Death Benefit

  “Do you need something, Mr. Spaulding?” Pia said finally on about his fifth pass. “You seem to go out of your way to come over here.”

  Spaulding said nothing and left, as Yamamoto had suddenly appeared and come over.

  “Miss Grazdani, we would like to see you in the organ bath lab.”

  Dr. Yamamoto hadn’t directly said anything about Pia being late, and he didn’t need to; Pia had gotten the message. She suited up quickly and went in the lab to join Lesley and Will, who had been in there all morning. They were standing in a side room with Rothman, who was holding a thick paperback book in one hand and pressing impatiently at the display of a newly installed machine that looked like a large inkjet printer.

  “Dr. Yamamoto, it appears we have bought a lemon,” Rothman said.

  Will gestured down to the power strip in the wall, and Yamamoto bent down and flicked on the surge protector. The machine wheezed and babbled into life.

  “Anyone know what this piece of machinery is?” Rothman said, not missing a beat and bending forward to stare into the innards of the device. As she moved closer, Pia could see how intricate the engineering on the device was, with tracking bars and a large array like the inkjet of a printer. Pia opened her mouth, but Lesley beat her to it. “An organ printer?” She had seen the cover of the book Rothman was holding.

  “Yes, for three-D bioprinting. We have an older machine, but this one is new. Someone from the manufacturer is coming tomorrow to show us how to use it.”

  “Perhaps we should wait till then to turn it on, Doctor,” Yamamoto said.

  “No harm in warming it up. Mr. McKinley, what do you know about three-D bioprinting?”

  “I think it works like a regular printer, spraying living cells onto a sheet of . . . a sheet of something. It goes back and forth building up the layers into a three-dimensional structure. The cells can often organize themselves to function collectively. So far it has applications making skin and cartilage.”

  “Indeed. You can print a spinal disk. Which I may need to try by tomorrow,” said Rothman, straightening up and rubbing the small of his back.

  “We’re all going to get up to speed on this machine together. As this engineering matures it might be quicker than growing organs. At this stage I’m thinking of using it to fix defects in the organs that we’re growing. But who knows? The value of this technology is that an organ would be fashioned as the mirror image of the patient’s by using data from MRI studies. As is often the case with organogenesis, the hardest part is not in replicating the function of the organ, or gland, but in connecting it to the rest of the body—veins, arteries, ducts, and so on have to be oriented appropriately to make the surgery feasible.”

  Rothman had found a switch and he toggled it on and off. He then reopened the instruction book and immediately became engrossed.

  Yamamoto ushered the students away. Will looked back at Rothman.

  “I hope that thing’s still working when the guy comes tomorrow.”

  The students spent the rest of the day monitoring the organ baths. They’d found that some did experience small changes in temperature or pH spontaneously, and the three talked with Yamamoto about designing an alarm system even for those minor fluctuations. It seemed to them that even such small changes might impact the results. It was real science, demanding and exciting for each student. Will and Lesley worked closely, keeping a respectful distance from Pia, who was in her own world.

  After Dr. Yamamoto dismissed the students for the day, he asked Pia to stay behind for a moment. “Dr. Rothman would like to speak with you later, after we’re done in the level-three lab. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not,” Pia had said. What else was she going to say?

  18.

  ONE CENTRAL PARK WEST

  NEW YORK CITY

  MARCH 3, 2011, 8:30 P.M.

  Jerry Trotter and Max Higgins left Edmund Mathews and Russell Lefevre with a souvenir of their lunch together at Terrasini. It was a healthy check, and as Edmund paid up, he hoped that Jerry and Max were going to do something to justify it. He was reasonably confident, as he knew them to be guys who did not sit on a problem. They were known to do whatever it took.

  And Jerry and Max did not disappoint. Within an hour of leaving the restaurant, Trotter and Higgins had two of their best investigative guys working on the two separate cases, one on the Columbia regenerative organ situation, the other on the hoped-for dirty little secrets of Gloria Croft in hopes of having something to control her with. Jerry knew that everyone, especially Wall Street people, had their secrets. The PIs were also given Edmund’s and Russell’s full names so they could Google them for background information.

  Jerry couldn’t use his very best guy, who was in fact a woman named Jillian Jones, because she was already involved in looking at a company that Higgins thought might be tanking its results to pave the way for a takeover. But as PIs, Tim Brubaker and Harry Hooper were separated from Jones only by a sliver. They’d do a thorough job, and they were very quick.

  This was the first time Jerry ever had three PIs on his payroll at once. Strictly speaking, Jones, Brubaker, and Hooper weren’t on the Trotter Holdings payroll at all; each was employed off the books in a strictly cash-only arrangement. There was no paperwork—no pay stubs or invoices or receipts, the latter because Trotter trusted the three not to pad expenses. The PIs undertook enough on-the-books domestic surveillance cases to report to the IRS to show sufficient income to justify their lifestyles. They were usually able to piggyback a cash job for someone like Jerry Trotter on one that was recorded by the business accountant.

