21

   The Young firm’s next reorganization occurred in the same chaotic fashion as the previous ones, and for the same reasons—too many new clients, too much new paperwork, not enough manpower, an unclear chain of command, and a very uncertain management style because no one at the top had ever managed before, maybe with the exception of Miss Glick. Three days after Clay returned from Ketchum, Paulette and Jonah confronted him in his office with a long list of urgent problems. Mutiny was in the air. Nerves were frayed and the fatigue made bad matters worse.
   According to the best estimate, the firm now had 3,320 Dyloft cases, and since the cases were brand-new they all needed immediate attention. Not counting Paulette, who was reluctantly assuming the role of office manager, and not counting Jonah, who was spending ten hours a day on a computer system to keep up with the cases, and, of course, not counting Clay because he was the boss and had to give interviews and travel to Idaho, the firm had hired two lawyers and now had ten paralegals, none of whom had more than three months’ experience, except for Rodney. “I can’t tell a good one from a bad one,” Paulette said. “It’s too early.”
   She estimated that each paralegal could handle between one hundred and two hundred cases. “These clients are scared,” she said. “They’re scared because they have these tumors. They’re scared because Dyloft is all over the press. Hell, they’re scared because we’ve scared the hell out of them.”
   “They want to be talked to,” Jonah said. “And they want a lawyer on the other end of the phone, not some frantic paralegal on an assembly line. I’m afraid we’ll be losing clients real soon.”
   “We’re not going to lose clients,” Clay said, thinking of all those nice sharks he’d just met out in Idaho and how happy they’d be to pick up his disgruntled clients.
   “We’re drowning in paperwork,” Paulette said, taking the tag from Jonah and ignoring Clay. “Every preliminary medical test has got to be analyzed, then verified with a follow-up. Right now, we think we have about four hundred people who need further testing. These could be the serious cases; these people could be dying, Clay. But somebody has to coordinate their medical care with the doctors. It isn’t getting done, Clay, okay?”
   “I’m listening,” he said. “How many lawyers do we need?”
   Paulette cast a weary look at Jonah. The two had no answer. “Ten?” she said.
   “At least ten,” Jonah said. “Ten for now, right now, and maybe more later.”
   “We’re cranking up the advertising,” Clay said.
   There was a long weary pause as Jonah and Paulette absorbed this. He had briefed them on the high points in Ketchum, but not the details. He had assured them that every case they signed up would soon pay big profits, but he had kept settlement strategies to himself. Loose tongues lose lawsuits, French had warned him, and with such an untested staff it was best to keep them in the dark.
   A law firm down the street had just given pink slips to thirty-five associates. The economy was soft, billings were down, a merger was in the works; whatever the real reason the story was newsworthy in D.C. because the job market was normally bulletproof. Layoffs! In the legal profession? In D.C.?
   Paulette suggested they hire some of those associates—offer them a one-year contract with no promises of any advancement. Clay volunteered to make the calls first thing the next morning. He would also locate office space and furnishings.
   Jonah had the rather unusual idea of hiring a doctor for one year, someone to coordinate the tests and medical evidence. “We can get one fresh out of school for a hundred grand a year,” he said. “He wouldn’t have much experience, but who cares? He’s not doing surgery, just paperwork.”
   “Get it done,” Clay said.
   Next on Jonah’s list was the matter of the Web site. The advertising had made it quite popular but they needed full-time people to respond to it. Plus it needed to be upgraded almost weekly with the developments on the class action and the latest bad news about Dyloft.
   “All these clients are desperate for information, Clay,” he said.
   For those who didn’t use the Internet, and Paulette guessed that at least half their clients fell into that group, a Dyloft newsletter was crucial. “We need one full-time person editing and mailing the newsletter,” she said.
   “Can you find someone?” Clay asked.
   “I suppose so.”
   “Then do it.”
   She looked at Jonah, as if whatever needed to be said should come from him. Jonah tossed a legal pad on the desk and cracked his knuckles. “Clay, we’re spending huge amounts of money here,” he said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
   “No, but I think so. Just trust me, okay? We’re about to make some serious money. To get there, though, we gotta spend some cash.”
   “And you have the cash?” Paulette asked.
   “Yep.”

   Pace wanted a late drink in a bar in Georgetown, within walking distance of Clay’s town house. He was in and out of the city, very vague, as always, about where he’d been and what fire he happened to be fighting. He had lightened up the wardrobe and now preferred brown—brown pointed-toe snakeskin boots, brown suede jacket. Part of his disguise, Clay thought. Halfway through the first beer Pace got around to Dyloft, and it became evident that whatever the current project was it still had something to do with Ackerman Labs.
   Clay, with the flair of a fledgling trial lawyer, gave a colorful description of his trip to French’s ranch, and the gang of thieves he’d met there, and the contentious three-hour dinner where everybody was drunk and arguing at once, and the Barry and Harry Show. He had no hesitation in giving Pace the details because Pace knew more than anyone.
   “I know of Barry and Harry,” Pace said, as if they were characters in the underworld.
   “They seemed to know their stuff, and for two hundred grand they should.”
   Clay talked about Carlos Hernandez and Wes Saulsberry and Damon Didier, his new pals on the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee. Pace said he’d heard of them all.
   Into the second beer, Pace asked, “You sold Ackerman short, right?” He glanced around, but no one was listening. It was a college bar on a slow night.
   “A hundred thousand shares at forty-two fifty,” Clay said proudly.
   “Ackerman closed today at twenty-three.”
   “I know. I do the math every day.”
   “It’s time to cover the short and buy it back. Like first thing tomorrow morning.”
   “Something’s coming?”
   “Yes, and while you’re at it, buy all you can at twenty-three, then hang on for the ride.”
   “Where might the ride be headed?”
   “It’ll double.”
   Six hours later, Clay was at the office, before sunrise, trying to prepare for another day of pure frenzy. And also anxious for the markets to open. His list of things to do ran for two pages, almost all of it involving the enormous task of immediately hiring ten new lawyers and finding work space to house some of them. It looked hopeless, but he had no choice; he called a Realtor at seven-thirty and yanked him out of the shower. At eight-thirty he had a ten-minute interview with a freshly fired young lawyer named Oscar Mulrooney. The poor guy had been a star student at Yale, then highly recruited, then merged out of a job when a megafirm imploded. He’d also been married for two months and was desperate for work. Clay hired him on the spot for $75,000 a year. Mulrooney had four friends, also from Yale, who were also on the streets looking for work. Go get ‘em.
   At 10 A.M., Clay called his broker and covered his Ackerman short sale, making a profit of $1.9 million and some change. In the same call, he took the entire profit and bought another two hundred thousand shares at $23, using his margin and some account credit. Online, he watched the market all morning. Nothing changed.
   Oscar Mulrooney was back at noon with his friends, all as eager as Boy Scouts. Clay hired the others, then gave them the task of renting their furniture, hooking up their phones, doing everything necessary to begin their new careers as low-level mass tort lawyers. It was up to Oscar to hire five more lawyers who would have to find their own office space, etcetera.
   The Yale Branch was born.

   At 5 P.M. Eastern time, Philo Products announced it would buy the outstanding common stock of Ackerman Labs for $50 a share, a merger with a price tag of $14 billion. Clay watched the drama on the big screen in his conference room, alone because everyone else was answering the damned telephones. The nonstop money channels choked on the news. CNN scrambled reporters to White Plains, New York, headquarters of Ackerman Labs, where they loitered by the front gate as if the beleaguered company might step forward and weep for the cameras.
   An endless string of experts and market analysts prattled on with all sorts of groundless opinions. Dyloft was mentioned early and often. Though Ackerman Labs had been badly managed for years, there was no doubt Dyloft had succeeded in shoving it off the cliff.
   Was Philo the maker of Tarvan? Pace’s client? Had Clay been manipulated to bring about a $14 billion takeover? And most troubling, what did it all mean for the future of Ackerman Labs and Dyloft? While it was certainly exciting to calculate his new profits on the Ackerman stock, he had to ask himself if this meant the end of the Dyloft dream.
   But the truth was that there was no way to know. He was a small player in a huge deal between two mammoth corporations. Ackerman Labs had assets, he reassured himself. And the company made a very bad product that harmed many. Justice would prevail.
   Patton French called from his airplane, somewhere between Florida and Texas, and asked Clay to sit tight for an hour or so. The Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee needed an emergency conference call. His secretary was putting one together.
   French was back in an hour, on the ground in Beaumont, where he would meet tomorrow with lawyers who had some cholesterol drug cases that they needed his help with, cases worth tons of money, but, anyway, he couldn’t find the rest of their steering committee. He’d already talked with Barry and Harry in New York and they were not worried about the Philo takeover. “Ackerman owns twelve million shares of its own stock, now worth at least fifty bucks a share but maybe more before the dust settles. The company just picked up six hundred million in equity alone. Plus, the government has to approve the merger, and they typically want the litigation cleaned up before saying yes. Also, Philo is notorious for avoiding courtrooms. They settle fast and quiet.”
   Sounds like Tarvan, Clay thought.
   “Overall, it’s good news,” French said, with a fax buzzing in the background. Clay could see him pacing up and down in his Gulf-stream as it waited on the ramp in Beaumont. “I’ll keep you posted.” And he was gone.

22

   Rex Crittle wanted to scold, to be reassured, to lecture, to educate, but his client sitting across the desk seemed completely unshaken by the figures.
   “Your firm is six months old,” Crittle said, peering over his reading glasses with a pile of reports in front of him. The evidence! He had the proof that the boutique firm of the Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II was in fact being run by idiots. “Your overhead began at an impressive seventy-five thousand a month—three lawyers, one paralegal, a secretary, serious rent, nice digs. Now it’s a half a million bucks a month, and growing every day.”
   “You gotta spend it to make it,” Clay said, sipping coffee and enjoying his accountant’s discomfort. That was the sign of a good bean counter—one who lost more sleep over the expenses than the client himself.
   “But you’re not making it,” Crittle said cautiously. “No revenue in the past three months.”
   “It’s been a good year.”
   “Oh yes. Fifteen million in fees makes for a splendid year. Problem is, it’s evaporating. You spent fourteen thousand bucks last month chartering jets.”
   “Now that you mention it, I’m thinking about buying one. I’ll need you to crunch the numbers.”
   “I’m crunching them right now. You can’t justify one.” “That’s not the issue. The issue is whether or not I can afford one.” “No, you cannot afford one.” “Hang on, Rex. Relief is in sight.” “I assume you’re talking about the Dyloft cases? Four million dollars for advertising. Three thousand a month for a Dyloft Web site. Now three thousand a month for the Dyloft newsletter. All those paralegals out in Manassas. All these new lawyers.”
   “I think the question will be, should I lease one for five years or just buy it outright?” “What?” “The Gulf stream.” “What’s a Gulfstream?” “The finest private jet in the world.” “What are you going to do with a Gulfstream?” “Fly.” “Why, exactly, do you think you need one?” “It’s the preferred jet of all the big mass tort lawyers.” “Oh, that makes sense.” “I thought you’d come around.” “Any idea how much one might cost?” “Forty, forty-five million.” “I hate to break the news, Clay, but you don’t have forty million.” “You’re right. I think I’ll just lease one.” Crittle removed his reading glasses and massaged his long, skinny nose, as if a severe headache was developing there. “Look, Clay, I’m just your accountant. But I’m not sure if there’s anyone else who is telling you to slow down. Take it easy, pal. You’ve made a fortune, enjoy it. You don’t need a big firm with so many lawyers. You don’t need jets. What’s next? A yacht?”
   “Yes.”
   “You’re serious?”
   “Yes.”
   “I thought you hated boats.”
   “I do. It’s for my father. Can I depreciate it?”
   “No.”
   “Bet I can.”
   “How?”
   “I’ll charter it when I’m not using it.”
   When Crittle was finished with his nose, he replaced his glasses and said, “It’s your money, pal.”

   They met in New York City, on neutral ground, in the dingy ballroom of an old hotel near Central Park, the last place anyone would expect such an important gathering to take place. On one side of the table sat the Dyloft Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee, five of them, including young Clay Carter who felt quite out of place, and behind them were all manner of assistants and associates and gofers employed by Mr. Patton French. Across the table was the Ackerman team, headed by Cal Wicks, a distinguished veteran who was flanked by an equal number of supporters.
   One week earlier, the government had approved the merger with Philo Products, at $53 a share, which for Clay meant another profit, somewhere around $6 million. He’d buried half of it off-shore, never to be touched. So the venerable company founded by the Ackerman brothers a century earlier was about to be consumed by Philo, a company with barely half its annual revenues but a lot less debt and a much brighter management.
   As Clay took his seat and spread his files and tried to convince himself that, yes, dammit, he did belong there, he thought he noticed some harsh frowns from the other side. Finally, the folks at Ackerman Labs were getting to see in person this young upstart from D.C. who’d started their Dyloft nightmare.
   Patton French may have had plenty of backup, but he needed none. He took charge of the first session and soon everyone else shut up, with the exception of Wicks, who spoke only when necessary. They spent the morning nailing down the number of cases out there. The Biloxi class had 36,700 plaintiffs. A renegade group of lawyers in Georgia had 5,200 and were threatening an end run with another class action. French felt confident he could dissuade them. Other lawyers had opted out of the class and were planning solo trials in their backyards, but again, French wasn’t worried about them. They did not have the crucial documents, nor were they likely to get them.
   Numbers poured forth, and Clay was soon bored with it all. The only number that mattered to him was 5,380—his Dyloft share. He still had more than any single lawyer, though French himself had closed the gap brilliantly and had just over 5,000.
   After three hours of nonstop statistics, they agreed on a one-hour lunch. The plaintiffs’ committee went upstairs to a suite, where they ate sandwiches and drank only water. French was soon on the phone, talking and yelling at the same time. Wes Saulsberry wanted some fresh air, and invited Clay for a quick walk around the block. They strolled up Fifth Avenue, across from the park. It was mid-November, the air chilly and light, the leaves blowing across the street. A great time to be in the city.
   “I love to come here and I love to leave,” Saulsberry said. “Right now it’s eighty-five in New Orleans, humidity still at ninety.”
   Clay just listened. He was too preoccupied with the excitement of the moment; the settlement that was only hours away, the enormous fees, the complete freedom of being young and single and so wealthy.
   “How old are you, Clay?” Wes was saying.
   “Thirty-one.”
   “When I was thirty-three, my partner and I settled a tanker explosion case for a ton of money. A horrible case, a dozen men were burned. We split twenty-eight million in fees, right down the middle.
   My partner took his fourteen mil and retired. I invested mine in myself. I built a law firm full of dedicated trial lawyers, some really talented people who love what they’re doing. I built a building in downtown New Orleans, kept hiring the best folks I could find. Now we’re up to ninety lawyers, and in the past ten years we’ve raked in eight hundred million bucks in fees. My old partner? A sad case. You don’t retire when you’re thirty-three, it’s not normal. Most of the money went up his nose. Three bad marriages. Gambling problems. I hired him two years ago as a paralegal, a sixty-thousand-dollar salary, and he’s not worth that.”
   “I haven’t thought of retiring,” Clay said. A lie.
   “Don’t. You’re about to make a ton of money, and you deserve it. Enjoy it. Get an airplane, buy a nice boat, a condo on the beach, a place in Aspen, all the toys. But plow the real money back into your firm. Take advice from a guy who’s been there.”
   “Thanks, I guess.”
   They turned onto Seventy-third and headed east. Saulsberry wasn’t finished. “You’re familiar with the lead paint cases?”
   “Not really.”
   “They’re not as famous as the drug cases, but pretty damned lucrative. I started the rage about ten years ago. Our clients are schools, churches, hospitals, commercial buildings, all with layers of lead paint on the walls. Very dangerous stuff. We’ve sued the paint manufacturers, settled with a few. Couple of billion so far. Anyway, during discovery against one company I found out about another nice little mass tort that you might want to look at. I can’t handle it because of some conflicts.”
   “I’m listening.”
   “The company is in Reedsburg, Pennsylvania, and it makes the mortar used by bricklayers in new home construction. Pretty low-tech stuff, but a potential gold mine. Seems they’re having problems with their mortar. A bad batch. After about three years, it begins to crumble. When the mortar breaks down, the bricks start falling. It’s confined to the Baltimore area, probably about two thousand homes. And it’s just beginning to get noticed.”
   “What are the damages?”
   “It costs roughly fifteen thousand to fix each house.”
   Fifteen thousand times two thousand houses. A one-third contract and the lawyers’ fees equaled $10 million. Clay was getting quick with his figures.
   “The proof will be easy,” Saulsberry said. “The company knows it has exposure. Settlement should not be a problem.”
   “I’d like to look at it.”
   “I’ll send you the file, but you have to protect my confidence.”
   “You get a piece?”
   “No. It’s my payback for Dyloft. And, of course, if you get the chance to return the favor someday, then it will be appreciated. That’s how some of us work, Clay. The mass tort brotherhood is full of throat-cutters and egomaniacs, but a few of us try to take care of each other.”

