HOWLERS (10 page)

CHAPTER 10

“A Factor Nine is a sigma-six event,” one of the company’s scientists said.

“
What
?” Squires said.

Harvey Squires’ office, on the Genesoft campus, was ostentatious. The president of the company and a native New Yorker, Squires had used that word himself when he was explaining what he wanted to the two “celebrity decorators.”

“I
want
ostentatious,” he’d told them. “I want people to come in here and have exactly three reactions: Insecurity, envy, and especially fear. Hopefully in that order. Business is all about levers. I like to throw the
Fear
lever.”

The decorators realized, to their horror, that he was serious, and probably a sociopath. 

Squires stood in one corner of his grandiose Swedish modern office looking down on the half empty Genesoft parking lot through the picture window. He’d like to fire everyone who hadn’t come to work, but he needed them. He was angry to the point of not being able to focus. How could
they
do this to
him
?

He crossed the snow-white carpet, past the eight-seat Swedish modern glass conference table, past the two black-leather couches, and, finally, to his enormous power desk where two senior company executives were sitting waiting for him. Both men were on the verge of panic.

“Factor Nine? What do you mean, Factor Nine?” Squires said.

One of the scientists looked at his colleague, a younger man. Both had Ph.Ds. in biochemistry and were tops in their field, genetic engineering. The look on the two scientists’ faces was one of both frustration and fear. Their fear had nothing to do with Squires’ office appointments; it had everything to do with Factor Nine.

“Factor Nine is what might be called the unknown percentile of risk,” the older scientist said, looking at his notes, which were a greasy smear of lead-pencil formulas and notes to himself in a language meant for rocket scientists and math geeks. The computer room was down because power failure had crashed their Microsoft network. They were resorting to pencil and paper. To make matters worse, the younger scientists in the Genesoft lab were unable to handle calculations in what they called “Luddite.”

“Some people call it the Mutation factor,” the younger scientist added
sotto voce
. “The post procedure mutations that come from nature’s side of the ledger, you could say. Sometimes we’ve found they can be very quick—as in, say, spongiform disease.”

“Listen, you fucking nimrod, stop whispering and cut to the fucking chase. I got food rotting in warehouses all over the state of California. I got consumers calling saying they are sick from eating our product. I got The Food and Drug Administration lighting up my operation here. Let’s have it in fucking English, pencil dick.” Squires, like a lot of CEOs, was used to getting things in bite-sized pieces. Anytime anyone presented him a complex problem that
couldn’t
be reduced into quickly chewable bites, he reacted in a predictable manner: he blew up. He swore and bullied. The odd thing was that it usually worked. People explained less, he understood less, and everyone seemed to get what they wanted. In short, he was the kind of man that yelled at machines when they didn’t work.

“The company’s new irradiated food products have gone bad because after we screwed with their genes, nature threw us a curve ball,” the younger scientist said getting the message,
finally
, that his boss was a moron and had been put in charge of the company only because he was a Goldman Sachs alum and spear carrier who was representing the bank’s interest in the company.

Squires looked at him, nodding. He understood what they’d been trying to say for fifteen minutes in that scientist language they used. “You mean after we designed them, they changed. That’s Factor Nine.”

“Exactly,” the young man said.

“Well,
shit.
What do we do now? We’re introducing the R-19 line to the press this morning. Already have, an hour ago. Come up with a fix,” Squires said. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours.” Squires used a dismissive tone, as if he were talking about fixing a dead car battery instead of some of the most complex cutting-edge biotechnology and irradiation science in the world.

“Sir. I’m afraid that it couldn’t possibly take twenty-four hours for us to understand how this mutation has worked its way into our hybrid gene’s schematic,” the older executive said, shocked by the man’s ignorance.

“You fucking, limp-dicked
asshole
! God damn you, if you say one more word in that fucking foreign language, I’ll fire your asses—so help me God!” Squires said. “I told you this is about
money
, not science. How many times do I have to tell you assholes the facts of life? This is a
business
, not a fucking university, no matter how many single-story buildings we got. Do you understand? I got a nine-month burn rate!”

Burn rate, the amount of capital consumed in a startup, was a phrase the younger man had learned to revere, along with book value and other terms—especially stock options—that were going to make him rich.

“We can’t fix this problem in a day,” the older man said. Unlike the younger man, he still had a sense of responsibility. He was English, and phlegmatic at the oddest times. Years of crisis in colonial backwaters had taught his ancestors sang-froid in the face of panic. Crouchback had the rare ability to lie to moronic superiors in order to get things done.

“Why didn’t you say so? I’ll give you two days. How’s that? Then I want a memo on my desk I can read to the board,” Squires said.

Crouchback was about to try and explain that the lab work alone would take ten, never mind the discussions and analysis. But he realized, like all good middle managers, that the truth was not what the CEO wanted. He wanted a memo and he would get one. A very short one indeed.

Failure is an option. This is an eight sigma event, no doubt
, he thought.

“No problem, sir,” Crouchback said.

“Now, I need a story for Food and Drug. So give me one.” Squires picked up his cell phone.

“A
story
, sir?” Crouchback said.

“Yes, a fucking story—you know, the thing we tell our kids at night. Make-believe fairy tales. They go to sleep, you go into your bedroom and bang the wife, end of the day.
A STORY
. Jesus, man.”

