_Tuesday, April 7
11:35 A.M.
_Stone Aimes was in his cubicle, staring at the phone when it rang.
He prayed this was the call he'd been waiting for. As a gamble, a long
shot, he'd requested that Jane Tully, his former live-in lover and the
Sentinel's part-time corporate counsel, do him a small favor. After he
hacked the NIH Web site, he'd asked her to pass along just one question
concerning Gerex to Winston Bartlett's corporate attorneys: Why had a
patient been abruptly and mysteriously terminated, without explanation,
from the clinical trials now under way by the Gerex Corporation? If
that wouldn't get a rise out of Bartlett, he didn't know what would. It
was the only part of the corporation's encrypted NIH file that seemed
irregular. But would Bartlett take the bait?
He reached for the phone.
"Aimes here." Around him came the clatter of computer keys and muted
laughter from the direction of the water cooler. Everybody had watched
a Tivo of the latest Sunday night and they were still critiquing the
shows. Mondays were everybody's day off, so Tuesdays were the first
chance to catch up. The staff was also starting to rev up again for the
coming week's edition, everybody with the hope that their particular
assignment would have legs and make its author a household name. Stone,
however, felt like this was either the first day of the rest of his
life or the last day of a career built on dealing to inside straights.
This cannot go on much longer, he kept telling himself; it was an
unstable condition. His soul was already over the fence, keeping
company with that wild, free ox he liked to muse about.
"Stone," came a husky female voice, strained and yet strong. Just as
he'd hoped, it was Jane, whose office was down on the third floor. "Can
you come down? Right now."
"Did you hear back from--"
"Stone," she admonished her voice growing urgent, "just come down. Do
it now, all right?"
"Sure." He paused a moment, wondering. Why did she sound so upset? Had
his plan somehow backfired? "I'm on my way."
He glanced up at the fluorescent light over his head like a pitiless
hovering spaceship, and wondered if this was going to be the break he
had been praying for. There was a nervousness in Jane's voice that
indicated something major was afoot. Something was about to change.
He switched off his Compaq laptop and reached for his brown corduroy
jacket, which was hanging from a hook on the side of the glass-walled
cubicle. He straightened his brown knit tie as he stepped on the
elevator, and for some reason he found himself thinking of his
daughter, Amy.
He mimed a toast. Here's looking at you, kid.
She was in the fifth grade and lived with her mother, Joyce, in a small
condominium nestled in the hills near El Cerrito, where his ex-wife
grew up. Joyce was a television producer who had left him to go back
out there, where she got work as a garden designer. When he got over
the shock, he finally concluded she loved California more than she
loved him. Maybe not an unreasonable choice. But then she got custody
of Amy, based solely on the fact that his income was inadequate to send
her to private school in New York and the public schools were out of
the question. But Joyce had agreed that if he ever had the money, she
could live with him some of the time. This book, he hoped, would make
that happen.
He still didn't know why he and Joyce couldn't have made a go of it. It
had occurred to him that there was the real possibility she had fallen
in love with the idea of a dashing investigative reporter, not the
grueling reality. These days she had Amy all the time except for three
weeks in July, and he had so many things to regret he scarcely knew
where to start.
He kept a year-old photograph of Amy on his desk, in a frame far too
expensive for a snapshot of a young girl on a black horse named Zena.
But it was Zena that his $1,500 a month in child support had helped to
pay for, and he felt it somehow bonded them.
Hi, Dad, from me and Zena, went the inscription.
Why was he thinking about her now? he wondered. The answer was, because
he wanted her world to be different from the one he had known as a
child. He hadn't had a father around, and that had left him with a lot
of anger. He didn't want the same fate for her.
Amy's world, he knew, was going to be very different, no matter what he
did. To be young like her and starting out was a daunting prospect
these days. He wanted to make everything easier for her, but the only
thing he could give her now was a measly $1,500 every month and his
unshakable love.
Even so, that was more than his mother, Karen, got for child support--
from a natural father he had never actually seen in the flesh until he
was eleven. And that was a chance encounter....
So, if this book got some traction and he got some recognition, along
with some economic security, he might be able to have Amy come back and
live with him. It was something
she'd said she wanted to do, though he wasn't sure where he would keep
Zena.
But all in good time. Now everything depended on the book....
The elevator door opened and he stepped out on the third floor. The
receptionist, Rhonda, a dark-haired resident of Avenue A who usually
tried to flirt, looked at him as though he'd just been convicted of a
crime and nodded with her head toward the corridor leading to Jane's
office.
"Stone, you've really screwed up this time. You'll never guess who's in
there and after your scalp. What on earth did you do?"
