Lab Notes: a novel (2 page)

She acknowledged that the vibe part might have been true in some isolated cases. But hey, it worked for her.

Having spent days and weeks on end living with indigenous tribes, she witnessed things that defied scientific explanation and learned not to challenge their validity. Besides, if she was going to display condor bones, in the absence of a prehistoric user manual why not follow the guidelines laid out by an expert? In this case, it was the shaman.

She glanced over at the bones and had to admit it nettled a bit seeing them all askew like that; it disturbed her sense of order. But was it as simple as that—merely a display that needed rearranging? Or, as Vincent suggested, did she see them as a talisman?

After a moment’s reflection she shook her head and said, “Nah,” and reached over to align the bones as per the shaman’s instructions.

The universe back in alignment, she grabbed a granola bar from her desk drawer, took a generous bite and reached down to retrieve the FedEx envelop from the floor. She checked the “Received” date, and chided Vincent across the room: “This has been sitting around for four days. How do you expect to be made famous by a letter bomb or anthrax exposure if you don’t open your mail?” She didn’t really expect a response.

She zipped off the tab and, to her amazement, pulled out two first-class plane tickets and an invitation to a Christmas yacht party at Bayside Research Inc in Texas.

Diane ran her finger over the raised gold and red lettering. “Houston again,” she mumbled.

μ CHAPTER TWO μ

Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.

∞Alan Valentine∞

In 1992, Bayside Research Inc. was two years old and not yet on its feet. By then, Raymond Bellfort had run through his seed money, his part of an inheritance from some family oil wells.

The establishment of a biotech company didn’t require the expanse of land, or the elaborate building Bellfort had purchased and renovated with the bulk of the funds. But he had been sure that at least one of BRI’s three original scientists would produce a “magic bullet” before his money ran out.

That not being the case, he borrowed from his wife’s trust fund—also oil money. Unlike Raymond’s wildcatting father and uncle, Charlotte Bellfort’s family had
other
people drill their wells. And the old adage held true: The farther they were from the work, the more money they made.

Another year passed at BRI—without the bonanza Raymond expected. And Charlotte informed him, in the presence of several of his staff, she was cutting off funds to the BRI “black hole.”

In the worst scenario Raymond Bellfort could have imagined, he was forced to turn to his cousin, Gabriel Carrera. And as Raymond expected, Gabriel, with his superior grades in prep school, his two degrees from Harvard, his GQ good looks, his industrial family’s tremendous wealth and his damned do-gooder attitude, granted him the money he needed to keep BRI afloat.

Raymond didn’t know which was worse: Charlotte’s financial squeeze on his gonads or the thrust of Gabriel’s generosity through his heart.

For his investment, Gabriel asked for sixty percent of BRI’s stock, prompting Raymond to curse Harvard Business School for not teaching the concept of family loyalty. Their mothers were sisters for God’s sake.

Even with the generous sum Gabriel paid for the near-worthless stock and the gentle buy-back clause he had written into the deal, Raymond was bitter that his cousin owned control of his company—therefore, of him.

Carrera watched BRI closely for the next year. He insisted on choosing projects and hiring staff, only
half
joking that Raymond saw great promise in anyone wearing a lab coat and carrying a cage full of mice.

Raymond’s contempt for his cousin deepened.

Then, just before withdrawing his thumb from BRI’s daily operations, Gabriel Carrera recruited Dr. Leonard Everly, leading to Raymond Bellfort’s reversal of fortune.

Dr. Everly was a chemist who had helped develop a substance to extract oil from avocados for the cosmetics industry and later on developed a product to remove oil from drilling mud for the oil and gas industry.

His latest product, a super-solvent food supplement,
Flatulex
, held the promise of preventing high cholesterol in people who consumed fatty foods—if the animal test results held up in humans.

He completed his animal research at BRI within several months. Then, seeing Raymond Bellfort as a kindred spirit, Everly approached him with a marketing proposal of sorts.

“Why expend BRI’s resources to complete the development of
Flatulex
?” he asked Raymond. “Indeed, why even look for a jointventure with a pharmaceutical company and have to share the wealth?”

Leonard Everly had studied the industry. He knew who would jump at the chance to develop the drug with BRI. But better yet, he knew which companies would collapse should his product enter the marketplace.

“It’s disruptive technology. Just a rumor of
Flatulex’s
existence—even before clinical trials—could trash some companies’ stocks,” he said. “Think of the cholesterol-lowering drugs on the market and downstream to all the companies with treatments for heart disease. Do you know how many angioplasties were done last year and how many stents inserted?

“Just like the oil companies inducing the automakers to shelve the development of the battery-operated car for years, we’ll have companies standing in line to buy
Flatulex
off the market – and bury it. Hell, we might even get the American Medical Association to kick in.”

Leonard Everly assured the enraptured Raymond Bellfort that his days of struggle were behind him. “Forget the interminable Food and Drug Administration paperwork and procedures.” Everly promised an immediate windfall with his “reverse marketing” plan. Bellfort approved of the proposal even before it was completely laid out.

Dr. Everly didn’t share the glitch he had found in his research with Raymond Bellfort. It would take a buyer years to find it, that is, if they even went to the expense to look.

Within three months,
Flatulex
was sold through a biotech broker in Germany. All transactions were done through numbered offshore accounts.

Unbeknownst to Gabriel Carrera, the majority stockholder, only a third of the funds showed up on BRI’s books as revenue. The rest was split between Bellfort and Everly who agreed that select future projects would be handled the same way.

And eureka! BRI had redefined bioextortion.

The sprawling Bayside Research Inc complex stood atop a bluff on Five Mile Cove, a scoop out of the western shore of Galveston Bay. Local boaters nicknamed the four-story Greek revival main building “The Texas White House.”

