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  Chadwick was not amused. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Okay, I will. I used to think Sands was bothered because of my interest in Clarissa. But now I think he wants to be sure I stay away from Nicky.”

  “Nicky who?”

  “Nicholas Crandall. Tom’s younger brother. Clarissa’s crazy brother-in-law.”

  Chadwick shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  “Someone at Healthways has.”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Marlin, for one. A couple of ambulance drivers, for another.”

  I waited for a comment, but Chadwick didn’t have one he wanted to share.

  “I think this is where you tell me to leave Healthways alone,” I prompted helpfully, “or else the boys who ruined my Cheerios and my White Label will come back and do it for real.”

  His response was less a threat than a recitation. “Mr. Sands has asked me to inform you that your continued interference in the affairs of Healthways would be …” He fumbled for a word.

  “Unhealthy?”

  He crossed his arms. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me something, Chadwick,” I said, hoping my manner was blithe enough to irritate him. “How do you list this kind of work on your résumé—public relations or preventive medicine?”

  He answered the question with an oath and a motto: “Motivation.”

  “Ah, yes. Your specialty. Well, I hope you’ve got the old C.V. updated—they say Sandstone is about to crumble like a croissant in a food fight.”

  “That’s crap,” Chadwick pronounced.

  “Toronto came through?”

  “That’s none of your business. I don’t know anything about a brother-in-law, or Dr. Marlin, or anything else. I’m here to make you an offer.”

  “For what?”

  “Your discretion.”

  “I haven’t listed it for sale.”

  Chadwick rumbled with disgust. “Everything is for sale.”

  “Only in your world, Lex.”

  Big shots don’t like it when you disparage their values—it makes them insecure, and the only people who are both rich and insecure are in show business. “If you’re smart, you’ll hear what I have to say,” he grumbled.

  I shrugged. “Okay. What’s the deal?”

  Chadwick picked his briefcase off the floor, extracted what looked like a contract, and began to read from it. “We—by that I mean both Mr. Sands and the Sandstone Corporation—have certain security requirements that are not being met under existing arrangements. Someone with your expertise could be invaluable in designing an effective interface between the need to interdict both internal and external threats to our operational structures and programs on one hand, and the needs of our staff professionals to feel unencumbered in their persons and their work on the other.”

  He needed time to catch his breath. “On a consulting basis or full time?” I asked, just to fill in the blank.

  “Whatever you prefer.”

  “Consulting, I think. What’s the remuneration?”

  “Whatever you think is fair.”

  I laughed. “I’ll bet that’s the first time you’ve used that gambit.”

  He decided my levity would go away if he ignored it. “I can offer a thousand dollars per day for a period of one hundred and eighty days. That should be sufficient to get the program up and running.”

  “Payable in junk bonds, I suppose.”

  “I can have a certified check here in twenty minutes. When can you start?”

  Our eyes tussled above the coffee table. “As soon as Tom Crandall’s killer is behind bars.”

  He was surprised by the rejection more than the condition. It took him time to summon the inevitable cliché. “You’ll regret this, Tanner.”

  “If Healthways is as evil as I think it is, you’ll regret not paying more attention in Sunday school.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “For your sake, I hope that’s true. How much do you pay Dracula to pimp for the blood bank?”

  Chadwick tried to look confused. “You’re not making sense. Maybe you should stop in at one of our clinics for an examination.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t wash, Chadwick. I saw you two in the parking lot. I know Dracula rounds up blood donors in the Tenderloin and herds them to Fremont Memorial. What I’m also pretty sure of is that he pays them surreptitiously even though no other bank uses paid donors. What I don’t know is why. But I’m going to find out; you can make book on it.”

  Chadwick was shaking his head before I was halfway through my exegesis. “Healthways isn’t involved in blood collection or distribution in any way. Our hospitals rely on the Red Cross and the other banks for a safe and certain supply of whole blood and components, of course, but that’s it.” Chadwick’s look was nearly beatific. “The industry has gotten a bad rap—people are afraid to donate; inventories have been reduced to precarious levels. For some reason, you seem determined to magnify that misperception. For the health and welfare of the people of this city, I hope you’ll keep your fantasies to yourself.”

  I was so moved by his selfless plea I decided to give him some solace. “I hear Healthways Pharmaceuticals has a new product in the pipeline.”

  He squinted. “So?”

  “I understand it may be the salvation of the company.”

  “So?” he said again.

  I got in position to observe any tic that might erupt after I played my hunch. “It wouldn’t happen to be an AIDS vaccine, would it? Being tested on humans without the knowledge or approval of the FDA? And without the knowledge or approval of the guinea pigs themselves?”

  The only response was a steely silence.

  “You wouldn’t be the first,” I went on breezily. “Not long ago, some children in Zaire were inoculated with an experimental vaccine without either them or their parents consenting to the test, and that bit of business was supposedly perpetrated by one of the leading AIDS researchers in the world. Then there was the AIDS victim in Mexico who died after getting his blood removed from his body and heat-treated by a doctor who took his lab south of the border when the feds wouldn’t let him perform that particular exercise in this country. Subrosa AIDS experiments seem to be booming—Healthways is just playing the game. Right, Lex? It’s the American way—going for the gold.”

