Sunday, April 5
Stone Aimes was staring at the email on the screen of his Compaq Armada and feeling an intense urge to put his fist through its twisted spiral crystals. What do you do when you've come up with an idea that could possibly save thousands of lives using simple Webbased technology and then the piece gets spiked by your newspaper's owners at the very last minute because it exposes some important New York hospitals to unpleasant (but constructive) scrutiny?
What it makes you want to do is tell everybody down on the third floor to stuff it and walk out and finish your book- undistracted by corporate asscovering BS… or, unfortunately, by a paycheck.
Around him the newsroom of the New York Sentinel, a weekly newspaper positioned editorially somewhere between the late, lamented New York Observer and the Village Voice, was in final Sunday countdown, with the Monday edition about to be put to bed. The technology was state of the art, and the room flickered with computer screens, blue pages that gave the tan walls an eerie cast. Composition, spellchecking, everything, was done by thinking machines, and the reporters, thirteen on this floor, were mostly in their late twenties and early thirties and universally underpaid.
The early morning room was bustling, though it felt to Stone like the end of time. Nobody was paying any attention to him but that was normal: everybody was doing their own thing. Besides, nobody else realized he'd just had a major piece killed at the last minute. Now he felt as though he were frozen in place: in this room, in this job, in this life.
The book he had almost finished was going to change a lot of things. It would be the first major explication of stem cell technology for general readers. Stem cells were going to revolutionize everything we knew about medicine and the research was going further than anyone could have dreamed. The possibility of reversing organ degeneration, even extending life, was hovering right out there, just at humankind's fingertips. It cried out for a major book.
He had read everything that had made its way into the medical journals, but the study that was furthest along was privately funded and now cloaked in secrecy. It was at the Gerex Corporation, whose head researcher was a Dutch genius named Karl Van de Vliet. The company had been bankrolled by the medical mogul Winston Bartlett after Van de Vliet lost his funding at Stanford.
Winston Bartlett, of all people… but that was another story.
Thirteen months earlier, the Gerex Corporation had trolled for volunteers on the National Institutes of Health Web site, referring to a pending "special study." The notice suggested the study might be using stem cell technology in some fashion. If that study was what Stone Aimes thought it was, it would be the first to use stem cells in stagethree clinical trials. Nobody else was even close.
Karl Van de Vliet was the ball game. Unfortunately, however, his study was being held in an atmosphere of militarylike secrecy. Why? Even the identities of the participants in the trials were like a state secret. Since Winston Bartlett owned Gerex, it surely had been ordered by him. You had to wonder what that was all about.
Whatever the reason, Stone Aimes knew that in order to finish his book with the latest information he had to get to Van de Vliet. But Bartlett had forbidden any interviews, and Gerex's clinic, called the Dorian Institute, was offlimits to the public and reportedly guarded with serious security.
But, he thought, perhaps he had just come up with an idea of how to get around that…
He stared a moment longer at the dim reflection coming back at him from the antiglare screen, which now informed him that his cover feature had been chopped. Truthfully, it was happening more and more; this was the third time in eight months that a major muckraking piece had been axed. Also, as he stared at it, the reflection told him he wasn't getting any younger. The hairline was no longer where it had been in his college photos-it was up about half an inch-and the blue eyes were sadder, the lines under them deeper.
Still, the tousled brown hair was thick enough, the brow mostly wrinklefree, and he still had hope. He wasn't exactly young anymore, but neither was he "getting on." The "Willy Loman" years remained safely at bay. He was thirtynine and divorced, with an exwife, Joyce, who had departed to be a garden designer in northern California, taking with her their daughter, Amy, on whom he doted. He had a onebedroom, rentcontrolled apartment in the East Nineties, on the top floor of a fashionable brownstone. He was socially unattached, as the expression goes, but he was so compulsive about finishing the book that he spent weekends hunched over his IBM Aptiva, nursing a sixpack of Brooklyn Lager and writing deathless prose. The truth was he was lonely, but he didn't allow himself to think about it.
He'd always vowed he'd amount to something by forty. And now it was as much for Amy as for himself. She lived with his exwife near El Cerrito, California, and she meant the world to him. The mortifying part was, he was a week behind with this month's support check. And he knew Joyce needed the money. It made him feel like a callous deadbeat dad when the real culprit was an unlucky confluence of inescapable bills. He’d make it up next week, but he’d sworn he would never let this happen.
