Michael Palmer - Side Effects

" The woman smiled and nodded. Kate was halfway to the tunnel entrance when she stopped, hesitated, and then returned. She reclaimed the note, tore the envelope open, and added a PS. And Bill… could you please get me ten tablets of each of the medications dispensed by the Monkeys.

Thanx. K.

"Well, what do you say, Clyde. Can I count on you or not?"

Norton Reese set aside the paper clip he was mangling and stared across his desk at the chief of cardiac surgery. Clyde Breslow was the fourth department head he had met with that day. The previous three had made no promises to help block Kate Bennett's appointment, despite delicately presented guarantees that their departments would receive much-needed new equipment as soon as her nomination was defeated. In fact, two of the men, Milner in internal medicine and Hoyt, the pediatrician, had said in as many words that they were pleased with the prospect of having her on the executive committee. "Bright new blood, " Milner had called her. Breslow, Napoleonic in size and temper, watched Reese's discomfort with some amusement. "Now jes' what is it about that little lady that bothers you so, Norton? " he asked in a thick drawl that often disappeared when he was screaming at the nurses and throwing instruments about the operating room or screaming at the medical students and throwing instruments about the dog lab. "She refuse to spread those cute little buns of hers for ya or what?"

"The bitch made me look bad in front of the board of trustees, Clyde.

You should remember that. It was your fucking operating microscope that caused all the trouble. I'll be damned if I'm going to have her on my executive committee."

"Whoa, there, Norton. Your executive committee? Now ain't you gettin' just the slightest bit possessive about a group you don't even have a vote in?"

"Look, Clyde, I've had a bad day. Do you back me on this and talk to the surgical boys or don't you?"

"Now that jes' depends, don't it?"

"The extra resident's slot? Clyde, I can't do it. I told you that."

"Then maybe you jes' better get used to seeing that pretty little face of Katey B.'s at the meetin's every other Tuesday."

Reese snapped a pencil in half. "All right. I'll try, " he said, silently cursing Kate Bennett for putting him in a position to be manipulated by a man like Breslow."

"You do that. Know what I think, Norton? I think you're scared of that woman. That's what I think. A looker with smarts is more than you kin handle."

Without warning, Reese exploded. "Look, Clyde, " he said, slamming his desk chair against the wall as he stood, "you have enough fucking trouble remembering that the heart is above the belly button without taking up playing amateur shrink. Now get the hell out of here and get me some support in this thing. I'll do what I can about your goddamn resident."

With a plastic smile, Clyde Breslow backed out of the office. Reese sank into his chair. Frightened of Kate Bennett? The hell he was.

He just couldn't stand a snotty, do-gooder kid going around trying to act grown up. She ought to be home keeping house and screwing that lawyer husband of hers. "Mr. Reese, there's a call for you on two." The secretary's voice startled him, and lunging for the intercom, he spilled the dregs of a cup of coffee on his desk. "Tlammit. Bettv. I told you no calls."

"I know you did, sir. I'm sorry. It's Mr. Horner from the Omnicenter. He says it's very important."

Reese sighed. "All right. Tell him to call me on three seven four four."

He blotted up the coffee and waited for his private line to ring. It was unusual for Carl Horner to call at all. Omnicenter business was usually handled by Arlen Paquette, Redding's director of product safety. In the few moments before 3744 rang, he speculated on the nature of a problem that might be of such concern that Horner would call. None of his speculations prepared him for the reality. "Mr. Reese, " Horner said,

"I'm calling on behalf of a mutual friend of ours." Cyrus Redding's name was one Horner would never say over the phone, but Reese had no doubt whom he meant. "How is our friend?"

"A bit upset, Mr. Reese. One of your staff physicians has been nosing about the Omnicenter, asking questions about our pharmacy and requesting Dr. Zimmermann to send her samples of the medications we dispense."

The word "her" brought Reese a bone-deep chill. "Who is it? " he asked, already knowing the answer. "It's the pathologist, Dr. Bennett. She's investigating the deaths of two women who were patients of ours."

"Damn her, " Reese said too softly to be heard. "Horner, are you.. I mean, is the Omnicenter responsible for the deaths?"

"That appears to be negative."

"What do you mean appears to be? Do you know what's at stake?

Paquette promised me nothing like this would happen." Reese began feeling a tightness in his chest and dropped a nitroglycerine tablet under his tongue, vowing that if this discomfort was the start of the big one, his last act on earth would be to shoot Kate Bennett between the eyes. "Our friend says for you to remain cool and not to worry.

However, he would like you to find some effective way of… diverting Dr. Bennett's interest away from the Omnicenter until we can fix up a few things and do a little more investigating into the two deaths in question."

"What am I supposed to do? 7' "That, Mr. Reese, I do not know. Our friend suggests firing the woman."

"I can't do that. I don't hire and fire doctors, for Christ's sake."

"Our friend would like something done as soon as possible. He has asked me to remind you that certain contracts are up for renewal in less than a month."

"Fuck him."

"Pardon?"

"I said, all right. I'll think of something." Suddenly. he briohtened.

"In fact, " he said, reaching into his desk drawer, "I think I already have."

"Fine, " Carl Horner said. "All of us involved appreciate your efforts.

I'm sure our friend will be extremely beholden when you succeed."

Reese noted the use of when' instead of if, but it no longer mattered.

"I'll be in touch, " he said. Replacing the receiver, he extracted a folder marked "Schultz/Geary." Inside were a number of newspaper articles, the official autopsy report, signed by Stanley Willoughby and Kathryn Bennett, MDS, and an explanatory note from Sheila Pierce. Also in the folder were a number of laboratory tests on a man named John Schultz-a patient who, as far as he or Sheila could tell, never existed in Metropolitan Hospital. While the chances of some kind of coverup weren't a hundred percent, they certainly seemed close to that. Sheila, he thought as he readied a piece of paper in his typewriter, if this works out, I'm going to see to it that you get at least an extra night or two each month. "To Charles C. Estep, Editor, The Boston Globe."

Reese whispered the words as he typed them. He paused and checked the hour. By the time he was done with a rough draft, the pathology unit would be empty. A sheet of Kate Bennett's stationery and a sample of her signature would then be all he needed to solve any number of problems.

The woman would be out of his hair, perhaps permanently, and Cyrus Redding would be-how had Horner put it? — extremely beholden. "Dear Mr.

Estep…"

As Norton Reese typed, he began humming "There Is Nothing Like a Dame."

"Do you think God is a man or a woman, Daddy?"

Suzy Paquette sat cross-legged on the passenger seat of her father's new Mercedes 450 SL, parked by the pump at Bowen's Texaco. Behind the wheel, Arlen Paquette watched the mid-morning traffic glide by along Main Street, his thoughts neither on the traffic nor on the question he had just been asked. "Well, Daddy?"

"Well what, sugar? " The attendant rapped twice on the trunk that he was done. "Company account, Harley, " Paquette called out as he pulled away.