Fatal Reaction (2 page)

“Stephen runs his company as he sees fit, John,” I replied coldly. “The last thing he needs is me telling him what to do.”

“Don’t let the fact that you’re sleeping with him cloud your judgment on this, Kate,” he snapped back, unpleasantly.

“What exactly is your point, John?” I inquired, determined not to let myself be baited. “When you’re subtle like this it’s so hard to know what you’re really thinking.”

“Come on, Kate. You know that I think of you almost like a daughter.” It occurred to me, not for the first time, that there was a reason Guttman’s own daughter had chosen to make a life for herself in Australia. “I’m just giving you a little fatherly advice for your own good.”

“And what’s that?”

“It’s not just Stephen’s ass that’s on the line this time, it’s Azor. Believe me, Kate, if Stephen doesn’t make this drug, if he doesn’t make a deal with Takisawa, Cassidy and his buddies on the board will throw him out and sell Azor to one of the big drug houses just to get some kind of return on their investment. What do you think will happen to your position in the firm if that happens? Stephen isn’t the only one who stands to get hurt if this deal doesn’t get made. You are up on the high wire, Kate, and the spotlight is on you. There’s a monkey on your shoulder and all the people sitting underneath you in the audience have paid their money hoping to see you fall.”

CHAPTER 2

I was so unsettled by what John Guttman had said that I stormed out of his office, took a wrong turn, and ended up in the library before I realized where I was. It is one thing to know that you are an outsider in the world you have chosen for yourself. It is quite another to hear it put into words and spoken out loud by someone who is most definitely on the inside. I did not need John Guttman to tell me that under normal circumstances any lawyer would jump at the chance to come to the aid of such an important client. But these were not normal circumstances, and the fact that they were of my own making helped matters not one bit.

My roommate, Claudia, says the trouble with Stephen is that he has the brains of a rocket scientist trapped in the body of a movie star. She may be right. I have known Stephen Azorini since I was a teenager and have counted him as a client from my first days practicing law. Though most people never got beyond his genius and his charisma, I know better than anybody just how difficult he can be. Besides, even though I would never tell Guttman, it was the current state of our personal life that was making me reluctant to get involved in the negotiations with Takisawa.

While there was no doubt that our relationship had recently moved forward—we had just bought an apartment and planned to move in together once renovations were completed—things between us didn’t seem to be actually progressing. No matter what conclusions outsiders chose to draw, ours remained first and foremost a relationship of convenience.

Stephen did not love me. He loved his company. And I was still in love with my husband, Russell, who’d died of brain cancer during the first year of our marriage. The fact that it was Stephen, then a resident at the hospital where Russell was being treated, who stood by me during those last terrible months only added another strand of obligation to an already complicated relationship.

Growing impatient with my own self-pity, I buzzed Cheryl, my secretary, and asked her to bring me a cup of coffee and my messages. The first three were from my mother, all reminding me of the five o’clock appointment Stephen and I had with her and the decorator at the new apartment. It had already been rescheduled four times and as much as I would have liked to get out of it, I knew that I was well and truly on the hook this time.

I picked up the phone and dialed Stephen’s number. This was his first day back in the office after ten days in Tokyo and I was pretty sure that my news about Cassidy and his incipient cabal was the last thing he wanted to hear. Nonetheless, I owed it to him to let him know the extent of the plotting that was going on against him.

Rachel, his personal assistant, answered the call. She was the latest in a series of bright young business school graduates who all seemed to work for Stephen for about a year before moving on to positions of greater glamour and less responsibility at one of the big pharmaceutical companies.

“He’s on the other line and he’s late for a meeting, but I’ll see if he can talk to you,” she said, crisply putting me on hold. Despite my best efforts to be nice to her, Rachel didn’t like me. I suspected she had a crush on her boss and didn’t think I was good enough for him. Having seen it before, I recognized the symptoms. I didn’t let it bother me. All it would take was one good loss of his temper and she’d not only get over her infatuation, but she’d get busy buffing up her resume as well.