That was why he had a larger game plan. Get out of this frigging day job and finish the book. The time for that plan to kick in was approaching at warp speed. This last insult was surely God's notsosubtle way of informing him that his future was in the freelance world. Every day out there would be a gamble, but he could write anything he damn well pleased.
There was a parable set down by the ancient Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu that Stone Aimes reflected on more and more these days. It was the story of two oxen: One was a ceremonial sacrificial ox who, for the year before he meets the axe, was feted with garlands of lotus flowers and plied with ox goodies. The other was a wild ox who had to scrounge in the forest for every scrap. But, the story went, on the day the ax was to drop, what wouldn't that ceremonial ox give to change places with that haggard struggling, underfed wild ox?
That's the one he empathized with. The one who was out there, half starved but free.
The Sentinel was an iron rice bowl that normally never let anybody go except for grossest incompetence or flagrant alcoholism. On the other hand getting ahead was all about office politics, kissing the managing editor's hindquarters, and copying him on every memo to anybody to make sure nobody else took credit for something you thought of.
On the plus side, he knew he was a hell of a medical journalist. There was such a gap between medical research and what most people knew, the field cried out for a Stephen Hawking of health, a medical Carl Sagan. The way he saw it, there was room at the top and he was ready for a major career breakthrough. He had done premed at Columbia before switching to journalism, and these days he read the Journal of the American Medical Association from cover to cover, every issue, along with skimming the many other journals now on the web.
The piece that just got cut was intended to show the world that investigative journalism was alive and well and trying to make a difference. He'd documented that hospital mistakes were actually the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. The Institute of Medicine estimated that medical errors caused between fifty and a hundred thousand deaths a year-rivaling the number from auto accidents or AIDS. (He'd gotten enough data to be able to quantify how many of those deaths were in leading New York hospitals.) Yet there was no federal law requiring hospitals to report mistakes that caused serious injury or death to patients.
The reason seemed to be that the medical lobbyhe'd named names-had successfully turned back all attempts by Congress to pass such a law, even though it was a formal recommendation by the Institute of Medicine. The problem was, once you admitted you screwed up, you could get sued.
So there was no formal accountability.
But (and here was the constructive part) if patients' medical records were put on the Web-everything, even their medications-it could make a big dent in the alltoofrequent hospital medication foulups. That alone could cut accidental hospital deaths in half.
He'd pitched Jay Grimes, the managing editor, to let him do a fivethousandword piece for the Sentinel. Jay had agreed and even promised him the front page. Jay liked him, but since all the real decisions were made by the owners, notsoaffectionately known as the Family, there wasn't much Jay could do to protect his people. Stone now realized that more than ever.
The email on his Compaq's screen was from Jane Tully, who handled legal affairs for the paper. Apparently, Jay didn't have the balls to be the hatchet man, so he'd given the job to Jane, who could throw in a little legal mumbo jumbo for good measure. And she hadn't even had the courtesy to pick up the phone to do the deed. Instead, she'd sent a frigging email: See attached. Corporate says legal implications convey unacceptable risk. Consider an oped piece. That way the liability will be all yours. Love and kisses.
And of course, by "Corporate," she meant the Family (or, more likely, their runningdog attorneys down on Nassau Street).
It was really too bad about Jane. She was a younglooking thirtysix and had her own legal practice with a large law firm in midtown, but she always dropped by before her Sunday brunch to answer any legal questions that might be pending before the Sentinel was put to bed. Stone knew pretty well how her mind worked. He should. Jane Tully was his former, very former, significant other.
They d lived together for a year and a half on First Avenue in the East Sixties. But she was type A (tailored Armani suits and always on time) and he was a type B (elbow patches and homecooked pasta). The denouement had been seismic and full of acrimony and accusations.
So was she killing this major piece out of spite? he wondered. Just to prove one last time who really had the cojones?
Actually, it would have been nice to think so. That would put a human face on this gutless travesty. But the attached memo had enough legal jargon that another reason was immediately suggesting itself. The owners of the paper, the Family, the fuckedup twins Harry and Bosco and their mother, Adeline, the heirs of Edward Jordan, actually were afraid of a lawsuit. The attachment had the fingerprints of the Family's attorneys all over it. Jane was just carrying out marching orders.
