Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) (10 page)

The infusion of capital from the stock sale enabled the company to branch out into the manufacture of other medical devices. They acquired a patent and marketed kinetic therapy products to prevent bedsores in bed-ridden patients. They produced lifesaving silicone catheters and hydrocephalic shunts. By late 1991, their sales exceeded $500,000,000. In 1992, MedPro was listed as one of the top ten publicly-traded companies in Florida.

That was as far as I got when I heard Carly come in. I slipped the Annual Report into my purse for further reading at another time. It was a public document. I wasn’t stealing anything.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tampa, Florida

Friday 12:45 p.m.

January 8, 1999

“Wilhelmina, I’m surprised to see you here. Please sit down,” she said as she closed the door.

I looked at her closely. She looked in worse shape than she had been Wednesday evening. She was pale, drawn and gaunt. There was an air of desperation about her and I thought she was silently entreating me not to mention our previous conversation. Until I could figure it out, I’d play along.

“It’s been so long since George and I have seen you. I was driving by MedPro and, since I’ve never been to your office, I thought I’d stop in for a short visit. Would you be interested in giving me a tour or your facility?”

Carly seemed relieved that I’d understood her signals. She flashed a brilliant smile and offered me the tour.

We left her office and turned right, in the opposite direction from the lobby. Carly began a walking monologue, explaining the offices, the plant, the manufacturing practices and the products made here at MedPro. She repeated much of what was contained in the Annual Report, and I got the impression that this was the public story, reproduced in every medium.

In truth, the tour was fascinating. MedPro, Carly told me, was a small manufacturer of silicone-based and other medical products. While going through the manufacturing portion of the plant, we were required to dress in sterile gowns, masks, caps, gloves and booties. During the entire tour, Carly pointed out the precautions taken to follow sterile procedures, packaging, labeling and other FDA related requirements.

When we arrived at the research and development lab, Carly told me about MedPro’s latest venture.

“The Company is currently experimenting with natural implants. The process uses a woman’s own cells to generate natural tissue inside her breasts. Other researchers are experimenting with vegetable oil and fat filled implants, but our process is different. Within three to five years, if it works, we’ll be able to remove tissue samples from somewhere on the body and grow additional cells in a lab. The cells would then be implanted into the breast where they would become real breast tissue.”

“Are you saying you’re experimenting with cloning humans?”

“Not exactly, but kind of like that. Here’s the theory:  a tissue sample with cells similar to those in breasts--”

“You mean pure fat?” I joked. I was relieved to see Carly smile, too.

“Not pure fat, but high in fat, yes. Anyway, those cells would be removed from the patient’s thigh or abdomen.”

“Those other gorgeous anatomic areas.”  I was trying to lighten the mood, and Carly seemed to appreciate the effort.

“It’s surprising Hugh Hefner and Bob Guccione have been able to make so much glamour out of so much blubber, isn’t it?”

By this time, we were both smiling, as Carly continued to explain the new process. When she’d finished, I asked her, “How close is this to becoming a reality?”

“Well, there are still a few things to work out. Three to five years away, at least.”

“It’s an expensive project. What if it doesn’t work?”

“We try not to think about that around here. ‘Negative thinking never solved anything’ is the researcher’s motto.”

Carly continued this charade all the way back to her office where she told me how pleased she was that I had come and asked me if I could join her for lunch. I told her I’d be delighted and we went out to my car.

Once we were out of the building and in my car, Carly slumped against the seat and closed her eyes. The charade had drained her.

I drove the few miles from the plant into downtown St. Petersburg and parked my car at the Vinoy, a large art deco hotel right on the water. We went in and were seated in the teak paneled dining room. After I ordered iced tea for both of us, I looked at Carly directly.

