The law firm of Stevens and Hilbrecht was tucked away on the second floor of one of the old historical buildings on Harrison Street. On the side of the building was a prominent ghost sign in white paint on red brick, promoting the long-defunct Bronx Lounge. Parking was in a secluded lot behind the building, and Gordon left his BMW in the stall closest to the alley and entered through the rear door. A musty smell tickled his nostrils and he sneezed a couple of times. It happened every time he visited his lawyer.
The stairs were wooden and creaked slightly under his weight. He reached the second-floor landing and veered right, down the hall and into Christine Stevens’s office. Her receptionist and paralegal, Belinda, was manning the scarred wooden desk and smiled as he entered.
“Hi, Gordon,” she said cheerfully. “Christine said to send you right in when you arrived.”
“Thanks, Belinda.” He tried to force a smile, but he couldn’t seem to force his lips to make the journey. He strode down the hall and into the second office on the left. A mid-thirties woman sat in the pewter and tanned-leather chair behind the desk, a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was diminutive, no more than five-four, with a slender figure that probably fit into a size two, three at best. Her hair was dark brown with a few lingering streaks of color she’d tried months back and realized she didn’t like. Her face was chalk white and bony, and her teeth were too big for her mouth when she smiled. But this Friday morning, she wasn’t smiling. She pointed to one of the chairs facing her desk, and Gordon sat. The chairs were more tanned leather on pewter frames and decidedly uncomfortable. They melded with the rest of the room, which was sparsely decorated with spindly halogen lamps and cold metal sculptures.
“I’ve been on the phone for fifteen hours on this file, Gordon,” she said. Christine Stevens charged by the hour and didn’t make idle conversation. “And I don’t have very good news.”
Gordon was stone-faced. “Just tell me what you found.”
Christine Stevens focused on some papers on her desk. “Veritas Pharmaceutical is a medium-size company if you compare it to the Big Pharma companies, but that doesn’t mean it’s small potatoes.”
“Big Pharma?” Gordon asked.
“Marcon, Frezin, GlasoKlan-the big guys in researching and marketing new drugs. They’re collectively referred to as Big Pharma. I don’t think it’s meant as a term of endearment. These are the guys who spend up to eight hundred million to bring a new drug to the market. Their research and marketing budgets are in the ozone. We’re talking big-time here, Gordon. Anyway, Veritas is a few billion short of fitting in with the big boys.”
“Okay,” Gordon said.“What did you find out aboutTriaxcion?”
She flipped over a few pages. “Not the best drug on the market. There have been some rumblings over the past couple of years that Triaxcion might cause peripheric tissues to mutate slightly, rendering A-positive blood incapable of coagulating.”
Gordon stared at her. “What?” he finally said. “What are you saying?”
“Billy was A positive, Gordon. And when he slashed himself with the chain saw, he bled to death because his blood wouldn’t clot. And Billy was taking Triaxcion for his hair loss. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.”
“That drug caused Billy’s death?” Gordon said quietly.
Stevens leaned back in her chair. “I can’t say that with total conviction, Gordon. If you were to ask me if I thought Triaxcion was responsible for Billy dying, I would say yes. But proving it in a court of law won’t be so easy. I’ve spoken with twelve other lawyers who have clients with family members they suspect have died as a result of Triaxcion, but none of them feel they have what is necessary to go to court.”
“Each one of them has a body, Christine,” Gordon said tersely. “What more do they need?”
“Definitive proof. Veritas isn’t going to lie down and die on this, Gordon. This drug is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to these guys. They have a legal department that rivals Microsoft. Forty-two lawyers, three times that many paralegals, and an investigative budget in the tens of millions. They’re going to protect their patent and their legal right to keep the FDA approval until someone can prove beyond any doubt that the drug can be fatal. And we don’t have that proof.”
“Billy wasn’t a bleeder, Christine. When we were kids, he used to get cut all the time. His blood always clotted. Something caused things to change, and the only variable is Triaxcion. I say that’s definitive proof.”