And sure enough, there at the bottom was a second message, unsigned and not part of the original memo. She had written clearly ITMB.
That was their old code for "I tried my best."
Well, Jane baby, who the hell knows. Maybe you did.
Damn, it wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't trying to be a Carl Bernstein, for chrissake. For once, all he wanted was to report a story exactly the way it was, and then try to help. He ultimately wanted to fix, not fault.
He hit a button and printed out a copy of everything, then minimized the screen, grabbed his jacket, and walked down the hall. Was this the moment to quit? It was, except he couldn't afford to. He'd never managed to put enough aside to take off a year and live on air and write and still get that fifteenhundreddollar check out to Joyce and Amy every first of the month.
He got to the bank of elevators and pushed the button for the third floor and stepped on. The inspection sticker framed just above the controls actually told the whole saga of why his cover story about sloppy procedures in New York and national hospitals had been killed. The building was owned by Bartlett Enterprises, the real estate holding company of Winston Bartlett.
The Sentinel held a very favorable lease, renewable for another ten years at only a 5 percent increase when it rolled over in seven months. The Jordan family had gotten it in the early 1990s, when New York real estate was still in the toilet from the stock market crash of '87, and for once Winston Bartlett really screwed up. Now it was about a fifth of the going price per square foot.
So naturally he was about to do everything he could to break the lease. He was that kind of guy. The Jordan family, owners of the Sentinel, probably figured that a big lawsuit by the AMA or somebody would overtax their legal budget and give Bartlett a shot at their soft underbelly. Thus no boats were to be rocked.
The elevator chimed and he stepped off on three. This floor had subdued lighting and understated birch paneling, pale white, in the reception area. It was as though power didn't need to trumpet itself. Everybody knew who had it
He waved at Rhonda, the receptionist, and strode past. She glanced up, then said, "Does she know you're coming?"
She knew full well he was headed down to see Jane. Unlike most organizations, which take Sunday off, this was always a big day for the Sentinel, with all hands on deck.
"Thought I'd give her a little surprise."
"No kidding." She was reaching for the phone. "I think maybe I should-"
"Not necessary." He was charging down the hall, feeling kneedeep in the thick beige carpet. "I've got a feeling she's expecting me."
Jane's door was open and she was on the phone. But when she saw him, she said something abruptly and hung up. He strode through the door, then slammed it. The decor was bold primary colors, like her take on life. Explicit.
"Okay," he demanded, "what the hell's going on? How about the real story?"
"Love, you know you can't hang the Family out with that kind of liability," she declared, then got up and came around her desk and cracked open the door half a foot. "And you're the one person here I can't have a closeddoor meeting with. It'll just get people talking again."
"Good. Let the world hear. It's time everybody on this floor learned what a bunch of gutless owners we have." He watched the crisp way she moved, pictureperfect inside her deep blue business suit, complete with a white blouse and a man's red tie. Seeing her here, hair clipped short, glasses, in an office brimming with power, you'd never guess she liked nothing better than to be handcuffed during sex.
"Stone, have you ever considered growing up?" She settled back into her chair. The desk was bare except for her notebook computer, an expensive IBM ThinkPad T25. Power all the way. "The Family's attorneys are just trying to keep us from getting dragged into court. At least until we can get the paper's lease on this building renewed. We're going to need to focus on that negotiation, not be distracted by some massive libel suit brought on by an irresponsible, mudslinging piece. You practically accused the AMA of bribery, and you named three senators. One from New Jersey, for chrissake. Stone, there might be a time for that, but this is not it."
This was exactly the reason he'd expected. What it really meant was, the Family was scared stiff of Winston Bartlett. They figured he was going to go to court to try to break the Sentinel's lease.
"Let me ask you a question. Whatever happened to journalistic ethics around here? Remember that Statement of Purpose they have everybody sign before they could be hired. 'All the news, without regard'… you know. We were both so damned proud to be a part of that. Now you're helping them kill anything that's the slightest bit controversial. Is that what we've come to?"
