Next: A Novel (17 page)

Josh said, “Who owns the ACMMD patent?”

The attorney flipped pages. “Patent filed by a company called Gen-CoCom, based in Newton, Mass. Filed for Chapter 11 in 1995. As part of the settlement, all patent apps went to the principal investor, Carl Weigand, who died in 2000. Patents passed to his widow. She is ill with terminal cancer and intends to give all the patents to Boston Memorial Hospital.”

“Can you do anything about that?”

“Just say the word,” he said.

“Do it,” Josh said, rubbing his hands.

CH027

Rick Diehl approached the whole thing like a research project. He read a book on the female orgasm. Two books, actually. One with pictures. And he watched a video. He ran it three times, and even took notes. Because, one way or another, he had sworn he would get a reaction from Lisa.

Now he was down there between her legs, hard at work for the last half hour, his fingers stiff, tongue aching, knees sore—but Lisa’s body remained completely relaxed, indifferent to his every attention. Nothing the books predicted had occurred. No labial tumescence. No perineal engorgement. No retraction of the clitoral hood. No change in breathing, abdominal tension, moans or groans…

Nothing.

He was exhausting himself, while Lisa stared at the ceiling, zoned out like she was at the dentist’s. Like a person waiting for something vaguely unpleasant to be over.

And then…wait a minute…her breathing changed. Only slightly at first, but then distinctly.

Sighing. And her stomach was tensing, rhythmically tensing. She began to squeeze her breasts and moan softly.

It was working.

Rick redoubled his efforts. She responded strongly. It certainly was working…working…she was grunting now…gasping, writhing, building strongly…her back arched…And suddenly she heaved and screamed,“Yes! Yes! Brad! Yessss!”

Rick rocked back on his heels as if he had been hit. Lisa threw her hand over her mouth and twisted away from him on the bed. She shuddered briefly, then sat up, pushed the hair out of her eyes, looked down at him. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dark with arousal. “Gee,” she said.

“I’m really sorry.”

At this awkward moment, Rick’s phone rang. Lisa lunged for it on the bedside table and handed it to him quickly.

“Yes, what is it?” Rick snapped. He was angry.

“Mr. Diehl? It’s Barry Sindler here.”

“Oh. Hi, Barry.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, no.” Lisa was off the bed, getting dressed, her back to him.

“Well, I have good news for you.”

“What’s that?”

“As you know, last week your wife refused to undergo genetic testing. So we got a court order.

Came through yesterday.”

“Yes…”

“And confronted with the order, your wife fled rather than submit to testing.”

“What do you mean?” Rick said.

“She’s gone. Left town. No one knows where.”

“What about the kids?”

“She abandoned them.”

“Well, who’s taking care of them?”

“The housekeeper. Don’t you call your kids every day?”

“Yeah, usually I do, but it’s been busy at work—”

“When was the last time you called them?”

“I don’t know, maybe three days ago.”

“You better get your ass over to your house right now,” Sindler said. “You wanted custody of your kids, and you got it. You’d better show the court some parental responsibility.”

And he hung up. He’d sounded pissed.

Rick Diehl leaned back on his knees and looked at Lisa. “I gotta go,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. See you.”

CH028

Bail was setat half a million dollars. Brad Gordon’s attorney paid it. Brad knew it was his uncle’s money, but at least he was free to go. As he was leaving the courtroom, the funny-looking kid in the Dodgers jacket sidled up to him and said, “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“You were set up. I know exactly what happened.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. We need to talk.”

The kid had booked an interview room in another part of the courthouse. It was just Brad and him. The kid shut the door, flipped open his laptop, and waved Brad into a chair. He turned the laptop so Brad could see it.

“Someone accessed your phone records.”

“How do you know?”

“We have contacts with the carrier.”

“And?”

“They accessed your cell-phone records when you were off work.”

“Why?”

“As you probably know, your phone contains GPS technology. That means your location is recorded whenever you make a call.” He tapped a key. “Graphing your locations over a thirty-day period, we find this.” The map showed red dots all over town, but a cluster of dots in one part of Westview. The kid zoomed in. “That’s the soccer field.”

“You mean they knew I went there?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Somebody knew that two weeks ago.”

