Flashback

physician's background difficulties disappear to all but the most intensive investigation.

However, its administrators had been well warned against using that service indiscriminately. Frank had just terminated with Mother when, with a discreet knock, Jason Mainwaring entered the office. He was dressed in a light cotton suit, monogrammed shirt, and white topsiders, and looked very much like the plantation owner he planned to become as soon as his pharmaceutical company had successfully produced and marketed Jack Pearl's Serenyl. 'Drink? ' Mainwaring asked, setting his briefcase down and then striding directly to the small wet bar in Frank's bookcase. 'Sure, ' Frank said, quietly resenting the way the man, as always, stepped into a room and took charge. 'Bourbon's fine.'

The surgeon gestured at the huge aerial photo of the Ultrameddavis complex. 'Nice little operation y'all have here, Frank, ' he said. 'I think I'm actually going to miss it some. But home is where the heart is, right?'

'Of course, ' Frank countered. 'Although I knew you had been up here too long when I heard a little Yankee accent creep into that drawl of yours the other day.'

Mainwaring snorted a laugh as he scanned Frank's collection of cassettes. 'Mantovani, Mantovani, Mantovani, ' he said disdainfully, tossing them aside one at a time. 'You know, the closest thing you have here to Beethoven is Mantovani.'

'I like Mantovani, ' Frank said. 'I know.'

Mainwaring thought for a moment and then snapped opein his briefcase, removed two cassettes, and flipped them onto Frank's desk. 'I know I'm prob'ly tossin' pearls to a razorback, ' he said, 'but here are some examples of real music for you. It's what I listen to in the O. R. Call em a good-bye present. This one's Beethoven's Third. It's called the Eroica. And this one's by an English composer named Vaughan Williams.

It's a fantasia on 'Greensleeves. Listen to these two pieces, and I suspect even you will appreciate the difference between real music and the Burger Mng brand you've been listening to.'

'Sure thing, Jase, ' Frank said, dropping the tapes into his desk drawer. 'I'll start my reeducation first thing in the morning.'

'I won't hold my breath.' Mainwaring settled in on the sofa Frank and Annette Dolan had so recently vacated, and motioned Frank to take the easy chair opposite him. 'I hate doin' business with anyone across a desk, ' he explained. Unless it's yours, right? Frank thought. He hesitated, and then did as the man asked. There was no sense in making an issue of it at this stage of the game. 'So, Jason, ' he said. 'I assume you're still satisfied.'

Mainwaring took a file from his briefcase and opened it. 'With this kind of money involved, ' he said, 'I won't be satisfied until our little anesthe ic is in every operating room of every hospital in the world.

But I am certainly pleased with the'-he consulted the file' four hundred ninety-six cases Jack and I have completed. I must say, Frank, you've done all right. You promised me five hundred cases in two years, and you delivered.'

'Like I told you when we first met, Jason, I know this town.'

The key to the whole project had been the rapid takeover by Mainwaring of Guy Beaulieu's practice. And only Frank, and to some extent, Mainwaring, knew how skillfully Frank had engineered that feat. Details, that's what it all came down to. Attention to touches like the letter to Maureen Banas threatening his own position should she ever disclose to anyone, including him, what was being done to her. The sort of details he had neglected to attend to three years before., Pity about ol'

Beaulieu,' Mainwaring said blandly. Frank could not tell if the man was being facetious or not. Again, he opted to avoid an altercation. In the morning, Mainwaring would be gone. And in a week or so he would be back to officially tender his resignation and to offer proof of a million dollars in Frank's Cayman Islands account and half a million in Pearl's, in exchange for the patent Frank now shared with Pearl and all future rights to Serenyl. And that, Frank knew, was what it was all about. He would, at last, have squared away the $250, 000 shortfall in the Ultramed-Davis books, and there would be a nifty little bundle left over to build on. 'Well, ' he said dispassionately, 'at least the old guy didn't suffer. When my number comes up, I want to go the same way…

So, I assume you have everything you need to conclude this business with your company in Atlanta?'

Mainwaring skimmed through his notes. 'It would appear so, Frank.

Here's that, ah, little agreement you insisted upon.'

