Damage Control
Published by Timothy Gilbert at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Timothy Gilbert
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September 1, 2002
Lansdale, Pennsylvania
8:15 a.m.
Joe Costa stepped out of his cruiser and onto Willow Lane. He was a lead detective in the Chester County sheriff’s office which serviced Lansdale, a bedroom community of the greater Philadelphia area.
Joe tried not to think about the stomach problems he’d been having that Monday morning.
The detective looked up at the Linder house. The nice looking brick structure highlighted a two columned front entrance partly obscured by three large oak trees filling the front yard. A grey SUV sat parked up onto the curb in the back of the driveway, and sticking halfway out of the open garage was a dark red sedan suffering from a beat up back end - all of which gave Joe the feeling that his hopes for a blissful morning on the can were about to be dashed.
“Okay, gentleman, what do we have this morning?” Joe asked two policemen waiting for him on the front step of the home.
“Come on in. I hope you had a light breakfast,” remarked Officer Tom Lightman.
Joe stepped into the house, observing that the front door and lock were intact. There was no smell of blood to knock him over, but Joe definitely smelled gasoline.
“The victims are in the kitchen,” Officer Rudy Jenkins informed Joe.
The spacious front foyer to the home featured a winding staircase with an oriental runner lining the middle of the wood stairs. Joe glanced at the living room on his left and dining room on his right, both holding furniture that pointed to an annual income light years away from Joe’s detective pay grade. The morning sun landed softly on the grand piano in the living room.
The gasoline smell came alive as Joe walked closer to the kitchen, which was positioned behind the front staircase, so he took a few seconds to reset his concentration. The doorframe to the kitchen entrance and the surrounding wall space had been torn to shreds, drawing Joe to run his fingers across the bullet entries. No small gun could have produced that kind of damage.
Mr. and Mrs. Harold Linder were each tied to a chair on the backside of the kitchen island. Their throats had been slit, while Harold’s left pinky laid on the floor. The gasoline source blanketed Mrs. Linder, soaking her neck down and pooling at her feet. The Linders looked to be in their 50’s.
Joe leaned in for a closer look: the large patch of hair missing in Mrs. Linder’s head was just a few inches above her broken right eye socket, and her right hand fingernails had bloody skin on them, indicating severe scratching of the attacker.
“She must’ve put up a hell of a fight,” Joe said calmly, running his fingers lightly through Mrs. Linder’s hair and finding a sizeable lump on the side of her head. Tiny glass pieces covered the Linders’ clothing.
“We found another guy in this hallway.” Officer Tom pointed to the back hallway leading to the garage. “You should see the garage.”
Joe looked at Officer Tom in disbelief. “More bodies in the garage?”
“No, but the sedan is a quarter way out of the garage…its front doors are open, the keys are in the ignition and its rear end is smashed in,” Officer Tom stated flatly.
It had to have been awfully loud when all of this went down. Maybe a neighbor heard, or, even better, saw something.
The ID on the body in the back hallway belonged to a Bill Walters of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The bullet to the back of Bill’s head probably killed him instantly. Joe and Officer Tom walked into the garage to look at the sedan that clearly was involved in some way during the struggle. Shattered driver side window and foreign paint chips attached to the crushed bumper.
“Well, forensics is on their way…what did the Linders do for a living?” Joe asked.
“The cleaning lady that called it in this morning told us that Mr. Linder was a leading cardiologist in the area.”
Joe finished examining the sedan before stretching out his arms and letting out a long breath. “Why the hell does this couple need a friggin’ body guard?”
The two officers and Joe convened in the kitchen.
“Okay…so this muscle guy tries to fend off the home invaders while the Linders try to get away in their sedan?” Officer Rudy asked.
Joe nodded his head. “Right, so, at some point, probably before they get dragged out of the sedan, the bodyguard is iced with a single gunshot to the back of the head….Does that make sense? This guy is firing away, tearing up the kitchen, so how do our intruders take him out with a bullet to the back of the head?”
Joe pulled out his notepad to start writing down a list of things he would need to cover. The clue he needed to make sense of it all was in this house, somewhere.
Talk with neighbors – anybody hear anything?
Talk with medical peers
DNA underneath Mrs. Linder’s fingernails.
Who is Bill Walters?
Why wasn’t Mrs. Linder set ablaze?
Talk with relatives.
Dig into Dr. Linder’s financial history, phone records, email.
Officer Tom walked back into the kitchen, announcing that he had figured out how the intruders got into the house: a long panel window in the family room had its entire glass cut from the frame and placed intact on the lawn outside.
September 1, 2002
Morristown, NJ
Peter Hansen
“Peter Hansen,” he stated firmly into the receiver while glancing at his watch: 9:30 a.m. Peter had a 10:30 a.m. appointment with Steven Angle, the lead singer for World Wind who just hit the 100 million albums sold mark last month.
“Peter, it’s Martin….we’re all set. The committee is announcing its recommendation for Lycor this Friday…They’re going to kill the drug,” Martin asserted into the phone. “I think Oleg and his partner made a fine example out of the good doctor and his wife.”
“Well, I’m sure they scared the hell out of them,” Peter said. “Does the doctor still have his kneecaps?” He let out a mild laugh, while leaning back into his chair.
Martin cleared his throat. “Uh...they had to kill them both, actually.”
The just poured coffee hit Peter’s thighs and he sprang out of his chair, thighs stinging and his frontal lobe under assault.
“What?” he yelled back at Martin. “That wasn’t part of the deal!”
Peter started to get dizzy, so he braced himself against the desk.
“Come on now, Peter,” Martin said in a less cheerful tone. “You’re not exactly holding the cards here, but you know that. We’ve been over and over this. The Violas own you, don’t forget that.”
