Miracle Cure

by Michael Palmer

  “Now they make Vasclear?”

  “So it would seem. And if that stuff is worth as much as the papers say, they ain’t gonna have to peddle vitamins or dope much longer.”

  Brian whistled softly.

  “Freeman, the guy who called me this morning and threatened me had a Russian accent. I’m certain of it.”

  “In that case, my man, I would say that you have gotten yourself into some deep, deep shit. When you do something to cross these guys, they don’t usually slap you on the knuckles with a ruler. I’m surprised that all you were threatened with was a positive urine test.”

  Brian sat stunned, gazing across the field at two boys who had begun tossing a football through the gathering dusk.

  “This Cedric, is he someone you trust?” he asked.

  “He’s a gangster. How the hell should I know? But yeah, I believe him. What reason does he have to lie to me?”

  “I staked my father’s life on a miracle drug that’s controlled by the Russian Mafia?”

  “So it would seem. But that don’t change that the drug works.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Seventy-five percent of two hundred cases. Freeman, what should I do?”

  “Don’t drink, don’t drug, go to meetings, and ask for help.”

  “Generic advice.”

  “Ah, but the right advice for this or any situation. Brian, I got more than a year invested in you. You may be right that the Newbury people are covering something up, or you may be wrong. At this moment, I really don’t give a rat’s ass which. I just don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “So, you’re saying I should go along with what they’re demanding, and not do anything?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But the thing is, Freeman, I haven’t done anything anyhow—certainly nothing to deserve this kind of reaction from them. They’re using the fact that I’m in recovery against me, threatening to destroy my life as a doctor, and I haven’t really done a damn thing but check some records.”

  “It does seem a bit like they’re trying to kill an ant with an elephant gun.”

  “Why?” Shaking his head, Brian stood and started across the field. Sharpe followed, tapping ashes from his pipe.

  “Why?” Brian asked again.

  They neared where the teens were playing catch. Brian clapped his hands for the ball, and one of them dutifully tossed it over.

  “Go deep,” Brian said, motioning the boy away. “Deeper,” he called out. “Deeper still.”

  “Mister, come on,” the youth hollered back.

  “Okay, suit yourself!”

  Every bit of confusion, doubt, and fear went into Brian’s throw. Although the boy was a good forty yards away, the perfect spiral was still rising when it sailed over his head. The ball landed more than sixty yards from Brian, bounced once, and disappeared into a low tangle of bushes.

  “I can’t quit on this, Freeman,” he said. “I just can’t.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  FULBROOK, NEW YORK, WAS A SLEEPY, POSTCARD-PRETTY village in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. The drive there from Boston was three and a half hours through intoxicating autumn foliage. Brian made the trip with the top down on the LeBaron, usually a tonic for any inner turmoil. But today, nothing was going to be able to distract him—nothing except some answers.

  Richard Vitorelli had been as suspicious and reluctant to speak to Brian as had his wife. Finally, he agreed to meet with him in person, provided he brought proper identification, and they could do it at the office of his family doctor—the man who also doubled as the county medical examiner. Brian was more than happy to oblige.

  Following nearly thirty-six hours on duty, Brian was off-call for the entire day. After speaking with Richard Vitorelli and getting directions to Dr. Samuel Purefoy’s office, he had called Teri from the flat. The sound of her voice made everything else seem less important.

  “I was just about to call you,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. Phone sex, maybe? I really miss you, Doc.”

  “And I really miss you, Doc. Can you get up here before Saturday?”

  “I really don’t see any way. There’s a tremendous amount of stuff still to be gone over here. Dr. Baird and I are flying up early in the day Saturday by government jet.”

  Brian had already decided that without specific proof, he wasn’t going to share any of the information Freeman had gotten from Cedric L. It was likely that the FDA was familiar with the officers and principal researchers of Newbury Pharmaceuticals, and that they had checked out above any reproach. Making unsubstantiated charges would only diminish his own credibility.

  “Have you come across any disturbing information about Vasclear?” he asked Teri.

  “None, except for what you told me about the two cases of heart failure that might have been PH.”

  “And Dr. Baird didn’t make anything of those.”

  “Not really. Remember, the patients in Phase One were all pretty sick to begin with. It seems only natural that some of them would die from their cardiac disease.”

  “What about the pulmonary hypertension?”

  “Brian, there’s no proof that either of those patients actually had it. And only one of them died of heart failure. You said the other man was shot during a holdup.”

  “He was. I’ve been meaning to get over to the medical examiner’s office to see if the autopsy on that guy showed any evidence of PH in his lung vessels, but there just hasn’t been time. And there’s another Phase One patient I want to learn about—a lady named Vitorelli. Like the other two, she’s dead. I think she died from cardiac disease, but I want to find out whether she might have had PH. I have the day off tomorrow, and I have nothing planned. So I thought I’d put the top down, drive over to her son’s place in New York State, and speak with him and the medical examiner.”

  “I won’t try to talk you out of it, Brian, but I will tell you that we’re satisfied the drug is safe and effective.”

  “But you said you’d be checking on Vasclear right up until the last minute.”

