A Fierce Radiance (36 page)

Rutherford knew he’d turn up tonight.

As he flipped through his pad to find the page where he’d left off, he wondered where, in fact, Catalano had found whatever it was that he was selling.

Well, in the end that didn’t really matter. These drugs were made
from natural products, and you might find them outside your own back door. If ownership questions came up later, Rutherford would say exactly that: this particular medication? Why, his grandson had found it in Central Park, across the street from the apartment. This medication had nothing to do with the substance Nick Catalano had sold him.

Anybody could discover anything. That’s what it meant to be a natural product—and right now, you couldn’t patent them and you couldn’t own them. That was sure to change.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
Roosevelt’s words at the 1936 Democratic Convention came into his mind. Rutherford was a Republican, but he still listened when the president gave a speech.

Rutherford had a hunch that this might just be his own, personal rendezvous with destiny.

W
hen he got outside, Nick was panting. Sweating. What had he just done? And was it right?

He stopped to get a grip on himself. People bumped into him. He’d interfered with the flow of noontime pedestrians.

Where was he? Where was he going?

West Forty-fourth—that’s where he was. Head east, he told himself. Go home. To the Institute. He turned left. The Chrysler Building was before him, so close it was watching him, the metallic gargoyles staring.

The street was packed. The heat was unbearable. The air was thick with humidity. The sky was gray from the heat and the dirt and the soggy moisture in the air. He headed toward Grand Central. He had to get the subway, to go uptown.

The crowd jostled him. The city pressed against him.

He was right to sell the substance to Rutherford. He was right, he was right…he repeated this to convince himself. He’d go home,
put everything in a shopping bag, and at 7:00
PM
he’d give the bag to Rutherford and take his check.

He’d been through his options a hundred times.

Rutherford was Claire’s father. Nick knew him and could trust him. Rutherford would protect him.

Nick had to think about the future. What was past was past and couldn’t be taken back, or made better, or forgiven.

I
n the bottom of the fourth inning, the crowd screamed its approval.

“Mom, did you see that?” Charlie turned around to explain. “Billy got to second on an error at first.”

Billy
was Billy Herman, the hitter. Claire restrained herself from covering her ears to muffle the din.

Friday evening, July 24, at Ebbets Field. The Brooklyn Dodgers versus the Pittsburgh Pirates. They had seats by the railing along the third-base line, which Claire had to admit was somewhat better than being in the bleachers. Charlie and his friend Ben, and her driver, Tony, and his younger brother, Joe, were sitting in the row in front of her. John Smith, of Pfizer, was sitting next to her.

The Dodgers were having a great year, with a seven-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals, or so Charlie had explained to her. Last year the Yankees had defeated the Dodgers in the World Series, but Charlie was confident the Dodgers would make the series again this year and defeat the Yankees.

“Go—go!” The boys punched each other’s shoulders in enthusiasm as Mickey Owen drove in a run and reached second on another error. They stood, jumping and shouting as if they’d run the bases themselves. John Smith also stood to cheer.

Claire did not stand. The heat, the noise, the reek of sauerkraut, the vertiginous angle of the Ebbets Field stands rising around them, ex
hausted her and gave her a touch of queasiness. She’d never understood the appeal of baseball. This game had started early because of the dim-out regulations, and the temperature was still in the high eighties. The humidity was a gel-like sheet pressed over her face. At the beginning of the game, Red Barber, the radio announcer, had urged them to donate blood for the troops. The mention of blood contributed to her queasiness. They were instructed to throw back foul balls, so the balls could be sent to the armed services teams. They stood for the wartime innovation of singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” At that point, Claire had been ready to go home, but she had at least two more hours ahead of her.

Smith rearranged himself in his seat. “I like it out here,” he said when the crowd quieted. “I feel relaxed.” Dressed in a blue-and-white seersucker suit, tie tight against his neck, perspiration beading on his temples beneath his panama hat, Mr. Smith didn’t look relaxed, but Claire took his word for it. He was a large, strong man with gray hair and a granite face. “You feel relaxed, Mrs. Shipley?”

“Yes, very relaxed.”

“I’m glad.”

The boys were lucky to be using his tickets; she wouldn’t offend him by complaining. This week when Claire and Tony had visited Pfizer headquarters, Smith had given them the usual song and dance about Pfizer’s lack of success and shown them the usual pristine laboratory. Just as Claire was about to walk down an apparently off-limits corridor, he offered to take her, her family, all her friends and the families of all her friends to a baseball game. He was part owner of the team, so this was no sacrifice for him. At first she’d refused. Then she caught the look on Tony’s face—Tony who might someday have his dream fulfilled and become a tank driver—and she thought of Charlie, who would escape the conflict only by the grace of God, and she accepted, provided she could pay for the tickets. Smith insisted he had the seats anyway, but she insisted on paying, and finally he capitulated and let her pay. She wasn’t about to start accepting bribes.