Collapsed back into the chair with his scalded thighs, Peter put his pounding head into his lap.
The Violas.
What had started as a simple money laundering deal had now morphed into a murdering criminal network funded by Peter’s firm. Things were spinning out of control - he needed to find his composure, somehow.
“Got it, loud and clear,” he told Martin. “I’ll fall in line.”
That day, five off shore accounts funded a total of $110 million into the Swiss Bank brokerage account of PLH, Inc. On Thursday of that week, PLH shorted the stock of Lycor Pharmaceuticals at $84.
On Friday, Lycor Pharmaceuticals announced that its proposed cholesterol reduction drug, Zintar, was causing too many kidney failures in the clinical studies. This announcement sent Lycor stock plummeting because Lycor had been counting on Zintar’s revenue to make up for the wave of Lycor drugs opening up to generic competition over the next five years.
By Friday afternoon’s market close, Lycor Pharmaceuticals stock was trading at $57.
PLH’s profit: $25.39 million.
Not too shabby for a celebrity money manager used to dealing with the obnoxious world of whiny sports and Hollywood stars.
September 1, 2002
Morristown, NJ
Nick Johnson
Susan walked up behind Nick as he finished his bowl of Honey Grahams. It was 7:30 a.m. and it was time for a sweet hug from his wife who was back from her standard three mile run. He could feel her heart racing but, as usual, she was bone dry. For years, Nick had wondered how she never sweated because three miles always had him dripping.
“Hey, that was a great walk last night…good ears, my man.”
He looked up at her and gazed into her eyes.
“I know, Tom has grown up so, so fast…but you can still talk to him…Tom’s a lot like you are…teens need to feel heard, like their emotions and ideas count for something.”
“That’s good stuff…I’ll see if I can take him out to dinner after practice.”
Susan and Nick had been walking every night since late April; their conversations were helping them deal with things of the day - patient illnesses, her problems with her brother Stanley, their son Tom - anything was fair game to discuss during these walks. They tried to push it for two miles.
There’s an old saying, “If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy”, and Susan hadn’t been happy lately with Tom’s silence. A sixteen year old young man does not need his parents much, so this had been sending Susan into a funk. This was the topic during their walk that last night. Really, Tom had been that way since puberty a few years back, except it never seemed to bother Susan much, or, if it did, she didn’t talk about it. Lately, however, she had wanted to discuss her feelings.
Washing his cereal bowl in the sink, Nick found a place for it in the dishwasher. Susan handed him a banana for a mid morning snack. He started to look for his work shoes, only to find their seven-year old black lab, Zeke, lying on them. Nick nudged with his foot causing Zeke to whine as he got up because Zeke always spent most of the day outside, and he adored his time inside their home.
“Nick, don’t forget to nail down a time with Will McRae. Tell him the tile people will finish on Friday and we’d like him to put the glass in soon after that.”
They were re-doing their whole master bathroom and the shower was the last thing to finish. Every couple, before they marry, should complete a re-modeling project; Nick could think of two couples that had nearly divorced over such a task in recent years.
Even though Susan had all the time in the world to make that phone call to Will McRae, she could not stand dealing with anybody servicing their home. Susan had Nick make all the cable appointments, call the plumber when needed and work with all contractors directly. Susan claimed that he was so particular in the way he wanted things done, that he had become a poor delegator. Much as Nick would have loved, he avoided discussion of this issue on their nightly walks.
The Johnsons lived in a white colonial at 57 Skyline Drive in Morristown, NJ. The house was built in 1931 and they were the third owners. Susan and Nick were pretty sure when they moved in 12 years ago that the only update that had been done over the years was the upstairs carpet, and they were afraid to fire up the ancient stove that stood in the middle of the kitchen, so they chose to gut the entire kitchen. In hindsight, Nick thought they should have done that before moving in. It was a really long six weeks of eating takeout on the floor of their dining room, particularly since Tommy was only five at the time.
“Well, I’ll make sure Will has talked with the glass people. It had to be custom ordered and I don’t know if they’ve received it from the manufacturer,” Nick replied to Susan.
“That’s my honey…now run off and save somebody from some nasty disease.”
Susan leaned in with a kiss.
Monday, September 1st
2:30 p.m.
Peter Hansen
The first phone call came just a few hours after learning of the Linder’s fate. Aside from Peter’s lunch meeting with Steven Angle two hours earlier, he had gotten nothing done that day, and there was no problem with that mainly because there hadn’t been much done at all with his clients’ investments since his horrible mistake with Julio Viola’s money concerning the Trispar drug study. Nobody thought Drexel Pharmaceuticals would stop development of the Trispar heart drug over the study, but that’s what they did and their stock got creamed for it. Peter had bought a large position in the Drexel stock with Julio’s funds, betting that the Trispar heart drug study would fare positively. So, when the study’s results were markedly negative, Peter’s despair hit the roof.
How would Julio respond upon learning the news of Peter losing a big piece of the cartel’s money? When Peter didn’t hear from Julio or Martin for five days, he got really spooked. If they were going to whack him over his mistake, it surely would have happened within those five days. Two days into this torment, Peter started making plans to disappear, yet the hurdle of leaving his family was far too large. Julio could just as easily kill them in retribution, so if he were to disappear, it would have to involve his whole family. Then there was the planning time problem. Such a plan would need at least a few weeks to pull off and they only had a few days.
At the end of the fifth day, Peter was sitting in his office sipping on his sixth diet coke of the day when he decided to give Martin a call. Nobody knew about the heart drug bet except him, yet Martin had to have seen the $45 million drop in funds - that’s what Julio paid him to do.
