The King of Torts

8

Clay’s apartment was in an aging complex in Arlington. When he’d leased it four years earlier he had never heard of BVH Group. Later, he would learn that the company had built the place in the early eighties in one of Bennett’s first ventures. The venture went bankrupt, the complex got bought and sold several times, and none of Clay’s rent went to Mr. Van Horn. In fact, no member of that family knew Clay was living in something they’d built. Not even Rebecca.

He shared a two-bedroom unit with Jonah, an old pal from law school who’d flunked the bar exam four times before passing it and now sold computers. He sold them part-time and still earned more money than Clay, a fact that was always just under the surface.

The morning after the breakup, Clay fetched the Post from outside his door and settled down at the kitchen table with the first cup of coffee. As always, he went straight to the financial page for a quick and rewarding perusal of the dismal performance of BVHG. The stock barely traded and the few misguided investors who owned it were now willing to unload it for a mere $0.75 a share.

Who was the loser here?

There was not a single word about Rebecca’s crucial subcommittee hearings.

When he was finished with his little witch hunts, he went to the sports section and told himself it was time to forget the Van Horns. All of them.

At twenty minutes after seven, a time when he was usually eating a bowl of cereal, the phone rang. He smiled and thought, It’s her. Back already.

No one else would call so early. No one except the boyfriend or husband of whatever lady might be upstairs sleeping off a hangover with Jonah. Clay had taken several such calls over the years. Jonah adored women, especially those already committed to someone else. They were more challenging, he said.

But it wasn’t Rebecca and it wasn’t a boyfriend or a husband.

“Mr. Clay Carter,” a strange male voice said.

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Carter, my name is Max Pace. I’m a recruiter for law firms in Washington and New York. Your name has caught our attention, and I have two very attractive positions that might interest you. Could we have lunch today?”

Completely speechless, Clay would remember later, in the shower, that the thought of a nice lunch was, oddly, the first thing that crossed his mind.

“Uh, sure,” he managed to get out. Headhunters were part of the legal business, same as every other profession. But they rarely spent their time bottom-feeding in the Office of the Public Defender.

“Good. Let’s meet in the lobby of the Willard Hotel, say, noon?”

“Noon’s fine,” Clay said, his eyes focusing on a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Yes, this was real. It was not a dream.

“Thanks, I’ll see you then. Mr. Carter, I promise it will be worth your time.”

“Uh, sure.”

Max Pace hung up quickly, and for a moment Clay held the receiver, looked at the dirty dishes, and wondered who from his law school class was behind this practical joke. Or could it be Bennett the Bulldozer getting one last bit of revenge?

He had no phone number for Max Pace. He did not even have the presence of mind to get the name of his company.

Nor did he have a clean suit. He owned two, both gray, one thick and one thin, both very old and well used. His trial wardrobe. Fortunately, OPD had no office dress code, so Clay usually wore khakis and a navy blazer. If he was going to court, he would put on a tie and take it off as soon as he returned to the office.

In the shower, he decided that his attire did not matter. Max Pace knew where he worked and had a rough idea of how little he earned. If Clay showed up for the interview in frayed khakis, then he could demand more money.

Sitting in traffic on the Arlington Memorial Bridge, he decided it was his father. The old guy had been banished from D.C. but still had contacts. He’d finally hit the right button, called in one last favor, found his son a decent job. When Jarrett Carter’s high-profile legal career ended in a long and colorful flameout, he pushed his son toward the Office of the Public Defender. Now that apprenticeship was over. Five years in the trenches, and it was time for a real job.

What kinds of firms would be looking for him? He was intrigued by the mystery. His father hated the large corporate and lobbying outfits that were packed along Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenues. And he had no use for the small-timers who advertised on buses and billboards and clogged up the system with frivolous cases. Jarrett’s old firm had ten lawyers, ten courtroom brawlers who won verdicts and were in demand.

“That’s where I’m headed,” Clay mumbled to himself as he glanced at the Potomac River beneath him.

After suffering through the most unproductive morning of his career, Clay left at eleven-thirty and took his time driving to the Willard, now officially known as the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel. He was immediately met in the lobby by a muscled young man who looked vaguely familiar. “Mr. Pace is upstairs,” he explained. “He’d like to meet with you up there, if that’s all right.” They were walking toward the elevators.

“Sure,” Clay said. How he’d been recognized so easily he was not certain.

They ignored each other on the ride up. They stepped onto the ninth floor and Clay’s escort knocked on the door of the Theodore Roosevelt Suite. It opened quickly and Max Pace said hello with a businesslike smile. He was in his mid-forties, dark wavy hair, dark mustache, dark everything. Black denim jeans, black T-shirt, black pointed-toe boots. Hollywood at the Willard. Not exactly the corporate look Clay had been expecting. As they shook hands he had the first hint that things were not what they seemed.

With a quick glance, the bodyguard was sent away.

“Thanks for coming,” Max said as they walked into an oval-shaped room laden with marble.

“Sure.” Clay was absorbing the suite; luxurious leathers and fabrics, rooms branching off in all directions. “Nice place.”

