"You know damn well I'm not talking about that. It's this 'a-man's-gotta-do-what-a-man's-gotta-do' attitude. I can't stand it sometimes."
"You want me some other way?"
Sal Vituolo's words of a few hours ago came back to him. Bein' the man of the family can really suck, if you know what I'm sayin'.
Yeah, Sal. I know what you're saying.
Gia said, "I want you alive, dammit!"
"So do I. That's why I got us out of the line of fire." He held up his hands, making two Vs with his fingers, and put on his most beatific expression. "You know me… a man of peace."
That teased a hint of a smile from her. "You're a piece of work is what you are." She sighed. "It's just that I get so mad when somebody like that tries to push me around."
Jack pointed past her. "And here comes another reason for staying out of a knockdown drag-out."
Vicky came puffing up the dune carrying a horseshoe crab carapace filled with clamshells. "Look what I got!"
They oohed and ahed over her sandy treasures all the way back to the parking area.
As Gia drove the now slightly fishy-smelling car back toward the city, Jack sat in silence, pondering his next move. Since he'd already been made by Dragovic's security, he'd have to work behind the scenes.
They were near Hicksville on the LIE when Jack spotted a sign for the Jericho Turnpike. That made him think of a couple of good old boys whose services he'd employed a few years ago. And that gave him the start of an idea…
"Do you mind if we make a stop?" he said.
Gia glanced at him. "Usually it's Vicky who's got to—"
"Not that. I want to see if some old acquaintances are still in business. Take the next exit."
He directed her off the highway and along a rutted dirt road until he saw the hangar with its red sign: TWIN AIRWAYS.
"Is this the place?"
"Yeah. It's their own private airfield." He pointed to the helicopter and two Gulfstream executive jets on the runway. "They charter those out."
"And why are we here?" Gia said.
"Need to talk to these guys." He got out and started toward the hangar. "Why don't you and Vicks stretch your legs and check out the planes while I check the office."
Luckily, both the Ashe brothers were in—tall, lanky twins in their midthirties. Both had fair, shoulder-length hair, but Joe wore a stubbly beard while Frank sported a droopy mustache.
"Well, well," Frank said in a thick Georgia drawl. "Looky who it is."
Joe stepped up and stuck out a hand. "Where you been keepin' yerself, boy?"
They liked small talk about as much as Jack, so after thirty seconds or so of catching up, Joe said, "What brings you round, Jack?"
"A little business. A couple of quick charters."
"No offense," Frank said, "but since it's you, I gotta ask: how legal we talking 'bout?"
Jack shrugged. "Not terribly zflegal."
"Not no RICCO-level shit where we could get our assets froze, I hope. That would be a bummer."
"No-no," Jack said. "Not even close. More legal than the last time. Promise."
"Reckon we can handle that," Joe said. "What's up?"
11
Doug Gleason congratulated himself as he left Dr. Alcott's office in Great Neck and walked toward his car. Another once formidable barrier had fallen. He'd penetrated Dr. Alcott's perimeter defenses and actually got to sit down with the man. A coup among sales reps.
Doug had never seen himself as a salesman but had thrown himself into the job to see what he could wring from it. He'd approached it as he would a programming problem, establishing object relationships and then functionally decomposing them. His applied system had met with resounding success.
In Doug's two years on the job, the most important truth he'd discovered was that knowing all the receptionists' first names, knowing the names of all their children and grandchildren, burbling at their baby pictures, smiling for them until you thought your cheeks were going to cramp, did not guarantee you a sit-down with the doctor. You needed the secret weapon.
Food.
A crumb cake or bagels and cream cheese in the morning or pizzas and subs at noon and, for the battle-hardened veterans who manned Dr. Alcott's front lines, the afternoon coup de grace: chocolate-covered strawberries.
Those had done it. The guardians of the gate had hoisted the white flag and all but demanded that their boss give that nice young Mr. Gleason five minutes.
Doug stowed his sample case in the trunk, then slipped into the front seat of his company car—more of a business office on wheels, actually. In addition to the indispensable cellular phone, he had a cellular fax, a cellular modem for his laptop computer, and a small inkjet printer.
He checked his cell phone—not wanting to be interrupted in Alcott's office, he'd turned it off—and the display told him he had voice mail. The message was from a pharmacist in Sheepshead Bay wanting to know where he could return some TriCef that was going out of date.
Doug wondered about that as he returned the call. TriCef had been out a couple of years now, long enough to start hitting its initial expiration dates, but with the way it was selling, there shouldn't be any of those old batches left.
When he got the pharmacist on the line, Doug identified himself and said, "So what did you do, lose a bottle in the back of one of your cabinets?"
"Not at all," the man said with a vaguely Jamaican-sounding voice. "TriCef simply isn't moving for me."
"Top-selling branded cephalosporin in the country."
"Yes, I read Pharmaceutical Forum too, but it's not moving in my place. Same with most of the other pharmacies around here. Only a couple of our docs have ever written for it."
Troubled, Doug gave the pharmacist directions for returning his outdated stock directly to the company and said good-bye.
Was this a trend? Were sales of TriCef slowing? Not according to his commission checks. But GEM commissions were based on dollar amounts shipped rather than number of prescriptions written. And GEM did its own distribution, so it was right on top of product flow. If sales were slowing, his checks would be shrinking.
So Sheepshead Bay had to be an anomaly.
But an anomaly was a glitch, and the programmer regions of Doug's brain abhorred glitches. He opened the pharmacy section of his computer's address book and made some random calls. First three, then five, then a dozen. Each pharmacy had the same story.
TriCef wasn't selling well. Had never sold well.
Unsettling, but only a bit. Because this didn't make sense. Somebody was buying it. GEM's profits were on target and the stock price was steady.
He wondered what the head honchos would say about it. As top salesman in a small company, he'd met all three. He didn't particularly care for any of them—and couldn't figure Nadia's near worship of Monnet—but at least they'd been reasonably accessible. Until lately. Over the past months they'd grown increasingly withdrawn, all but moving into their fortresslike boardroom.
Was something going on? Something he should know?
Doug knew this little mystery would keep nipping at his ankles until he solved it. Maybe it was something Nadia should know as well.
Nadj… that was another mystery. How had he lucked onto her? Every day he awoke thankful that he'd found her and that she somehow, miraculously, cared for him.
He had planned to knock off early today anyway. Why not spend some of the afternoon looking into it? He had hours before he was to meet Nadj for dinner. That should be enough. He was an expert with the investigating tool he planned to use: his computer.