"You mean--"
"This is a guy I've only seen in newspaper pictures, though, needless
to say, not in this upstanding rag." In her dismay, she unthinkingly
reached for the pack of Virginia Slims lying next to the phone,
momentarily forgetting that smoking had long-since been forbidden in
the building. "You'd better get your ass in there. Jesus, he came in
with a bunch of lawyers, but then he told them to split. 'I'm going to
handle the fucker myself.' Quote, unquote. Right here by my desk."
Stone didn't know, with absolute certainty, who she was talking about,
but surely it had to be ... My God, he thought with a thrill, maybe it
worked. Maybe I've smoked him out.
"Truth tellers have nothing to fear, Rhonda." He winked at her. "I'm
protected by the sword of the Lord. 'He is my rod and my staff. He
leadeth me beside still waters.'"
"You're crazy, you know that?" She'd remembered where she was and began
putting the cigarette back into the pack. Then she smoothed her short
black hair. "He leadeth you into the shit, handsome. That's where He
'leadeth' you. You're adorable, but you're also a sane person's
nightmare."
"Thanks," he said giving a thumbs-up as he walked past her desk. "I
appreciate your unstinting praise."
He headed on down the hall, the plush gray carpet soft against his
feet. Could this be the break? he wondered feeling his hopes cautiously
rising. Had the Big Man himself shown up? Could it be that there was
something funny going on with that patient who got dropped?
But what? He still didn't have a clue.
As he walked into the room, he felt as though time just stopped. He had
fantasized about this moment more and more as the years went by. Now
here it was. What next? He thought he had been emotionally prepared,
but now he realized he wasn't. Were they going to acknowledge the past,
or were they just going to act as though nothing existed between them?
That first chance meeting, when Stone was eleven, had been when his
mother threatened to sue Bartlett for formal child support. The threat
of publicity caused the matter to be immediately settled, as she'd
hoped it would be. Stone had been sitting in the law firm's reception
area when Bartlett walked through. Each knew who the other was, but
Bartlett just stopped and glared at him for a moment before moving cm.
Stone had sized up the man who had abandoned his mother and only barely
managed to suppress an urge to leap up and lash out at him, if only to
say, Look at me. I'm here.
He had not been in the same room with his father since, but this time
around he was definitely noticed.
Winston Bartlett looked just as he did in news photos. He was in his
late sixties, with thinning blond hair that was cut too long and shaggy
in the back. Stone's first thought was that the tightfisted old rou6
should spring for a better barber.
But it was Bartlett's eyes that really caught him. They were strong and
filled with anger, but they also contained a hint of desperation. They
were very different eyes from the haughty dismissal he remembered from
a lifetime ago.
Good, Stone thought. I've finally made you squirm, Daddy dearest.
Nothing else I've done has ever gotten the slightest notice from you.
For a moment they stood sizing up each other.
"Stone," Jane said, "this is--"
"I know," he said.
Even though they had been practically married, he had never
told her that he was the unacknowledged son of Winston Bartlett. He had
never told anyone. To him, his father had died before he was born and
that was the story he stuck to.
He naturally had a lot of complex feelings about that. He had seen his
mother struggling to give them a decent life, hoofing in the chorus
line of Broadway shows long after she should have, and a lot of his
anger remained. Now, though, Stone Aimes wanted nothing from the old
man. Except the truth.
"Miss Tully," Bartlett barked, glowering at her, "I think you'd better
leave us alone."
"Of course," Jane said with a wry look, and in a tactful instant she
had slipped past them and out, gently closing the office door behind
her.
"I don't believe it," Bartlett said turning back after he watched her
leave. "You're trying to blackmail me, you little prick. Which tells me
you're not half as smart as I thought you were."
Wait a minute! Did that mean Winston Bartlett has been following my
career? Stone felt a thrill in spite of himself.
"I never knew you thought about me, one way or the other."
He was experiencing a curious sensation. Although he was in the same
room with his father for only the second time in his life, it felt
natural. They were having one of those age-old arguments. The younger
generation had just challenged the older generation, and because of
that sparks were set to fly.
This was the kind of thing that was supposed to happen between fathers
and sons all the time. In fact, it felt good. It felt normal. More than
that, he was finally being acknowledged.
My God, he thought, I share DNA with this man and yet we have so little
in common.
Then he had a more scary thought: Maybe we have a lot in common.
"I think it's time you told me what the hell you're up to," Bartlett
declared, ignoring the jibe. "How did you--"
"I'm trying to do us both a favor, but you're not cooperating. If the
Gerex clinical trials are going half as well as I think they are, then
it seems to me you've got everything to gain by publicity. I'm trying
to write the first book that tells the Gerex story. So why the hell
won't your legal flunkies let me interview Karl Van de Vliet?"
"That's actually none of your business." Bartlett's eyes abruptly
turned cloudy. "I want you to stay the hell away from--"
"Right now I'm the best friend you've got in this world. Believe me."
