by Ken Brigham
An effective drug for a devastating major disease with no competing products! Gomez could barely imagine the value of such a product for her career and for the company. The antidepressant drug she had developed had become a blockbuster, but it had to compete with several other effective products. To be the only game in town for a target disease that was hopeless and already claimed millions of victims could put Global in a position to name their price. And the increasing incidence of Alzheimer’s as the American population aged could guarantee the company’s financial situation for years to come. This might be the last deal Susanna Gomez would ever have to do, the crowning glory of her successful career.
Gomez drove into the garage under the administration building that housed the offices of the senior Global executives and parked in the space marked, Reserved, Dr. Gomez. She took the elevator to the sixth floor and joined her colleagues in the executive conference room. She had arranged the debriefing ahead of time and her people from legal, regulatory, and clinical trials who had attended the airport meeting had assembled awaiting her arrival.
“Gentlemen,” Gomez said, taking her place at the head of the long conference table, “and lady,” she added, nodding to Carol Handschuler, head of the regulatory division, who was the only other female member of the group. “Please take your seats.”
For two hours, they reviewed the meeting with Bartalak, each in turn commenting on the matter from their special perspective. The consensus of the group after the discussion was that they should pursue the deal. There were several positives. The preclinical work had been done and had been sufficient to get FDA approval for the initial clinical testing. It shouldn’t be necessary to do any more animal and laboratory work. They would need to review the material that Bartalak’s group had submitted in the Investigational New Drug application that resulted in FDA approval for the phase I-II studies, but the fact that FDA had approved the IND application was encouraging. None of the discussants, least of all Dr. Gomez, bought Bartalak’s argument that it would be possible to move directly to phase III definitive studies, there was just too little clinical data to justify that no matter how dramatic the results. But, even if they needed to do a larger phase II trial first, the drug was still well along the path toward full approval. And it seemed likely that if they moved quickly to consummate the deal that they could do it at reasonable cost, maybe even at a bargain-basement price, given the potential.
As the meeting concluded, Gomez charged the group with obtaining all of the data from Bartalak’s team for careful scrutiny and to begin discussions with whoever the legal representatives of Renaptix were. They should move as rapidly as possible. In the meantime, Gomez would present the matter to Global’s executive group for their approval, but she was confident enough that she felt they didn’t need to wait for that to get moving.
It was obvious that Gomez was excited. Those members of the group who had worked with her for a while were especially glad to sense again the fire in her belly that they knew was there but had been latent for a while.
The Nashville City Club occupied the top floor of a bank building at the corner of Church Street and Fourth Avenue. That location had been the site of the venerable Maxwell House Hotel that had lent its name to a brand of coffee advertised as good to the last drop. As it turned out, the coffee, still marketed under the Maxwell House brand, had outlived the institution for which it was named. The hotel burned several years earlier and was replaced by the tall building just opposite the L&C Tower, the city’s first skyscraper, with a local bank as the anchor tenant.
Mitchell Rook had convinced Syd Shelling to join him for lunch at the City Club and Rook was making his way up the hill from Commerce Street. He had chosen to walk up Second Avenue to Church Street and then turn left on Church up the two blocks to the Fourth Avenue corner. As he passed by the arched entrance to Printers Alley on his right, he recalled his conversation with Katya Karpov and, struck with how desolate the alley looked in the middle of the day, wondered again why anyone would want to live there.
When Rook exited the elevator on the top floor of the bank building, Syd Shelling was waiting for him, sitting on a leather sofa and thumbing through a magazine. He had been surprised by the invitation to lunch coming so close on the heels of the first conversation that he’d had with his old classmate in it must have been almost a year. Shelling was also still a little out of sorts over the thing with the autopsy report, not totally convinced that he’d done the right thing. He just wished that the whole mess would go away. But he knew in his heart of hearts that wasn’t likely. The most he could hope for was that he could keep his distance from the affair. He was determined to do everything he could to be sure of that.
“Hi, Syd,” Rook said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Shelling got up, dropped the magazine on the sofa, and walked over to shake his friend’s hand.
“No problem, Mitchell,” Shelling said. “Just catching up on the local news.”
Shelling had been reading a locally published monthly magazine that dealt almost exclusively with the doings of prominent Nashvillians. Among the numerous pictures of well-dressed people who all seemed either to be drinking something that appeared to be alcoholic or standing in front of a church, there was no one whom Shelling recognized. That didn’t surprise him. He had little interest in the lives of prominent people. He preferred to be as anonymous as possible and so kept pretty much to himself, avoiding any possibility of being caught unexpectedly in the reflected glare of the glitterati.
Rook had reserved a table by a window with a view out over the city. The maitre d’ seated them and left menus. They each ordered sparkling water with lime from the unattractive but pleasant waitress and began perusing the menus. Shelling waited for Rook to open the conversation. After all, Mitchell had created the occasion. But, if he had done it for a specific purpose, he didn’t seem in any hurry to reveal that.
After a few minutes, Rook put down his menu and looked out the window.
