New Tricks - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,17

hire you on a temporary basis, maybe try it for ten years or so, see if it works out. Fifty bucks a week, but you’ll always have a place to sleep.” It’s a pathetic attempt to suggest she move back, but it’s as close as I’ll come to broaching the subject.

She doesn’t take the bait. “That’s an incredibly appealing offer,” she says. “I’ll talk about it with my agent.”

I head down to Timco Pharmaceuticals, the company Walter Timmerman founded and ran for the last twelve years. Company-naming was obviously not his strong suit.

I usually find that calling ahead in these situations is not the best way to get people to speak to me, especially when I have no idea who those people are. I can be more insistent and obnoxious in person, or at least that’s what everybody tells me.

Timco is located on Route 17 in Mahwah, in a building much smaller and less expensive than I would have expected. It looks like one of those mini medical center complexes that have sprung up everywhere. The entire thing looks like it could have fit in one of the bedrooms of Timmerman’s now exploded home.

The small lobby is not exactly a beehive of activity, matching the feeling that the exterior gives off of a slow-moving environment. Not what one would expect from the cutting-edge company that Timmerman was said to run.

The directory still lists Walter Timmerman as the chairman and chief executive officer, with Thomas Sykes next in line as chief operating officer, so when I approach the receptionist I give her my name and ask to speak to Sykes.

“Is Mr. Sykes expecting you?”

“Anything’s possible,” I say, “but only he can really answer that.”

“What is it about?”

“I’m representing Steven Timmerman.”

She picks up the phone and relays my message to whoever answers. The response is obviously positive, because within moments a young woman comes out to lead me back to Sykes’s office.

The main part of the building is surprisingly alive. It is one large laboratory, with what appears to be the most modern equipment, and a large staff of earnest people using them. If anyone is over thirty-five, they’re aging well. The average basketball team is older than this group.

Sykes himself seems under forty, though he is clearly the elder statesman here. He smiles and shakes my hand, welcoming me to Timco, as if I am joining the team. I thank him and enter his modern, well-appointed office, which has a large painting of Walter Timmerman looking down from the wall, as if he were Chairman Mao.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I say.

“No problem. But I doubt I can help you much; I don’t know Steven very well. The truth is, I’m not sure I’d want to help you if I could.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, if Steven… if Steven did this…”

“That, as we say in legal circles, is a big ‘if.’ ”

Sykes nods vigorously. “I understand. Innocent until proven guilty. I get it.” He shrugs. “But I really don’t know him well at all.”

“I’m more interested in learning about Walter Timmerman.”

He smiles. “Walter, I knew.”

“Good. Please tell me about him.”

“What do you want to know?” he asks.

“Everything. I’m looking to fill in the blanks, and right now blanks are all I have.”

He nods agreeably. “Okay. Well, there’s Walter Timmerman professionally, and privately. Two very different people.”

“Start with professionally,” I say.

“One of a kind,” he says. “An amazing, amazing man.”

“I’m going to need a little more specificity than that.”

“He was collaborative, inquisitive, brilliant… all he cared about was the science and the idea. He treated everyone whose ability he respected as an equal, even though he had no equal.”

“What exactly did he do?”

This question sends him headlong into an extended scientific dissertation, of which I understand maybe ten percent. When I hear the word “biology,” I interrupt. “So he was a biologist?”

“Are you a basketball fan?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Asking if Walter was a biologist would be like asking if Michael Jordan was a shooter. Of course he was, but he was so much more. Think of it this way. Usually you have chemists and microbiologists working side by side. Walter was the best of both; I like to say he lived at the intersection of Chemistry Boulevard and Microbiology Avenue. It was an incredible advantage for him in what he was doing.”

“What was he doing? Particularly recently.”

“Well, I can’t say exactly, because lately he wasn’t very talkative about his work, and whatever he did was in his lab at home. But for years he was studying