suite 200 closed behind Frank. Leigh Baron poured a weak bourbon and water from the room's well-stocked credenza. Then she turned to the intercom, inconspicuously placed on an end table. 'It's okay, Ed, ' she said. 'He's gone.'
Edison Blair, the CEO of RIATA International, entered the room from the inner office where he had been listening and crossed directly to the bar. He was nearing fifty but looked ten years younger, with close-cut, sandy hair, a lean, almost slight frame, and a deceptively boyish face.
His personal worth, estimated by various sources to be between twenty and thirty million, was actually closer to twice that, and was growing as rapidly as his young corporation. 'Unlimited potential. I like that little touch at the end, ' he said. 'He thinks you were referring to yourself, you know.'
'Of course I know. I picked up all the tools I needed to deal with Frank Iverson in Men 101. Take away his vanity, and he's got nothing. With men like him, you've always got to leave the carrot.'
'I'll remember that. So, ' he went on, 'what do you think?'
'Dunno. I have my doubts.'
'I've only met this Judge Iverson once, but from what I sensed of the man, my money's on him.'
Blair poured a shot of Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila, sniffed it once, and downed it in a single, quick gulp. 'I agree, ' Leigh said, 'but I think it's worth waiting a bit before we play out our hand. Who knows? Maybe Frank'll pull it off. He's been a hell of a surprise so far-to everyone but me, that is.'
'It's lucky we don't have too many more surprises like him working for us, Leigh. It's not exactly optimal business practice to carry an administrator who embezzles a quarter of a million dollars from you.'
'Come on, Ed.
He's made ten times that much for us already, and you know it. Our accountants haven't found so much as a missing penny since that one time. From the scrambling he's been doing, they think he's buying time to replace that money, and so do I. Either way, it's our ace in the hole.'
'So we wait?'
'We wait.'
'Leigh, I don't want us losing that hospital.'
'We're not going to lose anything. You can count on it.'
Edison Blair eyed her for a moment. 'I am, ' he said. DISAPPOINTMENTS AND hard times had dogged Jack Pearl most of his life. From as far back as he could remember, he had been different-an outsider. For one thing, he was an insomniac, a pathologic insomniac. As a youth, his parents would scold him for being in the basement at four o'clock in the morning, fiddling with his chemistry set. Later that same day, he would be reprimanded and sent home for falling asleep in class. His condition had led to threats of expulsion on any number of occasions, and he well might have been expelled were he not, thanks to an 10 in the 160s, the best student in his school. Making matters even more difficult for Pearl during those school years was the gradual emergence of his homosexuality. And even within that subset he was a fringe player, preferring mueh younger boys and their photographs to any more threatening entanglements. In college, no roommate lasted more than a few weeks with his bizarre biologic rhythms and deepening melancholia.
His dormitory room walls were decorated with posters and photos of his special heroes, Napoleon, Dickens, Edison, Churchill, Kafka, and Proust, none of whom, according to the first of his therapists, had ever enjoyed so much as one normal night's sleep. That an insomniac should have chosen anesthesia as his life's work was one of the few pleasant ironies in Pearl's life, that one should have developed Serenyl, the quintessential sleep-inducing agent, was the ultimate irony of all. The Screnyl odyssey had begun years before, in Iquitos, a jungle village by the headwaters of the Peruvian Amazon, where Pearl had accepted a six-month medical mission appointment as a means of escaping yet another disastrous situation in yet another hospital. Within a few weeks of his arrival, he had developed an intense fascination with the drugs used by medicine men, and in particular, with a plant alkaloid used by the most mystical 'doctors' in the region to induce a purgative state of deep hypnosis in their followers. The moment Pearl first witnessed the incredible substance in action, the lack of direction and purpose in his life was at an end. Two years of meticulously dissecting the active component in the alkaloid and modifying its composition led him to the synthesis of Serenyl-a structurally unique anesthe ic, fully as remarkable as was its chemical forebear. Now, for the first time since he conceived of its application, synthesized it, patented it, and adjusted its delivery and dosage in actual O. R. situations, Pearl's Serenyl was under attack. It was five in the morning. An hour before, Pearl had given up trying to sleep and had brewed himself a pot of coffee. In the nearly twenty-four hours since his confrontation with Zack Iverson, he had slept, perhaps, two. Familiar feelings of loneliness and isolation-feelings he had been able to keep reasonably in check since moving to Sterling-had surfaced and were beginning to smother him. The first glow of dawn was spilling over the valley as he wrapped himself in a blanket, padded across his dew-sliced yard, and settled onto a slat-backed chair. He wondered if a sleeping pill of some sort might be in order. With Mainwaring gone to Atlanta, the surgical load was light enough for his associate and their nurse anesthe ist to handle. He could call in sick and take a couple of hundred milligrams of Seconal. It had been years since he had taken a drug of any kind-he hated feeling the loss of control-but this might well be the time. He had been thinking too hard, his mind poring over and over the evidence Frank's brother had thrown at him, frantically trying to assess the extent of the threat and to find fault in the man's logic. Pinpointing even potential errors in Zack Iverson's reasoning had not been easy.