   Late in the afternoon, Ackerman Labs agreed to a minimum of $62,000 for each of the Group One Dyloft plaintiffs, those with benign tumors that could be removed with a fairly simple surgical procedure, the cost of which would also be borne by the company. Approximately forty thousand plaintiffs were in this class, and the money would be available immediately. Much of the haggling that followed involved the method to be used in qualifying for the settlement. A ferocious fight erupted when the issue of attorneys’ fees was thrown on the table. Like most of the other lawyers, Clay had a contingency contract giving him one third of any recovery, but in such settlements that percentage was normally reduced. A very complicated formula was used and argued about, with French being unduly aggressive. It was, after all, his money. Ackerman eventually agreed on the figure of 28 percent for Group One fees.
   Group Two plaintiffs were those with malignant tumors, and since their treatments would take months or years, the settlement was left open. No cap was placed on these damages—evidence, according to Barry and Harry, that Philo Products was somewhere in the background, propping up Ackerman with some extra cash. The attorneys would get 25 percent in Group Two, though Clay had no idea why. French was crunching numbers too fast for anyone.
   Group Three plaintiffs were those from Group Two who would die because of Dyloft. Since there had been no deaths so far, this class was also left open. The fees were capped at 22 percent.
   They adjourned at seven with the plan to meet the next day to nail down the details for Groups Two and Three. On the elevator down, French handed him a printout. “Not a bad day’s work,” he said with a smile. It was a summary of Clay’s cases and anticipated fees, including a 7 percent add-on for his role on the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee.
   His expected gross fees from Group One alone were $106 million.
   When he was finally alone he stood in front of the window in his room and gazed into the dusk settling over Central Park. Clearly, Tar-van had not braced him for the shock of instant riches. He was numb, speechless, frozen in the window forever as random thoughts raced in and out of his severely overloaded brain. He drank two straight whiskeys from the mini-bar with absolutely no effect.
   Still at the window, he called Paulette, who snatched the phone after half a ring. “Talk to me,” she said when she recognized his voice.
   “Round one is over,” he said.
   “Don’t beat around the bush!”
   “You just made ten million bucks,” he said, the words coming from his mouth but in a voice that belonged to someone else.
   “Don’t lie to me, Clay.” Her words trailed off.
   “It’s true. I’m not lying.”
   There was a pause as she began to cry. He backpedaled and sat on the edge of the bed, and for a moment felt like a good cry himself. “Oh my God,” she managed to say twice.
   “I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” Clay said.
   Jonah was still at the office. He began yelling into the phone, then threw it down to go fetch Rodney. Clay heard them talking in the background. A door slammed. Rodney picked up the phone and said, “I’m listening.”
   “Your share is ten million,” Clay said, for the third time, playing Santa Claus as he would never play it again.
   “Mercy, mercy, mercy,” Rodney was saying. Jonah was screaming something in the background.
   “Hard to believe,” Clay said. For a moment, he held the image of Rodney sitting at his old desk at OPD, files and papers everywhere, photos of his wife and kids pinned to the wall, a fine man working hard for very low pay.
   What would he tell his wife when he called home in a few minutes?
   Jonah picked up an extension and they chatted for a while about the settlement conference—who was there, where was it, what was it like? They did not want to let go, but Clay said he had promised to call Paulette again.
   When he’d finished delivering the news, he sat on the bed for a long time, sad with the realization that there was no one else to call. He could see Rebecca, and he could suddenly hear her voice and feel her and touch her. They could buy a place in Tuscany or Maui or anywhere she wanted. They could live there quite happily with a dozen kids and no in-laws, with nannies and maids and cooks and maybe even a butler. He’d send her home twice a year on the jet so she could fight with her parents.
   Or maybe the Van Horns wouldn’t be so awful with a hundred million or so in the family, just out of their reach but close enough to brag about.
   He clenched his jaws and dialed her number. It was a Wednesday, a slow night at the country club. Surely she was at her apartment. After three rings she said, “Hello,” and the sound of her voice made him weak.
   “Hey, it’s Clay,” he said, trying to sound casual. Not a word in six months, but the ice was immediately broken.
   “Hello, stranger,” she said. Cordial.
   “How are you?”
   “Fine, busy as always. You?”
   “About the same. I’m in New York, settling some cases.”
   “I hear things are going well for you.”
   An understatement. “Not bad. I can’t complain. How’s your job?”
   “I have six more days.”
   “You’re quitting?”
   “Yes. There’s a wedding, you know.”
   “So I heard. When is it?”
   “December twentieth.”
   “I haven’t received an invitation.”
   “Well, I didn’t send you one. Didn’t think you’d want to come.” “Probably not. Are you sure you want to get married?” “Let’s talk about something else.” “There is nothing else, really.” “Are you dating anyone?” “Women are chasing me all over town. Where’d you meet this guy?” “And you’ve bought a place in Georgetown?” “That’s old news.” But he was delighted that she knew.
   Perhaps she was curious about his new success. “This guy’s a worm,” he said. “Come on, Clay. Let’s keep it nice.” “He’s a worm and you know it, Rebecca.” “I’m hanging up now.” “Don’t marry him, Rebecca. There’s a rumor he’s gay.” “He’s a worm. He’s gay. What else? Unload everything, Clay, so you’ll feel better.”
   “Don’t do it, Rebecca. Your parents will eat him alive. Plus your kids will look like him. A bunch of little worms.”
   The line went dead.
   He stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling, still hearing her voice, hit hard with the realization of just how much he missed her. Then the phone erupted and startled him. It was Patton French, in the lobby with a limo waiting. Dinner and wine for the next three hours. Someone had to do it

23

   All participants had been sworn to secrecy. Thick documents had been signed by the lawyers promising complete confidentiality concerning the Dyloft negotiations and settlement. Before they left New York, Patton French had told his group, “It’ll be in the papers within forty-eight hours. Philo will leak it, and their stock will go up.”
   The following morning, The Wall Street Journal ran the story; of course, all blame was laid at the bar.


Mass Tort Lawyers Force Quick Dyloft Settlement

   ran the headline. Unnamed sources had plenty to say. The details were accurate. A pool of $2.5 billion would be set up for the first round of settlements, with another potential $1.5 billion as a reserve for more serious cases.
   Philo Products opened at $82 and quickly jumped to $85. One analyst said investors were relieved at news of the settlement. The company would be able to control the costs of litigation. No prolonged lawsuits. No threat of wild verdicts. The trial lawyers had been reined in on this one, and unnamed sources at Philo were calling it a victory. Clay monitored the news on the television in his office.
   He also fielded calls from reporters. At eleven, one from The Journal arrived, with a photographer. During the preliminaries, Clay learned that he knew as much about the settlement as Clay himself. “These things are never kept quiet,” he said. “We knew which hotel you guys were hiding in.”
   Off the record, Clay answered all questions. Then on the record, he wouldn’t comment on the settlement. He did offer some insights about himself, his rapid rise from the depths of OPD to mass tort zillionaire, all in just a few months, and the impressive firm he was building, etcetera. He could see the story taking shape, and it would be spectacular.
   Next morning, he read it online before sunrise. There was his face, in one of those hideous sketches made famous by The Journal, and just above it was the headline,


The King of Torts, from $40,000 to $100,000,000 in Six Months

   Under it was a subtitle: “You gotta love the law!”
   It was a very long story, and all about Clay. His background, growing up in D.C., his father, Georgetown Law School, generous quotes from Glenda and Jermaine over at OPD, a comment from a professor he’d forgotten about, a brief recap of the Dyloft litigation. The best part was a lengthy discussion with Patton French, in which the “notorious mass tort lawyer” described Clay Carter as our “brightest young star” and “fearless” and “a major new force to be reckoned with.”
   “Corporate America should tremble at his name,” continued the bombast. And, finally, “No doubt, Clay is the newest King of Torts.”
   He read it twice then e-mailed it to Rebecca with a note at the top and bottom: “Rebecca, Please Wait, Clay.” He sent it to her apartment and her office, and, while he was at it, he removed his own message and faxed it to the offices of BVH Group. The wedding was a month away.
   When he finally arrived at the office, Miss Glick handed him a stack of messages—about half from law school friends who jokingly asked for loans, about half from journalists of all varieties. The office was even more chaotic than normal. Paillette, Jonah, and Rodney were still floating and completely unfocused. Every client wanted the money that day.
   Fortunately, it was the Yale Branch, under the emerging brilliance of Mr. Oscar Mulrooney, that stepped up to the task and put together a plan to survive until the settlement. Clay moved Mulrooney into an office down the hall, doubled his salary, and left him in charge of the mess.
   Clay needed a break.

   Because Jarrett Carter’s passport had been quietly confiscated by the U.S. Department of Justice, his movements were somewhat limited. He wasn’t even certain he could return to his country, though in six years he had never tried. The wink-and-hand-shake deal that got him out of town without an indictment had many loose ends. “We’d better stick to the Bahamas,” he told Clay on the phone.
   They left Abaco on a Cessna Citation V, another toy from the fleet Clay had discovered. They were headed for Nassau, thirty minutes away. Jarrett waited until they were airborne before saying, “Okay, spill your guts.” He was already gulping a beer. And he was wearing frayed denim shorts and sandals and an old fishing cap, very much the expatriate banished to the islands and living the life of a pirate.
   Clay opened a beer himself, then began with Tarvan and ended with Dyloft. Jarrett had heard rumors of his son’s success, but he never read newspapers and tried his best to ignore any news from home. Another beer as he tried to digest the idea of having five thousand clients at once.
   The $100 million closed his eyes, turned him pale, or least a slightly lighter shade of bronze, and it creased his leathery forehead with a wave of thick wrinkles. He shook his head, drank some beer, then began laughing.
   Clay pressed on, determined to finish before they landed.
   “What are you doing with the money?” Jarrett asked, still in shock.
   “Spending it like crazy.”
   Outside the Nassau airport they found a cab, a 1974 yellow Cadillac with a driver smoking pot. He got them safely to the Sunset Hotel and Casino on Paradise Island, facing Nassau Harbor.
   Jarrett headed for the blackjack tables with the five thousand in cash his son had given him. Clay headed for the pool and the tanning cream. He wanted sun and bikinis.

   The boat was a sixty-three-foot catamaran made by a builder of fine sailboats in Fort Lauderdale. The captain/salesman was a cranky old Brit named Maltbee whose sidekick was a scrawny Bahamian deckhand. Maltbee snarled and fussed until they were out of Nassau Harbor and into the bay. They were headed for the southern edge of channel, for a half day in the brilliant sun and calm water, a lengthy test drive of a boat that Jarrett said could make some real money.
   When the engine was turned off and the sails went up, Clay went down to examine the cabin. Supposedly it could sleep eight, plus a crew of two. Tight quarters, but then everything was junior-sized. The shower was too small to turn around in. The master suite would fit in his smallest closet. Life on a sailboat.
   According to Jarrett, it was impossible to make money catching fish. Business was sporadic. A charter every day was required to turn a profit, but then the work was too hard for that. Deckhands were impossible to keep. Tips were never enough. Most clients were tolerable but there were plenty of bad ones to sour the job. He’d been a charter captain for five years and it was taking its toll.
   The real money was in private sailboat charters for small groups of wealthy people who wanted to work, not be pampered. Semiserious sailors. Take a great boat—your own boat, preferably one without liens on it—and sail around the Caribbean for a month at a time. Jarrett had a friend from Freeport who’d been running two such boats for years and was making serious money. The clients mapped their course, chose their times and routes, selected their menus and booze, and off they went with a captain and a first mate for a month. “Ten thousand bucks a week,” Jarrett said. “Plus you’re sailing, enjoying the wind and the sun and the sea, going nowhere. Unlike fishing, where you gotta catch a big marlin or everybody’s mad.”
   When Clay emerged from the cabin Jarrett was at the helm, looking very much at ease, as if he’d been racing fine yachts for years. Clay moved along the deck and stretched out in the sun.
   They found some wind and began slicing through the smooth water, to the east along the bay, with Nassau fading in the distance. Clay had stripped down to his shorts and was covered in cream; he was about to doze when Maltbee crept up beside him.
   “Your father tells me you’re the one with the money.” Maltbee’s eyes were hidden behind thick sunshades.
   “I guess he’s right,” Clay said.
   “She’s a four-million-dollar boat, practically new, one of our best. Built for one of those dot-commers who lost his money faster than he made it. A sorry lot of them, if you ask me. Anyway, we’re stuck with it. Market’s slow. We’ll move it for three million, and at that you should be charged with thievery. If you incorporate the boat under Bahamian law as a charter company, there are all sorts of tax tricks. I can’t explain them, but we have a lawyer in Nassau who does the paperwork. If you can catch him sober.”
   “I’m a lawyer.”
   “Then why are you sober?”
   Ha, ha, ha; they both managed an awkward laugh.
   “What about depreciation?” Clay asked.
   “Heavy, quite heavy, but again, that’s for you lawyers. I’m just a salesman. I think your old man likes it though. Boats like these are quite the rage from here to Bermuda to South America. It’ll make money.”
   So says the salesman, and a bad one at that. If Clay bought a boat for his father, his sole dream was that it would break even and not become a black hole. Maltbee disappeared as quickly as he had materialized.
   Three days later, Clay signed a contract to pay $2.9 million for the boat. The lawyer, who was in fact not completely sober during either of the two meetings Clay had with him, chartered the Bahamian company in Jarrett’s name only. The boat was a gift from son to father, an asset to be hidden away in the islands, much like Jarrett himself.
   Over dinner their last night in Nassau, in the back of a seedy saloon packed with drug dealers and tax cheaters and alimony dodgers, virtually all of them American, Clay cracked crab legs and finally asked a question he’d been considering for weeks now. “Any chance you could ever return to the States?”
   “For what?”
   “To practice law. To be my partner. To litigate and kick ass again.”
   The question made Jarrett smile. The thought of father and son working together. The very idea that Clay wanted him to return; back to an office, back to something respectable. The boy lived under a dark cloud that the old man had left behind. However, given the boy’s recent success the cloud was certainly shrinking.
   “I doubt it, Clay. I surrendered my license and promised to stay away.”
   “Would you want to come back?”
   “Maybe to clear my name, but never to practice law again. There’s too much baggage, too many old enemies still lurking around. I’m fifty-five years old, and that’s a bit late to start over.”
   “Where will you be in ten years?”
   “I don’t think like that. I don’t believe in calendars and schedules and lists of things to do. Setting goals is such a stupid American habit. Not for me. I try to get through today, maybe give a thought or two to tomorrow, and that’s it. Plotting the future is damned ridiculous.”
   “Sorry I asked.”
   “Live for the moment, Clay. Tomorrow will take care of itself. You’ve got your hands full right now, seems to me.”
   “The money should keep me occupied.”
   “Don’t blow it, son. I know that looks impossible, but you’ll be surprised. New friends are about to pop up all over the place. Women will drop from the sky.”
   “When?”
   “Just wait. I read a book once—Fool’s Gold, or something like that. One story after another about great fortunes that had been lost by the idiots who had them. Fascinating reading. Get a copy.”
   “I think I’ll pass.”
   Jarrett threw a shrimp in his mouth and changed the subject, “Are you going to help your mother?”
   “Probably not. She doesn’t need help. Her husband is wealthy, remember?”
   “When have you talked to her?”
   “It’s been eleven years, Dad. Why do you care?”
   “Just curious. It’s odd. You marry a woman, live with her for twenty-five years, and you sometimes wonder what she’s doing.”
   “Let’s talk about something else.”
   “Rebecca?”
   “Next.”
   “Let’s go hit the crap tables. I’m up four thousand bucks.”