“Peter, how have you been?” Martin asked. “We figured it would be good for our relationship if we let you stew for a few days.”
“I don’t understand, so you knew about it the whole time?”
Martin laughed weirdly. “Well, if you’re asking me if I noticed $45 million less on Monday than at the end of the prior Friday, then, yes, I did know all about it.”
Peter leaned forward in his chair and didn’t say anything to Martin for a few seconds. He had to come clean with them.
“You know, no one on Wall Street thought that Drexel would stop development of its heart drug after the study results were released last Thursday evening.”
“Well, we knew you wouldn’t be so stupid as to steal the money from us,” Martin said coldly.
“No, I suppose not.”
Martin didn’t really specify how their relationship would change - he didn’t have to. Not that Peter had any leverage in his deal with Julio before the Drexel fiasco, but his grip felt much tighter afterwards and spawned the dastardly plan to shake down doctors for drug study inside information.
The Linders would still be alive if Peter hadn’t showboated with Julio’s money, and that thought had him frozen in a bad karma twister all morning following Martin’s news about the Linders.
His firm had two employees, Judy Host, his receptionist, and Darryl Ludsten, who ran the administration side of things. Darryl was on vacation for the next two weeks.
Judy rang him at 1 p.m. to tell him to pick up line one.
“Peter, you gotta hear this…this guy is totally whacked!” she screamed into his intercom.
He picked up the handset and hit the button for line one.
“Liar, Liar, pants on fire, and your profits keep going higher, ha, ha, ha,” the voice sang eerily, only to repeat the song over and over again. It was a real low and underwater-like voice, disturbing in its delivery, meaning and just about every other kind of way.
It sure sounded like a recording - Judy couldn’t reset the line because the other end wouldn’t hang up. That’s when she called him.
“They’ll hang up eventually,” Peter told Judy firmly. “Is this the first time something like this has happened?”
“Well, yeah, Peter,” Judy responded. “Should we be scared?”
After he heard her put the receiver down, she started running down the hallway, making a clickity clack with her flip flops. It seemed she wore those things nine month months out of the year, though she always told him it was six.
Judy had been with Peter for over thirteen years and was a former bartender at a Newark strip club, something that she never discussed. He didn’t know if she thought he had some kind of judgment against that sort of thing, but whatever. For as long as Peter had known her, Judy wore an Annie Lennox red crew cut and a large gap between her front teeth. Judy and her husband Hank recently adopted a foster child that was living with them after being abandoned at a local shopping mall at the age of two.
When Judy took the job way back when, Peter’s firm was in Manhattan, in an office building just off of Times Square, and he thought she would leave him when he decided to relocate his firm to the New Jersey suburb of Morristown. But she stayed and moved herself and Hank to Morristown as well. They had had been in Morristown for six years, all in the same building that he shared with the law firm, Dewey, Stange and Lewis. Stange was dead, and, since the day Judy and Peter moved in, both Lewis and Dewey had been trying to win some entertainment business from Peter, sometimes a little too aggressively. Peter’s firm had two offices off of a long hallway, a conference room and a lobby where Judy sat. Darryl came aboard five years ago.
At this point of his career, he didn’t need to visit clients in person, with only a few appointments a month from celebrities bored with their life and looking to him as sort of a reminder of just how much dough they had gathered over the years.
Judy sprinted into his office and started to blurt something out, but stopped and put her index finger to her lips.
“Judy, it’s okay,” Peter told her, squeezing out a chuckle. “I think it’s a college buddy of mine.”
This was definitely another swing trying to whack at Peter’s nerves and he simply wanted this day to end. Talking with Judy, amazing calmness had to reign inside him to laugh it off as a prank call from a college buddy.
“Well, let’s plan on using Line two for the rest of the day, and if you find out who it was, please kill them for me!” Judy exclaimed.
“Done.”
She left his office and he let out a deep breath. Somebody was clearly trying to scare him, but, somehow, being in bed with a Mexican drug lord made Peter a little harder to scare – or so he liked to think.
Steven Angle didn’t say anything strange during lunch other than to show a little too much enthusiasm for his investment performance in recent years. Steven came to visit Peter a few times a year - probably the most of his clients - and Peter wasn’t sure why that was. His lunch invite was spur of the moment as he didn’t mention it to Judy when he called to change the time that morning, not long after Peter got off the phone with Martin. Judy was such a huge Steven Angle fan that it had taken her a few years to be able to hold a normal conversation with the man.
Judy had thought Stephen would be in for a quick 20-30 minute meeting, but that went out the window with the lunch plans. How in the world was Peter supposed to stay focused for an entire lunch? For God’s sake, the Linders’ blood was on Peter’s hands, and he was supposed to eat, drink and be merry?
And they weren’t expecting his whole family to be with him, so, when the Angle clan walked into the front lobby, Judy and Peter were taken aback. The man had four children, all of them present at the lunch meeting along with Steven’s wife, Cherise, who spent the entire lunch trying in vain to control her two year old boy. Spilling three glasses of water during the hour long meeting, this kid thought it hysterical to run around the table and smack each person in the back. Surreal as it was to see a rock star juggle four kids at a restaurant, he handled everything well. Peter was surprised, though, that nobody came up to Steven for his autograph.
Steven asked Peter question after question about the companies his firm had invested in for Steven’s portfolio, something he did last year when he took Peter to dinner. That dinner was the first dinner that Peter had with a client in five years, and he’d like to say he thought of Steven as a friend – but who was he kidding? A friend doesn’t rope his other friends into bed with a Mexican drug lord and tie their fortunes to a global money laundering scheme.