  Chadwick took two steps toward me, until his cologne almost put me to rout. “If I see a story to that effect in the public press,” he pronounced with real ferocity, “you will be a dead man.”

  “Just like Tom Crandall,” I reminded him, but I don’t think he needed it.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I had gotten ahead of myself in my duel with Chadwick, had been guessing, more or less, when I’d accused him and his company of illegally testing an AIDS vaccine in the Healthways clinics, and a guess wasn’t anything I could take to Charley Sleet and expect him to do anything but laugh. But the guess had been educated, based on the fact that Healthways had something big to hide and Sandstone was counting on something big to save its financial skin and Tom Crandall’s room had been full of tracts on the subject, so it was time to find some proof.

  The closest thing to an informed source I had was Dr. Marlin. When I called Healthways headquarters, they told me he was in residence at the Turk Street Clinic that morning. Before I set out for the Tenderloin, I put in a call to Clay Oerter.

  “Sorry to bother you while the exchange is open,” I said when he came on the line.

  “It’s okay, but make it snappy,” he admonished happily. “I’m writing orders for customers I haven’t heard from since the crash.”

  “If you ask me, they’re getting in just in time to take another plunge.”

  Clay laughed. “You’re right to stay out of the market, Tanner. It’s not a game for pessimists.”

  “What is?”

  “Lo Ball,” Clay said, then asked me what I wanted.

  “You mentioned that Healthways Pharmaceuticals had some new drugs in the p
ipeline.”

  “Right.”

  “What are some of them?”

  “I don’t remember offhand. Let me punch up our research and see what they say about it.”

  I heard the clatter of a keyboard followed by the silence that meant Clay was scanning the report. “Let’s see—transdermal arthritis analgesic, arrythmia medication, some antifungals, synthetic blood, fat substitute, Alzheimer’s treatment, antidepressives—pretty much the same things the other guys are playing with, it looks like.”

  “It doesn’t say anything about an AIDS vaccine or a new treatment for one of the opportunistic diseases?”

  “Not here it doesn’t, but these reports aren’t all-inclusive. I don’t track the stock myself, so I can’t tell you any more than I see on my screen; I’d have to ask one of our specialists.”

  “Would you? Some time today? I’ll get back to you by five.”

  “That’s all you want to know—whether Healthways is working on some kind of AIDS medication?”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  Professional to the core, Clay smelled a chance to make a buck. “Do you have any reason to think they’re onto something? There are thirty thousand people with HIV in this city alone; ten million infected worldwide. If Healthways was first out of the chute with an effective vaccine, it would be a license to print money—a year’s supply of AZT for one person grosses Burroughs-Wellcome close to five grand, and that’s only a palliative.” Clay’s zeal dropped a notch. “Of course, someone with inside information could get his ass in a sling if he traded the stock.”

  I laughed at his nod to the Securities Act. “When did a little inside information stop anyone in your business? But you can relax; I have no idea whether Healthways has come up with something on AIDS or not. It’s just that if they have, it might explain some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “That would be inside information.”

  Clay laughed. “Okay. I’ll do my best to get you some data, but it’s pretty hectic around here these days. Based on the trend of the last month, if we end up nuking Baghdad, the Dow will go to five thousand.”

  I left the world of stocks and bonds and headed for the world of speed and crack. Just before I got there, I stopped at the Hastings College of Law and spent an hour in its library, in search of a little leverage.

  The question was simple: When a corporation commits a crime—when Healthways administers unapproved drugs to unknowing recipients in order to test their efficacy, for example, and maybe kills someone in the process—who gets the blame and who gets punished? In other words, what were the chances that Richard Sands would face criminal penalties for the wrongdoing I was increasingly certain he and his cohorts were committing? The answer I came up with was both predictable and disheartening.

  At common law, a corporation wasn’t held responsible for the criminal conduct of its employees, under the theory that as a fictitious person a corporation could have no mens rea, the criminal intent that’s a necessary element of virtually every crime. A corporation’s officers were theoretically responsible for their behavior while acting in their corporate capacities, but in practice they usually escaped prosecution because of the difficulty of proving actual or constructive knowledge of the illegal course of corporate conduct, i.e., they got off by covering their asses in an organizational maze similar to the carefully crafted shell of deniability that let Reagan disclaim knowledge of trading weapons for hostages or illegally funding the Contras.

  Centuries after their formulation, the common-law doctrines retain their potency. Under current precedent, when a corporation commits a crime, awareness of the misconduct must be traced to a specific individual in order to hold that person criminally responsible. The individual, in turn, can defend himself by asserting the defense of “objective impossibility,” i.e., that he had no power to either detect or prevent the violation. Conviction for corporate misconduct under such a standard of proof has proved difficult over the years, a difficulty compounded by the phenomenon of “jury nullification”—the tendency of juries to acquit white-collar criminals regardless of the proof of their wrongdoing.

