 
# CANADIAN MEDS

by

John Moynihan

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

John Moynihan on Smashwords

Canadian Meds

Copyright © 2009 by John Moynihan.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009907302

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4415-5748-3

Softcover 978-1-4415-5747-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, companies and medications are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, persons, companies, pharmaceuticals or medications is entirely coincidental and unintended. This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.xlibris.com

Orders@Xlibris.com

* * * * *

### To Deborah

* * * * *

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all.

Grace Slick, 1967

* * * * *

### Prostata

"No, no, no. Hell, no! It needs to be bigger," Bill Callahan said loudly into the phone. "And redder, much redder." He was standing with his back to the office door, looking out in profile onto the parking lot below his window. Most of the cars were late-model Toyotas and Hondas sitting in the early winter sun. He was the president of Tundra RX, an Internet drug retailer based in Canada. He was medium-framed, with a little extra weight around the middle, still handsome with most of his hair, which was slowly turning salt-and-pepper gray. Callahan was dressed in the basic CEO uniform of dark pressed slacks, loafers, and a blue striped, open-collar dress shirt.

"Look, Bill," the voice said on the other end. "We've sent you three foam samples so far—what's wrong with them?"

"You want to know what's wrong? I'll tell you. We need this prostate big, and full, and hard. This thing is supposed to be like an anatomically exaggerated stress ball. Foamy and firm, and big. The operative word here is big. As in big and sore."

"I think a prostate is the size of a golf ball, isn't it Bill?"

"It doesn't matter what size it really is. When we give this to our customers who are buying Prostata, we want them to subconsciously think that this is their prostate. Their own puffy, sore, oversized prostate. Make it the size of a baseball, if you can. But it's got to be bigger and redder, and raw."

"Yeah, we can do that pretty easily. We'll just increase the size of the pour mold. The foam is really flexible. It's good stuff, they use it in the space program."

"Jesus. Remember, what we're trying to do here is ship this little foam prostate to our customers along with their Prostata pill order as health education. You know, teach 'em a little something, a sort of show-and-tell. That way, they can see their prostate and all the little connections that can get clogged."

"You thinking they'll keep it on their desk in their home office, huh? Is that what you're telling me?" The foam salesman laughed. "You're fucking nuts."

"Yeah, that's the idea. We want them to think that this foam replica is just like their own prostate. That's why the goal is to make it a little enlarged and puffy, and bright pink. Pink, almost red. Red is the real color. It's the color of inflammation. We want them to think that their prostates are inflamed and over-extended, so they'll take their Tundra RX prostate pills religiously, everyday. That's the holy grail.

"What a bunch of bullshit."

"Look, do the best you can," Callahan said. "I need to see another prototype in my office by Monday. We've got five thousand of these pills to ship this month and I'd like this little marketing aid to go with each order. So, help me out here."

The foam salesman promised to send another prototype in the next forty-eight hours.

Bill Callahan knew that he needed to finish this "consumer marketing" for Prostata before the company shipped its first pill. It was a new product line for them and he wanted to get it right. He punched in his marketing director's extension.

"Julie, can you come down here for a minute please?"

"Sure Bill, be right there."

Thirty seconds later, Julie Sontag showed up in his office. She was a tall, attractive, auburn-haired woman wearing slacks and a sweater. As usual, she was very well put together. She was Tundra RX's head of marketing and sales.

Julie had come to Canada five years ago to pursue a relationship with a professional hockey player. But she quickly realized that beyond the sporting events, nice dinners, and the physical relationship, they had very little in common. She had drive and ambition. Her ex was a hockey player who spent his free time taping his stick, playing video games, and talking on his cell to his buddies.

Callahan moved several stacks of paper around so that there was some clear space on the table for them to work.

"Julie, we've got to develop a guide sheet for Prostata. Something that talks to the problems that men face when they have a prostate issue." Callahan leaned back in his chair as he spoke. He had developed a slight softness around his waist, and it was noticeable when he rested his hands on his stomach. It was the result of too many hours in the office and not enough in the gym.

"What are you thinking?" Julie said. "We put in a drug disclosure sheet with the meds, just like we always do. Are you talking about an additional marketing piece?"

"Yeah, exactly. We need more marketing sizzle for this one. I want to push this one out the door. I'm thinking about a piece that highlights the problems of older men. I want you to put a picture of a man in distress in silhouette as wallpaper, in profile. Then write a paragraph about prostate problems. Under that, I want the textbook symptoms listed in slightly larger font."

Callahan grabbed a pad of paper and drew a facial outline of a man. Then he dropped in bullet points beneath:

Low flow

Erection problems

Painful urination

Irritation

Incontinence

Dribbling

Callahan underscored this last bullet twice and looked over at Julie. "Dribbling, Julie. You know what I'm goddamn talking about here? Men dribbling. Tell me, what's worse than that?"

Julie groaned. "You're disgusting," she said. "I'm glad I'm a woman, that's all I can say." She was thirty-three, with a high energy level. She loved the repartee with Callahan, as she knew she could always hold her own with her boss. He respected it. She listened to Callahan's concept for the campaign, and liked it. It would work.

"Think you can fix this?"

"No problem." Julie looked at the picture. "How close do you want the headshot of this guy?"

"I'm thinking quarter turn, with the pained expression. Give me some options."

"I think we should do a cool, blue background," Julie said.

"No, give me pink. It's the color of irritation."

Julie shook her head. "No way. We can't have pink or red for a male product."

"Okay. Just bring me back something this afternoon."

"I'll start it right after I finish the ad copy for the July AARP issue."

With that, Julie ripped the top sheet of paper from the pad as a memory jog, and got up. Callahan watched her as she walked out of the room. He always tried to hire good-looking women to work at Tundra RX. It made the days interesting.

* * * * *

### Erecta

The drug Erecta—the erection superpill—was the blockbuster product for Callahan when he started the company four years ago in Edmonton, in the back of an industrial park. Tundra RX's "delivery system," as Callahan called it in the company ads on the Internet, allowed it to get US pharmaceutical quality drugs at prices that that were twenty to fifty percent lower than what customers could purchase them for down in the United States. It was a bold statement.

The competitive advantage that Tundra RX had was its custom suppliers of pharmaceuticals. The company had an exclusive relationship with several small specialty pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, one in particular that was located in China, in Guangzhou province, just north of Hong Kong. This facility was state-of-the-art, and was able to make pills to any specification for Tundra RX.

For Erecta, the Chinese manufacturing plant could create either real or fake formulations at will. The real ones were perfect and were as good as any produced from a lab in the US. The facility could also produce Erecta tabs that were very close to the exact chemical compounding of the patented pill, but not exact, as the exact compound was much more expensive to produce. These pills would be close in potency to the real drug, but not quite the same. The plant could also produce purely fake Erecta pills—pills that looked identical to the real thing, right down to the markings and coating, but were essentially no more than sugar pills.

Callahan moved from selling real to fake to in-between pills easily and Tundra RX shipped all three types with the customers never knowing exactly which kind of pills they were getting in a particular order.

"Rakesh, I want us to start tracking the first-time Erecta orders we receive and fill them like this," Callahan said while talking to Rakesh Gupta, his chief medical officer, one morning. "For first-time buyers, I want you to fill the order with the genuine stuff—full-strength Erecta. No fucking around."

"Why?" Rakesh asked. "We won't make any money filling orders using US-supplied real drugs. We'll lose money because it costs us more to purchase the drug stateside, ship it up here, repackage it, and then ship it back down at our discount pricing. What are you thinking?"

"We've got to make sure the first order, particularly for these impotence drugs, works perfectly. We've got to create a satisfied customer," Callahan said. "It's obvious. If the customer isn't getting an erection from our stuff, he won't be a repeat buyer. He may even start to seriously badmouth us to his friends, and in public."

"He won't be badmouthing us in public about not getting a hard-on, I can tell you that much," Rakesh said.

"That's probably true. But he might loosen up to his buddies after a few beers at the club," Callahan said. "Why risk it? We need to create a great first-time customer experience. But we're only going to do it for the first shipment. Then we'll flip over to our in-house, diluted brand for future orders."

So that's what Tundra RX did, and did very efficiently. The company would ship full-strength Erecta for the first order, and then use the house brand after that. Sometimes the house brand was just as good as the proprietary stuff, and sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes it had other ingredients in the pills that didn't belong there. Callahan knew that you could never absolutely count on consistent quality from the foreign drug manufacturers. By fulfilling the first order with the real stuff, Tundra RX avoided a stumble with their new customers and increased the likelihood of repeat business.

Callahan knew that the reason why Big Pharma could charge so much more for their drugs was the simple premise that their drugs were better and safer, and therefore, more effective. He knew that was all garbage. It was the simple fact that the drug companies had a patent in a regulated market and could charge whatever they wanted to well-off, middle-class Americans. It was a pharmaceutical license to print money. This well-off American market became Callahan's target early on, and it was ripe for picking.

* * * * *

### Birth of a Nation

Callahan sat with Julie Sontag in the cafeteria that Northern Properties had constructed in one of the buildings in the industrial park. It was big and had a hot food line, a salad bar, and cookies and snacks.

For three years before coming to Tundra RX, Julie had worked at Mullin Brown, the big advertising agency in Toronto. She had been a mid-level manager in pharmaceutical marketing, and had accounts with Smith Planter and Kingston Allen Carter. Over time, she learned what the drug companies thought about their products, how they marketed their wares, and how they exploited their expensive proprietary patents. These were all valuable skills for Tundra RX to exploit when she came over.

Callahan and Julie were off to the side, alone at a two-top table along the windows. Julie had her feet up on a chair, sipping a large, steaming cup of coffee. Callahan was sitting with his own coffee and a honey-dipped donut. It was January. They blended in with the sea of people in the room.

"How do you think we're doing with our marketing?" Callahan asked as he swirled a flimsy wooden stirrer in his coffee.

"I think we're just scratching the surface."

"How so?"

"Look, let's take it from the top. Big Pharma in the United States discovers a drug then creates a market for it. Did you ever hear of Erecta for erectile dysfunction or Prostata for prostate issues before Smith Planter and Mack started advertising them?"

"Of course not. They built the brand," Callahan said. "It was a brilliant campaign. They took those closet afflictions and made them into everyday events. Not getting a hard-on became as mundane as getting the oil changed in the car at Quik-Lube. And you could talk about it in public as well."

"That's exactly right," Julie said. "Now, we need to draft off that platform that Big Pharma created. We need to do more ads. Cheap ads, probably banner ads. We're getting some of our best exposure from these banner ads. Take Canadian Hotties, for example. We got twenty-three orders from that site yesterday alone. That's great traffic from just a banner ad."

"That's not a bad idea," Callahan said. "But are they cheap enough?"

Julie was on a roll now. "Yeah, we can. I think we also need to expand to other adult sites. Some mainstream ones and some radical ones. We've got to go both ways. But my problem is that a lot of these sites are just hard core porn," Julie said as she sipped her coffee. "But I've got an idea."

"Like what?" Callahan asked.

"You're gonna laugh when I tell you."

"No I won't. You're creative. That's why you were hired—to figure some of this stuff out and push us into new areas." Callahan took a sip from his coffee cup, looked over at Julie and waited.

"Well, there are a lot of other adult sites with straightforward sex that we should be attached to. That's our mass market. Those sites are probably surfed by wholesome, middle-class guys who are watching light porn and want a performance edge."

"Yeah, so what?"

"I think I know how to get more exposure here, differentiate us, but keep us legit all at the same time." Julie smiled as she spoke. "I think that we need to brand ourselves on these adult sites with an image, a cartoony image but one that sticks. Like the lizard for the insurance company, or the duck. Or the dancing cowboys. You know what I'm talking about?"

"Yeah. They're effective, for sure," Callahan said." "But how do we work it?"

"So I'm thinking that we should use a donkey."

"A donkey? Cut the shit," Callahan said.

"A small, cartoon donkey walking across the top crawler with his pecker underneath his legs. You know, donkeys are known for having big peckers. So his pecker is dragging on the ground. He swallows a pill and starts to smile. He jumps up on his hind legs, and he gets a human-like erection as he walks off the crawler, with his paws on his hips. It's as if he's saying 'Look at me. Look what I've got!' The erection is proportional of course, not grotesque. It's gotta be funny and tasteful. We'll run a Tundra RX logo underneath the banner. I think the men will love it. I'm working on some animation right now with Jeff. It'll be like the dancing mortgage girls. What do you think?"

Callahan raised his eyebrows and looked at Julie. "Are you kidding me? It's over the top. It sounds absurd. But it might get us noticed. And that's what we need, something for us to stand out. An iconic image. There's a sea of Canadian pharmaceutical ads out there, otherwise."

"I know. Product recognition," Julie said. "It's a little raunchy, but trust me. I've got intuition on this one."

"A donkey dick crawler ad? Maybe," Callahan said, as he shrugged his shoulders. "Who has a bigger dick than a donkey? It might work."

Julie blushed. "It's not brilliant. It's just that the male psyche is consistent, at least from my limited experience."

"I'm sure your experience isn't limited, but I don't want to know," Callahan said as he winked at Julie. They finished their coffees and headed back to the office. Julie made a mental note to finish the animation quickly, as Callahan didn't reject the idea out of the box then and there. She took it as a green light. She needed to get a prototype working now.

* * * * *

### Straight Shooter

Officer Michael Smith was a fifty year-old Massachusetts state trooper on the prowl. He was six foot tall, and in reasonably good shape. Reasonable was the operative word. No paunch. He could still fit in the dress uniform that he graduated in from the Police Academy over twenty-five years ago. But he was definitely slowing down. Smith was divorced for three years now. His twenty year marriage had produced two girls. Both were grown up.

Now that he was divorced from Carole, he occasionally started to take some of the cell phone numbers that sometimes came his way. He was pretty awkward at the dating game. It was hard to keep conversation going with a state cop for an entire dinner, he knew. He could talk about fingerprinting and running licenses, and how to keep your foot hovering just above the brake pedal while going ninety miles an hour in the passing lane, floating two inches off the bumper of the guy in front, but not many women wanted to hear about that. At least, not the attractive ones.

No, they were occasionally interested in sex, and that was about it. Mike could generally produce in that department, for the most part. Two weeks ago, he dated a blond that he met coming off a Delta flight from Atlanta, and had a hell of a good time. After dinner, they ended up at her place in Woburn, screwing in her condo.

Once in a while, his machinery didn't work as well as he wanted it to. He got limp at the wrong time or couldn't get it up, usually right when his date wanted him to perform like an acrobat. This was not good stuff from his perspective, but since he only saw each of these women once or twice, it didn't rattle him.

But it did get him thinking that he was starting to get older and that he probably needed a little productivity boost to keep his pecker running straight and true. The false starts were happening on a more than random basis, and he was a little worried. One of the cops in the barracks was bragging about Erecta lately, and that the cheapest way to get some was by buying it from one of the Canadian mail-order drug companies. Not only was it cheaper on the Web, but you did it anonymously—no doctor's visit or prescription. The anonymous part was what interested Mike. The last thing he wanted was some doctor in Boston asking him sex questions about how frequently he had impotence problems or when was the last time he jerked off.

He stood in his bedroom in his condo in South Boston as he placed a call. It was the third-floor unit of a triple-decker, with great views of the harbor. He could see all the way over to the gas tank beyond the Dorchester Yacht Club from his open living room.

"Hello, is Susan there?" he asked. He threaded his shiny black belt through the trouser loops on his tight blue jodhpurs as he talked. He had to wear his dress blues with the pants and black boots on the airport detail.

"Speaking", Susan Jefferson said. Susan was a computer storage saleswoman who traveled a lot, selling memory drives and upgrades to large corporate users. She was blond and good-looking. She was a little older herself—early forties and also divorced. Susan had been married for ten years, but her constant traveling and poor choice of husband finally did her relationship in.

"Hi. This is Mike, the state policeman from Logan. We met at Dunkin' Donuts last week, remember? We talked about the bad weather and your BMW's starter problems."

"Of course I remember, Mike," Susan said. "I was wondering if you were going to call or not," she answered.

"This isn't easy for an old guy like me," Mike said as he shifted the phone onto his other shoulder, and finished clasping his belt. "I'm not good at calling up and asking for dates. It feels like high school."

"Then I'm going to leave you hanging and see how you do," Susan said. "You're doing fine so far, though. You had the courage to at least call me up and exposure yourself to failure. I admire that."

"No kidding. Failure? Wouldn't be the first time," Mike said as he laughed. "I figured I'd call and see if you wanted to go dinner this weekend. Place on the South Shore, the Harbor Grille." His restaurant repertoire was small, so he led with his best.

"I know it. It's one of my favorite places," Susan said. "You're not coming in a police cruiser, are you?"

"Don't laugh. At least we'd find a parking spot near the front."

"Surprise me," Susan said.

Mike ended the call and dropped the phone from his shoulder into the cradle. He had a good vibe with Susan early on that he didn't usually get with other women that he dated. He liked her sarcasm. She was sharp.

He finished getting dressed and gave his knee-high black boots a quick polish with a brush that he kept in his drawer. He was happy, thinking about the upcoming weekend as he headed north on Route 93 in the cruiser. He drove in the passing lane at seventy-five miles per hour, with his wrap-around Oakley sunglasses and hot coffee in the cup holder, the traffic moving out of the way as he passed.

* * * * *

### Working It

"You like this place?" Mike asked, as he cut into his T-bone steak diagonally. It was Saturday night. He was into his second glass of the Cakebread Cellars cabernet that Susan had chosen. She was having the veal chop and polenta.

"Yes, good choice," she said, as she cut into her entree. "So tell me, what's it like to be a cop? Sorry, I mean, state policeman. Why have you stayed at it so long?"

"It's basically a simple job. Like flying planes. A lot of boredom and a few moments of absolute terror," Mike said. "I actually like wearing the uniform and walking around schmoozing. It's pretty simple to talk to most people at the airport because I'm a cop. People know they have to talk to me if I start a conversation."

"So you like to talk to people but within a set of defined social boundaries," Susan said, picking up on the thought. "So what's our designated interaction tonight, Officer Smith? Tell me."

"I don't know yet. You have to decide if you like me or not, if you want this to go anywhere," he said.

"Indeed I do."

Susan and Mike continued to eat and drink. He refilled their wine glasses.

"Well?"

"Keep talking," Susan said and smiled as she cut her veal. "The night's young."

By the time they chose the bananas foster and cappuccinos for dessert, they had both recapped their marriages, how each now spent their free time, and how little of it they had.

"Come on in for a drink, Mike," Susan said when they pulled up around midnight to her condo in Cohasset. The neighborhood was quiet. He put the car in park, and looked at her in the glow of the streetlight nearby.

"Are you sure? It's pretty late. I should probably be going back to Southie."

"Just one glass of wine. I'll show you the renovation of my kitchen and you can tell me what you think," Susan said.

So in they went for drinks. Mike had a beer and Susan had a glass of wine. They sat and talked. Eventually, Susan moved closer to Mike, and they started to kiss. In a little while, their clothes were off in a pile on the floor. Since Susan knew where this was headed, she got up before they got too far into it, and took Mike's hand and smiled.

"I forgot to show you the renovation work that I did in my bedroom. Come on and check it out for a second," she said. "I'm interested in your opinion." Susan wasn't the top systems saleswoman in her office for nothing. She always knew how to close a deal.

#

When Mike awoke next morning Susan was already at work under the covers. He could barely keep up his erection. Three times in less than ten hours was too much for a fifty year-old cop. He struggled to perform. He finally came, but only after much hard work by Susan.

"Hang out for the morning," Susan said later in the kitchen. They were both putting orange marmalade on croissants they had just toasted. She sipped her coffee from a large ceramic mug that she wrapped her hands around.

"I can't," Mike lied. "I've got a shift at three this afternoon."

"You're always working," she said, mildly disappointed. She wanted to spend a little more intimate time with Mike to see if he was worth investing any energy in. "Maybe next time," she said. Susan made sure that there was no pressure to hang around, but left the "next time" feeler out there with Mike. She looked over at him, sizing him up.

Mike was nervous. He got the hell out of there fast. He liked Susan a lot—maybe too much, for a first date. He was sore as a polecat, though, from all the screwing. Something had to change. He wasn't getting any younger, and he needed performance help. He remembered the Erecta conversation with his buddy from the barracks as he was driving back up Route 93 toward South Boston. He decided to look into it some more. Maybe that was the solution.

* * * * *

### Substitutions

As it turned out, both the Mexican and Chinese pill manufacturers that Tundra RX used had similar operations. Callahan was right on in his initial assessment on the due diligence of each group, initially. They both had the talent and the equipment to grind out the finest in pharmaceuticals, from pills to caplets.

Callahan learned that it was best to use different manufacturers for different products the company sold. The Mexican facility was best at sleep aids and some high blood pressure meds. They were great at propranolol and metoprolol and the other beta blocking agents. For other classes of drugs, he would go to China. For statins and for the specialty erectile dysfunction, or so-called ED drugs, Hong Kong was the place to go.

"Hello, Pablo? This is Bill Callahan at Tundra RX. How are you?"

Pablo, the compact Mexican sales director at Pharmaceutico Real, knew Callahan well. Tundra RX was one of his larger customers. "I'm doing fine, Bill. What can we get you today?"

"I need some sleeping pills. Miloden MR and Sonotol. Five thousand pills each, end of the week."

"Ah, that's tough for us right now, Bill. Demand has shot up, and we're running two production shifts already. We can't keep up. I have two back orders for Europe already in front of you. The best I can do is fourty-five days out."

"Cut the shit, Pablo," Callahan said as he leaned back and swiveled in his big overstuffed leather chair. "We can't pay a premium every time we order. Our pricing model doesn't support it. We'll go broke."

"Bill, I'm not asking you to pay a premium every time you order. I don't understand about your pricing models, either. I'm just saying that if you want the order shipped now, you're going to have to pay more for it to go to the top of the list. A lot of other Canadian buyers want the same stuff. Everybody is having trouble sleeping now, you know."

"Yeah. I'll remember that when you call me to unload some of your overstocked inventory next month. I'll tell you that I don't want the shit."

"It's up to you, señor."

"How much?" Callahan finally asked.

"A dollar fifty a pill."

"That's too much. Way too much. I can do seventy-five cents a pill and that's it," Callahan countered.

Pablo paused. "All right, we'll do it at that price but you need to take a ten thousand-pill lot."

"It's a deal. Send me a confirmation," Callahan said. "We need the inventory now."

#

One of the problems for Tundra RX in retailing pharmaceuticals to the public was keeping up on the purity of the drugs that they sold. It was all well and good that the manufacturing plants that Callahan dealt with were state-of-the-art, and able to turn out drugs that rivaled American plants on a pill-for-pill basis. They had the equipment and the formularies. But having front-of-the-shop research and development capabilities in no way assured buyers like Callahan that the product they actually paid for and got was the real deal. That was often the case with foreign pill purchases. Quality control was questionable. It was never because the companies couldn't make the right drugs if they wanted to. It was simply whether they wanted to.

"Carol, how's the quality on the stuff that we're buying from Pharmaceutico Real?" Callahan asked. Carol Ferris, the director of research and quality control, had just come into his office. She had on a white lab coat and a pair of bright red glasses pushed up into her black hair. She was a single mom, thirty five years old and reasonably attractive, and the mainstay of the Tundra RX research area.

"We test checked three of the last shipments and they were so-so. The Miloden was full-strength, but there were problems with the Erecta. Even the basic blood pressure stuff they send us now has problems a lot of the time."

"What was wrong with the Erecta?" Callahan asked. This was one of the most profitable drugs for Tundra RX, and they were selling a lot of it.

"Yeah, we checked and the formulary was off by a lot. They're having a tough time getting the selendafil chloride for the mix. I think they're just too lazy and nobody is picking up on it," Carol said.

"Damn it. We need to stay on top of that with them. What does that do to the drug?"

"Limp dicks, Bill," Carol said matter-of-factly. She looked directly at him. She was a straight shooter and didn't go for small talk with Callahan.

"Doesn't sugarcoat it," he said as he laughed.

"Hey, you asked." She prided herself on her bluntness.

"Shit, we can't have that," Callahan said. "We're just starting to get traction for the ED drugs in our Web space."

"You mean the donkey dick ads?" Carol said, shaking her head. "You're bringing us down to new levels."

"Hey, the marketing may be a little seamy, but it's working. We've been selling a lot more Erecta since the ads started running. But the pills can't be bogus. We need real pills, and real erections. We need satisfied customers."

"I know, Bill, I know. Believe me, we all need erections of steel," Carol said as she winked at Callahan. She was on the dating circuit, now that she was single again. She had been divorced for two years and had custody of her two grade school kids.

"So who's doing it?"

"It's the Chinese, as usual. They keep changing the formularies, and they think that we don't know what's going on. You need to talk to Zhu. In the sampling that we're doing now, we're seeing twenty-seven percent of our order not meeting basic chemical composition requirements."

"'They're screwing us over," Callahan said.

"I don't know what's going on, but we need to clean it up. You and I should go down there one of these days and have a meeting with Zhu and the team and get it straightened out."

"That's not a bad idea. Talk to Fran. See if we can schedule something going forward."

"I'll look at your calendar," Carol said halfheartedly as she got up and left the room. She knew that the trip was just happy talk, and that Callahan would never fly to China to have a working session with the Lucky guys.

Callahan wondered how he was going to keep Carol out of the loop as to what was really going on at the Guangzhou production plant over the long term. She was inquisitive with a high energy level and would find out soon enough if he wasn't careful.

* * * * *

### Surfing for Pills

Mike Smith was in his kitchen late on a Thursday night, off-shift, in jeans and a blue Red Sox T-shirt with CRISP in big white letters on the back. He had cracked a Budweiser and had the Celtics on, early season, playing the Lakers on the West Coast. The game had just started. Kobe Bryant was in and had scored the last four points. Like every Boston fan, Mike hated the fucking Lakers, particularly when they played in LA. The camera kept panning to Jack Nicholson and the other stars all sitting courtside in the expensive seats.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop, scrolling through about twenty ads for Erecta online, all without a prescription. There was no way he was going to the doctor's to ask for this stuff in person. Besides, Mike knew what he wanted. A pill for one of those four-hour erections that they warned you about during the pro football games on Sunday.

Mike was having the time of his life. He was starting to see Susan regularly. They were doing romantic dinners and then sex back at her townhouse every other week. Susan was a woman who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to tell him. The problem was that it left Mike exhausted and unable to keep up.

Last Sunday they had made love in the morning, and afterwards, Mike was reading the Sunday Globe and watching the Fox NFL Pre-game Show in bed with Susan. She had a beautiful fourty-one-inch flat-screen right in the bedroom, on the wall. He was in heaven. Soon enough, she was interested in more lovemaking. He struggled to do it again, and ended up missing the entire pregame show, which was running in the background on mute. He decided then that he needed help.

He clicked through the lead page on the Web site, and was now on the Tundra RX Male Potency Page. This was the portal on the Website that had all the sexual potency and erectile drugs. It was set up with a very attractive Danish-looking blond who was smiling on the front page. She had Nordic features—high cheek bones and straight, almost platinum, hair parted to the side. She was gorgeous, and Mike stared at her before dropping down the screen.

He scrolled through the multiple offerings Tundra RX had listed. Each type of pill had a sample picture—in color—and then had its pricing, both on a package and a per-pill basis. The pills were all in bright colors, and were shown on a white background.

He scrolled over to dosage, and immediately clicked on the strongest dosage in stock: 100 milligrams per tablet. Up came a popup. "Have A Doctor's Prescription?" He clicked "No," and a follow-on appeared. "No Problem. A prescription is not necessary when ordering from us. We ask that you research the drug you are purchasing on our Website, and take it in appropriate doses. Serious side effects are possible." That was the extent of the disclaimer that Tundra RX had for any of its on line purchases.