“Kate?” demanded Stephen, coming on the line a few seconds later. “I’ve got people waiting for me.”

“Then I’ll keep it short. I just came from John Guttman’s office.”

“That must have been fun.”

“Jim Cassidy is on the warpath because he hasn’t been able to get hold of Danny.”

“Danny isn’t in today. He’s at home getting over his jet lag. I told you, this last trip to Japan was very high impact. We were in meetings all day and went out with our hosts drinking every night. I’ve decided that all the books are wrong. Negotiating with the Japanese isn’t about subtle strategies; it’s about surviving the nightlife. I’ll make sure Danny calls Cassidy as soon as he gets in tomorrow.”

“It would be better if it was today.”

“Fine. I’ll try to catch him at home. What’s the big rush?”

“According to Guttman, if you don’t make this deal with Takisawa, Cassidy already has the votes lined up on the board to demand your resignation.”

“Really? Then he should be happy to hear that I got a fax from Tokyo this morning. Takisawa is sending a delegation of their top scientists and business people here on the nineteenth. They want to hear about our results, see our labs, and talk dollars and cents.”

“Is there any chance of finalizing the deal while they’re here?” I asked eagerly. The board was scheduled to meet the Monday after Thanksgiving. If we could present them with a signed agreement with Takisawa, it would stop Cassidy and his buddies cold.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves on this, Kate. I know what Cassidy wants. He wants to jack up the share price, sell his stock, and cash out of the company. He doesn’t give a shit what happens to us after he’s gone. I’m not going to let Cassidy or anyone else try to scare me into giving away the store just to come to terms with Takisawa. The way I see it, a bad deal can kill us just as fast as no deal at all. This negotiation with Takisawa is going to be very, very tricky.”

“Do you think twelve days is enough time to get ready?” I asked. The Japanese are notorious for detailing Westerners to death. Before they wrote a check with that many zeros on it, Takisawa was going to want to know absolutely everything there was to know about Azor right down to the number of fillings in Stephen Azorini’s teeth. “It won’t be easy,” Stephen assured me, “but we’ll do it.”

“Tell Danny to call me if he wants a hand,” I said, disgusted that I was letting Guttman get to me even this much. “I don’t want him to think I’m trying to muscle in on him, but you know I’m available if he needs me.”

“I’m sure Danny will be thrilled to have your help,” replied Stephen, suddenly turning grim. “There’s going to be more than enough agony to go around on this one.”

* * *

When Stephen Azorini finished school, he had a medical degree and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. He also had his pick of academic appointments, not to mention offers from all the big drug companies. None tempted him. He’d long before made up his mind to challenge the giant drug companies at their own game. His plan was to start a pharmaceutical company daring enough to ride the cutting edge of scientific discovery and nimble enough to capitalize on opportunities that the pharmaceutical behemoths with their massive bureaucracies were too slow and cumbersome to exploit.

Danny Wohl was Azor Pharmaceuticals’ first employee. Danny and Stephen had known each other since college. Danny had gone to Harvard on scholarship, while Stephen had gone to prove he had the backbone to defy his father. While there is little doubt it was Stephen’s good looks that prompted Danny to strike up a conversation that first day, it was quickly apparent to both of them that they had something very important in common. What both men shared, what they immediately recognized in each other, was the same fierce desire to prove they were better than where they’d come from.

Danny grew up in a grim, blue-collar pocket of Detroit, the only son of an intermittently employed welder and his embittered, alcoholic wife. Stephen’s father, on the other hand, was a Chicago business tycoon with ties to organized crime. What had become of his mother was a question you learned not to ask twice.

Over the years I have tried to imagine how Stephen must have seemed to Danny back then. It is hard to believe he wasn’t mesmerized. At eighteen Stephen had been an Adonis—accomplished, athletic, and rich. That Danny reinvented himself using Stephen as a model I am certain. Years later there were still things about him, from his taste for Bushmills to his deep-seated love of jazz, that he’d picked up from Stephen the way a poor relation might acquire a suit of hand-me-down clothes.