  In sum, the history of criminal law didn’t offer much encouragement that Sands or any of his lackeys, given the powerful attorneys and influential friends who would line up to protect them, would be imprisoned for their machinations at Healthways, even if I could prove them. Neither did the recent decision by the attorney general to withdraw the Justice Department’s longstanding support for the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s recommendation that tougher mandatory sentences be imposed on corporate criminals, a reversal that was reached after intense lobbying from defense contractors, oil companies, and other representatives of the Business Roundtable—the very people to whom the tougher sentences would apply. In other words, what I dug up was all too illustrative of the laissez-faire approach to business behavior currently in vogue—the little guys are jailed in droves, while the fat cats run amok.

  Depressed and defeated, I spent a few minutes with the Reader’s Guide. I was about to give up when I stumbled on a reference to California’s brand new Corporate Criminal Liability Act. Then I happened onto Section 331 of the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. After delving into its history and application, I left the library with something close to a smile on my face.

  My luck held when I got to the bowels of the Tenderloin. Instead of having to wade through the intake bureaucracy at the clinic in order to get to my quarry, I ran into him in front of Glide Memorial as he was about to climb into his Town Car and call it a day.

  I hurried to nab him before he could disappear inside the Lincoln. “Dr. Marlin, my name’s Tanner. I talked to you at the clinic the other day. About Nicky Crandall.”

  He was still dressed to sell, still serene and self-possessed, still in a rush, but intrigued by what I had to say. “I remember. Did you find him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then what do you want with me?”

  “To tell you why you were lying to me.” I looked up and down the block. “Is there some place we can talk in private?”

  His laugh was careless and paternal. “Not in this neighborhood, there isn’t. And I don’t have time, regardless.”

  “I think you’d better make time, Doctor.”

  His bristled at my effrontery. “That’s out of the question. I have a staff meeting in twenty minutes.”

  “With Chadwick?”

  He raised a brow. “You know Lex?”

  “He’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

  Marlin looked at me for a long moment, reached a decision, then unlocked the car doors by pressing the button on a gizmo he got out of his pocket. I figured he was about to drive off and leave me, but he opened the passenger door and motioned for me to get in. “I can give you five minutes.”

  After he joined me in the sumptuous interior, we faced each other as best we could, traffic and transients streaming past us beyond the tinted barriers that remained as closed to the out-of-doors as they could get. My nostrils gorged on the smell of leather.

  “What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Chadwick?” Marlin asked when I didn’t open the discussion.

  “Let’s just say it led me to reach certain conclusions about the R and D program at Healthways Pharmaceuticals.”

  Marlin visibly relaxed. “If that’s your area of interest, you’re wasting your time with me—I have nothing to do with the drug company.”

  “It may not show up on the organizational charts,” I admitted, “but I think you’re a vital part of their program.”

  He could have given lessons in indifference. “How so?”

  “Maybe it would be best to tell you what I think has been going on at Healthways.”

  He shrugged and looked at his watch. “If you must.”

  I waited till I had his attention. “If I’m right, you’re subject to federal criminal charges for your role in it, Doctor. Felony charges, for violation of the Food and Drug Act, which a
s far as I can tell is the only area in all of criminal law where a businessman is likely to do time if he plays fast and loose with safety regulations. And there’s a new state law that punishes concealment of product dangers as well. In other words, Doctor, if I were you, I’d listen up. Then I’d start thinking of how you could distance yourself from the real bad guys when the feds come calling.”

  Marlin glanced in the rearview mirror. “Have you told anyone about this?”

  “Only Chadwick.”

  “Not the police; not the FDA; not the medical examiners?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  His brow got shiny. He glanced out the window, looked at his watch once more, then tried to look both innocent and exasperated. “I hope your tale is not an epic, Mr. Tanner. I’m leaving in two minutes.”

  I leaned against the door and spoke with all the assurance I could muster. “We know from the newspapers that there’s an outbreak of AIDS among the homeless and destitute population in the city, a good portion of which lives here in the Tenderloin. We also know that over a hundred thousand people have died in this country from AIDS, and thousands more worldwide. The number of people infected with the virus is estimated in the tens of millions.”

  “The tragedy is well documented, Mr. Tanner. What’s your point?”

  “We also know that nothing resembling a preventive vaccine is on the horizon—the end of the century, at the earliest. Medications like AZT that slow the progress of the disease are both expensive and of limited effectiveness, and come with nasty side effects. Which means the company that hits on a vaccine that immunizes against the virus, or produces antibodies that destroy the virus once it’s been contracted, will have themselves a gold mine. Do you agree, Doctor?”

  His shrug was noncommittal. “It’s obvious. But what does that have to do with Healthways?” The doctor was getting bored—more bored than he should have been.

  “Given the spread of AIDS among the poverty-stricken,” I said quickly, “it’s inevitable that Healthways would get lots of HIV-infected people at its clinics, just as a matter of percentages. Most of them are people on their own, without families, or friends, or colleagues—in other words, without anyone who could raise a significant stink about what was being done to them.”