Mike read the disclaimer, clicked on "I agree," and moved on. The site also made him approve a medical liability waiver since he had no prescription for the drugs. When it was all said and done, he purchased fifty Erecta tablets, a multivitamin compound for men over fifty, and a bottle of Vitamin E Natural caplets in the 150-milligram size. He read somewhere that Vitamin E promoted good heart health so he figured he should try the pills if he was going on an Erecta campaign.

He clicked through to his shopping cart and splurged on the One-Day FedEx service. He wanted the Erecta pills for the weekend. He and Susan were going down to Chatham for a long weekend away, and he wanted to be primed and ready for action. He paid with his New England Patriots MasterCard. He then opened another beer and went back to watching the Celtics. They were up by eight points in the second period. Mike noticed that Nicholson had a knockout blond seated next to him, young enough to be his daughter.

He leaned back in his chair as he sipped the cold beer, watched the game, and wondered what kind of shit he was getting himself into, taking pills to have better erections. He shook his head and felt a little perverted. He had never done anything like this before. He hoped it didn't cause more problems than it was worth.

#

Miguel San Luis was the head of production for Pharmaceutico Real CV in Mexico. He was sitting in Juarez in his office, doodling with his black Scripto Fine Writer pen on a pad of note paper that a sales rep had given him. He was talking on the phone to his plant manager, Eduardo. Miguel shook his head as he listened.

"We may need to shut the line down in Zone 1," Eduardo said quietly.

"Why, what's up?" Miguel said.

"We don't have any more dutasteride for the Prostata run."

'How far into it are you?

"We've batched twenty thousand pills so far and the run is thirty thousand."

"How'd it happen?"

"How does it always happen? We screwed up on the production mix, okay?"

"What?"

"Jose thought the run was only going to be fifteen thousand pills so we mixed for that level."

"Can't you add more filler?"

"Do you think I'd be calling you if I had more filler to add and finish off the batch?" Eduardo said.

"Okay, you're right," Miguel said. "So what do you want?"

"I need your authorization to mix in a different placebo to round out the formulation and finish the batch."

"What are you thinking?"

"Acetaminophen or maybe basic aspirin, amigo. Should be no problem."

"We ever have problems substituting aspirin in our other drugs?"

"Not yet. Nobody's called me up to complain, at least. It's pretty harmless stuff for most people."

"Most people?" Miguel said sarcastically.

"No, not everybody. Don't bullshit me. You know that some people can have allergic reactions to it, like internal bleeding, maybe worse. But the odds are they'll probably never notice it in a prostate drug, though."

"Okay, go ahead and use it then. Finish the run off. But Jesus Christ, we've got to start watching this closer. If people found out and could trace the pills to this factory, they'd have our cojones nailed to a tree, no doubt," Miguel said.

"Thanks, boss. This at least lets us finish up the production for the night," Eduardo said. "My son's playing soccer at six, and I can go watch him now with this run out of the way."

"Remember, nothing on paper," the plant manager said.

"Don't worry about me. I'm a poor Mexican that can barely read and write English anyway," Eduardo said sarcastically as he put down the phone and went back to work.

* * * * *

### Medical Input

Bill Callahan walked down the corridor to the research section of the office. It was a beautiful Canadian morning with the sky, brilliant blue, visible through all the windows. He went to Rakesh Gupta's big office at the end of the corridor. Gupta was sitting at his desk, working intently at his desktop computer.

Rakesh was a real medical doctor. He was the only one on the Tundra RX staff. He held the title of Chief Medical Officer. It was a role that was largely marketing in nature, but an important one. Gupta fit the position perfectly.

"Bill, what brings you to my squat surroundings?" Rakesh said as he turned from his screen and smiled at Callahan. He had been surfing the Web MD site looking for info on Prostata, to bone up on it. Gupta was a Pakistani with a mottled complexion and a full head of jet-black hair. He wore stylish black rimmed glasses, giving him an intellectual look which was geared perfectly for his role in the company. He was also a clotheshorse and that, coupled with the glasses, made him an ideal fit. He was handsome, to boot.

Callahan saw the screen and recognized it before Rakesh could minimize it. "Rakesh, no wonder we're so fucked up all the time," he said. "You're looking up medical research on Web MD. What the hell? Shouldn't you be on the Journal of Canadian Medicine or some other bullshit highbrow medical site? You know, the good stuff, the stuff that regular people can't understand. I can look shit up on Web MD, for Chrissake," Callahan said as he laughed. "And I'm an accountant by training."

He remembered how he had come to hire Rakesh for the company two years ago. Gupta had been in a public health clinic in Toronto where he was head of the clinical practice. He had received his medical degree from McGill, but he had two disciplinary actions on his record. Both of them were for unauthorized prescription activity. He was in his forties and divorced, and as it turned out, liked the restaurant and club scene in the city, along with a variety of prescription meds that he would sample along the way.

He let his hobby get out of control, and was eventually writing fake prescriptions for seven or eight drugs for himself. He got tripped up when he started sampling the Oxycontin. He finally got his medical license pulled for six months by the Board of Medicine, and was required to go to a rehab clinic in Montreal for three months to dry out.

Callahan remembered that he had tracked him down through a private detective. "Do you think he's back on the straight and narrow now?" Callahan asked the ex-cop.

"Not a goddamn chance in the world. I trailed him in Montreal for about three days. He's in the strip clubs every night. And I don't mean hanging at the back. He'd be right up front where the action is. The guy's not clean, trust me."

That was all Bill Callahan needed to hear. It was exactly the character recommendation that he wanted.

Callahan was in Montreal the next day, and he scheduled an evening meeting with Rakesh at Paul Mathew's steakhouse. Over prime rib, four cocktails, and two bottles of Stag's Leap cabernet, Callahan cut his deal with Rakesh Gupta.

Later, they went out to a strip club that Rakesh suggested, and blew about two hundred Canadian dollars into the G-strings of some of the best-looking and raunchiest girls in town. Callahan was no stranger to the strip club scene, and nursed his own addiction to the young women, just like Rakesh. The two men formed a fast bond early on.

They hacked out the terms of an employment agreement over the next two days, and two weeks later, Dr. Rakesh Gupta, addictions and all, was working at Tundra RX as the Chief Medical Officer.

"Rakesh, we need to look at our purchases more closely from Pharmaceutico Real and Lucky," Callahan said as he snapped back to the conversation. "They're starting to water down their shipments to us more frequently than we want. A lot of their shit is all of a sudden coming into our warehouse."

Rakesh had medical journals stacked high on his desk and side table. He had a keen interest in pharmacology, and would study articles that were relevant to Tundra RX and their business. He was a practical expert in most of the drug lines that the company sold.

"Yeah, I saw the report from Carol yesterday. I didn't have a chance to meet with her yet, though," he said. He pushed a mass of black hair off of his forehead as he frowned and adjusted his glasses.

"We need to watch what they're sending us," Callahan said.

"I know. They think because we're asking for some dilution to cut costs that they can do whatever they want. That's not the way it works. They can't send us any more shit that's not exactly as we ordered. End of story. We don't have the luxury of tamping down our products any more. We have to hold the line somewhere."

"I'll call Arturo today and go over the mixes that we're currently on order with."

"You better. We've been successful in diluting the generics with a whole bunch of trash but we can't get tripped up now. If we get a reputation for diluted pills, it'll pass through the market like shit through a goose and kill sales."

"I know," Rakesh said as he frowned at Callahan.

"We need to fix it fast. This is our livelihood."

Rakesh's right hand was resting on his desk, and Callahan could see that he had the shakes, but just barely perceptible. Several of his fingers twitched slightly as the men spoke.

"I know that you're on some stuff now," Callahan said. "You've got to be careful. It's one thing to be sampling the product, but you've got to keep it controlled. What were the terms of your license suspension?"

"If I'm caught writing another illegal prescription in the next year, I lose my license for five years. Then if it happens again, I lose it permanently."

"Shit, we can't have that. You're our real marketing guy. We need your license for legitimacy. Can't you keep your habits to after-hours and weekends at the clubs?" Callahan asked.

"No worries, Bill," Rakesh answered. "I don't write prescriptions for myself or for anyone else anymore. If I need to clinically test a drug in the interests of quality control for the company, I just go down to the warehouse floor and take a few foil cards. No one is the wiser."

"What about the pill count on the inventory floor? Aren't we short whatever amount you're skimming?"

"I go into the inventory control program and mark small amounts down as 'damaged in transport.' It's all fully supportable if we're inspected. There's no other paper trail. No record. I can't risk getting my license pulled either."

"No shit, Dr. Gupta. Where else are you going to make three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year for selling a bunch of knock-off pills to the unsuspecting public? You've got to protect your lifestyle or you'll lose it."

"Bill, no lectures, please. I'm the medicine man. I know what to do. Let's focus on the business and not my occasional sampling of the product."

"Just don't let your hobby get in the way of our business or the possibility of Canadian prison is there for both of us."

"You're always so melodramatic." Rakesh went back to his screen as he spoke to Callahan.

"We need to work together to pull as much money out of this machine as we can before it explodes. That's all I'm saying," Callahan added.

"Yeah, I agree. This is too lucrative for the both of us for me to screw it up."

"Anyway, the reason I'm here, Rakesh, is to understand how you're handling the Tenata production from Lucky. We need to watch those guys. Carol just found out that they were jimmying up the Miloden CR shipments with thirty percent junk.'' Callahan paused and looked over at Rakesh.

"That's not good," he said. "That amount of inert material will definitely affect the potency of the drug, without a doubt. I'll look at her report and then call Zhu. That's bullshit."

"They're thinking that they can change any of the drugs without us picking up on it. You've got to talk to them and tell them that they can only modify the drugs that we tell them to. Otherwise, it'll be out of control."

"You're right. We'll have no quality assurance and we'll get derailed pretty quickly."

"Speaking of quality control, how much are we cutting down the Tenata mix?"

"I've tamped it down by seventeen percent. Nobody will pick it up from usage."

"How about chemical analysis?"

"Well, with a mass spectrometer and chemical sampling, the drug components will come out. But Tenata is a patented drug. There's just a slim chance that a general analysis lab could trace the dilution back to us. Only Kingston Allen has the formulation, and they keep it tightly guarded."

"How about if Kingston did the tests?"

"Then we're screwed. But with the hundreds of thousands of pills that are made and shipped by them worldwide, that's pretty unlikely. And the chance of someone local doing the testing is pretty small too."

"We've still got to watch out."

"Agreed. But we're not in trouble yet, are we? Statins are my area of expertise. I read up on them constantly. I actually do research on Tenata and Tenoril. I know you find that hard to believe."

"No shit, I do find that hard to believe," Callahan said.

"Remember, we've been stepping on the potency of these drugs for twenty-four months now, and no one has complained."

"I know, I know. But I still get nervous. You can't weaken the pills any further for now. We can't risk it. We're running full bore and need to make as much money as we can."

Rakesh sat back as he listened to Callahan rant and tried to lift a sesame seed with his tongue that was stuck between his teeth from the morning's bagel. It was irritating the shit out of him.

"Does anybody else in the company know that we're decreasing the potency of the drugs we sell?" Rakesh asked Callahan straight out.

"Are you crazy? It's just you and me," Callahan said. "And that's the way it's got to stay. Everybody else thinks that we're good at buying our drugs wholesale. That we get our drugs cheaply because we're having them produced in China and Mexico, and we drive down the price through a competitive process. Julie and Carol probably suspect though, but they're not looking to ask any hard questions," Callahan said. "At least, not yet."

"Why not?" Rakesh asked.

"Carol's divorce just got finalized, and she's got the autistic kid. I think she's flat out just trying to keep it together day-to-day. Julie's got the good lifestyle thing going, so I don't think that she's looking for problems either. But you never know, though."

"What a fucking miserable world you've trapped us in, Bill," Rakesh said as he laughed. "We'd be drawn and quartered under Canadian law if we were ever found out." The lines hardened in his forehead above his glasses as he spoke.

"Yeah, I love compromised employees. Just keep your eye on the ball and your hobbies in check, and we'll be okay. Start doing some test sampling on the inventory we're getting from Lucky," Callahan said. "I don't trust those guys at all. They're the ones who'll send us bogus pills without our knowing it."

"I'll start random testing on all the products coming in-house for consistency. Carol will understand that."

"Just don't let her know too much or test too much."

"I'll be careful."

"You better be," Callahan said as he got up, stretched, and looked out the window. "Cause otherwise we're fucked." He smiled at Rakesh and then left his office. He headed back down the corridor to see how the day's sales were going.

* * * * *

### All Mixed Up

Carol Ferris was on her cell phone in her office on Monday evening. She was talking to her nanny at home. She was opening an e-mail from Biotest Services as she talked, multitasking.

"Anat, did he finish his homework? Okay. Did he take his pills? The orange ones that I left in the cup that said six pm on the stickie underneath. Yeah, those ones. Then let him watch wrestling for an hour in exchange. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure that he takes a shower and brushes his teeth. I'll be home at 8:30 to put him to bed. Let me talk to him for a minute."

The phone went quiet for a minute as Carol's nanny went to get her son on the phone. Carol could hear the television blaring in the background. Ever since her divorce two years ago, it had been hard. She had gone back to work to help pay for the special schooling for her son, Seth, who was diagnosed with a mild form of autism. She had to hire the nanny so that she could go back to work full-time when her husband just walked out.

"Hello." The little voice on the end of the phone was dull. Carole knew that she had interrupted Seth's television time and he would have little to say.

"You need to take your pills and brush your teeth. I'll be home in a little while, and we can watch a movie together. The Traveling Mouse. Alright?"

"Okay."

"I love you sweetheart. Now put Anat back on."

Her son quickly put the nanny back on the line and went back to his TV.

"Be sure all his work is done and he's ready for bed before I get home. I'm tired," Carol said.

They hung up, and Carol put her cell phone back into her pocket. She had a lingering resentment from the divorce. Frank walked away and didn't do jack-shit. He paid the mortgage and that was it. She was left to work and take care of their special-needs son and another daughter. It was hard. He paid child support sporadically, and Carol was emotionally exhausted from chasing him with a lawyer and trying to collect money all the time.

She went back to her computer screen, focused, and started scrolling through test results that she had obtained that morning from Biotest, the outside lab that Tundra RX used for a lot of its testing. Just this week, she had sent a mix of pills to be tested for purity to the lab on the QT. She didn't want her assistant or anyone else to know about it. She just had a gnawing feeling, and she needed to resolve it once and for all. It was her secret testing protocol.

The dirty secret in the industry was that all the drug retailers, like Tundra RX, would order placebos or "knock-offs" from the drug manufacturers to sell. These weren't shabby fakes with the drug name misspelled or coding not stamped on the pills accurately. These were substitutions of the highest order. They looked, smelled and felt real. The only way to tell if the pills were bogus was to actually break them down in a lab and subject them to chemical analysis. This rarely happened.

Tundra RX got most of the pills it sold to the public, like every other drug reseller, from China. China was fast becoming the pill producer of choice for the world. It was because China was the world's cheapest location to manufacture pharmaceuticals. Testing, inspection, and regulation were lax, and corruption was rampant. It was a heady and dangerous environment. Tundra RX ordered a significant amount of its pills from Lucky Pharmaceutical, which of course was China-based.

Carol reviewed the report online from Biotest on a clandestine sample of fifteen pills that she had sent the company last week. She told nobody about the testing. The compounds were all listed in a detailed PDF attachment. She went straight to the summary page and focused her eyes on the results. There in black and white on her screen was a set of testing results that showed that the pills she had sent were all adulterated and a lot contained virtually none of the chemical ingredients they were supposed to. Nothing! She couldn't believe it. They were basically fakes. Placebos.

Carol's heart quickened as she read through all the pages and the listing of the compounds that were present. Most of the pills were composed of either filler or drug compounds that had nothing to do with the medicine in question. She started to panic as she thought about what this meant. It was one of two things. One was that Tundra RX was paying for real drugs and getting ripped off from Lucky. The other was that people at Tundra RX were part of the scam. That would be Bill Callahan and Rakesh Gupta, buying pills from a shadowy Chinese manufacturer, and selling them to an unsuspecting public. She didn't know what to think, but she knew that she had to get to the bottom of it all. And soon.

Carol was scared as well. She needed her job, and the thought of being swept up into a pill-selling scandal was overwhelming. The ramifications would be huge. Julie Sontag was her closest friend in the shop. She decided to go to her tomorrow and tell her what she found. Julie had a level head, and would know what approach to take. This was too much for her to tackle alone, particularly if the company was in on the scam. She closed the e-mail and saved it into her personal file on a separate drive in her computer. Then she composed an e-mail to Julie.

"Julie, you free for lunch tomorrow? I want to go over the testing protocols that we discussed last week. What works for you? Carol." She sent the e-mail off to Julie. Julie was a compulsive workaholic, and Carol knew she'd see it on her BlackBerry that night.

Sure enough, Julie responded before Carol had even left the office for the night. Julie set up an Outlook appointment for the next day. The topic was a bland Marketing Catch-Up. Carol accepted the meeting planner, and took a deep sigh and relaxed a bit. Julie was cool-headed and efficient. She would know what to do. The two of them would figure this out.

She packed up and headed out the door. She had to go home and deal with her autistic son, Seth, along with her daughter for an hour now. At least she could have a glass of wine or two to take the edge off and relax. She hoped that the leftover pizza from the weekend was still in the refrigerator, and that the nanny hadn't eaten it. She left the office at 8:15 pm.

* * * * *

### Test One

The package arrived at Mike Smith's condo the next day. It had all the usual FedEx labeling and bar coding to whisk it through seven checkpoints and 2700 miles. But that was it. Inside the box were no blaring marks from Tundra RX on the side of the plain brown package. It was discreet. Nobody was the wiser.

He picked up the package from his front porch when he returned home from work. He went upstairs, opened it on the kitchen table, and quickly examined the contents. Inside, there was a virtual mountain of advertising and marketing material from Tundra RX announcing all sorts of diet supplements and vitamins. He ignored it all and went straight to the bubble pack. With the help of a razor blade from his kitchen drawer, he was finally able to get at the hidden treasure—two foil sheets of ten pills each of 100 milligrams of Erecta. This was the real deal. The small green pills dazzled in the kitchen light in their individual bubble casings. Mike picked up the wall phone from its cradle and dialed. He didn't waste any time.

"Susan? It's Mike. How about we go away this weekend to Yarmouth to that little inn I told you I found?"

"I have a yoga class on Saturday," Susan said reflexively, testing him. She didn't want to be seen as someone who had a lot of availability yet.

"Can you skip it for once? This weekend could be fun." Mike frowned as he spoke. He realized that she may already have plans in place.

"Maybe. Going down the Cape might be cool. And I can probably get credit for the yoga class." Susan paused for timing. "You think you won't be bored with me all weekend? I can be pretty demanding over the course of two days.

"The room we're getting has a canopy bed and a fireplace. It's supposed to be incredibly romantic. I think you'll like it," Mike said. "And I know a great restaurant in Provincetown that we can go to on Saturday night. You in? I promise you won't be bored."

"We'll see. You'll have to entertain me. But yeah, I'm interested. I love the Cape in the winter."

"Me too."

#

So away they went that weekend. The travel down to the Yarmouth Cove Inn was easy in the off-season. They flew down Friday night in Susan's BMW 3 Series with the black leather interior. Mike never had access to a vehicle like that as his previous life was filled with Crown Vic police cruisers or Ford family cars. He was driving a Focus right now that he bought used at a state police auction last year for cheap money. He tried to keep it clean, though. Driving the BMW was like foreplay for him, as he loved cars. He kept it pegged at seventy miles per hour all the way down from Boston to the Cape.

They had dinner around eight pm in a cozy little restaurant on Main Street called Meridian. The restaurant seated sixteen, and had little candles on each table, giving everything a warm and festive glow. Susan had found it on the Web under the best of Zagat's on the Cape. Just before the bottle of wine came with the quahog appetizers, Mike excused himself to go to the men's room.

In the john, he pulled out the foil sheet of Erecta pills, popped one out and into his mouth. He put his hand under the tap and washed the tiny green pill down with a mouthful of Yarmouth tap water. He then proceeded to take a pee while reading the text on the back of the pill sheet. He saw the warning not to drink alcohol when using Erecta, but he quickly dismissed it as bullshit. What were they thinking about, he wondered, as he headed back to table. How could you get in position to use the damn pills without several drinks to get in the mood? Fucking eggheads, he thought, as he sat down.

"So where do you see us going?" Susan said as she sipped some wine and looked over at Mike. "I like you but I'm not sure there's any future with a cop. You're never around." She was straightforward and challenging. Mike liked that about her. There were no pretensions when she spoke.

"There might be. We're just getting to know one another. I might surprise you," he said.

"You already do surprise me. I'm surprised that we're together at this little inn. I never do this kind of thing unless I know someone real well. This is very unusual for me. There's no place to escape here." She smiled and looked over at Mike for a response.

"I don't usually do this either. In fact, I'm surprised that I even asked you to come. The potential for me screwing up is huge. But I figured I'd give it a shot, so here we are. I'm nervous, to tell you the truth."

"I think it'll be fine. Let's give it a chance," Susan said. "Anyway, you've already got me down here for the weekend, so consider it a victory."

As they talked, the Erecta tablet was absorbed into Mike's system, working its magic. He washed it down with a bottle of Pinot Grigio and later, after-dinner drinks. Susan was warm and animated as they shared the intimacy of the evening.

When they got back to the hotel room, the first order of business was to get the gas fireplace turned on and set to low. With two clicks of the remote control, Mike watched it jump to life and cast a warm glow in the room.

Before either of them knew what was happening, their clothes lay in a heap on the floor. And Mike Smith suddenly had magical powers. He satisfied Susan the first time under the big canopy bed. Thirty minutes later, even after the wine and cognac, he was ready to go again.

"Honey, what's up with this? This isn't like you," she said. "You're usually sleeping after we make love once."

"I'm into it. Maybe it's this place, I don't know."

As he spoke, Susan moved her hand and rubbed him under the covers. The Erecta was working its wonders. He had never been this hard for such a prolonged period, ever.

"Baby, that's nice," Susan said. "You're interested again."

"Cape Cod charm," Mike said as he got closer to Susan. "Never underestimate the romance of the sea."

Susan had a quick orgasm before Mike finally came, and the two of them collapsed, in exhaustion, on the bed. They drifted off to sleep by the glow of the fire and didn't wake up until nine am on Saturday morning.

#

They had breakfast at the inn, with blueberry pancakes, mimosas, and coffee in the small dining room.

"Honey what is up with you?" Susan said as she gently rubbed Mike's hand while they drank their coffee together. "Last night was not you. Are you on something, like speed or some stimulant?"

"Yeah. I know. I was a little different last night," Mike said as he tucked into his eggs and pancakes. "I ended up getting some Erecta at a Canadian pill company."

"You're kidding!" Susan said. "Are you serious?" She burst out laughing.

"Nope. I can't keep up with you most nights when we make love, otherwise. You're too much for me. I'm fifty years old, on the downside. I'm slowing down."

"No you're not! You're in your prime," she said. "Don't start taking Erecta just for me. We don't need it. But I will admit that the pills do seem to work. You had more energy and interest than I've ever seen before."

"Yeah, it felt like I could go on for hours with that stuff last night. And I feel great today, no drug hangover or anything."

"Well, let's experiment then. Let's try the Erecta some more and see how it works. If it's like last night, I vote to keep the pills in the rotation once in a while, to spice things up." Susan smiled as she spoke and looked into Mike's eyes. "Hey, at least it keeps it interesting."

They finished breakfast and went to the room to freshen up. Then they headed out for a day of antique stores and shopping. Mike hated that shit, but put up with it for the blossoming romance with Susan. He learned too late with Carole, his ex-wife, that he needed to compromise once in a while for the good of the relationship. He was never too good at compromise. He'd try to watch some football in the late afternoon he decided, to even things out. They got back to the room around four pm to relax with some wine and cheese. Instead of football on the flat-screen though, things headed in another direction.

"Ohh, shit. That feels good!" Susan moaned as they rolled over on the bed. He had an erection the size of a rock.

Mike had taken another Erecta at lunch time without telling Susan.

"Baby, this is crazy!" Susan said. "Shit, give me what you've got!"

And give it to her, he did. For the next twenty minutes, nonstop. Great sex, compliments of Tundra RX.

In the end, the company created another very satisfied customer in Mike Smith in the course of just one weekend.

* * * * *

### Price Trolling

Callahan and Julie Sontag were sitting in a conference room on a cold morning in January, deeply involved in the task of pricing the Tundra RX product line. The conference room was an interior one, off of one of the labyrinthine corridors near accounting. It had a fifty-inch plasma screen at one end. Julie had it turned on and hooked up to her powder-blue iMac laptop that was connected to the Web.

Callahan took a sip of his venti Starbucks coffee, with cream and three sugars. He watched Julie work the keyboard. He noticed that she was incredibly efficient in navigating through different sites. She was intent on scrolling through the layers of the Web site she now had up on the screen, The Canadian Pill Palace.

"These guys are our biggest competition," Callahan sighed as he shook his head. "They are one big fucking pain in the ass. I can't stand them. Can't we start a scandal about them or something?" He was half-serious.

"You're right, they are our biggest competition. Look at their Web site. It's not half as good as ours in a lot of places either."

"It looks like the navigation is shitty."

"It is. It's hard to scroll down pages. You can get lost easily. And their shopping cart features are pretty bad, too."

"Their drug babes look good, though," Callahan said as he crossed his legs and sipped his coffee. He was looking for a reaction out of Julie.

"They're nowhere near as attractive as our models," she said quickly, in response.

She clicked through a variety of front-end screens, and the two of them looked at the pictures of the models selling the drugs. "Bill, if you think these women are attractive on this site, you've been up here in the Great White North for too long. They're nowhere near as good looking as the Tundra RX women."

"Yeah," Callahan conceded, "I guess you're right. These girls are not Grade A drug babes. Not good enough for our site anyway."

"Your taste has always been suspect. Or so I've heard through the grapevine," Julie said, and smiled.

"Go back to the prices and focus. That's why we're here," Callahan said.

Julie quickly moved to the pricing page for the Canadian Pill Palace. It popped up on the screen.

"Wow! Look at these prices. Shit. No wonder why they're competitive," Callahan said.

"They have us beat in a lot of categories," Julie said. "Look at the 50-milligram tabs for propranolol. They're selling for twenty-two US cents per pill. That's rock bottom."

"Look at the damn Prostata," Callahan said. "Shit, it's at ninety-five cents a pill. We can't do that."

"Of course we can. We just have to do it carefully," Julie responded. "We'll run a special on Prostata, and promote it. We'll beat Pill Palace's price for every pill-strength of Prostata during the special. But we'll limit the special to seventy-two hours. Maybe one week. Then we'll jump right back to regular pricing after that."

"Will that work? Will we retain any customers?" Callahan asked.

"Absolutely. It lets us go toe-to-toe with them on pricing in ads on the Web, and that's our real battleground. We just need to be able to advertise as though we're the lowest," Julie said. "And we are for that brief period of time."

"But that's just bullshit when it's all said and done. The average customer is just going to scroll down the screen and check prices against what he's paying now. He'll make his decision just like that. Bam! Either we're lower than the competition and they buy from us, or not."

"Bill, our Web sales experience has a little more subtlety than that and is also more successful. The customer sales decision is influenced by a lot of factors. Price is certainly a major one, but not the only one. C'mon, give us a little more credit."

"I don't think so Julie. These are serious price shoppers from Sheboygan, Michigan and Madison, Wisconsin. They're sick. They need to get their meds as cheaply as possible. Otherwise, they're eating cat food. Shit, they're probably eating cat food anyway. They're using the workstations in the recreation room at the housing project to go to our site because they're too poor to own their own computer. These people shop on price alone. Make books on it." Callahan was drinking his coffee and talking. "We have to assume the worst here."

"Okay. I agree that there is one segment of customer that shops on price alone. But not everybody. So, how much do you want us to drop our pricing on the mainline blockbusters?" Julie asked as she stopped navigating with the mouse and looked over at Bill. The room was quiet save for the low hum of the vent fan at the back of the laptop.

