A pause, a sip of coffee. The T-shirt trembled with fitness. He continued.

“So they began making mistakes. They picked three places—Mexico City, Singapore, and Belgrade—places far outside the jurisdiction of the FDA. Under the guise of some vague international relief outfit, they built rehab clinics, really nice lockdown facilities where the addicts could be completely controlled. They picked the worst junkies they could find, got ‘em in, cleaned ‘em up, began using Tarvan, though the addicts had no idea. They really didn’t care—everything was free.”

“Human laboratories,” Clay said. The tale so far was fascinating, and Max the fireman had a flair for the narrative.

“Nothing but human laboratories. Far away from the American tort system. And the American press. And the American regulators. It was a brilliant plan. And the drug performed beautifully. After thirty days, Tarvan blunted the cravings for drugs. After sixty days, the addicts seemed quite happy to be clean, and after ninety days they had no fear of returning to the streets. Everything was monitored—diet, exercise, therapy, even conversations. My client had at least one employee per patient, and these clinics had a hundred beds each. After three months, the patients were turned loose, with the agreement that they would return to the clinic every other day for their Tarvan. Ninety percent stayed on the drug, and stayed clean. Ninety percent! Only two percent relapsed into addiction.”

“And the other eight percent?”

“They would become the problem, but my client didn’t know how serious it would be. Anyway, they kept the beds full, and over eighteen months about a thousand addicts were treated with Tarvan. The results were off the charts. My client could smell billions in profits. And there was no competition. No other company was in serious R&D for an anti-addiction drug. Most pharmaceuticals gave up years ago.”

“And the next mistake?”

Max paused for a second, then said, “There were so many.” A buzzer sounded, lunch had arrived. A waiter rolled it in on a cart and spent five minutes fussing with the setup. Clay stood in front of the window, staring at the top of the Washington Monument, but too deep in thought to see anything. Max tipped the guy and finally got him out of the room. “You hungry?” he asked. “No. Keep talking,” Clay took off his jacket and sat in the chair. “I think you’re getting to the good part.”

“Good, bad, depends on how you look at it. The next mistake was to bring the show here. This is where it starts to get real ugly. My client had deliberately looked at the globe and picked one spot for Caucasians, one spot for Hispanics, and one spot for Asians. Some Africans were needed.”

“We have plenty in D.C.”

“So thought my client.”

“You’re lying, aren’t you? Tell me you’re lying.”

“I’ve lied to you once, Mr. Carter. And I’ve promised not to do it again.”

Clay slowly got to his feet and walked around his chair to the window again. Max watched him closely. The lunch was getting cold, but neither seemed to care. Time had been suspended.

Clay turned around and said, “Tequila?”

Max nodded and said, “Yes.”

“And Washad Porter?”

“Yes.”

A minute passed. Clay crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, facing Max, who was straightening his mustache. “Go ahead,” Clay said.

“In about eight percent of the patients, something goes wrong,” Max said. “My client has no idea what or how or even who might be at risk. But Tarvan makes them kill. Plain and simple. After about a hundred days, something turns somewhere in the brain, and they feel an irresistible impulse to draw blood. It makes no difference if they have a violent history. Age, race, sex, nothing distinguishes the killers.”

“That’s eighty dead people?”

“At least. But information is difficult to obtain in the slums of Mexico City.”

“How many here, in D.C.?”

It was the first question that made Max squirm, and he dodged it. “I’ll answer that in a few minutes. Let me finish my story. Would you sit down, please? I don’t like to look up when I talk.”

Clay took his seat, as directed.

“The next mistake was to circumvent the FDA.”

“Of course.”

“My client has many big friends in this town. It’s an old pro at buying the politicians through PAC money, and hiring their wives and girlfriends and former assistants, the usual crap that big money does here. A dirty deal was cut. It included big shots from the White House, the State Department, the DEA, the FBI, and a couple of other agencies, none of whom put anything in writing. No money changed hands; there were no bribes. My client did a nice job of convincing enough people that Tarvan might just save the world if it could perform in one more laboratory. Since the FDA would take two to three years for approval, and since it has few friends in the White House anyway, the deal was cut. These big people, names now forever lost, found a way to smuggle Tarvan into a few, selected, federally funded rehab clinics in D.C. If it worked here, then the White House and the big folks would put relentless pressure on the FDA for quick approval.”

“When this deal was being cut, did your client know about the eight percent?”

“I don’t know. My client has not told me everything and never will. Nor do I ask a lot of questions. My job lies elsewhere. However, I suspect that my client did not know about the eight percent. Otherwise, the risks would have been too great to experiment here. This has all happened very fast, Mr. Carter.”

“You can call me Clay now.”

“Thanks, Clay.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I said there were no bribes. Again, this is what my client has told me. But let’s be realistic. The initial estimate of profits over the next ten years from Tarvan was thirty billion dollars. Profits, not sales. The initial estimate of tax dollars saved by Tarvan was about a hundred billion over the same period of time. Obviously, some money was going to change hands along the line.”

“But all that’s history?”

“Oh yes. The drug was pulled six days ago. Those wonderful clinics in Mexico City, Singapore, and Belgrade closed up in the middle of the night and all those nice counselors disappeared like ghosts. All experiments have been forgotten. All papers have been shredded. My client has never heard of Tarvan. We’d like to keep it that way.”

“I get the feeling that I’m entering the picture at this point.”

“Only if you want to. If you decline, then I am prepared to meet with another lawyer.”

“Decline what?”

“The deal, Clay, the deal. As of now, there have been five people in D.C. killed by addicts on Tarvan. One poor guy is in a coma, probably not going to make it. Washad Porter’s first victim. That’s a total of six. We know who they are, how they died, who killed them, everything. We want you to represent their families. You sign them up, we pay the money, everything is wrapped up quickly, quietly, with no lawsuits, no publicity, not the slightest fingerprint anywhere.”

“Why would they hire me?”

“Because they don’t have a clue that they have a case. As far as they know, their loved ones were victims of random street violence. It’s a way of life here. Your kid gets shot by a street punk, you bury him, the punk gets arrested, you go to the trial, and you hope he goes to prison for the rest of his life. But you never think about a lawsuit. You gonna sue the street punk? Not even the hungriest lawyer would take that case. They’ll hire you because you will go to them, tell them that they have a case, and say you can get four million bucks in a very quick, very confidential settlement.”

“Four million bucks,” Clay repeated, uncertain if it was too much or too little.

“Here’s our risk, Clay. If Tarvan is discovered by some lawyer, and, frankly, you’re the first one who picked up even a whiff of a scent, then there could be a trial. Let’s say the lawyer is a trial stud who picks him an all-black jury here in D.C.”