So here they were, sweltering in the humidity of a New York summer’s evening, Tony’s uniform shirt glued to his back with perspiration. Charlie was on his third hot dog, Ben was finishing an astonishing fourth. Joe ignored his hot dog to give his full attention to the game.

“That was inside,” Tony shouted.

“Inside,” Ben repeated.

“Okay, ball two.” Tony provided more details to the boys, and Claire gave up trying to follow. All evening he’d been explaining to them the nuances of each pitch and the special talents of each batter and the histories and statistics of every player back to what sounded like the beginning of time itself. As he spoke to the younger boys, the set of Tony’s shoulders was both relaxed and proud.

“Wonderful to see the boys excited,” Smith said.

“Yes.”

“If you have time after the game, I’ll take them to the locker room to meet Leo.” Leo Durocher was the manager of the Dodgers. “No women allowed, though.” He chuckled. “That all right with you?”

“Yes, of course. A wonderful opportunity for the boys.” She tried to sound excited on their behalf.

“I hope they’ll have many opportunities to come out here as my guests. With you paying for their tickets, of course.”

“You’re very kind, Mr. Smith.”

“Not at all. The least I can do.”

The least you can do for what or whom? Claire wondered.

“Yes, it’s nice to come out here to the stadium, isn’t it?” he mused.

“Out here, everything is free and easy and we can really talk to each other. Not like the office. Too many open ears at the office, eh? That reminds me: I met your father recently.”

Claire was taken aback. “You did?”

“Sure. He’s involved with Hanover, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I saw him at a meeting. At the Harvard Club.”

“He doesn’t discuss business details with me.”

“That’s as it should be. I’m the same with my family.”

But Claire wondered, How did John Smith know that Edward Rutherford was her father? Were all these pharmaceutical people watching her, just as she was assigned to watch them? She wouldn’t let herself become paranoid, but it was disconcerting.

Smith turned puckish. “Forgive me for indulging in a little harmless espionage, Mrs. Shipley: is our setup at Pfizer pretty much the same as the other places you’ve visited?”

“Pretty nearly identical, Mr. Smith. The part of the setup I’m seeing, I mean. New and never used.”

“Good. Glad to hear it. Always good to know that we’re keeping up with the Joneses.”

“A grand ambition, Mr. Smith, to keep up with the Joneses.”

“Absolutely. Tell me something, Mrs. Shipley, this penicillin photography just a job for you, or you have a dog in this fight, too?”

She paused to consider her response. She decided to be honest with him, even though she suspected her honesty would disarm him. “My daughter died of septicemia.”

Before them, the three boys and the young man in uniform cheered for another play. But Claire and Smith were suddenly in an intimate conversation.

“She died years ago, though it seems, well, like yesterday. She was only three years old.”

“Ah.” Smith seemed oddly affected by this, rubbing his knees, his eyes turning bloodshot, but he said nothing more. He turned away from her and watched the game. A hit straight down the center drove in two runs. When Claire moved her feet, she felt as if she were peeling her shoes off the concrete; the soles were sticky from the spilled beer and Coke flowing down from seats behind them.

“Let me tell you some history,” Smith finally said. “We at Pfizer were working on penicillin long before Dr. Florey brought his sample
over from Oxford. We worked with a group at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons. A team led by Dr. Dawson, a fine man. We made the stuff, they tested it. Problem was, by the time the penicillin traveled from our manufacturing plant in Brooklyn and to their testing laboratory in Washington Heights, it was useless. Didn’t work at all. I told the guys, to keep their spirits up, that the problem was the Williamsburg Bridge. The penicillin didn’t like the potholes on the bridge.”

He glanced at her. She waited.

“The truth is,” he continued, “only God knows what killed it. That’s penicillin for you. Completely unpredictable. But when the government decided to move ahead with it, we fell into line. Doing our duty. At Pfizer, we’re going from bedpans and milk bottles directly to deep-tank submerged fermentation. This is a secret, by the way, but it’s a secret that doesn’t matter, because nobody else can do it. Sure they want to do it, they’re trying to do it, but they can’t. They don’t have the know-how. Only Pfizer has the know-how and the experienced, dedicated scientists, from years spent perfecting the deep-tank fermentation methods used to produce citric acid, one of our traditional specialties. We bought an old ice plant on Marcy Avenue, and we’re moving in huge fermentors, bigger than railroad cars, over a dozen of them, and we’re going forward. We’ve got one goal: to be the biggest producer of penicillin in the country. Okay, we’re not in production yet, but with the team we’ve got, it’s only a matter of time.”