"That's the million-dollar question," Callahan said as he paused and looked back at Julie. He rocked his empty cardboard Starbucks cup back and forth, and lightly tapped it on the table. He thought before he spoke. "What do you think? We have to be careful and not be too commoditized."

"I think we have to be five to seven percent cheaper than our competition to drive consumers to a transaction on our site," Julie said. "Otherwise, the pain to switch to us is not worth it for most consumers."

She knew the conversion figures for new customers cold. How many clicks it took them to buy a Tundra RX product. How many different pages they scrolled through, where they went, before making a purchase. The Tundra RX tracking software gave them a gold mine of detail on every customer.

"That sounds too low," Callahan said as he pursed his lips in thought. "I think that for our top four to five drugs we need to be ten to fifteen percent below where everybody else is. Not for everything, just the headliners. We need people to be able to immediately recognize that we're lower in the blockbuster categories."

"Okay, we can do that," Julie said. "That's a loss-leader strategy. Then we'll draw all the price buyers to our site. That's the lowest common denominator."

"Yeah, but that's okay. We want those guys because once we get them, we've got 'em. They'll come along with legitimate prescriptions and Medicaid authorizations. Then it's like electronic checking. It's too difficult to switch."

Julie smiled and looked at her boss. "It's a great strategy, and a time-tested one. But I hope you don't expect to start raising prices on the drugs they buy once they're customers. Those people are portable."

"No. We need to keep them price satisfied and we have to stay competitive. We need a big, loyal customer base that's the bulk of our routine business. Then we work the high profit segments in around them," Callahan said.

"That'll work. But we have to be careful there too." Julie was back to working the mouse and showing Callahan different competitors' Web sites as they talked. They now were on the Pill Price Chopper site.

"We can't oversell price so much that we spook the higher margin buyers who are looking for top of the line drugs," Julie said. "They're willing to pay more for the wonder drugs."

"Hell no. I'm not talking about that. We need to keep the moneymakers, the high profit margin pills, at the top of the food chain."

Julie made a soft sigh under her breath. She knew the pricing side of the business cold. She flushed. "Look, I go to every one of our competitors sites daily. Cynthia and I search about thirty sites every week. We check for site content, design, and pricing. Nobody is better than us at understanding what the competition is doing, and how to drive customers to our site. We use a mix of presentation, pricing, and sex."

"Are you updating the Google search words for Tundra RX?" Callahan asked.

"I get reports from Google daily on click-throughs and conversions. We adjust our key search words once or twice a week," Julie said confidently. This was her specialty area, dealing with Google and tweaking the search experience. "But I think we need to do an SEO study, though, to be certain we're okay here."

"SEO?" Callahan asked.

"Search engine optimization. It's a fancy way of saying that we need to optimize the way we come up in customer word searches for pills on the Internet. It's a big sophisticated area. We haven't scratched the surface here yet."

"Good. We should do some analysis. We pay Google a ton of money every month, and I hope to hell it's worth it. We need to build our customer base more. We're not there yet," Callahan said. "Can you set up a pricing meeting with you, me, and Rakesh going forward for Friday afternoons so that we can review the competition and set prices for the next week? We need to keep kicking ass, and it'll be a good way to review our competition and react accordingly."

"No problem," Julie said.

"Great. It'll be a good way to stay sharp."

And with that the meeting ended. Callahan got up and walked out of the room. He continually focused Julie Sontag and her staff on price and the Tundra RX Internet experience. He needed to, if Tundra RX was going to maintain dominance in the electronic marketplace. If they weren't the best on pricing for the mainline drugs like Erecta and Tenata, they wouldn't dominate. If they didn't dominate, they'd be a dead dinosaur in no time. Pricing and the Internet continued to be the mainstays of the market. They had to keep pushing it.

* * * * *

### Another Customer

Lyle Cullen was down on his luck, trolling the Internet in his faded yellow house in Athens, Georgia. He was forty-eight, and hadn't worked for over two years. He was sitting in his living room on a cheap metal fold-up chair at a big, brown, mahogany veneer desk off in the corner. The desk was old and scratched. It had a square well for his legs to fit in that was much too small. He was always uncomfortable at the desk, and it became unbearable after about an hour's worth of sitting there with his computer.

He had an ancient desktop with a fifteen-inch Dell monitor attached to it. The monitor was the old CRT tube variety, big and bulky. His right hand moved the mouse over a miniature Oriental rug-themed mouse pad, complete with fringe, in reds and blues. He splurged and bought it last year at a computer fair he went to in Atlanta. It had cost $4.00 and was a nice touch in his otherwise drab home office setup.

Lyle Cullen's health had fallen apart about five years ago. He never recovered. First, it was high cholesterol. Then, high blood pressure. Each diagnosis had set him back a bit. But he fought it gamely for a long while. He took his prescription statins and beta blockers regularly, and a combination of the drugs, diet, and a little exercise made him a new-age man.

Then he had the heart attack three years ago and suddenly all bets were off. It was a mild one as these things go, and he thought he'd bounce back in no time. They gave him a barrage of testing afterwards, and sure enough, they found four big blockages in his coronary arteries during the angiogram. That immediately qualified him for quadruple bypass surgery. He didn't even have the time to ask two questions before they put him up on the table that very day, and applied the anesthesia. He woke up thirty-six hours later in intensive care, with a scar like a zipper from the top of his chest to his stomach.

It took him two years to recover to the point where he was now. He still had a little residual "pump head" from the surgery and that made him sometimes forgetful and a little inarticulate. He had read that this was the after-effect of the heart and lung machine that they used during surgery, but the doctors never told him about that risk before the operation. He'd like to sue the bastards, if he could only remember the details of the whole hospitalization thing. It all got fuzzy.

Not too much later, Lyle was forced to give up his job as a benefits consultant at Toyota, because he didn't have the stamina or focus to do the work. That was a problem for Lyle, because he was one of the millions of baby boomers who actually needed money to make it from month-to-month. He wasn't one of the people who saved regularly and had a brimming 401(k) account. He was just the opposite. He waited anxiously for the monthly Toyota check of $3,125.42 to hit his checking account so that he could survive for thirty days and live his simple life.

When the checks stopped coming and the doctor bills continued to mount, that's when the shit really hit the fan. His wife of twenty-seven years, Betty, was a valiant partner. She worked at the local library. But the situation started unraveling as Lyle's health care woes continued to mount. She cooked the heart-healthy meals religiously and helped him do the oceans of medical forms and bills, and understand the Explanation of Benefits paperwork that seemed to always be coming in the mail. But she needed to unburden herself eventually, as the stress of it all soon bled over into her personal life as well.

So unburden she did, with the local journalism professor from the junior college whom she met at the library one day. A few support meetings at the local Starbucks soon led to a few candlelit dinners with bottles of wine at Ciro's Italian restaurant down the street from the library.

From there it was just a few zipper pulls away to a ton of filthy sex in the back of the professor's Volvo in the library parking lot. Soon enough, she packed up her things and moved in with him and out of her long-term prison sentence with Lyle.

Lyle, to his credit, saw it coming. It didn't make it any easier, but he was as at least prepared mentally for the worst. And worse it got. As soon as Betty left, all of Lyle's good health habits vanished. He went back to eating chips on the couch and take-out cheese pizzas. He always had an empty pizza box sitting around the kitchen filled with week old crusts and food detritus.

He was a fucking wreck. When the good food stopped, so did the exercise. Lyle flat gave up. He spent most of his time watching reality TV or Sports Center on the tube, or surfing the Internet. He loved the Internet because of the great access to porn. He could pull all the junk up freely, now that Betty wasn't around anymore and he no longer had to clear his browser and hide his tracks. So life became easier and possibly better, in some small ways.

So there he was that morning in December, moving his mouse across the little Oriental rug mouse pad, and navigating around the Tundra RX Web site. He had found the site after he googled "cheap Canadian prescription drugs." Lo and behold, Tundra RX was the first Web site to pop up under his search criteria. It was testament to the great work that Julie Sontag was doing up in Edmonton in the search engine optimization area.

He searched for Tenata. He took 150 milligrams a day to keep his cholesterol down. His system, like most aging males, was producing cholesterol like a motherfucker after the myocardial infarction and he had to beat it down with the meds. He also knew that if he was going to stay with the pizzas he had to keep taking the Tenata and the five other medications that he took daily to complement it. He was a wreck, with the shakes, the memory loss, and constant tiredness. He sometimes wondered why he kept soldiering on. He frowned and knew that there was no alternative.

He was on the Tenata page and gazed at the ten different pills that were in brilliant color before him. He loved looking at all the pills on the screen. Each one looked like a form of goodness and by ingesting it, would make his health better in some small way. He convinced himself that the pills were an antidote to all the bad shit that he was doing to his body, day in and out.

The Tundra RX Web site knew Lyle Cullen well. He had been a purchaser five times over the last eighteen months. It tracked and knew every item that he purchased and frequently took him to "If you liked this medicine, you should also consider . . ." screens with up sells, as the company called them. These were profitable diversions for Tundra RX, as they would bring the customer over to a drug that was a generic but was branded with a Tundra RX house logo. Things like vitamins, energy supplements, amino acid enhancers, all the other things the company could wrap into the basic buy decision.

The screen prompted him when his cursor moved onto the color image of the 150-milligram Tenata pill in pale blue. It asked if he would like to reorder the same amount of the pills as he had most recently purchased. He clicked "Yes," and the program added it to his cart. Lyle then cruised the site for a few other items, and finally went to checkout, putting $63.25 on his Visa card and opting for two day express delivery.

Depending on the products purchased, the Tundra RX Web site had a nifty little icon that showed a pill bottle being magically filled with bright red and green pills. It was about an inch big, next to the "Continue" button, and it usually mesmerized the buyers as they made the decision to purchase and the system authenticated the credit card. The company had run blind tests on this feature, and it found that fifty-three percent more of the site visitors actually closed a transaction and bought pills when this little gizmo was running. It was eye candy in the trade, and Julie Sontag had developed it. After he clicked on the "Complete This Sale" button, the Web site automatically fired off an e-mail confirmation to his personal e-mail account.

At the same time, his order was electronically sent to the warehouse in Edmonton. There, a fulfillment clerk read it from a handheld device and walked down the aisle to the statin section and began putting the items that Lyle Cullen ordered into a small plastic bin. The ordered was picked and finished in about seven minutes. Packed and labeled, it was off to Athens, Georgia in less than two hours after it had come into the warehouse. The system worked flawlessly.

#

The brown paper package came via UPS in the morning to Athens, Georgia, exactly two days after Lyle Cullen's finger hit the "Complete This Sale" button. The package landed on the porch with a thud, and sat there until Lyle came out to claim it an hour later. He was in his sleepwear—gym shorts, white socks, and an Atlanta Braves T-shirt that he purchased last year when he went to a game. He shook his head as he picked up the package, wondering how he had let himself get to this point.

"About frigging time," Lyle said out loud as he ripped open the box and the layers of wrapping, and finally got to the orange plastic pill containers inside. There were no less than seven color inserts that Tundra RX included in his package. There were two brochures on the medicine itself. These were 4x6 flyers with ultra-small print that had banners that said "Drug Interaction Information" and "Read This First.". This was the legally approved drug information that Tundra RX included with every order.

Then it tailored the next four to five inserts to whatever drugs the customer bought. It ranged from more vitamin supplements, to enhancement products, to meds that had no relationship whatsoever to what Lyle ordered but were in the high-profit margin category for the company. There was also always an erectile enhancement drug flyer, usually for Erecta, that was added if the customer was male.

Tundra RX had a good success rate with these add-ins. Happy customers were usually big-impulse purchasers. Julie Sontag called it "saturation bombing," and her staff was an expert in developing the collateral marketing material and inserts for the package shipments. They tracked it, like everything they did: rigorously. They had a software program that catalogued additional sales by existing customers within one week of an online purchase. In twenty-eight of the cases, existing customers came back online and bought more products, usually one of the supplements that was flyered in the shipping package.

Lyle's new girlfriend, Sheila Bridges, sat at the kitchen table, reading in her bathrobe as she drank a cup of coffee. The two of them had just made love on the living room couch, Lyle taking her doggie style as she held on to the red throw pillows with the fringe.

"About damn time. My meds finally came," Lyle said as he examined the package. Lyle was handsome in a Georgia redneck trucker way with chiseled features, a square jaw and short, clipped hair. "I haven't taken my Tenata in three weeks because I couldn't get my drug benefit card from the state. Do you know that I was on the phone for an hour two weeks ago with this asshole until I finally got all this bullshit straightened out? Don't get sick in Georgia, I'll tell you that," he said.

"Take your pills, sweetheart," Sheila said, "so you'll stick around for a while. I need to get laid regularly and for you to be healthy enough to support me in my old age," she said as she smiled.

Sheila herself was forty-five years old, and recently divorced. Lyle had met her at the local Episcopal Church at a Sunday night potluck dinner. He usually cruised it once a month for women to date. He had gotten lucky there twice. He and Sheila went home that first night, talked about Jesus and religion over a bottle of white wine, watched the Sopranos, then screwed right there on the living room floor.

"I know. I've got to start taking this stuff regularly now," Lyle said. "I keep forgettin' whether it's my HDL or LDL, but my bad cholesterol was over two hundred last week when I got it checked at the cardiologist. That's scary high."

"Shit honey, that's not going to work," Sheila said looking up. "You've got to fix that."

Lyle opened the bottle, shook two of the shiny green pills out onto his palm, popped them in his mouth, and washed them down with the remnants of the cold coffee in his cup. The pills slid down effortlessly. Lyle burped and then went back to reading the sports page in the Tribune.

#

Fifteen hundred miles and seven states away, Mike Smith was on his cell phone driving home from Logan Airport to his condo in South Boston. It was a sunny day in Boston, and he was in his freshly washed state police cruiser. He was in the left hand lane, traveling at seventy-five miles an hour, foot hovering over the brake, while watching the traffic in front of him magically move to the right as his cruiser pulled up behind each car on the three lane roadway. He was always amazed at how frightened people were of the state police. Everybody except Susan Jefferson, that was.

"Hey honey, how about dinner and a movie this weekend?" Mike said as he cradled the cell phone on his shoulder and put a piece of Freshen gum in his mouth.

"It's a possibility. What do you want to see?" Susan asked. "Do you even have Friday night off? You usually never have weekends off." Susan was working on her laptop in the airport in Detroit. She had just finished a sales pitch with GM.

"I did an extra Tuesday and Wednesday shift for a trooper who had to do a hockey tournament with his kid. I'm yours for the whole weekend," Mike said.

"Great. We'll do something then. Call me tomorrow when I'm back in Boston. We'll have some fun."

Susan closed her cell phone and sat back in her chair at the airport bar. She sipped her drink and thought about why she was attracted to this state cop. It wasn't just the uniform. She thought that she really liked this guy.

* * * * *

### Houston, We Have A Problem

The sex had been spectacular with Mike since he started taking Erecta over two months ago, Susan Jefferson mused as she sat on her couch back in Scituate. She had dated a lot of men in her day and had great relationships with probably three of them. One, in particular, stood out as the most intense physical relationship she ever had. It was the sex standard against which all her other lovers were measured. His name was, appropriately, Randy.

She had met this rodeo cowboy once when she travelled to Utah for a sale five years ago. They had dated for about eighteen months long distance, usually hooking up at various places on the rodeo circuit where Randy was competing. He was a professional bull rider. That made Susan Jefferson an amateur rider of bull riders. She was an amateur, but an enthusiastic and experienced one by the time Randy got through with her.

Susan and Randy would meet in small, dusty rodeo venues from Arkansas to Oklahoma. One week, they had a big town treat as the rodeo rolled into Austin, and Susan flew out there for the whole week. They had sex in a horse trailer on a bale of hay one afternoon, and in the back of his friend Bill's Ford King Cab the next night. They'd wash it all down with countless Mexican beers and plates of steak fajitas.

It was against this backdrop that Mike Smith was being compared. Mike was quickly rising up the ranks as he was becoming Susan's more current cowboy. He had the uniform, the gun, the badge, and the hot police car. He also had a good body for a fifty year-old that he kept in good shape. Now with the Erecta, he was also able to perform like the twenty-five year-olds. At least, for a short burst of time.

Friday night came soon enough. "Hon, let's go tomorrow morning. I want to stay here tonight," Susan said. "I'm tired. I had a full week." Mike picked her up and they went out to dinner at a local fish restaurant in Scituate.

"Fine with me, sweetheart," Mike said. He'd just as soon stay on the South Shore for the night anyway, and head down the Cape in the morning with a clear head and a fresh cup of coffee. He had taken his Erecta about two hours ago, so he thought he was ready. The only problem was that he was feeling tired too, more tired than usual. He decided that it was just the stress of the work week. He knew he could fight it off and rise to the occasion, though. He always did.

"Yeah, let's just have dinner and I'll pack quick in the morning," Susan said as they headed to the restaurant.

Mike knew that staying at Susan's condo was also a codeword for lovemaking later that night. She didn't like going to inns and guesthouses that had thin walls and close quarters. It was always too obvious what people were doing inside their rooms—either arguing, or having sex. But in her own home, she was comfortable and relaxed, and that translated into fewer inhibitions.

Dinner went off without a hitch. They finished with zabaglione and raspberries and two glasses of port. Mike couldn't shake his tiredness, though, and was a little surprised as they only had one cocktail apiece, and then split a bottle of California merlot with dinner. It was their standard alcohol mix. Still, his head felt woozy and heavy. The port compounded his tiredness.

Back at the apartment, they settled down for some romance on the couch. Susan poured two more glasses of wine. She turned the lights down low, and had George Benson's greatest hits on the Bose system. She had the mood set. She was dressed in a white sweater with a deep V neckline, jeans and black pumps. She knew that Mike had taken the Erecta earlier in the evening—she didn't even have to ask.

"Hon, I've got a special treat for you." Susan said. She had got a Brazilian wax job earlier that day for the weekend.

The trouble was, Mike had never felt this tired in his life. It was almost like he was fighting to stay awake. "What the fuck!" he thought. He couldn't understand it. He was drifting into unconsciousness at the end of a long tunnel, almost passing out. He felt like he got hit by a tractor trailer. Here was Susan in her heels and jeans, ready to make love and he was fighting off a wave of tiredness that he'd never had before. He was determined to keep fighting, though.

"Sweetheart, let's see how interested you really are tonight," Susan said, as she began rubbing her hand over Mike's crotch. He reached out and felt her breasts over the top of her tight sweater.

Mike was able to get a weak erection but something was happening, something that was nothing like the times that he had taken the Erecta before. Every other time, he had been like a Russian bull, large and ready for action. Tonight, he was almost ready to pass out. He had taken the Erecta two hours earlier, just like every other time. But tonight was weird. Susan was hot, rubbing his crotch, and he was exhausted. He was ready to fall asleep and he couldn't make sense of it. Something was wrong, very wrong.

Mike began to finally get aroused and Susan pushed her hair back and smiled.

"That's right, baby. You're in for a treat. I've got something special for you tonight." Mike was rubbing her breasts now and trying desperately to get into the flow. But he still felt like going to sleep. What was going on? He started to panic. Only he was too tired to sense the impending disaster.

Susan was ready. She kissed him and at the same time, used her right hand to undo his front button and unzip his pants. She quickly maneuvered her hand inside his boxers.

Mike was near catatonic at this point. He could barely stay awake. He felt like he'd been drugged. He tried desperately to stay aroused as he felt Susan massaging his pecker. He was trying to get that monster erection that he always had on the Erecta. But it just wasn't happening. Twice, his head bobbed down onto his chest as he fought off sleep. Twice.

"Are you all right baby?" Susan said as she noticed his head bob down again, and then snap back reflexively. "Aren't you into it tonight?"

'No, I'm fine. Really. I just need to have a drink and relax. Just give me a second," Mike said, as he reached for the small glass of sweet white wine. He took a sip and shook his head.

Susan knew what to do. She'd give him his treat now. That would be the spark that would get the fire roaring. "I'll be right back with something special for you. Get ready."

Susan got up off the couch and headed towards the bedroom to get ready.

Mike was fighting it, and losing. He didn't know what the hell was happening. He had never seen Susan so attractive, and she was all over him tonight. He was horny, too, but he was paralyzed to do anything about it. It was like an abyss that he was falling over. He held the glass of wine in his hand, and took a drink to stabilize himself. He tried to fight it. Finally he decided that he would just sit back and relax and wait for Susan to come back and then they'd have sex. It'd be fine.

Susan meanwhile quickly undressed to her Victoria's Secret Intimacy Collection red bra and thong. She was ready for a long night of lovemaking with Mike. She checked her Brazilian wax job, freshened up down there, put a few drops of Allure perfume on her neck, and headed back to the living room to Mike.

When she got back, she stopped short. "Mike! Are you all right sweetheart? What happened?!" There was Mike, lying back on the couch, head on the pillow, snoring softly, passed out. He was spread-eagled on the sofa with his pants unzipped and a wine glass in his hand. The glass had spilled over and there was a dark wet circle of spilled wine on Mike's crotch. The glass lay on his thigh, with his right hand still holding it. It was like Mike was drugged and had simply passed out. He looked pathetic.

Susan couldn't believe it. She sat down and rubbed Mike's shoulder. "Honey, are you all right? What's the matter sweetheart?" But she knew a passed-out man when she saw one. She looked at Mike sleeping on the sofa, and thought that they hadn't drunk any more alcohol than usual. And usually that made Mike more horny. But not tonight.

Oh shit, she thought, everybody is entitled to a bad night. She took the wine glass from his hand, found a blanket and draped it over Mike, and let him sleep on the couch, exactly as he was. Susan went back to her bedroom, got into her flannel pajamas, crawled under the covers and tried to relax. She wondered how this could have happened. A fleeting thought passed in her mind as she rolled over, that maybe Mike had some kind of bad reaction to the Erecta. He'd only been on it for two months, though. She had heard about strange things happening where guys had four-hour erections and stuff. God, four-hour erections! That must hurt like hell, she thought. But not falling asleep like this. It was like Mike took two sleeping pills—he was out cold. She couldn't make sense of it, as she started to relax and pulled up into the fetal position. She promised herself that she would check the Web for Erecta reactions and contraindications, like Mike obviously had to see if anything popped up tomorrow. Then she finally drifted off to sleep.

#

Mike sheepishly found his way into Susan's bedroom in the early morning around five a.m., dressed only in his socks. It was all he had that was dry. His pants were a damp mess from the white wine, and there was a huge wet area around the crotch. It looked like he was incontinent. He got under the covers quietly, and spooned into Susan's back as she stirred and started to wake up.

"Are you all right, hon?" Susan said, as she kept her head on the pillow facing away from Mike as they lay there.

"What the hell happened?" he asked. "One minute I was good to go, and the next minute, I'm passed out. I couldn't stop from going to sleep. It was incredible. It was like someone had put a knock-out drug in my drink."

"I don't know. I went to get undressed and I came back and you were out cold," Susan said. "I felt so bad, that I wasn't attractive or something."

"Are you kidding me? You were beautiful. It must have been something in that goddamn pill. The Erecta's never worked that way before, though. It's always been good."

"I don't know. It was scary the way you passed out. Like you were drugged, or something."

"That's just the way I felt."

"Well maybe you'll have to perform more on your own going forward," Susan said as she pushed her backside lightly into Mike with a little pressure, seeing what would happen now.

The Erecta tab had burned off and he was starting to get his own natural erection from being close to Susan. "You're not kidding. That was embarrassing," Mike said. He also had something to prove after last night's fiasco.

Susan, sensing a good morning makeup screw, reached back over her hip and started to touch Mike. "Let's see if you can make up for the sins of last night." She rolled over to face him. Mike, with his hardened, fifty year-old body knew Susan was giving him a chance to redeem himself and save the weekend. He didn't disappoint. This time, without the effects of the wine and the Erecta, Mike Smith was able to make love with Susan. He couldn't do it for two hours, but for twenty minutes he was a champion.

During the rest of the day, Mike still couldn't figure out what had made him pass out the night before. It was really strange. He finally chalked it up to a bad night, and nothing more. Even pro athletes had them from time to time, he knew. Shit happens. It was scary though.

* * * * *

### Strip Club

Dr. Rakesh Gupta was sitting in the first row of the strip club Rendezvous in Montreal, right at the stage with the lights down low, watching a girl dance in front of him on the pole. The techno music pumped out at a numbing level, vibrating the floor and making it nearly impossible to talk. The girl was blond, attractive, and young. Probably no more than twenty.

She had on nothing but red heels and a thong. She danced to the music and swung on the brass pole as she tried to get the runway patrons interested. She swept her hair back and finally came over to the doctor. She got in front of him and slowly squatted down while she continued to move her body to the beat. She was no more than six inches from Rakesh's face, so close that he could see the outer edge of her clean-shaven vagina as it poked out from the side of the tiny red Lycra thong. Defying gravity, she had her legs spread open in front of his rum and coke, and she looked directly down into his smiling face. He picked up a five-dollar bill, folded it, and with two fingers, easily put it inside the top of her tiny undergarment. She smiled, slowly got back up and then returned to the stage to complete her twenty-minute routine.

Rakesh was known around several of the bars in the Montreal red-light district as Dr. Feelgood. He frequented only the top clubs that had security and discretion, and also the best looking girls, which were usually Russian. He was addicted to a variety of things in life, and one of them was young Russian women.

Rakesh would fly over to Montreal for a weekend's stay several times a month. He had a small loft condo apartment that he paid a decorator to furnish. He usually would bring one or two of the girls back from the bar to stay there with him. They would sample his pharmaceuticals, have sex, and then go out for dinner and a night of club hopping with him.

The Russian girl came over to Rakesh after her routine was done, now dressed in a short black micro-dress with lacing at the top. She wore the laces open and loose so that the full curve of her breasts was visible. She took Rakesh's hand, and moved to a table that was over in a dark and quieter part of the club.

"Are we going out tonight, Rakesh?" she asked as she laughed and rubbed his thigh.

"Where do you want to go, my dear Sandra? I'm at your disposal." He smiled back at her with a boyish grin.

Sandra could see that Rakesh was already on the road to being drunk, and figured that he had probably popped a sedative or two before coming there.

"I was thinking we could go back to your apartment and I could show you what I learned in yoga class this week," she said. "You paid for it, you might as well get some benefit." She pulled her blond hair back behind one of her ears and looked directly at him. Sandra was a tall, svelte girl from Leningrad with a drop-dead gorgeous face. She had small boobs and long, smooth legs that made her about six feet tall. She was stunning. "Do you have any presents for me tonight, Rakesh?" she finally asked.

Rakesh took a sip from his drink and said, "I always bring presents for my favorite girls, Sandra. You'll just have to earn them, as usual. Show yourself worthy, and all that. You know I'm generous," he said, as he took another sip from his drink. It was his fourth one, so far.

Sandra's heart leapt, as she hoped that he had brought his usual full complement of narcotics that they would sample all weekend long. She didn't know where he worked or how he got access to the drugs, but they were killer. And all top quality stuff. He was amazing.

"You know I won't disappoint. I'll keep you happy," she said as she sipped her cosmopolitan.

"When are you off?" Rakesh asked.

"The usual. Ten o'clock. I traded my late shift when you called to say that you were in town."

"Good girl."

"I need to shower and freshen up, though, and get my overnight kit. I'll be at your place by midnight. Stay awake this time, for God's sake!" Sandra teased, as she picked up her cigarettes and turned to leave.

"I'll be home by then, waiting for you like a puppy like I always do, my love. I'm going to stay here for one more drink," Rakesh said, as he took his glass and stack of Canadian bills, and headed back toward the runway. Sandra laughed.

Later that night, he got back to his loft in the Plateau Mont Royal section of the city. This was the tony, hip, gentrified district. Most of the buildings in the immediate area were being quickly converted by young developers with square shoes and BlackBerries into open style, loft housing. Rakesh had bought a unit in a five-story industrial building two years ago when the project was just beginning, and got a good deal on the penthouse unit. He used his signing bonus from Tundra RX as the down payment. His monthly mortgage payment was very manageable. This was his weekend urban getaway, and he used it frequently. The doorbell rang discreetly.

