House on Fire

7

“I’m guessing if a document like that were made public, it would be financially devastating to Kimball Pharma,” I said.

“More than that. We could well end up with criminal indictments against the top officers at Kimball — starting with my father.”

“So if you made it public, you’d be putting him in prison.”

“He’d have put himself there. Look, this is the right thing to do. The moral thing to do. Because Oxydone is dangerously addictive, and they should be forced to admit it. They should be made to pay for their deception.”

“But I assume you’d pay too. As an heir. You okay with that?”

“Okay with that? I want that, desperately. It’s the only way anything changes. This is a business that feeds off addiction like a vampire drinks blood. You think another Facebook group, another devastatingly barbed tweet, another strongly worded op-ed in the New York Times is going to make a difference?” She shook her head. “People are dying, Nick. Every goddamn day.”

“What turned you?”

“In what way?”

“Something radicalized you. Caused you to start questioning your family’s role. What happened?”

She stirred Splenda into her coffee, which was lightened with half-and-half. “It was what happened to a college friend of mine. Woman named Charlotte, on the college women’s squash team. She was great at everything — Chaucer to football. Great athlete. Four years ago, something happened to her. She threw out her back, then had spinal surgery, and was put on painkillers. Oxydone, of course. Her parents had just died in an auto crash; she’d just gone through a messy breakup with her boyfriend. I don’t know what else. What I do know is she quickly became addicted to Oxy. And one day she OD’d. Was it deliberate? Was it an accident? I have no idea. But they found a couple of empty Oxydone inhalers in her bathroom and she died in the shower.” She spoke not very loudly but fervently. “And I thought, my God, we did it, we poisoned her. And before long I started to realize that this was happening all over the place. Do you know every year we lose more veterans to opiates than we lost to the Iraqis? Or ISIS?”

I nodded. Sean’s was just one death. She was seeing opiate-related deaths on a wholesale level. “I understand,” I said. “It’s just—”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“No, it’s not that. I’m not clear on what you’re trying to accomplish. What you’re trying to do.”

“I want leverage. I want blackmail.”

“For what? Not — for money?”

“Nothing for me. I want to force my father to set up a network of clinics around the world to take care of the people he’s addicted.”

“Think he’d do that?”

“It’s that or I hand the study to a reporter for the Times or the Washington Post. His choice.”

“What would happen then?”

“Kimball Pharma would be hit with massive fines — I’m talking billions of dollars — and he’d go to jail. Believe me, he doesn’t want this file made public.”

“Seriously, billions?”

“When GlaxoSmithKline got caught burying studies that showed their drug Paxil, their antidepressant, was ineffective, they were charged with health-care fraud and fined three billion dollars.”

“Jesus.”

“And this fraud is of a whole different order. So I’ll be making my father an offer he can’t refuse.”

“And what do your brothers and sisters think of what you’re doing?”

“They don’t know, and they can’t.”

“How do you think they’re going to react?”

“With surprise. That meek and mild Sukie, the middle child no one pays attention to, could do anything so unexpected.”

I thought that was interesting. “But wouldn’t you just be harming yourself by making such a document public? I assume your wealth is mostly tied up in Kimball Pharma stock.”

“I’m already rich enough for several lifetimes. Look, I’m talking about people I love. Let’s be clear. I know that. But I’ve got a chance to pull the brake cord. And I will not be able to live with myself if I don’t do it.”

“I just wonder if you know the risks here.”

“The risks? The big risk is that I do nothing.”

“Things don’t always turn out like you plan. Big companies don’t go down easy.”

“Oh, yeah? So what would you have me do instead — get another hot-stone spa treatment? Put cucumber slices over my eyes and call it a day? Buy a yacht? I’ve already seen too much. It just gets worse and worse by the day. We’re running out of time. And if you don’t get that, we probably shouldn’t be working together.”

Our eyes met, and neither of us looked away.

“I’ve still got a lot of questions, Sukie.”

“And I’ve got just one.” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “Can I trust you?”