Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

I nodded. Sean’s was just one death. She was seeing opiate-related deaths on a wholesale level. “I understand,” I said. “It’s just—”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“No, it’s not that. I’m not clear on what you’re trying to accomplish. What you’re trying to do.”

“I want leverage. I want blackmail.”

“For what? Not — for money?”

“Nothing for me. I want to force my father to set up a network of clinics around the world to take care of the people he’s addicted.”

“Think he’d do that?”

“It’s that or I hand the study to a reporter for the Times or the Washington Post . His choice.”

“What would happen then?”

“Kimball Pharma would be hit with massive fines — I’m talking billions of dollars — and he’d go to jail. Believe me, he doesn’t want this file made public.”

“Seriously, billions?”

“When GlaxoSmithKline got caught burying studies that showed their drug Paxil, their antidepressant, was ineffective, they were charged with health-care fraud and fined three billion dollars.”

“Jesus.”

“And this fraud is of a whole different order. So I’ll be making my father an offer he can’t refuse.”

“And what do your brothers and sisters think of what you’re doing?”

“They don’t know, and they can’t.”

“How do you think they’re going to react?”

“With surprise. That meek and mild Sukie, the middle child no one pays attention to, could do anything so unexpected.”

I thought that was interesting. “But wouldn’t you just be harming yourself by making such a document public? I assume your wealth is mostly tied up in Kimball Pharma stock.”

“I’m already rich enough for several lifetimes. Look, I’m talking about people I love. Let’s be clear. I know that. But I’ve got a chance to pull the brake cord. And I will not be able to live with myself if I don’t do it.”

“I just wonder if you know the risks here.”

“The risks? The big risk is that I do nothing.”

“Things don’t always turn out like you plan. Big companies don’t go down easy.”

“Oh, yeah? So what would you have me do instead — get another hot-stone spa treatment? Put cucumber slices over my eyes and call it a day? Buy a yacht? I’ve already seen too much. It just gets worse and worse by the day. We’re running out of time. And if you don’t get that, we probably shouldn’t be working together.”

Our eyes met, and neither of us looked away.

“I’ve still got a lot of questions, Sukie.”

“And I’ve got just one.” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “Can I trust you?”

The waitress brought Sukie’s salad and lasagna and my rigatoni.

We both ate for a while. Then Sukie said, “Wasn’t your father Victor Heller?”

I smiled. “Still is.” That was a matter of public record. And it was a problem for some potential clients, by the way. Victor Heller became symbolic of all that was scuzzy about Wall Street. Would you want to hire that guy’s son?

“I once met your dad. I guess he’s a friend of my father’s. A great big brain, a tiny shriveled heart. A dangerous combination, you know?”

“How’d you meet him?”

“I was doing research for a documentary about white-collar crime.”

“He’s a guy you want to talk to.”

“He told me about you. He’s the reason I’m here.”

“I doubt he recommended me.”

“No,” she admitted. “But I figured you knew something about my world. You grew up with money, didn’t you?”

“Until Dad was arrested.”

Dad was serving a thirty-year sentence in a prison in upstate New York, for wire fraud, racketeering, securities fraud, and income tax evasion. After his arrest, when he fled the country, he abandoned us, left us impoverished. All the property and bank accounts were seized. My mom had to start over, with two young kids, moving in with her mother in Malden, Massachusetts.

“That’s unfortunate for his family.”

“Life is a garden of forking paths,” I said. “I had a happy childhood.”

“Well, we were like that family in that Visconti film, The Damned ?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t seen it.

“The rich, doomed industrialist family who were doing business with the Nazis?”

“Okay.” I was being interviewed, and it felt like it. I had to remind myself that she made documentaries. She was probably used to doing deep research and interviews.

“Isn’t your brother in prison too?”

“True.”

“Two brothers and a dad. One of these things is not like the other.”

“I was the family rebel,” I said.

“Your brother carried on the family business?”

“It’s more that my brother bonded with my father in a way I never did. He revered him. They were cut from the same cloth. Is it my turn to ask questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“How am I supposed to get into your father’s home office? Or is that my problem?” I could foresee all sorts of challenges to getting into Conrad Kimball’s inner sanctum undetected. But there was always a way.

“I can get you into the house. You’ll have to get into his office yourself.”

“Will your father be gone?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the star of the show. The center of the party.”

“Party?”

“It’s a party for my father, who’s turning eighty.”

“A retirement party?”

“You obviously don’t know my father. Men like him don’t retire. They can’t.”

“The party’s in the Katonah house?”

She nodded. “I think you’ll clean up nicely. Unlike most private investigators I’ve interviewed for this job. Didn’t you go to Yale?”

“Never graduated. I dropped out.”

“You worked for McKinsey, the management consulting company.”

“A couple of summers. It didn’t take. So you’ll get me invited as a guest?”

“I’m going to bring you in as my date, actually. You’re plausible enough. Anyone who asks, you’re a consultant. With McKinsey. They’ll be too polite to inquire further — at least, overtly.”

“When’s the party?”

“Tomorrow.”

One of Patty’s friends had brought over a large tray of homemade stuffed shells and chicken fricassee, so Sean’s family and I had it for dinner along with a salad. The two brothers bickered throughout the meal.

After dinner, I took the kids out for ice cream at our favorite soft-serve place, to give Patty a little break. When I got back and the kids allegedly prepared for bedtime, Patty and I sat in the kitchen. She poured us each a Scotch on the rocks.

“You know,” she said, absently wiping her hand along the Formica countertop, “for the longest time I thought Sean was weak. Resorting to this painkiller to basically get high. It never occurred to me that he might really be addicted, that he might have been powerless over the drug.”

“He wasn’t weak,” I said, taking a long swig.

“And then I realized there are all these people out there, I mean doctors and lawyers and businessmen and moms, and they’re all hooked on Oxydone, or Oxycontin, or whatever. Sean got addicted because his doctor wrote him a prescription and told him to take it. Take Oxydone, he said. But he didn’t say, Be careful, you might get addicted. Why is that not malpractice?”

“Sean was an incredibly strong person. It wasn’t his fault he got addicted to Oxydone.”

“Then who do you blame?”

I didn’t have an answer.

The next day I flew from Logan Airport in Boston to the much smaller Westchester County Airport, where I was met by a uniformed driver outside baggage claim holding an iPad sign: mr. heller.