"Stone, what the New York Sentinel has come to is to try and stay out of legal shit till their lease is renewed." She brushed an imaginary lock of hair from her face, a residual gesture she once used to stall for time when she actually did have long hair. "Just let it go, won't you? To get the signed and notarized documentation we'd need to run that piece- assuming we even could-would cost a fortune in time and resources."
Well, he told himself, there was possibly something to that, from a legal standpoint. But this was not the moment to let sweet reason run riot.
"Okay, look, if you or the Family, or whoever the hell, believe I'm going to go quietly, you'd better get ready for some revisionist thinking. If this piece gets spiked, after all the work I put into it-and dammit, Jane, you know I can document everything I write; that's the way I work-then I bloody well want something back from this gutless rag. Actually, it's something I want from you."
"You're not really in a position to-"
"Hey, don't try to ream me twice in the same morning." He walked around her desk and gazed down at the street. The Sundaymorning traffic was light. He also noticed that there was a public phone on the corner. Good, he'd be using it in about eight minutes. Then he took a moment to reflect on how nice it was to actually have a window. Of any kind. "You know the saying, the pen is mightier than the sword. I'm about to prove that once and for all, but there's something I need I need a half hour’s face time with one of Bartlett's employees. A certain Dr. Karl Van de Vliet. He runs a company that Bartlett bought out, called the Gerex Corporation. Strictly for factchecking. They've got some important clinical trials going on at a clinic in New Jersey that I need to hear about."
She looked at him in sincere disbelief.
"Stone, how on earth am I supposed to-"
"You talk to the Family's lawyers. They've gotta be talking to Bartlett's attorneys by now. Make it happen."
"And why exactly-?"
"Because I have a book contract, Jane. And in the process I need to find out everything there is to know about Winston Bartlett's biggest undertaking ever. He has bankrolled something that could change the face of medicine."
"You're doing a book about Bartlett?" Her astonishment continued growing and appeared to be genuine. "Jesus, you didn't tell-"
"Hello. That's because who or what I write about on my own dime is nobody's effing business around here."
Now he was thinking about Winston Bartlett and wondering why he'd never told her the most important piece of information in his life. It was how he was connected to the man. He often wondered if maybe that was why he was doing this book on stem cells, knowing that half of it would end up being about Bartlett's selfserving, takenoprisoners business career. His infinite cruelty. Was the book actually revenge?
"You know you'll have to get permission to reprint anything you've published in the Sentinel. The paper owns the rights to-"
"Didn't you hear me?" He smiled. "It's a book. My book. There's no editorial overlap."
"Who's the publisher?"
"They exist, trust me."
His small publisher wasn't exactly Random House, but they were letting him do whatever he wanted.
"It didn't start out being a book about Bartlett, per se," he went on, "but now he's becoming a central figure, because of what's going on-or possibly not going on-at Gerex."
She was losing her famous poise.
"What… what are you writing?"
"The end of time. The beginning of time. I don't know which it is. You see, the Gerex clinic in northern New Jersey has clinical trials under way on some new medical procedure involving stem cells. At least that's what I think. They've clamped down on the information, but I believe Van de Vliet, who's the head researcher there, is perilously close to one of the most important breakthroughs in medical history. I just need to get all this confirmed from the horse's mouth."
"Is that what you want to interview him about?"
"He was available for interviews until about four months ago. I actually had one scheduled, but it abruptly got canceled. Bang, suddenly there's a total blackout on the project. They just shut down their press office completely. When I call, I get transferred to his CFO, some young prick who likes to blow me off. For starters, I'd like to know why it's all so hushhush."
"Stone, private medical research is always proprietary, for God's sake. Sooner or later he undoubtedly hopes to patent whatever he's doing. A privately held corporation doesn't have to report to anybody, least of all some nosy reporter."
That was true, of course. But Stone Aimes knew that the only way his book would be the blockbuster he needed to get free of the Sentinel was to tell the real story of what Gerex was in the process of achieving. And to be first doing it.
For which he needed access.
"Make it happen. Because, like it or not, Winston Bartlett is about to be the subject of a major volume of investigative journalism. I've already got a lot of what I need." That wasn't precisely the case, but there was no need to overdo brutal honesty. "The only question is, does he want it to be authorized or unauthorized? It's his choice."