“At some point, you’re going to have to tell me what is going on. Why did we go through that charade back at the plant? “

Carly seemed no more willing to talk and no less ill at ease than when she first came to the house. Since she wasn’t willing to begin, I said “You need to know that George and I told the police who the body was.”  Her eyes widened, she pushed herself away from the table and started to rise from her seat. I put my hand on her arm to keep her from leaving, or making a scene in a place where both of us were well known.

“We made an anonymous call from a pay phone. All we said was that the body could be Dr. Morgan. Nothing more.”  She sat back down, slowly, and relaxed a little.

Then, more sternly, I said, “It’s time for you to fill in some of the details you left out, or I’m going to have to go to the State’s Attorney. This is serious business for me, Carly. I can’t have any appearance of impropriety around me or my office over a murder. I want to help you, but you’re not making it easy.”

“I saw you reading our Annual Report,” she said.

“So?”

“What it doesn’t say in there, and what you’d know if you read the local papers closely, is that the breast implant controversy came to a complete head and nearly destroyed the company when the FDA ordered a moratorium on the sale of silicone breast implants.”

“The report said the company had diversified its product by that time. How much of MedPro’s business was breast implants when the moratorium was declared?”

“Over fifty percent. We had to close one of our plants and lay off a lot of our sales and manufacturing people and we beefed up our other products.”

“That just sounds like prudent business, not the end of the world. People get laid off and plants close every day.”

“Yes, but the loss was devastating to a young company like MedPro. Dr. Morgan and the other two founders went from being multimillionaires to being in threat of bankruptcy overnight.”

“I don’t mean to sound heartless, but sometimes wealth easily gained is easily lost. And it’s not like any of those doctors are going to starve.”

“You’re right. And they were weathering the storm pretty well, under the circumstances. Dr. Young’s husband had just died, so she was an emotional basket case anyway.  Zimmer went to our creditors and restructured our debt. We thought we were going to come out ok.

“But then the lawsuits and the publicity started. The public revilement of everyone associated with the implants was devastating, personally and financially.”

“A cynic would say it’s the price of fame,” I told her.

“You have no idea what it was like. We were under siege. Every day for months, the company was picketed by the Silicone Sufferers support group. We had to hire extra receptionists just to handle the calls. We got two feet of faxes and six feet of mail every day, most of it nasty. Our employees were constantly harassed. A lot of them quit because they were afraid to come to work. Every night for a month, we were the lead story on the six o’clock news.”  Carly’s voice was becoming louder with each sentence. Other diners were looking at us.

“You mean, until a former NFL running back was arrested for killing his wife and the media had something new to report?”

She smiled weakly and calmed down a little. “I know it sounds like a nine-day wonder now, but it wasn’t then. None of us handled the pressure well. There were frayed tempers, shouting matches and shoving contests somewhere in the plant every day, and not only on the production floor. More than one-thousand complaints were filed against MedPro and our insurance was canceled. I became a litigation manager. Just answering complaints and discovery requests was more than a full time job. The shunts, catheters and kinetic products were not enough to keep us going. It didn’t look like we were going to get out alive.”

“So how did it all work out?”

“It hasn’t yet. We started preparing our bankruptcy petition, and were close to filing it when the bankruptcy of the largest defendant temporarily halted the litigation and gave us some breathing room.”

Carly stopped talking as the waiter brought our lunch and made a major production of arranging it on the table. By the time the bread waiter brought the rolls and the beverage waiter brought refills on our iced tea, a family of four could have ordered, received and consumed a fast food meal, at less than half the cost of our salads. I made a mental note to remind George that not every meal needs to be a dining experience.

Once we were alone, I asked, “What does all this have to do with Dr. Morgan?  Are you saying he committed suicide over the business reversal, by shooting himself in the head, then bound and gagged himself, and jumped into the Bay?”

“Of course not. But Dr. Morgan had been calling me every day or two for about three months before he died.”

“Did he say what for?”

“Oh sure. Over and over, in fact. He wanted to make a presentation to our scientists at MedPro.”

“What kind of a presentation?”

