The Last Good Day (15 page)
He stood up, shoulders back, emphasizing the six inches he had over the short seller.
“I hear you’ve been giving us hell on the Internet and CNBC.”
“No more than you deserve.” Mark bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, clearly not intimidated. “You guys way overstated your potential for growth. Twenty-seven million in your second year of operations? I don’t know what drugs you’re on, but they’re stronger than whatever you’re making.”
“We missed some of our numbers, there’s no question about that …”
“You did a helluva lot more than that. You went from fifty-one to sixteen in less than twelve months.”
“It’s been a volatile market.” Barry shrugged. “Everybody knows that. But things were starting to pick up this quarter until you shit-bombed us.”
“Excuse me,” Mark cut him off, raising his voice slightly. “If you’re a public company, it’s all about debate and disclosures. You guys didn’t get the overseas contracts you promised your investors. You’ve been hiding recurring expenses as capital spending. And worst of all, your drugs don’t deliver. You’ve been stuck in Phase Two trials for Chronex since March.”
“That’s because we felt we needed to broaden the study group,” said Barry.
He was aware of the receptionists watching them, two brightly attired dissatisfied middle-aged white women muttering into headsets before a late-period de Kooning abstract. The audience. He realized they’d seen Mark do this act before.
“Look,” he said, “you’re certainly entitled to your opinions. What you’re not entitled to do is spread false rumors and allegations to drive our price down.”
“We do the best research on the Street.” Mark’s Adam’s apple went up and down like the pump action of a shotgun. “We know more about the companies we look into than most of the major institutional investors. Sometimes more than their own executives. So I’d suggest to you, Mr. Schulman, that a company that sends its general consul trudging around town to try and stifle legitimate criticism is wasting its investors’ time and money and doesn’t have much of a future.”
“And I suggest to you that you work harder on getting your facts straight.”
Barry reached into the brown Coach attaché case at his side and pulled out a small stack of court papers. “You have a report on your Web site saying our company stands to lose fifty million dollars in the lawsuit over the squirrel monkey patent,” he said.
“They’re not your monkeys,” Mark Young replied stiffly. “Nieman and Tsyrlin developed them in their lab at MIT. They were the ones who figured out how to give the monkeys Alzheimer’s for the experiments. By the time this suit’s over, they’re going to be taking over your office and picking out the new curtains.”
“I am now giving you a half-dozen depositions and research papers from six of the top geneticists in the country, telling you that’s not true.” Barry thrust some of the documents at him that Lisa Chang had helped him gather. “I’ve got the best people from Yale, Berkeley, and Princeton on the record saying these claims are worthless. This case will probably never make it to trial. You now have this information in your possession. So if you continue to spread these false allegations about us on your Web site and on TV, I guarantee you that we will sue you for slander, and when we win, we will not only pick out the new curtains in this office but the new fish in your tank.”
A half-smile flickered across Mark’s bony face and then faded. Clearly, here was a man who was up for a little midmorning jousting. In a different part of his life, Barry would’ve enjoyed going one on one with him.
“Snake oil is still snake oil,” Mark said. “You guys said you were going to get a product to market within four years that would reduce amyloid plaques and tangles in the human brain, and you’re nowhere near that. And in the meantime, you’re about to get lapped by half a dozen other drugs. Why don’t you just admit the jig is up and shut the circus down?”
“Listen.” Barry lowered his voice. “I’ve read some of your research, and I know you’re a sharp guy. But this is not my first rodeo either. I’ve got my own money tied up in this company.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mark laughed. “It’s usually better to be the knave than the fool.”
“I know we’ve had a few setbacks, but I believe in what we’re doing. Let me tell you something. My old man was the strongest guy I ever knew. He was the only white store owner who didn’t move off his block after the riots in Newark. He rebuilt the place with his own hands, and when they came to burn it down a second time, he stood outside and said,
Kiss my ass, motherfucker.
” He decided to omit the detail that Dad had ended up bagging groceries at a Pathmark in Nutley after the second store failed. “And I saw this man slip away right before my eyes because of Alzheimer’s. So believe me, this isn’t any scam.”
