| General Fiction posted February 27, 2025 | Chapters: |
...37 38 -39- 40... 
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The harassment by Gideon Pharmaceutical begins
A chapter in the book The Devil Fights Back
The Devil Fights Back - Ch. 39
by Jim Wile
| Background Three intrepid women team up to conquer medical challenges. |
Recap of Chapter 38: Two months have passed, and the FBI gets word that Dipraxa has just begun making people sick to their stomachs. Fran calls Brian to share this good news. It’s not certain yet if it no longer makes people high, but time will tell. Brian fills Fran in on the progress of the libel suit against Myalosoma and says they dropped the suit because the magazine complied with Brian’s demand to print a retraction and an article by Brian.
Fran tells Brian that Dana is now working for Gideon Pharmaceutical and asks him if there have been any acts of harassment. Brian reports a car parking across the street and watching the house. Fran also calls Julia to the phone and tells them to expect some harassment.
Fran then calls Dana for an update on her new job at Gideon. Dana tells her that plans are usually hatched by her boss and the security chief over lunch at an outdoor restaurant, so Fran begins thinking of ways to eavesdrop in hopes of getting another wiretap.
Chapter 39
Dana
The opportunity to get a peek at Rudy Spangler’s calendar came sooner than I could have hoped for—just a few days later, in fact. He had asked me for a sales report, and I said I could get it to him later this afternoon. He told me he would be at a meeting most of the afternoon, but to leave it with Leigh-Anne.
I knew that Leigh-Anne took her afternoon break at 3:00, so I had a window of opportunity to sneak a peek at Rudy’s calendar as long as Leigh-Anne didn’t lock her computer screen when she left on break.
At precisely 3:00, I watched her walk by my office, heading for the lunchroom. I waited a minute for the hall to clear, then went next door into her office. I put the report in her in-basket then breathed a sigh of relief when I found her computer unlocked. I quickly called up Rudy’s calendar.
I noticed that on Monday at noon, three days from now, there is a meeting scheduled with Peter Israel, the security chief, at Gable’s Restaurant. Maybe this is the opportunity I’m looking for. I restored her computer to the screen it had been on and headed for the door when who should walk in but Rudy.
“Dana, what’s up?”
“Hi, Rudy. I was just dropping that sales report off. It’s in Leigh-Anne’s in-basket.”
“Great. Thanks. How do the figures look?”
“Pretty good. This is shaping up to be a good quarter for us.”
“Glad to hear it. Have you seen Leigh-Anne?”
“She should be back from her break any minute.”
“Alright, then. You take care.” He turned and headed into his office.
Phew! That was close. I headed back to my office with my heart in my throat.
I called Fran tonight with the news. I remember that she had once hinted at ways of listening to conversations. I was curious to see what she would say.
“Hi, Dana. I didn’t expect to hear back from you so soon. Have you got something already?”
“I do. My boss, Rudy Spangler, will be meeting with the head of security, Peter Israel, at a noon luncheon meeting at a local restaurant on Monday. That’s three days from now. I scouted the place out after work today, and it has a large outdoor seating area. This sounds like one of those planning meetings Leigh-Anne told me about.”
“Perfect. Tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to drive down and meet you tomorrow for lunch there so I can see the place. I’ll be bringing some equipment with me that you can use to eavesdrop on the meeting, and I’ll show you how to work it.”
I gave her the name of the restaurant and told her I would meet her there at noon.
I arrived at Gable’s Restaurant first, and the hostess showed me to a table on their large, open patio. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence with flower boxes hanging all around it. A large tree of some kind was in the center and provided shade to much of the patio. We were in June now, and it was starting to get hot, so the shade was welcome. Fran showed up a few minutes later.
“I thought you were going to bring some equipment with you,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s in the car. Maybe we could go back to your apartment after lunch, and I can show you how to operate it there. This is Saturday, so you won’t be going to work this afternoon, will you?”
“Nope. We’ve got the whole afternoon to ourselves.”
“Alright then. Let’s enjoy a leisurely lunch, and we’ll talk about surveillance later.”
We spent an hour over our meal, catching up with each other. I had a bowl of French onion soup and a half chicken salad sandwich on a croissant, and Fran had a lunch-size portion of shrimp and grits. We both had a couple of glasses of Chianti. Fran picked up the tab for lunch.
We drove to my apartment and parked. Fran reached into her back seat and pulled out a box with a big basket of sunflowers inside.
“For me? Oh, you shouldn’t have.”
“I didn’t. This is the equipment I brought to show you how to use.”
“A bouquet of sunflowers? What are you going to show me: how to arrange them properly?”
She smiled. “This isn’t just any old basket of flowers. I’ll show you when we get inside.”
