BLIND TRIAL

by Brian Deer

  She allowed his touch. But only for seconds. Then she got up and circled the room. “Yes, but professionally, I mean. Do you know, has Dr. Mayr been looking at more records? How thorough is she actually being? Has she found anything else, do you know?”

  She returned and sat beside him. But not close enough. If anything, she was further away.

  So, a woman teasing: no surprise there. That part of their trip came with the territory. Luke always said this was the straight man’s tragedy: “the compulsive need for mixed sex.” But Ben sensed something else, something deeper, going on. Her eyes were all desire—all give it to me baby—but her mouth was butt-tight: resolute.

  This was getting sucky. This was looking pretty manipulative. But he could do likewise. He was expert. Was she really coming on to him, or playing some game? Was Hoffman right after all? Who cares? He could fuck her in the ass and still open the drapes. There was a line or two of coke in the car.

  He drained his beer and spun the bottle. “You seem pretty interested in that database, seems to me. Some people might think you’re obsessed.”

  “But look what she’s found. An international phase III trial on something so important as a vaccine, run so sloppy, so lazy, and dishonestly that a very senior company executive can turn up and forge signatures. And, if they’d do that—which they did—what else would they do that we don’t know about?”

  There was a mismatch here that didn’t sit right. One minute she was coming on to him; the next minute this shit. The Hoffman hypothesis looked compelling. You hit on that lady and you see her laugh in your face. It was worse than that: the lady wasn’t laughing.

  “All I know’s she’s calling Atlanta about your friend Murayama. And about catching me today with him. Which is probably gonna end my career.”

  “I’m sorry. Did I say something?”

  He banged the empty bottle on the hardwood and stood up. “And what’s all this Wilson shit anyhow? First, he’s insulting patients. And yeah, okay, that’s pretty bad. Next thing we’re driving round like some seventies cop show. What exactly’s your angle with all this?”

  “My angle?”

  “Coming on with all this professional angst, making out you’re some kind of whistleblower, with stuff you could have raised months ago. Chewing up our time out here days before FDA comes up with our license.”

  “I’m sorry if you feel that way, but I’m genuinely concerned. I thought you were concerned about integrity.”

  “Integrity, my ass.” This was all so sneaky. It was obvious she’d a hidden agenda. “Okay, so you got a thing about Wilson, and yeah they screwed up and cut corners? Everyone screws up sometime.”

  “This is a phase III clinical trial.”

  “Yeah, and what could he do about Doctorjee signing those forms? Which, I’d point out, you didn’t even know about before we got here, and Doc Mayr found them. You didn’t give a rat’s ass about your ‘home visits.’ You only wanted to chew up everyone’s time going round there.”

  “What more could I do? Honestly. Cool it.”

  “I’m telling you, some people think you’re digging the dirt so your friend Murayama can get something juicy on the company and say we did jack about it.”

  She vaulted from the settee. “I resent that.” She slammed down her beer and gripped her hips. “I haven’t told Hiroshi about any of it. Not the forged paperwork. Not the volunteer being thrown off the trial. Not the dead lost to follow-ups. And if that’s not professional, what is?”

  “Oh sure. What I think’s this. You and him are in it together. You’ll use any stuff Doc Mayr finds to yell blue murder. And BerneWerner Biomed goes down the chute, taking my job with it.”

  She dropped to perch on a blue-and-white ottoman: part of a suite with the settee. “That’s insane. You’re paranoid. You know that?”

  “Professional? Yeah, sure. If you say so. Professional. You and Murayama and his proposition. His proposition. Seems pretty obvious he’s fucking you stupid and wants to fuck the company as well.”

  He pulled open a drape, lifted it above his head, and looked out onto the street, now dark. He saw nothing unusual; no rented Camaro. He released the curtain and put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah well, if you want to know anything about the trial, I suggest you ask Doc Mayr.”

  “Hiroshi’s proposition? Huh. Oh right. So, I suppose you think that’s some kind of conspiracy, do you? Show me the data and I’ll give you the money.” Her brown eyes looked up from the ottoman. “They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

  “Probably a bribe. Typical biotech conduct.”

