Syndrome - Thomas Hoover (best summer books .TXT) 📗

quite rise to the minimal threshold of credibility.

“You ‘share’… with whom, you self-centered prick? Nobody else was involved. He mortgaged CitiSpace to the hilt and settled those fraud suits to keep you from losing your license. Or worse. You destroyed his business and his life all by yourself.”

He looked as contrite as she’d ever seen him.

“Look, I thought the business plan I had would work out. I really did. I was managing discretionary accounts, but the bond market hit a downdraft when I was long. A few of my clients didn’t have the balls to ride it out. What do you want me to say? That I feel like a complete cretin over what happened? That a day doesn’t go by that I don’t hate myself for it?” His eyes went dead and he seemed to shrivel, his body becoming visibly smaller. “Well, I do. More than you’ll ever know.”

“You didn’t seem all that contrite at the time.”

“I was operating in a high state of denial back then. But now I want to take a shot at growing up. I want to start trying to make up for all that, if you’ll just cut me a little slack and give me a chance.”

“Grant, you’re working for Bartlett Enterprises, doing whatever it is you do. Fine. That’s your job. But now you want me to become a guinea pig when this Dutch doctor needs one in a crunch. Or maybe Mom too, for all I know. Maybe he needs her as well. Two guinea pigs. So don’t try to make this about me and her. Let’s keep it honest. It’s really about you, just like always.”

“Ally, a lot of things have gone on since Dad… passed away. I’ve changed, in more ways than you could ever imagine.” He was all sincerity now, his demeanor rapidly evolving to fit the current vibes of the scene. “I’m not like I used to be. I really mean that. I’ve learned… learned that I can’t always just be thinking about myself.”

“So… what changed you?” The truth was, he did seem different. In some way she couldn’t quite understand. But he was always talking about turning over a new leaf, especially whenever he’d just gotten himself in trouble. That part hadn’t changed at all.

“Ally, Dr. Van der Vliet… I don’t know how much I should tell you, but he’s a miracle worker.” He paused and looked down at his scotch. One thing about him was definitely different, she thought. There was a lot less bravado and swagger. “The thing is, what he’s doing is so powerful. I’m not sure which worries me most-that it’s not true, that it’s just some placebo effect, or that it is true. When I think about the implications…” His voice trailed off again.

“Go on.” She could tell he was dead serious.

“It’s not something I’m sure I should talk about.” He reached over and touched her hand. “But it’s working, I swear. He’s doing things that shouldn’t even be possible.”

Uh-huh, she thought, pulling her hand away.

“Grant, please tell me exactly what you think he could do for Mom.” She wasn’t sure she should be having this conversation. “You want her to go out to the Dorian Institute, right? Where he does his ‘research.’ And I take it that’s where you want me to go too.”

“It’s in northern Jersey, about an hour’s drive from the city, maybe not even if traffic’s light. But I’d only want Mom to go if you say it’s okay. I’m not trying to do anything behind your back.”

She breathed a long sigh, trying to clear her brain. Every other word he uttered was probably part of some hustle. But what was it?

“Why don’t we start at the beginning, Grant? I read his CV, and believe me I’ve got a lot of questions. For starters, how did he convince Winston Bartlett to bankroll him?” She took another sip of her tequila, then set it down. “You’re his flunky now, so you should be able to answer that question.”

“You read the materials I left?”

“Just finished them.”

“Then you know he lost his federal funding at Stanford a few years back, when he was at a critical stage of his research using stem cells. That’s when he came to the Man and persuaded him to put up the money to help him take everything private. The only way Bartlett would play ball was if he could buy the Gerex Corporation and get three-quarter interest in all the patents. Van de Vliet kept the other quarter, but now they’re both hoping to sell off forty-nine percent to a big pharmaceutical company. Not American. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “Sounds like your job is secure.”

“Yeah, right.”

That twitch of nonchalance he had when something really mattered-even as a child he would attempt (and fail) trying not to gloat over some personal success. It was moments like this when she realized she’d missed seeing him and talking to him. When you cut a family member off from you, you also cut yourself off from them. After all, he was her closest blood kin, even though he was an unreconstructed shit. At some level she wished she could get past the bitterness she felt toward him. Could it be he really had changed?

He didn’t like the way the scene was going. What the hell was her problem? He looked at his scotch longingly, then got up and went to the kitchen and got another ice cube for it.

Go easy.

How was he going to get through to her? If word of the Beta screw-up got out, the buyout was toast and Grant Hampton along with it. But if Ally could be brought in…

“Grant,” she was saying, “I want to start off by asking you if you’ve ever taken a really good look at that guy Karl Van de Vliet. Does he look anything like his picture? The one that came with that CV of his.”

“Sure, that’s him.”