   When Mr. Ted Worley of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, received a thick envelope from the Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II, he immediately opened it. He’d seen various news reports about the Dyloft settlement. He’d watched the Dyloft Web site religiously, waiting for some sign that it was time to collect his money from Ackerman Labs.
   The letter began, “Dear Mr. Worley: Congratulations.
   Your class-action claim against Ackerman Labs has been settled in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. As a Group One Plaintiff, your portion of the settlement is $62,000. Pursuant to the Contract for Legal Services entered into by you and this law firm, a 28 percent contingency for attorneys’ fees is now applicable. In addition, a deduction of $1,400 for litigation expenses has been approved by the court. Your net settlement is $43,240. Please sign the enclosed agreement and acknowledgment forms and return them immediately in the enclosed envelope. Sincerely, Oscar Mulrooney, Attorney-at-Law.”
   “A different lawyer every damned time,” Mr. Worley said as he kept flipping pages. There was a copy of the court order approving the settlement, and a notice to all class-action plaintiffs, and some other papers that he suddenly had no desire to read.
   $43,240! That was the grand sum he would receive from a sleazy pharmaceutical giant that deliberately put into the marketplace a drug that caused four tumors to grow in his bladder? $43,240 for months of fear and stress and uncertainty about living or dying? $43,240 for the ordeal of a microscopic knife and scope in a tube slid up his penis and into his bladder where the four growths were removed one by one and retrieved back through his penis? $43,240 for three days of lumps and blood passed through his urine?
   He flinched at the memory.
   He called six times and left six hot messages and waited six hours until Mr. Mulrooney called him back. “Who the hell are you?” Mr. Worley began pleasantly.
   Oscar Mulrooney, in the past ten days, had become an expert at handling such calls. He explained that he was the attorney in charge of Mr. Worley’s case.
   “This settlement is a joke!” Mr. Worley said. “Fortythree thousand dollars is criminal.”
   “Your settlement is sixty-two thousand, Mr. Worley,” Oscar said.
   “I’m getting forty-three, son.”
   “No, you’re getting sixty-two. You agreed to give one-third to your attorney, without whom you would be getting nothing. It’s been reduced to twenty-eight percent by the settlement. Most lawyers charge forty-five or fifty percent.”
   “Well, aren’t I a lucky bastard. I’m not accepting it.”
   To which Oscar offered a brief and well-rehearsed narrative about how Ackerman Labs could only pay so much without going bankrupt, an event that would leave Mr. Worley with even less, if anything at all.
   “That’s nice,” Mr. Worley said. “But I’m not accepting the settlement.”
   “You have no choice.”
   “The hell I don’t.”
   “Look at the Contract for Legal Services, Mr. Worley. It’s page eleven in the packet you have there. Paragraph eight is called the Preauthorization. Read the language, sir, and you’ll see that you authorized this firm to settle for anything above fifty thousand dollars.”
   “I remember that, but it was described to me as a starting point. I was expecting much more.”
   “Your settlement has already been approved by the court, sir. That’s the way class actions work. If you don’t sign the acceptance form, then your portion will stay in the pot and eventually go to someone else.”
   “You’re a bunch of crooks, you know that? I don’t know who’s worse—the company that made the drug or my own lawyers who’re screwing me out of a fair settlement.”
   “Sorry you feel that way.”
   “You’re not sorry about a damned thing. Paper says you’re getting a hundred million bucks. Thieves!”
   Mr. Worley slammed the phone down and flung the papers across his kitchen.

24

   The December cover of Capitol Magazine featured Clay Carter, looking tanned and quite handsome in an Armani suit, perched on the corner of his desk in his finely appointed office. It was a frantic last-minute substitution for a story titled “Christmas on the Potomac,” the usual holiday edition in which a rich old Senator and his newest trophy wife opened their private new Washington mansion for all to see. The couple, and their decorations and cats and favorite recipes, got bumped to the inside because D.C. was first and always a city about money and power. How often would the magazine have the chance at the unbelievable story of a broke young lawyer who got so rich so fast?
   There was Clay on his patio with a dog, one he’d borrowed from Rodney, and Clay posing next to the jury box in an empty courtroom as if he’d been extracting huge verdicts from the bad guys, and, of course, Clay washing his new Porsche. He confided that his passion was sailing, and there was a new boat docked down in the Bahamas. No significant romance at the moment, and the story immediately labeled him as one of the most eligible bachelors in town.
   Near the back were the pictures of brides, followed by the announcements of upcoming weddings. Every debutante and private school girl and country club socialite in metropolitan D.C. dreamed of the moment when she would arrive in the pages of Capitol Magazine. The larger the photo, the more important the family. Ambitious mothers were known to take a ruler and measure the dimensions of their daughters’ pictures and those of their rivals, then either gloat or hold secret grudges for years.
   There was Rebecca Van Horn, resplendent on a wicker bench in a garden somewhere, a lovely photo ruined by the face of her groom and future mate, the Honorable Jason Shubert Myers IV, cuddling next to her and obviously enjoying the camera. Weddings are for brides, not grooms. Why did they insist on getting their faces in the announcements too?
   Bennett and Barbara had pulled the right strings; Rebecca’s announcement was the second largest of a dozen or so. Six pages over, Clay saw a full-page ad for BVH Group. The bribe.
   Clay reveled in the misery the magazine was causing at that very moment around the Van Horn home. Rebecca’s wedding, the big social bash that Bennett and Barbara could throw money at and impress the world, was being upstaged by their old nemesis. How many times would their daughter get her wedding announcement in Capitol Magazine? How hard had they worked to make sure she was prominently displayed? And all of it now ruined by Clay’s thunder.
   And his upstaging was not over.

   Jonah had already announced that retirement was a real possibility. He’d spent ten days on Antigua with not one girl but two, and when he returned to D.C., in an early December snowstorm, he confided in Clay that he was mentally and psychologically unfit to practice law any longer. He’d had all he could take. His legal career was over. He was looking at sailboats himself. He’d found a girl who loved to sail and, because she was on the downside of a bad marriage, she too needed some serious time at sea. Jonah was from Annapolis and, unlike Clay, had sailed his entire life.
   “I need a bimbo, preferably a blonde,” Clay said as he settled into a chair across from Jonah’s desk. His door was locked. It was after six on a Wednesday and Jonah had the first bottle of beer opened. They had compromised on an unwritten rule that there would be no drinking until 6 P.M. Otherwise, Jonah would start just after lunch.
   “The hottest bachelor in town is having trouble picking up chicks?”
   “I’ve been out of the loop. I’m going to Rebecca’s wedding, and I need a babe who’ll steal the show.”
   “Oh, this is beautiful,” he said as he laughed and reached into a drawer in his desk. Only Jonah would keep files on women. He burrowed through some paperwork and found what he wanted. He tossed a folded newspaper across the desk. It was a lingerie ad for a department store. The gorgeous young goddess was wearing practically nothing below the waist and was barely covering her breasts with her folded arms. Clay vividly remembered seeing the ad the morning it first ran. The date was four months earlier.
   “You know her?”
   “Of course I know her. You think I keep lingerie ads just for the thrills?” “Wouldn’t surprise me.” “Her name is Ridley. At least that’s what she goes by.” “She lives here?” Clay was still gawking at the stunning beauty he was holding, in black and white. “She’s from Georgia.” “Oh, a Southern girl.” “No, a Russian girl. The country of Georgia. She came over as an exchange student and never left.” “She looks eighteen.” “Mid-twenties.” “How tall is she?” “Five ten or so.” “Her legs look five feet long.” “Are you complaining?” In an effort to appear somewhat nonchalant, Clay tossed the paper back on the desk. “Any downside?” “Yes, she’s rumored to be a switch-hitter.” “A what?” “She likes boys and girls.” “Ouch.” “No confirmation, but a lot of models go both ways.
   Could be just a rumor for all I know.”
   “You’ve dated her.”
   “Nope. A friend of a friend. She’s on my list. I was just waiting for a confirmation. Give it a try. You don’t like her, we’ll find another bimbo.”
   “Can you make the call?”
   “Sure, no problem. It’s an easy call, now that you’re Mr. Cover Boy, most eligible bachelor, the King of Torts. Wonder if they know what torts are over in Georgia?”
   “Not if they’re lucky. Just make the call.”

   They met for dinner at the restaurant of the month, a Japanese place frequented by the young and prosperous. Ridley looked even better in person than she did in print. Heads jerked and necks twisted as they were led to the center of the restaurant and placed at a very powerful table. Conversations halted in mid-sentence. Waiters swarmed around them. Her slightly accented English was perfect and just exotic enough to add even more sex to the package, as if she needed it.
   Old hand-me-downs from a flea market would look great on Ridley. Her challenge was dressing down, so the clothes wouldn’t compete with the blond hair and aqua eyes and high cheekbones and the rest of the perfect features.
   Her real name was Ridal Petashnakol, which she had to spell twice before Clay got it. Fortunately, models, like soccer players, could survive with only one name, so she went just by Ridley. She drank no alcohol, but instead ordered a cranberry juice. Clay hoped she wouldn’t order a plate of carrots for dinner.
   She had the looks and he had the money, and since they could talk about neither they thrashed about in deep water for a few minutes looking for safe ground. She was Georgian, not Russian, and cared nothing about politics or terrorism or football. Ah, the movies! She saw everything and loved them all. Even dreadful stuff that no one else went to see. Box office disasters were much beloved by Ridley, and Clay was beginning to have doubts.
   She’s just a bimbo, he said to himself. Dinner now, Rebecca’s wedding later, and she’s history.
   She spoke five languages, but since most were of the Eastern European variety they seemed pretty useless in the fast lane. Much to his relief, she ordered a first course, second course, and dessert. Conversation wasn’t easy, but both worked hard at it. Their backgrounds were so different. The lawyer in him wanted a thorough examination of the witness; real name, age, blood type, father’s occupation, salary, marital history, sexual history—is it true you’re a switch-hitter? But he managed to throttle himself and not pry at all. He nibbled around the edges once or twice, got nothing, and went back to the movies. She knew every twenty-year-old B actor and who he happened to be dating at the moment—painfully boring stuff, but, then, probably not as boring as having a bunch of lawyers talk about their latest trial victories or toxic tort settlements.
   Clay knocked back the wine and got himself loosened up. It was a red burgundy. Patton French would’ve been proud. If only his mass tort buddies could see him now, sitting across from this Barbie Doll.
   The only negative was the nasty rumor. Surely she couldn’t go for women. She was too perfect, too exquisite, too appealing to the opposite sex. She was destined to be a trophy wife! But there was something about her that kept him suspicious. Once the initial shock of her looks wore off, and that took at least two hours and one bottle of wine, Clay realized he wasn’t getting past the surface. Either there wasn’t much depth, or it was carefully protected.
   Over dessert, a chocolate mousse that she toyed with but did not eat, he invited her to attend a wedding reception. He confessed that the bride was his former fiancée, but lied when he said that they were now on friendly terms. Ridley shrugged as if she preferred to go to the movies. “Why not?” she said.