Looking at Steven’s kids during lunch, part of Peter wanted to scream “I’m sorry” right there in the restaurant. The Angle family didn’t deserve his lies, nor did any of his clients, but Julio had them all under his bind. Peter just needed to keep his smile on and wait for a miracle – risking losing all his clients’ money by recklessly disturbing his relationship with the cartel was way too foolish - or for somebody to put a bullet through Julio Viola’s head.
Peter had gotten Angle-esq enthusiasm over his investment performance from a few clients recently. Yet, after listening to that recorded phone message, maybe one of his clients or maybe even a competitor didn’t believe the numbers. Peter hadn’t received any client liquidation requests in over two years, although that meant nothing after a phone call like that. Granted, this person had no proof without access to his bank records and even those would be difficult to transcribe. Still, if the authorities were made suspicious enough, it would be game over for Peter Hansen.
Whoever Peter was hiding from Judy, this certainly was no college friend. Someone out there knew his secret. How much time before the whole world knew? They had to be guessing, albeit correctly, that his investment performance was fictional, because it was highly doubtful that Julio or Martin would blab about his situation to others. Peter had hidden his tracks rather well and offered in-depth explanations for his ‘stellar’ performance in the annual reports that his firm sent to his clients the past few years. In the end, however, Peter was a liar and nothing more and now someone wanted him to pay.
The agent for Bruce Gilbert, a Broadway director that Judy never had heard of, was on Line Two.
“Peter Hansen.”
“Did you get my message?”
The voice sounded deeper in person, and a lot clearer.
“Who is this?” Peter demanded, shooting up from his chair.
The dial tone rang and he was gone. Peter thought for a second about running out to Judy to see if this joker rang up on caller ID, but it was not worth alarming her any further and it wasn’t likely this guy would make such a rookie mistake anyway.
Peter got back on the phone – it was time to call for some help.
“Martin, we got a problem here,” he said firmly. “Someone has called here twice this afternoon, accusing me of lying to my clients about my investment performance.”
“Who do you think it is?” Martin asked.
“I don’t have a clue, but Judy is really scared.”
“I can assign a guy to watch over you if you want, but he may get a little too close for comfort…your family might get suspicious…”
“Let me deal with them,” Peter responded. “I really appreciate this Martin.”
Peter cracked a smile, because this creepy caller guy didn’t know who was playing on his team, and this guy might learn the hard way about messing with ‘ole Peter Hansen.
“Hey, we look out for each other, Peter,” Martin affirmed. “I can have a guy in your parking lot in one hour.”
“Martin, thanks a lot.”
“Don’t mention it…just stay safe,” Martin stated. “We need you alive and well.”
Peter couldn’t argue with the general statement about being alive and well. Maybe someday, Julio would cut him loose.
******
By the end of 2001, PLH Capital was down 51% for the prior two years thanks to a huge downturn in the stock market over that time. Peter’s celebrity investors were told a different story, however, with the annual report going out to these clients in January 2002 showing a total loss of only 10% since the beginning of 2000. The dot com bubble burst in the spring of 2000, but thanks to the money laundering mercy of the Viola drug cartel deep from the heart of Mexico, Peter could afford to lie to his celebrity clients.
The Violas started laundering money through PLH capital in September, 2001. Everything went fine until Peter’s firm lost a chunk of the cartel money in the Drexel stock. After that, things got much worse. Julio knew that Peter’s firm had lost a lot of his money over a stock bet on the outcome of an important heart drug study, so that is how Julio came up with this crazy inside information plan for these drug studies. How he found Dr. Linder, Peter never knew, yet, asking too many questions was risky business. He should never have bet on that drug study; maybe he was trying to show off to Julio his excellent stock picking skills, except, everything was made so much worse, instead. While the world of money laundering was stressful at first, it became way less shocking and disturbing over time. Nobody got hurt or even threatened – it took very little of Peter’s time. This drug study shakedown was a different story because it was 100% disturbing and nasty and people got killed over it.
Shortly after the Drexel stock loss, Peter learned how the cartel had asked Oleg to start forcing this Dr. Linder of Philadelphia to give up inside information about the pharmaceutical drug study he was leading. If the inside information pointed to good news for the drug company, Peter was told to buy the stock ahead of time, but if the information pointed to bad news, he was to short the stock. This part of the strategy, including how much money to spend and what off shore accounts to use, was just conveyed to him recently over the phone by Julio Viola.
Monday, September 1st
7:55 a.m.
Nick Johnson
“Top of the morning, ladies,” Nick declared upon entering his practice.
He was a single practicing Internal Medicine physician working out of a medical building that stood next to a huge family practice which filled a two story building in the office complex next door. Mary Higgins handled all of Nick’s scheduling and billing, while Melanie Jones was his nurse.
“You have an 8:15 and your day is filled except for one slot at 1:30, but I’ll bet that gets taken this morning,” Mary stated. “It looks like the lab might be busier than usual. How was your weekend?”
Mary was in front of the computer holding her customary mocha cream. She had a cast on her left forearm, a victim of a nasty spill on a friend’s boat down at the Jersey shore.
“The weekend was mighty fine, thank you,” Nick said a tad smugly though he didn’t mean to.
“Oh, you’re in a good mood, what’s up with you?” Mary asked.
Nick didn’t think he was in a particularly good mood and struggled to give her a satisfactory answer. But maybe he’d been trying to be more cheerful lately and it had thrown people off. Susan liked it, though he was not sure anybody else did.
“Do we have the lab figures back for Leon Blue?”
Leon came into the after-hours clinic over the weekend, complaining about having a head cold for seven months. No fever, no real pain, just congested as all get out.
“Yes, I’ll call him in a bit. Nothing popped up on the blood screen,” Melanie chimed in from down the hallway.