“So thiswas a setup,” Brad said.

“That’s what I have been telling you, yes.”

“What about the girl?”

“We’re working on her. She’s no ordinary teenager. We think she’s a Philippine national. She’s appeared on a webcam, masturbating for money. Anyway, what’s relevant now are the inconsistencies in her story. If you look at the hotel security camera”—he tapped another key—

“you see here that she turns her body away from the camera while waiting for the elevator, opens her purse, and touches her face. We think she is putting drops, or s?ome irritant, in her eyes.

When she gets in the elevator a moment later she is visibly crying. But notice: as a supposed rape victim, crying in the elevator, apparently very upset, she doesn’t go right to the hotel desk to report that she has been raped. You have to wonder why not.”

“Uh-huh,” Brad said, eyes narrowing.

“Instead, she goes straight through the lobby to her car. Security camera in the parking lot shows her driving away at five-seventeen p.m. Depending on traffic, the drive from the hotel to the hospital is between eleven and seventeen minutes. She doesn’t show up until six-oh-five p.m.

Forty-five minutes later. What was she doing during that time?”

“Injuring herself?”

“No. We’ve had several experts look at the pictures from the hospital, and the nurse who examined her was an experienced trauma nurse. The pictures are very clear. We think she met an accomplice who produced the injuries for her.”

“You mean, some guy…”

“Yes.”

“Then he would have left his DNA, right?”

“He wore a condom.”

“So at least two people were involved in this.”

“Actually, we think a whole team was involved,” the kid said. “You were very professionally set up. Who would do this to you?”

Brad had been thinking about that while he sat in his jail cell. And he knew there was only one answer: “Rick. The boss. He’s wanted me out of there ever since I started.”

“And you were trying to boff his girl…”

“Hey. I wasn’t trying. I was doing it.”

“And now you’re suspended from your job, you’ve got nine months, minimum, before you go to trial, and you’re looking at ten to twenty if you lose in court. Nice.” The kid flipped his laptop shut, and stood.

“So what happens now?”

“We’ll work on the girl. If we can get a prior history, maybe some video of her on the Internet, we can press the DA to drop the charges. But if this thing goes to trial, it’s not good.”

“Fucking Rick.”

“Yeah. You owe him, buddy.” He headed for the door. “Just do yourself a favor, okay? Stay away from that soccer field.”

FromScience magazine’s “News of the Week”:

Neanderthal Man: Too Cautious to Survive?

Scientist Finds a “Species Death Gene”

An anthropologist has extracted a gene from Neanderthal skeletons that he says explains the disappearance of this sub species. “People don’t realize that Neanderthals actually had larger brains than the modern Cro-Magnon men. They were stronger and tougher than Cro-Magnons, and they made excellent tools. They survived several ice ages before the Cro-Magnons came on the scene. Why, then, did Neanderthals die out?”

The answer, according to Professor Sheldon Harmon of the University of Wisconsin, was that the Neanderthals carried a gene that led them to resist change. “Neanderthals were the first environmentalists. They created a lifestyle in harmony with nature. They limited game hunting, and they controlled tool use. But this same ethos also made them intensely conservative and resistant to change. They disapproved of the newcomer Cro-Magnons, who painted caves, made elaborately decorated tools, and who drove whole herds of animals over cliffs, causing species extinction. Today we consider the cave paintings a wondrous development. But the Neanderthals regarded them as so much graffiti. They saw it as prehistoric tagging. And they viewed the elaborate Cro-Magnon tools as wasteful and destructive of the environment. They disapproved of these innovations, and they stuck to the old ways. Eventually, they died out as a species.”

However, Harmon insists that the Neanderthals bred with the modern Cro-Magnons. “They unquestionably did, because we have identified this same gene in modern human beings. This gene is clearly a Neanderthal remnant, and it promotes cautious or reactionary behavior. Many of the people who today wish to return to the glorious past, or at the very least to keep things as they are, are driven by this same Neanderthal gene.” Harmon described the gene as modifying dopamine receptors in the lateral posterior cingulate gyrus and in the right frontal lobe. “There’s no question about its mode of action,” he said.