  She raised her eyebrows and laughed. “You want to know what it is? His proposition?”

  “Probably. I can guess.”

  “You can, can you?”

  “Probably.”

  “He’s asked me to go and live with him.”

  “What?”

  “I said, he’s asked me to go and live with him.”

  Twenty-nine

  THE CURTAIN opened. Or, more exactly, it raised. But at the third-floor window on the corner of Twentieth and Missouri, Henry’s boy signaled. As expected. Hoffman was parked about fifty yards east, his arms on the wheel of the Camaro. “She’s laughing at the kid. She’s laughing at all of us. Well, the last laugh’s on you, Dr. Honda.”

  In the seat to his right, Dalbert Skeet nodded, causing his afro hair to rasp the coupe’s roof. He was the Athens night gateman, a humdrum hoodlum, but the best for this job at short notice. “Like you said, boss. Yep. You got it right. Yep. Some folks don’t deserve to be Americans.”

  Hoffman sprang the locks of his alloy gun case, now resting between Skeet and himself. “I knew it. I knew it. She’s in it with Sanomo. Fucking assholes want to bring us all down.”

  The general counsel opened the case and stroked his Smith & Wesson, pressed snug in egg-crate foam. In a faint glow of streetlight, the anodized black of its hammer and trigger gave a beautiful smooth contrast with the stainless. It had the Wayne Novak sights. It had the patented Lo-mount. It had the fine rear adjustment for windage.

  Skeet sucked his teeth. “You’re sure you don’t want me to slap her around though? You know, teach the bitch a lesson? Show we’re serious about this?”

  “No.”

  “Aww.”

  Hoffman lifted the pistol, released the magazine, and checked the chamber for a shell. He’d loan the gun empty, so there could be no shooting. Shooting was for gun clubs, not business. “I told you. No. You do not slap her around. Get it? We don’t want any kind of rough stuff here.”

  “Won’t be rough. I’ll be controlled, like I said. Slap her around but controlled.”

  “You were meant to be controlled in DC, and what you do? Nearly killed the fucking woman. Dumbfuck.”

  “You said give her a scare. Freak her out, you said. Take her mind off work, you said.”

  “Listen fuckwad, the deal was to feel her ass, snatch her purse. Something proportionate.” Hoffman snapped back the empty magazine. “I said nickel-and-dime stuff. Something she’d spend a week dining out on. Something she’d whine about to get her off our ass. That was the deal. Not throw her in front of a fucking train.”

  “Yeah, well, you try feeling asses and snatching purses on the United States National Mall. You try it, man. I’m telling you, that town’s got more kinds a cop than Starbucks got hot beverages. They got Metro cops, transit cops, Capitol cops, FBI, DEA, Secret Service. They got Homeland Security, CIA, ATF, federal marshals. They got military cops, buildings cops, parks cops…”

  “Shut the fuck up, will you?” Hoffman sniffed the gun. “Couldn’t have snatched something, for God’s sake? Woman like that could whine till Thanksgiving on getting something snatched.”

  “Yeah, what she have? Fucking shopping bag.”

  “Could have snatched that.”

  “Right, with a fucking beach towel? Man, that’d be some trauma. Put her into psychiatrics
.”

  The general counsel opened the driver’s door and flapped it to expel Skeet’s odor. He was stinking up the car like he’d not bathed in months, or a raccoon crawled to die in his shorts. Christ, Hoffman loathed this. This wasn’t his style. He was a corporate attorney, not some hood.

  “And your pretty boy protégé had the bag.”

  Hoffman studied the apartment building. From the Camaro’s front fender stretched three levels of schoolyards, each surrounded by chain-link fences. Against the sidewalk, behind the fences, sat four parked cars. None was a white sedan.

  He couldn’t see her front door, on the corner with Twentieth, but Henry’s boy’s signal was enough.

  Skeet scratched between his legs. “So why didn’t I get the Jap job anyhow? You said I’d get that when you called.”