  “And I meant it. If you find anything concrete, anything at all, Dr. Baird will evaluate it. He has the President’s word that the signing ceremony can be called off even at the last minute.”

  “In that case, I’m off to Fulbrook. You sure you don’t want to fly up tonight and drive over there with me tomorrow morning? It’s about a four-hour trip and I have this car fantasy—”

  “Oh, not that one. All you men have that one.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, it just so happens that mine has to do with orange marmalade, a Ouija board, and my medical bag. Just so you know what you’re missing.”

  “Now that does sound intriguing. Brian, we really are satisfied we’ve done all we can. You don’t need to stick your neck out.”

  “You should have thought of that before you invited me to your hotel room. Now I’m obsessed.”

  “In that case, can I take a rain check on the Ouija board and marmalade?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll call you when I get back.” Brian heard a click on the line. “Do you have call waiting?” he asked.

  “No, why?”

  “I just heard a sound—a click.”

  “I’m always hearing weird stuff on my line, but nothing this time. Are you okay?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure. I’m tired and a bit stressed from work, is all. And I miss my dad.”

  “I would think those feelings might soften, but they’ll never go away.”

  “Yeah.… Well, I’ve got to get to the store for some marmalade.”

  “I miss you, Brian.”

  Dr. Samuel Purefoy, the Greene County medical examiner, was a jovial bowling ball of a man. His office was in a small sky-blue bungalow at the foot of a low mountain ablaze in fall colors. There was an old buggy, freshly painted, on the front lawn—a reminder of the simpler, gentler days of medicine.

  Brian arrived fifteen minutes earlier than promised, and Purefoy used the
time to brew them a pot of tea and benignly grill him about medicine, White Memorial Hospital, and BHI.

  “I’ve never encountered a scene quite like the one in that woman’s bedroom at Ricky’s place,” the aging GP said finally, the information acknowledging his acceptance of Brian. “There was blood-tinged pulmonary edema fluid everywhere. God, how that poor woman must have suffered before the end. She drowned. Pure and simple. We did what we could for her, but there really wasn’t any chance.”

  “She was alive when you got to her?”

  “She was, but just barely. It was a Sunday. My home is just a mile or so from the Vitorellis’ place, and my back was acting up so I decided to pass on church. I made it over there right when the rescue squad arrived. We actually got a tube in her, and got her over to our little hospital. It’s small, but it’s a damn fine place.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” Brian said.

  “She never made it out of the ER, though. With all that fluid in her chest, we just couldn’t get enough oxygen into her blood.”

  “Did you consider doing an autopsy?”

  “Not really. She was a White Memorial cardiac case. Her medications bore that out. I didn’t see any sense in putting her or her family through the trauma of a post. What brings you all the way out here from Boston two years after the fact?”

  “Mrs. Vitorelli was one of the first patients to be treated with Vasclear.”

  “Ah, the wonder drug. I’ve already got half a dozen candidates lined up for it. I heard it was going to be available this weekend. That right?”

  “I think so. Dr. Purefoy—”

  “Sam. Please call me Sam.”

  “—Sam, I’ve bumped into a couple of cases of patients who were part of the early Vasclear studies and who had something that looked and acted like severe pulmonary hypertension. Is that much of a possibility in Mrs. Vitorelli, from what you could tell?”

  “Pulmonary hypertension, huh. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a case. Or if I did, I didn’t diagnose it. Her ankles were terribly swollen, about as bad as I’ve ever seen. That’s part of pulmonary hypertension, right?”

  “Absolutely, although it’s not specific to PH.”

  At that moment, Richard Vitorelli came in, looking and smelling like a man who spent his life in the fields. He was broad-shouldered with thick, curly black hair and an extremely kind face. He tentatively shook a callused hand with Brian, then turned to Purefoy.

  “This guy legit?” he asked, his expression suggesting that trust didn’t come easily to him.

  “Oh, he’s legit all right,” Purefoy replied. “White Memorial Hospital, just like he said. He’s checking up on that drug Vasclear your mother was taking.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well,” Brian said, “in just a couple of days, people all over the world will be taking it.”

  “Including a bunch right here in Fulbrook,” Purefoy interjected.

  “I’m checking on people who were taking Vasclear and died. Your mother was on my list.”

  Vitorelli looked again to Purefoy, who nodded that it was okay to say anything he wanted.

  “My mother was never sick until my father died of a stroke four years ago,” he began. “Then, just a few months after he died, she started getting pains in her chest.”

  “That’s when she was put on Vasclear,” Brian said.

  “Yes. She took it for almost a year,” Vitorelli said. “At first, it looked like it was going to be really good for her. Her chest pains pretty much went away, and she perked right up. Then she started complaining again. When she came up here and I got a look at her legs, I was scared. I was gonna call Doc Purefoy, but it was Sunday and I … I thought it would keep until the next day.”

  He rubbed the back of his hand at the sudden moisture in his eyes.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Ricky,” Brian said, more sympathetic than either of the other men would ever know. “If your mother had the lung problem I think she had, no one could have saved her—not me, not Sam here, no one.”

  “She was a very good woman,” Ricky said. “Is there anything else you want to know? If not, I’d better get back to the tractor.”