  Jerry Trotter loved this semi-legal, clandestine work because it was so far removed from anything he’d done as a plastic surgeon or a money manager. He loved everything about it and even saying “Brubaker” and “Hooper” gave him a little thrill; to his mind, they were perfect PI names. For him it was like being in his own movie. Brubaker and Hooper were ex-cops and had seen everything; Jillian Jones had seen everything too but no one knew what work she had done prior to this and no one dared ask. In contrast to most PIs, she always acted anxious and quick to take offense. She also had a black belt in karate and was always armed.

  As usual, Higgins took care of all the practical arrangements. He bought three use-and-lose cell phones and used one to place a prearranged marketing cold call to Hooper and Brubaker’s offices. The call purported to be from a firm interested in talking to the business manager about the company’s metered postage. This identified the source of the call. The first digit of the call-back number times one hundred was the rate being offered; the last four specified a time for a meet at the usual location. Brubaker and Hooper had a habit of checking their messages regularly and both picked up Higgins’s call within a half-hour. The promise of a $300-an-hour rate drew them to the four o’clock meeting place in a back booth at Flanagan’s bar on Second Avenue. It took Higgins five minutes to give them their marching orders, a cell phone for each to call in on, and a $1,200 down payment on their work.

  Another aspect of the game that Trotter relished was asking his guys how they’d found whatever information they dug up. At first neither Brubaker nor Hooper wanted to talk about their MOs, but they’d come to indulge Trotter’s whims. He did sign the checks, after all.

  When the phone rang at eight-thirty, Trotter was fixing his second Glenlivet in his apartment near the summit of the Trump International on the corner of Central Park West and Columbus Circle. Trotter lived so high up he didn’t bother with drapes in the living room—he didn’t want anything to interfere with his view of Central Park. Tonight, banks of low clouds and rain were all he could see. He was pleased to see it was Brubaker. The number on his LED was the cell phone Higgins had given him.

  “It’s B,” Brubaker said. It was the code name Trotter insisted on his using.

  “So soon?” Trotter could barely conceal the childish excitement in his voice.

  “Yes, I got to speak directly with the
laboratory’s secretary by posing as a journalist. Couldn’t shut her up. Thought she was doing her boss a favor talking him up. Thinks he’s shy and needs the pub. She even said as much.”

  “So she was informative.”

  “Very. Don’t understand half the stuff she was saying, but she was knowledgeable. I’m transcribing the tape myself word for word. I don’t want any transcription service looking at this stuff.”

  “Of course, very prudent. So give me the headlines.”

  “Okay, the two names you mentioned to me are the guys for sure....”

  “Rothman and Yamamoto,” Trotter said, talking over Brubaker.

  “Shit, what’s the point of the code words and all the cloak-and-dagger you insist on if you don’t follow it yourself? Yes, those are the guys. The first one is the big cheese.”

  “Sorry,” Trotter said, inwardly cursing himself.

  “Okay, so she tells me all this stuff that they’re doing, and I’m supposed to be a science reporter and able to follow it. So I asked her at the end for the Cliff Notes version that I can use for the readers.”

  “What paper does she think this is going in?”

  “No paper. I told her I was doing the research to see if there was a story and if there was, I’d sell it and call her again.”

  “What if she calls you?”

  “She doesn’t have my number. I told her this was very hush-hush on my end, and I asked her not to tell anyone we’d spoken because this is such a big story that other reporters are going to be on it soon, and I want to get a jump on it. I’m actually thinking of writing it up for real—I wasn’t lying to her, this is going to be way big.”

  Jerry’s joy at playing Dick Tracy evaporated.

  “What do you mean, ‘big’?”

  “Well, according to her, these guys are close commercially to growing organs outside the body, organs that will be perfect matches for the person who needs them. The trials have worked with animal subjects, and they want to move on to using human stem cells.”

  “When?”

  “She did get a little cagey there. Not because she wouldn’t tell me—I think she didn’t know and didn’t want to let on that she didn’t know. But it’s months that they will be moving to human cells, maybe even weeks and certainly not years.”

  “Weeks or months? The difference is important.”

  “Well, I guess I need to make a few more calls. But it’s happening. And soon. He’s working on something else too. Something about growing salmonella strains that cause typhoid fever on the space shuttle. Can you imagine? To think where our tax dollars go. It makes me sick.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jerry said. “Okay, thanks, B. Keep me posted.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  After hearing from Brubaker, Trotter was impatient to know what kind of progress, if any, Hooper was making. Although it was technically against protocol, Trotter called Hooper’s new cell.

  “Yes,” Hooper said after one ring. He was between calls on the Gloria Croft assignment and thought it might be one of the contacts he had made calling him back.

  “Hi, it’s the boss.”

  “Hi, boss.”

  “What’s happening? Any dirt?”

  “I’m only three hours in. Not even.”

  “What’s the setup?”

  “I’m a headhunter looking for someone for a major bank CEO job. The board wants a woman for appearances’ sake. I’m asking around about people on my supposed list.”

  “Our friend doesn’t need a job, she makes seven figures–plus a year,” said Trotter with disappointment. He purposely avoided using Croft’s name.

  “I know that. They know that. But people like showing off how much they know. I think someone might tell me just how much she doesn’t need a job in a bank. Or need the scrutiny of running a public company, more like it.”

