitals and clinics.”
“And one of them belongs to Chaney?”
“Yeah, he’s finishing up phase two, which is very cool.”
“What’s phase two?”
“Okay, you start with chemical and animal tests, then you go to phase one, where you try out your drug on a heathy population, like twenty to a hundred healthy people. You gotta pay them. I’m thinking maybe I’ll volunteer someplace.”
I held my tongue. They’d probably ask what drugs she did regularly and toss her out. Hell, they’d take one look at the hair and the tattoos and toss her out.
She went on. “Phase two. Now it’s safe, you gotta show it’s effective, right? Most of these are randomized trials, where one group gets the experimental drug and another gets a placebo or a standard treatment. These are usually blinded or double-blinded trials.”
“Nobody knows who gets what.”
“That’s double-blinded. They used to just do it blinded, where the patients wouldn’t know if they got the new stuff or the placebo, but then some shrinks figured that the docs treated the patients differently, talked to them differently, that kind of shit, if they knew who was getting what. So they double-blinded the studies.”
“Right.”
She went on. “And this is a biggie—only about a third of all drugs successfully complete phase one and phase two. Phase three is killer expensive. You gotta run the tests with anywhere from several hundred to several thousand patients. Phase three lasts several years.”
“Blinded?”
“Yeah, doubled and randomized. They’re so many of these damn studies, they have trouble enrolling enough patients, but seventy to ninety percent of drugs that enter phase three successfully complete testing, and after you pass your phase three, then you can go for FDA approval to market.”
“Chaney’s phase two is looking good?”
“Very good, that’s the word on the street. So if this was ten years ago, Harvard would take the company public, but the market sucks for IPOs right now.”
“Chaney’s been meeting with people.”
“Well, I imagine the name Harvard in his r’sum’ doesn’t drive the moneymen away, but the hot thing now is takeovers. Selling out to a big pharma for big bucks. Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical firm, is moving into Cambridge soon, and everybody’s hoping they’ll buy up some of the smaller fish, and probably so is Novartis.”
“Why?”
“They need new drugs. Most of the big pharmas, GlaxoSmith-Kline, Merck, Novartis, Roche, they don’t have enough late-stage drugs in the pipeline to make up for the money they’re gonna lose when the patents expire on their older drugs, their major moneymakers. They need blockbuster drugs or they can’t keep generating the big profits and their investors will bail. So they’re buying little firms like crazy. Novartis just bought Idenix, and the deal could be worth eight hundred and sixty-two million.”
“Is anybody courting Impro?”
“That’s what I’m checking now. I’ve got calls into people at Pioneer Investment and I’ve got a pal at Nutter, McPherson.”
“Good. How many people does Impro employ?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“And Chaney’s the CEO?”
“No. Can’t be. Harvard has rules and regs to avoid conflict of interest. He’s on the board of directors; plus, he’s listed as a consultant.”
“Who’s the CEO?”
“Dr. Nigel Helving.”
“Check him out. Is there a George Fording anywhere?”
“Doctor?”
“Of course.”
“Yeah, here he is. Member of the Scientific Advisory Group. There are a ton of other names, plenty of initials and degrees after all of ’em.”
“Print out a list so I can look them over. One more thing. Are they hiring?”
“Let me go to their Web site. … Okay. Hiring. … Yeah. Technical. Hey, here’s one for a receptionist. You want me to go for it?”
“Tell me more about the technicals.”
“Okay, they’ve got an opening for a high-throughput medicinal chemist. You need your B.S. or your M.S. in chemistry, along with practical experience in conducting multistep organic synthesis, isolation, purification, and characterization of novel compounds. You want more?”
“That should do it,” I told her. “Thanks. Remember to call Mrs. Guzman.”
I locked the car and walked across the street.
Improvisational Technologies was a low-slung two-story yellow brick square, with one side broken so you could pass betwe
en thick brick walls to an inner courtyard. The exterior walls looked fortresslike, but the walls of the inner courtyard were patterned with picture windows, more like a hotel than a prison. I wondered how much of the building Harvard had funded, how much of it Harvard owned. Surely this was their land.
