“You say corporations aren’t people, but they do share our character. They’re nuanced, complicated and messy beings who seek our love and loyalty even as they periodically screw us over. You can’t get more human than that.”
--Dying to Laugh
I found Volz’ sexy-bored assistant sitting behind her beige, industrial looking desk in the reception area outside his office. Her black, fitted blazer was perfectly tailored and revealing a glimpse of a white, silk camisole that complimented her brown skin. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun that I’m not entirely sure she intended to be messy. “Ms. Katz?” She asked, her burgundy painted lips over enunciating my name.
I nodded, feeling awkward as I stood in the center of the room. In my hand was a notebook that I thought suited a reporter. In my purse I had a rape whistle just in case Gundrun Volz really was a homicidal corporate overlord (could individuals be corporate overlords? Is that how that works?). I pictured a man with Julian Assange hair and the icy blue Jake-Gyllenhaal-like eyes. I could imagine this Julian Gyllenhaal sitting behind a desk ordering the assassination of quirky former employees who knew too much.
The receptionist picked up the phone and announced me before saying, “You can go right in, Ms. Katz.”
“Thank you.” I started for the door, walking slowly as the thoughts in my head starting whirling around at accelerating speed. The name Gundrun Volz did sound kind of Nazi-ish. What if he really was one? I’m a black Jew. Black Jews shouldn’t go around having meetings with Nazis.
“By the way,” the receptionist said, startling me. I stopped and turned to face her. Her gaze didn’t quite meet mine. Was she nervous? Was she about to warn me about the man I was going to be alone with? It was odd that a Nazi would hire this woman, who looked biracial, as his receptionist but maybe he did it to torture her! What if this place was like a corporate version of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and this woman was about to beg me to help her escape her existential prison! I bit down hard on my lip as she shifted her position. “I just wanted to say…” Oh God, here it comes! “I love your hair.”
“W-what?” I said, taken off guard.
“I hope this isn’t being presumptuous,” she continued, “but...well, I was hoping…maybe you could give me your stylist’s info on your way out?”
Oh. She wasn’t meeting my eyes because she was looking at my hair. “Thank you,” I managed, “yeah, of course I will.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Her request gave me a needed boost of confidence. It was easier to confront possible evil on a confirmed good hair day. I put my hand on the doorknob and made my entrance, ready to face the fascist.
The fascist had a surprisingly nice office. Floor to ceiling windows flooded the room with light. Framed Ansel Adams prints decorated the walls and the couches were made of tufted brown leather. The desk itself looked like it was a polished wood, possibly redwood and the man behind it was…well, startlingly normal looking. He had salt and pepper hair with a news-anchorman cut, a broad nose, square chin, bushy brown eyebrows and big ears. His complexion was rosy, maybe a little too rosy, like he overindulged in spirits in his spare time. But sitting there, behind his desk, in a dark suit and red tie, he looked completely together and composed.
It was sort of disappointing.
“Miss Katz, so good to meet you.” He walked around his desk to shake my hand. He had a firm, manly grip. “I’m so glad you’re following up on Tereza’s phone interview. Nolan-Volz has a lot to boast about these days. Sit, sit,” he gestured to a chair in front of his desk, which I accepted. He, however, remained standing, meandering around the room as he spoke. “We’ve been conducting clinical trials of Sobexsol for almost a year now. It’s early yet, but the results are amazing. It’s going to change lives.”
“That’s great,” I said taking notes as if I was truly impressed with whatever Sobexsol was. “And you said you guys have been working on that for just under a year?”
“They’ve been working on it for seven years,” he said with a short laugh. “We had to figure out the science, then do the animal testing and so on before we got approval for clinical trials from the FDA.” I looked up to find that he had found a semi-resting spot, casually leaning against the wall, between a framed doctoral degree from Harvard Medical school and two framed photographs, one of him shaking hands with President George W. Bush and the other with Barack Obama. “We have some of the best scientific minds in the world working here. And dedicated! We’ve been working with the exact same scientific team from the beginning…or close to exact. We did lose one researcher who left for a position with a company working on finding a cure for Tay-Sachs.” He stopped himself, then gave me a slightly patronizing smile. “I’m sorry, sometimes I forget that most people aren’t familiar with all the world’s ailments. Tay-Sachs is a disease that mainly affects the Ashkenazi Jewish population—“
“I know what Tay-Sachs is. My Jewish uncle died of it while still a child.”
“Oh, you’re Jewish?” Gundrun asked, visibly surprised. “Forgive me, I thought you were black.”
I offered him a tight-lipped smile. “I used to be black but I converted. Anyway, what were you saying about the development of your drug?”
Gundrun looked at me askance for a moment but then quickly recovered. “Right, right, of course. As I was saying, you can’t rush these things,” he went on. “But based on early results of our clinical trials…I tell you, sometimes I wonder if this merger wasn’t a bit premature. I think the inevitable success of this new drug could put Nolan-Volz on the path of becoming a mega player, up there with Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, even without hitching our wagon to Gilcrest & Co.”