   As he turned into the drive of the Potomac Country Club, Clay was hit hard by the moment. His last visit to this wretched place had been more than seven months earlier, a torturous dinner with Rebecca’s parents. Then he’d hidden his old Honda behind the tennis courts. Now, he was showing off a freshly detailed Porsche Carrera. Then, he’d avoided the valet parking to save money. Now he’d tip the kid extra. Then, he was alone and dreading the next few hours with the Van Horns. Now he was escorting the priceless Ridley, who held his elbow and crossed her legs in such a way that the slit in her skirt showed all the way to her waist; and wherever her parents happened to be at the moment they damned sure weren’t involved in his life. Then, he’d felt like a vagrant on hallowed ground. Now the Potomac Country Club would approve his application tomorrow if he wrote the right check.
   “Van Horn wedding reception,” he said to the guard, who waved him through.
   They were an hour late, which was perfect timing. The ballroom was packed and a rhythm and blues band played at one end.
   “Stay close to me,” Ridley whispered as they entered. “I won’t know anyone here.”
   “Don’t worry,” Clay said. Staying close would not be a problem. And though he pretended otherwise, he wouldn’t know anyone either.
   Heads began turning immediately. Jaws dropped. With several drinks under their belts the men did not hesitate to gawk at Ridley as she and her date inched forward. “Hey, Clay!” someone yelled, and Clay turned to see the smiling face of Randy Spino, a law school classmate who worked in a megafirm and would never, under normal circumstances, have spoken to Clay in such surroundings. A chance meeting on the street, and maybe Spino would say, “How’s it going?” without breaking stride. But never in a country club crowd, and especially one so dominated by big-firm types.
   But there he was, thrusting a hand forward at Clay while showing Ridley every one of his teeth. A small mob followed. Spino took charge, introducing all of his good friends to his good friend Clay Carter and Ridley with no last name. She squeezed Clay’s elbow even tighter. All the boys wanted to say hello.
   To get close to Ridley they needed to chat with Clay, so it was only a few seconds before someone said, “Hey, Clay, congratulations on nailing Ackerman Labs.” Clay had never seen the person who congratulated him. He assumed he was a lawyer, probably from a big firm, probably a big firm that represented big corporations like Ackerman Labs, and he knew before the sentence was finished that the false praise was driven by envy. And a desire to stare at Ridley.
   “Thanks,” Clay said, as if it was just another day at the office.
   “A hundred million. Wow!” This face, too, belonged to a stranger, one who appeared to be drunk.
   “Well, half goes for taxes,” Clay said. Who could get by these days on just $50 million?
   The mob exploded in laughter, as if Clay had just hit the funniest punch line ever. More people gathered around, all men, all inching toward this striking blonde who looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps they didn’t recognize her in full color with her clothes on.
   An intense, stuffy type said, “We got Philo. Boy, were we glad to get that Dyloft mess settled.” It was an affliction suffered by most D.C. lawyers. Every corporation in the world had D.C. counsel, if in name only, and so every dispute or transaction had grave consequences among the city’s lawyers. A refinery blows up in Thailand, and a lawyer will say, “Yeah, we got Exxon.” A blockbuster flops—“We got Disney.” An SUV flips and kills five—“We got Ford.”
   “We-Gots” was a game Clay had heard until he was sick of it.
   I got Ridley, he wanted to say, so keep your hands off.
   An announcement was being made onstage and the room became quieter. The bride and groom were about to dance, to be followed by the bride and her father, then the groom and his mother, and so on. The crowd gathered around to watch. The band began playing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
   “She’s very pretty,” Ridley whispered, very close to his right ear. Indeed she was. And she was dancing with Jason Myers who, though he was two inches shorter, appeared to Rebecca to be the only person in the world. She smiled and glowed as they spun slowly around the dance floor, the bride doing most of the work because her groom was as stiff as a board.
   Clay wanted to attack, to bolt through the crowd and sucker punch Myers with all the force he could muster. He would rescue his girl and take her away and shoot her mother if she found them.
   “You still love her, don’t you?” Ridley was whispering.
   “No, it’s over,” he whispered back.
   “You do. I can tell.”
   “No.”
   The newlyweds would go somewhere tonight and consummate their marriage, though knowing Rebecca as intimately as he did, he knew she had not been doing without sex. She’d probably taken this worm Myers and educated him in the ways of the bed. A lucky man. The things Clay had taught her she was now passing along to someone else. It wasn’t fair.
   The two were painful to watch, and Clay asked himself why he was there. Closure, whatever that meant. A farewell. But he wanted Rebecca to see him, and Ridley, and to know that he was faring well and not missing her.
   Watching Bennett the Bulldozer dance was painful for other reasons. He subscribed to the white man’s theory of dancing without moving his feet, and when he tried to shake his butt the band actually laughed. His cheeks were already crimson from too much Chivas.
   Jason Myers danced with Barbara Van Horn who, from a distance, looked as though she’d had another round or two with her discount plastic surgeon. She was poured into a dress that, while pretty, was several sizes too small, so that the extra flab was bulging in the wrong spots and seemed ready to free itself and make everyone sick. She had plastered across her face the phoniest grin she’d ever produced—no wrinkles anywhere, though, due to excessive Botox—and Myers grinned right back as if the two would be close chums forever. She was already knifing him in the back and he was too stupid to know it. Sadly, she probably didn’t know it either. Just the nature of the beast.
   “Would you like to dance?” someone asked Ridley.
   “Bug off,” Clay said, then led her to the dance floor where a mob was gyrating to some pretty good Motown. If Ridley standing still was a work of art, Ridley in full motion was a national treasure. She moved with a natural rhythm and easy grace, with the low-cut dress just barely high enough and the slit in the skirt flying open to reveal all manner of flesh. Groups of men were gathering to watch.
   And watching also was Rebecca. Taking a break to chat with her guests, she noticed the commotion and looked into the crowd, where she saw Clay dancing with a knockout. She, too, was stunned by Ridley, but for other reasons. She continued chatting for a moment, then moved back to the dance floor.
   Meanwhile, Clay’s eyes were working furiously to check on Rebecca without missing a movement from Ridley. The song ended, a slow number began, and Rebecca stepped between them. “Hello, Clay,” she said, ignoring his date. “How about a dance?”
   “Sure,” he said. Ridley shrugged and moved away, alone for only a second before a stampede surrounded her. She picked the tallest one, threw her arms around him, and began pulsating.
   “Don’t remember inviting you.” Rebecca said with an arm over his shoulder.
   “You want me to leave?” He pulled her slightly closer but the bulky wedding dress prevented the contact he wanted.
   “People are watching,” she said, smiling for their benefit. “Why are you here?”
   “To celebrate your wedding. And to get a good look at your new boy.”
   “Don’t be ugly, Clay. You’re just jealous.”
   “I’m more than jealous. I’d like to break his neck.”
   “Where’d you get the bimbo?”
   “Now who’s jealous?”
   “Me.”
   “Don’t worry, Rebecca, she can’t touch you in bed.” On second thought, perhaps she’d like to. Anyway.
   “Jason’s not bad.”
   “I really don’t want to hear about it. Just don’t get pregnant, okay?”
   “That’s hardly any of your business.”
   “It’s very much my business.”
   Ridley and her beau swept by them. For the first time Clay got a good look at her back, the full extent of which was on display because her dress didn’t exist until just a few tiny inches above her round and perfect cheeks. Rebecca saw it too. “Is she on the payroll?” she asked.
   “Not yet.”
   “Is she a minor?”
   “Oh no. She’s very much the adult. Tell me you still love me.”
   “I don’t.”
   “You’re lying.”
   “It might be best if you leave now, and take her with you.”
   “Sure, it’s your party. Didn’t mean to crash it.”
   “That’s the only reason you’re here, Clay.” She pulled away slightly but kept dancing.
   “Hang in there for a year, okay?” he said. “By then I’ll have two hundred million. We can hop on my jet, blow this joint, spend the rest of our lives on a yacht. Your parents will never find us.”
   She stopped moving and said, “Good-bye, Clay.”
   “I’ll wait,” he said, then got knocked aside by a stumbling Bennett who said, “Excuse me.” He grabbed his daughter and rescued her by shuffling to the other side of the floor.
   Barbara was next. She took Clay’s hand and flashed an artificial smile. “Let’s not make a scene,” she said without moving her lips. They began a rigid movement that no one would mistake for dancing.
   “And how are you, Mrs. Van Horn?” Clay said, in the clutches of a pit viper.
   “Fine, until I saw you. I’m positive you were not invited to this little party.”
   “I was just leaving.”
   “Good. I’d hate to call security.”
   “That won’t be necessary.”
   “Don’t ruin this moment for her, please.”
   “Like I said. I was just leaving.”
   The music stopped and Clay jerked away from Mrs. Van Horn. A small mob materialized around Ridley, but Clay whisked her off. They retreated to the back of the room where a bar was attracting more fans than the band. Clay grabbed a beer and was planning an exit when another group of onlookers encircled them. Lawyers in the bunch wanted to talk about the joys of mass torts while pressing close to Ridley.
   After a few minutes of idiotic small talk with people he detested, a thick young man in a rented tuxedo appeared next to Clay and whispered, “I’m security.” He had a friendly face and seemed very professional.
   “I’m leaving,” Clay whispered back.
   Tossed from the Van Horn wedding reception. Ejected from the great Potomac Country Club. Driving away, with Ridley wrapped around him, he privately declared it to be one of his finest moments.

25

   The announcement had said the newlyweds would honeymoon in Mexico. Clay decided to take a trip himself. If anyone deserved a month on an island, it was he.
   His once formidable team had lost all direction. Perhaps it was the holidays, perhaps it was the money. Whatever the reason, Jonah, Paulette, and Rodney were spending fewer hours at the office.
   As was Clay. The place was filled with tension and strife. So many Dyloft clients were unhappy with their meager settlements. The mail was brutal. Dodging the phone had become a sport. Several clients had actually found the place and presented themselves to Miss Glick with demands to see Mr. Carter, who, it happened, was always in a big trial somewhere. Usually, he was hunkering down in his office with the door locked, riding out yet another storm. After one particularly troubling day, he called Patton French for advice.
   “Toughen up, ol’ boy,” French said. “It goes with the territory. You’re making a fortune in mass torts, this is just the downside. It takes a thick skin.”
   The thickest skin in the firm belonged to Oscar Mulrooney, who continued to amaze Clay with his organizational skills and his ambition. Mulrooney was working fifteen hours a day and pushing his Yale Branch to collect the Dyloft money as quickly as possible. He readily assumed any unpleasant task. With Jonah making no secret of his plans to sail around the world, Paulette dropping hints about a year in Africa to study art, and Rodney following along with some vague chatter about just plain quitting, it was obvious that there would soon be room at the top.
   It was just as obvious that Oscar was hustling for a partnership, or at least a piece of the action. He was studying the massive litigation still raging over Skinny Bens, the diet pills that had gone awry, and was convinced that at least ten thousand cases were still out there, unclaimed, in spite of four years’ worth of nonstop publicity.
   The Yale Branch now had eleven lawyers, seven of whom had actually gone to Yale. The Sweatshop had grown to twelve paralegals, all up to their ears in files and paperwork. Clay had no hesitation in leaving both units under the supervision of Mulrooney for a few weeks. He was certain that when he returned, the office would be in better shape than when he left.

   Christmas had become a season he tried to ignore, though it was difficult. He had no family to spend time with. Rebecca had always worked hard to include him with whatever the Van Horns happened to be doing, but while he appreciated the effort, he’d found that sitting alone in an empty apartment drinking cheap wine and watching old movies on Christmas Eve was a far better evening than opening gifts with those people. No gift he gave was ever good enough.
   Ridley’s family was still in Georgia, and likely to stay there. At first, she was certain that she could not rearrange her modeling assignments and leave town for several weeks. But her determination to do so warmed his heart. She really wanted to jet away to the islands and play with him on the beach. She finally told one client to go ahead and fire her; she didn’t care.
   It was her first trip on a private jet. He found himself wanting to impress her in so many ways. Nonstop from Washington to St. Lucia, four hours and a million miles.
   D.C. was cold and gray when they left, and when they stepped off the plane the sun and the heat hit them hard. They walked through Customs with hardly a glance, at least none directed at Clay. Every male head turned to admire Ridley. Oddly, Clay was getting accustomed to it. She seemed oblivious. It had been a way of life for so long that she simply ignored everyone, which only made matters worse for those gawking. Such an exquisite creature, perfect from head to foot, yet so aloof, so untouchable.
   They boarded a commuter for the fifteen-minute flight to Mustique, the exclusive island owned by the rich and famous, an island with everything but a runway long enough for private jets. Rock stars and actresses and billionaires had mansions there. Their house for the next week had once been owned by a prince who sold it to a dotcommer who leased it when he wasn’t around.
   The island was a mountain surrounded by the still waters of the Caribbean. From three thousand feet up, it looked dark and lush, a picture on a postcard. Ridley clutched and groped as they descended and the tiny airstrip came into the view. The pilot wore a straw cap and could’ve landed wearing a blindfold.
   Marshall, the chauffeur/butler, was waiting with a huge smile and an open Jeep. They threw their rather light bags in the back and started up a winding road. No hotels, no condos, no tourists, no traffic. For ten minutes they did not see another vehicle. The house was on the side of a mountain, as Marshall described it, though it was just a hill. The view was breathtaking—two hundred feet above the water and miles of endless ocean. No other island could be seen; no boats out there, no people.
   There were four or five bedrooms, Clay lost count, spread around a main house and connected with tiled walkways. Lunch was ordered; whatever they wanted because there was a full-time chef. And a gardener, two housekeepers, and a butler. A staff of five—plus Marshall—and they all lived somewhere on the premises. Before they could unpack in the main suite, Ridley had stripped down to virtually nothing and was in the pool. Topless, and if not for a small string that could barely be seen, she would have been completely nude. Just when Clay thought he was accustomed to looking at her, he found himself once more almost dizzy.
   She covered up for lunch. Fresh seafood, of course—grilled prawns and oysters. Two beers and Clay was staggering toward a hammock for a long siesta. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and he didn’t care. Rebecca was away in some tourist trap of a hotel, cuddling with little Jason.
   And he didn’t care.

   Two days after Christmas, Max Pace arrived with a companion. Her name was Valeria, a rugged, crunchy outdoors type with broad shoulders and no makeup and a very reluctant smile. Max was a very handsome fellow, but there was nothing attractive about his friend. Hopefully, Valeria would keep her clothes on around the pool. When Clay shook her hand he felt calluses. Well, at least she wouldn’t be a temptation for Ridley.
   Pace was quick to change into shorts and head for the pool. Valeria pulled out some hiking boots and asked where the trails were. Marshall had to be consulted, said he was unaware of any trails, which of course displeased Valeria who struck off anyway, in search of rocks to climb. Ridley disappeared into the living room of the main house, where she had a stack of videos to watch.
   Because Pace had no background, there was little to talk about. At first, anyway. However, it soon became apparent that he had something important on his mind. “Let’s talk business,” he said after a nap in the sun. They moved to the bar and Marshall brought drinks.
   “There’s another drug out there,” Pace began, and Clay immediately began seeing money. “And it’s a big one.”
   “Here we go again.”
   “But the plan is a little different this time. I want a piece of the action.”
   “Who are you working for?”
   “Me. And you. I get twenty-five percent of the gross attorneys’ fees.”
   “What’s the upside?”
   “It could be bigger than Dyloft.”
   “Then you get twenty-five percent. More if you want.” The two shared so much dirty laundry, how could Clay say no?
   “Twenty-five is fair,” Max said, and reached across for a handshake. The deal was done.
   “Let’s have it.”
   “There’s a female hormone drug called Maxatil. Used by at least four million menopausal and postmenopausal women, ages forty-five to seventy-five. It came out five years ago, another wonder drug. It relieves hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause. Very effective. It’s also touted to preserve bone strength, reduce hypertension and the risks of heart disease. The company is Goffman.”
   “Goffman? Razor blades and mouthwash?”
   “You got it. Twenty-one billion in sales last year. The bluest of all blue-chips. Very little debt, sound management. An American tradition. But they got in a hurry with Maxatil, typical story—profits looked huge, drug looked safe, they rammed it through the FDA and for the first few years everybody was happy. Doctors loved it. The women are crazy about it because it works beautifully.”
   “But?”
   “But there are problems. Huge problems. A government study has been tracking twenty thousand women who’ve been taking the drug for four years. The study has just been completed, and a report is due in a few weeks. It will be devastating. For a percentage of women, the drug greatly increases the risk of breast cancer, heart attacks, and strokes.”
   “What percentage?”
   “About eight percent.”
   “Who knows about the report?”
   “Very few people. I have a copy of it.”
   “Why am I not surprised?” Clay took a long pull on the bottle and looked around for Marshall. His pulse was racing. He was suddenly bored with Mustique.
   “There are some lawyers on the prowl, but they haven’t seen the government report,” Pace continued. “One lawsuit has been filed, in Arizona, but it’s not a class action.”
   “What is it?”
   “Just an old-fashioned tort case. A one-shot deal.”
   “How boring.”
   “Not really. The lawyer is a character named Dale Mooneyham, from Tucson. He tries them one at a time, and he never loses. He’s on the fast track to get the first shot at Goffman. It could set the tone for the entire settlement. The key is to file the first class action. You learned that from Patton French.”
   “We can file first,” Clay said, as if he’d been doing it for years.
   “And you can do it alone, without French and those crooks. File it in D.C., then blitz with ads. It’ll be huge.”
   “Just like Dyloft.”
   “Except you’re in charge. I’ll be in the background, pulling strings, doing the dirty work. I have lots of contacts with all the right shady characters. It’ll be our lawsuit, and with your name on it Goffman will run for cover.”
   “A quick settlement?”
   “Probably not as quick as Dyloft, but then that was remarkably fast. You’ll have to do your homework, gather the right evidence, hire the experts, sue the doctors who’ve been peddling the drug, push hard for the first trial. You’ll have to convince Goffman that you are not interested in a settlement, that you want a trial—a huge, public spectacle of a trial, in your own backyard.”
   “The downside?” Clay asked, trying to appear cautious.
   “None that I can see, except that it’ll cost you millions in advertising and trial prep.”
   “No problem there.”
   “You seem to have the knack for spending it.”
   “I’ve barely scratched the surface.”
   “I’d like an advance of a million dollars. Against my fee.” Pace took a sip. “I’m still cleaning up some old business back home.”
   The fact that Pace wanted money struck Clay as odd. However, with so much at stake, and with their Tarvan secret, he was in no position to say no. “Approved,” he said.
   They were in the hammocks when Valeria returned, soaked with sweat and appearing somewhat relaxed. She stripped everything off and jumped in the pool. “A California girl,” Pace said softly.
   “Something serious?” Clay asked, tentatively.
   “Off and on for many years now.” And he let it go at that.
   The California girl requested a dinner that included no meat, fish, chicken, eggs, or cheese. She didn’t do alcohol either. Clay arranged grilled swordfish for the rest of them. The meal was over quickly, with Ridley anxious to run and hide in her room and Clay equally as eager to get away from Valeria.
   Pace and his friend stayed for two days, which was at least one day too long. The purpose of the trip had been solely business, and since the deal had been struck Pace was ready to leave. Clay watched them speed away with Marshall driving faster than ever.
   “Any more guests?” Ridley asked warily.
   “Hell no,” Clay said.
   “Good.”