“Okay….tell him I’m prescribing Sifanext for allergies.”
Pulling out his prescription pad, Nick started writing it all out, trying to ignore Mary who stood up from the computer and let out a moan while she stretched.
It was clear Mary had something big to let him in on.
“So, get this,” she started. “I’m driving home on Friday night and I’m on my street. Six houses down from us, I see all the contents of the home out there on the lawn…all of the beds, entertainment centers…everything!”
Mary grabbed from Nick the prescription to fax over to Mr. Blue’s pharmacy.
“Big garage sale?” Nick asked.
She let out a loud chuckle and came up to him with crossed arms, which was her way of saying, ‘I want your full attention now.’
“Does this have anything to do with your brother’s situation?” Nick asked innocently.
Mary’s brother was arrested last weekend over charges of serving alcohol to minors, after her brother and sister-in-law hosted a keg party for their high school senior daughter, Lindsay and her friends. One of these friends left the party before passing out on his own front lawn until the next morning when his parents called the police.
“What?” Mary yelled out. “No, stupid, I’m not talking about that! Okay…this lady and her kids were renting the house from a couple that had moved back to Arizona…It turns out that she’s a stripper…which I’ve a hard time believing because she never looked that thin the few times I saw her…”
“Where are you going with this?” Nick demanded.
Mary took a sip of her mocha cream. “Okay…the next door neighbor called the cops on Friday morning to complain about a toxic smell coming from this lady’s home…well, the cops show up and find a meth lab in her basement.”
Nick didn’t dare point out the mocha cream mustache on Mary’s lip.
“Can you make meth in a basement?”
Mary pushed him with her good arm.
“Where have you been? Crystal Meth was the leading drug for teens last year and it’s growing like mad.”
Nick shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, why did this couple rent the house to a bunch of meth dealers?”
Mary threw up her arms and walked back to her station with the prescription that she needed to fax.
“I was just kidding, you know!” he shouted back to her and headed into his office.
His nurse, Melanie, came into his office two minutes later.
“Hey hon….there’s a Dr. David Clark waiting for you in the lobby, Should I send him in? You have about 10 minutes before the first patient.”
This was odd, because Nick had known David since Princeton and he had never come into the clinic. David was a cardiologist - a highly successful one at that – who had been a key part of five or six major heart-related drug studies in recent years and had a consulting gig with Distal Pharmaceuticals on the side. It helped that many of these companies’ drug studies were located around the New York metro area.
They tried to have lunch every month and they were pretty good at keeping that schedule. David loved Italian food, so Nick tried to accommodate him on that end.
They were roommates in college for one year along with four other guys. David was legendary for his upside down tap suck technique in which he would be held upside down by the side of the beer keg and drink from the keg’s tap. David grew up in Boston and still had a slight accent when Nick met him. An easy target himself, David stopped trying to make fun of the Jersey accent years ago. He was the first member of his family to go to college, though David rarely discussed his extended family with Nick. He had one boy, age 15, and was married to Toni.
Nick walked out to the lobby and spotted David reading last week’s Sports Illustrated. He looked up at Nick with a mighty smile.
“Interesting article on the Patriots…you should check it out,” David remarked.
David knew that Nick was a huge New York Jets fan and couldn’t stand the Patriots.
“Funny man! Good to see you, David…what brings you down here? I don’t think you’ve ever set foot in this clinic.”
David laughed and grabbed his arm. “Is your office back here?”
Was the great David Clark off today? That would make sense given that David only operated a few days a week and always in the very early morning. Nick couldn’t recall if Monday was an off day or not.
They walked down the hallway to his office, passing Mary who gave Nick a funny look.
“Have a seat,” Nick said.
He closed the door to his office. “Okay, what’s up?”
David kept standing and put his hands in his pockets. He stood 6’2 and always wore a suit during non operating business hours, which Nick found odd given that he never wore suits if he didn’t have to. He only owned two good suits that still fit him. Nick bought a tuxedo eight years ago, but had worn it just once to a black tie wedding and had thought since that he would have been much better off renting a decent one - no one would ever have noticed.
For five years, Susan wore a knock-off diamond wedding ring after losing the original ring during their vacation in the Bahamas. When Nick surprised her one Christmas with the real deal again, they viewed this as more symbolic.
“I’m sure you’re aware of the drug Zyptorin – it’s the coronary drug that aims to be 40-50% more effective in artery plaque reduction,” David started. “It stays in your system longer and spends more time in the arteries.”
“Okay….” Nick inserted, knowing David could easily be speaking for a few more minutes if he didn’t cut him off at the pass.
“Well, we’re about halfway done with the study and I’m one of the heads of the study committee,” David continued. He clapped his hands together. “Ralph Lacher, one of our committee members has had to drop out due to family issues and I’d like you to join the steering committee.”
Nick leaned back extra hard in his chair; the great David Clark was asking Nick to be on one of his high profile drug study committees. Susan was going to have a cow when she heard this, given that she had informed her husband on several occasions over the years how David was a pompous ass who could spend an entire dinner party talking about himself and his affairs. Nick couldn’t say he entirely disagreed with his wife but the guy and Nick had some strange bond, like David needed him as a constant in his life. Nick never called him to arrange their monthly lunch because David always called to set it up first. If David got Nick’s voice mail, he had been known to call again before Nick had a chance to even hear the message. Nick had a far busier day than Dr. David Clark, yet he made one fifth of what his college buddy pulled in each year and this only bothered him every other week.
“Really?” Nick tried to act as calm as possible, taking a sip of his bottled water. He probably drank 7-8 of those suckers every day.
David laughed. “Yes, really! It’ll be very helpful to have an Internal guy at the table, and you won’t have to do much of the work.”
