Sheer Gall

by Michael A. Kahn

  “Hey,” he called from the kitchen, “how about some deer dick?”

  “What?”

  “This stuff is wild. Oh, gross!”

  I sighed in exasperation.

  “Listen to this,” he called. “‘Deer testicles can be sliced, soaked in wine, or prepared as food.’”

  “Oh, brother,” I mumbled under my breath as I turned back to my work. I finished up in the closet without finding anything worth noting. The same was true in the guest room. I had just searched that closet when Benny came in with the Chinese medicine book.

  I turned and groaned. “Now what?”

  “This is serious. Remember Sally’s mystery photographs—the ones from the film in her safe deposit box?”

  I nodded uncertainly. “Okay.”

  He handed me the book. “Take a look.”

  I stared at the color photograph. There were two white Chinese bowls, each containing three or four rust-colored stones exactly like those that were in Sally’s photographs. There were four additional stones scattered on the white surface between the bowls. As in Sally’s photos, some of the stones were reddish-brown, others were yellowish-orange. Most were round; a few were triangular or cube-shaped. The page was captioned “Cattle Bezoar.” I read the English text:

  Gallstones from the gallbladder, biliary ducts, or ductus hepticus of cattle or ox. A full bezoar is in shape of an egg, a rounded square or triangle. The better variety has a smooth, lustrous, fine, and crisp surface and finely veined cross section without white coating.

  Indications: Dispelling pathogenic heat, resolving phlegm, regulating gallbladder and subduing tension. It is also useful for treatment of fever, coma, delirium, insanity, infantile spasm, convulsion, pyorrhea, laryngitis, virulent carbuncle, ulcer and poisoning, chronic hemorrhoids.

  Available in pills or powder.

  I looked up at Benny, flabbergasted. “Gallstones?”

  He shrugged.

  I glanced down at the page again. “From cattle,” I said quietly.

  “Guess whose cattle,” Benny said.

  I shook my head in amazement, staring at the color photograph. “Oh, brother.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Benny was right. As long as I was going back to Chicago to meet with Betsy Dempsey at Bennett Industries, I might as well drop in on the Shell Answer Man. If anyone outside the Hong Kong pharmacology market was likely to understand the economics of cattle gallstones, it was Melvin Needlebaum. This was not merely because of Melvin’s encyclopedic knowledge of various subjects and his perfect photographic recall of even the most minor of details. No, the subject of cattle gallstones would ordinarily be too arcane for even a data demon like Melvin. But, as Benny reminded me, Melvin had a special reason to know gallstones: Meat-Prod.

  Back when we were all junior associates in the Chicago litigation department of Abbott & Windsor, Melvin had been assigned to Abbott & Windsor’s Meat-Prod team, a group of eight attorneys and numerous paralegals headed at the time by the late Graham Anderson Marshall III, the firm’s senior antitrust partner. The A&W Meat-Prod team represented two of the dozens of pharmaceutical companies named as defendants in multi district antitrust litigation over, of all things, cattle pancreas glands.

  To the uninitiated, it was an alleged price-fixing conspiracy that sounded not merely bizarre but downright ghoulish. Pancreas glands? they would ask in disbelief, wondering if perhaps the American businessman’s voracious hunger to monopolize, having already gorged on all the tasty morsels in the ordinary channels of commerce, had now taken a grotesque and apocalyptic turn: hoarding the internal organs of corpses.

  Far from it. Cattle pancreas glands were an essential raw material in the manufacture of insulin used in the treatment of diabetes. As such, the alleged antitrust conspiracy involved a potential damage exposure far in excess of two hundred million dollars.

  Such numbers justified assigning Melvin Needlebaum to the case, for Melvin was an expensive proposition for a client. Not only did he exhaustively research every conceivable legal issue, no matter how inconsequential or abstruse, and generate lengthy, contentious motions over matters others would not contest, he also tended to immerse himself in the facts and the minutia of a case so obsessively that by the time of trial he knew more about the particular subject matter of the lawsuit than any one individual at the company. For someone as thorough and persistent as Melvin, an understanding of the economics of pancreas glands would not have been enough; he would have wanted to understand the economics of every cow by-product, from hooves to eyeballs to gallstones.