Stone couldn't believe he was saying this. For how many years had he
loathed and despised this man? But now, for the first time, he actually
needed something from him. "I want to tell the real story of what Van
de Vliet has accomplished. What Gerex has accomplished. It'll be the
latest word on stem cell technology. But your office keeps giving me
the runaround."
"We have a damned good reason to keep our work proprietary just now,"
Bartlett declared. "This is like the Manhattan Project." His eyes bored
in. "The results of the clinical trials are going to cause a press
feeding frenzy, and I want to be in a position to control that when the
time comes."
This is incredible, Stone told himself. We 're talking as though we
have no history. You have a granddaughter by me whom you've never even
seen. Don't you at least care about her?
"I've got a pretty good idea of what Gerex is doing and I think it's
going to be a milestone in medical history." Stone looked at him,
trying to figure him out after all these years. For all his bluster,
Winston Bartlett seemed like a man with a lot of vulnerabilities and
insecurities. He hadn't expected it. "It so happens I'm a damned good
medical reporter and all I'm asking is to be the Boswell to Van de
Vliet's Johnson. I want to be the one to chronicle this historic
moment. There's no one who can do it better, believe me. Ill even agree
to embargo everything until I get a green light from Gerex. But I want
to start now and get it right"
"You can't ethically know any details of the work," Bartlett declared.
"So the question I'm waiting to hear answered is, how did you find out-
?"
"I can't reveal my source." Because, he told himself, I still don't
have one. All 1 have is guesswork. "But I know that Karl Van de Vliet
is running the first successful clinical trials using stem cell
procedures. And I'm going to report on it whether you want me to or
not. So are you going to help make sure my facts are accurate?"
"I'm going to help make sure there's no reporting at all till I say
so," Bartlett went on. "Anything you print will be-- by definition--
irresponsible speculation and you can expect enough legal action to--"
"The original schedule was that they'll be finished in less than a
month. I'm not going to publish anything before that I just want to
have the manuscript I've been working on ready when the Gerex story
finally can be told. It'll be the final chapter, the payoff. I'm going
to describe your clinical trials, and it would be better for all
concerned if it could be the 'authorized' version. If you force me to
publish without your cooperation, it's not going to do either one of us
as much good."
Again he wondered why Bartlett was so upset. What was it about that one
terminated patient that made him freak when he found out somebody knew?
So freaked he charged up here personally, all the way from his fancy
corporate building in TriBeCa, to breathe fire and brimstone and yell
threats?
"Do I have to get a court injunction to put a stop to this corporate
espionage?" Bartlett demanded.
"Everything I know is in the public domain somewhere." Actually, Stone
thought that's a serious out-and-out lie. Nobody knows that a patient
got mysteriously terminated from the trials. "I just want to work
together with you."
Even as he was saying it, Stone Aimes realized that it was not in the
cards, now or ever. He watched Winston Bartlett's eyes narrow.
"What kind of contract do you have with this paper?"
"Quite frankly, the terms of the contracts for employees of this paper
are confidential."
"I knew I should have kept those fucking lawyers here. It takes a shark
to deal with a shark." Then he seemed to catch himself. "So if you're
planning on writing anything about this, you'd be well advised to get
yourself an attorney, because you're sure as hell going to need one."
"Thanks, Dad." It just came out. Maybe he'd been wanting to say it all
his life.
Bartlett's look was shock for a moment, and then it turned pensive.
"You don't think I take an interest in you, but I do."
"Yeah, you've really been around through thick and thin." He felt the
old anger of abandonment welling up.
"I took care of your mother. Whatever she did was beyond my control."
The eyes were switching to chagrin. "Do you have the slightest idea
what I could do for you? I've . . . I'm not getting any younger and
I've been thinking about . . . with your medical background you could
easily have a place . . . I mean, if you've got a head for business,
then someday . . . So why do you fucking want to do this now? "
Stone listened, trying to internalize what he was hearing. Not only did
Winston Bartlett know about him, he was finally thinking about
acknowledging him. Sort of.
Or was this just a bribe to hush him up?
Either way, it was too little, too late.
"You've never given me anything and I've sure as hell never asked. I'd
just like for you to get out of my way so I can do my job."
Bartlett stalked toward the door. Then he turned back.
"You'd better think long and hard about what you're getting into. You
can ask some of the two-bit reporters I've dealt with in the past.
They're fucking roadkill."
With that pronouncement, he slammed the door and was gone.
Stone stared after him, feeling his heart pump. It wasn't the threat;
it was the mixed emotions. For a moment, in spite of his better
judgment, he'd felt like he had a father, but then Bartlett became the
enemy again.
Then the door cracked open and Jane appeared, dismay in her eyes.
"What was _that _about?"
"What was _what _about?"
"I've gotta tell you, that man doesn't know how to keep his voice down.