“You can tell them that the new food products were irradiated for too long and we can fix it,” the younger man said. The younger scientist was deathly afraid of Squires and only spoke now because he wanted to score a point. He was determined to score points. He’d spent his whole life fearing people in authority.

“You mean I tell everyone we overcooked them in that five-hundred million dollar bug-killer thing?”

“Yes, sir. That’s about the size of it.”

“What about people calling saying we’ve made them sick with R-19 foods?”

“Ask them for proof,” the young man said, and smiled. “It’s the same as Gulf War Syndrome. No proof. No problem.”

“Fucking right. No ticky, no laundry. Yeah, where is their
proof?
”
Squires smiled and buzzed his secretary
.
“
Love
it.”

As soon as Crouchback got to his office, he picked up the phone and called his daughter. He told her to throw out the assorted vegetables he’d sent her from the company’s “new line.” Then he began the process of trying to understand what nature had done to their perfectly good idea for a genetically altered common table—vegetables that couldn’t be bruised during shipping. Two hours into his investigation he felt ill, and drove home.

*   *   *

“Eileen, would you calm down, please,” Quentin said. His secretary had started talking as soon as he’d come into the office, but not making a lot of sense.

She stopped talking.

“Now, start at the beginning. And sit down,” Quentin said.

“Okay. I have heard from the dispatcher that at least 200 people have been reported missing just this morning—might be more. My son is missing from school. And, as soon as I give you your messages, I am leaving and getting to the bottom of this,” she said. “The state police have sent a fax this morning about some of the news stories that have appeared in the press and TV concerning missing people.”

“What news stories? I didn’t watch ‘Good Morning America’ this morning.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t read the whole thing,” she said. “And Lacy called. She said she was going back to school and that she’d call you once she got down to the Bay Area. She said she’d lost her phone and is getting a replacement this morning. She’ll call you from her car.

“Dr. Poole wants to see you, he’s been waiting. And he’s upset, something happened over at his office. I’m afraid something happened to Willis Good—he’s dead. And T.C. is missing.” And then Eileen Anderson did something he never thought he’d see: she started to cry.

Quentin got up. She was someone he’d known practically all his life. They had dated in high school. She was a lot more than his secretary; she was a dear friend. They were, in fact, friends in a way few men and women ever get to be. He had never seen her cry before—
ever
.

“I’ll take you up to the junior high as soon as I call the state police. But you can’t leave me right now. Something’s going on, and I need your help, Eileen. Okay? Sharon is missing, too. I was just up at the high school and she didn’t show up for school. Now, we can’t panic and leave our posts here. Right?”

Eileen stopped crying and looked up at him.

“I need you.” He put his arm around her. “Now get me the state police on the phone, and then I’ll take you up to the school to find your son. And send Marvin in. I thought Willis was on the way to Boonville with T.C.? How can he be
dead
?”

Eileen left the room without answering his last question.

Quentin sat down behind his desk, which was stacked with mail and pink phone-message slips. He watched Eileen behind the glass wall that separated his office from her desk. She and his wife had been good friends. He was putting Ronny Alexander—her son—at the top of his list, right next to his daughter. Quentin looked at the sea of papers on his desk and saw the fax from the state police. The message was so obtuse you couldn’t tell exactly what they were trying to say. He quickly flipped through several phone message slips; half of them were about missing people. He recognized most of the names.

Quentin heard his office door open. The doctor was standing there, his jacket and sweater stained with blood. The morning was getting crazier and crazier, Quentin thought, looking at Poole.

“Marvin? What the hell’s going on?”

“Sheriff.”

“What happened to you?”

“I’ve got the state police in Sacramento on line three.” Eileen’s voice came through on the intercom.

Quentin motioned for Marvin to sit down. Quentin put on the speakerphone.

“Sheriff, this is Captain Harrison.”

“Captain, I have a rash of missing—” Quentin started.

“You can stop there, Sheriff. You aren’t alone. We have twenty-six counties reporting unusually high numbers of missing persons. We texted you to ask you not to speak to the press until we have a coordinated law-enforcement response. We don’t want wholesale panic—” The phone went dead.

Quentin almost broke out laughing. It was all a little too much—a nightmare he would certainly wake up from.

“I’ve got him back.” It was Eileen’s voice on the intercom. She’d been listening in.

“Sorry, we’ve had lots of phone problems. If we get disconnected, you can radio me. Now, I need your help with your local press, Sheriff.”

“Sure. Can you brief me?” Quentin said. “On what’s going on, I mean. I don’t understand.” He leaned back in his chair. He thought of Sharon and Ronny.

“Nobody does,” Harrison said. “There are reports that—there are reports of a
mass
hysteria.”

“Come again?” Quentin said.

“We’ve had some pretty disturbing reports, especially in the Bakersfield area, about mass hysteria. Reports are saying that people are going off their heads,” the captain said. His voice tried to retain that policeman’s cool, but it wavered.

Quentin noted a hint of fear. And it was that hint of fear that finally got to Quentin.

“Captain, my daughter is missing. What the hell is going on? Can’t you be more specific?” Quentin slid forward in his seat. He looked through the window. Eileen was standing and holding the phone, tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Harrison said. “My wife and son are missing too. I don’t know. But let’s not give the press any more ammo. They’re already having a field day with this.”

“What do I tell the families of the missing?” Quentin said, looking at Marvin.

“Tell them that you’re going to do everything you can to find their loved ones,” the policeman said and rang off. Quentin watched Eileen put down the phone in the next room.