  Or so I hoped.

  My meeting with Betsy Dempsey was scheduled for three that afternoon. According to Melvin’s secretary, to whom I spoke after confirming my meeting with Betsy, Melvin was in a deposition that morning but was due back to the office by one o’clock. I could meet with him then.

  I spent the early morning at my office putting the final touches on my preparations for tomorrow’s libel trial, caught the eleven-o’clock flight to Midway Airport, and was in the Loop by one.

  The law firm of Abbott & Windsor occupies the top six floors of the Lake Michigan Bank Building in the heart of the Chicago financial district on LaSalle Street. I took the express elevator to the forty-first floor—my old floor—and stepped off onto the beige carpeting of the main reception area. Although the receptionist was younger and the chairs had been reupholstered, the rest of the reception area—from the austere granite letters of the firm name on the wall to the contorted chunk of stainless-steel “art” squatting on a pedestal near the picture window—looked the same as it had during my days as a junior associate.

  The receptionist tried without success to contact Melvin. He was on the phone, she explained, and his secretary was at lunch. She let me go back to his office when I explained that I used to work at the firm, he was expecting me, and I knew exactly where his office was.

  I walked down the long carpeted corridor, passing by the secretaries in their little cubicles. Some recognized me, and I recognized some. A few of the nameplates outside the attorneys’ offices were familiar, others were not.

  I slowed as I reached one of the smaller offices. Inside was an earnest young woman associate frowning at her computer screen and absently tugging at the side of her frizzy red hair with her left hand. There was no wedding ring. Her desk was cluttered with stacks of court pleadings, legal pads, and photocopies of cases. She was working on either a brief or a motion. The message light on her phone was blinking.

  I knew this office well. Too well. I glanced at the nameplate on the wall, half expecting to see MS. GOLD. Instead, it read MS. ALTMAN. There was an empty carton of Dannon yogurt on her credenza with an empty banana peel hanging out. It looked like Ms. Altman was headed for another long night. I remembered all those long nights in that same little office. Abbott & Windsor works its associates hard, striving to squeeze every last billable hour out of them. Turnover is high, few make partner, and those who do are scarred along the way, losing their health or their marriage or their ability to recognize the first signs of spring.

  I quietly studied Ms. Altman. She was brilliant, had been a high achiever in college, and had compiled a sterling record at a top law school. Those were prerequisites for a job at Abbott & Windsor. She was intense. That was obvious. And she was no doubt feeling overwhelmed at the moment. That came with the territory, as I vividly recalled.

  Standing there in the hallway watching her, I had a crazy urge to dash into her office, my old office, grab her by the arm, and, like one of those crazed survivors in a body-snatcher movie, drag her into the hall and plead with her to leave before it was too late. Just go. Now. Walk down the hall and get on the elevator and don’t look back. Go. Please. You can still survive this.

  The urge passed, and I smiled ruefully at my own foolishness. Ms. Altman was her own woman, and for all I knew she’d be the managing p
artner of Abbott & Windsor someday.

  I moved on, past the next corner office and down the west hallway. In the distance I heard that unmistakable nasal staccato: “That is patently absurd!” The mating call of a Melvin Needlebaum.

  He was, as always, on his phone and on his computer and on his Lexis terminal, all at the same time. He had a speakerphone, which gave him even greater freedom of movement, and which he was using at the moment to feed a document into his portable fax machine.

  His office looked as it always did. The desk was a jumble of yellow legal pads, computer printouts, pleadings binders, and deposition transcripts. There were documents scattered in tall piles on the floor throughout the office. A dead rubber plant sagged against the wall in the corner, one withered yellow leaf drooping from an otherwise bare trunk. I lifted a stack of deposition transcripts off the lone chair and sat down to wait.

  “Now, jes’ hold your horses, Melvin,” a male voice was saying over the speakerphone in a thick Texas drawl. “Ah’m sure we can reach an amicable accommodation on that issue.”