Sitting back down in his chair, Nick looked at the clock on the wall, realizing that he had less than two minutes.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, the steering committee acts like a buffer between the study researchers and the drug company. We simply review the data…we have statisticians for the big leg work.”
Buffer was an odd, yet decent choice for describing how a drug study steering committee worked. Things could get kind of nasty when a drug company got a study result that they didn’t like, since neither scientist nor pharmaceutical CEO was fond of hearing that the drug they created had some nasty side effect or, worse, was conclusively ineffective.
“When does the study end?” Nick inquired.
“Not entirely sure at this point. My guess is that the committee will be able to release conclusive results nine months from now.”
David was a scratch golfer and played in pro-am tournaments across the country, a level of productivity in sharp contrast to his college days when he always said that he could be on the golf team if he put a little dedication into the sport. Enter the easy life as a cardiologist and the golf game blossomed.
“I’ll call you later this evening with more details,” David told Nick. “I believe there’s a meeting Thursday at 5:30, but I need to double check.”
“That’s fine,” Nick said.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” David declared. “I’m having lunch with Peter Hansen tomorrow to talk about investing some of my money with him. I hear PLH has been performing reasonably well.”
“You’re not a high flying celebrity but, whatever,” Nick replied. “Say hello for me.”
Nick’s son Tom was best friends with Peter’s son, Charlie. Peter ran an investment firm in town, though Nick could honestly say that he hadn’t been tracking Peter’s performance over the recent years. He had a Merrill Lynch broker in town that he had been using for over twelve years.
“I will do, sir!” David said and then let himself out of his office.
Nick sat back in his chair, thrilled that David finally asked him. He never wanted to beg to be on one of David’s cool drug committees but this was an opportunity to break out of the funk he had found himself in with his career. Was this a mid-life crisis, even though Nick had earned the same amount of money for ten years now? He couldn’t see any more patients, meaning that he had hit the proverbial glass ceiling. Meeting with pharmaceutical big wigs or hobnobbing with the upper ranks of the medical community was out of his league. The opportunity that David gave him could open doors in his stagnant career. It was not about the money – it wasn’t clear to Nick if committee members got paid for their service – yet he wanted to be looked at as somebody more than some Internal Medicine doctor in a small clinic.
He didn’t want to get his hopes up too much and he was sure Susan would ask him just to be happy with whom he was. This caused him to cringe every time she said this. Why did everybody need to understand who they were and be happy with that? The ego is a complicated beast within us and it needs feeding. He shouldn’t have needed somebody like David Clark to ride to his rescue but Nick kind of did need him. He wanted Susan to brag more about him to her friends, she needed that and he needed that.
Monday, September 1st
5 p.m.
Oleg Yashkov
“Five hundred thousand will be wired to your Swiss account on Thursday.” Martin’s voice was tired and deep.
“That’s great…I really appreciate this.”
“Oleg, you handled a sticky situation the way we want it handled….Jerry said you were our man.”
The whirring of a vacuum cleaner could be heard on the background.
“Yeah, I thought doctors were an easier mark but that guy in Philly surprised us,” Oleg told Martin. “So…how exactly do you make this kind of money on the information we pass on?”
After months of planning and waiting, the final money reward seemed hugely crazy and deserving at the same time. After all, Mrs. Linder put up quite a fight and was a real bitch about the whole thing. And they definitely weren’t expecting that Uzi.
“You don’t need the details…just keep doing your job. There are countless of clinical drug studies going on in the Northeast…
“Right, we’ll be staying in central Jersey…laying low for the time being – like you said.”
An 18 wheeler trucker blew his horn behind the sedan.
“That’s good. Now, I don’t expect to hear from you again until we find another doctor on a study.”
“I understand.”
Oleg turned the cell phone off and merged the sedan onto the NJ Turnpike, heading toward Morris Plains, NJ. Traffic was quite heavy and they were moving just 30 miles per hour due to the heavy rain that had started. The rain was creating a loud noise inside the car.
“Looks like we need to find I-70 West.”
“Okay then…let’s give Mihail a call once we find I-70.”
Oleg glanced over at Karel wincing as he moved his left shoulder. That damn Uzi surprised them and Oleg was screaming inside over them not knowing what kind of heat the Linder bodyguard was packing. The week before played over and over in his head, how they first noticed this large guy hanging around the Linder house and acting like a security person. They were told not to meet with Mr. Linder or make a big scene over this development, but instead violently remove the bodyguard with a home raid and get the information out of the Linders a little earlier than the plan had called for. If they had met with Mr. Linder, he might have decided to bolt town. That was Martin’s and Fred’s conclusion, anyway, and they called the shots. Oleg personally thought Mr. Linder’s friggin ego would never let him disappear even for a short time.
Oleg didn’t know they were supposed to plan for the Uzi, though. They were thinking shot gun or even an automatic pistol. But what was done was done, and Karel had a bullet in his shoulder that needed to get removed. That was priority #1.
Priority #2 was to make sure they were still cool with Julio. They sort of screwed up with the Lick Brothers incident in Miami. They needed this to run smoothly and it kinda didn’t, at least not the way Oleg saw it. And they were pretty sure Mihail, their cleaner, was going to be pissed at their mess at the Linders. Martin thought they did a good job, but Mihail could have sent his complaint directly to Julio for all Oleg knew, especially since someone much higher in the cartel than Martin had brought Mihail into this drug study operation. It took them way too long to get the information out of Mr. Linder and Karel’s blood was on the kitchen floor. They hadn’t been able to get in touch with Mihail since they left the Linders fifteen hours earlier.
Friday, September 5th
5:30 p.m.
