“They sure do, Sam. So what caused the change of heart?”
“Change of mind,” Sam corrected, lest Raul get the wrong idea. Nothing with her heart had changed. Of that she needed to be clear.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the skinny?”
While Raul sounded so casually confident, Sam’s heart rate hadn’t yet returned to normal. She pushed through the apprehension regardless.
“I was hoping I could ask for your help with something.”
“What kind of something?”
“I need to get in touch with an untouchable person.”
“Ooh, I’m intrigued. Who is the unlucky fellow?” There was that rush of sound that Sam recognized as Raul’s interest grew.
“Thomas Cook.”
Raul scoffed. “The CEO of Cook Pharmaceuticals?”
“The one and only,” she said.
“Why on earth would you want to contact him?”
“Because he is the man responsible for my father’s death. And finding him is the only way I’m going to bring him and his evil empire down.”
“Evil empire? Sam, you’re not Carol Danvers trying to take down Doctor Doom.” When Raul noticed that Sam was unusually silent, he went on to explain, “Carol Danvers—you know, Ms. Marvel, the superhero?” Sam remained contemplatively confused. “From Marvel Comics?” Still nothing. “Were you born under a rock?”
In all likelihood Sam could have been. Minnie Stanton had birthed her on the side of the highway on the way to the hospital after being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic inside the Liberty Tunnel, one of the many tunnels built into the Allegheny mountains that surrounded the city.
Tunnels, bridges, and steep roads—these were the proudest claims to fame by Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with the toxic wastewater from the coking process used in steel production that bled into the three rivers that supplied questionable drinking water to the city’s residents.
“Anyway, Sam, Thomas Cook is a powerful man, and powerful men are dangerous men. Just stay away from him. Please.”
“His toxic medicine killed my father. I’m not letting it go. This was why I fought so hard to get this advice column in the first place.”
“So that you could make a public spectacle of him and exact your revenge?” Raul scoffed. “Are you crazy?”
“Maybe. But if you won’t help me, I’ll do it without you.” Sam always had, after all.
This statement was followed by reticence. Sam knew she was asking the impossible. After hours of research, she had gone from dead end to deader end as she discovered Thomas Cook was unlisted in the phone directory, inaccessible for appointments, and refused any and all meetings, according to his spiteful secretary who had bluntly rejected Sam’s requests for an interview the first and second time she had called. By Sam’s third call, the ruthless assistant had simply hung up at the sound of Sam’s voice.
Sam had even gone so far as to sit outside the Cook Pharmaceuticals’ US Steel Tower headquarters, the newest and tallest skyscraper addition to the skyline, not even open to the public yet. So she waited until the brimming city had emptied its bowels, watching the lobby doors late into the evening for Thomas Cook’s departure. Only by the pity of a young intern who worked on Cook’s floor, identified by the ID badge hanging from a lanyard, did Sam discover why the man was so successfully evasive.
“Rumor has it that Dr. Cook paid off the builders to give him his own private entrance and exit,” the intern explained when Sam had approached her outside the black-marbled atrium, asking if she knew when Dr. Cook usually left the office. “When you control the drugs that save lives, you can afford just about anything.”
Which made Thomas Cook the richest—and most elusive—man in the city.
“So will you help me or not, Raul?” Sam spoke into the static phone line.
Raul sighed. “I wish I could, but even I can’t get access to him. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“You have?”
Sam wondered why Thomas Cook had landed on Raul’s radar in the first place. During his New York Times journalism days, Raul had only pursued scandals and injustices, not entitled rich businessmen… unless the entitled rich businessmen happened to be behind the scandals and injustices, which was more often than not.
Did Raul know something about Thomas Cook that Sam didn’t?
“Years ago I tried to investigate him. I think Cook knew his heart drugs were killing people—”
“Like my dad,” Sam interjected.
“Uh, right, like your dad,” Raul continued, “but I failed to get the story. And now Cook is still getting away with it.”
“That’s why I need to stop him!”
“No, Sam, it turns out it was for the best that I never exposed it.”
“For the best? How can you say that?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know. Please leave it alone.”
“I can’t. My job depends on it.”
In a sparse bachelor pad on one side of the city, Raul stood at his kitchen counter, twirling the phone cord around his finger wondering how he could possibly tell Sam the truth of what he knew.
In a skyscraper bullpen on the other side of the city, Sam sat in her scratchy orange office chair, twirling the phone cord around her finger wondering what Raul could possibly be hiding.
“Why did you give up the story, Raul?” Sam needed to know. Raul never gave up on a lead, not even a dangerous one.