“Syd,” Rook finally said without taking his eyes from the view of the city. “Tell me something.”
“Sure, Mitchell,” Shelling responded.
“I haven’t been around the academic scene for a long time, so maybe I’m naive about how the system works. But, I thought you went that route because of the integrity of it, the disinterested search for truth,” he emphasized the familiar phrase, “and all that. Am I wrong?”
Shelling wanted to be honest with his old friend, but it was hard to answer the question honestly without saying more than he wished to.
Shelling paused for a few moments and then said, measuring his words. “Well Mitchell, that’s true. As corny as it may sound to you, that is why I chose the career that I did. And it was a good choice for me for the most part.”
“And the other part?” Rook looked directly at his friend.
“I guess things change over time. It seems to me that medical institutions in the last several years have become driven by different motives than when I started out.”
Mitchell sighed and said, “You mean money? Well, medical institutions don’t have a corner on that market. Money has come to drive a lot of things that used to be driven by more noble motives. Even business. Seems like a lot of people think making money is the only goal for business and, unfortunately, that any means are justified by that end.”
“Yeah. I thought we were doing medicine because we wanted to do something positive for the human race. Now I’m told that yes that’s true, but you can’t do good without money and the more money you can amass, the more good you can do. The problem is, I don’t buy that when what I see is more time and energy being spent trying to make money than trying to do good.”
“So, how do you do it, Syd? How do you stay true to yourself and deal with the apparently, shall we say, evolving mores,” stressing the words, “of the institution that employs you?”
“You know, Mitchell,” Syd responded, “basically I hunker down. I’m just a good pathol
ogist with a job to do and I do it as best I can. I do everything I can to stay as far away from the politics and the large issues that the institution faces as possible. I do my committee work on the Animal Care Committee or sometimes the IRB. I decline any invitation to sit on committees that deal with big institutional issues. Well, at least that’s what I try to do but it doesn’t always work.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rook said. “Sometimes you get drug into something you would rather avoid specifically because people know you don’t have a personal agenda. It’s happened to me. Quite a lot, in fact. I’ve lost clients that way. But in the long run, I think the firm has gained more than it’s lost by trying to keep true to its basic principles.”
“That’s true. Sometimes you come by information that you don’t want and that forces your hand. Understand?” Syd said, but immediately wished that he hadn’t said that.
The waitress reappeared to take their orders. They each scanned the menu again. Shelling ordered a Cobb salad and Rook ordered a grilled salmon panini with watercress pesto and microgreens, confirming that the fish had not been frozen and specifying that it should be cooked medium-rare.
“I think I do understand,” Rook resumed the conversation. “And actually that’s the reason I wanted to talk with you.”
“I thought our lunch invitation was a little sudden. And a little too close to the conversation we had about Cy Bartalak.”
“And Dr. Karpov.”
“Yes, Katya Karpov too.”
“I met with her.”
“And?”
“My sense was that she didn’t tell me the same things you didn’t tell me.”
“So, Mitchell,” Shelling said. “Why are you so interested in this? I don’t see that it has anything to do with your business client. This is a university matter and it could get really complicated. Do you understand?”
“No, Syd,” Mitchell replied. “I don’t understand at all. Perhaps you could enlighten me.”
“Well,” Syd said, “it’s like we were saying. When money drives the system, the people bringing in the money hold the power.”
“I understand that very well, Syd. I deal with people every day who believe that their sole mission in life and their worth as human beings depends on how much money they can make.”
“Well, yeah, but in an academic setting, it may be more complicated than that. There are still some of us who have different motives. The money guys can’t ignore that entirely.”
“But,” Rook replied, a note of indignation in his voice, “you, even you who claim to be driven by more noble motives, still protect your own, circle the wagons when a threat looms.”
“Maybe that’s true. But that’s because we still believe that universities are the only hope for perpetuating more noble motives. And, I might add, convincing the next generation to change the direction of things from where our generation appears to be taking them. We, or at least I, don’t want to undermine the stature of the university.”
Rook was ready to move directly to address the reason he had arranged the meeting. At this point, he thought that he had laid enough groundwork.
“Syd,” Rook said, laying down the fork he had been fondling, resting his elbows on the table and leaning aggressively toward his friend. “I’m going to give it to you straight. If that doesn’t cause you to tell me what you know about the Bartalak situation, then God help you.”
“Whoa,” Shelling replied, leaning back in his chair. “That sounds like a threat, Mitchell.”
“It is a threat, Syd,” Rook said. “But just hear me out. And I wouldn’t do this except for the fact that I trust you to do the right thing. I always knew you to care about what was right, maybe even more than I did back when we were classmates.”
Shelling didn’t respond in any obvious way. He sipped at his water. The waitress arrived with their food. Shelling started to eat, avoiding his friend’s eyes.
“I trust that what I’m about to tell you,” Rook started, “will be held in confidence.”
Shit, Shelling thought. The last thing he needed was some more confidential information.
“Wait a minute, Mitchell,” Shelling said. “Do you really need to do this? I don’t want any confidential information from you or anyone else!”