Chaney worked here and Dowling had cleaned here. Dowling had been blackmailing Chaney when he died. If Chaney was right and Dowling had been blackmailing others as well, it was possible he’d learned enough during his work hours at Impro to fuel his illegal activities. Yet Chaney didn’t want me interrupting his staff to question them about the possibility.
As I opened the heavy door to the foyer, I noted the camera installation in the upper right-hand corner. It was meant to be noticed, boasted a small red light that indicated it was active. Peering through glass double doors, I could see a tiled lobby with a reception desk to one side, a woman typing diligently at a keyboard. I pressed a bell. The receptionist didn’t look up, but after a time, the door buzzed and I opened it.
I figured the bell must ring in some security office linked to the door by the camera. If you didn’t pass muster in the foyer, you didn’t gain entry.
The receptionist looked up when the door opened. I fastened a smile on my face.
“May I help you?”
“Yes. Who would be the best person in Human Resources to see about a job?”
It was a calculated request. Not “May I see someone in Human Resources?” Not “Are you hiring?” I needed an opener that would make her think about the suitability of the people in Human Resources, not about my suitability.
She was no dummy. Her smile glazed from welcoming to rueful.
“I’m afraid we do no on-the-spot hiring. You’d need to call ahead for an interview, or submit your CV on-line. If you tell me what sort of position you think you’d be qualified for, I can give you a name, so you can send your r’sum’ to the proper person.”
“And then it’ll get stuck in a pile of other r’sum’s, and I’ll get a call in two months, when I’m no longer out of work.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Look, I was talking to Wilson Chaney at a party last Saturday and he suggested I drop by.”
She licked her lips. “Did he, by any chance, leave a message with anyone at HR? If someone were expecting you …”
Chaney’s name had power, but not enough.
I said, “I don’t think anyone’s got my name on an appointment list, but what would be the harm in letting me—”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not the way we do things here.”
I had no intention of leaving without gaining an inner sanctum. I’m stubborn, but she was no pushover. The look in her eyes made me think of a bulldog.
After a few more minutes of an argument that was getting us nowhere, her voice turned steely. “I’m sorry, but if you don’t leave now, I’ll have to call Security.”
“Why don’t you do that,” I replied.
And that’s when I lucked out. The man who responded wore a Foundation Security uniform.
CHAPTER 27
The head of Impro’s security force sat across from me at a dark wooden table, his mouth a thin line in an inexpressive face. He was a tall, loose-limbed man in his mid-thirties, wearing the Foundation uniform, light blue shirt with a patch on the left arm, dark blue pants with a light blue stripe up the side. The TV in the bar area of the steak house was tuned to Red Sox baseball, a day game, and he was conscious of it, looked like he wanted to turn and face the set, ignore me completely. He’d just refused my offer of a drink but had sullenly accepted a cup of coffee. I was starving and more than willing to buy the man lunch, but he didn’t seem happy at the prospect.
“Eddie said you had some questions.” He bit off the words, staring at his watch.
I used to work with Eddie Conklin, the big man at Foundation Security, back when I was a cop. I’d done some recent work for Foundation, and Happy Eddie and I had emerged from the ordeal as friends. A quick call once I’d been bounced from Impro had resulted in Joe Spengler turning up quickly at my table. What Eddie had said to get Spengler there so fast, I didn’t know.
Possibly, Spengler thought I was checking up on him for Eddie. Before we started, I had to get a few things straight or the man would never open up. I slipped a card from my wallet and passed it across the wooden expanse.
He studied it. “Carlyle Agency, huh?”
“Just me. I used to work with Eddie.”
“You went out on your own. You like being your own boss?”
“Money’s not great, but the hours are terrible,” I said.
He almost smiled.
“You’re working something that ties in with Impro?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I wanna know what you got.”
“That’s what I figured,” I said. “You’d want to know what’s going on. And in exchange, Eddie thought you’d give me some answers.”
He weighed it as if it were a trap that might spring shut. “Sounds okay.”
The waitress brought watery coffee in heavy dark mugs. The lighting was bad, the way it is in steak joints when they don’t want the customers to be able to tell the difference between medium-rare and well-done meat. I ordered a quarter-pound burger, and Spengler decided to go along. He even agreed to split an order of onion rings. Progress.
