"Sounds good," Stuart said. "Black's fine."
A high-tech, burnished-steel coffee machine claimed pride of place on the counter. Furth moved efficiently. He pulled mugs-not cups and saucers-down from the built-in cabinets, placed one under each spigot on the machine, and pushed one button. In less than a minute, the coffee was in front of them, and Stuart took a sip. "Thanks for seeing me. I know you must be busy. I probably should have called first, but I've been running on automatic for the past couple of days."
Furth waved that off. "I'd imagine so. I'd actually thought of calling you, but…" He paused.
"But you wanted to see if I got myself arrested first?"
A muted acknowledgment, shoulders slipping an inch, a quick twitch of an embarrassed smile. "Maybe a little of that. Sorry."
Stuart nodded. "For the record, I didn't kill my wife. The papers- everybody, in fact-seems to have it wrong. I wasn't there when it happened."
"All right," Furth said. "It wouldn't be the first time the media got things wrong. They need a story. For the moment you're the story. I've been there too. We can agree that it sucks. Now how can I help you?"
Stuart's drive down here had been an unraveling and evolving fantasy where he terrorized the men with whom Caryn had been involved, Furth the first of them. Now he was facing this charming and confident businessman in the flesh, and suddenly his very presence here struck him as somewhat ludicrous, even surreal. "To be honest with you, I'm not certain," he began. "I'm trying to get a handle on some parts of Caryn's life that I didn't know too much about. One of the first things I came across is I understand that she was having some issues with PII, financial and otherwise, and that you were the point man she talked to about all that."
"I'm not sure of everything you're talking about, but you're probably right. That was me. But if you're saying you think there's some connection between those issues and her death, I'd say you're wildly off the mark."
"I'm not saying that. Not yet, anyway. I don't even know what the issues were."
Furth killed a few seconds with his coffee, then put the mug down on the glass table in front of them and sat back in his chair, crossing a leg. It was the opposite of an antagonistic posture, relaxed and open. He seemed ready to talk. "You said 'financial and otherwise.' What's the otherwise?"
"I guess it would fall under ethics. She'd heard her socket had killed some people."
A cock of the head. "I thought you said you didn't know the issues."
"Not all of them. And I just found this one out an hour ago. So it's true?"
"Well," Furth said, "that's still to be determined. There are questions, certainly. And Caryn wanted them answered."
"Before final FDA approval?"
"That would have been her choice, yes."
"And what was holding that up? Getting answers?"
Furth brought his hand up to his Adam's apple and pulled at the knot of his tie. He cleared his throat. "Well, the company, PII, did the usual rigorous clinical testing, of course, as the FDA mandates on any new product, and the results of these tests assured the company and the investors that there was no problem with going into full production."
"Except that there was a problem?"
"Well, of course, when people die, you've got at the very least a perceptual problem." Now Furth uncrossed his legs and came forward a bit in his chair, a smile that begged for understanding. "But the fact is, the deaths were only reported long after the study period, so they were outside the study's parameters."
"But the people really did die, didn't they? Weren't there autopsies to find out why?"
"In some cases, yes, but the results were inconclusive."
"Inconclusive how?"
"In the way that blood clots can come from any number of sources. Not necessarily from complications of hip replacement surgery three to five years before."
"So these people, they died of blood clot complications."
"Basically, yes."
"How many of them?"
"To date, we've had formal confirmation of six. But you have to remember that this is out of over six hundred surgeries. So it's exactly in the ballpark of typical post-op clots, which is about one in a hundred. And remember that none of the patients were under sixty. The Dryden Socket wasn't causing those deaths. It was most probably the surgeries themselves. Typical complications. Tragic, of course, but typical."
"And what did Caryn think about that?"
Furth shrugged, turned his palms up, utterly forthcoming. "If you want the truth, I think she was just hypersensitive because it was her invention, with her name on it and everything. Once PII goes into full production, the numbers are going to be staggering. The profit numbers, I mean. She-both of you-were going to become very, very rich. I think the magnitude and reality of it made her nervous."
Stuart strongly doubted the truth of this. If anything, the opposite-that she would experience even a temporary setback in her pursuit of money-would be more likely to make her nervous. But there was nothing to be gained by voicing that opinion. Instead, he said, "So what was she calling you about?"
"She wanted me to intervene with PII. She thought they could solve the problem in two years or so, once they got a clear understanding of what it was. Again, from the late reports. Some more autopsies, that sort of thing."
"She wanted to put production on hold."
Seeing that Stuart seemed to understand and accept the basic issue, Furth sat back more comfortably again. "Essentially, yes. Which-I think you must know-well, you know about Caryn's mezzanine loan, of course?" "Sure. The broad strokes."
"Well, hers wasn't the only one. And a delay of two years or more at this stage… I mean, some of the investors…" Another shrug. "I think you can see the problem."
"I think so." Stuart clipped out the response and realized that he was struggling to keep the outrage from his voice. "Caryn was threatening to blow the whistle on what she'd come to believe was a faulty product, and if she succeeded it would cost some people maybe millions of dollars. Isn't that about it?"
"I don't think she was quite to the point of blowing the whistle on anything. She just needed some hand-holding, the usual last-minute reassurance. She wanted to go forward as much as the next investor, I believe."
"She didn't talk to you about trying to postpone PII's production?"
"Not with any specificity, no. There really was just too much riding on all this. In another couple of months, both of you would have been smiling all the way to the bank. I'm sure of it."
Stuart felt that if he sat more than another minute or two under Furth's unyielding gaze with its unflappable geniality, he might be forced to come back inside the building with his gun and blow the guy away just on general principles. But there was one more avenue he needed to explore, if gently.
"So, Fred, let me ask-has a homicide inspector named Juhle called you?"
The change of topic didn't scare Furth. In fact, it seemed to put him on firmer ground somehow. Matter-of-fact, he nodded. "Yesterday. He asked what I was doing Sunday night."
"Let me guess," Stuart said. "Sleeping in bed."
"Eleven o'clock Sunday night, what would anybody be doing if you've got to be up at five thirty?"
"Five thirty?"
"Wall Street time. You're in the markets, that's when you're up if you want to make the six-thirty bell. But you already knew what I'd told him?" A question.
Stuart said, "I asked him if he was even looking for any other suspects-besides me-and he said he'd checked alibis with everybody on Caryn's cell phone. Which included you."
"So now you're asking me?" The question didn't seem to bother him, or maybe Fred Furth was so programmed for affability in his career that like Marie Antoinette he wouldn't show any anger or resentment even if he were facing his executioner.