26

   The entire floor above his firm became vacant at the end of the year. Clay leased half of it and consolidated his operations. He brought in the twelve paralegals and five secretaries from the Sweatshop; the Yale Branch lawyers who’d been in other space were likewise transferred to Connecticut Avenue, to the land of higher rents, where they felt more at home. He wanted his entire firm under one roof, and close at hand, because he planned to work them all until they dropped.
   He attacked the new year with a ferocious work schedule—in the office by six with breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner at his desk. He was usually there until eight or nine at night, and left little doubt that he expected similar hours from those who wanted to stay.
   Jonah did not. He was gone by the middle of January, his office cleared and vacated, his farewells quick. The sailboat was waiting. Don’t bother to call. Just wire the money to an account in Aruba.
   Oscar Mulrooney was measuring Jonah’s office before he got out the door. It was larger and had a better view, which meant nothing to him, but it was closer to Clay’s and that was what mattered. Mulrooney smelled money, serious fees. He missed on Dyloft, but he would not miss again. He and the rest of the Yale boys had been shafted by the corporate law they’d been trained to covet, and now they were determined to make a mint in retribution. And what better way than by outright solicitation and ambulance-chasing? Nothing was more offensive to the stuffed shirts in the blue-blood firms. Mass tort litigation was not practicing law. It was a roguish form of entrepreneurship.
   The aging Greek playboy who’d married Paulette Tullos and then left her had somehow gotten wind of her new money. He showed up in D.C., called her at the swanky condo he’d given her, and left a message on her answering machine. When Paulette heard his voice, she raced from her home and flew to London, where she’d spent the holidays and was still in hiding. She e-mailed Clay a dozen times while he was on Mustique, telling him of her predicament and instructing him on exactly how to handle her divorce upon his return. Clay filed the necessary papers, but the Greek was nowhere to be found. Nor was Paulette. She might come back in a few months; she might not. “Sorry, Clay,” she said on the phone. “But I really don’t want to work anymore.”
   So Mulrooney became the confidant, the unofficial partner with big ambitions. He and his team had been studying the shifting landscape of class-action litigation. They learned the law and the procedures. They read the scholarly articles by the academics, and they read the down-in-the-trenches war stories from trial lawyers. There were dozens of Web sites—one that purported to list all class actions now pending in the United States, a total of eleven thousand; one that instructed potential plaintiffs on how to join a class and receive compensation; one that specialized in lawsuits involving women’s health; one for the men; several for the Skinny Ben diet pill fiasco; several for tobacco litigation. Never had so much brainpower, backed by so much cash, been aimed at the makers of bad products.
   Mulrooney had a plan. With so many class actions already filed, the firm could spend its considerable resources in rounding up new clients. Because Clay had the money for advertising and marketing, they could pick the most lucrative class actions and zero in on untapped plaintiffs. As with Dyloft, almost every lawsuit that had been settled was left open for a period of years to allow new participants to collect what they were entitled to. Clay’s firm could simply ride the coattails of other mass tort lawyers, sort of pick up the pieces, but for huge fees. He used the example of Skinny Bens. The best estimate of the number of potential plaintiffs was around three hundred thousand, with perhaps as many as a hundred thousand still unidentified and certainly unrepresented. The litigation had been settled; the company was forking over billions. A claimant simply had to register with the class-action administrator, prove her medicals, and collect the money.
   Like a general moving his troops, Clay assigned two lawyers and a paralegal to the Skinny Ben front. This was less than what Mulrooney asked for, but Clay had bigger plans. He laid out the war on Maxatil, a lawsuit that he would direct himself. The government report, still un-released and evidently stolen by Max Pace, was one hundred forty pages long and filled with damning results. Clay read it twice before he gave it to Mulrooney.
   On a snowy night in late January, they worked until after midnight going through it, then made detailed plans for the attack. Clay assigned Mulrooney and two other lawyers, two paralegals, and three secretaries to the Maxatil litigation.
   At two in the morning, with a heavy snow hitting the conference room window, Mulrooney said he had something unpleasant to discuss. “We need more money.”
   “How much?” Clay asked.
   “There are thirteen of us now, all from big firms where we were doing quite well. Ten of us are married, most have kids, we’re feeling the pressure, Clay. You gave us one-year contracts for seventy-five thousand, and, believe me, we’re happy to get them. You have no idea what it’s like to go to Yale, or a school like it, get wined and dined by the big firms, take a job, get married, then get tossed into the streets with nothing. Does something to the old ego, you know?”
   “I understand.”
   “You doubled my salary and I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know. I’m getting by. But the other guys are struggling. And they’re very proud men.”
   “How much?”
   “I’d hate to lose any of them. They’re bright. They work their tails off.”
   “Let’s do it like this, Oscar. I’m a very generous guy these days. I’ll give all of you a new contract for one year, at two hundred grand. What I get in return is a ton of hours. We’re on the brink here of something huge, bigger than last year. You guys deliver, and I’ll do bonuses. Big fat bonuses. I love bonuses, Oscar, for obvious reasons. Deal?”
   “You got it, chief.”
   The snow was too heavy to drive in, so they continued the marathon. Clay had preliminary reports on the company in Reedsburg, Pennsylvania, that was making defective brick mortar. Wes Saulsberry had passed along the secret file he’d mentioned in New York. Masonry cement wasn’t as exciting as bladder tumors or blood clots or leaky heart valves, but the money was just as green. They assigned two lawyers and a paralegal to prepare the class action and to go find some plaintiffs.
   They were together for ten straight hours in the conference room, guzzling coffee, eating stale bagels, watching the snowfall become a blizzard, plotting the year. Though the session began as an exchange of ideas, it grew into something much more important. A new law firm took shape, one with a clear sense of where it was going and what it would become.

   The president needed him! Though re-election was two years away his enemies were already raising money by the trainload. He had stood firm with the trial lawyers since his days as a rookie Senator, in fact he’d once been a small-town litigator himself, and was still proud of it, and he now needed Clay’s help in fending off the selfish interests of big business. The vehicle he proposed for getting to know Clay personally was something called the Presidential Review, a select group of high-powered trial lawyers and labor types who could write nice checks and spend time talking about the issues.
   The enemies were planning another massive assault called Tort Reform Now. They wanted to put heinous caps on both actual and punitive damages in lawsuits. They wanted to dismantle the class-action system that had served them (mass tort boys) so well. They wanted to prevent folks from suing doctors.
   The President would stand firm, as always, but he sure needed some help. The handsome, gold-embossed, three-page letter ended with a plea for cash, and lots of it. Clay called Patton French, who, oddly enough, happened to be in his office in Biloxi. French was abrupt, as usual. “Write the damned check,” he said.
   Phone calls went back and forth between Clay and the Director of the Presidential Review. Later, he couldn’t remember how much he had initially planned to contribute, but it was nothing close to the $250,000 check he eventually wrote. A courier picked it up and delivered it to the White House. Four hours later, another courier delivered to Clay a small envelope from the White House. The note was handwritten on the President’s correspondence card:


   Dear Clay,
   I’m in a Cabinet meeting (trying to stay awake), otherwise I would’ve called. Thanks for the support. Let’s have dinner and say hello.

Signed by the President.

   Nice, but for a quarter of a million bucks he expected nothing less. The next day another courier delivered a thick invitation from the White House.


Urgent Reply Requested

   was stamped on the outside. Clay and guest were asked to attend an official state dinner honoring the President of Argentina. Black tie, of course. RSVP immediately because the event was only four days away. Amazing what $250,000 would buy in Washington.
   Ridley, of course, needed the proper dress, and since Clay was paying for it he went shopping with her. And he did so without complaining because he wanted some input into what she wore. Left unsupervised, she might shock the Argentines and everyone else for that matter with see-through fabrics and slits up to her waist. No sir, Clay wanted to see the outfit before she bought it.
   But she was surprisingly modest in both taste and expense. Everything looked good on her; she was, after all, a model, though she seemed to be working less and less. She finally chose a stunning but simple red dress that revealed much less flesh than what she normally showed. At $3,000, it was a bargain. Shoes, a string of small pearls, a gold and diamond bracelet, and Clay escaped with just under $15,000 in damages.
   Sitting in the limo outside the White House, waiting as the ones in front of them were searched by a swarm of guards, Ridley said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Me, a poor girl from Georgia, going to the White House.” She was wrapped around Clay’s right arm. His hand was halfway up a thigh. Her accent was more pronounced, something that happened when she was nervous.
   “Hard to believe,” he said, quite excited himself.
   When they got out of the limo, under an awning on the East Wing, a Marine in parade dress took Ridley’s arm and began an escort that took them into the East Room of the White House, where the guests were congregating and having a drink. Clay followed along, watching Ridley’s rear, enjoying every second of it. The Marine reluctantly let go, and left to pick up another escort. A photographer took their picture.
   They moved to the first cluster of conversation and introduced themselves to people they would never see again. Dinner was announced, and the guests proceeded into the State Dining Room, where fifteen tables of ten were packed together and covered with more china and silver and crystal than had ever been collected in one place. Seating was all prearranged, and no one sat with his or her spouse or guest. Clay escorted Ridley to her table, found her seat, helped her into it, then pecked her on the cheek and said, “Good luck.” She flashed a model’s smile, brilliant and confident, but he knew she was, at that moment, a scared little girl from Georgia. Before he was ten feet away, two men were hovering over her, grasping her hand with the warmest of introductions.
   Clay was in for a long night. To his right was a society queen from Manhattan, a shriveled, prune-faced old battle-ax who’d been starving herself for so long she looked like a cadaver. She was deaf and talked at full volume. To his left was the daughter of a Midwestern shopping mall tycoon who’d gone to college with the President. Clay turned his attention to her and labored mightily for five minutes before realizing she had nothing to say.
   The clock stopped moving.
   His back was to Ridley; he had no idea how she was surviving.
   The President spoke, then dinner was served. An opera singer across the table from Clay began to feel his wine and started telling dirty jokes. He was loud and twangy, from somewhere in the mountains, and he was completely uninhibited when it came to using obscenities in mixed company, and in the White House no less.
   Three hours after he sat down, Clay stood up and said good-bye to all his wonderful new friends. The dinner was over; a band was tuning up back in the East Room. He grabbed Ridley and they headed for the music.
   Shortly before midnight, as the crowd dwindled down to a few dozen, the President and First Lady joined the heartier ones for a dance or two. He seemed genuinely pleased to meet Mr. Clay Carter. “Been reading your press, son, good job,” he said.
   “Thank you, Mr. President.”
   “Who’s the chick?”
   “A friend.” What would the feminists do if they knew he used the word chick?
   “Can I dance with her?”
   “Sure, Mr. President.”
   And with that, Ms. Ridal Petashnakol, a twenty-four-year-old former exchange student from Georgia, got squeezed and hugged and otherwise networked by the President of the United States.

27

   Delivery on a new Gulfstream 5 would be a minimum of twenty-two months, probably more, but the delay was not the biggest obstacle. The current price tag was $44 million, fully loaded, of course, with all the latest gadgets and toys. It was simply too much money, though Clay was seriously tempted. The broker explained that most new G-5’s were bought by large corporations, billion-dollar outfits who ordered two and three at a time and kept them in the air. The better deal for him, as a sole proprietor, was to lease a slightly older airplane for say, six months, to make sure it was what he wanted. Then he could convert it to a sale, with 90 percent of his rental payments applied to the sales price.
   The broker had just the airplane. It was a 1998 model G-4 SP (Special Performance) that a Fortune 500 company had recently traded in for a new G-5. When Clay saw it sitting majestically on the ramp at Reagan National, his heart leaped and his pulse took off. It was snow-white, with a tasteful royal blue striping. Paris in six hours. London in five.
   He climbed aboard with the broker. If it was an inch smaller than Patton French’s G-5, Clay could not tell. There was leather, mahogany, and brass trim everywhere. A kitchen, bar, and rest room in the rear; the latest avionics up front for the pilots. One sofa folded out into a bed, and for a fleeting instant he thought about Ridley; the two of them under the covers at forty thousand feet. Elaborate stereo, video, and telephone systems. Fax, PC, Internet access.
   The plane looked brand-new, and the salesman explained that it was fresh from the shop where the exterior had been repainted and the interior refurbished. When pressed, he finally said, “It’s yours for thirty million.”
   They sat at a small table and began the deal. The idea of a lease slowly went out the window. With Clay’s income, he would have no trouble obtaining a sweet financing package. His mortgage note, only $300,000 a month, would be slightly more than the lease payments. And if at any time he wanted to trade up, then the broker would take it back at the highest market appraisal, and outfit him with whatever he wanted.
   Two pilots would cost $200,000 a year, including benefits, training, everything. Clay might consider putting the plane on the certificate of a corporate air charter company. “Depending on how much you use it, you could generate up to a million bucks a year in charters,” the broker said, moving in for the kill. “That’ll cover the expenses for pilots, hangar space, and maintenance.”
   “Any idea how much I’ll use it?” Clay asked, his head spinning with possibilities.
   “I’ve sold lots of planes to lawyers,” the salesman said, reaching for the right research. “Three hundred hours a year is max. You can charter it for twice that much.”
   Wow, Clay thought. This thing might actually generate some income.
   A reasonable voice said to be cautious, but why wait? And who, exactly, might he turn to for advice? The only people he knew with experience in such matters were his mass tort buddies, and every one of them would say, “You don’t have your own jet yet? Buy it!”
   And so he bought it.
 