  “So you want someone to brag about what they know.”

  “Sure, everyone does it. Most everyone. And the finance world is like a small, competitive club which feeds on gossip.”

  Okay, that was more like it. Jerry was struck again by how much Hooper and Brubaker sounded alike. They sounded like Brooklyn cops, which is what they both had once been.

  “So you shake anything out of the tree yet?”

  “Just spoke to a guy who knew her at Morgan, back in the day. I said someone mentioned him as a possible reference, and he laughed. Real asshole, thinks I’m a moron having gone to Brooklyn College nights. I don’t like these Ivy League types. But he has something, I’m sure. Trying to fuck with me a little. Hope he doesn’t push it ’cause he’s messing with the wrong guy. I can get his nice car towed tonight, and it ain’t goin’ to the pound.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you can. That’s what keeps me honest in our relationship.”

  Hooper laughed, then added, “One other thing. He mentioned that I might ask one of the bankers Higgins mentioned when we talked this afternoon. He said if I wanted dirt on our friend to ask him, because he thought he had been literally and figuratively fucking her back in their Morgan days.”

  Trotter frowned. “Which one?”

  “The thick guy with the short hair,” Hooper said.

  “Now, that is interesting,” Trotter said. “Don’t call and ask him directly. Make it part of your investigation. It could be interesting.”

  “Got it,” Hooper said.

  As Trotter hung up the phone, he smiled. “Edmund, you rogue.”

  19.

  COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

  NEW YORK CITY

  MARCH 3, 2011, 9:02 P.M.

  Pia waited more than two and a half hours for Rothman and Yamamoto to finish their work in the BSL-3 lab. She spent the time productively reading papers on tissue engineering and organ printing on the Internet, which is what she would have been doing anyway if she’d gone back to the dorm. As the time had passed and her empty stomach growled, she became progressively concerned it had something to do with her being late two days in a row. Eventually, Rothman and Yamamoto appeared. Yamamoto immediately left. Rothman wordlessly waved for her to join him in his office, where he got straight to the point.

  “I want to talk to you about the future. Your future. I need to know that you are committed to this work.”

  “I am, truly,” Pia said. She was panicked. “I know I was late this morning—”

  “You were late two mornings in a row, at least according to Miss Langman.”

  “I’m sorry . . .” Pia stammered. Her fears were coming to pass.

  “It doesn’t help to be sorry,” Rothman shot back. “I’m concerned about what it implies.”

  “I will make sure it never happens again,” Pia offered.

  Rothman waved her off. “Let me speak while I’m inclined to do so. As you know, I’m not accustomed to talking too much about this kind of nonsense. I don’t have the time. Last year I confided in you some information about myself because I had been progressively confident that you were turning out to be the person I thought you could be. Remember, as I told you, I played a role in getting you admitted when others on that damn admissions committee where I was forced to serve were reluctant because of your foster care experience. Since I had the same experience, I thought you might have promise of being a researcher.”

  “I’ve come to the same conclusion,” Pia blurted.

  “Don’t interrupt!” Rothman snapped. “Last year when I told you those secrets about me that are only known by my wife, bless her soul for putting up with me, concerning my foster care history and my Asperger’s, I wasn’t completely open. I said my sons were not as healthy as I would like. To be more specific, not only are they too on the Asperger’s spectrum, but even worse, they have type 1 diabetes. Having passed on the Asperger’s was reason enough for guilt and depression. The diabetes has put it over the top. The main reason I’ve turned to stem cell work is to see that my boys are cured in my lifetime. It’s a quest that pulled me out of a serious bout of depression. Depression has been my b
ête noire.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear about your boys,” Pia offered.

  “I’m not telling you this to elicit any sympathy. I’m telling you this so that you understand me better. I have never ever agreed to mentor anyone, and it is not just because my Asperger’s puts me at a social disadvantage. I feel I don’t have the time for other people’s nonsense, and this includes Ph.D. students as well as medical students. You were a first. I thought your foster care experience would make you thrive in the lonely pursuit of science and that you should have been given a chance.”

  “I think you’re right,” Pia said. “I know I struggle with social issues as well.”

  “Pia, commitment to research has to be total. Two days ago you came in here and told me that, yes, you were going to take me up on my offer to do your Ph.D. here in my lab. At the same time you told me you were going to do a simultaneous residency in internal medicine. And then you expected me to be pleased. Pia, that old myth of the doctor doing both clinical medicine and research at the same time is totally passé. It wasn’t even true when it was current. Research is more than a full-time job.”

  For one of the first times in their three and a half years of knowing each other, Pia and Rothman held each other’s eyes. It was a kind of Mexican standoff. Both were conflicted. Pia had struggled hard and surmounted considerable obstacles in her drive to become a doctor. And now she was so close. In months she would be getting her M.D. degree. The problem was she wouldn’t yet be a doctor, one that can get a license from the state. A resident was on his or her way to becoming a real doctor. If she didn’t take a residency, she’d always be a medical student with an M.D.

  Both individuals looked away.

  “I realize that I’m hard to read,” Rothman said, breaking a short silence, “or at least my wife tells me so. She advised me to have a conversation with you.”