"Yeah, come in sweetheart," Rakesh said, as he pressed the button that allowed Sandra, his dancer friend, to come into the building and have access to the elevator. Because he had the only unit on the top floor, the elevator doors opened directly into his unit. So he had his own personal elevator. It was a great amenity, and the girls who came over were always impressed.

He was dressed in a long, black terrycloth robe, with a gold chain and amulet around his neck. He had a hairy chest, as befitted his Pakistani heritage. He wore small black jockey shorts underneath, and he kept the robe pulled in tight. He had a small but noticeable paunch around his middle that was beginning to grow as he aged. Rakesh was thirty-seven years old and rarely exercised. He kept himself impeccably groomed, though, and had manicures and pedicures regularly. He kept his unruly jet-black hair cut moderately short and conservative. Rakesh found that it was easier to hide his compulsive personality this way—the conservative on the outside with the sybarite within.

Sandra came in the apartment and took off her three-quarter length sable fur jacket. She looked beautiful outside of the harsh glare of the strip club lights. She was dressed elegantly in a red pullover dress with high black heels. She didn't look like a hooker coming from a night club. She looked more like a diplomat's wife. Her hair was done nicely in a French braid, and she wore expensive perfume, very sparingly. She had a large cotton-patterned bag over her shoulder with her casual clothes and travel things inside. She was ready to camp out with Rakesh for the weekend.

He came over and took her coat and bag. He put them to the side on the antique high-back chair in the hall. They immediately embraced and began kissing. Rakesh drank in Sandra's perfume and soft body. They held each other close, and Rakesh soon started to get an erection.

Sandra felt Rakesh hardening, and quickly broke away to get a drink. It was too soon for sex. She could see that Rakesh was slightly wobbly already, and had clearly started drinking and taking drugs in the early afternoon. She had some catching up to do and she wanted to keep him going for a while, at least until he offered her some good drugs.

"Cosmopolitans, my dear? They're on the counter," Rakesh said as he moved to the kitchen. He had made a full pitcher of the sweet drink for them just a few minutes before.

Sandra poured a drink, tasted it, and then went over to the couch to sit. She spoke to Rakesh across the room as she sipped the sweet liquor. "What have you got for me tonight, love, in your little bag of tricks?" On the coffee table in front of her was Rakesh's small leather pouch full of various pills.

"Take a look for yourself, sweetheart. Then come over here," he said. Rakesh was arranging two long lines of cocaine on the dark granite kitchen countertop. He moved it with the precise hand of the medical doctor that he was. He then began to tightly roll a Canadian five-dollar bill into a makeshift straw as he admired his work.

Sandra, in the meantime, was looking through all the pills that Gupta had on the table. There were over twenty different kinds of uppers and downers, sedatives and pain killers. He even had ten tabs of Oxy-Tectin on the counter. That stuff was potent, and very hard to get. She decided to start slowly, and took one Perdistan. She washed it down with the cold, sweet taste of the cosmopolitan in the long-stemmed glass. She knew that the weekend was going to be another wild ride with Rakesh.

"Where did you go to medical school, again?" Sandra asked Rakesh as she moved over into the kitchen where he was working. She was getting in the mood now, and came over behind him and put an arm around his waist. She started to move her hips into Rakesh's backside to get him interested.

"McGill. I told you before," he said.

"How do you get all this awesome stuff? From where you work? Don't they ask questions?" Sandra asked.

"I work for a pharmaceutical company and they have no problem with me testing some samples of the products before we sell them to the general public." Rakesh turned and winked as he spoke.

"You're full of shit."

"Yeah, you're right," he answered.

They were both at the speckled granite countertop in the loft's kitchen. There was an unopened new bottle of red wine with two glasses nearby. Rakesh admired his handiwork for a moment, and then bent his head down and snorted one of the perfect lines of cocaine, half with each nostril. His eyes glazed over as he sniffed and handed the rolled bill to her. Sandra's eyes widened when she looked and saw the size of the cocaine line, but she was excited at the prospect of the rush. She put her head down and ran the straw all along the white line, sucking the powder up into her nostrils with a well-practiced motion.

She stepped back on her heels and stabilized herself. She took two sips of her cosmopolitan, and looked around the room.

"Wow. Good stuff, Rakesh. I hope you're ready for some fun." She moved over into the living room. Rakesh was over on the couch now, sitting on the leather sofa, distracted by the remote control, trying to put the hockey game on the big flat-screen on mute. He was having trouble with the clicker.

Sandra came over to the couch. "Here maybe I can help," she said. She stood in front of him, then reached behind her back, and unzipped her dress in one smooth motion. She pulled it up and over her head, and let it land on one of the side chairs next to the couch. She was dressed in a matching pair of black bikini bottoms and a lace push-up bra. She left her heels on as she moved in close, directly in front of Rakesh. She leaned down on top of him. With one hand on the top of the couch for balance, she began kissing him and at the same time untying the belt on his terrycloth robe. She reached down and started to rub the growing bulge in his black boxer briefs.

Sandra knelt down on the floor in front of Rakesh and fondled him with one hand, and started to get him interested. As she moved her head into position, she smiled and remembered that it was just Friday night. The weekend fun was just beginning. Rakesh lay back, closed his eyes, and faintly groaned as he focused on the pleasure down below.

* * * * *

### Making the Cookies

Inside the production area in the offices of Lucky Pharmaceutical in Guangzhou, China, two men were meeting. It was the end of the day at the large complex. The parking lot was full with over a hundred cheap, late-model Chinese and Indian cars. Production at Lucky Pharmaceutical was booming, and the company now had two shifts working to fill the orders coming in from customers around the world.

The history of Lucky Pharmaceutical in China, like that of many worldwide drug plants, was due to an accidental coming together of market forces. Lucky was the first generation of productions facilities that were based on new and cheap construction design. In the old days, the drug plants were big, bulky facilities with large out-lots of piping and chemical tanks. Now, the buildings were cheap prefabricated structures. There was little need for large storage tanks, as the plant ordered most of its raw materials partially formulated from other chemical companies and no longer had the need for the support infrastructure.

The combination of cheap production technology and outsourcing produced substantial profit for Lucky. What also produced tremendous profit was illegally altering the composition of drugs that it was licensed to produce. This cut production costs even further. Lucky was very adept at manufacturing fake pills and then selling them at full price as the real thing to its customers. Fake pills, pure and simple, were the key to a lot of profit.

Zhu Wen, the sales manager, started the meeting. He was seated at the table with a man wearing a white coat, from production.

"Bill Callahan called me yesterday, from Tundra RX in Edmonton," he said quietly. ZhuWen was a small man who favored blue button-down Oxford cloth shirts. He had several pens in his pocket and a BlackBerry in a holster on his belt. He was a technologist, a modern-day Chinese manager.

"What did he want?" the chief chemist in the company, Ju Wong, asked. The men looked knowingly at each other.

"He picked up on the batch of Tenata that we sent him last month. He said that it didn't test out when he sampled it. He said that we had cut it down too much. That it sampled thirty-five percent neutral composition."

"I thought he ordered that," Ju said. He calmly looked back at Zhu Wen through thick glasses. Zhu thought he looked like a fish. "We can fix the formulation easy enough. He was the one that asked for the drug to be cut to that level," the chemist continued defensively.

"Not by that much, he didn't. We agreed with him to cut it by twenty-five percent, not thirty-five percent. At the higher level, the drug is barely effective. If we get a reputation with our clients for diluting our drugs too much, we'll be out of business quickly."

"But we discussed this," the chemist said to Zhu. "We don't expect our buyers to test every batch."

"That's true. This was just a case of bad luck for us. But it's easy for Tundra RX to test now. They have the same equipment that we do to check for quality. We've got to be more careful." Zhu Wen was angry. "If we get caught and lose them as a customer, that's almost ten percent of our revenue. We can't let that happen."

"I'll ramp the potency back up," Ju Wong said quickly. "It's not a problem."

"It's risky enough to dilute the pills from the real formulations when Tundra RX asks us to do it. But we can only dilute the pills so much or we're liable to get caught. Then, it's trouble for everyone."

"Yes, I know," Ju said trying to reassure. "I only do a diluted run every other production cycle. The fake pills are mixed with real strength pills in the warehouse. There are no markings that identify the batches of fake pills, other than the bar code reference. And only you and I know that."

"That's good enough for our other customers. They'll never know. But we can only dilute pills for Tundra RX as much as Bill Callahan wants. Nothing more. As it is, he's taken the dilution exercise to the limit himself."

"He's smart about what medicines he picks to dilute. He knows what he's doing."

"Fine. But if he suspects a double-cross, that we are taking advantage of him, we could lose the business," Zhu Wen said with a nod of his head to the chemist.

"I'll be more careful going forward," Ju said.

"Good. If he or Rakesh ask for more dilution, keep me informed. Don't make any more changes without my approval."

"Yes, Zhu. I understand."

"Good. Now back to work. We're still running behind in our order fulfillment. I'm thinking about a third shift in the factory."

"We may need it," Ju Wong said as he opened the door. The meeting ended, and the two men left the small room and headed back to the main drug production area.

#

Bill Callahan was stopped at a red light on a four-lane access road about two miles from the office. It was a gunmetal-gray day in February. He had stepped out of the office to do a few errands in the afternoon when things had quieted down.

He drove a late-model blue Ford Explorer. Like most cars in the Canadian north, it was caked over with road salt and dirt, and had a chalky-white winter covering. The only clean parts of the car were small semi-circular patterns on the front and rear windshields that were constantly being washed with blue solvent from the wipers.

Callahan picked up his BlackBerry off the passenger seat and was thumbing through e-mails as he waited at the light. He hated to be out of touch and would always fire off e-mails to people in the office while he was out. He would make it a point to always send several to Fran Harrington, his personal assistant, to keep her on her toes and off the Web, where she frequently shopped for clothes.

The BlackBerry suddenly buzzed with a call while he was scrolling down through the seven e-mails that had arrived in his inbox since he had left the office. The screen flashed that it was Julie Sontag. He took the call.

"Bill, just updating you on the screenshots for the supplements section. I was over at New Faces today reviewing candidates for the wallpaper and sidebars."

"New Faces?" Callahan asked as he swung left into the parking lot of Gateway Pavilion, a big retail supercenter right off the highway. He had the BlackBerry on his lap now, and was talking into his Bluetooth earpiece.

"It's the modeling agency that we use. They're good. Anyway, I looked at about three hundred photos."

"Yeah? How do they look?" Callahan said.

"You'll see," Julie said. "Everyone is wholesome and sexy, in a classic Canadian way. Anyway, I narrowed it down to two girls. I know your tastes. Pure, but with a hint of raunchiness. I think you'll like them. I'm putting the portfolio on your table. Take a look when you get back."

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that we pick a 3 x 3 head shot for the left-side entrance screen, and build the story around the picture. We'll need to have a similar shot of a guy, too, to cement the image of vitamin rejuvenation. I think it'll work nicely. I've got Karen working on a mock-up now. It should be ready by the end of the week."

"I need to see the shots."

"I know. I'm also thinking that we need to have a full body shot of the girls, dressed casually on the right side for balance on the second page."

"It can't be just sex."

"Yeah, too much and it'll broadcast like potency enhancers. No, this is wholesome and sports-related. The basics."

"Good, that's what we need," Callahan said as he ended the call, slid out of the SUV, and headed into Pricel-Mart.

He always liked to go to the local retail stores and anonymously shop the pharmacy and drug areas. He knew that Tundra RX prices would be just as competitive, usually more so, but he was really looking for other things. He'd go to check out the product displays and see how things were presented. The big stores were selling not only prescription meds at a discount, but also were trying to develop their high-margin, supplement business. He'd look to see how things were displayed in the aisles and on the end caps to try to get a sense of what they were up to.

"Are you selling much of the vitamin supplements?" Callahan casually asked a young pharmacy intern behind the counter as he popped a piece of gum from a foil pack into his mouth.

"Yes. We sell a lot of vitamins. It's amazing. In the last six months, the demand has been incredible. I guess everybody wants to stay young," she said as she smiled at Callahan. "Can I help you with anything in particular?"

"Where are your family planning products?" Callahan asked with a straight face.

"Excuse me?" the girl said.

"Condoms. Where are your condoms?" Callahan said it to get a reaction.

The girl paused and then looked directly at him. "Family planning is in aisle four, on the right." She looked back down at her computer screen.

"Thanks," Callahan said as he turned and headed to the aisle.

"What an asshole," she muttered under her breath.

The girl was surprised by the request. Most men just searched for condoms, too embarrassed to ask where they were located. Not Callahan. She also thought that he was a little old to be asking for them. She finally guessed that they were for his son, and went back to entering orders into the system.

#

Lyle Cullen finally got a job in town, and it wasn't a bad one. He was the day clerk at the Quik Mart over on Senegal. The location was good, only ten minutes from his house. The mart had two rows of brand new gas pumps and a medium-sized convenience store attached to it. The store was one of the new designs that had all kinds of junk food strategically placed for easy purchase.

There was a half-aisle alone of assorted gummy bears, sugar worms and Lik-m-Aid sticks. Lyle couldn't eat the stuff, but he realized once he started working there that plenty of people did. He was amazed at the amount of money people spent on that shit, and the different kinds of beef jerky they stocked, from jalapeño to smoky BBQ flavor.

"You want a receipt?" Lyle said as he thumbed the blue button on the console and spoke into a goose-neck microphone. The pump control was like the space shuttle, with rows of buttons and indicator lights and LEDs glowing. He had a fresh pistachio nut in his other hand that he popped into his mouth as he spoke.

"Yeah, I do."

"Come on inside then. I can't print you one at the pump. Printer's down," Lyle said, as he sucked the salt off the little white nut while he rang up another person buying three lottery tickets.

He finished the sale and looked outside. He worked an extra shift on Tuesday and it was just getting dark. The new sodium lights washed the pump islands in a bright white glare. He couldn't believe how bright it was out there. Lyle watched the guy close the gas door on the side of his car and head toward him.

"Yeah, we ran out of paper on Pump 7 early today, and I haven't been able to change it. Sorry. Too damn busy," Lyle said as the burly customer came over to the check out.

'No problem," the customer said.

"I've got to print it off the printer here," Lyle pointed off to the left as he popped another pistachio into his mouth, waiting for the receipt to spit out.

"I'll take a package of American Spirit Lights while I'm here too," the man said as he looked up at the cigarette display behind Lyle.

"Yessir," Lyle said as he turned and reached up to get the pack of cigarettes. He then ripped the receipt off the printer, and worked the register to complete the sale. It took about thirty seconds. Lyle never had to engage customers for more than thirty seconds because he was always able to complete sales quickly.

"Have a nice day," Lyle said to the customer's back as he headed out of the store. He loved saying that bullshit phrase to everyone that came in. Most people actually said the same thing back to him, and didn't realize that what Lyle was really saying to them was "Fuck you," but in a different way. A few did. The smart ones.

He jumped off the high stool behind the counter and went to his jacket that was hanging off a hook, near the big unisex restroom in the back with the white plastic walls and the big aluminum grab rails down low near the toilet. He reached in his pocket and found his pills.

He took the orange plastic vial from his pocket with the Tundra RX logo and prescription for TENATA 125 MG plastered on a bright yellow prescription label. He twisted off the top, grabbed one pill and washed it down with a sip of the Red Bull energy drink that he was sipping at the control panel. With the new job and the money coming in, he was trying to get a fresh start. He finally had money for his prescriptions again, and he had made a vow to start taking his medicine regularly.

He went back to the high stool behind the cash register and the paperback novel he was reading. He felt good but, noticed that he still wasn't able to get the slight ringing sensation he had begun to feel in his ears to go away. He figured that he needed to start cutting back on the wine at night and maybe get a little more sleep. But overall, Lyle felt like he was on the road to getting his life back together.

* * * * *

### Aftermath

Rakesh barely survived the weekend. He was in the Montreal airport at a small table in the bar with a beer waiting for his flight back to Edmonton. He had a plastic bowl of nuts in front of him that he was digging into. On the tabletop was the Sunday New York Times with the business section out.

Rakesh was on his BlackBerry in a conversation with Bill Callahan. He had a pounding headache.

"I think we have an opportunity here with the Canectin situation."

"How so?" Callahan said from the other end. "Where are you, by the way?" Before Rakesh had time to answer or make up a story, Callahan asked, "You're not in Montreal with the girls again this weekend, are you? Jesus Christ, take it easy Rakesh. If you get caught up there giving any of our products to the hookers, we could have a problem. A big problem. The last thing we need is a Tundra RX overdose from a Russian stripper in your condo. It'll screw up the business model." He laughed.

"Bill, don't worry. I'm a doctor. I know what I'm doing. I have a straight girlfriend now, and we go out to dinner and museums. You'd find it all very sedate and boring." Rakesh paused and took a big swig of his beer as he tried to cut through his hangover. He popped a red pill as he talked.

Callahan was in his own apartment with a Toronto Maple Leafs game on his fifty-one-inch plasma screen. He was momentarily distracted as he watched Toronto score a goal on a power play. The colors on the big screen were brilliant. Between bites of a pepperoni pizza and his own beer, he plowed on. "Rakesh, a word of advice, don't make any Russian woman named 'Candy' your girlfriend. It'll never end well. Your wallet will be gone along with your car keys in the morning."

"My girlfriend is a graduate student, Bill. It's different now. I'm starting to grow up. And her name's Cindi, not Candy," he said.

"I rest my case," Callahan said. "So what about the Canectin?"

"Yeah. Mack is in trouble all of a sudden. There's a lot of bad press that has just come out that the medicine's no good. That it's no more effective than a generic statin. The key selling point to Canectin has always been that it's a statin and a cholesterol reducer, all-in-one. That it gets rid of the bad cholesterol and the triglycerides together."

"And does it work?" Callahan asked.

"Who knows? But Mack has been able to premium price it for five years. They're getting almost double their typical margin because they're marketing it as two drugs wrapped into one. Everybody believed the bullshit. It's been a great strategy for them."

"Isn't that the drug where they have the weird-looking old people in the ads smiling?"

"Exactly," Rakesh said. "Weird ads, but they stick with you after they're gone. Generally effective. Until now. This bad press is killing them. And it isn't just Mack. It's a partnership with Smith Planter. This was a heavy duty marketing campaign." Rakesh paused and took another swig of his draft Molson.

He was finally starting to make headway with his hangover. Rakesh sat back in his chair as he listened to Callahan talk. He was wearing an expensive suitcoat and slacks. The suitcoat draped perfectly over his shoulders, and was elegant in a grey winter tweed. He fished inside the pockets, and came out with a pill vial. He took another pill and washed it down with more beer.

"So what's our play?" Callahan asked.

"I'm thinking that we can probably have the Mexican guys mix up a batch of placebos, call it Canectin and we can dump it into the market with nobody knowing. The press is so bad on the drug right now that even if we get caught selling diluted Canectin, we'll just blame it on Mack."

"Come on."

"Listen, by the time it all gets sorted out, we'd have switched back to the full-strength Canectin and just claim foul from the manufacturer," Rakesh said.

"Sounds risky. I don't know about us going in that direction. The drug is bound to start slowing down in sales now anyway, with all the bad press. We may take a bath here," Callahan said. He put the hockey game on mute to flesh out the strategy with his chief medical officer more fully." "So what do you think we should do? Sell into a likely sales slump? I don't get it."

"Hear me out. I'll call Arturo now and have him produce twenty thousand pills at pure placebo level. I'll put a rush on production and shipping. We can probably have them by Friday to start distributing," Rakesh said." "There's so much misinformation in the market right now that nobody will notice."

"But will people still buy this shit with all the bad press?" Callahan asked.

"People aren't going to drop their meds overnight because of this. Over time, we're at risk with the product, but people can't change their prescriptions that quickly. And Mack will do a big shoring up campaign right now too. So we'll sell into the uptick with their counter-publicity.

"Okay. That's a good thought. It could work. It's probably a one-time shot for us, though."

"I agree. Just a quick way to make about five hundred thousand dollars."

"I'll talk to Julie to put together an e-mail blast this afternoon," Callahan said. "Call Pharma Real now and see what they can do for us."

"Will do," Rakesh replied.

"So how was your weekend?" Callahan asked, switching topics.

"Nice and quiet, just like I like it," Rakesh said. "I'm getting too old for the party bullshit." He had finally beaten down his hangover and had his appetite back. He was getting ready to order dinner from the bar menu as his return flight was still over an hour away.

"Don't pick up any communicable diseases, Rakesh. The last thing I need is an HIV-positive chief medical officer." Callahan rang off and went back to the hockey game.

* * * * *

### Medicine at Work

Lyle Cullen was happy, almost amazingly so. With his new job falling into place, he was starting to get stabilized. He was driving back home in his Ford Escort from the Athens Gulf Mini-Mart with the window down and his left arm resting on top of the door. His elbow caught the wind as he drove. It was eighty degrees out, and sunny. He had opened up this morning and was now off-duty at three pm. He had the whole rest of the afternoon off.

As he drove past the retail strip centers that lined the street, he put his head back against the headrest and tried to relax. He had NPR on the radio and was listening to All Things Considered. The only thing that bugged him occasionally was the slight ringing in his ears that he started noticing the last few weeks. He couldn't seem to get it to go away. He didn't notice it as much when he had a glass of wine or two at home, but it bugged him when he was at work, concentrating on the customers. Particularly when all the bastards wanted was for him to complete their transactions as fast as goddamn possible, and get in and out. Fuck, they were pains in his ass, he thought.

He figured that he'd just try to relax a little more during the day and not let the customers hassle him as much. If he didn't think about it, the ringing wasn't a big deal. It seemed to come and go. He figured it was probably just the fact that he still ate a lot of shit. He couldn't seem to break the junk food habit. Right now, he had a bag of salted cashews on the seat that he was nibbling from. He liberated it from the Mart before he left. He knew that he shouldn't be eating the salted nuts with his high blood pressure, but he ignored that fact as he popped three more in his mouth. He remembered that he read somewhere that nuts were supposed to be good for your heart. There you go, he thought.

The Escort was a twelve-year old shitbox. It ran okay, and he wasn't about to sink more money into car payments. He finally got the car loan paid off in December of last year, and it felt good not to have to make any more payments to the finance company. He was going to make the car last forever. They never got any winter weather down in Athens, so the body wasn't rotting out. If the engine kept going, he could get another fifty thousand miles out of it. He only had one hundred and two thousand miles on the odometer. He turned left into his driveway, pulled up and stopped.

"Hi, sweetheart. How ya doing?" Sheila, now his girlfriend of all of fifteen months, said as he came in. She was working in the kitchen, chopping onions. She had semi-moved in with him about two months ago, when her landlord raised her rent. Sheila worked at the only decent local restaurant in town as part of the wait staff. She'd been doing it for almost seven years now, and was good at it. She was forty-five, and still reasonably attractive, with streaked blond hair pulled back off her face.

Sheila had smallish breasts. She was wearing a pale blue Live Life T-shirt and shorts. She kept her body in shape with an exercise class over at Curves three times a week at the local strip mall. She had the figure of a thirty-five year-old and was determined to keep it that way for as long as she could. The only part of her body that gave away her age were her eyes. They were a striking blue but light-shaded circles were beginning to form underneath, along with wrinkle lines at the far edges. They were the telltales of a hard life. Like Lyle, she was also divorced.

"What are you making, hon?" Lyle strolled into the kitchen and looked into the pot on the stove.

"A little homemade chicken soup for dinner." Sheila pointed her large chopping knife toward the big stainless pot simmering on the gas stove. "Take a taste and tell me if I've got enough flavor in there. I think it may need a little more salt and another bouillon cube."

"Christ, any more salt and I think my head will explode," Lyle said as he came over to the stove and ran his hand over Sheila's ass. He dropped his head down into the pot and inhaled. He lingered over the steaming liquid in an attempt to get the aroma and steam to rise up deep into his sinuses and relax them. That fucking ringing in his ears was still there.

"How was your day, honey?" he said as he swung the long handled wooden spoon through the soup and brought several bits of chopped carrot and celery to his mouth to taste.

"Good. I stopped over and saw my sister and the kids for a while this morning. We had lunch together at the mall. She paid."

"How are they?" Lyle said distractedly as he headed to the refrigerator for a beer. He was planning on watching TV from the couch for a little while to unwind.

"They're good. Bob got a promotion." Sheila came from the sink countertop to the stove, and slid the onions off a small plastic cutting board into the pot. The mixture bubbled as steam rose up toward the stove hood. She adjusted the flame lower to simmer.

"How was your day?" she said looking up at Lyle as she dried her hands on her apron.

"Good. No problems. Except I can't seem to shake this little ringing in my ears. And now, I've got a shitty little headache too. I think it was just too many customers today. It was busy as a bastard at the Mart."

Lyle pulled the last Bud Light beer from the fridge and dropped down onto the couch. He put his feet up as he cracked open the can and took his first sip of the cold crisp liquid.

"Nectar of the Gods," he said to no one in particular, as the beer slid down, and he palmed the clicker, searching for ESPN on the old TV.

Sheila was in a good mood, having just seen her sister and her two teenage nieces. Visiting with her always made her happy. Her sister wasn't divorced yet, and Sheila lived vicariously through her and her family. She came over to Lyle sitting on the couch, and stood next to him.

"You still have that headache, hon?" she said as she reached around and untied her apron.

"Yeah, this beer should fix it though." Lyle scratched his scalp and watched the set as he moved through the channels. He had on his blue Quik Mart polo shirt with the open collar. Sheila thought he looked good in it, like a professional.

"Well I've got something to help. You're out making money for us, so we can pay the bills. You can't be running around here stressed out all the time."

"Yeah, but you're doing the same thing, too, honey. We're both putting it down," Lyle said as he looked up at his girlfriend.

"But you're the main breadwinner and I don't like to see you stressed. A little chicken soup and some loving is just what the doctor ordered. How 'bout a little house call?"

With that, Sheila pulled the apron off over her head and dropped it onto the couch. She straddled Lyle as she pulled her Scrunci off, and shook her hair out, letting it fall around her face. Lyle grunted as she put her weight down on top of his legs.

"Let's see if I can't fix you up before dinner, baby," she said as she moved down to meet Lyle's lips. "I'm pretty good at making people feel better. I bet your headache goes away real quick."

The chicken soup gently simmered on the stove as Sheila and Lyle had at it on the couch, with the TV on mute in the background.

* * * * *

### Rules of Engagement

Dr. Rakesh Gupta was back sitting in his office Monday with a large cup of Starbuck's coffee. He drank it with cream and three sugars. He was still feeling wobbly after the weekend in Montreal, so he stayed away from straight black coffee. The sun was shining into the office in slanting rays, and snow melted off the roofs of cars just outside the window in the parking lot below.

Rakesh had just downloaded two papers on the effects of zimatembe in varying doses. Across his desk, he had his browser pointed to Web MD and was on the Canectin page, reading the contra-indications section.

He had his headset on as he leaned back in his Aeron chair, pushing the lever down on the left-hand side that allowed him to rock back and forth. His stomach swirled. He vowed to get to the health club at the end of the day for a steam bath and some exercise. He was also going to start cutting back on the booze for sure. The hangovers were getting harder to break through, and he knew that was a sign of trouble.

"Arturo, my friend, how are you today?" Rakesh said into his headset as the phone came alive in Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City.

"Rakesh, to what do I owe this pleasure?" Arturo Seguras said. He was the senior sales manager at Pharmaceutico Real who handled all the Tundra RX business. Seguras was a precise man who kept up to date on all his clients and their purchases. He knew Rakesh as someone he had to keep happy. "Is everything all right with the shipments?"

"Yes. Everything is fine," Rakesh said. "I'm actually calling about a new order."

"A new order? Do you want to just e-mail the specifications to me, and I'll put it into the system?"

"No Arturo. This is one of our special orders that we can't have any paper trail on."

