Blood Brothers

by Rick Acker

  Yesterday afternoon, the management team had left for the airport, and the pressure level in the office dropped to virtually nothing. Kim and the other members of the prep team had gone out for a beer to celebrate, but they had all been too tired to stay out late. Even Kim, who was usually up for a night of bar hopping, had been in bed by ten.

  Now, she had little to do in the office, so she decided to call David. They hadn’t spoken for more than five minutes in over a week, and it would be good to hear his voice. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Hi, Kimmy. How are you doing? It’s been quite a week for you, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but it’s pretty quiet here today. Everybody’s waiting to hear how the FDA meeting goes. I’m just sitting here at my desk, missing you.”

  “I miss you too. I wish you were here. The hospital here is less than a mile from the beach, and there’s this cool little boardwalk right on the water,” he said wistfully. “It would be fun to go hang out there with you after work.”

  She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “That sounds so great right now, I can’t even tell you. I wish I could get on a plane and be there tonight. I just want to get away from here.”

  “Really? How come?”

  “I guess I’m still kind of in shock about Kathy dying. It’s so weird to walk past her office and see the door shut and the lights off and know that I’ll never talk to her again. There’s a memorial this weekend. I think I’ll go.”

  “That’s a good idea. It should give you some closure.”

  She opened her eyes and began to twist her hair around her finger, absently hunting for split ends among the black strands. “Maybe. I don’t know. I need closure about more than Kathy.”

  “You mean the monkey thing? That sounded pretty gruesome, but they’ve moved you into the clinical program, haven’t they?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like the people in the clinical program haven’t heard about it. I’m sure they all think of me as the screaming intern who threw up in the hallway.”

  “If it had been me, I would’ve needed to change my pants afterwards,” replied David. “Seriously, I wouldn’t worry about it. Just stay focused and make sure the rest of your summer there is strong—which I’m sure it will be.”

  “I’m actually thinking of quitting. It’s not just the monkey thing and the Kathy thing and the missing-you thing; it’s all of them together. Plus, it’s always humid here and there are tons of mosquitoes and I don’t know anyone and—”

  “Are you nuts?” David broke in with sudden vehemence. “You’ve got the perfect summer job, and you want to quit?”

  “It’s not seeming so perfect right now. I had a lot more fun waiting tables at Tim’s Tiki Hut last summer. I made more money too.”

  “What would you rather have on your med-school application and résumé—Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals or Tim’s Tiki Hut? And imagine what interviewers will think if they figure out that you bailed out of Bjornsen so you could wait tables in LA. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I guess it would be best for me to stay here.”

  “I know I’m right. Getting into a top med school is incredibly competitive. If you really want to get into UCLA, you’re going to need every advantage you can get.”

  “Yeah, I suppose not too many applicants get to talk about spending their summers working on a cutting-edge drug.”

  “You’ve got to look at the long term. Don’t just think of what sounds like fun right now.”

  “Okay,” Kim said wearily. “I knew you’d help put things in perspective. I’ll have two weeks to have fun and spend time with you after I get back to LA. Right now, I need to get in the right mind-set so I can crank on this clinical trial if the FDA gives us the green light.”

  “There you go,” he replied. “That’s my Kimmy. Hey, speaking of that trial, do you think you could get me in?”

  Kim hesitated. “Are you sure you want to? I mean, it’s an experimental drug that does things to your brain.”

  “The FDA won’t allow human trials unless they’re sure it’s safe,” reasoned David. “Are you worried because of the monkey thing?”

  “Yeah, a little bit,” she admitted. “Dr. Kleinbaum said he’d looked into it and there’s no way that it was related to Neurostim, but still. Besides, your brain is important to me. I don’t want anything bad happening to it.”

  “Don’t worry. If the FDA says it’s safe, and Dr. Kleinbaum says it’s safe, then it’s safe, particularly in the extremely low doses they’ll use for a Phase I clinical. C’mon, even a low dose of this thing could give me a boost in school next year. And I really need a boost.”

  His request made her uncomfortable, but she trusted his judgment. Besides, what he said about the FDA sounded right. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Ben looked up when Sergei walked into his office. “Glad you could make it. Have a seat.”

  The tall Russian sat down in one of Ben’s office chairs. “I was in the neighborhood when you called and had a few extra minutes. What’s up?”

  “I got a call from Gunnar this morning. He said that a Dr. Kathy Chatterton from Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals called him last night and told him that she had information proving that one of Karl’s executives was hiding bad test results from the FDA. She said she would bring it over to his house, but she never arrived. She was killed in a traffic accident on the way.”

  Sergei whistled. “You mean a crash.”

  “What? Oh, yeah. Exactly. Gunnar suspects that it wasn’t an accident at all.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d like to know what the police think. If they think it was an accident—particularly if they have witnesses who say so—I’ll feel a lot better. Can you look into it?”

  “Sure. I still have some friends in the state police from my time at the Bureau. I’ll make a couple of calls.”

  “Thanks. Anything you can find out before the preliminary-injunction hearing starts on Tuesday would be especially useful. Speaking of the Bureau, do you think we should talk to Elena about this? Murder is usually a state crime, of course, but I thought the fraud-on-the-FDA angle might interest the feds.”