“It’s mine for a few more days. I thought we could eat up here, order some room service, that way we can talk with complete privacy.”

“Fine with me.” A question came to mind, the first of many. What was a Washington headhunter doing renting a horribly expensive hotel suite? Why didn’t he have an office nearby? Did he really need a bodyguard?

“Anything in particular to eat?”

“I’m easy.”

“They do a great capellini and salmon dish. I had it yesterday. Superb.”

“I’ll try it.” At that moment Clay would have tried anything; he was starving.

Max went to the phone while Clay admired the view of Pennsylvania Avenue below. When lunch was ordered, they sat near the window and quickly got past the weather, the Orioles latest losing streak, and the lousy state of the economy. Pace was glib and seemed at ease talking about anything for as long as Clay wanted. He was a serious weight lifter who wanted folks to know it. His shirt stuck to his chest and arms and he liked to pick at his mustache. Whenever he did so, his biceps flexed and bulged.

A stuntman maybe, but not a headhunter in the big leagues.

Ten minutes into the chatter, and Clay said, “These two firms, why don’t you tell me a little about them?”

“They don’t exist,” Max said. “I admit I lied to you. And I promise it’s the only time I will ever lie to you.”

“You’re not a headhunter, are you?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I’m a fireman.”

“Thanks, that really clears things up.”

“Let me talk for a moment. I have some explaining to do, and when I’m finished I promise you’ll be pleased.”

“I suggest you talk real fast, Max, or I’m outta here.”

“Relax, Mr. Carter. Can I call you Clay?”

“Not yet.”

“Very well. I’m an agent, a contractor, a freelancer with a specialty. I get hired by big companies to put out fires. They screw up, they realize their mistakes before the lawyers do, so they hire me to quietly enter the picture, tidy up their mess, and, hopefully, save them a bunch of money. My services are in great demand. My name may be Max Pace and it may be something else. It doesn’t matter. Who I am and where I come from are irrelevant. What’s important here is that I have been hired by a large company to put out a fire. Questions?”

“Too numerous to ask right now.”

“Hang on. I cannot tell you the name of my client now, perhaps never. If we reach an agreement, then I can tell you much more. Here’s the story: My client is a multinational that manufactures pharmaceuticals. You’ll recognize the name. It makes a wide range of products, from common household remedies that are in your medicine cabinet right now to complex drugs that will fight cancer and obesity. An old, established blue-chip company with a stellar reputation. About two years ago, it came up with a drug that might cure addiction to opium- and cocaine-based narcotics. Much more advanced than methadone, which, though it helps many addicts, is addictive itself and is widely abused. Let’s call this wonder drug Tarvan — that was its nickname for a while. It was discovered by mistake and was quickly used on every laboratory animal available. The results were outstanding, but then it’s hard to duplicate crack addiction in a bunch of rats.”

“They needed humans,” Clay said.

Pace picked his mustache as his biceps rippled. “Yes. The potential for Tarvan was enough to keep the big suits awake at night. Imagine, take one pill a day for ninety days and you’re clean. Your craving for the drugs is gone. You’ve kicked cocaine, heroin, crack — just like that. After you’re clean, take a Tarvan every other day and you’re free for life. Almost an instant cure, for millions of addicts. Think of the profits — charge whatever you want for the drug because somebody somewhere will gladly pay for it. Think of the lives to be saved, the crimes that would not be committed, the families held together, the billions not spent trying to rehab addicts. The more the suits thought about how great Tarvan could be, the faster they wanted it on the market. But, as you say, they still needed humans.”

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.”

“Easy enough.”

“Of course it’s easy. And let’s say this lawyer somehow gets the right evidence. Maybe some documents that didn’t get shredded. More likely someone working for my client, a whistle-blower. Anyway, the trial plays beautifully for the family of the deceased. There could be a huge verdict. Worse yet, at least for my client, the negative publicity would be horrendous. The stock price could collapse. Imagine the worst, Clay, paint your own nightmare, and believe me, these guys see it too. They did something bad. They know it, and they want to correct it. But they’re also trying to limit their damages here.”

“Four million is a bargain.”

“It is, and it isn’t. Take Ramón Pumphrey. Age twenty-two, working part-time, earning six thousand dollars a year. With a normal life expectancy of fifty-three more years, and assuming annual earnings of twice the minimum wage, the economic value of his life, discounted in today’s dollars, is about a half a million dollars. That’s what he’s worth.”

“Punitive damages would be easy.”

“Depends. This case would be very hard to prove, Clay, because there’s no paperwork. Those files you snatched yesterday will reveal nothing. The counselors at D Camp and Clean Streets had no idea what kind of drugs they were dispensing. The FDA never heard of Tarvan. My client would spend a billion on lawyers and experts and whoever else they need to protect them. Litigation would be a war because my client is so guilty!”

“Six times four is twenty-four million.”

“Add ten for the lawyer.”

“Ten million?”

“Yes, that’s the deal, Clay. Ten million for you.”

“You must be kidding.”

“Dead serious. Thirty-four total. And I can write the checks right now.”

“I need to go for a walk.”

“How about lunch?”

“No, thanks.”