Mind-Altering Murder

Chapter Twenty-five

“We are doing well, but we can do even better by doing good.”

That sounded right. Gus had been practicing his closing line for half an hour now, and he thought he had finally perfected the intonation. As long as he made sure to add that note of surprise to the last phrase, as if he had just stumbled across the formulation in the middle of speaking it, all taint of self-righteousness disappeared.

Gus was ready. He’d been preparing for this staff meeting for a week, although in a way his entire tenure at Benson Pharmaceuticals had been a warm-up for what he was about to do. “We are doing well, but we can do even better by doing good,” he said again, this time with a perfect little fillip of surprise when he hit that last phrase.

Gus glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes until the meeting started. Just enough time to practice his presentation one last time. He straightened his tie, shrugged his shoulders like a fighter entering the ring, and stood to address his imaginary audience. And he froze.

He knew his closing; there was no doubt about that. But that was all he knew. The beginning and the middle were completely gone.

Gus snatched the index cards off his desk and riffled through them quickly. He recognized his handwriting, but he couldn’t read any of it. What were these words scribbled down? What was it he was supposed to say? His mind was blank.

There was a gentle knocking, and the door cracked open. Jerry Fellows’ beaming head appeared in the doorway. “All ready?”

Gus dropped the index cards and let them scatter all over his desk. “Ready for my career to end.”

Jerry pushed the door open and wheeled his steel mail cart into the office. “Now you’re just being silly, if you don’t mind my saying so. You’re going to be great.”

“I’ve been here for weeks,” Gus said. “Before that I was a half-time salesman, and not a very good one at that.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Jerry said. “I can see the fire in your eyes. I bet you had that in your last job.”

“One of them,” Gus said. “But I don’t think it was for the sales route.”

“Then maybe you were simply waiting for this opportunity to come along,” Jerry said.

“Yeah, the opportunity to humiliate myself completely,” Gus said. “Look at the new guy. He’s barely got his business cards, and he’s already telling us how to restructure the entire company. Who do I think I am?”

Jerry left his cart behind and walked up to Gus. “I can’t answer that, but I can tell you who I think you are,” he said. “I think you’re the kind of man who sees an opportunity to make the world a better place and won’t rest until he seizes it. I think you’re the kind of man who knows he could hide behind his desk and make a lot of money for doing not much of anything but chooses to risk his job for the chance of helping the company and its customers. I think you’re the kind of man this company needs and that Bobby cherishes.”

Gus felt some of his panic start to ease away. “Really?”

Jerry gave him one of his leprechaun grins. “But what do I know about anything?” he said. “I’ve been pushing a mail cart for thirty years, so pretty obviously I don’t have a clue about how business works.”

Gus looked at his watch again. He still had a few minutes before the meeting. He scooped his index cards into a pile and flipped through them to make sure they were in order. “And why is that, Jerry?” he said. “I’ve seen how D-Bob promotes people around here, and I’m getting an idea of the kind of person he likes. Seems to me if you’d wanted to be an executive you could be running the place by now.”

“That would be one of those questions that answer themselves,” Jerry said.

“You mean the part about if you wanted to, right?” Gus said.

“When I go home at the end of the day I leave my mail cart right here,” Jerry said. “It never wakes me up with a phone call in the middle of the night, it never demands I come in on a weekend, and it doesn’t add ten years to my age because of stress. I went through my world-changing phase when I was young, and I managed to get over it. Now I’ve got a nice little apartment, and thanks to Bobby’s generosity I won’t have to spend my golden years standing outside BART stations with a Styrofoam cup, asking for spare change. So why would I want any other job in the world?”

“That’s a good question,” Gus said. “Maybe I should get a mail cart.”

“Only one per company,” Jerry said. “Besides, I know people, and I can see you wouldn’t be happy in any job where you weren’t making a serious impact on the world. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone with your drive since Carlton Eastlake had this job.”

“I don’t think I’ve met him,” Gus said. “Is he running one of our foreign branches now?”

“Not unless we’ve got one in heaven,” Jerry said, doffing his cap and touching it to his chest.

“He died?” Gus said.

“Almost a year ago now,” Jerry said, replacing his cap over his mop of red hair.

“What happened to him?”

“It wasn’t that he ate too many oysters, just that one of those he ate turned out to be the wrong one,” Jerry said.

“Food poisoning?” Gus said.

“One of the few things this company doesn’t make a pill for,” Jerry says. “It’s always felt like some kind of tragic irony there. But his loss to the company wasn’t ironic at all, especially since he was the only one pushing on the very same issue as you.”

“He was interested in orphan drugs?” Gus said.

“It was a passion for him, just as it has been for you,” Jerry said. “I really thought he would be the one to convince Bobby that was the direction the company should be moving in. And he might have, if it hadn’t been for that mollusk. And so does history move on.”

“I didn’t realize that other executives had tried to broach this subject,” Gus said.

“It doesn’t come up a lot,” Jerry said. “It’s easy to explain how you’re going to alleviate suffering by developing drugs for diseases, even if they only affect a tiny percentage of the world’s population. It’s a lot harder to figure out how to make money doing it. But I really think you’ve come up with a novel and exciting approach.”

“I appreciate that,” Gus says. “I hope the executive committee agrees with you.”

“There’s only one person on that committee who really counts,” Jerry says. “If you can convince Bobby, the rest of those sycophants and parasites will fall in line.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” Gus said, picking up his note cards and sliding them into the breast pocket of his suit coat. “Wish me luck.”

“One second, if you don’t mind,” Jerry said. He reached across the desk and straightened Gus’ tie, then stepped back. “Now you’re perfect. I think you’ve got a better shot at making this work than Jim Macoby ever did.”

Gus was halfway across the office before the last of Jerry’s words struck him. “Jim Macoby?” he said. “Jim Macoby was planning a presentation on orphan drugs?”

“That he was,” Jerry said. “Until that sad accident with the coffeemaker.”

Gus took a long look at Jerry to see if the mailman was sending him any kind of coded message. He’d just told Gus that the last two executives who attempted to do what Gus was about to try died in freak accidents. Was there some kind of warning there?

“You’re going to be great in there,” Jerry said without a trace of subtext or hint of caution. “I look forward to hearing all about it.”

Gus took one last look at Jerry, then headed out of his office.