   Goffman’s fourth-quarter earnings were up from the year before, with record sales. Its stock was at $65, the highest in two years. Beginning the first week in January, the company had launched an unusual ad campaign promoting not one of its many products but the company itself. “Goffman has always been there,” was the slogan and theme, and each television commercial was a montage of well-known products being used to comfort and protect America: a mother applying a small bandage to her little son’s wound; a handsome young man with the obligatory flat stomach, shaving and having a wonderful time doing it; a gray-haired couple on the beach happily free of their hemorrhoids; a jogger in agony, reaching for a painkiller; and so on. Goffman’s list of trusted consumer products was lengthy.
   Mulrooney was watching the company closer than a stock analyst, and he was convinced that the ad campaign was nothing but a ploy to brace investors and consumers for the shock of Maxatil. His research found no other “feel-good” messages in the history of Goffman’s marketing. The company was one of the top five advertisers in the country, but had always poured its money into one specific product at a time, with outstanding results.
   His opinion was shared by Max Pace, who had taken up residence in the Hay-Adams Hotel. Clay stopped by his suite for a late dinner, one delivered by room service. Pace was edgy and anxious to drop the bomb on Goffman. He read the latest revision of the class-action lawsuit to be filed in D.C. As always, he made notes in the margins.
   “What’s the plan?” he said, ignoring his food and wine.
   Clay was not ignoring his. “The ads start at eight in the morning,” he said with a mouth full of veal. “A blitz in eighty markets, coast to coast. The hot line is set up. The Web site is ready. My little firm is poised. I’ll walk over to the courthouse at ten or so and file it myself.”
   “Sounds good.”
   “We’ve done it before. The Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II is a mass tort machine, thank you very much.”
   “Your new pals know nothing of it?”
   “Of course not. Why would I tell them? We’re in bed together with Dyloft, but French and those guys are my competitors too. I shocked them then, I’ll shock them now. I can’t wait.”
   “This ain’t Dyloft, remember that. You were lucky there because you caught a weak company at a bad moment. Goffman will be much tougher.”
   Pace finally tossed the lawsuit on the dresser and sat down to eat.
   “But they made a bad drug,” Clay was saying. “And you don’t go to trial with a bad drug.”
   “Not in a class action. My sources tell me that Goffman might want to litigate the case in Flagstaff since it’s a single plaintiff.”
   “The Mooneyham case?”
   “That’s it. If they lose, they’ll be softer on the issue of settlement. If they win, then this could be a long fight.”
   “You said Mooneyham doesn’t lose.”
   “It’s been twenty years or something like that. Juries love him. He wears cowboy hats and suede jackets and red boots and such. A throwback to the days when trial lawyers actually tried their cases. A real piece of work. You should go meet him. It would be worth a trip.”
   “I’ll put that on my list.” The Gulfstream was just sitting in the hangar, anxious to travel.
   A phone rang and Pace spent five minutes in muted conversation on the other side of the suite. “Valeria,” he said as he returned to the table. Clay had a quick visual of the sexless creature munching on a carrot. Poor Max. He could do so much better.
   Clay slept at the office. He had installed a small bedroom and a bath adjacent to the conference room. He was often up until after midnight, then a few hours of sleep before a quick shower, and back to the desk by six.
   His work habits were becoming legendary not only within his own firm but around the city as well. Much of the gossip in legal circles was about him, at least for the moment, and his sixteen-hour days were often stretched to eighteen and twenty by those at bars and cocktail parties.
   And why not work around the clock? He was thirty-two years old, single, with no serious obligations to steal his time. Through luck and a small amount of talent he had been handed a unique opportunity to succeed like few others. Why not pour his guts into his firm for a few years, then chuck it all and go play for the rest of his life?
   Mulrooney arrived just after six, already with four cups of coffee under his belt and a hundred ideas on his mind. “D-Day?” he asked when he barged into Clay’s office.
   “D-Day!”
   “Let’s kick some ass!”
   By seven, the place was rocking with associates and paralegals watching the clocks, waiting for the invasion. Secretaries hauled coffee and bagels from office to office. At eight, they crammed into the conference room and stared at a wide-screen TV. The ABC affiliate for metro D.C. ran the first ad: An attractive woman in her early sixties, short gray hair, smartly cut, designer eyeglasses, sitting at a small kitchen table, staring sadly out a window. Voice-over [rather ominous voice]: “If you’ve been taking the female hormone drug Maxatil, you may have an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke.” Close on the lady’s hands; on the table, a close-up of a pill bottle with the word MAXATIL in bold letters. [A skull and crossbones could not have been more frightening.] Voice-over: “Please consult your doctor immediately. Maxatil may pose a serious threat to your health.” Close on the woman’s face, even sadder now, then her eyes become moist. Voice-over: “For more information, call the Maxatil Hot Line.” An 800 number flashes across the bottom of the screen. The final image is the woman removing her glasses and wiping a tear from her cheek.
   They clapped and cheered as if the money was about to be delivered by overnight courier. Then Clay sent them all to their posts, to sit by the phones and begin collecting clients. Within minutes, the calls started. Promptly at nine, as scheduled, copies of the lawsuit were faxed to newspapers and financial cable channels. Clay called his old pal at The Wall Street Journal and leaked the news. He said he might consider an interview in a day or so.
   Goffman opened at $65 1/4 but was soon shot down by the news of the Maxatil lawsuit in D.C. Clay got himself photographed by a stringer as he filed the lawsuit in the courthouse.
   By noon, Goffman had fallen to $61. The company hurriedly released a statement for the press in which it adamantly denied that Maxatil did all the terrible things alleged in the lawsuit. It would defend the case vigorously.
   Patton French called during “lunch.” Clay was eating a sandwich while standing behind his desk and watching the phone messages pile up. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” French said suspiciously.
   “Gee, I hope so too, Patton. How are you?”
   “Swell. We took a long hard look at Maxatil about six months ago. Decided to pass. Causation could be a real problem.”
   Clay dropped his sandwich and tried to breathe. Patton French said no to a mass tort? He passed on a class-action lawsuit against one of the wealthiest corporations in the land? Clay was aware that nothing was being said, a painful gap in the conversation. “Well, uh, Patton, we see things differently.” He was reaching behind him, groping for his chair. He finally fell into it.
   “In fact, everybody passed, until you. Saulsberry, Didier, Carlos down in Miami. Guy up in Chicago has a bunch of cases, but he hasn’t filed them yet. I don’t know, maybe you’re right. We just didn’t see it, that’s all.”
   French was fishing. “We got the goods on them,” Clay said. The government report! That’s it! Clay had it and French did not. Finally, a deep breath, and the blood started pumping again.
   “You’d better have your ducks in a row, Clay. These guys are very good. They make old Wicks and the boys at Ackerman look like Cub Scouts.”
   “You sound scared, Patton, I’m surprised at you.”
   “Not scared at all. But if you have a hole in your theory of liability, they’ll eat you alive. And, don’t even think about a quick settlement.”
   “Are you in?”
   “No. I didn’t like it six months ago, don’t like it now. Plus, I got too many other irons in the fire. Good luck.”
   Clay closed and locked his office door. He walked to his window and stood for at least five minutes before he felt the cool moisture of his shirt sticking to his back. Then he rubbed his forehead and found rows of sweat.

28

   The headline in the Daily Profit screamed:


A Lousy Hundred Million ain’t Enough

   And things got worse after that. The story began with a quick paragraph about the “frivolous” lawsuit filed yesterday in D.C. against Goffman, one of America’s finest consumer products companies. Its wonderful drug Maxatil had helped countless women through the nightmare of menopause, but now it was under attack by the same sharks that had bankrupted A.H. Robins, Johns Manville, Owens-Illinois, and practically the entire American asbestos industry.
   The story hit its stride when it went after the lead shark, a brash young D.C. hotshot named Clay Carter who, according to their sources, had never tried a civil lawsuit before a jury. Nonetheless, he had earned in excess of $100 million last year in the mass tort lottery. Evidently, the reporter had a trusted stable of ready sources. The first was an executive with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who railed against lawsuits in general and trial lawyers in particular. “The Clay Carters of the world will only inspire others to file these contrived suits. There are a million lawyers in this country. If an unknown like Mr. Carter can earn so much so fast, then no decent company is safe.” A law professor at a school Clay had never heard of said, “These guys are ruthless. Their greed is enormous, and because of it they will eventually choke the golden goose.” A windy Congressman from Connecticut seized the moment to call for immediate passage of a class-action reform bill he’d authored. Committee hearings would take place, and Mr. Carter just might be subpoenaed to testify before Congress.
   Unnamed sources within Goffman said the company would defend itself vigorously, that it would not yield to class-action blackmail, and that it would, at the appropriate time, demand to be reimbursed for its attorneys’ fees and litigation costs due to the outrageous and frivolous nature of the claims.
   The company’s stock had declined 11 percent, a loss of investors’ equity of about $2 billion, all because of the bogus case. “Why don’t the shareholders of Goffman sue guys like Clay Carter?” asked the professor from the unknown law school.
   It was difficult material to read, but Clay certainly couldn’t ignore it. An editorial in Investment Times called upon Congress to take a serious look at litigation reform. It too made much of the fact that young Mr. Carter had made a large fortune in less than a year. He was nothing but a “bully” whose ill-gotten gains would only inspire other street hustlers to sue everyone in sight.
   The nickname “bully” stuck for a few days around the office, temporarily replacing “The King.” Clay smiled and acted as if it was an honor. “A year ago no one was talking about me,” he boasted. “Now, they can’t get enough.” But behind his locked office door he was uneasy and fretted about the haste with which he had sued Goffman. The fact that his mass tort pals were not piling on was distressing. The bad press was gnawing at him. There had not been a single defender so far. Pace had disappeared, which was not unusual, but not exactly what Clay needed at the moment.
   Six days after filing the lawsuit, Pace checked in from California. “Tomorrow is the big day,” he said.
   “I need some good news,” Clay said. “The government report?”
   “Can’t say,” Pace replied. “And no more phone calls. Someone might be listening. I’ll explain when I’m in town. Later.”
   Someone might be listening? On which end—Clay’s or Pace’s? And who, please? There went another night’s sleep.
   The study by the American Council on Aging was originally designed to test twenty thousand women between the ages of forty-five and seventy-five over a seven-year period. The group was equally divided, with one getting a daily dose of Maxatil, the other getting a placebo. But after four years, researchers abandoned the project because the results were so bad. They found an increase in the risk of breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke in a disturbing percentage of the participants. For those who took the drug, the risk of breast cancer jumped 33 percent, heart attacks 21 percent, and strokes 20 percent.
   The study predicted that for every hundred thousand women using Maxatil four years or more, four hundred would develop breast cancer, three hundred would suffer some degree of heart disease, and there would be three hundred moderate to severe strokes.
   The following morning the report was published. Goffman’s stock got hammered again, dropping to $51 a share on the news. Clay and Mulrooney spent the afternoon monitoring Web sites and cable channels, waiting for some response from the company, but there was none. The business reporters who’d scalded Clay when he filed the suit did not call for his reaction to the study. They briefly mentioned the story the following day. The Post ran a rather dry summary of the release of the report, but Clay’s name was not used. He felt vindicated, but ignored. He had so much to say in response to his critics, but no one wanted to listen.
   His anxiety was relieved by the deluge of phone calls from Maxatil patients.

   The Gulfstream finally had to escape. Eight days in the hangar, and Clay was itching to travel. He loaded up Ridley and headed west, first to Las Vegas, though no one around the office knew he was stopping there. It was a business trip, and a very important one.
   He had an appointment with the great Dale Mooneyham in Tucson to talk about Maxatil.
   They spent two nights in Vegas, in a hotel with real cheetahs and panthers on display in a fake game preserve outside the front entrance. Clay lost $30,000 playing blackjack and Ridley spent $25,000 on clothes in the designer boutiques packed around the hotel’s atrium. The Gulfstream fled to Tucson.
   Mott & Mooneyham had converted an old train station downtown into a pleasantly shabby suite of offices. The lobby was the old waiting area, a long vaulted room where two secretaries were tucked away in corners at opposite ends, as if they had to be separated to keep the peace. On closer inspection, they seemed incapable of fighting; both were in their seventies and lost in their own worlds. It was a museum of sorts, a collection of products that Dale Mooneyham had taken to court and shown to juries. In one tall cabinet was a gas water heater, and the bronze placard above the door gave the name of the case and the amount of the verdict—$4.5 million, October 3, 1988, Stone County, Arkansas. There was a damaged three-wheeler that had cost Honda $3 million in California, and a cheap rifle that had so enraged a Texas jury that it gave the plaintiff $11 million. Dozens of products—a lawn mower, a burned-out frame of a Toyota Celica, a drill press, a defective life vest, a crumpled ladder. And on the walls were the press clippings and large photos of the great man handing over checks to his injured clients. Clay, alone because Ridley was shopping, browsed from display to display, entranced with the conquests and unaware that he had been kept waiting for almost an hour.
   As assistant finally fetched him and led him down a wide hall lined with spacious offices. The walls were covered with framed blowups of newspaper headlines and stories, all telling of thrilling courtroom victories. Whoever Mott was, he was certainly an insignificant player. The letterhead listed only four other lawyers.
   Dale Mooneyham was seated behind his desk and only half-stood when Clay entered, unannounced and feeling very much like a vagrant. The handshake was cold and obligatory. He was not welcome there, and he was confused by his reception. Mooneyham was at least seventy, a big-framed man with a thick chest and large stomach. Blue jeans, gaudy red boots, a wrinkled western shirt, and certainly no necktie. He’d been dying his gray hair black, but was in need of another treatment because the sides were white, the top dark and slicked back with too much grease. Long wide face, the puffy eyes of a drinker.
   “Nice office, really unique,” Clay said, trying to thaw things a bit.
   “Bought it forty years ago,” Mooneyham said. “For five thousand bucks.”
   “Quite a collection of memorabilia out there.”
   “I’ve done all right, son. I haven’t lost a jury trial in twenty-one years. I suppose I’m due for a loss, at least that’s what my opponents keep saying.”
   Clay glanced around and tried to relax in the low, ancient leather chair. The office was at least five times as big as his, with the heads of stuffed game covering the walls and watching his every move. There were no phones ringing, no faxes clattering in the distance. There was not a computer in Mooneyham’s office.
   “I guess I’m here to talk about Maxatil,” Clay said, sensing that he might be evicted at any moment.
   Hesitation, no movement except for a casual readjusting of the dark little eyes. “It’s a bad drug,” he said simply, as if Clay had no idea. “I filed suit about five months ago up in Flagstaff. We have a fast-track here in Arizona, known as the rocket-docket, so we should have us a trial by early fall. Unlike you, I don’t file suit until my case is thoroughly researched and prepared, and I’m ready to go to trial. Do it that way and the other side never catches up. I’ve written a book about pre-lawsuit preparation. Still read it all the time. You should too.”
   Should I just leave now? Clay wanted to ask. “What about your client?”
   “I just have one. Class actions are a fraud, at least the way you and your pals handle them. Mass torts are a scam, a consumer rip-off, a lottery driven by greed that will one day harm all of us. Unbridled greed will swing the pendulum to the other side. Reforms will take place, and they’ll be severe. You boys will be out of business but you won’t care because you’ll have the money. The people who’ll get harmed are all the future plaintiffs out there, all the little people who won’t be able to sue for bad products because you boys have screwed up the law.”
   “I asked about your client.”
   “Sixty-six-year-old white female, nonsmoker, took Maxatil for four years. I met her a year ago. We take our time around here, do our homework before we start shooting.”
   Clay had intended to talk about big things, big ideas, like how many potential Maxatil clients were out there, and what did Mooneyham expect from Goffman, and what types of experts was he planning to use at trial. Instead, he was looking for a quick exit. “You’re not expecting a settlement?” he asked, managing to sound somewhat engaged.
   “I don’t settle, son. My clients know that up front. I take three cases a year, all carefully selected by me. I like different cases, products and theories I’ve never tried before. Courthouses I’ve never seen. I get my choice because lawyers call me every day. And I always go to trial. I know when I take a case it will not be settled. That takes away a major distraction. I tell the defendant up front—’Let’s not waste our time even thinking about a settlement, okay?’” He finally moved, just a slight shifting of weight to one side, as if he had a bad back or something. “That’s good news for you, son. I’ll get first shot at Goffman, and if the jury sees things my way then they’ll give my client a nice verdict. All you copycats can fall in line, jump on the wagon, advertise for more clients, then settle them cheap and rake yours off the top. I’ll make you another fortune.”
   “I’d like to go to trial,” Clay said.
   “If what I read is correct, you don’t know where the courthouse is.”
   “I can find it.”
   A shrug. “You probably won’t have to. When I get finished with Goffman they’ll run from every jury.”
   “I don’t have to settle.”
   “But you will. You’ll have thousands of cases. You won’t have the guts to go to trial.”
   And with that he slowly stood, reached out a limp hand, and said, “I have work to do.”
   Clay hustled from the office, down the hall, through the museum/lobby, and outside into the fierce desert heat.