Winston Bartlett, Stone knew all too well, was a man who liked nothing better than to see his name in the papers. In fact, he used the free publicity he always managed to get with his jetsetting lifestyle to popularize his various business ventures. Like Donald Trump, he had made himself a brand name. So what was going on here? Was he just playing his cards close to the chest, waiting to make a dramatic big announcement? Or was he keeping this project secret because he was worried about some competing laboratory beating him to a patent?
Or was he hiding something? Had the clinical trials out in New Jersey gone off the track? Was he keeping the project hushhush because something was going on he didn't want the public to hear about? Had stem cell technology turned out to be an empty promise? Or had there been some horrible side effect they didn't want reported?
"So could you just raise this with his attorneys? Because if he lets Van de Vliet talk with me directly, he can be sure I'll get the story right. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It's up to him."
"Stone, I hope you have an alternative career track in the advanced stages of planning. Because the minute the Family gets wind of this, that you're writing some tellall about Bartlett, they're going to freak. Even if you're doing it on your own time, you still work here. At least for the moment. Your name is associated in the public's mind with the Sentinel."
He knew that, which was why this was going to be all or nothing.
"Just do me this one itsybitsy favor, Jane. It's the last thing I'll ever ask of you." He was turning to walk out. "And look on the bright side. When the Family finally sacks me for good and all, you won't have to write me any more nasty memos telling me to be a good boy."
He walked to the elevator and took it down. The next thing he had to do was make a phone call, and this was one that required a pay phone.
He'd thought about it and decided one possible way to encourage Bartlett to open up was to try to bluff him, to make the man think he knew more about the clinical trials than he actually did. There was only one way he could think to do that.
In premed days Stone Aimes had shared a dorm room at Columbia with Dale Coverton, who was now an M.D. and a deputy director at the National Institutes of Health. His office was at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
One of the nice things about having friends who go way back is that sometimes, over all those years, something happens that gives one or the other a few chips to call in. Such was the case with Stone Aimes and Dale Coverton.
Dale's oldest daughter, Samantha, a blondhaired track star and math whiz, had-at age thirteen-developed a rare form of kidney cancer and needed a transplant. She was given six months, tops, to live.
Stone Aimes had done a profile of her in the paper he worked for then, the New York Globe, and he'd found a transplant donor, a young girl on Long Island with terminal leukemia, who was able to the knowing she'd saved another person's life. The two had met and cried together, but Samantha was alive today because of Stone Aimes. It was a hell of a chit to call in, and he'd sworn he never would, but now he felt he had no choice. The truth was, Dale Coverton would have walked through fire for him. The question was, would he also violate NIH rules?
Stone hoped he would.
He stopped at the pay phone at the corner of Park and Eighteenth Street, an area where nine people out of ten were wearing at least one item of clothing that was black. It also seemed that six out of ten who passed were talking on cell phones. He took out a prepaid phone card and punched in the access number and then the area code for Bethesda, Maryland, followed by Dale's private, athome number. It was, after all, Sunday morning.
"Hey, Atlas, how's it going?" That had been Dale's nickname ever since he lifted two kegs of beer (okay, empty) over his head one balanced on each hand, at a Sigma frat blast their senior year. It now seemed like an eternity: for Dale, two wives ago, and for Stone, one wife and two livetogethers.
"Hey, Truth and Justice, over and out." It was their all purpose old code phrase for "I aced the quiz. I hit with the girl. I'm doing great."
"My man, I need some truth," Stone said. "Justice may have to wait."
A big delivery truck was backing up against the sidewalk, its reversegear alarm piercing and deafening. The midmorning sun was playing hideandseek with a new bank of clouds in the south.
"That thing you told me about? Is that it?" Dale's voice immediately grew subdued. He was a balding blond guy with just enough hair left for a combover. Beyond that, his pale gray eyes showed a special kind of yearning. He wanted truth and justice to prevail.
"Don't do anything that won't let you sleep nights. But this situation is very special. I was hoping I wouldn't have to come to you about what we talked about last month, but I'm running out of time and ideas." He paused, listening to the sound of silence. "I suppose it's too much to ask."