“Then why did your CEO sell off four thousand shares of his own stock right before it fell to thirty this summer?” Mark asked.
“Bullshit.”
“No, it’s true,” Mark said evenly. “Ross Olson dumped about a fifth of his holdings in August. He did it through a third-party sale, but our researchers picked up on it. Hey, it’s not against the law. People need the cash sometimes. Or maybe they just want to spread the risk around …”
Barry’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. From the corner of his eye, he saw a blue triggerfish tear off a piece of coral and start chewing so loudly that its jaw could be heard snapping through the glass.
The cell phone rang in his breast pocket. He took it out long enough to see that it was Lynn calling and then put it back again.
“Look,” he said, staying poker-faced, “we’re in it for the long haul. We’ve got drugs in the pipeline that we haven’t even started to tell people about. You want to keep betting against us and get yourself caught in a short squeeze, be my guest.”
Just the mention of a squeeze, in which Mark would lose money because stock price suddenly shot up, made the cords in his neck bulge slightly. A tiny piece of coral fell out of the triggerfish’s mouth and drifted down toward the goby at the bottom.
“I just don’t know why a bright young guy like you spends all his time ripping other people’s companies apart when they’re trying to make something worthwhile,” said Barry.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you why.” Mark stood back, planting his feet firmly. “It’s because there’s a lot of crappy companies out there, taking money away from legitimate investors. Or, in a case like yours, steering money away from other companies doing serious work. You were asking about the fish tank before. It’s the same thing. There’s an ecosystem. The wrong kind of bacteria gets in, it’ll poison all your fish. You need a few bottom-feeders to eat the excess and keep the tank clean. It may not be pretty, but we get the job done. And if we keep a little something for ourselves in the meantime, what’s it to you?”
Barry watched the goby swallow the coral, along with a few gravel stones, and then squirt the residue out through its gill pouches, oblivious to the kaleidoscope of Cuban hogs, yellow tangs, lion-fish, angel flames, and red-breasted mattress thrashers circling above it.
“Hey, that’s all well and good,” he said. “But don’t you think that once you start paying more for your fish tank than you do for your secretaries, you maybe lose just a foot or two off the moral high ground?”
He turned and saw the receptionists giggling into their headsets.
“I guess you know your way out.” Mark nodded toward the elevators.
STILL FEELING DIZZY
and vaguely sick, as though she’d been inhaling paint thinner, Lynn went fifty in the Saab along the narrow little roads climbing higher into the West Hills, suspension rattling, springs squeaking on the turns. She made the quick right off Prospect and found the brawny new center hall colonial at the end of the cul-de-sac called Love Lane, a great gift-wrapped Macy’s box of a house, a run-on sentence of a house, a house she’d really hoped to like, with huge black shutters, tall Greek revival windows, gables the size of small planes, and Georgian columns on the front porch.
She parked halfway into the long circular driveway, jumped out, and raced up the steps to the front door. Even though the family had been there since August, Sandi had never invited Lynn in, saying she didn’t want her oldest friend to see the place until absolutely everything was ready. As if Lynn was going to bring a camera and a writer from
Architectural Digest.
She rang the bell, a stately remote chime barely audible under the bank alarm wailing in her mind.
After a few seconds, the door opened, and Isadora, Sandi’s seven-year-old, in a black leotard top worn inside out, a white tutu, and a pair of black jeans and untied Keds, looked up at her. A silver lamé scarf was tied haphazardly over a long uncombed brown ponytail.
“Where’s Mommy?” she said impatiently, as if Lynn had been hiding her.
“Um …”
Lynn’s mind emptied out. What were you supposed to say to a child under these circumstances? Her eyes probed into the darkness of the foyer, hearing the echo of voices from deeper within the house.
“I don’t know, sweetie.” She touched Isadora’s crusty white cheek and saw no one had washed the girl’s face yet this morning. “Is your daddy around?”
“Yeeeahhhh …” She rolled her eyes with the same premature exasperation that Sandi had at that age, as if she already knew the best she’d get out of the men in her life.