Harmon’s claim has provoked a firestorm of criticism from academic colleagues. Not since E. O.

Wilson published his sociobiology thesis two decades ago has such furious controversy erupted.

According to Columbia University geneticist Vartan Gorvald, Harmon was injecting politics into what should be a purely scientific inquiry.

“Not at all,” Harmon said. “The gene is present in both Neanderthals and modern humans. Its action has been confirmed in scans of brain activity. The correlation between this gene and reactionary behavior is indisputable. It’s not a matter of politics, of left or right. It’s a question of basic attitude—whether you are open to the future, or fearful of it. Whether you see the world as emergent, or deteriorating. We have long known that some people favor innovation and look positively toward the future, while others are frightened of change and want to halt innovation.

The dividing line is genetic, and represents the presence or absence of the Neanderthal gene.”

The story was picked up in the New York Times the next day: NEANDERTHAL GENE PROVES ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA

Fears of ‘Rampant Technology’ Justified

STUTTGART, Germany – Anthropologist Sheldon Harmon’s discovery of a Neanderthal gene which promotes environmental preservation “proves the need for sound environmental policy,”

said Greenpeace spokesperson Marsha Madsden. “The fact that Neanderthals lost the battle for the environment should serve as a warning to us all. Like the Neanderthals, we will not survive unless we take radical global action now.”

And in the Wall Street Journal :

CAUTION KILLED THE NEANDERTHALS

Is the ‘Precautionary Principle’ Lethal?

Oppose Free Markets at Your Peril, Club for Growth Notes BYSTEVEWEINBERG

An American anthropologist has concluded that Neanderthals died from a genetic predisposition to resist change. In other words, “Neanderthals applied the Precautionary Principle so dear to illiberal, reactionary environmentalists.” That was the view of Jack Smythe of the American Competitive Institute, a progressive Washington think tank. Smythe said, “The extinction of Neanderthals serves as a warning to those who would halt progress and take us back to a life that is nasty, brutish, and short.”

CH029

In the corner of the office, the TV showed Sheldon Harmon, professor of anthropology and self-proclaimed discoverer of the “Neanderthal gene,” being assaulted during a lecture with a bucket of water poured over his head.

On-screen, the event was shown repeatedly in slow motion, the water sloshing over a skinny, bald guy who looked oddly amused. “See? He’s smiling,” Rick Diehl said. “This is all a publicity stunt to promote the gene.”

“Probably,” Josh Winkler said. “They had cameras there to catch it.”

“Exactly,” Diehl said. “And aside from the publicity this guy is getting for his damn Neanderthal gene, he is claiming a mode of action closely related to our maturity gene. Activation of the cingulate gyrus and so on. Could steal our thunder.”

“I doubt it,” Josh said. “Dozens of genes work in the cingulate gyrus.”

“Even so,” Rick said, “I think we ought to announce. Soon. I want to get the maturity gene out there.”

Josh said, “With all due respect, Rick, we’d be premature.”

“You’ve tested the gene in rats. That’s gone well.”

“Yes, but it’s not exactly newsworthy. Showing baby rats pushing turds in a cage—that won’t make the evening news.”

Diehl nodded slowly. “Yeah. True. We need something better.”

Josh said, “What’s the urgency?”

“The board. Ever since Brad got arrested, his uncle has been pissed. Seems to think Brad’s problems are our fault. Anyway, he’s pressing us to put the company on the map with a big announcement.”

“Fine, but we’re not there yet.”

“I know. But what if we just…what if we justsay that we’re ready to start human testing?”

Josh shivered. “I wouldn’t,” he said. “I mean, we haven’t even applied to the FDA for—”

“I know. Stage one. So let’s make the application.”

“Rick, you know what a stage-one application requires. It’s a stack of research data and forms ten feet high. That’s just to start the process. And we would have to lay out a timetable of milestones—”

Rick waved his hand impatiently. “I know. I’m saying we just announce it.”

“You mean, announce it when we’re not doing it?”

“No, announce that we’re going to do it.”

“But that’s my point,” Josh said. “It’d be months before we could even file.”

“Reporters don’t care. We just say that BioGen Research in Westview Village is ready to begin stage-one testing, and is in the process of making an application to the FDA.”