Dense stands of live oaks—trunks bent away from prevailing winds, branches bearded with Spanish moss—shaded outbuildings and jogging trails throughout the grounds.

BRI’s marina, at the base of the bluff, held the one-hundred-twenty-foot motor yacht,
Enterprise;
a forty-foot sailboat,
Woodwind;
a research vessel and several boat slips for visitors.

Raymond Bellfort considered his yacht and harbor, both built in the company’s ninth year, to be grand measures of his success in the burgeoning field of biotechnology.

Flushed with his accomplishments, Bellfort embellished his marina with ionic scrolls atop thirty-foot pilings that anchored the floating docks.

Raymond Bellfort knew the Bayside Research staff called him “The Admiral” behind his back, but he didn’t mind. Most employees assumed his frequent trips down the steps to the
Enterprise
were motivated by his love of the yachting life. And indeed there was
some
call-of-the-sea behind his decision to convert the yacht’s middle-deck stateroom to an on-the-water office complete with mahogany bookshelves and wainscoting, media center and bar.

But, for the most part, the on-board office was created to provide Bellfort with a vantage point for gazing up at his overwhelming passion—the white pillared temple of his entrepreneurial genius that presided over the marina and Galveston Bay.

It was noon and BRI’s administrative offices were closed for lunch. But Raymond Bellfort and Maxine Boudreaux, his leggy thirty-two-year-old business manager and sometime confidant, remained sequestered aboard the
Enterprise.
Maxine had given up her lunch hour to offer her boss moral support.

She watched from the bar as Bellfort paced between the black-lacquered banquet table at one end of the main salon and the marble-topped bar at the other end.

A bearish hulk of a man who’d already downed one and a half martinis, he still managed to follow a narrow path of repeating patterns in the antique rug: right foot on the hunter and lion, left foot on the tiger and leopard… until finally he stopped at the bar.

He pulled a small plastic bottle from his jacket, popped a blood pressure pill and gulped the last of his martini. Then he stared off into space and said, “You’d think they would have responded by now; they had the option of answering by email.”

Maxine rolled her eyes. “It’s only been a week since I FedEx’d the invitation; the party’s two and a half weeks away.”

“You might phone Diane Rose and make sure they received it.”

“She’d know we could track it through FedEx. A phone call would seem kinda desperate—don’t you think?”

“I
am
desperate. When I met the Roses for lunch in Pittsburgh, I pretty much decided not to make a job offer before the salads arrived. I just went through the motions of an interview. Then I made some excuse to cut the meeting short. They probably thought I was rude. So now, if they don’t show up at the party, I’m screwed.”

Raymond reached over and plucked the toothpick and olive from his martini glass. He ate the olive, then absent-mindedly pried the toothpick between his bottom teeth.

Maxine sat on a bar stool, sipping a coke, waiting. Early in her employment at BRI, she had learned to keep a low profile, suppressing her natural assertiveness (some called it pushiness) while Bellfort worked through a business crisis.

She now knew better than to suggest he remove his jacket and tie, or insinuate it was too early in the day for martinis. And, she was
especially
careful never again to recommend that her psychic, Amelia, come aboard to foretell the outcome of his predicament.

Maxine could never subdue her curiosity however. So, she just went with it. “What’s so special about Diane and Vincent Rose that we need them at our Christmas party?” she asked.

Raymond turned and glared at her. “Did I say I thought they were special?”

It seemed like a trick question. So Maxine returned his stare and remained silent, giving him time to rethink his answer.

Raymond leaned an elbow on the bar, tunneled his fingers through his hair and tightened his jaw. “As you know, since that little bastard Harry Lee absconded with his technology, I have been interviewing scientists to fill the empty offices and laboratories on the fourth floor. And I found several excellent prospects.”

He straightened up and gazed out over the bay. “What you don’t know is: Last week I was informed that our
Boarrrd
of Directors rejected my recommendations, choosing instead the Drs. Rose.”

“But why the Roses?”

“Ahh, that’s a good question isn’t it? It seems that—over my strong objections—the
Boarrrd
has decreed that BRI will join the quest for plant-based pharmaceuticals.

“It turns out that Diane Rose is the premiere ethnobotanist in this country. And she’s also a pharmacologist. So, she’s the Board’s prime candidate to head up BRI’s new venture.”

He made quotation marks in the air and, in a monotone, listed his new marching orders: “We will be signing royalty agreements with tropical countries. Then we will collect plants, soil, bark and so forth from their rain forests so we can screen them for useful chemical compounds to create biopharmaceuticals. We will also seek out tribal shamans and spend time, lots of time, buddying up to them so we can analyze plants used for their native cures. Ethnobotany it’s called. It’s a ver-rr-ry slow process. And verr-rr-ry costly.”

He slapped the bar. “So, there you have it—a sure formula for bankruptcy.”

He stepped over to a cabinet, rooted around and came up with more olives. “There’s an upside to all this I guess. Diane Rose’s husband is a biochemist. He’s also her research partner—and a real prig, by the way. He’s in the final stages of developing a pharmaceutical from one of his wife’s jungle plants. If it’s approved by the FDA, it’s supposedly the best drug to control the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease to come along in forty-some years. I put out some feelers this week. There are parties interested in investing in the drug—even before the approval comes through. That could provide us with a quick return on our investment in the Roses.”

Raymond mixed another martini. He took a long swig, then placed his glass on the bar and stared at it. “I was told to: ‘Just make it happen.’ There’s no limit to the incentives I can offer the Roses.”

He turned to Maxine with glassy eyes and a thin smile. “So, I guess that does make them pretty special, doesn’t it?”