She certainly had my curiosity piqued. Once inside, she set it on my kitchen table.
“This may look like an ordinary flower basket to be given as a gift. It’s wrapped in cellophane with a bow on top, but if you notice, there’s a six-inch circular hole in the cellophane on one side, and if you look closely at it, you’ll see that it’s concaved inward. This is a parabolic microphone with a 6-inch dish and an extremely sensitive microphone mounted at the focal point. The dish has been painted to blend in with the surrounding flowers. They’re silk flowers, by the way, but they sure look real, don’t they?”
“Sure do. What exactly is a parabolic microphone?”
“It’s a long-range listening device, which uses a parabolic-shaped reflector that focuses distant sound waves and can filter out surrounding sounds. It will automatically record the conversation of your targets as long as you are no more than, say, 40 feet away. Just set it on the table in front of you and point it at them.
“This is a very sensitive microphone here at the focal point, which enables the dish to be small, but beyond 40 feet, the words will become garbled, especially if your targets are speaking softly. If you can get a little closer than that, it would be better, but it would be best if they don’t recognize you or spend a lot of time looking at the flower basket. It looks damn good, but they may notice something odd about it if they study it closely.”
She then showed me how to turn it on and off and how I could listen in with a wireless earbud to what was being captured and recorded.
“When it sounds like they’ve concluded their little meeting, turn the basket around, so if they leave and happen to notice you and come over to talk to you, they won’t notice the hole in the cellophane and the dish within. If they ask who the flowers are for, make something up in advance to help explain it. Rehearse it out loud. Just stay cool. Chances are they won’t even notice you’re there, especially if it’s crowded.”
“I think I can do all that.”
“Why don’t we practice it for a while? I’ll go sit in the living room over there. Train it on me, and I’ll tell you a joke. Maybe put some music on too, and let’s see how it does in picking up my voice with some ambient sound going.”
“Got it.”
Fran moved into the living room and sat down on the furthest chair. It was only about 20 feet away. I said, “Hey Siri, play ‘Chicken Fried’ by the Zac Brown Band.”
When the music started, I pointed the mic at her and turned the switch on. Fran began telling her joke.
One day on a busy street corner, a big guy walks up to a cop
and says, "Thcuse me offither, can you tell me where thirty-third
and thacramento ith?"
The cop doesn’t say anything. The big guy then asks again, but
still nothing from the cop. Finally, the frustrated guy leaves.
A pedestrian walks up to the cop and asks, "Officer, why didn't
you tell that guy where thirty-third and Sacramento was?"
The cop says, "Thure, and get the thit kicked out of me?"
I laughed out loud. “Thath a good one!”
I shut the mic off and the music, and Fran played back the recording. Her voice was very clear, and you could hardly hear the music in the background. “Thing really works,” I said.
I practiced one more time to make sure I had everything right. Then she told me that, when the job was all done, I should place the flower basket back into the box it came in, seal it up, and overnight it back to her on Monday afternoon.
“You’re really into this cloak-and-dagger stuff, aren’t you, Dana?”
“I can’t deny that I am.”
“Well, let’s hope there’s something we can use to get a wiretap warrant—most likely on Peter Israel’s phone. It sounds like he’s probably the one who arranges things, while Rudy Spangler gives the initial orders but likes to distance himself from the details.”
 Recognized |
Fran Pekarsky: One of three narrators of the story. She is an FBI agent from the North Carolina field office in Charlotte.
Dana Padgett: One of three narrators of the story. She is a confidential informant (CI) for Fran and works in Big Pharma.
Brian Kendrick: Fran's younger brother. He is the inventor of Dipraxa and Glyptophan.
Julia Kendrick: Brian's wife. She is a world-class violinist who now plays in a bluegrass band.
Johnny Kendrick: Brian and Julia's baby boy and Marie's grandson.
Dr. Marie Schmidt: Julia's mother. She is the third narrator of the story.
Cedric (aka Cecil): The doorman at the apartment house where Marie lives.
Lou D'Onofrio: Fran's boss at the FBI.
Patty Mattson: A hacker friend of Fran's. The programmer on Brian's project.
Abby Payne (nee St. Claire): A girl from Dana's past, who she used to bully but has befriended during their adulthood. The mathematician on Brian's project.
Leonard Merra: A vice president at the Big Pharma company where Dana works. He is in charge of stopping Glyptophan.
Rudy Spangler: A vice president at Gideon Pharmaceutical. He is in charge of stopping Glyptophan.
Peter Israel: The security chief at Gideon Pharmaceutical. He is in cahoots with Rudy Spangler to stop Glyptophan.
Leigh-Anne Grimsley: Rudy Spangler's secretary at Gideon Pharmaceutical.
Picture courtesy of Poe Assistant
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