He passed the document over. Frank scanned the page to be certain it included Mainwaring's admission to having illegally used Serenyl on five hundred patients. It was Frank's insurance policy against any kind of deal being made behind his back. In the morning, the two of them would jointly place the confession, along with similar ones from Frank and Jack Pearl, in a safe deposit box at the Sterling National Bank, and upon Mainwaring's return to town, the three of them would retrieve and destroy the documents together. 'Remember, Frank, ' Mainwaring warned,

'I don't have the final say in all this. My partners are still calculatin' what it's gonna cost us to go backward and do all the animal and clinical trials the FDA insists on, and-' Frank laughed out loud.

'Jason, please, ' he said. 'It costs tens of millions to develop and test new drugs that you don't even know are going to work, let alone work safety. You've got a gold mine here, and you know it, and I know it, and your partners know it, and even our little fairy friend Pearl knows it. 'After five hundred perfect cases without so much as one problem, the only money you're going to spend is whatever it costs to grease a palm or two at the FDA and to put together a few folders of bogus animal and clinical trials. So don't try to shit me, okay? It's unbecoming for a man of your class.'

Mainwaring shook his head ruefully. 'There are a number of things I'm going to miss around here, Frank, ' he said, perhaps purposely intensifying his drawl, 'but I confess you won't be among them. Be sure Jack has all the paperwork and formulas ready for me in the morning, y' hear? Assumin' my partners and our chemists give their okay, I'll be back in eight or ten days. Meanwhile, I shall assume that you or Jack'll let me know if any problems crop up.'

'Of course, Jason, old shoe, ' Frank said. 'But after two years and five hundred cases, I don't think you have to camp by the phone waiting to hear from us. Next to birth, death, and taxes, Serenyl is as close as life gets to a sure thing… And you know that, don't you.'

Mainwaring's eyes narrowed. 'What I know, ' he said evenly, 'is that this little tate-to-tate has gone on long enough.'

Without offering his hand, the surgeon snapped up his briefcase and left. Not until the office door clicked shut did Frank's smile become more natural. In the interests of their deal, he had allowed the pompous ass to walk over him any number of times during the past two years. The son of a bitch even tried to tell him what music to listen to. Now, with the work completed and so successful, there was no longer any reason to defer to him, and Frank felt exhilarated that he hadn't. After years of operating in the shadows of men like Mainwaring and the Judge, it was time to start casting some shadows of his own. His life had finally turned the corner. He was a rising star in a powerful corporation, and soon he would have the independence and prestige that only money could bring. 'God bless you, Serenyl,' he murmured. Softly at first, then louder and louder, the familiar chant worked its way into his thoughts.

Frank, Frank, he's our man. If he can't do it, no one can… Four miles to the north, Suzanne Cole screamed and leapt up from the couch where she had been dozing. A vicious, searing pain had exploded through her chest from beside her right breast. Bathe in a chilly sweat, she tore open her blouse and ripped apart the clasps on her bra. The scar from her surgery was red, but not disturbingly so, and the tissue beneath it was not the least bit tender. Still, the pain had been like nothing she had ever experienced before. Desperately, she searched her cloudy thoughts for some logical medical explanation. Perhaps a neuritis, she reasoned-the single, violent electrical discharge from a regenerating nerve. Yes, of course, a neuritis. That had to be it. No other diagnosis made sense. Shaken, but relieved, she sank back onto the pillow. Then she checked her watch. Forty-five minutes. That was all she had napped.

She needed more than that-much more-if she was going to catch up with the sleep she kept losing every night. It was lucky she had taken time off after her surgery. The strain of the whole affair seemed to have taken more of a toll on her than she had anticipated. Slowly, her eyes closed. Perhaps she should get up and take something before she slipped off again. An aspirin or even some codeine. At least then, if the irritated nerve fired off again, the pain would be blunted. No, she decided. As long as she knew what it was, there was nothing to be frightened about. It had only lasted ten or twelve seconds, anyhow. If it happened again, she could handle it. For that short a time, she could handle almost anything. What she needed most was sleep. Relax…

Breathe deeply… Breathe deeply… Good… That's it… That's it … Now, she thought, as she drifted off, just