"Ahh. I understand," the Mexican drug salesman said. "We are doing many of these now. What can I help you with?"

The rules that Callahan and Pharma Real had set up were simple. On the placebo pill orders, nothing in writing was passed between the two companies. Callahan was adamant that no e-mails detail these transactions. It was just too risky. They would show criminal intent if the police ever got involved.

"I've been reading about the problems that Canectin is having in the States with the negative press."

"Yes, we all have. Our business is off thirteen percent with orders from Mack. It's hurt us."

"I know. We're thinking of a contrarian move. We'd like to order ten thousand Canectin pills in the usual dosages." Gupta paused to let that sink in. He adjusted his headset as it was pulling on the hair on the side of his right temple. "But I only want you to make them placebos."

"So no zemitembe at all? No active ingredients?" Arturo said.

"Is that a problem? You can do that, right?" Rakesh said, as he brought his volume down and was now speaking quietly. He thought it gave his words more force.

"Rakesh, we can do it easily. The pills will be identical. Impossible to pick out as fakes from the eye. You know the quality of our production. No problems there."

"We're going to run a special on Canectin on the Web site," Rakesh explained. "We'll sell the pills at a deep discount to generate sales."

"These pills will certainly help your profit margin then if you've got nothing inside them," Arturo said. "We'll make them cheaply for you."

"How cheap?" Rakesh asked.

"Wait a second." The line went quiet, and he could hear a ten-key clicking in the drug salesman's office five thousand miles away in Mexico. The reception on the line was clear, and Rakesh could hear the barrel of the adding machine rolling over several times. He even heard Seguras rip the paper off the roll.

"We can do it for twenty seven cents a pill. Shipping and tariffs not included," Arturo said. "It's a good price for you. We're not making any money at that kind of pricing, Rakesh. And you know it." Seguras ran a hand through his black hair and waited on the line while Rakesh thought. There was a long pause. Finally the Pakistani doctor spoke.

"Okay, that seems fair. We need these pills this week, though. If we don't get them into the market quickly, the opportunity will be lost. This is a short time fire-sale we're holding."

"I understand. We'll work quickly," Arturo said. He was already starting to write up the order for the bogus production run for Tundra RX as he spoke.

"Just make us the pills fast and everything will be all right. Remember, no write-ups on this order."

"Don't worry. This will go off under our records as a test production run for pill quality and design. We do this frequently."

'Yeah, but not in ten thousand pill runs," Rakesh said as he smiled into the phone.

"True. But believe it or not, you're not the only customer we have that wants altered pills."

"Really? Who else is doing it?" Rakesh tried to press a little.

"You know I can't disclose my other customer's orders. It would be unethical," Seguras said deadpan into the phone.

"Yeah. I know. Your morality's inspiring. Anyway, send me your standard e-mail when the run is complete and you are going to ship."

"I'll do that, Rakesh. And have a good day." The Mexican hung up and got to work processing the special order for Tundra RX. The one for the fake Canectin pills.

* * * * *

### Righting The Ship

Mike Smith was back to normal. He and Susan survived the bad sex weekend, and were back into the old routine. He had performed the following morning like a trouper, and that was with no artificial help at all. He was at his best in the mornings, with a good night's sleep under his belt and a fresh cup of coffee in him.

Two weeks had passed since the incident. Mike hadn't taken an Erecta pill from Tundra RX since the trouble that Saturday night. He and Susan were in a restaurant in Hanover called American Sam's, having lunch. It was a big suburban restaurant about a mile down from the Hanover Mall, a sprawling, local place for the family hordes and empty nesters on the South Shore. Susan and he had a small table over in the corner next to a big spider plant hanging down from a wooden rafter. The décor in the restaurant was 70's faux brick and beam.

Susan drank a margarita as they waited for their food. "So what do you think it was with the Erecta before?" she said as she sipped her drink. Her tongue touched the salt around the rim.

"Damned if I know. I must have been incredibly tired that night, and just didn't react to it well," Mike said as he took a drink from Harbor Lager, the pint of local microbrew beer in front of him. He looked around at the people in the restaurant and then shrugged. "It was just one of those things."

"Well, were you tired that night? I don't remember you mentioning that during the night," Susan asked as she gently probed. "Maybe you should stop taking the pills altogether. You don't have to do it for me. I think our sex life is great as it is."

Susan was always frank and upfront in talking about sex with Mike. He hated it. It made him uncomfortable. Sex was something he did, but didn't talk about. It was taboo. He was old-school, Irish Catholic. He was even an altar boy once. Some things should be left unsaid, or at least not put under a microscope.

The food came and Mike prepped his Swiss cheeseburger with a load of ketchup. He took a bite of the juicy, red burger, and washed it down with a big slug of the lager beer.

"I thought you liked it when I was on the Erecta. I can go forever on that stuff. Like Johnny Wad."

Susan gagged as she laughed. "Who's that?" She was eating a Caesar salad with grilled chicken. "You're dating yourself."

"Johnny Wad. He was an old 80's porn star," Mike said.

"I didn't say I didn't like it when you took the Erecta, and it worked, sweetheart." She paused and ate some salad. "In fact, it's fun. You're good with the pills. The last time you took it, I had two orgasms." Susan looked up at Mike for effect.

He blushed. "Well, there you have it. You like it, and it helps me out. So, I'll keep taking the stuff because I sure as hell can't go as long without it." Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out his little Erecta pill vial. He opened the top and took out one of the little green pills.

"As a matter of fact, let's celebrate. And continue the experiment. Let's see how this works today." With that, he popped the pill into his mouth and washed it down with a deep slug of beer. "It's all in the interest of science," he said as he smiled and looked over at Susan.

"I guess we'll find out, won't we?" Susan said as she shook her head and finished off her margarita. "In the interests of science. Oh, and by the way, if you're going to be Johnny Wad you're going to need to get a pair of 1980's vintage, big platform shoes."

After lunch, they went antiquing. There was a small place in Scituate that had been in the center of town for over thirty years. Susan was looking for a lamp for the end table in her living room. They were paused in a row of sideboards and dressers, each with two or three lamps on top.

"Do you like this?" Susan said as focused on an older porcelain lamp with a small dark brown vase. She fingered the design on the lamp, which was a colorful arrangement of flowers in orange and green patterns. They floated on the surface of the light green porcelain body.

"It looks nice," Mike said. In truth, he didn't know jack shit about antiques. It wasn't in his field of interest. He knew that women liked antiques, though, particularly women he had dated over the last two years. His ex-wife, Cheryl, also liked them. So he knew enough to add in a comment or two along the way when he was dragged along on an antique hunting mission.

"I think the base is nice and it matches the coffee table you have in the living room," Mike said as he looked at the bottom of the lamp.

Bingo. It worked like magic. He looked at Susan and she was smiling as she touched the lamp's base.

"Yes, you're right," she said. "Let's put it on this table by itself to see how it looks." Susan pointed to a table over by a window in the corner. The store was small, and the corner was the coziest nook in the room at the back.

Mike was starting to get interested in Susan, just relaxing in the antique shop and spending the afternoon with her. He could see that she was happy, looking at the lamps in the small store. The vibe was right.

"I like this one a lot. I think it's going to look great on your side table," Mike said as he gingerly lifted the lamp up and brought it over to the other table for a different view.

He almost felt the Erecta coursing through his veins. He knew that it was going to work today because he was already getting a hard-on, right there in the store just being near Susan. Her hair and scent, and closeness were working their magic on him. He could sense that she was getting interested too.

He knew what he had to do. He had to buy the lamp for her as a sign of affection, as a love offering. Buying and bringing gifts was often the most direct route to hopping in the sack. That tradition was still alive today, he knew.

He casually looked at the price tag, like a good policeman, as he centered the lamp on the small viewing table. $250 was the price that was marked in black ink on the small white label hanging on the lamp base with a thin piece of string.

"I think it looks great sweetheart," Mike said as he stepped back. He had no feelings for the lamp but he made a snap decision that the $250 he was about to spend were short dollars. He would benefit from the purchase tenfold, not just this afternoon but well into the future. He knew that it was an investment in their relationship, and he was not going to falter.

"You know, I think you're right," Susan said as she put her lips together and stepped back to look at the lamp. Mike stepped behind to hold her as they looked at the antique. Susan discreetly pushed her behind back into him as they looked at the lamp. She could feel him start to swell right there in the antique shop.

"I think it's nice," she said." She had jeans on, and was moving slightly back and forth as Mike held her, rubbing into him as she spoke.

"So do I," Mike said as his mouth went dry. "I think we should get it." He was quickly losing interest in the lamp.

"I think you're right. The shade goes perfect with the valence in the room." Susan knew how to prolong Mike's agony as she lingered on the decision.

"That's it. We're getting it," Mike said as he broke away and gently picked up the lamp. He headed toward the front of the store to buy it. The owner, an attractive, dark-haired woman in a grey pantsuit was reading a Jackie Collins novel. She took his credit card and rang him up.

On the way back to Susan's townhouse, Mike and Susan talked about decorating her living room and how the lamp was exactly perfect. It was sitting on the rear seat behind them, in a cardboard box nestled in between a mountain of newspaper to hold it upright. They both knew that the Erecta from Tundra RX was going to work today. It was in the air. They didn't talk about it as they rode up Route 3A toward Susan's condo, but they knew.

The afternoon was grey and wintry, and it was a perfect time for winter romance. Mike knew that buying the lamp had sealed the deal. Susan had wanted it, and it was a test. Call it his cop's intuition, but he did the right thing for once, with no hesitation. He was starting to get the hang of dating.

The 100-milligram little green pill from Tundra RX did not disappoint. Mike had barely got the lamp on the table, hadn't even positioned it right, when Susan asked him to come over and view it from the couch. He sat down next to her. They ended up leaving a string of clothes from the living room to the bedroom.

An hour later, they lay exhausted in Susan's big bed. Mike thumbed the clicker and the big plasma screen at the foot of the bed flashed to life. He surfed the channels until he got a college basketball game on ESPN. Kansas versus Louisville. Susan was curled up in his arms.

"I've changed my mind. Keep taking that Erecta, sweetheart. Those pills are good stuff," she said as she spooned into him and was drifting off toward sleep.

"No shit. I'm ordering more tomorrow," Mike said as he thumbed the volume to mute.

"Where do you get them?" she asked.

"That place on the Internet. No prescription. It's cheap, too."

"What's it called again?"

"It's a place up in Edmonton, I think. Tundra RX. I Googled it."

"Ummmm. You're crazy," Susan said as she was drifting off to sleep.

"No, I'm not. That stuff is black magic," Mike said as he picked up the clicker and changed the channel to a fishing show on ESPN2 during halftime.

* * * * *

### Canadian Winter

It was nothing but slow and steady for the first two years of Tundra RX's existence. A quiet life for Callahan and the small staff at the company, filling prescription drug orders for old-timers down in the States trying to save a few bucks on their medicines. At the time, he felt like an in-house pharmacist at a long-term care facility. Just filling maintenance med scripts for the elderly, and mailing pills to Duluth and Des Moines.

Then the shit hit the fan. Callahan remembered it well. It was during the first quarter of 2006. He had just hired Julie Sontag. She brought an energy and aggressiveness to the business that wasn't there before. Tundra RX changed almost overnight from a sleepy prescription drug order-filler to a first class marketing machine.

Julie was a change agent in the transformation. But other things also came together serendipitously as well. The United States seemed to get older instantly. And it was mostly that great human mass, the baby boomers. Callahan was one of them, and he knew the demographic, cold. All of a sudden, he developed aches and pains, and had a bum knee and a bad shoulder. His blood pressure was rising, and his cholesterol was high.

Callahan quickly realized that this was happening to millions of people in the States, right at the same time as it hit him. Just as he started to feel lousy, so did a whole nation of folks below Canada that had money and wanted to live forever. That meant they were happy to spend their disposable incomes on drugs that would let them keep going. Callahan would look at the sales reports, and see the orders for the big maintenance meds like Tenata for cholesterol and beta blockers for high blood pressure rocket up by five to ten percent every quarter. Demand just kept increasing.

#

It was another sunny day in late January. It had snowed in a light dusting the night before, and the flakes covered the window ledge of Callahan's expansive view of the parking lot and the mountains beyond. His phone rang as he pored over reports.

"Hi, Bill. It's Julie. Do you have time to talk about the call center today? I need to tell you what's up," she said into the phone.

Callahan's attention shifted to her. The call center was an important part of the Tundra RX operation, as real people called in and talked to the phone operators. It was very different from the anonymous internet sales.

"Yeah, what's up?" Callahan said as he shifted in his chair and watched the snow blow around in the parking lot, preoccupied.

"It's something that we have to sit together and go over," Julie said.

"How about lunch? Cafeteria at noon?" he said.

"Fine. I'll come over," Julie said as she hung up.

The two of them were in the cafeteria going through the line. Julie got a salad with grilled chicken. Callahan got his usual Canadian heart special, pastrami on a bulkie with mustard. He paid for both of them, and they headed to an area near the windows for some privacy. It wasn't crowded yet, and they found a small, two-person table in the corner.

"So how's it going?" Callahan said as he bit into the pastrami and the mustard oozed out around the edges.

"How can you eat that stuff?" Julie said. "Think about your cholesterol."

"I own the company that sells pills to take care of it," he said. "I'll just have to start increasing my dose. Tenata is a beautiful thing." He took a few chips from the bag, and popped them in his mouth. "Besides, all you ever eat is salad."

"It keeps me thin," Julie said. She was dressed in a knee-length blue skirt with black suede boots and pullover sweater top. She looked Canadian wholesome, and Callahan caught several of the men in the cafeteria stealing glances at her.

Julie got down to business quickly. "Bill, we've been getting some strange calls on the customer care line recently. People have been complaining about the meds."

"What do you mean?" Callahan said as he immediately focused. It was like he was jolted with a mild dose of electricity. His antennae were up.

"Well, it's strange. We've got four or five calls recently by people who're saying the drugs they bought aren't working. That they're no good. They want their money back."

"The drugs aren't working? Are they talking about specific drugs?" he asked.

"Some are, some aren't. One guy said that his doctor said that his cholesterol had gone up in the last six months since he started taking pills from Tundra RX instead of going down."

"Christ, what's the guy eating?" Callahan said. "That could be from sucking down a pepperoni pizza every night. Who knows?"

"Don't get defensive. I'm just reporting what I'm hearing from the phone operators, and as I read the call logs. Anyway, there's been a spike in these calls over the last sixty days."

Callahan listened closely to what Julie was saying but he appeared not to be interested. He had never told Julie about the fake pills that Tundra RX was pushing through the system. That would spell disaster.

"Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me. People can't tell if their blood pressure is up or down just by feeling shitty," Callahan said.

"That's true. But they can report that they don't feel great in general."

Callahan took another big bite of his pastrami sandwich and washed it down with Diet Coke. "We have to monitor this closely going forward," he said. "We can't have a lot of bad press floating around."

"Yes, I'm all over it," Julie said as she picked at her salad and pita bread. She continued "The other complaint that has surfaced is that some of our ED drugs aren't working."

"Hell no!" Callahan said. "What do you mean? The guys can't get erections?"

Julie blushed. "Don't be crass, but yeah, something like that. These are our paying customers, in the middle of romance, and they're not able to perform. That's not good."

"How do you know it's our drugs?" Callahan asked. He knew in his gut that it undoubtedly was the fact that they were messing with the drug formulations and weakening the pills, and sometimes, even substituting pure placebos.

"It's strange. We've had several calls from male customers, but a few women have called too. They said that their partner took our Erecta, and it worked fine for a number of times. They'd have great sex, and then the pills wouldn't work at all another time. It seemed weird. That's not how these pills work. Erecta usually either works consistently, or not at all. Random effects are unusual."

Callahan knew right away what was happening. They were mixing placebos with real pills in the foil packs. He decided he would talk with Rakesh today, or the situation could unravel and get out of control.

"You're going to have to monitor it closely, Julie, and see what happens," Callahan said as he held the remnants of a pickle spear. "We can't have a problem with our pills."

"Yeah, I agree," Julie said. "Maybe we should have Carol do some more sampling of the incoming shipments. She can check for formulation strength pretty easily."

"She could. It's probably a good way for us to get a comfort level on the pills." Callahan was a little non-committal, as the last thing he wanted was to set up a testing plan that would shine a bright light on the fact that some of the Tundra RX pills were bogus. He had to steer Julie in a different direction.

"It may help our marketing, too," Julie added.

"It's expensive, though, to set up a new testing protocol. Maybe we just start more basic, and try to find out the details from the customers about the pills they ordered and we can trace them to a particular shipment. Maybe there was just a bad batch that was cooked up." Callahan tried not to sound too concerned.

"A bad batch? Cooked up?" Julie looked up at Callahan. "Bill, what are you talking about? We're not making cookies here. These are highly regulated pharmaceuticals we're talking about."

"Shit happens," he said.

"No it doesn't. And you know it. Something strange is going on," Julie said. "Anyway, there was one great call that you have to listen to. It was from a woman in Boston. She was real detailed on the call. Not in a pornographic way, but factual, you know? She says that she was giving her boyfriend, who's a cop, a hand job, and he passed out while she was doing it. Just fell asleep on the couch."

"Maybe she needs more practice," Callahan said.

Julie blushed again and smiled. "Maybe. Or maybe something else is going on. I've never heard of anybody falling asleep during sex after taking one of our Erecta's. It sounds unbelievable, doesn't it?"

"Sounds like she needs to work on her technique," he said. "Maybe he should have arrested her."

"Not funny, Bill," Julie said. "She was concerned. She did say that when her boyfriend took another Tundra RX Erecta tab the following week, everything was okay again."

"That sounds just like basic human physiology. Erecta's not guaranteed to work every time. Maybe he had a bad reaction or something." Callahan was in full defensive mode.

"I'm just reporting to you as the CEO that as the director of marketing, I'm listening to our customer care feedback loop. Some of the feedback is squirrely. The pills don't work for everybody. And we're starting to get more negative calls. More than we've ever had before. We've just got to watch it."

Julie finished her meal and pushed her plate away. She sat back and sipped her orange-flavored sparkling water. With her streaked, auburn hair, she was very attractive.

"You're absolutely right, Julie," Callahan said. "One thing we have to realize is that our sales have skyrocketed. With increased customers and sales, we're going to have more complaints. More customers and more metabolisms to deal with. It's a simple fact of business that our customer satisfaction will be more difficult to maintain as our sales base rises."

"That's true. But we have to start putting some protocols in place to track the problems and see what's going on. We can use it for marketing purposes, but we can also use it with the regulators if we're inspected, to show how we perform quality control."

Callahan was listening to Julie speak and thinking how to sidestep where she was headed. The last thing he wanted was some formal feedback loop in the company that hunted out the bad drugs flowing through the system. He and Rakesh were putting bogus pills into inventory as fast as they could, to sell at huge profit margins. They didn't need a procedure put in place using company resources to root that out. He was trying to bury it.

"Yeah, we need to start thinking about better monitoring. We'll work on it," Callahan said as he pushed his straw down into the remaining ice in his Diet Coke. "By the way, how are you coming on the Web page expansion for the vitamins?"

And with that Callahan steered Julie off of the feedback loop and back into the sales and marketing area. He needed to get her focus off searching for fake pills. Bringing cash in the door was what it was all about.

* * * * *

### Susan & Mike

Mike and Susan were starting to get serious, and it was okay. They were dating regularly, and he was staying over at her place at least once a week. He would leave the state police cruiser at home, and take his Ford Focus to her house when he stayed over.

Mike was shopping in Costless at the South Bay Center in Dorchester off of Route 93 in Boston. He was off-shift. He was buying toilet paper and household stuff that he hadn't gotten in about six months. His condo was basically empty. Susan never stayed there anyway, so it didn't matter too much. But he needed the basics, like paper towels and laundry soap. His cell phone rang in the pocket of his khaki pants as he shopped.

It was Susan on the phone. "Hi hon. What are you doing? Interested in lunch? I've got some great jalapeño sauce and burgers we can grill."

"Huh?" Mike said into the phone, as he pushed the oversized carriage through the massive aisles looking for paper towels. He was planning on being productive, and doing house chores all day.

"Just something spontaneous and totally random. Are you interested?"

"Are you sure you want me down there this afternoon, Susan? I'm going to be there for dinner anyway." Mike was trying to dodge for time and deflect the afternoon visit so that he could finish off all his bullshit shopping before he went to Susan's house. Once he got there, he'd get nothing done for the rest of the weekend. Not that he minded, or was complaining, but some of this stuff just needed to get done.

"Well, you can wait and come down tonight for dinner. That's fine. No problem. I know you've got errands to run today. No big deal. We'll see each other tonight." Susan was a little irritated, and Mike could feel it over the phone, but she kept her tone soft and smooth.

Mike knew he'd have a great time if he got there for lunch and an afternoon hookup—he was always more awake during the day than at night. He made a snap decision right there among the towering pallets of mustard and ketchup.

"Alright, sweetheart, I'll be down by noon. I'd love to have a burger on the grill. I can finish this bullshit shopping later. Can I pick up anything on the way?" he asked.

"Great. This will be fun!" Susan said as she smiled over the phone. "Bring a Vidalia onion, and a green pepper. And how about a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio? Not that cheap stuff that you usually buy," she said as she laughed. "Something special."

"Okay. One bottle of real white wine coming your way. See you in two hours."

Mike closed his cell phone and put it back in his pants pocket. He reached into his blue fleece jacket pocket and found his pill container. He always kept a small vial of his meds in his pocket for emergencies. Nobody was around in the aisle as he opened the top and shook the pills out into his palm. He immediately found the small, green Tundra RX Erecta pill. It stood out among the other ones in his hand.

He put the pill in his right hand, while he poured the rest back into the container and closed the lid. He headed to the front of the store to the water cooler over by the men's room. There, over by the mounds of empty cardboard boxes, he popped the pill in his mouth, and washed it down deeply with a big slug of cold water.

He did some arithmetic in his head as he checked his watch. It was ten am. He took the pill now, so that by one pm, it would kick in and he'd be ready to go. If it worked as well as the last several times he'd taken the Erecta, he'd have a two-hour erection. That'd be plenty.

He'd be pretty pleased himself, he thought. He wiped his mouth and went back to his carriage in the condiments aisle to finish off his shopping and get the hell out of there. He needed to drop all the stuff off at the house, freshen up, and get down to Cohasset in two hours. He needed to get moving.

#

Lunch was great. The sun had come out with a few cumulus clouds in the blue winter sky. Susan took the grill cover off, and Mike worked the burgers like a pro. She had set out a big food spread in the kitchen, along the black granite counter top. The jalapeño salsa was there along with chips and pickles, and coleslaw. It was a romance offering, and she had gone all out. They sat at the kitchen island on high bar stools with two place settings that Susan had put together, complete with cloth napkins and silverware. Mike could see that Susan went all out.

"Thanks for coming on such short notice. I know I was going to see you tonight, but it's such a beautiful day that I thought we could spend it together," Susan said as she sipped her wine. She ran her index finger lightly over Mike's hand.

He had some wine, and looked at her. She was striking today. Blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was wearing light makeup that accentuated her clean, good looks.

"Are you kidding, I love spending time with you," he said as he sipped his wine. He reached for the bottle and refilled both of their glasses.

Mike could see that the wine was working its magic on Susan, as she was relaxed and happy. They ate lunch when the burgers were done, sipping the Italian wine and listening to jazz on the Bose CD player. It was all very comfortable. After lunch, Susan pressed her advantage.

"Come on," Susan said. "I've got a little surprise for you in the bedroom." She took his hand and led him through the townhouse, to her bedroom in the back with the big four poster bed. Susan sat Mike down on the side of the bed. She clicked on the fireplace. Then she turned back to him and stroked his hair as he sat on the bed. They started to undress.

But Mike was noticing something strange again. He wasn't feeling aroused. Nothing at all. No hard on, just nothing. It was the same as before. He was suddenly getting very nervous. Here was Susan ready to make love, and he felt nothing. Something was wrong—very wrong. The same shit was happening, but he wasn't as tired.

Susan was next to him on the bed, half-undressed, with his pecker in her hand. It was small and limp. She laughed as she held the little appendage. It stayed small, even with her holding it.

"Are you okay hon?" she said as she smiled and pulled at the little sausage. "Nothing's happening. Not interested?"

She was right. Nothing was happening. He wasn't getting aroused at all. His little pecker was as limp as a flaccid turkey neck. It was just there, small as could be. He was starting to panic. He tried to think erotic thoughts about Susan. It just wasn't working.

Susan was hard at it, trying to jump-start Mike's libido. She made a valiant effort to get him engaged. But nothing. She quickly realized something was wrong. She looked up at Mike.

"What's wrong, hon? Not feeling good?" She smiled, and tried to keep it light. She continued to hold him as she spoke. Susan looked into his eyes, and could see that he was embarrassed.

"I don't know what to say. This usually doesn't happen," Mike said. "I even took an Erecta this morning to be at peak performance today. What the hell?"

Susan could sense his fear. "Honey, don't worry. It's all good. We'll make love later when you're feeling better. Maybe you had too much wine at lunch. It's okay. I just like spending time with you anyway. It's not a big deal."

Susan really did like Mike, and wasn't going to let this unfortunate episode get in the way of the relationship. She knew that he wasn't feeling good about not being able to get an erection, and she was determined not to make a big deal of the situation.

The two of them got dressed and regrouped in the living room. They went to the newspaper and decided to go see a movie that afternoon in Hanover. They got there for a three fifteen show, and the theatre was empty. As they watched the movie, Mike struggled to put the fact that he couldn't get an erection with the Erecta pill out of his mind but it wouldn't leave. He didn't know what to think. He slunk down low in the seat and couldn't believe that it was happening again. It was like he had a pox.

* * * * *

### Executive Planning

Dr. Rakesh Gupta was in Bill Callahan's office. The door was closed. It was almost six pm, and people were leaving the Tundra RX offices for home in the Edmonton suburbs. It was dark outside, and the bright lights of the business park shone through the windows.

Callahan had a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup, his sixth of the day. He sipped, put the cup down on the table, and looked at Rakesh. What a mess of a guy, he thought. Almost useless. But Callahan knew that he needed Rakesh in the fold. No denying it, he needed a bonafide medical doctor on staff to give the Tundra RX organization the stamp of legitimacy. Even if the good doctor had a blossoming addiction to the drugs he was in charge of supervising. It was a dangerous mix. Callahan also needed Rakesh to help monitor the sale of the fake drugs that they were distributing in the marketplace.

"So what about this stuff in the Times that I just read?" Callahan said to Rakesh, as he swallowed some coffee and spoke. "There's this pharmaceutical plant in Shanghai that made medicine for cancer patients. They took it and were paralyzed. From the pills, for chrissakesChrissakes." Callahan shot a worried look toward Rakesh. "Can that shit happen to us?"

Rakesh coughed, thought for a moment then looked directly at Callahan. "Well, I suppose it could. The pills can always be adulterated. But ten people dead from taking bad Tundra RX Erecta? Highly unlikely, I'd say, but I guess it could happen."

"It's not that unlikely with our friends over in China," Callahan said.

Rakesh smiled. "True enough. But that accident was a one-in-a-million event. The Chinese government shut the plant down, in fact. That was a disaster."

"But could it happen to us?"

"Not really. We're having inert substances added to the formulations of our pills. Inert substances like digestible powder, sugar, vitamin additives. Nothing harmful. The chemicals are added to the mix to give the pills some body. They're all non-toxic additives."

"Still, it's not confidence building."

"So what do you want to be reassured about?" Rakesh said.

"That we're not going to wake up one morning and read about fifty people that keeled over from taking Tundra RX pills."

"Look Bill, I can't guarantee it. But a problem like that could happen to any of our medications, even for the drugs that we're making strictly by the book, full formulation. Remember, a lot of our pills are still one hundred percent legitimate. It's only select meds that we're cutting."

"Which ones are those again?" Callahan asked.