  Melvin looked up from his fax machine with a demented grin, his eyes swimming behind the thick, smudged lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. “An accommodation? Hah! If I were you, Mr. Beverly Hillbilly, I’d check my fax machine in precisely three minutes.” He paused to feed another page into the fax. “That motion gets filed tomorrow a.m. unless I get relief today. Hah!”

  He leaned forward and pressed the disconnect button on the phone. Then he looked up at me, rubbing his hands together manically, his shoulders hunched forward. “Great stuff, Miss Gold, great stuff.”

  There was a beep from his Lexis terminal, and Melvin spun around to squint at the monitor screen. A lunatic grin gradually spread over his face. “Good golly, Miss Molly!” he said as he spun his chair toward the word processor on his credenza. “A moment if you please, Miss Gold.” His fingers flew over the keyboard. He finished typing, spun back toward his desk, typed a new search instruction into the Lexis terminal, and then looked up, his eyes blinking rapidly. “Yesssss?”

  I smiled and shook my head in amusement. “Hello, Melvin.”

  “Greetings and salutations, Miss Gold. What brings you to the windy city?”

  “Gallstones.”

  He winced. “My sympathies, Miss Gold. I hope you have retained the services of a skilled urologist.”

  “Not mine, Melvin. Cattle gallstones.”

  “Ah, well, thank heavens, eh? I once had the misfortune of passing a kidney stone. I can assure you that it was an even more execrable experience than arguing a point of law before Judge Carson.”

  Cook County Circuit Judge Luther T. Carson, a dim-witted political hack with a fierce temper, a pathological mistrust of big-firm lawyers, and an inability to grasp any rule of law more complex than those set forth in the traffic code, had for years played Professor Moriarty to Melvin’s Sherlock Holmes.

  Melvin paused and gave me a curious look. “Did you say cattle gallstones, Miss Gold?”

  I nodded. Opening my briefcase, I removed the leather-bound Hong Kong health manual and Sally’s gallstone photographs. “Here,” I said, handing him one of the photographs.

  Melvin studied Sally’s gallstone photograph for a moment and looked up. “Cattle, eh?”

  “I think so. They look pretty much like the ones shown in that book.”

  Melvin glanced at the cover of the book and nodded.

  “Benny said you might remember something about the economics of cattle gallstones from your days on the Meat-Prod team.”

  Melvin’s eyes widened as he flashed a demented grin. “Ah, yes, the Meat-Prod case. The stuff of legends, Miss Gold. In the end, you may be interested to learn, the plaintiff’s case collapsed as moot. The development of nonorgan sources for artificial insulin has significantly diminished the utilization of cattle pancreas glands.” He paused and snapped his finger. “That reminds me of an intriguing issue we had over the use of contention interrogatories in that case. Let’s see, if I correctly recall—”

  “Melvin, cattle gallstones,” I reminded him.

  “Ah, yes, of course. Cattle gallstones.” He craned his head back and squinted at the ceiling, searching his memory. After a moment, he returned his gaze to mine with a look of pride. “Cattle bezoar, as the Chinese say.”

  “Right,” I answered, impressed.

  “Just one of many lucrative but little-known edible or medicinal bovine by-products. Did you know that the Koreans are enthusiastic gourmands of beef large intestines? The Japanese prepare feasts of a part of the cow curiously known as the hanging tenders.”

  “Gross.”

  “Miss Gold, you may be surprised to learn that the Armour Pharmaceutical Company buys beef warts by the bushel.”

  I grimaced.

  “And should you ever become heavy with child, Miss Gold, and require artificial promotion of uterine contractions during labor, you will find yourself on the receiving end of an injection prepared from the pituitary glands of a cow.”

  “Fascinating,” I said, trying to sound interested. “But can we get back to the gallstones?”

  “Ah, yes, cattle bezoar. Slightly more valuable than horse bezoar, but far less valuable than black bear bezoar.”

  “Bear gallstones?”

  “Absolutely, Miss Gold. Find yourself a few choice specimens of same, live long enough to make the sale in Hong Kong, and take the rest of the year off.”

  “Tell me about cattle gallstones.”