“He’s up in his office,” she said, a slight lisp whistling through the gap in her front teeth. “Still on the phone.
Blah, blah, blah.
”
She rolled her eyes again to show she’d given up trying to get his attention. God, she really did look just like her mother. Lynn shuddered a little, thinking about the sorrows that awaited this child.
“Has anybody given you breakfast today?”
“I made myself a waffle in the toaster.” Isadora smiled proudly. “I made one for Dylan too.
With
butter.”
“Your little brother’s lucky to have you.”
“That’s what I keep telling him.”
Lynn stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind her. Dylan, the five-year-old, was more brittle than his sister, always had been. Kept his mother on bed rest for the last four months of her pregnancy and still slipped out six weeks early. Lynn remembered seeing him under the bilirubin lights in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a scrawny little red chicken fighting for his life in the incubator. He’d been a little neurasthenic ever since, dragging one of his mom’s old silk slips to nursery school as a security blanket. So how the hell was he supposed to make it through the next seventy-five years?
“Would you run upstairs and let Daddy know I’m here?” Lynn said, resisting the urge to scoop the little girl up in her arms and hug her, lest she get frightened by Mommy’s friend starting to cry for no reason.
“Okay. And then will you play chase with me?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Sure.”
All right, smile. Act normal. Don’t let on that her world is about to disintegrate. Children need routine.
She watched Sandi’s daughter run down the long dim hall, the plastic ends of her untied laces scatting on the onyx floor. She stopped at the foot of a stairway and did a little splay-armed, stiff-legged twirl before the newel post. Shafts of sun poured through a skylight above her, shining down on her upturned face and turning her skirt into a fine diaphanous mist. And for the only time this morning, Lynn wished she had her camera with her so she could somehow freeze this last careless moment and give it back to the girl years from now when she would surely need it again.
She listened for the scampering of feet up the stairs and then allowed herself to sink a little, relieved of having to prop up this cheerful facade. Why wasn’t the girl in school today anyway? Hadn’t Jeff thought of asking one of Sandi’s friends to take her? God, the last thing she would want would be her kids hanging around the house waiting in vain for her for the rest of their lives.
She moved cautiously down the hall, drawn by the sound of a TV droning. The echo of her footsteps seemed to amplify her grief. She always thought of Sandi as being so busy and eclectic that she was sure there’d be some off-the-wall touches, like carved wooden duck decoys or her oil canvas of Mr. T in a ruffled Elizabethan collar or her acrylic portrait of six great American first ladies dressed as astronauts. Instead there was just cold austere space, bland beige wallpaper, and a twenty-foot-high domed ceiling above the stairs.
She pictured Sandi with a man’s hand over her mouth. Someone had held her down and cut her throat.
Had she understood what was happening? Had she begged? Had she thought of the children just before her head was severed? It was an image that Lynn didn’t want in her brain, but it kept coming back at her.
She rounded the corner and saw that the living room had scarcely more furniture. The women’s morning talk show
The View
played on the four-foot-wide Sony flat screen against the wall, Barbara Walters holding forth with memories of Lady Di. A floor lamp stood uncovered in the corner, its bare bulb making a soft singing sound and revealing ghostly outlines of places where chairs and couches had been pushed against the walls. Dylan lay on the cream rug next to the long glass coffee table, playing with scuffed plastic Pokémon toys.
“
Peeeeek-aaaahh,
” he screeched in a demented tinny voice, wagging a stumpy yellow mutant cat at an orange dragon-troll. “
Peeeekk-ahh-choo!!
”
“Charizard, SLASH!” he answered himself in the deepest baritone he could muster. “Fire spit! Get back, or I’ll lock you in your room and never let you out.”
“Whaddaya doing, Dyl?”
She knelt down beside him, a little catch in her throat as she remembered Clay at this age, playing on the floor with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Donatello. Michelangelo. The names were so much more poetic then, weren’t they? And weren’t Pokémon sort of old hat anyway? She was surprised he didn’t have newer toys.
“Dyl?”
A straight ash-blond curtain of hair refused to turn and acknowledge her.