“And I assume you’ve actually read his resume?”

“Of course.” Here it comes, he thought. The thing everybody asks.

“If those dates are right, then he has to be-what?-at least sixty years old. But in the picture he doesn’t look a day over forty-five. So what’s going on?”

“Ally, you’re finally getting it.” He rattled the ice in his Dewar’s, then finally took a deep sip. Maybe, he thought, it would help with the courage. “He’s a truly amazing human being.”

“That’s not an answer, Grant. It’s a generality.” She exhaled in obvious exasperation. “But I want an honest answer about one thing, dammit. Do you actually think he could help Mom’s Alzheimer’s? Maybe even reverse it? Tell me the truth. Just once.”

“Ally, I can’t guarantee anything. But it’s worth a shot.”

Now, he thought hopefully, she was sounding like she was starting to come around. Thank God. As for whether Dr. Vee could cure the old bird who knew? But he’d overheard the nurses talking about how he and his research staff had had some phenomenal luck with Alzheimer’s….

“By the way, what happened when you talked to Mom?” he went on. “Did she seem like she understood anything I told her?”

“Grant, she probably understood a lot more than you wanted her to. The bad part is, she let you give her some hope. Now, what’s going to happen if she goes out there and ends up being disappointed?”

It’s a real possibility, he told himself. But it’s probably the only way I’ll ever get you out there, and that’s what really matters.

“Ally, we’ll never know unless… You should go too.”

“Look, maybe I’ll talk to Van de Vliet. But it’s purely information-gathering.” She was staring at him. “So why not tell me? The whole story. Are you doing this for Mom and me, or are we just being used like lab animals?”

“I’m not sure you’re going to believe anything I say.” He sipped again at his scotch, then walked over to the skylight and looked up. Finally he turned back. “After Dad… and everything, I had trouble sleeping. I know you didn’t think it got to me, but it was like some bad force had taken over my mind, haunting me. I became obsessed with death. I took off two months and went to Colorado, camping. Out there, under the stars, I did a lot of thinking. Dad had died suddenly, but maybe that was a blessing in disguise. The rest of us, we all die a little every day. Why does time do the things to us it does? Why do we have to grow old and repulsive?”

He drew on his scotch again, then continued.

“When I came back, I started doing research on aging. That’s when Karl Van de Vliet’s name popped up on the Internet. Some paper he’d given in Vienna years ago. It was about the physiology of aging. But then Tanya came along and I sort of forgot about him. Then when I went to work for Winston Bartlett, there he was. The very same guy. It was weird, but it was as though God had delivered him.”

“Is this shaggy-dog story going to end up being about why he looks so young?”

“I’m getting there.” He smiled. “I kept wondering too, and then finally I saw an opening in his schedule and took him to dinner here in the city, down at Chanterelle. A social thing. Eventually, after a couple of bottles of serious wine, it came out that once upon a time he had done an unconventional experiment. On himself. It was sort of an accident, something about melanoma research.”

“So he—”

“You asked me why he looks so young. Well, some procedure he did apparently stopped his skin from aging. But then he changed the subject and wouldn’t talk about it anymore. So do I think he’s a miracle worker? I’d say he’s walking proof of something. That you can cheat nature.”

“And?”

“There is no ‘and.’ That’s all I know.” He came back and settled onto the couch. His scotch glass was empty and he yearned for another, but that small voice inside was urging discretion. This was the moment that could be make or break.

“But to get back to you, Ally, you really should meet him. I can’t talk specifics about the actual clinical trials, but let me just say they’ve been very positive. There’s every reason to think he can help you. And Mom too.”

He studied her, trying to read her mind. He wondered if she could detect the anxiety he felt lurking just beneath the surface. Was she seeing through him, the way Nina, for all her mental debility, had seemed to?

“Grant, has this doctor Van de Vliet gotten into some kind of medical experiment that’s turned into a Faustian bargain? Is his skin rejuvenation a signal that this research has gone over into The Twilight Zone’! When a sixty-something man looks forty-something, there’s got to be an unnatural act going on. What does it mean?”

“Maybe it means he’s found the thing Ponce de Leon was looking for. The Fountain of Youth or whatever.”

“Then he’ll probably have to pay for it some other way,” she said getting up. “Mother Nature doesn’t give out freebies. Look, I’ve got to give Knickers her midnight walk. That’s your exit cue. I’ll call him tomorrow. I’ll go that far.”

“Don’t blow this chance, Ally,” he said setting down his empty scotch glass and getting up. He felt hope and it bucked him up. “It could be the biggest mistake of your life. And Mom’s.”

He was at the door before he turned back. It was time for the insurance. The hedging of bets. Bartlett had authorized it.

“By the way, I almost forgot. Jesus, I’m going senile myself. W.B.