"Just several of the statins, and then we're cutting the Erecta, like we said. For those, we're mostly just substituting pure placebos for the real stuff. It's one hundred percent profit on those pills."

"Okay. It feels like we're covered. I get a little jumpy once in a while, Rakesh. I'm the CEO, and ultimately, I'm responsible."

Rakesh smiled. "Bill, we're headed in the right direction. We're doing great. When I go to conferences, everybody wants to talk to me about the company. We're one of the ten fastest growing Web sellers of prescription medicine in the country. We're on fire."

Callahan paused for a second. "Rakesh, I'm also worried about you. How much of our stuff are you taking now? I'm looking at your fingers and there's a slight tremor. It's noticeable. Are you all right?" Callahan put his coffee cup down, and looked intently at Rakesh. He fidgeted in his chair and rubbed his hands.

"I'm fine. I'm not on any medications long-term. I occasionally take some pain killers for my hip, from the skiing accident, after I work out at the gym. That's all."

"Fuck that, Rakesh. The last time you saw a gym was when we went together to check out the girls in the spinning class at that conference down in Cabo. That was three years ago. You're not seeing many gyms. Just stay off the hard stuff, that's all. You and I are getting wealthy here all of a sudden and we—both of us—can't afford to fuck it up."

Rakesh nodded as he acknowledged Callahan. He put his hands in his lap, below the desk. "I know. I'm careful in taking my pills. No prescriptions. I'm just taking the meds right off the shelf downstairs."

"Yeah, that's what frightens me," Callahan said. "No limits. Does Carol know you're taking pills?"

"No, she has no idea. Neither do any of the inventory guys. I go down nights and weekends for my samples. There's no paper trail. The Canadian licensing board keeps a close watch on my prescription writing. I had a felony drug conviction, remember? My record is clean now, and I keep it that way."

Callahan sat back, slightly relieved. "Good, keep it that way. We've got a good thing going. One thing you've got to do is stay in front of our pill suppliers."

"I know. They need supervision and direction," Rakesh agreed.

"Rakesh, these are all unregulated pill houses. We've got to be careful with them. You need to call Arturo and Zhu Wen every week, and stay in their faces. If they're making changes to our pill orders that we don't authorize or know about, we're screwed."

"Yeah, you're right. I'll start calling them every week to confirm our production runs."

"You need to be our quality control person on this stuff."

"What about Carol ?" Rakesh asked Callahan. "Does she know from the testing?"

"She still has no idea. She doesn't know that we're cutting some of the formulations. It's getting complicated, though. We've got to be careful."

"Yes, I agree." Rakesh frowned.

"You and I won't do well in prison," Callahan said as he stood up and opened the door, signaling that the meeting was over.

* * * * *

### Smooth Sailing

Lyle Cullen was back at work. It was Tuesday, mid-morning. This was his busiest time. Everybody was rolling into the gas islands, looking to buy ten or twenty dollars of gas. Then they'd come into the mart to buy junk food, and completely empty their wallets of whatever meager change they had left. He couldn't understand why people did that.

Everybody was buying American Spirit cigarettes, beef jerky, and gummy worms. New millennium health food, he called it. Lyle also noticed that he was selling a shitload of an energy enhancer called Instant Energy. It came in a little plastic bottle that had a bright red-and-black wrapper. It was small, like a nip of bourbon. He kept a twenty-four-count box of the bottles right at the check-out, next to the cash register. His boss, Frank, the fat fuck, called them an impulse purchase. Lyle knew that Frank got that name from the sales rep that came in every week. Frank was too dumb himself to come up with that scientific term for the stuff.

"How ya doin'?" Lyle said to the customer who eased up to the register.

"Not bad. Twenty bucks of regular. And this stuff, too," the young, heavyset man said as he pushed three items across the counter at Lyle. He figured the customer was a construction worker or something, owing to the size of his gut and his rough hands.

"Can I get a pack of Marlboro Reds too?" the roughneck said.

"Huh?" Lyle returned. The ringing in his ears this morning was incredibly bad. The worst ever. He could barely hear. He was feeling flushed, too. He'd been feeling this way for the last week or so, and didn't know what the hell was going on. He vowed to make an appointment at the walk-in clinic over on South Street next week to get checked out. Ever since he started taking his pills and getting on the straight-and-narrow over a month ago, he started feeling shitty. So much for good habits he thought.

If he kept feeling this bad, he was going to stop all the medicine and shit and just abuse himself. At least he felt good then.

"Reds. Marlboro Reds. Up there to the left," the fat man said.

"Oh, yeah. No problem. Here you go." Lyle reached up the giant cigarette rack behind him, and pulled down the pack of cigarettes for the customer. He had to grab the side of the counter as he reached—he was feeling so dizzy.

"You okay?" the man said to Lyle as he handed him his Credit One credit card. "You look a little flushed."

Lyle moved back to the stool and sat down to get his sea legs. "Yeah, I'm fine," he lied. "I just have this cold or flu, or something. I can't seem to shake it."

"Try one of these energy things. They taste like garbage but they pep you right up," the customer said, as he pulled a 5 Hour Energy vial out of the crate to show Lyle. "I take 'em all the time for hangovers."

"Maybe I will," Lyle smiled as he gave the card back to the customer. "Credit?"

"Yeah."

"Hit cancel for credit," he said.

The construction worker fingered the electronic key pad, punched it a few times when prompted, then swept up his goodies in the plastic Mini-Mart bag that Lyle gave him.

"Later, man," he said as he walked out the door. "I hope you're feelin' better."

"Yeah, me too," Lyle said to himself as he leaned over the counter and picked one of the little red energy supplements from its display pack. He read the label. No sugar and no carbohydrates and loads of instant energy. What the hell, he thought. He ripped off the cellophane wrapper at the top, and unscrewed the cap. He felt flushed as hell.

He fished into his pants and pulled out his pill bottle. He took out his Tundra RX prescription for Tenata, and shook out two pills. Lyle was only supposed to take one pill a day because they were the maximum strength. Screw it, he thought. A double dose with the little energy drink was just the ticket to feeling better. He'd juice himself up with a little extra medicine. His own Rx for good health. Screw the doctors.

He put the two red pills on his tongue and washed them down with the 5 Hour Energy supplement. The liquid tasted sickly sweet—he almost gagged. When he finished the little bottle, he had to go over to the refrigerator case and snag a container of Gatorade—lemon lime flavor, his favorite—to wash down the bad taste in his mouth.

He settled in on his stool, and went back to reading the Sports Illustrated he had pulled from the rack to pass time. An hour quickly passed as he hawked gas and packages of Swedish fish and salted cashews. He didn't know how people could eat all the shit he sold in the store. Most of it was disgusting.

About mid-afternoon, a mini-crisis occurred out at Pump 7, the gas island farthest from the mini-mart. The intercom next to Lyle on the control board crackled to life, shaking him out of his daydreaming. He wasn't feeling any better. In fact, he felt worse, like he was going to faint at any second. He decided he was going to the walk-in clinic on the way home today, not next week, and get checked out. He needed to see a nurse.

"The pump won't turn on here," the woman's voice boomed over the speaker.

Lyle leaned over and hit the red reset button on the master control panel. "Try it again."

Silence for a minute.

"Nothing's happening. I have to get to work. I'm running late already."

"Let me reset it again, ma'am," Lyle said as he pushed the green Start button and then the red Reset button again in sequence.

"C'mon, man. I gotta get going."

Lyle looked out over the pump islands and could see that the young woman was having trouble with the pump. Typical. People had no patience with these mechanical issues, Lyle thought. This happened all the time.

He lapsed back into his best customer-speak. "Ma'am, you're not putting the pump nozzle back in its cradle to reset the machine. It won't work if you don't do that."

He heard the rattle of the aluminum pump nozzle through the speaker on the front of the gas pump as the girl struggled with the hose.

"Aaarrh. Shit. The damn hose is in my way and I can't get it in. I need some help! Can you come out here for Chrissakes?" the girl shouted out into the air.

The ringing in Lyle's ears was intense. Like a steam valve going off in his brain. He shook his head to try and clear it. There were two people in line in front of him to buy drinks and cigarettes and other shit, and he was still dicking around with the pump at station 7. He was stressing out. So much so that he could barely hear the girl yelling into the intercom.

"Can you please help me out here?"

Silence over the intercom. Lyle made a decision. He needed to go out to the pump and reset it himself to get it working again. And probably punch the girl in the head, he thought for, being so fucking dumb. But he couldn't do that, he needed the job too much. He thumbed the intercom button.

"I'll be right out, ma'am. Please be patient." He quickly rang up the two customers in front of him, then fished under the counter and found what he needed.

He plopped a plastic sign with a Camel cigarette ad and the words "Back In Ten Minutes" onto the counter. Lyle swung off the stool as he locked the cash drawer, and then headed out around the display area and through the door.

It was crazy. Lyle felt extremely lightheaded as he walked out of the store. His heart was starting to pound like a jackhammer as he approached the shiny pump island. He was starting to sweat. He was having an out of body experience.

The girl waited until Lyle was close.

"This thing just won't work. And I'm late for work. Can you fucking fix it?" She was clearly frustrated.

Lyle was starting to drift. He heard the girl talking way up high in his head but he couldn't hear himself answering. He was having trouble breathing. He felt faint.

"Let me try the pump, ma'am."

Lyle took the aluminum pump handle with the long black hose from the girl, and tried to wrestle it back into its cradle in the pump. It was stiff and hard to move, and it kept getting stuck under the tire of the car. He leaned down to move the hose from under the tire. The blood rushed to his head. All of a sudden, he was incredibly dizzy. He stood up, and quickly realized that he needed to sit down.

Too late. As Lyle Cullen leaned back onto the car to stabilize himself and take a deep breath, his eyes rolled back in his head and he started to fall over. As the world started to go black, he heard the words "I'm late for fucking work!" rattle around lazily in his skull.

The last thing he remembered was the angry face of the girl yelling at him as he toppled over backwards into the tub of red plastic geraniums next to the gas pump.

* * * * *

### Searching for Answers

Carol Ferris was working late in the lab on Tuesday night. Late being seven pm, after all the other lab techs on her staff had closed down their workstations and left. The snow swirled down all day in little flakes, off and on. There was an inch or two of the soft, light powder blanketing the asphalt and cars in the business park. It was cozy and warm inside the office, as the light outside illuminated the flakes as they fell.

Carol felt protected in her little world at Tundra RX. She sat at the lab bench in the middle of a hedgerow of Pyrex flasks, heating stands and gas burners. She had on stonewashed jeans with a big bulky sweater top. It was always business casual in the lab at the company.

She pushed her glasses up onto her head as she swept her brown, shoulder-length hair back. Carol pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to cut off the headache that she felt forming deep in the back of her eyes. Something was wrong, something in the formulations of the pills that were coming in. Something wasn't meshing from the pill manufacturers that were supplying Tundra RX with their product.

Carol was resourceful, if nothing else. She had to be, now that her divorce was final from former husband, Eric. He was a prick. Now she had no one else to rely on but herself and her wits. It was the same whether it was with the Canadian hicks that frequently tried to pick her up in bars on the weekend, or right here on the lab floor at the company.

She got tipped off to the problem by Julie Sontag one day about a month ago.

"Carol, we're getting a ton of negative feedback on the call-in number about some of our products. The Web site is getting a lot of hits, too, on the quality of our meds. It's all bad stuff, potentially very bad," Julie said one morning over coffee. "I don't know where it's coming from. I'm concerned."

"I can check it out for us if you want me to," Carol said to Julie when they had spoke.

"What would you do?" Julie asked.

"Run some screens through the lab. You know, basic testing. What I usually do. I'll randomly test samples of some of the drugs that you're getting complaints about. I'll sample each of the inventory lots that we get coming in the door. I'm doing it for a lot of our other medicines now, so it's no big deal."

"Could you? I'd just like to have some real test results," Julie said. "Something that's positive that I can use to refute all these bogus claims. It's bad publicity for us. All this negative stuff on blogs floating around about Tundra RX, you know?"

"Sweetheart, consider it done," Carol said that afternoon.

So here she was, reviewing the chemical compound analysis for a shipment of Erecta that had come in last week and was now on the inventory floor. Carol read the compound analysis that her assistant, Wayne Culver, had run during the day on the drug lot. She couldn't understand the results, and thought something must be wrong. The lab report showed that this Erecta sample had a fifty percent composition of propranolol. Propranolol was a cardio vascular medication that controlled the heart and slowed down the metabolism—it was a blood pressure med.

You sure as hell wouldn't want it in Erecta, she thought, as she scanned the results. Propranolol was probably the last drug you'd want mixed into an Erecta tablet to build an erection. She couldn't understand how it was showing up. Even more importantly, there were only trace elements of the PDE-5 inhibitor, the key active compound in Erecta and all the other ED drugs. Without that, there'd be no erection. It was like a bad joke, she thought. Somebody would have to be intentionally mixing those different compounds together to get the results she was looking at. That would have to happen way back at the pill manufacturer, and nowhere else. She knew that a customer would never get an erection taking the pills on the counter in front of her. It'd be impossible.

Carol next looked at the results of the statins analysis that Wayne, her little gay, thin-as-a-wisp lab assistant, had run. She decided to run the basic screens for active ingredients for the statins, because they were the most popular class of drug that Tundra RX sold. And they sold a lot. Bill Callahan had her run screens on this class of drugs every so often so that Julie could use the test results for marketing purposes. It was usually a virtuous cycle.

At least, up until now. She shook her head as she mouthed, "What the hell?" to herself while poring over the results. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. She pulled her glasses down to concentrate on the computer printout.

There, on the sheet of paper, were the test results, stark in black and white. At least fourty percent of the chemical compounds from the tests they just ran on the shipment of Tenata were inactive. Inactive! Meaning that almost half of the cholesterol reducing effect of the drug wasn't there. Nothing!

What was even crazier was the fact that the fourty percent filler compound that was there consisted of a concentrated triglyceride fat as a substitute. Jesus Christ. Concentrated fat! That was what the drug was supposed to control and wash out of the user's system, not put in. That was probably the cheapest substitute in the world to put into a pill as a filler. But you couldn't put concentrated fat into Tenata. It would be like a time bomb for all those folks that had high cholesterol to begin with. They'd be at great risk of a clot, or an embolism, or a myocardial infarction. Or worse, a stroke. She had to verify the results with Wayne again tomorrow, first thing. These results just couldn't be right. Carol went back to her office and sat at her workstation. She quickly typed out two e-mails.

To Wayne Clough: We've got to re-run the Tenata screens. The results can't be correct. Something is clearly wrong. Check and calibrate the mass spectrometer first, before you re-run the tests. Then, test two samples from the same run you ran yesterday. Verify the results. Thx, Carol.

To Rakesh Gupta: Rakesh, we may have a problem with a recent shipment of Tenata we got from Lucky. The test results show that the pills we have are contaminated with tri-fats. Sounds crazy, I know. We're rerunning the tests tomorrow am. I'll be back to you. Regards, Carol.

She cc'ed Bill Callahan on the e-mail to Rakesh. He'd want to know if there was a problem with the drugs they were buying from the foreign pharmacy plants. She knew that he wanted top quality in the Tundra RX product line. Carol was covering her ass as well. If there was a problem in the production line, she wanted to be all over it, and for Callahan to know that she was.

She left her office and went to the lab to turn off all the lights and head out for home. It was 7:30 pm, and she was hungry. And she needed a drink badly. Maybe even two, just to relax and get away from all this stuff. That wasn't even counting the nightly stress her autistic son, Seth, provided as well.

Carol put on her suede jacket with the sheepskin fringe at the collar and the sleeve openings. It fit her perfectly, and was plenty warm for the deep Canadian winters.

As she searched for her keys and cell phone while walking down the corridor to go to the parking lot, she thought about the pill tests. Jesus Christ, she thought. If the Tenata test results are correct, there's probably a lot of people taking pills from Tundra RX to lower their cholesterol out there who are getting sicker by the minute.

By the time Carol left the building, her e-mails had shot through the Tundra RX router in Edmonton, onto the BlackBerry wireless satellite network, and then back down to the PDAs owned by Bill Callahan and Dr. Rakesh Gupta.

#

Bill Callahan was sitting at the bar at the Gold Mine restaurant at the end of the Mountain View Mall. The restaurant had been an old Long John Silver's seafood place that went bankrupt five years ago. A local bar operator, Carl Williams, leased the building cheaply, set up a restaurant, and made it into a hell of a success, feeding and watering all the Canuck locals pouring out of the business park after work. Callahan went there several times a week to knock back two or three beers and put the feedbag on. He tended toward meat—large cuts of char-grilled steak, moose or venison. The Gold Mine served it all with relish. There were plenty of real locals in the restaurant too, beefy guys in work shirts, eating meat and drinking pitchers of beer, and not a vegan in sight.

Callahan took a big slug from his Molson Golden draught in a frosty mug, and put it down on a beer coaster, savoring the cold taste as he swallowed. His BlackBerry vibrated across the bar next to his American Spirit menthols, and his keys, and car fob. He reached for it compulsively—he took e-mail 24/7 as the CEO of the company—and read the text from Carol Ferris. His stomach turned as he moved through the e-mail. When he was finished, he immediately thumbed the key over to the phone function and dialed Rakesh from his speed dial. This was a real, live phone call. No fucking e-mail. Human-to-human contact, as Callahan had to find out what the hell was going on.

Seven seconds later, he was connected. Rakesh, also a religious e-mail reader, had seen Carol's e-mail come across, but was still scrambling to put the pieces together. The second Gupta hit the green key, Callahan started in.

"Rakesh, did you just see Carol's e-mail? What the fuck is going on? Didn't we just have this very conversation yesterday in your office, or am I dreaming? Didn't we? Give me some comfort here, for chrissakes."

"Easy, Bill. I just got the e-mail a few seconds ago, and I don't know what the hell is going on either." He was still in his office, and had just dropped the Arctic Heat porn site that he was surfing. Before he really engaged with Callahan, he made sure to wipe his browser history clean to cover his tracks. He knew it didn't do any good as far as the systems people went, as they knew everything, but at least it stopped Callahan's assistant, Fran, from checking to see where he'd been after hours.

"Look, come over here right now. We need to talk face-to-face and not over the phone. Are you still in the office?"

'Yeah, where are you?" Rakesh said, as he stood up and looked for his suitcoat.

"I'm at the Gold Mine, having dinner. This is a big complication. Get over here, pronto," Callahan said. He took another long swig of beer between sentences.

"I'm on my way," Rakesh said as he grabbed his BlackBerry and briefcase, and headed for his car.

* * * * *

### Emergency Room

Lyle Cullen was in a fog, drifting in and out of consciousness. It was quiet. He was in a bed and there were subdued lights. He could feel clean cotton sheets on his right side, but not on his left. His body was limp, and he couldn't move around that well. He heard a rhythmic beeping from a monitor behind him.

Lyle opened his right eye and looked around. There was a man next to him wearing glasses and peering at a clear plastic line. He was fiddling with a connector that adjusted the flow of the liquid from a clear plastic bag that ran through the line into his arm. It was so real that Lyle imagined he could almost hear the liquid dripping from the top. The man adjusting the flow looked like an egghead. Lyle couldn't think clearly, but he was scared.

"Well, how are you doing, Mr. Cullen?" the man said, as he pushed his glasses back up onto his face and squinted at him. Lyle thought he looked like a fish, a grouper, with large, watery eyes. He had a quiet way of talking. Lyle made an attempt to respond to the man.

"Thhhhh. Thhhhh." It was all that would come out of Lyle's mouth. His speech had left him. He ended up pointing. His bowel tightened, for good reason.

"I'm Dr. Goldman. You're here at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. You had a small stroke yesterday while you were working, and you passed out. You've been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours."

Lyle tried to get another word out, but nothing came. His tongue felt leaden. It was too big for his mouth. How did he get here, he wondered? He was terrified.

"We took you by ambulance from your job at the Quik Mart yesterday. When you fell, you hit your head on the way down, so you've had some secondary neurological impact."

Lyle knew he was in deep trouble now. He looked up at the doctor with fear in his eyes.

"Phhhhft," he managed to push out of his mouth. His eyes said it all. He was still having trouble focusing, as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

"Don't worry. You'll be fine. You just came from an MRI, and your brain functioning is consistent with a person who just had a minor stroke. Everything is working. You've had some impact on your left side and with your speech, but we can address these things, Mr. Cullen, with occupational and speech therapy over in the rehab clinic."

The rehab clinic, Lyle thought. He panicked. He envisioned a world of old droolers and colostomy bags. Fuck no! He fought to roll over and get the hell out of the angled bed. His right leg was wrapped in some kind of sleeve that kept gripping and releasing him. He couldn't feel his left leg. He also couldn't feel his left arm. His left fucking arm! It was numb. Nothing was moving on his left side. He was in full-blown panic now. He tried to scream, but his asphalted tongue prevented that.

"Aaahhhh!" he gargled. "Aaaaccckk!!"

Dr. Goldman continued to methodically examine Lyle, like a prize fish on a bait table ready to be filleted. He lifted his johnnie, and tapped his stomach with two fingers. He pulled out a sharp, little pointy thing, and ran it up and down Lyle's arms and legs.

"Do you feel this, Mr. Cullen?" the doctor asked.

Lyle looked away as he started to cry. This was not happening, he thought. This couldn't be happening. With a superhuman effort, he tried to refocus on the doctor and what he was saying. He forgot his name already.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another person come in, wearing a white coat. Another fucking doctor, he thought. She was a woman. She was an attractive, dark-skinned woman. She looked Indian.

"What is his status, Dr. Goldman?" he heard her say. Her nameplate said Dr. Jalapur—Neurology Resident." Lyle didn't know what the hell neurology was, but he knew he'd find out soon enough.

"Mr. Cullen has just regained consciousness. His speech is impacted, as is his left side's functioning. His MRI is normal, post-stroke. Slight patterning in the occipital lobe."

"Any neurological history?"

"None. He presented very strangely. He appears to be on a course of statins. The EMTs found a pill vial in his pocket for Tenata, 150 milligrams. A high dose that should have provided some prophylactic benefit for his cholesterol, but he had none. His blood work was strange: his LDLs were 255, the level of triglyceride fat in his blood was dangerous, it was so high. It no doubt aided the formation of the clot."

"Very strange for being on a course of statins, don't you think?" the young, attractive Dr. Jalapur said as she studied Lyle's chart.

"Yes, something is wrong," Dr. Goldman said. "He's starting to respond now, though. We switched him off the Tenata and on to Centixx. Maybe that will be more effective. His blood work from this morning is much better, and his LDL and HDL numbers are near normal now."

"Have you seen a case like this before?" Dr. Jalapur said, looking over at her supervisor.

"No, never. His fat levels have been high for a while, though. His eyes show yellow. He was a walking time bomb. He was lucky this happened so close to the hospital."

"I'll do some research on this kind of Tenata reaction, and see if anything's written up," the young Indian doctor said.

"Maybe there's a JAMA paper in here for you somewhere, doctor," Goldman said as he smiled. "Your young career will be burnished early on. And I am privileged to be a part of it."

Both doctors laughed and went back to poking and prodding Lyle as they talked and read his chart.

Lyle was defenseless. All he could remember was the gas pump handle and the woman yelling at him, screaming at him about the pump. At least it was quiet here, with just the faint beeping of the machine in the background, pumping something into his body through the tangle of lines in his left arm.

Lyle knew that he was in trouble. He tried to roll over onto his good side, but the fact that his left side was not responding wasn't helping matters. Screw it, he thought, as he turned his head to the right, relaxed, and drifted back into a deep sleep.

#

Bill Callahan sat at the bar at the Gold Mine and ordered another beer. He started to cut into his moose steak, a big slab that he ordered medium rare. He shook about half a bottle of A-1 Steak Sauce into a puddle on the plate next to the French fries. He was half on a diet to lose a few pounds, so he was limiting carbs tonight to just beers. The steak and fries were pure protein he thought. And he needed protein, based on the stress his body was under now.

He had a small side shot of Dewar's scotch that he sipped as he ate. His mind was racing. What the hell was going on with the pills? How did Carol find out about the bogus ones? A thousand questions, and all of them bad.

Rakesh came in ten minutes later and spotted Callahan at the bar. He slipped in to the seat next to him that Callahan had put his jacket on to reserve.

"Kettle One martini," Rakesh said as he sat down. He was the best-dressed guy in the restaurant, with his custom, dark-patterned sportcoat over light-brown slacks. He was wearing black kiltie slip-on loafers with a nice polish that he got in Montreal. He looked like a Canadian cabinet member.

Callahan frowned as he looked at Rakesh and waited for him to speak. As he chewed his steak waiting for Rakesh's drink to come, they made small talk and watched the Maple Leafs on the flat-screen in front of them. Callahan could see that Rakesh was nervous, as he fidgeted with his car keys and fingered the salted nuts on the bar.

The martini came, and the doctor took a long sip that drained about a third of the contents right off. Callahan watched the liquid go down Rakesh's throat. When Rakesh put the glass down on the bar, Callahan dove in.

"Rakesh, what the hell is going on? How does Carol know about the bad pills?" He put down his fork and picked up his beer in his right hand, as he waited for an answer. He knew that he couldn't go into a tirade here at the bar, as someone could overhear the conversation. He also knew that yelling would only rattle his chief medical officer, and he needed his help to solve the problem. So he had to be constructive and calm.

"I've no idea, Bill. I really don't know. The e-mail we got from her tonight was a total surprise. I don't know why she tested pills without my direction."

"I thought that you controlled what she tested and what she inspected. What the hell? Are you in control of her group or not?"

"I thought I did, too. I'm very careful about the pills that I have her 'randomly' inspect."

"Jesus Christ. Randomly inspect? What are you talking about?" Callahan asked as he took another sip of beer. "It feels like Carol's a loose cannon."

"I'm just joking, Bill. There's nothing random about it. Carol is only testing pills that I give her, handpicked, from the inventory. I'm checking them by barcode, so I know which shipments are coming in. I know exactly the production runs that aren't full-strength. Carol never tests those pills."

"Sounds like you're wrong, Rakesh. She's testing some of those pills, and we both have an e-mail to prove it. She has test results that show there's a problem in our inventory. You and I have got to step in tomorrow and fix it."

"I know. And it's fixable. I've already been thinking about it. I can get some fresh samples to Carol tomorrow morning for additional testing that will show they came from the same sample lot. The pills will be one hundred percent real. I'll change the barcodes."

"Can you get it done tonight?" Callahan asked as he cut through another piece of the grilled moose steak. He dipped it in the big puddle of steak sauce, and popped it in his mouth. He was starting to relax a little. He thought that the problem was probably fixable by Rakesh.

"Yeah, no problem. I'll go back to the office after this to get it set up. We can't have this be a problem. I agree with you," Rakesh said as he continued to sip his martini.

The bartender came over and looked at him. She was an attractive blond with long hair pulled up in a bun. "Another round, guys?" she said, wiping up the bar around the two men as she leaned in and spoke. Rakesh ordered another martini. Callahan ordered another beer and scotch chaser.

Callahan finished eating, pushed his plate away and continued to talk to Rakesh. "I don't know why Carol would test pills randomly, though. We've got to find that out. I'll meet with her tomorrow to get to the bottom of this." Callahan shook his head again. "We can't have her just randomly testing pills. We'll be screwed."

"Yeah, we can't have this unravel any more," Rakesh answered.

"I think we need to let the altered pills flush through the system and then get clean inventory to backfill it for a while," Callahan said.

"I think you may be right," Rakesh said. "We'll stop the fake substitutions for a bit, then start up again on a different high-margin product."

The two men continued to drink and talk. They created a plan to flush out some of the bad inventory in the system, and produce some clean test results for the staff to see and believe in. They needed a clean track record.

"I'm going back to the office now to fix this mess," Rakesh said as he drained his martini. "Tell me what Carol says to you tomorrow morning." He dropped twenty dollars on the bar, got up and headed out of the restaurant.