Nick Johnson
Nick found a spot in the outdoor lot on the westside of Overlook Hospital in Summit, NJ. The meeting was in the newly constructed glass tower on the west wing of the building.
It was raining, and the lot was ¾ full, forcing him to park toward the back of the lot. For a second he thought his umbrella wasn’t in the car until it turned up under a jacket lying on the back seat floor.
“Excuse me….can you tell me how to get to Conference room 3A?” he asked the information clerk in the lobby.
Nick was guessing it was on the third floor, but you never know with hospitals and the odd room numbering.
“Follow the blue arrow around to the elevators on the other side of the tower. Take the elevator down to LL3. Conference room 3a is the big one in the center of that floor. You can’t miss it.”
He thanked the information clerk – it was a good thing to ask.
The elevator stopped on LL3 and Nick saw the conference room 3a, a fishbowl in the center of the floor just as the clerk directed. David Clark was busy talking with an elderly gentleman.
“Nick! Great that you could make it…you can hang your coat and bag on the rack behind you…refreshments and light snacks are over here,” David stated warmly.
Wood blinds covered the windows of the room, and the aroma from coffee brewing in the corner took on its own dimension. Nick was not a coffee drinker - never had been - though Susan couldn’t survive without a jolt first thing in the morning.
David introduced him to the elderly gentleman, Dr. Norman Watson, who was a Cardiologist from Boston.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir…”Nick stated.
“Nick, we appreciate you coming tonight on such short notice,” Dr. Watson declared.
Dr. Watson had an incredibly strong handshake for somebody that looked 70. He was wearing a grey sweater vest over a white dress shirt and reading glasses dangled from his neck.
As two other gentlemen arrived, they began talking to another gentleman that Nick did not know.
The drug the committee was examining was called Zyptorin. This drug had been in the marketplace for three years, generating over $1 billion in annual sales for Distal Pharmaceutical, Inc. Zyptorin had replaced nearly 2/3 of the sales of the former leading artery drug, Balentor, claiming to be 40% more effective than Balentor in artery plaque reduction.
Over the past two years, complaints had surfaced about Zyptorin’s claim as the superior drug for artery plaque reduction. Distal Pharmaceutical was funding the study of 2,050 heart patients receiving stents in the last year, with various doses being set for the study that extended to 10 cities across the U.S.
The Data Monitoring committee was due to present the statistical findings for ½ of the patient population to the steering committee that next week. The phase three study five years ago only tested 400 patients. Current complaints claimed that Zyptorin had not shown to be superior to Balentor in a much wider pool of heart patients.
Dr. Watson invited Nick to sit next to him at the table, a mahogany table able to seat twenty people around it. There were ten of them in the room and everybody but Dr. Watson looked to be within 10 years of Nick.
“Ok, everyone, if we can be seated at the table, I want to introduce the newest member of our committee, Dr. Nick Johnson.”
David Clark came over and patted him on the back.
“Nick here is the finest Internal physician in New Jersey and we’re lucky to have him with us,” David said to everybody.
“Okay, guys…let’s get started. I talked with Justin Witley this afternoon and he has confirmed that we have the statistical findings for half the pool,” Dr. Watson started. “And he’s ready to present these findings to us next week.”
A gentleman Nick didn’t know leaned over the table. “And we’ve covered all five dose classes across the patient sample?”
“Pete, all five dose classes have been covered, and the study for ½ of the patient pool is complete.”
“Was Justin able to give you any hints?” David Clark asked.
Dr. Watson grimaced while rubbing his chin.
“Well, this first half doesn’t look very promising…right now, the study is pointing us to between 10 and 15% greater effectiveness than Balentor,” Dr. Watson continued. “And remember, we’re looking to see how many patients fall into that range.
“Wow! Less than 15% is a lousy figure....Norm, we’re going to have our hands full with Jim Newel,” a bald gentleman stated from the other side of the table.
Jim Newel was the Chief Executive Officer for Distal Pharmaceutical who had been CEO for four years. In 2001, he was paid over $12 million dollars in salary and bonus - the 8 million stock options didn’t hurt either.
“Paul, please don’t overreact here…The whole purpose of this Steering Committee is to act as a buffer between those running this study and Distal Pharmaceutical.”
Dr. Watson announced that a different dose pattern would be assigned to 10% of the remaining pool to see if they could get the greater effectiveness figure into the mid 20% range.
“Wait at a minute…so we’re reaching, so to speak, to get to 20% better than Balentor?” Paul asked.
Dr. Watson leaned back in his chair and put his hands on the back of his head.
“Paul, you know as well as I that so much of this business is reaching, as you say…It’s not like this is your first committee. So, I’m assuming the same time next week works for everybody?” Dr Watson asked the group.
Dr. Watson checked his watch.
“You know, Norm, I’ve been reading some of the testimonials given by these heart patients and I’m not sure that physicians would stop prescribing Zyptorin if it’s only shown to be 10% more effective than Balentor,” David Clark asserted.
Paul jumped in the flow. “But you gotta admit that Jim Newel’s precious Distal Pharmaceutical stock is going to plummet if we publish a 10% result for Zyptorin.”
David Clark slammed his hands down on the table.
“Well that guy could use a little humility!” David yelled.
“All right, that’s enough…let’s re-focus here,” Dr. Watson inserted. “I want everyone here to come up with two statistics questions for next week’s meeting. I don’t want to appear like we’re not doing very much work for this study.”
Several at the table burst into laughter and even Dr. Watson had trouble keeping a straight face.
“Oh, you’re all about image, Norm. I think that‘s great. Guys, I think he’s being serious here,” David said.