Pearl lit his fifth cigarette of the hour, searched about for a packet of Kleenex, and finally wiped his nose on the corner of the blanket. Why was it, he wondered, that every time life had started looking the least bit bright for him, every goddamn time, something or someone had come along to screw it up? 'y?
Most aggravating of all to him was that this time, from the very beginning, he had seen the potential for trouble and had discussed his concerns with his partners. He had warned them that Serenyl's marvelously diminished recovery time-the most distinctive of its many attributes-was also its Achilles' heel. The rest of the properties that set it apart from other anesthe ics, injected or inhaled, were all unwanted side effects it did not have. He had even suggested using the anesthe icon other surgeons' patients, so that should questions arise, his technique, and not the drug, would be the focus of any suspicion.
But Frank and Mainwaring had been obstinate in their demand for absolute secrecy. In fact, both men had pooh-pooh ed his concerns and had laughed at the notion that anyone at Ultramed-Davis might be sharp enough, or interested enough, to put things together. They hadn't counted on Zachary Iverson. Pearl knew that he was drifting in over his head. Over a lifetime of turmoil he had developed something of a sixth sense about such things. He should have been on the phone to Frank the moment Zack Iverson walked out of his office. But he had needed time to think-not so much about the gallbladder cases Iverson was reviewing, or even about the implications of the possible discovery of Serenyl, but about the chances that this child, this Toby Nelms was, in fact, suffering from a complication of his anesthesia. Serenyl was the achievement of Pearl's lifetime-the validation of his entire chaotic and harried existence. It simply had to be flawless. It was Mainwaring's promise, in writing, that Pearl would eventually receive credit for his work, that had brought him to Sterling. That Prank Iverson had arranged for him to be paid handsomely for his discovery when others had threatened to prosecute him for even working on it, was only icing on the cake. Of course, Pearl acknowledged grudgingly, Frank Iverson had also smoothed over his past difficulties-most notably a dicey piece of business involving a politican's son in Akron. But without Mainwaring's promise, even the lure of escaping that mess would not have been enough to make him move to a place like Sterling, much less to share the Serenyl patent. But share that patent he had. And now, like it or not, Pearl knew that he had to talk to Frank about his brother and Toby Nelms. They had looked at every possible immediate complication of Serenyl-renal effects, liver function, pulmonary function-and had found none. It had been sloppy not to have been conducting a long-range retrospective survey as well. But dammit, Pearl rationalized, the drug had persistently functioned so perfectly… Well, now he would simply have to make his partners understand that they had made a mistake, thank God it was not a fatal one. They merely had to go back and do the study they should have been doing from the beginning. With just a little investigation, just a hundred or so calls to patients who had received the anesthe ic, Pearl knew he could determine if Toby Nelms was a coincidence or a problem.
Nobody would even have to know why he was conducting the survey. And if there was a problem with Serenyl-if a second case like Toby Nelms was identified-almost certainly, he could fix it. He knew every molecule of the drug. All he needed was the chance. Pearl stood and paced nervously about the yard, mindless of the damp, which had already soaked through his cloth slippers. He had a decent handle on Jason Mainwaring. In a sense, they were allies. The surgeon was a haughty, privileged bastard, but he was far more bark than bite. In fact, with his company's money on the line, he would probably demand that this loose end be tied up before consummating their