“So who goes first?” he asked when the waitress disappeared. “How about ladies?”
I ignored his baiting smile. “First, I want you to tell me about the job. What does Foundation do for Impro? Are you decorative, or serious security?”
“Hey, it’s a real gig.”
I waited, hoping he’d continue. It would have made me feel better if he’d accepted a beer; he probably still considered me a possible spy.
He said, “Company’s been around—I don’t know—more than five years, but we only took over like five months ago, kind of sudden. They wanted us fast, to beef things up.”
“What kind of things? Due diligence? Computer security?”
“Due diligence, yeah, we do that.”
“How? Through Foundation’s central office?”
Eddie’s smart, but he tends to hire more muscle than brain. Plus, he keeps things too centralized for my taste.
“Look,” Spengler said, “a lot of these guys have already been run through the Harvard mill, and that’s one mill grinds pretty fine, you know, so if it’s a Harvard postdoc, I gotta admit, probably guys down at Eddie’s don’t do that much digging.”
“Thirty-eight people, I hear.”
“Yeah. Small but growing. They get more financing, they bring in more people. Started out like, you know, a garage band—two, then four, then eight. A core group, then the group expands. They got some grad students, man, I don’t know if they ever go to class, ’cause they’re here all the time. Postdocs are worse, practically sleep here. Most days, it’s quiet, but sometimes they have these big meetings. Then, if it’s gonna include outsiders, we check ID at the door. Photo ID.”
The waitress brought our burgers on dark red plates. Dark plates, dark wood, dark lighting—I decided I’d give the joint a miss at night. I opened the pale bun and removed the wilted lettuce and limp tomato slice.
“Can I have those?” Spengler asked.
“Sure.”
“My girlfriend asks if I ate vegetables for lunch, this way I can say yes. She’s vegan and I’m a meat guy. I don’t think it’s gonna work.” He gave me a regretful smile.
“Far as vegetables go, I like artichokes,” I said.
“Me, too. On pizza. The only place I like vegetables, on pizza. They blend in.”
I nodded, my mouth full. I have nothing against veggies, carrots, brussels sprouts, broccoli, but I wanted to be on his team. He ate meat; I ate meat.
“This tastes great,” he said, chewing the burger. “Man, I’ve been eating a lot of pizza lately.”
We talked odds and ends for a while—how I’d met Eddie, where he grew up—but he
kept coming back to food and how much he wished he could convince his girlfriend to eat meat.
“It’s not natural,” he said. “I mean, look at me, look at my teeth. Why would I have teeth like these, God didn’t want me to chew meat?”
He was really trying to cut down, but the less meat he ate, the more he craved it. I was starting to like the guy. He was trying to work it out with his girlfriend, trying to figure a compromise. It made me sad, made me wonder why I couldn’t work it out with Leon, considering all we had in common, both of us carnivores. By the time I aimed the conversation back to business, the atmosphere was easier, more relaxed.
“So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “Harvard vets your people, Foundation’s home office verifies, and you check IDs. Okay. I got that. What’s the policy on incidentals?”
In security work, incidentals are the wives and kids who come to visit, the mailman, the gardener, the electrician.
“We don’t run a check on every Federal Express guy. FedEx doesn’t get past reception, ya know?”
“The way I didn’t.”
“Yeah, that lady on the desk, man, she scares me.”
We shared a smile.
“Cleaning crew?” I asked.
“Bonded,” he said firmly.
Sounded to me like Foundation was going on people’s reputations, not doing the groundwork. Spengler had finished his burger. Now he concentrated on the onion rings. I was wondering whether I’d be lucky enough to grab a couple, when he stopped eating abruptly, and wiped his hands on his napkin.
“Your turn,” he said. “What’s this about?”
I wasn’t planning to discuss Chaney’s troubles with anybody associated with Happy Eddie. Eddie knows too many cops and owes too many favors. The police might be trying to make a financial link between Chaney and Dowling, but as far as I knew, they didn’t know about the blackmail, and I wasn’t going to be the one who spilled those beans.
“Cleaning service,” I said. “One of their people wasn’t who he seemed to be. An ex-con, and I’m checking up on whether he stole from the places he cleaned. Has anyone missed anything at Impro?”