What was that about helping your mother? Karen. You never talked about
her much, but I sure don't remember you ever saying anything about her
and Winston Bartlett."
"That's because I didn't. Jane, there are parts of my past life that I
try not to think about any more than I have to."
"After the fact, it's nice to know that there were parts of your life
that you didn't see fit to share with me." She sniffed.
"Maybe someday."
"It's a little late for that," she declared, hurt lingering in her
voice. "Look, Stone, I don't know what you know that's got Bartlett so
upset, but he's not the best guy in the world to piss off. He stormed
in here, fit to be tied, personally demanding to know how the hell did
you have proprietary information about the Gerex Corporation's clinical
trials. He already seemed to know who you were. Now I realize there's
more to the story, somewhere back there in time."
"And what did you tell him?"
"I was completely blindsided for which I thank you. I told him I didn't
know anything about your sources, but I wouldn't reveal them even if I
did. He's our landlord but that doesn't give him subpoena power. He
doesn't have the right to barge in here and try to intimidate the
Sentinel's staff. We're current on the rent."
Stone felt a tinge of nostalgia. Sometimes her gold-plated bitchiness
was the very thing he admired most about her.
"Well, thanks for sticking up for me. Maybe I've got him upset enough
that he'll come around eventually and decide it's better to have me
inside the tent, where I can be monitored."
She snorted at the improbability of that.
"No, Stone, as usual you're an idiot idealist and dreamer. I'll tell
you exactly what's going to happen. Bartlett is most likely on his cell
phone right now, as we speak, threatening the Family, trying to get you
fired. He's saying you're stealing proprietary information somehow and
he's going to sue the Sentinel for our last dime if we print a syllable
of anything you write about him. That's his next move, Stone. I expect
my phone to ring in approximately fourteen and a half minutes. Their
attorneys are going to tell me to tell Jay to get you under control.
That's what's going to happen. The Family does not want Winston
Bartlett pissed off. Especially by the likes of you, somebody who's
always writing muckraking articles that make them real nervous. Does
anything I've said have the ring of logic to you? Or are you living in
some never-never land where the facts don't fucking penetrate?"
Hey, he thought, that's pretty good. Jane is in DEFCON 1 mode today.
"Depends on what you look at, the doughnut or the hole. That is, the
stick approach or the carrot. I'm betting he's going to split the
difference and try a little of both. He's going to cool off and then
offer me a few crumbs as an inducement to go away."
"God, you're so naive." She laughed in derision. "Winston Bartlett is
not accustomed to having to ask anybody for anything. So the fact he
came up here this morning to try to get you to back off on whatever it
is you're doing must mean you've really got him psyched." She stared at
him. "What is it, Stone? Tell me. What do you have on him?"
"Right now I'm more interested in what he thinks I might
have. And the truth is, I don't really know. But it must be something
pretty big."
"Stone, why is it so hard to hate you? You can make a person's life
miserable and that stupid person will still root for you. God, I don't
know what it was about you." She paused a moment as though thinking.
"Maybe you're just too honest. Or just too sincere. Maybe that's what
it was."
"Don't try to butter me up. I know my weaknesses. But dammit, Jane, I'm
this close to the story of the century. And the paranoid zillionaire
who was in here just now yelling at me is trying to freeze me out"
"Well, please don't involve me in this anymore, Stone. You've just
provided me with a week's worth of unnecessary shit. From now on, any
communicating you want to do with Gerex's attorneys is going to have to
be done by someone else. Trust me when I tell you I do not need this in
my life."
"Sweetie, wait till you see what I'm on the track of. What the Gerex
Corporation is doing at a small clinic out in New Jersey is going to
change everything we know about medicine. And it's going to blow wide
open the second they finally let the press in on what's happening at
the clinical trials they're now winding up for the NIH. When they
finally hold that big press briefing, I want to have a manuscript
already in copyediting. I want to be first."
"Then why is he so worked up over your question?" she mused. "About
somebody being dropped from the clinical trials?" She paused
"Incidentally, I can do without being called 'sweetie' by a man I'm no
longer screwing."
"Sorry about that." He winced. It did just sort of slip out in this
orgy of intimacy. "But what I think Bartlett desperately doesn't want
me to find out is the reason that patient was dropped. And he's afraid
I'm getting close. Unfortunately, I'm not, and I just took my best shot
at prying the information out of him and--you're probably right--blew
it." He was turning to leave. "But I'm, by God going to find out
somehow. Just see if you can keep me from getting fired for a little
while longer. If I'm still working for the Sentinel three months from
now, you may get honorable mention in my Pulitzer acceptance."
It was bluff talk. But he believed it with every fiber of his body.
You've gotta believe, right?
Come on, Ally, get lucky. Find out who that mystery patient was. The
way things look now, you 're the only shot I've got left.