   Bad luck in Vegas and a disaster in Tucson, but the trip was salvaged somewhere over Oklahoma, at 42,000 feet. Ridley was asleep on the sofa, under the covers and dead to the world, when the fax machine began humming. Clay walked to the rear of the dark cabin and retrieved a one-page transmission. It was from Oscar Mulrooney, at the office. He’d pulled a story off the Internet—the annual rankings of firms and fees from American Attorney magazine. Making the list of the twenty highest-paid lawyers in the country was Mr. Clay Carter, coming in at an impressive number eight, estimated earnings of $110 million for the previous year. There was even a small photo of Clay with the caption: “Rookie of the Year.”
   Not a bad guess, Clay thought to himself. Unfortunately, $30 million of his Dyloft settlement had been paid in bonuses to Paulette, Jonah, and Rodney, rewards that at first had seemed generous but in hindsight were downright foolish. Never again. The good folks at American Attorney wouldn’t know about such bighearted bonuses. Not that Clay was complaining. No other lawyer from the D.C. area was in the top twenty.
   Number one was an Amarillo legend named Jock Ramsey who had negotiated a toxic-waste-dump case involving several oil and chemical companies. The case had dragged on for nine years. Ramsey’s cut was estimated at $450 million. A tobacco lawyer from Palm Beach was thought to have earned $400 million. Another one from New York was number three at $325 million. Patton French landed at number four, which no doubt irritated him greatly.
   Sitting in the privacy of his Gulfstream, staring at the magazine article featuring his photo, Clay told himself again that it was all a dream. There were 76,000 lawyers in D.C., and he was number one. A year earlier he had never heard of Tarvan or Dyloft or Maxatil, nor had he paid much attention to mass tort litigation. A year earlier his biggest dream was fleeing OPD and landing a job with a respectable firm, one that would pay him enough for some new suits and a better car. His name on a letterhead would impress Rebecca and keep her parents at bay. A nicer office with a higher class of clients would allow him to stop dodging his pals from law school. Such modest dreams.
   He decided he would not show the article to Ridley. The woman was warming up to the money and becoming more interested in jewelry and travel. She’d never been to Italy, and she’d dropped hints about Rome and Florence.
   Everybody in Washington would be talking about Clay’s name on the top twenty list. He thought of his friends and his rivals, his law school pals and the old gang at OPD. Mostly, though, he thought of Rebecca.

29

   The Hanna Portland Cement Company was founded in Reedsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1946, in time to catch the postwar explosion of new home construction. It immediately became the largest employer in the small town. The Hanna brothers ran it with iron fists, but they were fair to their workers, who were their neighbors as well. When business was good, the workers received generous wages. When things were slow, everybody tightened their belts and got by. Layoffs were rare and used only as a last resort. The workers were content and never unionized.
   The Hannas plowed their profits back into the plant and equipment, and into the community. They built a civic center, a hospital, a theater, and the nicest high school football field in the area. Over the years, there was a temptation or two to sell out, to take serious cash and go play golf, but the Hanna brothers could never be sure that their factory would remain in Reedsburg. So they kept it.
   After fifty years of sound management, the company employed four thousand of the eleven thousand residents of the town. Annual sales were $60 million, though profits had been elusive. Stiff competition from abroad and a slowdown in new housing starts were putting pressure on the income statement. It was a very cyclical business, something the younger Hannas had tried unsuccessfully to remedy by diversifying into related products. The balance sheet currently had more debt than normal.
   Marcus Hanna was the current CEO, though he never used that title. He was just the boss, the number-one honcho. His father was one of the founders, and Marcus had spent his life at the plant. No less than eight other Hannas were in management, with several of the next generation out in the factory, sweeping floors and doing the same menial jobs their parents had been expected to do.
   On the day the lawsuit arrived, Marcus was in a meeting with his first cousin, Joel Hanna, the unofficial in-house lawyer. A process server bullied his way past the receptionist and secretaries up front and presented himself to Marcus and Joel with a thick envelope.
   “Are you Marcus Hanna?” the process server demanded.
   “I am. Who are you?”
   “A process server. Here’s your lawsuit.” He handed it over and left.
   It was an action filed in Howard County, Maryland, seeking unspecified damages for a class of homeowners claiming damages due to defective Portland mortar cement manufactured by Hanna. Joel read it slowly and paraphrased it for Marcus, and when he finished, both men sat for a long time and cursed lawyers in general.
   A quick search by a secretary found an impressive collection of recent articles about the plaintiffs’ attorney, a certain Clay Carter from D.C.
   It was no surprise that there was trouble in Howard County. A bad batch of their Portland cement had found its way there several years earlier. Through the normal channels, it had been used by various contractors to put bricks on new homes. The complaints were fresh; the company was trying to get a handle on the scope of the problem. Evidently, it took about three years for the mortar to weaken and then the bricks began to fall off. Both Marcus and Joel had been to Howard County and met with their suppliers and the contractors.
   They had inspected several of the homes. Current thinking put the number of potential claims at five hundred, and the cost of repairing each unit at about $12,000. The company had product liability insurance that would cover the first $5 million in claims.
   But the lawsuit purported to include a class of “at least two thousand potential claimants,” each seeking $25,000 in actual damages.
   “That’s fifty million,” Marcus said.
   “And the damned lawyer will rake forty percent off the top,” added Joel.
   “He can’t do that,” Marcus said.
   “They do it every day.”
   More generalized cursing of lawyers. Then some specifics aimed at Mr. Carter. Joel left with the lawsuit. He would notify their insurance carrier who would assign it to a litigation firm, probably one in Philadelphia. It happened at least once a year, but never one this big. Because the damages sought were much higher than the insurance coverage, Hanna would be forced to hire its own firm to work with the insurance company. None of the lawyers would be cheap.

   The full-page ad in the Larkin Gazette caused quite a stir in the small town hidden from the world in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Because Larkin had three factories it had slightly more than ten thousand people, a regular population center in the mining country. Ten thousand was the threshold for full-page ads and Skinny Ben screening that Oscar Mulrooney had established. He had studied the advertising and arrived at the opinion that the smaller markets were being overlooked. His research had also revealed that rural women and Appalachian women were heavier than those in cities. Skinny Ben territory!
   According to the ad, the screening would take place the following day at a motel north of town and would be conducted by a medical doctor, a real physician. It was free. It was available to any person who had taken benafoxadil, aka Skinny Bens. It was confidential. And it might lead to the recovery of some money from the manufacturer of the drug.
   At the bottom of the page, in smaller print, the name, address, and phone number of the D.C. Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II were given, though by the time most readers got that far they had either quit or were too excited about the screening.
   Nora Tackett lived in a mobile home a mile outside Larkin. She did not see the ad because she did not read newspapers. She read nothing. She watched television sixteen hours a day, most of the time while eating. Nora lived with the two stepchildren her ex-husband had left behind when he hit the road two years earlier. They were his kids, not hers, and she was still not sure exactly how she’d come to possess them. But he was gone; not a word, not a dime for child support, not a card or a letter or a phone call to check on the two brats he’d forgotten when he fled. And so she ate.
   She became a client of J. Clay Carter when her sister saw the Larkin Gazette and arranged to come fetch her for the screening. Nora had taken Skinny Bens for a year, until her doctor had stopped prescribing the drug because it was no longer on the market. If she’d lost any weight with the pills, she couldn’t tell.
   Her sister loaded her into a minivan and thrust the full-page ad in front of her. “Read this,” MaryBeth demanded. MaryBeth had started down the road to obesity twenty years earlier, but a stroke at the age of twenty-six had been her wake-up call. She was tired of preaching to Nora; they’d fought for years. And they began fighting as they drove through Larkin and headed for the motel.
   The Village Inn had been selected by Oscar Mulrooney’s secretary because it appeared to be the newest motel in town. It was the only one on the Internet, which hopefully meant something. Oscar had slept there the night before, and as he had an early breakfast in the motel’s dirty cafe he wondered once again how he’d fallen so far so fast.
   Third in his class at Yale Law School! Wined and dined by the blue-chip firms on Wall Street and the heavyweights in Washington. His father was a prominent doctor in Buffalo. His uncle was on the Vermont Supreme Court. His brother was a partner in one of the most lucrative entertainment law firms in Manhattan.
   His wife was embarrassed that he was off again in the boondocks chasing cases. And so was he!
   His tag-team partner was a Bolivian intern who spoke English but did so with an accent so thick even his “Good Mornings” were hard to understand. He was twenty-five and looked sixteen, even in his green hospital scrubs, which Oscar insisted he wear for credibility. Med school had been on the Caribbean island of Grenada. He’d found Dr. Livan in the want-ads and was paying him the stiff sum of $2,000 a day.
   Oscar handled the front and Livan took care of the back. The motel’s only meeting room had a flimsy folding partition that the two of them had fought with to unwrinkle and pull across the room, dividing it roughly in half. When Nora entered the front at eight forty-five, Oscar glanced at his watch, then said, as pleasantly as possible, “Good morning, ma’am.” She was fifteen minutes early, but then they usually showed up before the starting time.
   The “ma’am” was something he caught himself practicing as he drove around D.C. It was not a word he’d been raised with.
   Money in the bank, he said to himself as he looked at Nora. At least three hundred pounds and probably pushing four hundred. Sad that he could guess their weight like a huckster at a carnival. Sad that he was actually doing it.
   “You the lawyer?” MaryBeth asked, with great suspicion. Oscar had been through it a thousand times already.
   “Yes ma’am, the doctor’s in the back. I have some paperwork for you.” He handed over a clipboard with questionnaires designed for the simplest of readers. “If you have any questions, just let me know.”
   MaryBeth and Nora backed into folding chairs. Nora fell heavily into hers; she was already sweating. They were soon lost in the forms. All was quiet until the door opened again and another large woman peered in. She immediately locked on to Nora, who was staring back, a deer in headlights. Two fatties caught in their quest for damages.
   “Come in,” Oscar said with a warm smile, very much the car salesman now. He coaxed her through the door, shoved the forms into her hands, and led her to the other side of the room. Between two hundred fifty and two hundred seventy-five pounds.
   Each test cost $1,000. One out of ten would become a Skinny Ben client. The average case was worth between $150,000 and $200,000. And they were picking up the leftovers because 80 percent of the cases had already found their way into law offices around the country.
   But the leftovers were still worth a fortune. Not Dyloft money, but millions anyway.
   When the questions were answered, Nora managed to get to her feet. Oscar took the forms, reviewed them, made sure she’d actually taken Skinny Bens, then signed his name somewhere on the bottom. “Through that door, ma’am, and the doctor is waiting.”
   Nora walked through a large slit in the partition; MaryBeth stayed behind where she commenced to chat up the lawyer.
   Livan introduced himself to Nora, who understood nothing of what he said. Nor could he understand her either. He took her blood pressure, and shook his head with displeasure—180 over 140. Her pulse was a deadly 130 per minute. He pointed to a set of industrial meat scales, and she reluctantly stepped on—388 pounds.
   Forty-four years old. In her condition, she would be lucky to see her fiftieth birthday.
   He opened a side door and led her outside where a medical van was parked and waiting. “We do the test in here,” he said. The rear doors of the van were open; two sonographers were waiting, both in white jackets. They helped Nora into the van and arranged her on a bed.
   “What’s that?” she asked, terrified, pointing at the nearest device.
   “It’s an echocardiogram,” one said, in English she could understand.
   “We scan your chest with this,” said the other, a woman, “and we take a digital picture of your heart. It’ll be over in ten minutes.”
   “It’s painless,” added the other.
   Nora closed her eyes and prayed that she would survive.
   The Skinny Ben litigation was so lucrative because the evidence was so easy. Over time, the drug, which ultimately did little to help lose weight, weakened the aorta. And the damage was permanent. Aortic insufficiency, or mitral valve regurgitation, of at least 20 percent was an automatic lawsuit.
   Dr. Livan read Nora’s printout while she was still in prayer, and gave a thumbs-up to the sonographers: 22 percent. He took it up front where Oscar was shuffling paperwork for a whole room full of prospects. Oscar returned with him to the back, where Nora was now seated, looking pale and gulping orange juice. He wanted to say, “Congratulations, Ms. Tackett, your aorta has been sufficiently damaged,” but the congratulations were only for the lawyers. MaryBeth was summoned and Oscar walked them through the litigation scenario, hitting only the high points.
   The echocardiogram would be studied by a board-certified cardiologist whose report would be filed with the class-action administrator. The compensation scale had already been approved by the Judge.
   “How much?” asked MaryBeth, who seemed more concerned about the money than her sister. Nora appeared to be praying again.
   “Based on Nora’s age, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars,” Oscar said, omitting, for the moment, that 30 percent would go to the Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II.
   Nora, wide awake, said, “A hundred thousand dollars!”
   “Yes ma’am.” Like a surgeon before a routine operation, Oscar had learned to lowball his chances of success. Keep their expectations low, that way the shock of the attorneys’ fees wouldn’t be so great.
   Nora was thinking about a new double-wide trailer and a new satellite dish. MaryBeth was thinking about a truckload of Ultra Slim-Fast. The paperwork was completed and Oscar thanked them for coming.
   “When do we get the money?” MaryBeth asked.
   “We?” asked Nora.
   “Within sixty days,” Oscar said, leading them out the side door.
   Unfortunately, the next seventeen had insufficient aortic damage and Oscar was looking for a drink. But he hit paydirt with number nineteen, a young man who jolted the scales at five hundred fifteen pounds. His echocardiogram was beautiful—40 percent insufficiency. He’d taken Skinny Bens for two years. Because he was twenty-six years old, and, statistically at least, he would live for thirty-one more years with a bad heart, his case was worth at least $500,000.
   Late in the afternoon there was an ugly incident. A hefty young lady became incensed when Dr. Livan informed her that her heart was fine. No damage whatsoever. But she’d heard around town that Nora Tackett was getting $100,000, heard it over at the beauty shop in fact, and, though she weighed less than Nora, she too had taken the pills and was entitled to the same settlement. “I really need the money,” she insisted.
   “Sorry,” Dr. Livan kept saying.
   Oscar was called for. The young lady became loud and vulgar, and to get her out of the motel he promised to have their cardiologist review her echocardiogram anyway. “We’ll do a second workup and have the Washington doctors review it,” he said, as if he knew what he was talking about. This settled her enough to move her along.
   What am I doing here? Oscar kept asking himself. He doubted if anyone in Larkin had ever attended Yale, but he was frightened nonetheless. He’d be ruined if word got out. The money, just think of the money, he repeated over and over.
   They tested forty-one Skinny Ben users in Larkin. Three made the cut. Oscar signed them up and left town with the bright prospect of about $200,000 in attorneys’ fees. Not a bad outing. He raced away in his BMW and drove straight to D.C. His next foray into the heartland would be a similar secret trip into West Virginia. He had a dozen planned for the next month.
   Just make the money. It’s a racket. It has nothing to do with being a lawyer. Find ‘em, sign ‘em, settle ‘em, take the money and run.