  Hoffman filled his lungs before closing the door. Managing morons wasn’t his strong suit. “Two reasons. First, I’d wrap myself in brown paper and phone the feds to come get my body before I put a half kilo of eighty percent cocaine in your greasy paws. Second, I needed a test for the kid. You remember a test? When you mistook your SAT results for a soccer score.”

  “Aww.”

  They’d wait fifteen minutes for Ben to get clear. Then Dr. Honda would learn something about her Sanomo Romeo. Plenty to keep her mind off work.

  “Okay Skeet, let’s go over it again.” He passed the firearm. “So, she answers the door. You push your way in. You give her a bunch of verbal about ‘where’s the Jap,’ and wave this thing. Right?”

  “Now, about that having no shells…”

  “We covered that.”

  “I gotta say, that’s not an NRA-approved situation. Gun with no shells is worse than no gun.”

  “Look, the purpose of this is to avoid a disturbance. Think about it. If you don’t have this, maybe she’d do something. Scream most likely. You want that? A screaming woman?”

  “Fuck yeah.”

  “But she’s not gonna resist when she sees this in her face. And then you say, ‘Where’s the coke.’ And she’ll say, ‘Dunno,’ or “Don’t ask me.”

  “Yeah, but what if she says, ‘Please don’t hurt me, it’s under the bed?”

  “She’s a doctor. She’s not gonna have half a key.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever she’s got, I’m having it.”

  “And when Murayama’s not there, you say, ‘Where’s his coke?”

  “I got that. ‘Where’s his coke.’”

  “Stressing ‘his.’”

  “Yeah, but that’s when maybe I’m thinking I need to slap the bitch around some. Make the thing more convincing.”

  “Like to slap her around myself.”

  “Right on.”

  “No. It’s no. The aim’s to make her think twice about the Jap. Break off that connection. We don’t need to get heavy. You wave this around, check the place over, say, ‘We’ll find that piece of shit that went off with our stuff,’ or something similar. Nothing else. You hear me?”

  “Could set light the place.”

  “No, you could not set light the place. You do what we agreed. Okay? Reason? Bullet point (a)…”

  “With no bullets.”

  “Point (a), slapping women around and setting light to buildings is going further than we gotta, and we don’t go further than we gotta. Point (b), burning buildings is destroying people’s homes. Think about the folks who live underneath. And the cops’ll start world war three over arson. Point (c), you’re one sick asshole, who’ll do what he’s told. You got all that? This is business.”

  “Be a nice combustible frame behind that siding.”

  “Fuck’s sake. First thing she’s gonna think is someone’s trying to shut her up. Destroy her secret documents, probably. You can bet she’s got secret documents up there. In her own mind.”

  “Could tie her up.”

  “No, you could not tie her up. What the fuck for? Look. Think it through here. Use that frozen pea in your skull to process information for a change. She won’t call the cops if she figures her boyfriend’s a mule. Yes? And if she does—which she won’t—who’d give a shit? They’re not short on crime in this town.”

  Hoffman looked at the sky: dark for a city. A ship’s siren hooted across the bay. Sporadic vehicles cut through to Third Street, and a wobbly old guy walked a German Shepherd dog. Otherwise, the location was deserted.

  “Now, for the last time, you’re hundred percent sure she didn’t see your face in DC? You’re totally sure about that?”

  “Listen boss, the dude saw me. The little old lady saw me. But the bitch did not see me.”

  “And she’s not seen you anywhere else?”

  “What, two miles outside Athens, Georgia, from six at night to six in the morning? Yeah, sure, she’s been in and out of there like dicks in the monkey house.”

  Hoffman wiped the pistol on a monogrammed handkerchief. “Okay, let’s do it then, and I’m out of here. So, no violence. You’re looking for the Jap, and the coke. That’s it. Now you go back to your car, you wait ten more minutes for the kid to get clear and me to get downtown.”

  Skeet took the gun and pulled the passenger door lever. “Okay boss. I’m just hoping it works the way you’re thinking. Cos, I’m thinking I gotta slap her around. What else I do? Think about it now. I say, ‘Where’s the Jap, where’s the coke?’ She says, ‘Don’t ask me. The fuck you talking about?’ And I say, ‘Oh, pardon me ma’am, excusez-moi,’ and step back on the street? I don’t think so.”