“Uh-huh.” My scribbled notes were pretty close to illegible but that seemed appropriate since the odds of my ever wanting to re-read Volz’s comments about his favorite pharmaceutical seemed pretty slight.
“May I ask what other individuals were instrumental in bringing…um…Sobexsol to market?”
“As you know, it’s really been our only project. So everyone here has been instrumental. My co-founder, David Nolan, provided us the funds to get off the ground. Matthew Reynolds has been the scientist leading the research studies, V.P. Lori Casey has helped us get the grants and additional funding we need--”
“What about Aaron London? Was he intricately involved?”
It’s not just that Gundrun Volz went quiet, it’s that he practically stopped breathing. I looked up from my notepad to see his eyes had doubled in size, his mouth gone slightly slack.
“Aaron London,” he repeated.
“Yeah, I spoke with him the other day. He had a lot to say about your research and development methodology.”
“Aaron London doesn’t work for the company anymore,” Gundrun said, his voice still completely even, his eyes still looking wild.
“I’m aware of that,”
He hesitated a moment and then offered me another smile, this one almost apologetic. “I’m afraid that if you’ve used Aaron London as a source you might have gotten some misinformation. He’s bipolar and he stopped taking his medication a while back. It’s really a shame. He used to be such a good employee.”
London was bipolar? I was hit with a small flicker of doubt. Could it be that my first instinct was right? That London was completely delusional? “He sounded pretty stable last we spoke.” My toes curled as I tried to sell the lie.
“I find that…surprising.” He pushed himself off the wall and started meandering again, this time in my general direction. “What exactly did he say?”
Oh, that you’re part of the New World Order and are working with the government and mainstream medical establishment to kill us all. “He said a lot,” I said out loud. “His perspective on your industry was…insightful and unique.”
Gundrun Volz took several steps more in my direction before stopping a few feet away. I didn’t get the sense he was trying to come across as threatening exactly but the effect was that he was looming over me, establishing a dynamic that definitely was not designed to make me feel at ease.
“Why don’t you sit down?” I asked, in a pointedly polite tone. “If you don’t mind. It’ll be easier on my neck.”
He hesitated a moment, perhaps surprised at my hubris, before, somewhat theatrically, taking his seat behind his desk. He held his arms out to each side as if to say, look at what I’m doing for you. “I want to assure you the company was unaware that Mr. London had stopped taking his medication while he was here.” He picked up a plastic blue pen from his desk and started toying with it. “I didn’t even know London was bipolar until he started to fall apart. It’s illegal of course to demand that kind of information from your employees. Still, we here at Nolan-Volz would never knowingly allow someone with a severe, diagnosed psychiatric disorder to work here untreated. We pride ourselves on the professionalism of our staff, and their rationalism. We are a company based on science after all.” He then added with another apologetic smile, “I’m sorry he wasted your time with his rantings.”
I watched the pen rotate between his fingers. This interview was getting interesting. “Why are you so sure he didn’t say something good?”
“Excuse me?” Volz cocked his head to the side, the pen momentarily stilled.
“I didn’t say London was bad mouthing your company. Why are you assuming he did?”
Volz’s smile broadened. For the first time I noticed that his teeth were whiter than any teeth I had ever seen. It didn’t suit him. One shouldn’t have a Crest Whitestrip smile and an aging statesman face. “I suppose I simply found it logical that he would continue his erratic behavior once he left. But perhaps he did get help?” His Paper Mate was on the move again. “You said he seemed…normal? Yes? Or something like that.”
“I said he seemed cogent,” I corrected although I think what I had actually said was that he seemed stable. Lies were tricky to keep track of. “He expressed some concerns about your methodology in developing your pharmaceuticals…and…and about how you addressed unexpected side effects of drugs still in development,” I improvised. God, I was taking a risk here.
“That’s still rather vague,” he rightfully pointed out. “As I was just alluding to, developing a new pharmaceutical is a laborious and drawn out process. We don’t test it on human subjects until we’re damn sure it’s safe. Nothing happens unless the FDA signs off on it. By the time we’re asking people to participate in drug trials our main question is whether or not the drug is as effective as it needs to be.”
“But there are unintended side effects occasionally,” I said. “You read about it all the time.”
“I promise you, we always proceed with caution. If there are issues we disclose them…like some drugs don’t mix well with others or, on rare occasions, you have to avoid certain foods while taking a particular pharmaceutical. Like with Rispedal, not ours by the way, you have to avoid eating grapefruit while on that particular drug.”
“Rispolex?” I asked, looking up from my pad.
Gundrun’s eyes went from wide to very, very narrow. “That’s not what I said. I said, Rispedal,” he snapped.
It had been an honest mistake on my part, I had simply misheard him. His tone was needlessly defensive…which meant I was close to something here. but I had no idea what. “Your company doesn’t make Rispolex?”
“I just told you, Sobexsol is the only drug we’ve been working on. Are you not listening or are you playing some kind of game?”
I chewed on my lower lip, trying to make sense of this. “What kind of game would I be playing?”