  “It might.”

  Ben started to jot down a note to call Elena.

  “So, uh, are you planning to call her?” Sergei asked.

  Ben stopped and looked up. “Yes. Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”

  “Not really, but you should know that I don’t think we’re . . . well, that we’re not together anymore.”

  “Wow. Really? The last I heard, you guys were pretty serious. What happened? Or don’t you want to talk about it?”

  Sergei thought for a moment and then nodded. “You know, actually I would like to talk. Want to go get something to eat?”

  Ben glanced at his watch. It was five thirty. “Sure. Let me just tell Noelle that I’ll be taking the ‘L’ home.”

  Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at a table in the Sidebar Grille, eating sliders and buffalo wings. “So, what happened?” asked Ben.

  “We’d been dating for a while—more than dating, really. We’d get together for dinner practically every night, and we’d spend the whole weekend together. We even went to Russia for three weeks to visit each other’s families.”

  “I remember that,” said Ben, nodding as he spoke. “You two seemed really happy together.”

  “We were.” He paused and gazed absently at the street outside for a moment. “We really were. She liked doing the same stuff I like; we could talk about each other’s jobs and really be interested. In fact, we could talk for hours about pretty much anything and never get bored. I’d never had that with a girl I’d dated. Every other time, eventually I’d get bored with her or she’d get bored with me, and we’d wind up staring at our food during dinner and waiting for the evening to be over. I never once felt like that with Elena. Not once.”

  “Sounds like a great
relationship,” said Ben. “What made you guys break up?”

  “After we got back from Russia, my mom and my aunts started asking when I was going to marry her. So I asked myself, ‘Am I going to marry her?’ And I realized that I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s not a Christian.”

  “Oh.” Ben paused. “I knew you guys went to church together a couple of times, so I kind of figured she was, but no?”

  Sergei shook his head and took a sip from his glass. “She’s about as agnostic as you can get. Religion just doesn’t matter to her one way or the other.”

  “And it does to you. Yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t know what I would have done if Noelle hadn’t been a Christian. I would’ve known the right thing to do—or at least I hope I would have—but actually doing it would have been really tough. Remember that hiker who got his arm pinned under a boulder and had to cut it off or he’d die? That’s what it would have been like, except harder. It takes a lot of guts to break off a serious relationship over your faith.”

  Sergei brightened a little. “Thanks, I was hoping you’d see things my way. I’ve been catching flak from everyone else I’ve told. You remember my Aunt Olga, who works at the Petrograd restaurant? I haven’t been there for two weeks because every time I come in, she sits down at my table and starts telling me what an idiot I’m being to let Elena go.”

  “Didn’t she marry a mob boss?”

  “I pointed that out to her, and she said, ‘And we were happily married for thirty-six years! See? You should listen to me about these things!’” He scowled and wagged his finger in perfect imitation of Olga as he spoke. “Of course, she was mafiya too.”

  “There you go,” said Ben, gesturing with a buffalo wing. “They were both criminals, so it worked for them. What if he had been in the mob and she hadn’t? What if his whole life was dictated by that ‘thieves code’ you told me about, but she thought it was all garbage? It’s the most important thing in the world to him, but it’s nothing to her—just a bunch of meaningless rules made up by some lowlifes a hundred years ago. Maybe they wouldn’t have been so happy together then.”

  Sergei nodded vigorously. “Yeah, that’s it exactly. My mom keeps telling me I should marry Elena anyway, because ‘true love conquers all.’ You know what? I’m afraid she’s right, and I don’t want my faith to be conquered. I don’t think Elena would ever come right out and ask me to stop going to church or anything like that, but it bugs her in a lot of little ways—when I go home early on Saturday nights so I can get up for church, when every other Wednesday night is booked for small-group meetings. Things like that. And it would probably bug her more after we’re married; then the money I’d be putting into the offering plate each Sunday would be ours, not just mine.

  “But more than that, she doesn’t share the most important thing in my life. I can’t talk to her about it. I can’t even argue with her about it. I’ve tried bringing it up a couple of times, and she just sits there waiting for me to finish talking, and then she changes the subject when I run out of steam. I can’t live like that for the rest of my life.”

  “No, you can’t,” agreed Ben. “It’s too bad, though. You two were good together.”

  Sergei sighed and rubbed his eyes. “We were a lot better than good.”

  Anne didn’t sleep well after going to see The Gamester on opening night. As Markus had predicted, Gunnar hadn’t used his ticket, but that hadn’t kept Anne from enjoying the play, a revival of an eighteenth-century tragedy about a man who destroys himself through his addiction to gambling. Markus had been superb as the main villain of the play; he had given a nuanced performance that conveyed deep emotion without overacting. He had also looked handsome and dignified in the period clothes, which gave him a gravitas that his usual ratty outfits did not. Or, at least, that’s what Anne thought.