“I’d like to get some pictures of those fermentors.” She saw the shots in her mind: a row of giant vats in a rhythm of steel, gleaming in the lights she’d set up around them, workmen dwarfed as they walked among them. American industry triumphant. “I’m sure Dr. Bush would, too.”

“Yes, I’m sure he would,” Smith said. “Mrs. Shipley, I’ve got men working twenty-four hours a day, catching sleep at the plant when they can. Have we had any success? Can’t say that we have. Contami
nation, that’s the problem, over and over. But we will have success, sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we don’t need some well-intentioned government flunky like you or James Stanton or Nicholas Catalano coming around and checking up on us. Nothing personal, mind you, and you’re always welcome to bring the boys to a baseball game. Anytime.” He gestured magnanimously, taking in the field, the terrific seats, the hot dogs. “This has nothing to do with you. It’s the principle. We’re serving our country and doing our duty, but we’re running a business, too. This isn’t a Communist state, at least not the last time I checked.”

“Of course it’s not a Communist state,” she said, trying to make herself sound as if she were teasing him, “but I still don’t understand why I can’t take the pictures. I’ll make you look like a hero.”

“I don’t need to be a hero. You can’t take the pictures because this is our business, not yours. Not Vannevar Bush’s. It’s
our
business. I’m looking ahead to when this war is over. To when penicillin is available to the general public. The government may control the patents, but there’ll still be a profit in selling the drug. Do I want George Merck looking at some photos in
Life
magazine and figuring out how I do my work? George Merck is a fine fellow and I wish him success, but I’m not going to hand him the results of my team’s hard labor.”

He studied her. “Well, I do run on a bit, don’t I.” It wasn’t a question. “You’ll have to forgive me.” His demeanor conveyed that he wasn’t asking for forgiveness. “I still think about poor Lucretia Stanton. I met her once at a conference. Remarkable woman. I offered her a job, but she wouldn’t take it. Considered herself above the profit motive. Those people over at the Rockefeller Institute—they think they’re better than people trying to do business and make money. But who accomplishes more in the end, eh? We do. Let me give you some advice, Mrs. Shipley. You seem like a nice woman. A good mother. You’ve got a fine son. Your father’s a good man. You know and I know that penicillin isn’t the only substance we’re working on. Sure, we’re trying to save lives,
but there’s a lot of money at stake here, too. Give up this assignment of yours. Not everybody in this business is as civilized as I am. ‘Nice guys finish last’—one of Leo’s favorite sayings, as you probably know. An apt motto for many circumstances.” He sighed wearily. “It’s not for me to tell anyone else how to run his business. But I can confidently speak for myself and my colleagues at Pfizer when I say: we’re the experts, let us get on with things.
That
would constitute your personal service to your country. And to yourself and your family.”

He didn’t speak in anger. He simply communicated facts. Was he threatening her directly, or merely imparting a threat from others? Claire wasn’t certain. Yes, he frightened her, but she wouldn’t let him suspect it. She shot back, “This just a job for you, Mr. Smith, or you have a dog in this fight, too?”

He surprised her by shuffling in his seat. He stared at home plate for a moment, before turning to her once more. “As a matter of fact, you and I have something in common: my daughter died of bacterial meningitis. Nothing the doctors could do to help her.” He stopped, unable to go on. Then, “She loved coming to the ball game. She loved the hot dogs, the ice cream, the peanuts. She was a pretty little thing. Smart as a whip. Penicillin would have saved her—or at least I like to think it would have. We’re still waiting for clinical trials on bacterial meningitis. But indulge me: I like to think she’d be alive today, sitting here with us. Talking to the boys. Flirting with Tony. If her doctors had penicillin. Or some other antibacterial. So I’m doing my damnedest to make sure that nobody else’s kid dies like that. Meningitis is a horrible death. Septicemia, too. Every death is a horrible death; I’m not running a contest. Mark my words, Mrs. Shipley: Pfizer is going to create an entire nation where kids don’t die of infectious diseases. You see, I
am
an idealist—but an idealist who knows that only money, and lots of it, money in the form of patents and profits, can turn my goal into reality. You understand?”

Against all her expectations, his eyes were swollen and watery.

“I do understand, Mr. Smith. Believe me, I do.”

Pulling his panama hat down over his forehead, he turned and snapped his fingers at a concessionaire in the next aisle. He ordered a hot dog in a gruff voice. When he received it, covered with sauerkraut and mustard, half-wrapped in a napkin, he cradled it in the palms of his hands without eating it. He stared at the field, the sauerkraut congealing in the summer heat.

The Dodgers won that night, 6–4, their fourth victory in a row.