Rook smiled. “I’m not going to give you a choice, my friend. I’m going to give you confidential information and trust you to do with it what you believe to be right.”
Shit, Shelling thought.
“So, here is the story,” Rook began.
He told Shelling of the suspicion that Cy Bartalak was a crook, had probably dealt illegally in a drug development fiasco in Houston, and was strongly suspected by the federal authorities to be scheming to make an additional killing by committing securities fraud yet again. It was suspected that after inflating the value of his startup company by doing some kind of deal with VC or Big Pharma, and knowing that the odds of the drug succeeding were much less than he had claimed when doing the deal, he would unload his interest in the startup company at the inflated price on the pretense that the university viewed his further involvement with the startup company and the drug as a conflict of interest for him and for the institution. Rook did not tell his friend of the planned sting operation in which Rook was to play the starring role.
When Rook had finished, Shelling said, “OK, Mitchell. I’ll tell you what I know if you will promise not to reveal your source. I know that may sound cowardly to you, but understand that if I were identified as the source of what I’m about to tell you, it is very likely that I would lose my job and maybe my credibility as an academic pathologist. I’m just not willing to go there.”
Rook accepted the conditions, and Shelling, at long last, unburdened himself. He told his friend of his meeting with Katya Karpov and her claim to have documentation proving that some of the data from the clinical studies of Cy Bartalak’s drug had been falsified. He told Rook of Katya’s plan to file a formal charge of scientific misconduct against Beth Bartalak.
“And what did you advise her about that?” Rook asked.
“I gave her the same advice I’d give to anyone who asked—play by the rules. There’s a process for investigating scientific misconduct, and the proper way to deal with such a suspicion is to play by the rules. File a formal complaint with the dean. He’ll appoint a committee to investigate the charges and report back to him and a decision will be made.”
“Will she do that?”
“I’m quite confident that she will. Katya Karpov is not only uncommonly bright, she is also still driven by the motives that I think you and I admire. She would be taking a big risk to level such charges against Cy Bartalak’s wife, but I don’t think Katya will be deterred by the possible personal consequences of her actions. She’ll do what she thinks is right.”
“And her documentation? Is there any way I can get a hold of that?”
“Not likely. She apparently pirated it from Beth Bartalak’s computer. I haven’t seen it.”
They were both quiet for a while. Shelling pretended to be admiring the view out the window, but actually, he was considering whether or not to tell Rook about Bonz Bagley’s involvement in the drug study and the results of his autopsy. Shelling finally decided that he had told Mitchell Rook quite enough and so didn’t say any more.
As soon as Mitchell Rook arrived back at his office in the Batman Building, he placed a call to Dom Petrillo. Rook was told by a secretary that Mr. Petrillo was out of the office, and Rook left a message for the attorney to call him ASAP.
Chapter 27
When Katya Karpov arrived at work that morning, she went directly into her office and closed the door. She removed the envelope containing her letter to the dean from her briefcase and placed it on her desk. She then sat down at the desk and stared at the envelope for a while, screwing up her courage. She knew she had to do this and she would do it. But it was probably the most difficult thing she had ever had to do during a career that had, for the most part, brought her
pleasure and satisfaction. There was nothing either pleasurable or satisfying about leveling a charge of professional misconduct against a colleague, regardless of how disagreeable the colleague happened to be. And leveling such a charge against the wife of her chairman, who may even be involved in the deception, might very well be, as she had told Shane earlier, professional suicide.
Finally, Katya picked up the phone and rang the office of the dean. She told his secretary that she needed to meet with the dean about an urgent matter as soon as possible.
“Well, Dr. Karpov,” the secretary replied, “I’m looking at his schedule, and it may be at least a day or two before I can work you in. He has a board meeting this morning and some important standing meetings during the afternoon. How about tomorrow at five?”
“It really can’t wait, Lynda,” Katya responded. “I must see him today.”
Everyone who had any business with the dean knew his long-time secretary and knew that she controlled his calendar with a vengeance.
“I’m really sorry,” Lynda responded. “But I can’t schedule you today. Tell you what. If this is really that urgent, let me check with him and see if he wants to rearrange things in order to work you in.”
“I would greatly appreciate that, Lynda,” Katya said.
“Good. Let me check with him as soon as he returns from the board meeting, and I’ll call you. Will you be in your office?”
“Yes, I’ll be here,” Katya said and hung up the phone.
She removed the letter and the two accompanying documents from the envelope and spent the next couple of hours going over everything again, carefully studying each document. She tried as hard as she could to come up with an explanation for the information that would justify a conclusion different from the obvious one. But, for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine any other explanation. She replaced the material into the envelope and sat staring out the window. She thought about her career at the university. It had been an excellent situation for her, at least while Larry Walker was department chair. But even when Cy took over, things were still OK for the most part. This drug study had not been a positive for her. It had taken most of her time away from her own research that was at a critical stage. But she had done what Cy wanted her to, tried to be a good citizen, a team player. She couldn’t do that any longer, not with the information in the envelope on her desk.