  Thirty

  SUMIKO WAS shocked by how quickly he lost it. His eyes danced around like they’d broken. She’d set something off when she gave mixed signals. She almost felt frightened by his reaction. She watched him struggle as he tried to control it. You’d think they’d had this fight a hundred times.

  And then he recovered—in about three seconds—the moment she explained the proposition. His gaze locked onto her. He seemed to look right through her, through the building, and halfway to Hawaii. Then he reined-in his focus and his mood morphed back to the way it was when she showed him her fish.

  “You what?”

  She grabbed a cushion. “He’s asked me to go live with him. In Japan, Nagoya. And work for Sanomo. That’s his proposition. He probably means ‘proposal,’ if the truth was known, because I think he’s got bigger ideas.”

  “Go live in Japan and work for Sanomo?”

  “He says he can get me a job.”

  Ben stared, wide-eyed. “You going to do it or what?”

  “Not sure.”

  He took a step toward her and kissed her forehead. “Sumiko, sweetheart, let me be first to congratulate you. The future Ms. Dr. Murayama.”

  “Not necessarily. And please don’t make fun.” She buried her face in the cushion. “This isn’t the right time. I feel delicate.”

  He sank to the floor. She heard his knees strike wood, then shuffles and snorts behind the cushion.

  She rose from the ottoman, bypassed his smirk, and sought a moment’s refuge in the kitchen. She drenched her wrists in cold water, opened the refrigerator, and poked around shelves of fresh produce. They were jam-packed with vegetables, salads, and bento boxes. Oh, how she hated bento boxes.

  Tonight was a mistake: she shouldn’t have done this. She shouldn’t have lured him to California. But she couldn’t let him leave on this awkward, foolish, note. She must act like an adult and be professional.

  She tugged a bag of grass from behind a bowl of beetroot and lifted two more Kirins from the fridge. Then she reached into a cabinet for a MiniVAP vaporizer, opened the beers, and returned to the living room.

  He’d kicked off his sneakers and killed the ceiling light, leaving the room lit only from the aquarium. And he’d fired up her laptop, which she’d hooked to speakers. She recognized Pearl Jam: Binaural.

  There's a girl on a ledge, who's got nowhere to turn

  Cos all the love that she had was just wood that she
burned.

  She sank to the rug, pressed her back to the settee, swigged from a bottle, and giggled. Then she unscrewed the vaporizer, opened the top, and filled the heating chamber with grass.

  Ben lay with a cheek in a puppydog hand, his forearm supported on an elbow. “So, you gotta tell me. Like, I’m pretty curious about this. How’d you keep a scene going with a guy from Nagoya?”

  She gazed at a light—pink—blinking on the MiniVAP. “Oh, conferences, conferences. You can spend half your life at conferences. I told you, we met in Shanghai.”

  “So, you want to live in Japan? Yes, or no?”

  “That’s the idea. Or at least give it a try, at least for a while. He’s made me a video of his house. It’s lovely.”

  “So, what about this week, if you’ve not made your mind up? Checking out the goods before you purchase?”

  “That’s a very male attitude, may I say?”

  He rolled onto his back, a knee pointing at the ceiling, open-legged like he’d sprawled in Washington.

  She studied his face as she reached for her beer. In the light from the aquarium, he was beautiful.

  “Oh, he’s being a tad pushy, I suppose. And this week’s been so difficult. There’s so much to think about really.”

  The pink light turned solid. He stretched to the vaporizer and raised its mouthpiece to his lips. She watched him exhale, then breathe in slowly. His lungs had volume. Yes, beautiful.

  He passed the MiniVAP and lifted a bottle.

  She sucked moist vapor as he spoke. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  But his question was drowned by her front door buzzer: harsh from a box near the stairs.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  She crawled to the laptop and muted Pearl Jam. That was all she needed: Hiroshi. He was supposed to be shopping with an old colleague from Yokohama on sabbatical from UC Berkeley. They were going for a meal. He said he’d call later. He was such an impulsive man.

  The buzzer buzzed again… Again and again… He said he would call. He should have called.