  Markus had been less sanguine about his performance. When Anne talked to him after the play, he had agonized over getting his lines slightly wrong a few times and having been off in his timing. Anne hadn’t noticed either alleged problem, but Markus was sure the critics in the audience had. While they were talking, Mel Goldsmith, who covered the theater for the Chicago Reader, had come up and congratulated Markus on his first appearance in a major role. Goldsmith then made a few polite, studiously noncommittal remarks and left. As soon as he walked away, Markus plunged into despair because he was sure that if Goldsmith had liked the play, he would have said so clearly. Because Goldsmith had been reserved in his comments, Markus reasoned, he must have hated the play—or worse, hated Markus’s performance. Crushed, Markus headed for home a few minutes later, where Anne had no doubt a bottle or two waited to comfort him.

  Anne watched for the morning Tribune with trepidation. When it came, she immediately pulled out the Tempo section and hunted for the theater reviews. She found the item on The Gamester. The Trib’s reviewer described the play as “a surprisingly satisfying revival of a three-century-old morality play.” He commented that Markus’s performance “showed his newness to the professional stage in occasional technical missteps, but his portrayal of Stukely was strong and sure overall. Bjornsen’s performance held real power and revealed a thorough understanding of the character. This was his first time in a major role, but it won’t be his last.”

  Anne read the review two more times and then called Markus. It was only six thirty in the morning, but she felt no guilt about waking him. He picked up after the first ring. “Hi, Mom!” he said brightly.

  “Good morning, Markus. You’re up early.”

  “Or late, depending on how you look at it. I couldn’t sleep last night. I finally gave up at four thirty, fired up the espresso maker, and started hunting for reviews on the Internet.”

  “Have you seen the one in the Tribune?” asked Anne.

  “I did. There are also reviews in the Reader and on a couple of theater websites. They all liked it, which hopefully will mean strong ticket sales. We should have a good run.”

  “Great! What did they say about you? I thought the Tribune’s review was right on the money, by the way. You were terrific.”

  “Thank you,” said Markus. “The other reviewers were also pretty generous in their comments about my performance. I think they’re going a little easy on me because I’m new, but I’m not complaining.”

  “I don’t want to hear any false modesty from you this morning. You were really good, and I don’t want you to deny it. We are very proud of you.”

  “Is that the royal ‘we,’ or has Dad really read any of the reviews?” he asked, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice. “I know he didn’t see the play.”

  “He hasn’t had the chance to yet, dear. I haven’t given him the paper yet.”

  “Did he ask for it?” Markus sighed. “Don’t bother answering. I know what you’ll say.”

  “Your father loves you,” she replied softly.

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “It’s true, Markus,” she insisted. “I’m not saying it because I want it to be true, but because it really is.”

  “Mom, he can’t even see me; how can he possibly love me?” The bitterness was now mixed with anger and hurt. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “He doesn’t see anything outside of his little corporate world, and I’m about as far outside that world as you can get. You know how he is; you know better than I do. The only time he notices me is when I force him to by being a problem somehow. If I haven’t embarrassed him in front of a major stockholder or something, he barely acknowledges my existence. All he cares about is that company. I don’t, and he’s never forgiven me for that. No, it’s worse: he’s ignored me for it. He decided I was a failure and moved on to Tom. He couldn’t fire me, of course, but he might as well have.”

  “You didn’t take the path in life that he’d hoped you would,” Anne acknowledged, “but he truly does love you.”

  Markus sighed again, and his voice sounded weary. “Oh, he may love me in a sense because I’m h
is son, but that’s not really love, is it? It’s duty. It’s an accident of nature. He has to love me because he’s my father, but he doesn’t love anything about me.”

  “How about you?” Anne asked. “Do you love anything about him?”

  “I—” He paused. “Touché.”

  George Kulish hung up the phone and frowned. His Chicago contact had just called to confirm that the Chatterton business was finished, and that the local police did not appear to be handling it as a homicide. The contract had been handled efficiently, quickly, and at a reasonable cost. George made a mental note to use the same man if he ever had a similar business problem in Chicago in the future.

  Still, a frown wrinkled his smooth, pale face, and he drummed his fingers on the mahogany table of his dacha’s sunroom. He poured himself a tumbler of twenty-year-old single-malt scotch that was only a few years younger than he was. He gulped it down quickly, grimaced, and poured himself another one. He brooded as he waited to feel the relaxing warmth of the alcohol reaching his blood. It was not the killing that bothered him; it was the personal failure that had led to the killing. The Chatterton contract shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. He’d had little choice once the woman found the data-capture program on her computer, but it was his own sloppiness that had allowed that to happen.

  Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ security software was a few years old, but well designed. George had needed to hack his way past it in order to find useful dirt for leverage in case Karl Bjornsen got out of line, and he had quickly decided that the easiest way to do that was with the username and password of someone with full access to the system. A techie from the IT department would have been ideal, of course, but stealing the cyber-identities of those types of people was difficult—and they were much more likely to discover the theft. So George had sent a run-of-the-mill data-capture program to various members of the research and financial staffs, attaching them to e-mails purporting to be messages from the recipients’ colleges regarding an upcoming reunion. Dr. Kathy Chatterton had taken the bait.