  No questions about the possible link between his mother’s death and Vasclear; no sudden interest in a big lawsuit. Richard Vitorelli hadn’t been raised to think sue first, ask questions later. Silently, Brian vowed that if Vasclear had harmed Sylvia Vitorelli and Newbury Pharmaceuticals knew about it or had tried to cover it up, he would be back to visit with her son.

  Ricky shook Brian’s hand more forcefully this time. Brian stood to go, then he thought of something.

  “Sam, it just occurred to me,” he said. “Did they ever do a blood count on Mrs. Vitorelli?”

  “I don’t really know. I would imagine we sent bloods off, but then she … she didn’t make it.”

  “Could you find out? I’m specifically looking for her total white-cell count and the percent of eosinophils.”

  “If it’s there, I don’t see why not. Ricky, I know it was two years ago, but do you by any chance remember the exact date your mama died?”

  “It was two years ago this month. October the fifth.”

  Sam Purefoy called the hospital, spoke to the lab, then hung up. They didn’t have to wait two minutes for the results, which came in via a printer tucked into the corner of his office.

  “Well,” he said, scanning the sheet, “the eosinophils are up, but just a bit. Seven percent of a total white blood cell count of twenty thousand.”

  He passed the sheet over. Brian studied the numbers excitedly. He didn’t bother to point out that stress and maybe even dehydration had artificially elevated Sylvia’s white-cell count. If it had been the normal 5,000 to 10,000, the eo count would have been between fifteen and twenty percent—strikingly elevated.

  “Can I keep this?” he asked.

  “Of course,” the GP said.

  Three Phase One patients, two dead of heart failure, a third with heart failure, and all with an elevation in eosinophils. It certainly sounded as if there had been a drug reaction of some sort going on.

  Brian was about fifteen minutes outside of Fulbrook, cruising through a late-afternoon canopy of red, orange, and gold on a largely deserted, winding two-lane road. Distracted by the Vasclear puzzle and by his interaction with Sam Purefoy and Ricky Vitorelli, he didn’t notice the brown unmarked sedan in his rearview mirror until the red strobe on the dash began flashing.

  Reflexively, he glanced down at the speedometer. Forty-five. Maybe he had missed a microscopic twenty-five-miles-per-hour sign and had gone through a small-town speed trap, he thought.

  Annoyed, he pulled off onto the narrow, soft shoulder. The sedan rolled up behind him, and the dashboard strobe was cut off. There were two men in the front seat, both with sunglasses on. The one on the passenger side got out. He was under six feet and trim, but he moved with the looseness of an athlete. He was wearing slacks and a dress shirt with an open collar. He also had a shoulder holster under his left arm.

  He circled to Brian’s side and flashed the badge in his wallet.

  “License and registration, please,” he said, his tone perfunctory to the point of boredom.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Brian asked, rummaging through the glove compartment for the registration, then handing it over along with his license.

  “Speeding,” the policeman mumbled.

  He turned and ambled back to the sedan. A minute later he was back.

  “Would you mind stepping out of the car, please, Doctor.”

  Doctor? How could he—Then Brian remembered that on his first driver’s-license renewal after his graduation from med school, he had insisted on adding M.D. after his name. Deduct one more point for arrogance. The fine he was going to be asked to pay had probably just doubled. Next renewal—

  “I really don’t think I was speeding,” he said as he opened the car door.

  The policeman glanced back at the other officer, who had Brian’
s license and registration, and nodded. The man opened his door and stepped onto the pavement. Unlike the first officer, he was physically imposing—six four, narrow waist, massive shoulders.

  It took Brian only moments to place where he had seen him before. The high cheekbones and badly pockmarked face were not easy to forget.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BRIAN’S ENTIRE FOOTBALL CAREER AND MOST OF HIS time in the cath lab had been guided by one rule: Evaluate. React. Now, 175 miles from Boston, as he watched the man he had seen in the White Memorial basement emerge from the bogus police car, his evaluation took less than a second. He was going to be badly hurt … or he was going to die.

  In the three or four minutes since they had pulled him over, not a single car had passed. And even if one did, the chance of the driver stopping, or even realizing something was wrong, was remote. In a few more seconds, Brian would be disabled on the floor of the sedan or in the trunk, headed for someplace where he could be patiently and persuasively grilled about Vasclear—what he had learned and whom he had told. There was nothing appealing about the prospect. Assuming Cedric L. was right about the Russian mob controlling Newbury, these two were almost certainly professional killers.

  Nothing in the huge man’s manner suggested that he realized he had been recognized, or even that he remembered those fifteen seconds by the basement canteen. But he had eased the sedan door closed and was turning in the direction of Brian’s car. Brian knew he might be killed outright if he tried to run. But doing nothing, placing himself at the mercy of these two, was an even more frightening option. He was taller by six inches than the man standing just three feet from him. If he had any chance, it was now.

  He brought his left foot up with all the strength he could muster, and kicked the man squarely in the groin. Brian was tempted to hit the gunman as he sank to his knees. Instead, he whirled and bolted down the road. From behind he heard a firecracker snap, then another, followed immediately by the soft thud of a bullet slamming into the pavement just ahead of him.