“He wouldn’t say. He would only say that it was a presentation that had to be made to sophisticated scientists because lawyers wouldn’t understand it.

“He said he knew why women with breast implants were ill and he wanted to explain his theory. He was writing a book about it but, for old times sake, he wanted to give MedPro a preview. He didn’t mention what a successful defense would do to the price of his stock, but he didn’t have to.”

“But that’s a fabulous scientific breakthrough!” I said. Her face let me know how wrong that was. “If there’s a scientific explanation for women with breast implants becoming ill, then isn’t that something everyone would want to know?”  I asked her.

“No. I mean, I guess it depends on what the explanation is. If the explanation is related to the product, then the answer is, MedPro doesn’t want to know. We can’t know. That will put our company out of business.”

I was beginning to see the problem. If the women’s illnesses were related to the product itself, then MedPro would be at fault.

“Did you set up the meeting he requested?”

“I took it to my superiors. They weren’t interested.”

“Why not?”

“What they told me, through the proper channels, was that Dr. Morgan is a crackpot. He’s a defendant himself in several hundred cases. They believed anything he might have to say would be an attempt to save his own skin, and the value of his stock. They didn’t want to be associated with him any more than they already were. It seems everything MedPro does these days ends up on the front page of the papers and on the evening news. If it became known that we were working with Dr. Morgan, we would be the laughing stock of the medical community and he would be forever associated with us in the litigation. They couldn’t believe that he had anything to offer that the best minds at the big, well-funded institutions weren’t able to discover. They just didn’t want to get involved with him.”

“But if he was an owner and founder of the company, why did he need you to set up a meeting?”  I asked her.

“Dr. Morgan had been removed by the board and only owned his stock. Which, at that point, wasn’t worth much.”

“Why?”

She looked at me, trying to decide whether to answer. Finally, she shrugged. “This is very hush hush, Willa. If this gets out, MedPro would be in a lot more trouble than it is now, if that’s possible.”

“Keeping secrets is a lawyer’s stock in trade.”

“I know, but some lawyers are better at it than others.”  She eyed me pointedly. I had, after all, made George call the police once already.

“True. All right. As long as I’m not required to disclose what you tell me, I’ll keep it quiet.”

“Dr. Morgan got into trouble with drugs a few years ago. He went to jail for selling cocaine and he lost his license to practice.”

“That makes him a man who’s paid his debt to society, not an ignorant incompetent without an intelligent idea.”

“Yes, but during the prosecution of his case, it was discovered that he’d been having sex with his patients while they were anesthetized.”

“You’re kidding!  How did they ever prove that?”

“He videotaped the surgeries, and he kept the tapes. The police found them in a routine search of his beach house.”

The things you don’t know about your own friends and neighbors are amazing. “Then why did he think MedPro would be interested in his presentation after he’d been fired by the other two founders when he went to jail?”

“Because he said his discovery would prove MedPro’s innocence and the safety and efficacy of the implants. It was his way of trying to make it up to Young and Zimmer.”

“And saving his own ass in the bargain,” I said.

“That, too. Since Morgan lost his license, no medical insurer would touch him and no one else wants to be involved. He was begging me to schedule the meeting and, because he seemed so contrite and pathetic, I couldn’t turn him down cold. I did tell him that, unfortunately, my management wasn’t interested. The last time I talked to him, he told me someone was blackmailing him. He’d run out of money, and the blackmailer had threatened to kill him if he didn’t pay. He sounded really desperate. I told him I thought he was exaggerating and he got angry with me and hung up.”

“You never heard from him again?”

She hesitated before answering me, took a bite of her salad and washed it down. “No. He’d never given me a number where he could be reached. He always called me at prearranged times to talk. I’ve tried tracking him down through the Yellow Pages and directory assistance. I even hired a private investigator to look for him. No luck. When I heard they’d found a body in the Bay and about how long they thought it had been there, I just got this weird intuition that it was Dr. Morgan.”