"Well, I still haven't seen any data or preliminary reports. The NIH monitor for those particular clinical trials is a woman called Cheryl Gates and she's not returning anybody's phone calls. The truth is, she doesn't have to. But another possibility is, she doesn't actually know beans and she's too embarrassed to admit it. If somebody wants to keep a monitor in the dark for strategic commercial reasons, it's easy enough to do."
"Well, how about the other thing? The thing we talked about. The list?"
He sighed. "I was afraid you might come to that. That's a tough one, Truth and Justice."
"Hey, you know I didn't want to ask. But I'm running out of cards."
He sighed again. There was a long silence and then, "You know you're asking me to give you highly restricted access codes to the NIH Web site. We shouldn't even be talking about it. So officially the answer is no. That's for the record."
"Strictly your decision." But he had his fingers crossed, even as he was ashamed of himself for asking in the first place.
"Maybe this is God's way of letting me even up things a bit. It can't be something easy or it doesn't really count, does it?"
"I could end up knowing more about these trials than the NIH does," Stone said. "Because it doesn't sound like you guys actually know much at all."
"Let me think about it and send you an email tonight. Whatever comes up, it'll be 'scrambled eggs.'"
"Thanks, Atlas."
"Scrambled eggs" was a reference to a madeup code system they'd used in college. A name or number was encoded by interlacing it with their old phone number. This time the interlaced number would be an access code for proprietary NIH data.
"I do not think I'm long for the world here at the Sentinel. We're forming a mutual hostility society."
"I sure as hell hope you've got a new career concept ready for the day when they give you the ax." Dale's attempt at a light tone did not quite disguise his concern.
"Funny, but that's the second time I've received that advice in the last half hour. I deem that unlucky."
"Stone, sometimes I think you ought to try not living your life so close to the damned edge. Maybe you ought to start practicing a little prudence, just to see what it feels like."
"I'm that wild ox we used to talk about I like to scrounge. But I also like to look around for the biggest story I can find. I'm trying to get an interview with a guy on Bartlett's staff. Maybe our 'scrambled eggs' will flush him out."
"Just take care of yourself and keep in touch."
"You too."
And they both hung up.
Was this going to do the trick? he wondered. As it happened Stone Aimes already knew plenty about Bartlett's business affairs. He had been a lifelong student of Bartlett the man, and as part of his research into the Gerex Corporation he had pulled together an uptodate profile of Bartlett's cashflow situation. If you connected the dots, you discovered his financial picture was getting dicey.
Bartlett was overextended and, like Donald Trump in the early 1990s, he needed to roll over some shortterm debt and restructure it. But his traditional lenders were backing away. He had literally bet everything on Van de Vliet. If his research panned out, then there was a whole new day for Bartlett Enterprises. That had to be what he was counting on to save his chestnuts.
The funny thing was, Bartlett didn't really like to spend his time thinking about money. One of his major preoccupations was to be in the company of young, beautiful women, usually leggy models.
Bartlett also had an estranged wife, Eileen, who reportedly occupied the top two floors of his mansion on Gramercy Park. Rumor had it she was a paranoid schizophrenic who refused to separate or give him a divorce. She hadn't been photographed for at least a decade, but there was no reason to think she wasn't still alive and continuing to make his life miserable.
Another tantalizing thing to know about Winston Bartlett was that he had bankrolled a Zen monastery in upstate New York twenty years ago and went there regularly to meditate and recharge. He had once claimed in a Forbes interview, that the monastery was where he honed his nerves of steel and internalized the timing of a master swordsman.
The Forbes interview was also where he claimed he had quietly amassed the largest collection of important Japanese samurai swords and armor outside of Japan. For the past five years he had been lobbying the Metropolitan Museum of Art to agree to lend its dignity to an adjunct location for his collection, and to name it after him. The Bartlett Collection. Winston Bartlett lusted for the prestige that an association with the Met would bring him.
At the moment some of his better pieces were housed in a special groundfloor display in the Bartlett Building in TriBeCa. Most of the collection, however, was in storage. He had recently bought a building on upper Park Avenue and some people thought he was planning to turn it into a private museum.
Well, Stone thought, if the stem cell project works out, he could soon be rich enough to buy the Metropolitan.
He walked back to the lobby of his building and stood for a moment looking at himself in the plate glass. Yes, the older he got, the more the resemblance settled in. Winston Bartlett. Shit Thank goodness nobody else had ever noticed it.