“I have no idea, Ms. Katz,” he said curtly. “What’s important is that Nolan-Volz always takes every precaution necessary, not just those legally required of us and there’s a lot legally required of us. Despite popular opinion, pharmaceutical companies aren’t like other corporations. Ethics frequently come before profits for us. When doctors make mistakes and prescribe our medications in ways they weren’t intended, it hurts our industry. Not just our bottom line, but our sense of decency.”
With effort, I managed not to burst out laughing. “Do you always publish the results of your clinical trials?” I asked, recalling what Jason had told me about that NYU professor.
“As I noted, we just started clinical trials but we’ve been very open about them,” Gundrun said immediately, his eyes falling to his desk and his pen wiggling furiously between his fingers.
“There’s a professor at NYU who did a study on how the results of clinical drug trials weren’t disclosed--”
“That was a flawed study.” He cocked his head to the side, glaring at me now. “Is that what London spoke to you about? It’s much ado about nothing. We are members of one of the most highly regulated industries in the United States. There’s no room for shenanigans.”
The use of the word shenanigans in an actual conversation almost made me like this guy. But not quite. “London would disagree,” I said, assuredly. “He thought you were cutting corners. He thought you were doing tests the FDA doesn’t know about. If he’s truly crazy than the details of the accusations aren’t really important, but that’s the gist.”
Gundrun lost control of the pen. It went flying across the room. He stared at it for a moment as if shocked by the consequences of what was clearly a nervous tick. Then he laughed, perhaps a bit too loudly. “I’ve never been able to have a conversation without keeping my hands busy. Perhaps I should invest in one of those fidget gadgets.” He tightly clasped his hands together on his desk, forcing them to be still. “Nobody gets anything past the FDA. Certainly not someone as bad at keeping secrets as me. If Aaron was in his right mind he’d scoff at the very things he suggests.” His smile slipped from his lips as he leaned back into his chair. “I believe it was the whole thing with his wife that pushed him into a manic state,” he added, quietly. “Lost love can push anyone over the edge, can’t it?”
“Wait, what whole thing with his wife?” I scooted a little forward in my seat.
“Well, I could tell that losing…damn, what was her name?” he shifted in his chair as he turned his focus to the office window. “Something with an A.”
“Anita?”
He paused for a beat. “That might have been it,” he said, uncertainly. “I could tell losing Anita was difficult for him, although he never talked about it. His condition makes it difficult for him to regulate his emotions. And he is not a man who is comfortable being single. Men like London need the stabilizing force of a good woman.”
Well hello, 1955. “Do you know what went wrong?” I asked, “With his wife that is?”
“I was his boss, not his therapist or confidant,” he said, the edge creeping back into his voice. “Anita had problems. I don’t know the exact nature of them, depression, anxiety, whatever. And London couldn’t be an easy man to live with. I suppose it became too much for her. But that’s just random speculation.”
“You don’t remember London’s wife’s name and yet you know she suffered from depression and anxiety?”
“I met her at company events. Christmas parties and the like. She came across as jittery and withdrawn. But you’re right, I don’t know that was indicative of anything, I’m guessing. Would you like me to go on the record with a guess?”
“Well, you never said we were off the record sooo…” I smiled and shrugged. “Did you ever meet his daughter?”
He looked at me blankly for a moment and then let out a short, startled laugh. “I didn’t know he had one.”
I blinked at him, surprised.
“As you must have gleaned by now, we didn’t socialize outside of work. Perhaps if we did I would have seen the signs that he was falling apart much earlier than I did.” He loosened his grip on his hands enough to steeple his fingers in a way that revived my ideas about his super-villain identity. “Sophie…may I call you Sophie?”
“Of course Gundrun,” I replied without missing a beat. “Speaking of names, Gundrun Volz it’s…unusual.”
He smirked and shook his head. “I know, everybody wants to know what kind of parents would give their son a girl’s name.”
“I’m…sorry?’
“Gundrun. It’s a girl’s name, but you obviously already figured that out. My friends and colleagues spare me the embarrassment of it by just calling me Gun.”
Gun? I don’t care how unassuming this man looks, he is definitely a super villain.
“Sophie,” he went on, “I’m a little baffled by this interview. Are we here to talk about Sobexsol, the Gilcrest merger, what Aaron London said or are we here to talk about who Aaron London is? And if it’s the latter, why?”
Shit. I took in a deep breath as I decided how to best handle the question. “I’m just trying to get a sense of who my source was.”
Gun arched his bushy brown eyebrows, causing the lines across his forehead to deepen into trenches. “Was?”
“Oh, you don’t know?” I readjusted myself in my seat, all the while carefully watching Gun’s expression. “Aaron London is dead.”
Three seconds.
Three seconds is all it took for Gun to react exactly as any decent human being would. He verbally conveyed his shock and horror. He asked all the right questions. Was I sure? How did it happen? Had he been sick? And this daughter of his, does she know? Is she okay?
Yes, they were all the right questions. His reaction was on point…except for those first two seconds that preceded the third.
In those first two seconds, he had seemed disturbingly happy.