But Danny was no weak shadow. After ten years he bore little resemblance to the child of poverty and longing who’d gotten off the bus in Cambridge. Although Stephen routinely received the credit for Azor’s meteoric rise, those closest to the company quietly agreed that while it was the fire of Stephen’s entrepreneurial genius that had fueled the rocket, it was Danny’s firm hand on the throttle that had kept it on course.

And yet, despite all the exigencies of business, Danny was able to remain a man of wide-ranging interests. A passionate collector of modem art, he also served on the board of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and raised money for the Lyric Opera. That he was gay always seemed one of the least significant things about him.

I will never forget the day that Danny came to my office to tell me he’d tested positive for HIV. I’d assumed he was coming to discuss a possible stock offering for Azor. Instead, he asked if I would draw up the necessary documents granting Stephen power of attorney in the event he became incapacitated. Up until that moment AIDS for me had always been a word on paper, nothing more. Now I sat and looked across the desk at Danny, blond and sunburned from spending the weekend on a friend’s boat, and all I could see was a dead man.

Eventually the horror receded, papered over by other problems, different crises. Ironically it was new drugs developed by the very pharmaceutical companies he and Stephen had long decried as dinosaurs that finally offered hope. For the past year Danny had been taking a “cocktail” of anti-AIDS drugs. While they reduced the amount of virus in his blood to below measurable levels, the regimen left him struggling with a plethora of side effects. Tormented by deep muscle pain, blinding headaches, and a general sense of malaise, Danny had been forced to cut back on his schedule. Even so, one day in ten found him too weak to make it in to the office at all. While Guttman had been railing about Danny’s unavailability, Danny had probably been in bed, shuddering through waves of nausea and despair, no doubt feeling less concerned about the company’s prospects of survival than his own.

At five o’clock I waited on the corner of Adams and LaSalle with the darkness gathering around me. In winter, night comes early to Chicago; by the time December rolled around, it would practically fall in the middle of the afternoon. I pulled the heavy cashmere of my coat around me and stamped my feet against the cold.

Stephen pulled to the curb and I slid gratefully into the warm, dark car. He was talking on the phone, immersed in a conversation I could not understand—something about chemical sequences and protein folding. As we glided through traffic I listened with half an ear, vaguely comforted by the thought of atoms and molecules binding and releasing like dancers in a quadrille.

We drove east on Adams then turned north onto Michigan Avenue through the thickening rush-hour traffic. It was a clear night and everything seemed crisp from the cold. Thanksgiving was still weeks away, but the trees were already hung with tiny white Christmas lights that glittered like diamonds strung against the dark velvet of the night.

As we turned onto East Lake Shore Drive it seemed as if someone had lowered the volume of the city. The cacophony of Michigan Avenue evaporated, buffered by an open expanse of park and the much larger silence of Lake Michigan. Our new apartment was in an elegant building nestled in the elbow of Lake Shore Drive just where it reaches out to embrace the shore. Built at the turn of the century, the apartment itself had been designed by David Adler, an architect whose sense of scale was so legendary that he supposedly could look at an eighteen-foot ceiling and tell instantly if the cornice was even a fraction off.

By any measure it was a grand apartment. My mother always said it was the best in the city. She should know— it had once been hers, a wedding present from my grandparents who’d made their home in the one directly above it. Later, after my grandfather died and my grandmother moved to Palm Springs, Mother combined the two apartments, adding a graceful curved staircase and creating arguably the most stunning duplex in the city.

They sold it when I was six and we went to live in the big house in Lake Forest where I grew up. In the intervening years the apartment changed hands a number of times. It had most recently been purchased by Victor Sanderson, who’d died six weeks later after choking on a piece of roast beef at the Saddle & Cycle Club. His widow, Phyllis, continued to live there but grew more eccentric with each passing year. Over time she closed off progressively more of the apartment until she was living in the smallest of its twenty-one rooms, eating cold soup by candlelight in order to save on the electricity. According to the attorney who handled the estate, she left behind a fortune totaling over $120 million.