Chapter 4

More than enough reason for Roy to fight government. But Malcolm needed confirmation Roy would be the right man for the team. Malcolm walked back to the parking garage and the Jag with the phone directory. The one sure source of information was located five miles northeast, at Camelback Road and North 32nd Street.

The offices of the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona are modern and the young receptionist is pretty, friendly and helpful. She immediately ushered Malcolm into a relatively plush office and introduced him to the Assistant to the Executive Director. The man in charge of liaison and coordination with members of Association committees.

"Yes, Roy Roberts is a member. At least he was. Technically he's no longer a member, because his dues are delinquent."

"A shame, really. Roy's a nice fellow. He served on the Maricopa County Building Codes Committee. A smart guy, and a pretty good builder, too. A good mix of spec homes and custom homes. Good designs and good quality."

"But something went wrong. Not with a house though. Not something built wrong that came back to haunt him."

Details were vague, but the hints were present, almost obvious to the astute listener.

Malcolm was an astute listener. The personal problem sounded suspiciously like an extremely ill wife.

Roy dropped out of sight for over six months but he's back doing construction now. Remodeling and room additions, trying to put his operation back together.

"We have a phone number. You might try that."

One of the good things about contractors is that they're always available to answer the phone. As a group, they are the original carriers and earliest beneficiaries of those modern marvels of high technology, cellular phones.

Roy was in the north end of Scottsdale building an Arizona room, with glass walls neutralized by industrial strength air conditioning. He answered on the second ring and was definitely interested in talking with Bill Stephenson, retired civil and structural engineer and current investor in distressed commercial real estate. Over coffee at Coco's on Cactus Road at 4:00. Roy's driving an older white Ford F-250 pick-up. A little over 6 feet tall and a little under 200 pounds, not one of them gone to fat. A 38 year-old Irishman with an Irishman's joviality, temper and long red hair, a perpetual good-natured grin and an unquenchable thirst for adventure and excitement.

Roy arrived exactly at 4:00 and enthusiastically shook the extended hand of an older gentleman in the entrance foyer. He was handed a business card hot off a Hewlett Packard laser color press, simple almost to the point of being stark; William F. Stephenson, Commercial Real Estate Investments, with a phone number and address on Baseline Road near Interstate 10.

Bill Stephenson turned out to be an interesting guy; pleasant, well mannered, quick-witted, clearly of far higher than average intelligence and obviously extremely knowledgeable about both real estate and construction. He moved to Phoenix from Indiana 3 years ago, is bored with retirement and is looking to become active again.

Bill's a civil and structural engineer, from Purdue, and later got both an MBA and a law degree from Indiana University. Those schools are both way back in the Far East, which in Arizona means east of the Mississippi River.

Bill worked predominately in the engineering field but also combined the two professions. He's done some really interesting work on commercial properties with a wide assortment of construction or environmental problems. He owned his own small consulting firm for over twenty years and during the last ten or so traveled the country, working on commercial properties for various clients, mostly based in Manhattan.

Bill's owned commercial properties himself and is interested in investing out here. Phoenix is much better than Indiana for investing in real estate.

Bill's interest is distressed properties that require some sort of remediation. Bill has a knack for designing practical and economical solutions for problems that other engineers can't seem to solve, or sometimes can't grasp or even define. Part of the funny way his brain works sometimes.

Take a pile of lemons and make a lemon pie. There's good money in it and there's good money for a contractor too. One who's smart and competent in messy jobs, big tin cans full of worms. Bill isn't interested in bidding the work; the jobs will be too messy, with too many unforeseeable conditions, meaning snags. Bill needs a good contractor whose operation is small enough that he can pay close attention to all the gory details, some not so little. An equity stake will be available too, so the contractor will have a long-term investment in the finished products.

The upshot of the dialogue was that Bill needs a bright contractor that can do unusual, complicated jobs. Someone Bill can work well and closely with.