30

   On May 1, Rex Crittle left the accounting firm where he’d worked for eighteen years and moved upstairs to become the business manager of JCC. With the offer of a huge increase in salary and benefits, he simply couldn’t say no. The law firm was wildly successful, but in the chaos it was growing so fast its business seemed out of control. Clay gave him broad authority and parked him in an office across the hall from his.
   While Crittle certainly appreciated his own large salary, he was skeptical of everyone’s around him. In his opinion, which he kept to himself for the time being, most of the employees were overpaid. The firm now had fourteen lawyers, all making at least $200,000 a year; twenty-one paralegals at $75,000 each; twenty-six secretaries at $50,000 each, with the exception of Miss Glick who earned $60,000; a dozen or so clerks of different varieties, each earning on the average $20,000; and four office gofers at $15,000 each. A total of seventy-seven, not including Crittle and Clay. Adding in the cost of benefits, the total annual payroll was $8.4 million, and growing almost weekly.
   Rent was $72,000 a month. Office expenses—computers, phones, utilities, the list was quite long—were running about $40,000 a month. The Gulfstream, which was the biggest waste of all and the one asset Clay could not live without, was costing the firm $300,000 in monthly mortgage payments and another $30,000 for pilots, maintenance, and hangar fees. The charter revenue Clay was expecting had yet to show up on the books. One reason was that he really didn’t want anyone else using his airplane.
   According to figures that Crittle monitored daily, the firm was burning around $1.3 million a month in overhead—$15.6 million a year, give or take. Certainly enough to terrify any accountant, but after the shock of the Dyloft settlement and the enormous fees that had flooded in, he was not in a position to complain. Not yet, anyway. He now met with Clay at least three times a week, and any questionable expenditure was met with the usual, “You gotta spend it to make it.”
   And spending they were. If the overhead made Crittle squirm, the advertising and testing gave him ulcers. For Maxatil, the firm had spent $6.2 million in the first four months on newspaper, radio, television, and online advertising. This, he had complained about. “Full speed ahead,” had been Clay’s response. “I want twenty-five thousand cases!” The tally was somewhere around eighteen thousand, and virtually impossible to monitor because it changed by the hour.
   According to one online industry newsletter Crittle peeked at every day, the reason the Carter firm in D.C. was getting so many Maxatil cases was that few other lawyers were aggressively pursuing them. But he kept this gossip to himself.
   “Maxatil will be a bigger payday than Dyloft,” Clay said repeatedly around the office, to fire up the troops. And he seemed to truly believe it.
   Skinny Ben was costing the firm much less, but the expenses were piling up and the fees were not. As of May 1, they had spent $600,000 on advertising and about that much on medical tests. The firm had 150 clients, and Oscar Mulrooney had floated a memo claiming that each case was worth, on the average, $180,000. At 30 percent, Mulrooney was projecting fees of about $9 million within the next “few months.”
   The fact that a branch of the firm was about to produce such results had everyone excited, but the waiting had become worrisome. Not one dime had been collected from the Skinny Ben class-action settlement, a scheme that was supposed to be automatic. Hundreds of lawyers were involved in it, and, not surprisingly, major disagreements had arisen. Crittle didn’t understand the legal intricacies, but he was educating himself. He was fluent in overhead and fee shortages.
   The day after Crittle moved in, Rodney moved out, though the two events were not related. Rodney was simply cashing in his chips and moving to the suburbs, to a very nice home on a very safe street, with a church on one end, a school on the other, a park around the corner. He planned to become a full-time coach for his four kids. Employment might come later, and it might not. He’d forgotten about law school. With $10 million in the bank, before taxes, he had no real plans, just a determination to be a father and a husband, and a miser. He and Clay sneaked away to a deli down the street, just hours before he left the office for good, and said their good-byes. They had worked together for six years—five at OPD, the last one at the new firm.
   “Don’t spend it all, Clay,” he warned his friend.
   “I can’t. There’s too much of it.”
   “Don’t be foolish.”
   The truth was, the firm no longer needed someone like Rodney. The Yale boys and the other lawyers were polite and deferential, mainly because of his friendship with Clay, but he was only a paralegal. And Rodney no longer needed the firm. He wanted to hide his money and protect it. He was secretly appalled at the way Clay was blowing through such a fortune. You pay a price for waste.
   With Jonah on a sailboat and Paulette still hiding in London and apparently not coming home, the original gang was now gone. Sad, but Clay was too busy to be nostalgic.
   Patton French had ordered a meeting of the steering committee, a logistical impossibility that took a month to put together. Clay asked why they couldn’t do things by phone, fax, e-mail, and through secretaries, but French said they needed a day together, the five of them in the same room. Since the lawsuit had been filed in Biloxi, he wanted them there.
   Ridley was up for the trip. Her modeling had all but ceased; she spent her time at the gym and put in several hours a day shopping. Clay had no complaints about the gym time, it provided icing for the cake. The shopping concerned him, but she showed remarkable restraint. She could shop for hours and spend a modest amount.
   A month earlier, after a long weekend in New York, they had returned to D.C. and driven to his town house. She spent the night, not for the first time and evidently not for the last. Though nothing was said about her moving in, it just happened. Clay could not remember when he realized that her bathrobe and toothbrush and makeup and lingerie were there. He never saw her hauling her stuff into his apartment, it just materialized there. She wasn’t pushy; nothing was said. She stayed three consecutive nights, doing all the right things and not getting in the way, then she whispered that she needed a night at home. They didn’t talk for two days, then she was back.
   Marriage was never mentioned, though he was buying enough jewelry and clothes for a harem. Neither appeared to be looking for anything permanent. They enjoyed each other’s company and companionship, but both kept a roving eye. There were mysteries around her that Clay did not want to solve. She was gorgeous and pleasant and okay in the sack, and she did not seem to be a gold digger. But she had secrets.
   So did Clay. His biggest secret was that if Rebecca called at the right time, he’d sell everything but the Gulfstream, load her in it, and fly away to Mars.
   Instead he was flying to Biloxi with Ridley, who for the trip had chosen a suede mini-skirt that barely covered the essentials, which she had no interest in covering because it was just the two of them on the plane. Somewhere over West Virginia, Clay gave a passing thought to yanking out the sofa and attacking her. The thought lingered, but he managed to put it away, partly out of frustration. Why was he always the one initiating the fun and games? She was a willing player, but she never started things.
   Besides, the briefcase was filled with steering committee paperwork.

   A limo met them at the airport in Biloxi. It drove them a few miles to a harbor, where a speedboat was waiting. Patton French spent most of his time on his yacht, ten miles out in the Gulf. He was now between wives. A nasty divorce was raging. The current one wanted half his money and all his hide. Life was much quieter on a boat, as he called the two-hundred-foot luxury yacht.
   He greeted them in shorts and bare feet. Wes Saulsberry and Damon Didier were already there, stiff drinks in hand. Carlos Hernandez from Miami was due at any moment. French gave them a quick tour, during which Clay counted at least eight people in perfect white sailor’s garb, all standing at the ready in case he needed something. The boat had five levels, six state rooms, cost $20 million, and on and on. Ridley ducked into a bedroom and began shucking clothes.
   The boys met for drinks “on the porch,” as French described it—a small wooden deck on the top level. French was actually going to trial in two weeks, a rarity for him because corporate defendants normally just threw money at him in fear. He claimed to be looking forward to it, and over a round of vodkas bored them all with the details.
   He froze in mid-sentence when he saw something below. On a lower deck, Ridley appeared, topless and, at first sight, bottomless as well. But there was a dental-floss bikini in the package, clinging somehow to the right spot. The three older men bolted upright and gasped for breath. “She’s European,” Clay explained as he waited for the first heart attack. “When she gets near the water, the clothes come off.”
   “Then buy her a damned boat,” Saulsberry said.
   “Better yet, she can have this one,” French said, trying to collect himself.
   Ridley looked up, saw the commotion she was causing, then disappeared. No doubt she was followed by every waiter and staff person on board.
   “Where was I?” French said, breathing again.
   “You were finished with whatever story you were telling,” Didier said.
   Another powerboat was coming near. It was Hernandez, with not one but two young ladies in tow. After they unloaded and French got them settled in, Carlos met the boys on the porch.
   “Who are the girls?” Wes asked.
   “My paralegals,” Carlos said.
   “Just don’t make them partners,” French said. They talked about women for a few minutes. Evidently, all four had been through several wives. Maybe that was why they kept working so hard. Clay did none of the talking and all of the listening.
   “What’s up with Maxatil?” Carlos asked. “I have a thousand cases and I’m not sure what to do with them.”
   “You’re asking me what to do with your cases?” Clay said.
   “How many do you have?” French asked. The mood had changed dramatically; things were serious now.
   “Twenty thousand,” Clay said, fudging just a little. Truth was, he didn’t know how many cases were in the office. What was a little exaggerating among mass tort boys?
   “I haven’t filed mine,” Carlos said. “Proving causation could be a nightmare.” Words that Clay had heard enough and did not want to hear again. For almost four months, he’d been waiting for another big name to dive into the Maxatil pit.
   “I still don’t like it,” French said. “I was talking to Scotty Gaines yesterday in Dallas. He has two thousand cases, but isn’t sure what to do with them either.”
   “It’s very difficult to prove causation based solely on a study,” Didier said in Clay’s direction, almost lecturing. “I don’t like it either.”
   “The problem is that the diseases caused by Maxatil are caused by many other factors as well,” Carlos was saying. “I’ve had four experts study this drug. They all say that when a woman is taking Maxatil and gets breast cancer, it’s impossible to link the disease to the drug.”
   “Anything from Goffman?” French asked. Clay, who was ready to jump overboard, took a long pull on a very strong drink and tried to appear as if he had the corporation dead in the crosshairs.
   “Nothing,” he said. “Discovery is just getting started. I think we’re all waiting for Mooneyham.”
   “I talked to him yesterday,” Saulsberry said. They might not like Maxatil, but they were certainly monitoring it. Clay had been a mass tort lawyer long enough to know that the greatest fear of all was missing the big one. And Dyloft had taught him that the biggest thrill was launching a surprise attack while everyone else was asleep.
   He was not yet sure what Maxatil might teach him. These guys were nibbling around the edges, probing, hoping to learn something from the front lines. But since Goffman had so thoroughly stonewalled the lawsuit since the day he’d filed it, Clay had nothing to give them.
   Saulsberry was saying, “I know Mooneyham very well. We tried some cases together years ago.”
   “He’s a blowhard,” French said, as if the typical trial lawyer was tight-lipped and one with a big mouth was a disgrace to the profession.
   “He is, but he’s very good. The old guy hasn’t lost in twenty years.”
   “Twenty-one,” Clay said. “At least that’s what he told me.”
   “Whatever,” Saulsberry said, brushing them aside because he had fresh news. “You’re right, Clay, everybody is watching Mooneyham. Even Goffman. The trial is set for sometime in September. They claim they want a trial. If Mooneyham can connect the dots and prove causation and liability, then there’s a good chance the company will set up a national compensation plan. But if the jury goes with Goffman, then the war is on because the company ain’t paying a dime to anybody.”
   “This is all according to Mooneyham?” French asked.
   “Yes.”
   “He’s a blowhard.”
   “No, I’ve heard it too,” Carlos said. “I have a source, and he said exactly what Wes is saying.”
   “I’ve never heard of a defendant pushing for a trial,” French said.
   “Goffman’s a tough bunch,” Didier added. “I sued them fifteen years ago. If you can prove liability, they’ll pay a fair settlement. But if you can’t, you’re screwed.”
   Once again, Clay felt like going for a swim. Fortunately, Maxatil was instantly forgotten when the two Cuban paralegals pranced onto the deck below in very skimpy outfits.
   “Paralegals, my ass,” French said, straining for a better view.
   “Which one is yours?” Saulsberry asked, leaning out of his chair.
   “Take your pick, boys,” Carlos said. “They’re professionals. I brought them as a gift. We’ll pass them around.”
   And with that the windbags on the top deck were dead silent.

   A storm arrived just before dawn and disrupted the quietness of the yacht. French, badly hung over and with a naked paralegal under his sheets, called the captain from his bed and ordered him to head for shore. Breakfast was postponed, not that anyone was hungry. Dinner had been a four-hour marathon, complete with courtroom war stories, dirty jokes, and the obligatory late-night bickering caused by too much alcohol. Clay and Ridley had retired early and double-latched their door.
   Moored in Biloxi harbor, riding out the storm, the steering committee managed to review all the documents and memos it was supposed to review. There were directions to the class-action administrator, and dozens of signature blanks to be filled in. Clay was nauseous by the time they finished, and desperate to stand on solid ground.
   Not lost in all the paperwork was the latest fee schedule. Clay, or more accurately, his law firm, would soon be receiving another $4 million. Exciting enough, but he wasn’t sure if he would realize it when the money arrived. It would make a nice dent in the overhead, but only a temporary one.
   It would, however, get Rex Crittle off his back for a few weeks. Rex was pacing the halls like an expectant father, looking for fees.
   Never again, he vowed to himself when he stepped off the yacht. Never would he allow himself to be penned up overnight with people he didn’t like. A limo took them to the airport. The Gulfstream took them to the Caribbean.