She shook her head. “If you’re going to initiate a class-action tort suit against a major pharmaceutical company, you’d better have the evidence and the money to back it up.”
“We have both,” Gordon said.
“No,” Christine said slowly, “you don’t. You have a few million dollars, Gordon. Maybe twenty or thirty tops. If we’re going after Veritas, we’ll have to bring in another firm, a major player, with at least twenty lawyers on retainer. You’ll have a fight that will last years and eat up every dollar you’ve ever earned. You’ll lose the mill, spend more time in court than at home, and in the end, probably lose. And you’ll lose because they have the connections-inside the FDA and on the Hill in D.C. You’ll lose because you’re angry at what happened, but they’re ruthless. You’re a decent person, Gordon, and these guys eat decent people for breakfast. You’ll lose because sometimes life just isn’t fair.”
Gordon was silent. He stared at her with tired eyes. “And this is one of those times,” he finally said.
She nodded. “I can take the case, Gordon. I can bring in medical and pharmaceutical experts and have them testify. I can build a solid legal team and fight a good fight. I can bring public awareness to the drug’s side effects. But I can’t win, Gordon. I know that going in.”
“Then what do I do, Christine?” he asked.“Just accept the fact that these people killed my brother and get on with my life?” She didn’t answer. “How can I do that, Christine?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, Gordon. But I do know this. Billy wouldn’t have wanted you to destroy yourself over this. It was his mistake with the chain saw that caused the accident. And he chose to take the drug to stop his hair loss. There are always choices in life, Gordon, and your brother made a couple of bad ones. Don’t get me wrong, I’m on your side. But if you want to pursue this, it’s against my advice.”
“There’s no other lawyer ready to file a litigation claim against Veritas?” he asked.
She shook her head.“As I said, I’ve managed to dig up twelve other lawyers looking at Veritas, but none of them are willing to serve papers. And every one of those twelve firms is considerably larger than this one.”
“How did you find them?” Gordon asked.“The other deaths?”
“Sometimes lawyers file paperwork with their respective jurisdictions when they have a client who may have a litigation claim. It’s precautionary, that’s all. It doesn’t mean they have to proceed, but just filing gives them the option to pursue an action against the drug’s manufacturer at some point in the future.”
“Can I have the names?” Gordon asked.
Christine didn’t waver for a moment with her response. “The information is privileged, Gordon. It’s not in the public domain until they begin proceedings. These families would get pretty upset if someone showed up asking questions. Imagine how you’d feel.”
“If a stranger showed up on my door and told me someone they loved had died as a result of Triaxcion, it would give me hope. It would let me know I’m not alone.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do it, Gordon. I could get disbarred.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, then pulled a toothpick from his pocket and peeled off the protective cover. “Where do we go from here?”
“Wherever you want. But keep in mind that I’m strongly opposed to starting any legal action against these guys.”
“All right. Leave it with me. Let me think about it.” He stood up and offered his hand. “I’ll get back to you in two weeks, around the end of May.”
She nodded and walked him to the door. “This could consume you if you let it, Gordon,” she said, her voice softer now. Like a friend would tell another friend not to do something stupid.
“Yeah, I understand. It’s a big decision.”
The sun was just touching the tips of the trees on the westerly foothills as he exited the legal office. He slowly walked across the parking lot, fingering the keys to his car. Even with his wealth, he was powerless against this corporation. They were killing people and they knew it. But the dollar signs outweighed the rights of the poor bastards with A-positive blood who were losing their hair. What were thirteen dead when profits ran into the hundreds of millions? What did it matter if every one of those dead people had families who loved and cherished them? Who missed them?
He set his hand on the roof of his car and stared at the darkening sky. He had to decide which way to go. Indirectly, someone at Veritas had murdered his brother. Yet pursuing them would probably destroy him. For a split second he wished he’d never found the pill bottle; that the police had cleaned out
Billy’s medicine cabinet and thrown the damn thing in the garbage. But that hadn’t happened. He knew, and now he needed to decide. He felt sick to his stomach, because he knew one thing for certain.
He was facing a lose-lose situation.