“You bet I’m serious about this,” Dr Watson cried out. “Just once I’d like to run a steering committee where we have good news to tell our pharmaceutical client.”
This was Norm Watson’s third steering committee. The first two were Phase 2 drug trials for brand new drugs which never made it out of Phase 2, so Norm was thrilled that he could work with a drug that was actually successful in the marketplace.
Friday, September 5th
Oleg Yashkov
Karel laughed and slammed his hand on the bar at Luiggi’s, causing him to wince in pain from his shoulder wound. Any sudden movement in his upper body disturbed him mightily. Oleg refilled his champagne glass.
Karel was very lucky that the Linders’ asshole security guy only nicked him with the array of bullets he sent flying their way that night. They knew he was in the house, but Karel had to take the security guy out in a way they hadn’t considered. Barreling through the garage door was their only chance and Karel did a hell of a job. They were not sure how Karel was shot - they probably would never know. In any case, it was a divot taken out of his shoulder, so they were keeping peroxide and Neosporin on it.
“I can’t believe you cut that guy’s finger off - that was really nasty. There are less bloody ways to get somebody to talk, you know.”
“C’mon, focus here! We gotta get Martin’s guy to look at your shoulder, again.”
Oleg thought he was too loud just then, making him look around the restaurant to see if anyone was staring at them. Two men were talking with a woman and her teenage son, though none of them was paying any attention to the two cartel men.
They had some homework to do on Dr. Nick Johnson. Oleg wished their friends in charge had a master directory for all drug trials and the projected date of completion, but they didn’t. Ideally, they would know when the trial would end and make contact with the target doctor shortly before that date. Since they didn’t have that luxury with Dr. Linder they were now caught cleaning up some loose ends. Oleg and Karel were going to have to watch this Nick Johnson more closely.
They gave Dr. Linder too much time to come up with a plan, and he thought he could outsmart them. He didn’t, but he sure made everything messier than it had to be. Oleg sure would have liked to know where the doctor found that bodyguard.
Martin’s guy was able to get the bullet out of Karel’s shoulder and stitch him up, but the wound was oozing something green. Oleg knew that wasn’t good. They had been trying Martin on the cell for a few hours, because Oleg didn’t know how to reach the stitch up guy who had worked on Karel in Martin’s office in New York. They could not risk an ER visit. Even though they would have no way of knowing that Karel’s wound was from a bullet, the ER staff was sure to grow suspicious over the less than quality stitching job provided by Martin’s guy.
Friday, September 5th
Peter Hansen
Dinner at the Crusted Top had been a Hansen family tradition since Charlie was a baby- they also had a 14-year old daughter, Isabelle – and tonight was certainly a night for celebration. Martin’s security guy was keeping the ‘pants on fire’ harasser away from him, the image of the Linders’ blood was fading in his mind, and his firm made a huge profit on Friday afternoon. It had been a year since Peter was forced to dance with the devil that was the Viola drug cartel. Something about a $25 million gain on a stock trade got his blood moving. Even if the gain was grossly illegal, it was the best news his firm had gotten in a long time. When Julio first explained in entirety his plan for Doctor Linder, Peter didn’t understand why he was wasting his time on what seemed to be a small potatoes project. However, sitting at the table at the Crusted Top tonight, Peter understood it all quite well. A few more doctor shake downs like that one, without the actual murder of course, and he would be well on his way to making up for his poor investment losses of the past two years. The fact that Julio controlled those profits in addition to all of PLH was being intentionally ignored in his mind as Peter needed to celebrate with his family.
The truth was, though, Peter had slept like crap all week long, and, by Friday night, Claire could have put a fork in him. Martin’s security guy showed up in his office parking lot late Monday afternoon as promised. By Friday, Peter was kind of surprised that this ‘pants on fire’ guy hadn’t called back. Maybe he noticed Martin’s security guy arrive or maybe he wasn’t watching Peter at all. He couldn’t have full appreciation of who he was dealing with if he wasn’t watching, so Peter kinda hoped he was watching. In any case, Martin’s man hung around his neighborhood, where Peter only had two neighbors on his heavily wooded street, and followed him wherever he went in his car each day. Part of him hoped that ‘pants on fire’ did try something. That way he could find a bullet between the eyes.
When someone threatens your family, you try to think of every way out of the situation, and Peter did just that. That day a year ago, when the mustached man name Martin first visited him, Martin stood over Peter while he executed the nine different wire transfers. After each transfer, Peter tried his hardest to see how the financial maze they were creating could end up leading the authorities to him if things went wrong. But it was so stressful with Martin standing over him that it was crazy hard to think straight. For sure, if someone poked hard enough, they would see that the first wire transfer started inside his firm’s office.
Over the next few months, Peter made sure to tape every conversation he had with Julio, which totaled five before year end. On the third conversation, he whined to Julio that the laundered money scheme would end up crashing down into his lap, and Julio assured him that he wouldn’t let that happen. Once Peter got that on tape, that was enough insurance. Thoughts about picking up his family and bolting town were gone, replaced by confidence that Julio didn’t have a reason to hurt them as long as the laundering relationship continued functioning; and if authorities raided his firm one day, the tapes would point the blame directly at Julio.
PLH ended 2001 down 45%, having gone from ‘not great’ status when Peter first met Julio to ‘likely disaster’ a few months later. The Enron scandal was the reason, with Peter failing to believe the company would go bankrupt and doubling down his bet in late November of 2001. That single trade could have taken down his firm if it weren’t for Julio’s aid. Why he decided to swing for the fences, he didn’t think he ever would know for sure. Julio definitely rattled him when he forced his way into PLH. Maybe Peter got to thinking that his $75 million of laundered drug money was some kind of insurance.
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