Callahan ordered another beer and decided to watch the third period of the hockey game at the bar. There was nothing else he could do tonight, as it was in Rakesh's hands, for now. The good-looking blond bartender came back and he started chatting with her. When she left to work the far end of the bar, Callahan took out his BlackBerry and quickly sent off an e-mail to Carol Ferris, asking her to set up a meeting for the two of them in the morning. He needed to get to the bottom of the pill-sampling fiasco quickly.

* * * * *

### Restoration

Susan Jefferson didn't call Mike Smith for over a week. She was too rattled from the last weekend. Plus she was too busy working, making money. She had a raft of sales calls come in during the past two weeks, and they all were for big-volume data storage purchases. She had to visit two of the clients to close the sales. So she did a three-day trip to Chicago and Cleveland. In Cleveland, she scored, as she was able to close a big order with Asperix, a medical device manufacturer. So she celebrated; she stayed in Cleveland on Thursday night, and was planning on flying home to Boston on Friday.

Susan went to a great steakhouse in Cleveland called Nick's for dinner by herself. It had a lively bar, and was crowded with hip, young corporate types when she walked in. It was six pm, and she thought that she might call Mike later that night to begin to patch things up. She had a small steak for dinner, and two glasses of merlot to celebrate the big order that she got on the trip. She was having a great year on the sales circuit.

When she got back to her room, Susan undressed and put on her XL T-shirt, and got comfortable on the bed. She fired up her laptop, and began to search for drug information on the Web. Something stuck in her head about companies that sold fake drugs over the Internet, and how they did it. She googled all kinds of keywords, and started getting a big volume of material. Now she just had to piece it all together. She spent about an hour searching through the information, and then fell asleep with the laptop on her chest.

Susan woke up with a jerk thirty minutes later. She went to the bathroom and got ready for bed. As she brushed her teeth, she decided to get to the bottom of Mike's problem and help him fix it. She liked him too much to let an impotency issue screw up their relationship. She had been reading about fake pills from Internet pharmacies in Canada that sounded suspiciously like Tundra RX. Susan thought that Mike may be getting scammed by the company. Why not? The pieces all fit together. She vowed to do more research back in Boston as she drifted off to sleep.

#

Susan's flight left on time for Boston the next morning. She gazed out the window once they leveled off. It was a beautiful day, a Friday, and the plane was high above the cloud base, in a field of blue. The sun was bright as it came in big shafts through the Plexiglas windows onto her face. She squinted, and enjoyed the sensation of being in a warm cocoon.

Susan felt renewal. She closed a big deal, and she was also committed to helping Mike. She had feelings for him that went way beyond the sex. She was starting to like him and had invested enough emotion in their blossoming relationship that she was not ready to just walk away.

"Something to drink?" the cute flight attendant, with Christine on her plastic nametag, asked as she pushed her cart down the aisle. The ride was smooth. Susan decided to celebrate: it was the end of the week, and she wasn't doing any work at home today, other than push a few e-mails.

"Bloody Mary, please," she said.

"Sure." Christine smiled. "Five dollars, please."

Susan had the money ready as the flight attendant handed her a vodka nip and a can of V-8 juice. She mixed the drink, stirred it, and drifted off in thought for a moment before tasting it. She was anxious to address Mike's issues, whatever it took. She brought the Blood Mary to her lips, and tasted the spicy, cold liquid as she weighed her problems.

She wondered what she could do to fix the situation. His supposed impotence problem was at the root of it all. Susan knew that Mike was worried about his staying power. No matter how many times she told him that he was great in bed, he was insecure. Most men were, she knew. Older guys were even more vulnerable.

But she had to admit that they had great sex when he took the Erecta. So, Susan wasn't ready to give up on the enhancement drugs immediately. But it was so strange, she thought. She remembered reading an article recently in the Boston Globe about bad pills from drug companies outside the US; how it was screwing up people who were taking the pills they purchased from these foreign companies; and how it was hard to prosecute these companies outside the United States.

She wondered if that could be it. Maybe Tundra RX was selling bad pills. It was possible. Mike only had problems when he took the pills. But then again, sometimes the pills worked great. Susan couldn't figure it out.

She drank her Bloody Mary, and thought about a game plan. She knew that if it were a drug problem, then they could probably fix it easy enough. But if it were a problem in Mike's head, with his state police ego, it was going to be tougher to resolve. Susan was a businesswoman, so she picked the problem that was fixable first. So she assumed that Mike might be getting bad pills. It would be strange, though, that all the pills he was getting weren't bad, but she was going to check it out anyway. She'd start today.

The plane landed in Boston and Susan made her way south, toward home. "Mike, it's Susan," she said on her cell phone as she drove her blue BMW down Route 3 heading toward Cohasset. The nice weather had followed her from Cleveland, and it was a beautiful day with few clouds and bright sunshine.

Mike wasted no time, as he knew that he didn't have much time to fix the situation. "Look Susan, I'm sorry about last week. I don't know what the hell happened. I'm just screwed up. Maybe we shouldn't see each other for a while until I get my head on straight."

Susan knew where Mike was heading and she cut him off quickly. "Mike, I like you. A lot. We get along great. I think there's something else going on, sweetheart. I've been thinking about it while I was in Ohio. I think that you may be getting bad pills, pills that don't work. You know, bad Erecta."

"C'mon, you don't believe that do you?" Mike said as he sat at his kitchen table, listening to what Susan was saying. He had never thought about the possibility of the drugs he was taking being bad.

"Hon, there's a lot of this happening in the online pill world. Just go on the Web. Where did you say you were getting your drugs from?"

"This place called Tundra RX. In Canada—Edmonton, I think. The place seems okay so far. It looks legit. And besides, some of the times I took the Erecta, the stuff worked great. Remember?" Mike said. He was very skeptical about what Susan was saying, but he began to turn the possibility of something being wrong with the drugs over in his mind. It would definitely fit with some of the weird things that had been happening. His policeman's thought process started to kick in. All of a sudden, he was presented with a new thesis for the crime.

"You're right. But sometimes, nothing happened after you took one of the pills too. Remember? Like last week, when you couldn't get it up. My right hand is still sore, Mike. You've got to keep an open mind on this. Think about what I'm saying."

"Yeah, maybe," he said. "Maybe you're right. What do you think we should do?"

"Well, I'm going on the Web this afternoon and do more research on fake pills. Then I'm going to do some research on Tundra RX, too."

"I got their name from a trooper that I work with. He buys vitamin supplements, and he hasn't had any problems with their stuff so far."

"So what? That's vitamins. That doesn't prove anything. You don't even know what pills he's buying from them. There could be just one supplier that sells them bad medicine. It happens."

"Go ahead and check them out. If it's not in my head, I'll be real happy," Mike said, as he was searching for a ray of hope.

"Indulge me for a little bit. I might find something. Anyway, how about dinner tonight, to patch things up between us?" Susan asked as she swung off the highway and into the Whole Foods parking lot off the exit. "I'm going shopping now 'cause I've got absolutely nothing in the house. How about fish?"

"You're on. I'll get some wine, and bring dessert," Mike said as jumped at the chance to patch things up with Susan. He liked her too much to just have it all fall apart.

"Okay," Susan said. "But do me a favor: don't take any Erecta today before you come. I want you natural—flaws and everything."

'Okay, but you're going to get a beaten-down state cop with limited ability," Mike said as he popped a beer from his refrigerator.

"That's exactly what I want," Susan said. "A one-shot wonder. See you tonight. I can't wait." And with that she flipped her cell shut, got out of her car, and headed into the store.

* * * * *

### Parry & Thrust

Carol Ferris was sitting in Bill Callahan's office. She was dressed casually in fitted slacks and a blue shirt. The top two buttons were open, and she wore an attractive turquoise necklace. She had big breasts, and she accentuated her assets in a professional way whenever she could. Callahan looked and lingered on Carol's décolletage for a microsecond, but not long enough for her to catch him doing it.

"What's going on with the tests on the pills you did yesterday?" He was being extra careful with Carol, as he knew that she had no idea that pills were being altered at the company. She had stumbled onto this little secret profit center that he and Rakesh had created, and now he had to lead her in a different direction.

"Well, it's very strange. I got a note from Julie Sontag last week. She asked me to run some tests to prove the strength of two of our drugs. She needed some good results as PR for our marketing. She's been getting an uptick of bad press lately, particularly over the customer support line on our products.

"What do you mean?" Callahan asked.

"She told me that in the last month or so, complaints about some of our drugs have increased by as much as fifty percent," Carol said. "That she's gone from five negative calls a day to ten to twelve. She wanted to get some clean test results that she could publish and use for promotion."

"Jesus Christ. That makes sense."

"Yeah, that's what we all thought. So I had Wayne run some tests, and we got strange results. Four of the five samples we ran for purity all tested bad."

"What do you mean bad?" Callahan said.

"Well the erectile drugs were essentially placebos and believe it or not, we found propranolol in some of the samples."

"Propranolol? That's high blood pressure medication that slows your metabolism down. That wouldn't be too good for getting an erection, would it?" Callahan said.

"No kidding. It's the last thing you'd want," Carol said. "I checked the manufacturing data. The bad pills came from China."

"Could it have been just poor quality samples?," Callahan asked as he started to steer the conversation.

"Pretty unlikely," Carol said. "There were too many bad pills in the four test batches that we took, and remember—we did controlled testing."

"Unbelievable," Callahan said. "Look Carol, you need to get together with Rakesh this afternoon. I want you to come back to me with a second testing plan. Let's check some more samples, and see if this is more widespread than we thought. This would be a PR nightmare for us if we have a real problem."

"I agree. I'll set something up with Rakesh today, and we'll come back to you with a full testing protocol."

"How many strange results did you get?"

"It's funny, it just came back in some of the statins and one of the erectile drug sets. It's really random."

"Good. Since it's not across the board, it may be just a bad production run or two. Unfortunately, these things happen in our world."

"I guess so. But they shouldn't," Carol said as she collected her papers and got up to go. "These are high grade pharmaceuticals we're talking about."

"That's why we have you guys to pick this shit up when it happens," Callahan said. "We've got to watch our suppliers better, going forward. Let's regroup tomorrow morning. You, me, Rakesh, and Julie. Let's get a battle plan in place."

"Okay. I'll work with Rakesh and we'll draft a protocol this afternoon," Carol said as she got up and walked out of the room. Once she was around the corner, Callahan snapped back to business.

He picked up his handset and punched in x3425. Dr. Rakesh Gupta picked up on the first ring. Callahan dispensed with the civilities and got right to the matter.

"We've got a fucking problem and we can't let it fester, Rakesh. Carol's got a bunch of bad test results. We're screwed if they get out to the general public. You need to create a testing protocol with her that seems like it's tough and thorough. But you've got to be sure that every pill that she tests is one hundred percent pure. No exceptions. We've got to nip this in the bud. Got it?"

"Bill, I'm ahead of you already. The test pills for her are all set to go. I'm creating a testing protocol that's pure textbook—it's going to be deep and thorough for each brand of pill she looks at. Don't worry, I will personally give her every pill that she tests, and they'll all be at full strength.

"Good. Maybe we can head this thing off before it becomes a train wreck. And make sure that you act like you're full of concern when we meet. A little empathy goes a long way in solving these problems."

"I know. I'm a doctor, remember? I was trained in bedside manner."

"The only bedside manner you know is when you're diddling one of those Montreal whores in your penthouse. This is a little different."

"I'll turn it on, believe me," Rakesh said. "Do you want me to call Zhu Wen to stop production of the bogus pills for a while, until this mess gets cleaned up?"

For one brief instant Callahan pondered the possibility of stopping the production of the fake pills to let the crisis blow over, and to relieve the pressure on the system. But that would have meant that the pure profit would stop as well, the kind of money that comes from selling inert pills to customers that cost five cents apiece for between $3.50 to $7.50 per pill. The moment passed. The profit motive prevailed in Callahan.

"Absolutely not. We need to keep making money while we can. This may not last forever. Tell the guys to keep making the pills but we've got to keep tighter control in the warehouse. Carol and Wayne can't have any access to them directly. It all has to be through you."

"Not a problem," Rakesh said. "I'll get on it straightaway."

#

Two days later, Lyle Cullen woke up. Really woke up. To the reality that he had had a small stroke, and that he was in deep shit. He counted that he had been wheeled down the hall and put in the elevator six times at the Sisters of Mercy hospital. He had every kind of doctor poke and prod him, and ask him the same questions twenty-five times. He had the cardiovascular doctors for his heart and his blood pressure. He had a whole army of neurologists poking at him with sharp little pointy tuning forks, asking him if he ever felt weak before his stroke last week. He had every PET and MRI scan that was available.

Lyle wanted to tell them all that he felt fine right up until he crashed into the tub of plastic geraniums that morning. And the fucking nurses. The nurses kept attacking and working on him at all times of the day and night. It was endless. Some of them were young and good-looking, and some of them were hardened, middle-aged passive-aggressive types. He knew at least two of them that could probably toss a hay bale twenty feet, from the way they manhandled him in his bed. He could never get any sleep to get healthy and get the hell out of there. They were always waking him up with blood pressure checks and needle sticks in the middle of the night. It was awful.

Lyle knew that he was the recipient of bad karma, no question. But the good news was that his speech was slowly coming back, and he started to have some feeling in his left leg. His left arm started working again, too.

Off to the right of his bed, was the fair Sheila. She was now transformed into the concerned significant other, coming in every day and listening to the doctors and asking the nurses good questions. She was sitting in a chair, looking over at Lyle.

Sheila was dressed in jeans and a sweater, and her dark hair was pulled up in a bun. She was good-looking for a mid-forties woman. She was a little rough around the edges, but she had an attractiveness underneath, a soft aspect to her white-trashiness. Lyle was happy she was there. His ex-wife hadn't come to the hospital, or even called him once yet.

Thirty minutes later, a tall doctor in a crisp, white jacket came in. He walked over to Lyle and stood next to him as he pushed the big rolling table out of the way.

"Mr. Cullen. I'm Dr. Archer, and I'm the senior resident in the neurological service here at the hospital. I've got some good news for you." Dr. Archer was a good-looking, all-American doctor with dark hair and a pocket full of pens in his white jacket. He had that easy Midwestern air, and radiated confidence as he spoke. Lyle's bowel immediately relaxed when he heard the words "good news," although he had to be careful. Around here, good news could mean that they were going to put two more third-year residents on your case, work you up with ten new tests, and give you a warm water enema in front of five twenty year-old nursing students. He was wary. So far, he had heard very little good news in this place about anything concerning his health.

"Yesss?" Lyle said with his tongue still not fully functioning, and occasionally a little thick. His speech was coming back, but he slurred a few words as he spoke.

"We looked at your PET scan yesterday and there's marked improvement in your brain functioning in the area where you had the stroke."

"Hood!" Lyle shot back. "That's hood."

"We think that the blood flow back to that area will slowly get better and you'll be on the road to recovery. So we're going to let you out tomorrow to get some rest. Then we'll start you on a rehabilitation program." Dr. Archer put his hand on Lyle's shoulder.

Lyle's eyes widened and started to glass over. He was ecstatic. He'd be fucking out of there soon. Amen.

"Phank youu Doctor. Phat's great news!" And it was. Lyle was as happy as if he'd received a commutation of a life sentence from the state prison over near Atlanta. He'd be a free man to watch television again in his living room. He cried.

"But I've got to ask you several questions, first," the doctor continued. "We found some strange results in your pills that we had tested. They were in your pocket when you came into the emergency room last week when you had your event. Do you remember those?"

"Yesss. I bought them on the Internet. Tundra RX," Lyle wheezed out.

"Did anybody change those pills you had? Did anyone give you different pills?"

"Nooo. Those are the phillls I got in the mail from the company," Lyle said.

Dr. Archer looked at Lyle, nodded his head and pursued his lips.

"Well Mr. Cullen, there might have been a problem with those drugs. So we want you to use the hospital's drugs for now. And when you get home next week, I want you to get your drugs from the local pharmacy. You know, at CHP or even Costgo. That way, we'll know what you're getting."

"Phokay," Lyle said. Shit, he'd say anything to get the inflatable boots off his legs and get the hell off the bedpan and out of the hospital. He was desperate.

"Good. We'll get your discharge papers started, and you should be ready to get out of here in the morning. You're on the road to recovery." With that, he checked a few of Lyle's charts, then left the room.

Lyle was overjoyed. He held Sheila's hand and she smiled back at him. She was ready to get him home too. She figured that some of her chicken soup with the carrots and the celery would be just the recipe to get Lyle back on the road to health.

"That's great news, honey," Sheila said as she squeezed Lyle's hand.

Lyle smiled back, happy for the first time in over two weeks. "Yep. I phan't wait to pho home! Today."

"Not today honey, tomorrow," Sheila said. "Look, I'm going to get a cup of coffee downstairs. I'll be right back."

And with that, Lyle's girlfriend got up to go downstairs to the hospital cafeteria. As she was leaving the room, Sheila wondered, in a semi-concerned way, whether Lyle would ever be able to have sex with her again. She wasn't a girl, but she was still too young and healthy to take up the sexless life of a sister of mercy. She had needs, even as a divorced mother. And there were a lot of cute doctors in the hospital, she thought, as she waited for the down elevator to stop on her floor.

#

New Bill Targets Rogue Druggists on the Internet

Wall Street Journal

October 9, 2008

President Bush is set to sign legislation that will help the federal government crack down on hundreds of rogue Internet pharmacies that peddle controlled substances like the painkiller Vicodin or the stimulant Ritalin.

The bill reflects growing concern among parents and public health experts that certain online pharmacies enable almost anyone to purchase drugs with a few mouse clicks and without seeing a doctor or getting a valid prescription. Experts believe the Web sites are fueling an increase in the abuse of prescription drugs.

The legislation, approved by Congress last month, aims to make it harder for people to obtain the drugs by prohibiting online pharmacies from dispensing medications to anyone without a valid prescription from a doctor who has examined the purchaser in person at least once.

The bill has limitations, however. For one, it's not aimed at online pharmacies based outside the country. Also, the bill doesn't address non-controlled prescription drugs, such as the erectile-dysfunction drugs Viagra and Cialis, hair-loss drug Propecia, painkiller Celebrex and muscle relaxant Soma, that are popular on rogue sites. Finally, the bill does not create new requirements for Internet search engines, credit card companies, or package-delivery concerns whose services are used in online pharmacy transactions.

Sarah Rubenstein.

* * * * *

### Examining The Facts

"This is getting out of fucking control," Callahan said as he sat in Rakesh's office. Whenever he had to do some good, old-fashioned ass-kicking, he went straight to that person's office or cube in the company, no messing around.

Callahan looked at the Pakistani doctor for further signs of addiction. He was wary as he watched Rakesh's eyes. They seemed steady, though. He looked at Rakesh's hands for the shakes. That was always a giveaway, the hands. His hands had no tremors. They were on top of his desk and his fingers weren't twitching. Rakesh had on a Brooks Brothers rep tie and a pale-pink shirt. He looked remarkably good under the circumstances, Callahan thought.

"Why do you say that?" Rakesh asked Callahan. "I spoke with Carole this morning and reset the testing parameters. We brought Wayne into the meeting, too. I convinced them that the results they got were abnormal. That it was either a fault in the test equipment or the pills were part of a screwed up manufacturing run at the factory."

"Why would they believe that?" Callahan asked. "The explanations don't jive with reality. Pharmaceutical manufacturing firms just don't screw up on their pill production. It's too precise a science."

"That's true. But some companies screw up. Sometimes lab equipment isn't set properly either. But you're right—they probably aren't convinced yet. I think that the protocols we set up for the testing going forward will give them confidence that we'll be thorough."

"Yeah. And?" Callahan asked.

"And I'm going to feed them nothing but unadulterated, one hundred percent pure medicine going forward. The real stuff. We agreed that I will pick the samples from the incoming lots as they are set up in the warehouse. I know which drug shipments are coming in that are fake, so those are going to have a special spot in the racks. There won't be any samples taken from those lots, you can bet your ass. I'll cover it, don't worry."

"I am worried," Callahan said in response. "A lot. We've got to be careful here. You were already supposed to be taking care of the situation and instead of getting better, it's gotten worse. Remember, we can be out of business in a New York minute."

"I know." Rakesh nervously ran his hand through his thick, black hair as he spoke. He had it cut very stylish, slightly long. Callahan thought that he looked like a model, like a Bollywood star from Calcutta. "I'm going to watch the testing and oversight very carefully from now on," Rakesh continued. "I can't risk going back to another, low paying straight job."

"You're finally getting smart" Callahan said. He picked up his BlackBerry, thumbed his messages, and was momentarily distracted. "We've got to police this better, going forward. Both of us."

#

Julie Sontag sat in her office and frowned. The cold winter sunlight streamed in through the window. She was a classic Canadian beauty with high cheekbones and a fair complexion. Her hair was pulled back in an antique red clip. Her lips were in a small pout as she scrolled down the fifteen-inch flat-screen monitor on her desk. She was troubled.

Julie was on the Web site of the Canadian Consumer Affairs Board. The CCAB was the place for complaints by citizens against companies that engaged in questionable business practices. It was a laundry list of hundreds of companies in all areas of business that consumers had problems with.

She knew that it was no big deal if a company were on the list, because there were a lot of cranks out there with an axe to grind. They sat at home e-mailing bullshit complaints about petty things to the CCAB for some satisfaction or for revenge. Oftentimes, a resolution never came. There were literally hundreds of complaints about companies in every part of the business world. The CCAB was a federal organization, so it was slow to respond, and it generally focused on areas that had high political impact. Like oil and utility companies, for instance.

She was surfing in the retail pharmaceutical sales area. It was a listing of complaints that had been filed at the Board by consumers against drug companies. She scrolled down through over one hundred companies that had complaints lodged against them. The companies included the usual Big Pharma ones like Mack, Gastro and Smith Planter. There were a lot of complaints against them about price fixing and monopolistic behavior. She read through some of the postings, and realized that there was a fair amount of crank stuff mixed in with legitimate complaints. She scrolled down further and finally found the section she wanted: the one for on-line drug retailers. She was able to sort the complaints by company name after fumbling around with the slow, kludgy software.

Finally, what she wanted popped up. There, in sharp contrast on the screen, was Tundra RX listed twenty-three times. Twenty-three times! Her heart leaped. What the hell was going on, she asked herself? Why was Tundra RX showing up so much? She usually would find one or two complaints per month, but not twenty-three complaints. And all in the space of about ninety days. Christ! She was slightly panicked.

Julie took a deep breath and began opening and reading each complaint. Some of them were about pricing and how Tundra RX quoted one price on its Web site, and billed for another when the products were shipped. She could deal with those. But there were a lot—seventeen in total that she counted—that were complaints about the drugs. People getting drugs that they claimed didn't have any effect, things like that. Julie knew that they could effectively defend against most of these complaints. Drugs interacted with the human metabolism and drug-taking had different effects on virtually everybody.

There were a lot of complaints about the erectile dysfunction drugs, too. The customers were just not getting erections as promised. There could be a thousand reasons for these ED drugs not working, Julie knew, and most importantly, the psychological makeup of the pill-taker was critically important. Again, Tundra RX could probably defend pretty easily here.

She spent thirty minutes quickly reading all the complaints that were filed. Most of them were pretty open-ended, and Tundra RX could produce good answers, probably for all of them. The simple fact that people thought that their drugs weren't working was not necessarily the company's fault. But when she stepped back and looked at the complaints in total, she had a gnawing concern.

It seemed that there were a lot of complaints about drugs not working, or people getting sick from taking Tundra RX pills. Unless the pills were actually tested, these claims were basically not verifiable. But this mushrooming of complaints about the pills coupled with the testing that Carol Ferris and Wayne did last week was disconcerting. She wondered if there really could be a problem with the pills.

Julie knew that Tundra RX was getting its pills from international manufacturers in Mexico and China. Christ! Who knew what was being mixed into the batches of pills in those faraway countries? She knew that there were international drug standards in place, but did they mean anything? If the company was getting ripped off with bad pills, she needed to warn Bill and Rakesh so that they could take action. If Tundra RX were found to be selling bogus pills to its customers, it would be a public relations nightmare. She had to dig deeper here.

Julie wrote down a summary of all the complaints that were filed with the CCAB. She was going to write a memo to Bill and Rakesh that summarized her findings. She'd suggest that they do a lot more research into the pills they were getting from their suppliers. She assumed that everything was okay, and that these customers were just cranks. They were everywhere, she knew. A good, thorough report would go a long way to refute any potential bad press that could bubble up if a journalist had an axe to grind.

Julie logged off the CCAB Web site and planned her strategy. She went into Outlook and looked at her bosses' schedules. She set up a meeting with Bill and Rakesh for Wednesday. That gave her plenty of time to write her memo and plot out a strategy. Bill Callahan, she knew, would want to see a response already laid out for him rather than her just being Chicken Little and yelling that the sky was falling. He would want a plan, not mass hysteria.

* * * * *

### Parallel Tracks

"I did some research today, honey. You' won't believe what I found," Susan said. She and Mike were sitting in her living room before dinner with glasses of wine—a nice, subtle Pinot Grigio to set the mood. Susan had two big overstuffed chairs in the corner near the full-length windows that they were sitting in side-by-side.

"What did you find?" Mike said. He was nervous and a little expectant. This was the first time he and Susan had been together in two weeks, since the fiasco, since his miserable performance at Susan's house that afternoon. He still shuddered. Susan sipped her wine and looked relaxed.

"Look, it's all good news I think," Susan said. She was happy to be with Mike again. Sitting there with him, she knew it was right to try and fix their relationship. And she was committed to doing it. She stroked his hand on top of the table as she talked.

"Yes, I spent all afternoon researching the online pharmaceutical industry and how it works. There's some amazing stuff there," she said. "I'm going to be an expert."

"Why are you doing this?" Mike asked. He was getting her good vibes, and after several sips of the white wine, was starting to relax himself. He was looking for any ray of hope. He didn't want Susan to dump him. "Are you thinking that there's something wrong with my pills and that it's not me?"

"That's exactly what I'm thinking," Susan said as she sipped her drink and leaned toward him. "Listen, the majority of this online pharmacy sales stuff is a scam. These companies set up quickly, sell basically anything, and are beyond the bounds of the law if they're caught. They tend to dissolve overnight. It's an amazing business model. That's why there are so many of them on the Web right now. There are no barriers to entry, and they're all weakly capitalized."

Mike furrowed his brow. "You think Tundra RX is bogus? They've sold me a bunch of stuff over the last six months. It all seems good.

"That's just it," Susan said. "It seems good. But is it? I did a lot of research today. Good stuff. There's a huge problem with these companies selling adulterated products. They buy their stock from drug manufacturing companies all over the world. There are suppliers in Mexico, Nicaragua, China, you name it." Susan was getting excited as her finger tapped the table.

Mike was absentmindedly fingering the stem of his wine glass as he listened to Susan. "I thought this business was highly regulated, and drugs were being inspected all over the world, at entry points coming in to the country?" he asked.

"Well, that's the interesting part," Susan continued. "These online resellers sometimes set up these dummy companies in areas of the world called free-trade zones. These are little havens in strange places, like Dubai."

"Over in the Middle East? Why?"

"It turns out that the bogus drugs are made in plants in China or Central America, and then sent to the free-trade zone. Nobody inspects them on the way in. Or they're able to bribe the customs people. The drugs sit there for a month, get cleansed on a paper basis, and then get shipped out as legitimate to resellers all over the world."

"So is it just the drug manufacturers that are doing the scamming? Or both them and the sales companies?" Mike was getting interested now. His policeman's instincts were aroused, and the things Susan was telling him started to make sense.

"Could be one group. Could be both. Who knows?" Susan took a deep breath and let it all sink in with Mike. She took a big sip of her white wine and paused for a minute. George Benson played in the background, setting the mood with a mellow riff.

