BLIND TRIAL Brian Deer (best novels for beginners TXT) 📖

be one hundred percent effective but would settle for fifty percent. Basically, everybody’s pumping it at you. They’re all saying, ‘This thing’s gotta work, or we wouldn’t be spending all this dough.’”

“But you had a fifty-fifty chance of getting placebo. And the vaccine was never going to be hundred percent.”

“Yeah, well, let me tell you. All you think is you been vaccinated. Everybody says you can tell, like if you get a hot feeling, or tired after the shot, like I did. And you think that must mean you got the real stuff. And then you get some stud coming at you after four Jacks and a tab of MDMA. Go find yourself a rubber? I don’t think so.”

Luke stepped into a little kitchen area and rinsed his hands. “Contributory negligence maybe screws you. I don’t know. This isn’t one of my fields.”

“Yeah, well I did sign the thing. I did read it. And it does say the effectiveness of the vaccine isn’t known. Even if I didn’t get the placebo.”

“But what else did you hear? You’re saying they were pushing it at you orally? Saying things verbally they didn’t write down?”

“Course they were. They want you to think it’s so wonderful, so you sign up and then come back for a second shot. And they want you to go out and get fucked without a rubber. Otherwise, they got no stats. But there’s nothing written down about that. I mean, those guys are smart.”

“Could have recorded it on your phone.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t.”

“They don’t know that. Might be worth drafting a letter and see what they say. I mean, if the doctors, or nurses, or maybe advocacy groups getting money from BerneWerner, and especially the company itself, made any kind of reckless or misleading claims.”

“Much could I get?”

“Probably nothing. This is very speculative. But maybe seventy cents on the dollar of a number of millions, if we can prove it, on the preponderance, or they think it’s smart to settle. Burden’s on us though.”

“Now you’re talking.”

“But it’s not that simple. First, you got to think, do you recall any relevant person telling you it did work, or it must work, or it probably would protect you?”

“They all did, one way or another.”

“And were they employed on the trial, work for a medical center, or connected with BerneWerner Biomed, or anything along those lines?”

“Yes, sir. They were.”

“They were? Do you remember any names?”

“I remember one.”

“Go ahead. You can name them.”

“Ben.”

Luke felt a stab: a familiar kind of stab. “Ben? What d’you mean by that?”

“Correct, counselor. He told me. Never stopped about how they got the magic bullet with that vaccine.”

“Fuck’s sake Mario. You can’t believe what he says.”

“What do you mean? He’s your alter ego.”

“Fuck’s sake, you just don’t always take what he says as being like necessarily true, or anything. You can’t always make that assumption.”

“You never said that before.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. Besides, he was only on their scholarship then. Wasn’t even a marketing assistant. You couldn’t get at the company through him back then. He only went on the staff after we drove down Memorial Day weekend.”

Mario rose from the floor. “Yeah, well he told me the vaccine was sure to work. Said they wouldn’t be spending millions of bucks on a phase III trial if it didn’t work. And he heard stuff from a guy at the company about how you could tell if you were getting the active vaccine or not. And he said how he was giving me the inside track. That’s what he said.”

“Man, you wanted to blow him. That’s all. That’s why you listened to all the crap he comes out with. It’s always the same story.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m telling you, for weeks round our place it was, ‘Oh Ben, let me get you a beer,’ ‘Oh Ben, you want me to rinse that shirt for you.’ And now it’s his fault. My fault.”

“Can’t say he doesn’t play it up.”

“No, you can’t. He needs it.”

“So how come you’re on his side all the time? What makes you stand up for that scumbag and his lies? Lied about that vaccine, he did. Even if he only lied about knowing one thing about it.”

Luke couldn’t handle this. He couldn’t bear arguments. He pulled on his shirt and shoes. “Look, I gotta go. I got a pile of work. I just came by with a thought. I’ll call you on the weekend. Okay?”

At the foot of the stairs, he stepped onto the street and stared at the sky: all clear. He looked at Mario’s windows. He knew he shouldn’t leave, but he wouldn’t fight with anyone over Ben. Mario was right. But when it came to all that, a choice was made too long ago.

Thirty-nine

AN HOUR before sunset, the landscape around Ukiah turned as gray as Trudy Mayr’s bra. A carpet of cloud edged in from the coast, creeping across the vineyards and pear orchards of the Yokayo Valley, westward to the Mayacamas Mountains. Orange turned to white. Shadows softened on State Street. The Russian River gave up its sparkle.

Resting on the pillows in the Sentra’s front passenger seat, Trudy studied the sky with apprehension. As a child on Bodie Island, she’d learned to read the weather even before she read Huckleberry Finn. She knew how cumulonimbus warned of short, heavy showers, and what stirrings in the grass presaged a gale. And when a pale, flat vapor stole across Pamlico Sound, she knew it meant to be prepared.

She felt like the mother of a missing child. Waiting. She felt bewilderment, fear, self-blame.

They were parked at a spot where street lighting had failed half a mile from the freeway exit. Ben had pulled in—the car’s nose to the curb—at a miniature strip mall on Talmage Road, two hundred feet east of South State. Behind them lay pavement and a patch of vacant land at the end of an airstrip runway. To the right: a carwash, with an apron of asphalt. Ahead, a liquor store: the Bottle