She’d gone into this business to ease the suffering of patients — because her own mother had had such a difficult time dying. But what she’d meant by “easing suffering” was putting them down like dogs.
Robert Covey returned to his den. He was badly shaken but physically fine. He had some Luminux in his system but not a dangerously high dosage. “She seemed so nice, so normal,” he whispered.
Oh, you bet, Tal thought bitterly. A goddamn perfect member of the Four Percent Club.
He and LaTour did some paperwork — Tal so upset that he didn’t even think about his own questionnaire — and they walked back to LaTour’s car. Tal sat heavily in the front seat, staring straight ahead. The homicide cop didn’t start the engine. He said, “Sometimes closing a case is harder than not closing it. That’s something they don’t teach you at the academy. But you did what you had to. People’ll be alive now because of what you did.”
“I guess,” he said sullenly. He was picturing Mac’s office. Her crooked smile when she’d look over the park. Her laugh.
“Let’s file the papers. Then we’ll go get a beer. Hey, you do drink beer, don’tcha?”
“Yeah, I drink beer,” Tal said.
“We’ll make a cop outta you yet, Einstein.”
Tal clipped his seatbelt on, deciding that being a real cop was the last thing in the world he wanted.
A beep on the intercom. “Mr. Covey’s here, sir.”
“I’ll be right there.” Dr. William Farley rose from his desk, a glass-sheet-covered Victorian piece his business partner had bought for him in New England on one of the man’s buying sprees. Farley would have been content to have a metal desk or even a card table.
But in the business of medicine, not the practice, appearances count. The offices of the Lotus Research Foundation, near the mall containing Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, were filled with many antiques. Farley had been amused when they’d moved here three years ago to see the fancy furniture, paintings, objets d’art. Now, they were virtually invisible to him. What he greatly preferred was the huge medical facility itself behind the offices. As a doctor and researcher, that was the only place he felt truly at home.
Forty-eight, slim to the point of being scrawny, hair with a mind of its own, Farley had nonetheless worked hard to rid himself of his backroom medical researcher’s image. He now pulled on his thousand-dollar suit jacket and applied a comb. He paused at the door, took a deep breath, exhaled and stepped into a lengthy corridor to the foundation’s main lobby. It was deserted except for the receptionist and one elderly man, sitting in a deep plush couch.
“Mr. Covey?” the doctor asked, extending his hand.
The man set down the coffee cup he’d been given by the receptionist and they shook hands.
“Dr. Farley?”
A nod.
“Come on into my office.”
They chatted about the weather as Farley led him down the narrow corridor to his office. Sometimes the patients here talked about sports, about their families, about the paintings on the walls.
Sometimes they were so nervous they said nothing at all.
Entering the office, Farley gestured toward a chair and then sat behind the massive desk. Covey glanced at it, unimpressed. Farley looked him over. He didn’t appear particularly wealthy — an off-the-rack suit, a tie with stripes that went one way while those on his shirt went another. Still, the director of the Lotus Foundation had learned enough about rich people to know that the wealthiest were those who drove hybrid Toyota gas-savers and wore raincoats until they were threadbare.
Farley poured more coffee and offered Covey a cup.
“Like I said on the phone yesterday, I know a little about your condition. Your cardiologist is Jennifer Lansdowne, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re seeing someone from the Cardiac Support Center at the hospital.”
Covey frowned. “I was.”
“You’re not any longer?”
“A problem with the nurse they sent me. I haven’t decided if I’m going back. But that’s a whole ’nother story.”
“Well, we think you might be a good candidate for our services here, Mr. Covey. We offer a special program to patients in certain cases.”
“What kind of cases?”
“Serious cases.”
“The Lotus Research Foundation for Alternative Treatment,” Covey recited. “Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think ginseng and acupuncture work for serious cases.”
“That’s not what we’re about.” Farley looked him over carefully. “You a businessman, sir?”
“Was. For half a century.”
“What line?”
“Manufacturing. Then venture capital.”
“Then I imagine you generally like to get straight to the point.”
“You got that right.”
“Well, then let me ask you this, Mr. Covey. How would you like to live forever?”
“How’s that?”
In the same way that he’d learned to polish his shoes and speak in words of fewer than four syllables, Farley had learned how to play potential patients like trout. He knew how to pace the pitch. “I’d like to tell you about the foundation. But first would you mind signing this?” He opened the drawer of his desk and passed a document to Covey.
He read it. “A nondisclosure agreement.”
“It’s pretty standard.”
“I know it is,” the old man said. “I’ve written ‘em. Why do you want me to sign it?”
“Because what I’m going to tell you can’t be made public.”
He was intrigued now, the doctor could tell, though trying not to show it.
“If you don’t want to, I understand. But then I’m afraid we won’t be able to pursue our conversation further.”
Covey read the sheet again. “Got a pen?”
Farley handed him a Mont Blanc; Covey took the heavy barrel with a laugh suggesting he didn’t like ostentation very much. He signed and pushed the document back.
Farley put it into his desk. “Now, Dr. Lansdowne’s a good woman. And she’ll do whatever’s humanly possible to fix your heart and give you a few more years. But there’re limits to what medical science can do. After all, Mr. Covey, we all die. You, me, the children being born at this minute. Saints and sinners... we’re all going to die.”
“You got an interesting approach to medical services, Doctor. You cheer up all your patients this way?”
Dr. Farley smiled. “We hear a lot about aging nowadays.”
“Can’t turn on the TV without it.”
“And about people trying to stay young forever.”
“Second time you used that word. Keep going.”
“Mr. Covey, you ever hear about the Hayflick rule?”
“Nope. Never have.”
“Named after the man who discovered that human cells can reproduce themselves a limited number of times. At first, they make perfect reproductions of themselves. But after a while they can’t keep up that level of quality control, you could say; they become more and more inefficient.”
“Why?”
Covey, he reflected, was a sharp one. Most people sat there and nodded with stupid smiles on their faces. He continued. “There’s an important strand of DNA that gets shorter and shorter each time the cells reproduce. When it gets too short, the cells go haywire and they don’t duplicate properly. Sometimes they stop altogether.”