  “Certainly. The principal source of market-quality gallstones is cows and bulls, not fatted cattle.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Fatted cattle are the younger animals, primarily steers and heifers. They are the source of steaks and other choice and prime cuts of beef available at your local supermarket and in fine restaurants throughout the nation. The older animals, known in the industry as cows and bulls, are generally between the ages of eighteen months and eight years. The quality of the meat on these animals is inferior. For that reason, they are slaughtered principally for hamburger and for the harvest of that gag-all of items accurately but euphemistically labeled by-products.”

  “Which includes gallstones?”

  “Most definitely, Miss Gold. The older the animal, the larger the gallstone, and, quite often, the better the quality. The better the quality of the gallstone, the higher the price. Just like diamonds.” He gestured toward the gallstones in Sally’s photograph. “These are from older animals.”

  “And thus more valuable?”

  “Oh, yes. Indeed, several of these might qualify as sheer gall.”

  “Pardon?”

  Melvin cackled, rubbing his hands together. “A term of art, Miss Gold. Sheer, as in unadulterated, or pure. In Hong Kong, the finest-quality gallstones are classified sheer gall. The poorest quality are classified corrupt gall.”

  I nodded, looking at another one of the photographs. “Do all cows have gallstones?”

  “Great Caesar’s ghost!” Melvin sat back, stunned. “All? No way, Miss Gold, no way.”

  I had to smile. Melvin was the only person other than Perry White who used that expression.

  “We are speaking of a tiny fraction, Miss Gold. If one could draw an analogy, searching for stones in cattle gallbladders is a bit like searching for pearls in oysters. Except”—he paused with a manic grin—“you don’t need a face mask and snorkel.” He burst into weird, high-pitched cackles, enormously pleased with his joke.

  When he calmed down again, I asked, “You say these stones are from older cows?”

  “Yes, indeed. And thus they come from a particular type of slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouses specialize, Miss Gold. Most handle fatted cattle, a smaller number handle cows and bulls. The population figures for fatted cattle are rather extraordinary. There are thirty-five million of them slaughtered a year. Impress
ive, eh? Big numbers, but it takes more than seven thousand fatted cattle to yield one ounce of gallstones, and those stones are often of inferior quality. With the older animals, however, one thousand carcasses will yield one ounce of high-quality stones, many of them deemed sheer gall. But, alas, there are less than a million cows and bulls slaughtered each year.”

  “So that means there’s an annual U.S. harvest of less than one thousand ounces of high-quality cattle gallstones?”

  Melvin nodded. “You are correct, Miss Gold. However, the unit of measurement in Hong Kong is the kilo, which is, as you may recall from your high school chemistry class, thirty-five point two ounces. That translates into an annual harvest of less than thirty kilos.”

  I was taking notes. “How valuable are they?”

  “Excellent question, Miss Gold, the answer to which depends upon your location within the chain of commerce. A kilo of sheer gall can be worth anywhere from twenty-five to seventy thousand dollars.”

  “And how many kilos could one slaughterhouse produce a year?”

  “The numbers vary, Miss Gold. The average slaughterhouse kills five hundred cows and bulls a day. The larger houses, however, can double or even triple those numbers. I’d say a good annual production would be eight to twelve kilos. With good market conditions in Hong Kong, that could yield more than half a million dollars, although a slaughterhouse would never sell them for anywhere close to that.”

  “Why not?”

  Melvin cackled. “Come, come, Miss Gold. Economics 101. Too many middlemen, commencing with the local by-products dealer. That’s the outfit that buys the gallstones, pancreas glands, fetal blood, and other byproducts. It sells them to one of the national houses, and so on and so on, until the gallstones finally reach the ginseng houses and folk medicine shops in Hong Kong. The only way to get the top prices is to hop on a plane to Hong Kong and peddle them direct to the retailers.”

  I quietly absorbed this information.

  “If the disclosure is not prohibited by the attorney-client privilege,” Melvin said, “I am curious to learn the reason for your sudden preoccupation with the subject of cattle gallstones. I trust it is not because you suffer from pyorrhea, laryngitis, virulent carbuncles, or chronic hemorrhoids or seek alleviation from what the Chinese obliquely refer to as, ahem, endogenous wind.”