“Why?” Paulette asked pointedly. She stabbed at her bruschetta with a knife. “What is getting into you, Miriam? What have they got on you?”
“They—” She stared. “Blackmail is business as usual,” she said bitterly. “I figure I need to get an edge of my own, before they marry me off to the Idiot. Simple as that.”
“Huh.” Paulette put her knife down with exaggerated care. “Miriam. I told you about what things were like when I was growing up.”
“Yes.” Miriam nodded. “Goodfellas. Well, I was born into the mob, I guess, so using their own tactics—blackmail seems to be the family sport—”
“Miriam!” Paulette reached across the table and took her hand. “Listen. As your agent, and as your legal adviser, I would really be a lot happier if you would drop this. You’re right, the clinic shit sounds dirty. But if your uncle is involved, it means money. The tough guys, they used to cut their wives and children a lot of slack—as long as they didn’t try to nose in on the business. You see what I’m saying? This is family business and they’re going to take it a whole lot differently if you go digging—”
“Nuh-uh, no way.” Miriam shook her head vehemently. “I know them, Paulie. They’re more medieval than that. Everything is on the outside, you know? Their politics is entirely personal. So’s their business. If I get the goods on this scheme, then I’ve got a handle on whoever’s running it—” Miriam stopped dead as the waitress sashayed in and scooped up her plate with a smile.
“I still don’t like it.” Paulette frowned. “I mean that. I think you’re misreading them. Just because you’re little miss heiress, it doesn’t make you exempt. They’ve got their code: item number two on it, after ‘don’t talk to the cops,’ is ‘don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.’ And this sounds like exactly the sort of business people wake up dead for sticking their nose into.”
Miriam shrugged. “Paulie, I’ve got status among them. I couldn’t just vanish. Too many people would ask questions.”
“Like they did when you appeared out of nowhere?” Paulette stared at her cynically. “Miriam. Seriously, one last time, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Please, just for me, will you drop it?”
Miriam crossed her arms, irritated. “Who’s paying your wages?”
The main course appeared, savory meatballs in a hot, sweet tomato sauce. Paulie nodded, her face frozen. “Okay, if that’s how you want to do it,” she said quietly. “You’re the boss, you know best. Okay?”
“Oh . . . okay.” I went too far, Miriam realized. Shit. How do I apologize for that? She glanced down at her plate. “Yeah, that’s how I want to play it,” she said. Play it all the way, then apologize. Paulie was a mensch, she’d come round.
“First I have to figure out if it really is what it seems to be. Although given that stuff about W-star heterozygotes, I can’t see what else it might be. Then if I’m right, I have to figure out how to use it. At best”—she bit into a meatball—“it could give me all the leverage I need. They couldn’t touch me, not even my psycho grandmother could. Hmm, great meatballs. So yeah, I think I need to go pay the clinic an anonymous visit.” She flashed Paulette a tentative smile. “Know where I can buy a stethoscope around here?”
ARRESTED
The auditor smiled as she walked in the door. “I’ve come to see Dr. Darling,” she announced, parking her briefcase beside the desk. Her expression was disturbingly cheery as she raised an ID card: “FDA, clinical audit division. I don’t have an appointment.”
The receptionist visibly teetered on the edge of a panic attack for a few seconds. “I’m afraid Dr. Darling isn’t—” She lost her thread. The auditor didn’t look particularly threatening: just another office worker in a conservative suit, shoulder-length black hair, severe spectacles. But she was from the FDA. And unannounced! “I’ll just see if I can get him? Wait right here . . .”
The auditor tapped her toe a trifle impatiently as the receptionist fielded two incoming calls and paged Dr. Darling. Glancing round, the auditor took in the waiting area, from the bleached pine curves of the desk to the powder-blue modular sofa for visitors to sit on. The walls were hung with anodyne still-life paintings of fruit baskets, alternating with certificates testifying that this HMO or that insurance company had voted the clinic an award for excellence in some obscure field. It was all very professional, nothing that could possibly offend anyone. A classic medical industry head office, all promises and no downside. Not a hint that it might be the front end for a slave factory, or dabbling in eugenics. “Excuse me?” She looked up. “Dr. Darling will be right with you.”
The door opened. Dr. Andrew Darling was forty-something, excessively coiffed and sporting a thousand-dollar smile. “Good morning! You must be from the FDA, Dr., ah . . . ?”
“Anderson,” said Miriam, holding up the ID card and mentally crossing her fingers. Get me a fake ID, she’d told Brill. Not police or DEA or anything like that, but I want to be able to walk into any restaurant or drugstore and scare the living daylights out of the manager. And Brill had just narrowed her eyes and looked at Miriam thoughtfully and nodded, and all of a sudden Miriam was an FDA standards compliance officer called Julie Anderson.
It was, she reflected, a bit like magic. The Clan could—of necessity—do things with false ID that beggared the imagination, far better than anything she’d had to work with on undercover investigations for The Industry Weatherman. It was funny what a few million dollars a year in the right pockets could buy you. As long as you had the brass neck—the sense of personal invulnerability—to make effective use of it. Miriam’s wrist itched under the temporary tattoo. Yes, she thought.
“Ah, Dr. Anderson.” Darling barely examined her card. “If you’d care to follow me?”
Darling turned and led her through a maze of cubicles and corridors lined with the usual water coolers, photocopiers, and wilting rubber plants, to an office that seemed too cluttered and compact to be that of an executive. There were files of hardcopy case notes on his desk and a subsiding heap of medical journals behind the glass front of a very used-looking bookcase. “I wasn’t expecting a compliance audit this month,” he said.
“I know. You should have received a preliminary e-mail by now, though. This isn’t the start of a full investigation, I hope; more of a precautionary check, I didn’t bring a full team with me. To be frank, I’m hoping you can just clarify a few points for me and we can leave it at that?”
“That’s very irregular.” Darling looked slightly puzzled.
Another false note and he’ll see through me, Miriam realized edgily. But it was too late for second thoughts now. She stared at him through the lenses of her false spectacles and concentrated on playing her role to perfection. “We’ve been asked to investigate quietly. By another government agency.” She tapped her briefcase. “You’ve been dealing with Applied Genomics via a cutout trust. All perfectly aboveboard.” She smiled. “Don’t tell me this is the first time anyone’s asked you about it?”
She’d struck pay dirt: Darling’s face turned gray. “Who sent you here?”