Roy's definitely interested. This would be his chance to get back into real jobs with meat on their ribs. He's just doing small jobs right now, but hoping to grow his company again and get back to where he'd been.

Roy suffered some major personal and financial setbacks so he's doing little jobs now. Remodeling and room additions.

Malcolm saw the opening. Not large, but large enough. He took the plunge, off the board and into the pool. Now or never, do or die.

"So I've heard. That's why I looked you up."

"Yeah. I wondered, you coming out of the blue like this."

Malcolm became more intent. "Tell me some. Give me the story."

And Roy did. Everything was cloud nine until 5 years ago when his wife Susan came down with a bad cold. The doctor found a lump below her Adam's apple. Her thyroid was removed and found to be cancerous, but it had already spread. The beginning of a horrible downward spiral. Susan lasted almost 4 years before she died last year at the age of 38. She suffered 4 years of unbearable pain as the doctors kept cutting on her. Her lymph nodes, both breasts, her cervix, her spleen and one lung.

But the doctors couldn't remove three tumors in her brain, and she died. A sweet, innocent young woman who never even smoked or drank but unfortunately grew up near Richland, ate vegetables from the family garden and drank fresh milk from the neighbor's cow.

Susan's father was a World War II vet. In 1956, the Army offered vets the opportunity to homestead on farmland in southeastern Washington, near the Columbia River and Richland. And Hanford. The vets didn't know they had been induced to undergo secret radiation experiments or why the farms were available.

The farms were available because the Atomic Energy Commission bought them from the local hospital.

Mr. Smith, the prior owner of Susan's family farm, was a nuclear technician and part-time farmer, with a wife and two children. The son developed thyroid cancer and was sent to the local hospital. The credit department quickly learned Smith didn't have health insurance and demanded money up-front. The hospital also placed a lien on the farm for the cost of future care.

When the daughter developed thyroid trouble, Smith sold a cow and some wheat in the child's name to raise cash for her medical treatment. He thereby committed a "conversion of assets" in violation of the lien and the hospital foreclosed on the farm. Not long before both son and daughter died of thyroid cancer.

When Mr. Smith died 2 years later, his body was almost totally consumed by cancers of the lung, bronchial lymph nodes, diaphragm, spleen, pancreas, intestines, stomach, liver and adrenal glands.

The Veteran's Administration denied responsibility for the sickness and deaths in his family until 1988, when benefits were awarded to his widow. One year later that award was revoked without explanation. An attempt to deny and cover up all government responsibility for the horrors it caused.

Susan's father wasn't told the history of the farm he homesteaded. The farm was located 7 miles east of the Hanford plant, in what is called "Death Mile". All the homesteaders who moved there had nothing in common except being vets. They came from all different religious and ethnic backgrounds and had different genetics. The only thing they had in common was the homegrown vegetables they ate and the locally produced milk they drank.

And suffering from thyroid problems, cancer, birth defects and death. Of 28 families in Death Mile, 27 suffered severe health problems associated with radiation. Of 108 people in those families, 28 died of cancer.

Susan's father suffered from hypothyroidism before dying in 1992 of anaplastic carcinoma, the most lethal type of thyroid cancer. Susan's brother Jimmy had thyroid cancer and then leukemia before he died 4 years later. Her sister Linda died in 1998 from leukemia. Her mother is still alive but suffers from hyperparathyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Susan was infertile and suffered from chronic indigestion and repressed immune system.

Susan's family was but one of thousands who served as human guinea pigs for the government without knowledge or consent, often with fatal results. Testing began in 1931 when Dr. Cornelius Rhodes infected people with live cancer cells. He later established the US Army Biological Warfare facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. After he was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission, he injected soldiers and hospitalized civilians with radioactive isotopes. Later, soldiers were marched to ground zeros of nuclear blasts and pilots were ordered to fly through mushroom clouds, apparently to verify that horrifying scenes and reports of Japanese suffering were authentic.