Mike looked at her in her animated state. He could see why she was a good saleswoman. She was passionate about whatever she put her energy into. She was sexy like this, too. He didn't want to lose her. If there was any truth to this stuff Susan was talking about now, he was going to pursue it with a vengeance and nail the fuckers, no question. If his erection problem wasn't because of a head problem, some psychological bullshit, he'd jump all over it. Like any cop, he was terrified of going to a shrink. He'd do anything to avoid it. But it sounded too easy, too pat to blame it all on bogus drugs. He was still a little wary.

Susan continued. "So let me tell you what I did next. I Googled Tundra RX and went through a whole lot of background stuff on them. They seem legitimate. They started up about four years ago up in Canada when the big online Canadian sales boom started. They have offices in Edmonton, and a warehouse there too. They even have a Canadian MD on-staff as a chief medical officer. So they have every aspect of legitimacy."

"Well, that's not pointing to fraud or murky stuff," Mike said. "Shit." He swirled what was left in his wine glass and drank it in one swift motion. The company sounded legit.

"So here's where it gets interesting," Susan continued. "I finally got over to the consumer affairs department in Canada. These sales are all highly regulated, and the companies need a lot of licenses."

"Does Tundra RX have all theirs?" Mike asked.

"They do. They're buttoned down, as far as paperwork goes. They have a big law firm in Canada that does all their filings."

"So it sounds like there're no holes there," Mike said grudgingly.

"True. But I stumbled from there on to the consumer complaints section of the Web site. It's a listing of the formal complaints filed against all online drug companies over the last twenty four months," Susan said. She smiled and arched her eyebrows up as she looked at Mike.

"And?" he said expectantly.

"Well interestingly, there have been a ton of complaints against Tundra RX over the past six months. Now, a lot are about price fixing, and how they quote one price on their Web site and charge another."

"But that's just bullshit stuff," Mike said. "I'm sure they can argue that all day and night and come out clean."

"You're right. I think so, too," Susan said. "But the interesting thing was that there were also about ten complaints that I counted that talked about drugs that people bought that were not working. And seven of them were specifically about Erecta! Mike, people were complaining that they weren't getting erections after they took the ED drugs they bought from Tundra RX."

Mike looked at Susan and pursed his lips, thinking before he spoke. "But that doesn't prove anything. Those are just a few complaints. They probably sell thousands of those pills. And there have to be some fizzle-outs along the way. That's the nature of that stuff."

"Look, Mike. It's not a huge smoking gun. But it's curious that there are several complaints from guys that had the exact same experience as you. I read their details. It was all there in the online complaint forms."

Susan leaned forward again as she continued to talk to Mike. "Don't you find it funny that you couldn't get an erection those times in particular? Some of the times you took the Erecta, it worked perfectly. But then at least twice, you took the pill at the right time and you couldn't get anything to happen. Hell, that one time you passed out on my couch! Remember? Your drink spilled right onto your crotch. It was like you were drugged. In fact, I think you were drugged that night. I think it was the pills. Now I know it's strange that some of the pills work and some don't, but that's still my theory."

Mike thought about it and picked up on the thread. "You know, come to think of it, you may be right. Both of the times when I had those crashes, I had taken the Erecta just like I was supposed to. I had some wine and a few cocktails, but that never stopped me before. And then other times when I took the pills, they worked perfectly. I was like Superman, a couple of times there. And I drank on those nights too, so it's not the alcohol."

"Anyway, I think there's something there," Susan said. "We need to research it some more. We may have a case here, or maybe not. You could get promoted to captain if you broke a big international drug case like this, huh?" Susan said as she laughed. "Retire young with a big pension. We could buy that cottage in Chatham with the rose arbor. All that shit."

"Yeah, sure," Mike said. "But you've given me a few good leads to follow up on. We have plenty of contacts with the RCMP's, and I'll do some calling this week and poke around. Who knows, something could turn up."

"Who's the RCMP?" Susan asked.

"The Royal Canadian Mounted Police," Mike said. "They're good guys. I know a few of them from some cases we worked on over the years. I know one guy in particular up in Toronto. I'll make some calls, ask around. Who knows what will turn up."

Mike's basic gumshoe work was his strong suit. He was a state cop for over twenty-five years. And he smelled something strange about the stuff that Susan was talking about. His antenna was up. He didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but he would check it out pronto this week back in the office. He had contacts that could hook him up with the right cops, to dig a little deeper. He just couldn't let the other troopers in on the fact that it was him taking Erecta. Christ, they'd roast him to no end, he thought.

They poured more wine and continued to talk. Susan looked attractive in a white turtleneck, designer jeans, and black heels. Mike was interested.

"Look, Mike. There may be nothing here with the Tundra RX pills. Maybe. It may be just that you have a problem, and we'll have to work through it together. And I'm okay with that. But let's at least do some more research. And one other thing." Susan paused for effect. "For now, no more Erecta from Tundra RX. I don't need three orgasms a night." She smiled and held his hand.

"Whatever you say," Mike said. "I didn't like that shit anyway. I was really only taking it 'cause I thought you wanted me to."

"No! Stop it," Susan said. "Just stop it for now. Let's go back to being normal."

"You've got it, sweetheart," Mike said.

They got up and went over to the kitchen, while Susan cooked. She put some dill on the two salmon steaks on the granite counter, and then slid them into the broiler. She had prepped the salad beforehand. Mike poured more wine for each of them as he watched Susan prepare the rice pilaf and broccoli spears. Susan was happy. She was glad that she asked Mike to come over as she felt like cooking tonight.

Mike and Susan ate dinner by candlelight in the dining room. Susan had Sade on the Bose sound system. Old-school romance, the mood was set. A bottle of wine and a nice meal, and everything was patched back up.

After they did the dishes, Susan took Mike into her bedroom and flicked the fireplace on. He performed admirably, with no Erecta pill anywhere in sight. Susan was a good saleswoman. She knew how to seal a deal, whether it was in her love life, or in the business world.

* * * * *

### Dr. Rakesh Gupta

It was Thursday afternoon and a light snow was falling. It was early February, and winter was in full force in Montreal. Rakesh was in his condo in the warehouse district, with the heat turned up. He had flown in early that morning because he attended a seminar on the ethical and security aspects of converting paper patient files to electronic records. It was put on by a big health insurance company, Allied Health. He went because he needed the credits to keep his medical license current. It was bullshit, though. He hadn't been near an actual patient in almost four years. He hadn't touched a patient's chart in that long, either. Nor did he intend to. He stayed at the seminar long enough to confirm his name on the attendance roster, then left through the rear doors at the first break.

He had just snorted a small line of cocaine and opened a bottle of merlot wine. He had developed an interest in wine after he got the job with Tundra RX and he finally had the money to pursue the hobby. Rakesh was at the countertop in his kitchen. He swirled the glass on the hard surface slowly, then took a small sip. As he tasted the wine on his palate, he took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number from speed dial.

"Elodie? It's Rakesh. Yeah, I made it. No problems. Want to come over and have a drink?" He listened to her tone, anticipating excitement.

"Sure, honey," the young woman said. Rakesh had called her yesterday, so she knew he was coming. Whenever he was in town, Elodie knew she'd have a good time. She called him Dr. Feelgood. They all did. Rakesh didn't know that was his nickname, and he probably wouldn't like it, she knew, but it was what she and her girlfriends called him. He always had a pocketful of recreational drugs for them to sample. He was fun. And the sex was always interesting.

"I'll meet you at the restaurant at 7:30. I've got a few things to do here first," Elodie said. Number one on her list was to get a quick manicure and pedicure. She knew that there would be action tonight. She needed to get ready. With Rakesh, it could be two girls or just her. She never knew how the night would turn out. It made life interesting.

"No problem," Rakesh answered. "I've got some work to finish up here anyway. It's actually good that I have a little time."

They talked for a bit more, and then Rakesh hung up. He sat down with his wineglass, and looked out at the sky over Montreal. It was beautiful, with the snow falling in a gentle blanket over the buildings and onto the street below. He pulled out his BlackBerry and began to scroll through his messages.

He was still jangled from the trouble that was running in the background at Tundra RX. He had to stay all over it because it was too dangerous if the testing disintegrated any more. He and Bill had to keep the lid on what they were doing. If people found out about the bogus meds they were selling, they'd be screwed. Or worse, he knew.

Rakesh focused on his e-mails as he sat back on the couch. He scrolled through them quickly. He had a fast mind, and it was still reasonably clear now before the night got going full-bore with the alcohol and cocaine. He also checked his watch. It was three pm. He had plenty of time to stop off at the club for a drink and a couple of table dances before meeting Elodie at seven thirty tonight. His timing was good.

#

Lyle Cullen's doctor, Dr. Archer, had been busy. He first worked to get Lyle discharged from the hospital, and into a rehab facility. It took about an hour to sort through all the red tape and find a bed over at the other Sisters of Mercy facility. There were a lot of other compromised patients that were trying to get into the facility there, most of them sicker than Lyle. Plus, the unwritten rule was that the Sisters of Mercy doctors needed to discharge their patients to their own rehab facility to keep the reimbursements in the system. Everybody was fighting for insurance money all the time.

A wonderful thing had happened to Lyle along the way as well. His speech came back, full bloom. Dr. Archer said that his speech impediment just after his stroke was more like TIA, as he called it—transient ischemic activity—and the doctor said that sooner or later, it was likely to clear, and he would talk normally again. And that's just what happened. Lyle couldn't believe it. His left side was still a little weak, and his left arm was punky, but he was making a ton of progress.

"You're a lucky man, Mr. Cullen," Dr. Archer said as he looked at Lyle sitting in a wheelchair, waiting to get discharged to the rehab facility.

"I know, doctor. Thanks to you. It's great to be able to talk again."

"That's just your body starting to wake up after the stroke. You're slowly on the mend."

"I'll be bowling before you know it," Lyle said, smiling. He hated bowling but he thought that Dr. Archer wanted to hear a positive, working class attitude. He learned quickly to parrot back to the doctors and nurses what he thought they wanted to hear. They were like jailers, as far as Lyle was concerned.

"Stay off those pills from the online pharmacy. Get your medicine from the hospital or your local drug store, and you'll be fine, Mr. Cullen," the doctor said as he patted Lyle on the shoulder.

"I've got it doc. No more cheap pills. Do you think that caused my problems?" Lyle asked as he looked up. His left arm sat limply on his lap.

Dr Archer pursed his lips. "It's a possibility. Your basic metabolism was right for the stroke. You had extremely high blood pressure, and your blood work showed high levels of saturated fats. You were probably predisposed to it. You're lucky that you got help so quickly."

"Yeah. Thanks again, doctor," Lyle said as an orderly started to push Lyle down the corridor and into the mini-van to go to rehab.

"I'll see you in two weeks," Dr. Archer said. "I like to follow up with my patients regularly."

Back in his office, after Lyle's discharge and the completion of his daily rounds, Paul Archer sat at his desk with a cup of tea from the cafeteria and went through his e-mails. He ran down through the list, prioritizing, and opened the most important ones first. The one that caught his eye was halfway down the list, and was from the laboratory analysis group right there in the hospital.

Paul Archer was cc'ed on it. The e-mail was addressed to Dr. Latika Jalapur, the junior resident who was working with him on the Lyle Cullen case. Attached to the e-mail was a PDF copy of the lab testing results for the pills that were in the container with Lyle Cullen on the morning when he stroked out.

It was a computer printout, written in pure medical-chemical jargon, and it listed the chemical compounds found in five samples of the pills from Tundra RX. Dr. Jalapur had taken out five pills randomly, and sent them off to the lab for a chemical breakdown analysis. Lyle Cullen's blood had an LDL level that was off the charts at 220. For a patient taking the amount of Tenata that he was taking, she thought that his LDL's should have been much lower. Dr. Jalapur was going down each avenue to see whether it was Lyle's metabolism or something else that was causing his underlying problems.

Looking at the test results, Dr. Archer was amazed. He scrolled down the page. The Tenata that Lyle Cullen had supposedly been taking was simply inert. It was bogus—there was no atorvastatin, the active ingredient in the drug, at all. None in any of the five samples. It was surprising, and he couldn't understand it. It was a clear case of the patient taking a placebo, a sugar pill basically, in place of an active compound for the reduction of cholesterol in the blood stream. He was sure that Lyle had no idea of what was in his pills.

"Son of a bitch," Paul Archer said as he scratched his head and moved his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. He thought for a bit. He knew that it was hard to say that those fake pills were the root cause of Lyle Cullen's stroke, but they were certainly the smoking gun in the workup so far. He knew they probably contributed to his bad luck that day.

He leaned forward and began typing quickly on the workstation's keyboard. He fired off an e-mail to Dr. Jalapur, giving her his thoughts, and what to prescribe for Lyle in light of these test results.

Then he composed a second e-mail to Pam Tolliver, his nurse practitioner on the stroke service. Pam was like a bloodhound, and looked like one, too. She had worked on the service for fifteen years, and was a little droopy and soft around the edges. While she never had the skillset to be a doctor, she was a great administrator for all of the stroke patients. She was thorough, and ran things down.

Paul Archer forwarded the lab results for Lyle Cullen's pills—the ones from that online pharmacy called Tundra RX—to Pam. In the e-mail, he explained his thinking that the pills were bogus and contributed to Mr. Cullen's current medical condition. He asked her to forward his e-mail, explaining the situation, along with the test results, to the right watchdog agency in Canada that supervised and licensed the online pharmacy companies.

Pam would know how to find the right licensing agency to forward the case to. She was a whiz at Google, he knew. He also knew that the e-mail was probably going nowhere once it crossed the electronic border and got up to someone in Canada. They were as lax as most of the US enforcement agencies. Populated with career bureaucrats, and swamped with complaints, Archer thought that this one would go to the bottom of a giant electronic pile.

But it didn't matter. Paul Archer had a code of ethics to do no harm, and he lived by it. He knew he was an academic doctor and a do-gooder, but he had to have a clear conscience, or he couldn't get up every day and do his job. As long as he made the effort to report the activity of this Canadian company selling fake pills, and he tried to alert the right authorities, he had done his job. And that was enough in this world.

* * * * *

### Relaxing

It was the weekend. Julie Sontag was at her boyfriend's house in Twin Brooks, fifteen miles west of Edmonton. Paul Kendrickson owned a small business distributing after-market car parts. He was a successful entrepreneur, and had a nice house in a gated community at the edge of town. It was a 3,500 square footMcMansion, with a big redwood deck off the back that faced the mountains.

Julie and Paul were on the back deck, watching Paul grill dinner—it was a large, marbled steak. They both were drinking red wine. It was still deep winter, but the couple wore only sweaters as they stood and watched the meat sizzle, and they took in the beautiful Canadian star canopy.

"How's work going, hon?" Paul said as he poked the piece of meat with a long-handled tine. He sprinkled a little seasoning on the cut of meat after he flipped it over.

"I don't know, sweetheart. Business is booming for us. But some strange things are happening at the company," Julie said as she shifted closer to the warmth of the big, stainless-steel grill. She sipped her wine as she spoke.

"Yeah? Like what?" Paul said. He walked over to table on the deck, and refilled his and Julie's wineglasses. They were drinking an expensive cabernet that he picked out from his wine cellar in the basement. He had over two thousand bottles. It was his new passion, and like everything in his life, he was totally compulsive about it. "Every business has crazy things going on," he said.

"I know, but we've had some strangeness that's freaked me out a little. All of a sudden, we've been getting a lot of complaints about bad pills at the company. This is the first time this has surfaced. There's a rash of people complaining. I'm seeing it in the customer feedback reports."

"But you sell thousands of pills a week, hon. Isn't that naturally going to happen? Everybody complains about something in life." Paul swirled his wine in the big balloon glass and sipped. "People are generally unhappy. They're complainers."

"I don't agree with that," Julie said. "Most people are happy given their circumstances. I think people complain when something bad happens, or they can't control something in their life."

"But don't you have hundreds of customers? Everybody is going to complain at some point."

"We've got thousands now. Business has gone up almost fourty percent over the last twelve months. I guess you're right, though. With that kind of increase, maybe we're going to have some dissatisfied people." Julie looked at Paul, drank some wine, and shrugged.

"How could you not? We've got a fraction of the customers that you have, and we get tons of complaints."

"Are your complaints about bad auto parts?" Julie said.

"Hell, no. We always have complaints about slow service, or the parts being shipped to the wrong place. Our computer system sucks. It's ancient. We're doing an upgrade right now. It's costing way too much money, too." Paul flipped the meat over again and watched it cook. "This is done in five minutes," he said.

"It's funny. Our complaints are all about bad drugs," Julie answered. "People saying that the meds we sell them don't work. Things like that. We've had a rash of those calls lately. I thought we were going to have a lot of bad press about it, but we've avoided it," Julie said. She was starting to relax as she drank more wine, and took in the big night sky. She was a country girl at heart, and loved the outdoors.

"It's natural, Julie," Paul said. "With that kind of customer growth, you're bound to have problems. All of that customer base just strains the system. Enjoy it while it lasts."

"It's different. Our new customers don't strain our system. Our computers are scaled for big volume. The new customer growth that we've had is handled effortlessly by our system. I rarely get complaints about delivery or timeliness. We generally ship our product within twenty-four hours of receiving an order via overnight delivery. We're at the cutting edge of our industry in the technology area."

"Then where are the complaints coming from?" Paul flipped the steak over once more, got the serving plate, and took the meat from the grill." Come on, it's ready. Let's have some red meat."

With that the couple went inside the house into the large dining room that was next to the kitchen. Paul had set it elaborately for dinner, and there were candles and flowers on the table. He was out to impress Julie tonight. They sat down to a full gourmet meal, complete with a salad, creamed spinach and warm bread. Paul opened a second bottle of wine, something a little heavier for the meal.

"If your systems are good, then it must be your product. Where do you get you pills?"

"That's just it," Julie said. "That's where our problem is. We get pills from all over the world. The manufacturers are in China, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Think about it—China, for God's sake!" she said as she swallowed a piece of steak. "How in the world do we control people over in China? We don't!"

"Maybe you can test the pills you get from over there," Paul said. He was beginning to tire of the conversation. He was a car guy, and had a very limited appetite for medicine and drugs.

Julie sensed that she had pushed her work problems too far front and center. She reached for her wine. "Well, you may be right. We're going to have to do a lot more testing of the medicines we get from all over the world if we hope to stay clean. It's the only way. Otherwise it's a disaster waiting to happen."

"You'll fix it, sweetheart, I'm sure," Paul said. "You always do." He smiled at Julie, and refilled both of their glasses with the dark cabernet.

"What do you think about the Maple Leafs? Six in a row. They're playing pretty good, huh?" Paul said.

Julie laughed in response. She knew that she had pushed the bad pill discussion too far. And with that, Paul Kendrickson deftly changed the topic to areas that he was much more fluent in.

* * * * *

### Small Bit of Heaven

Business was booming. Tundra RX's sales were up seventeen percent, year-over-year. The first quarter was phenomenal—the profit margins were good, and getting better since they started substituting bogus pills for real ones in the key, high-priced meds the company sold. Selling blank pills at pricing of $3.15 to $8.25 each was turning out to be good business. Much better, in fact, than trying to sell pills legitimately at razor-thin profit margins.

Callahan was in his usual spot, at the right end of the bar at the Gold Mine. CNN was on the flat screen, and he had just finished off a steak, baked potato, and a vegetable side. He was now working a single malt scotch. He wondered about retirement, and how long he would do this Tundra RX thing. He thought about it as he sipped his scotch and scanned the room for attractive women.

The best exit strategy was to sell the company when it was on the upstroke—which was probably now. The next three years would be awesome, he knew, but the competition was getting fierce. He thought that they'd keep selling fake pills on the prime drugs for the next twelve to eighteen months and take out some serious profit. Then he and Rakesh would clean up the operation, go one hundred percent legitimate, and use an investment bank to put the company up for sale. They could probably sell it for a multiple of fifteen times' earnings. He could retire like Richard Branson to an island in the Caribbean, albeit a smaller one.

Jennifer Marshall, the bartender, came over to him. She was twenty-seven, and a bottle blond in tight jeans and cowboy boots. She had an hourglass figure that worked its way down to a splendid backside. She was a throwback to the Elizabeth Taylor era. Callahan liked her look.

Being an extrovert, he struck up a conversation with her immediately when she started tending bar last August. He was a regular, so she got to know him from her shifts. They had been seeing each other, off and on, for several months. Callahan knew it was only casual. She was a looker, so he didn't expect her to be exclusive with an old horndog like himself. He never had those warped expectations.

"What are you doing tonight, after work?" he asked as he swirled the scotch around in his glass.

Jennifer looked up from cutting limes and smiled. "I don't know. What have you got?" She had come over to Callahan's house a number of times and stayed over. The sex was good. Callahan didn't push anything. He left it light. Otherwise, he knew he'd scare her away.

"Pond hockey in my back yard is what I've got," he said and smiled. "You have your skates?" Callahan had a huge yard, and had built a small hockey rink in the back. Everybody did it in the neighborhood.

"I can get them easy enough," she said as she smiled. She pulled her hair back into a pony tail while standing in front of him, giving Callahan a straight-on body shot.

He liked what he saw. "Good, we can play under the lights."

"You'll have to lace up my skates, though. I strained my ankle at yoga this week."

'How did you strain your ankle at yoga?" Callahan asked. He sipped his drink.

"I'm a klutz. What can I say?"

"No problem. Did you drive?"

"I need a ride after my shift. Carol dropped me off. Can you pick me up?"

"No problem. When are you finished?"

"Midnight."

Callahan settled up. It was 8:30 at night. He had time to go to Costless and buy some food for the house, and get home to take a shower and clean up. He had big expectations with Jennifer coming over after work.

#

Callahan got home at 10:15 pm after the shopping. He took a shower and then went into his office to check e-mail and make a call. He needed to talk to Zhu Wen at Lucky Pharmaceutical. It was 11:15 in the morning in China—he knew he could reach him now. Callahan sat at his desk, put his headset on, and swung his legs up over the top to get comfortable. He keyed in Zhu's number and waited. There was a long paused as the connection clicked through to the other side of the world.

"Zhu, Bill Callahan. How are you?"

"Bill. Good of you to call. I was planning on calling you today. Good timing." Zhu Wen never missed a beat in responding.

"What the fuck's up with the pills?" Callahan said. He was always brutally direct, if nothing else. He also knew there was no time for small talk when calling the Lucky people in China.

"What do you mean? Any problems?" Zhu Wen asked. He had a nervous tone in his voice—Callahan picked up on it right away.

"You're stepping on our pills too much, Zhu. Tundra RX is getting a bad reputation. I'm getting complaints everywhere. It's not good."

"What's the matter?"

"My head of research did some sample analysis on some of our recent product from you guys and guess what? It didn't turn out good.

"Why not?" Zhu said into the phone.

"Because the Erecta had metoprolol in it and the Tenactin was cut too much."

"What do you mean?" Zhu said.

"Yeah. No active ingredients and our customers are paying $3.75 a pill. There was nothing there." Callahan paused to let the information sink in. "Not a fucking thing."

Zhu Wen was quiet for a moment. "Bill, you asked me to cut the Erecta, remember?" He continued. "We discussed this. You said I could cut it with anything in-house."

"Yeah, I did say you could cut it, Zhu. But not with fucking metoprolol! That stuff slows the metabolism down and puts people to sleep. It's for angina, for Chrissakes! My customers are looking for hard-ons, not low blood pressure. My head of research wants to go to the authorities and file a complaint."

"That wouldn't be good for business—yours or mine," the Chinese product manager said with a light threat.

"Don't worry. I'll distract her. But you've been sending me Tenactin that's useless, too. Just garbage. It's getting to be a problem. If some guy has a heart attack or strokes out while they're taking bad medicine from Tundra RX, it'll be a nasty scene. We may be exposed if a lot of questions are asked and sampling is done. Both of us. Not good stuff."

The Chinese pill man composed his thoughts and then spoke. "I'm sending you bad pills because that's what you asked me to send you. I don't keep written records. That was our agreement. So you want me to stop sending dummy pills for a while? It's not a problem. We'll send you pills with one hundred percent active ingredients if that's what you want until things settle down. It will cost more, but it'll be better if there is trouble."

Now it was Bill Callahan's turn for a pause. The line crackled from six thousand miles away.

"No, I didn't say that Zhu. Just hold on here. Give us clean Tenactin for a month so that we can build up some good inventory. Then start sending us the stepped-on pills again. We'll mix 'em up. The profit margin on the bogus ones is too good to pass up.

"And what about the Erecta?" Zhu asked.

"Same thing," Callahan said without hesitation. "Send us some full strength pills, in the 75-milligram and the 100-milligram size for the next run, and we'll restock. Then we'll mix up the inventory between real pills and fake ones. It's all good."

"But what about the bad erections?" Zhu Wen said. "Won't your customers be mad at you if they find out?"

"Zhu, remember, there are no such things as bad erections." Callahan laughed at his own joke. "We'll have to start mixing more good pills with the placebos, though, or people will stop buying our meds. The pills have to work some of the time. And no more cutting them with metoprolol. It's the wrong stuff. We can't have that. You've got to use something that's inert."

"That was a mistake. It's an easy fix. I have full-strength inventory for both Erecta and Tenactin right now in the warehouse. We manufactured some last week. I can set up a shipment today."

"Good. Be sure that you mark the bar codes so that we'll know which shipments are full strength. Otherwise, we won't know what's full-strength from what's bogus."

"No problem. I'll send you an e-mail now with the bar code references."

"That's why I like doing business with you—you've got a sense of urgency. Everything else all right over there?"

"Everything is fine. The Big Pharma companies are getting out of the manufacturing side, which means more orders for us."

"That's good, Zhu. Keep it up. We'll do business together for a long time."

Callahan sat back in the chair in his home office and watched the snow falling outside. The flakes were small and steady, and they gave a hypnotic effect as they fell onto the trees in the back yard. Everything was coated in a soft, white, spreading cover.

The two men ended their business. "Remember, Zhu, Tundra RX needs you. You're our best supplier of specialty meds. Don't let us down." Callahan loved shoveling on the bullshit. He was never above shameless compliments if he thought it made a difference.

"Don't worry, Bill. You'll get your special pills from us just as you requested."

The call ended. Callahan swung around and rummaged through the top drawer of the teak desk. He found his stash of real Erecta pills in among the paper clips and pencils. He pushed out one 100-milligram tab from the blue foil, popped it in his mouth and washed it down with a swig of scotch. He had to be in tip-top form for Jennifer tonight. He figured that they'd skate around in the backyard rink for a little while, and then he'd convince her to stay over for the night. As he swallowed the Erecta, he hoped he'd get called for "high-sticking" by the blond waitress later in the night. Instead of being a penalty, it'd be a score.

* * * * *

### Gumshoe Work

Royal Canadian Mounted Patrolman Pat McEwan sat at the back of the staff briefing room in Toronto on Monday morning. He was overweight by twenty pounds, in khaki pants and a light-blue checked shirt. His stomach strained at the fold of his shirt above his belt.

Pat was nursing a gigantic hangover from last night, as he and his lads had played in a recreation league hockey tournament, and then gone out and got shitfaced at the Boar's Head Tavern after the game. It ended up being a long night. When Pat got home he took a great raft of shit from his wife, who had been hiding under the covers waiting for him. The row was so big that it woke up the kids in their bedrooms down the hall.

He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, the bright fluorescent light beating down on his brow. Pat nursed a large cup of coffee in a paper cup that he bought downstairs in the headquarters canteen just before coming to the meeting. He sipped, listened, and tried to concentrate, as his head throbbed.

Detective Constable William Evers droned on, dressed in his crisp blue police uniform, epaulets and all.

"One of the things that the CO has asked us to focus on starting today is the movement of illegal pharmaceuticals into Canada and then being resold to customers all over the world. The Prime Minister has personally asked the RCMP, on the Q-T, to find one or two of these bastards and make a show of prosecution for the public. The government boys are saying that it looks bad, with all the online drug sellers here in Canada, that we can't find a few that are bad apples and show the public that we're earning our keep."

"That's crap and you know it," Fergus Jenkins said from across the room of fifteen to twenty detectives and assorted police personnel in the briefing. "We had two companies last year dead to rights with bogus drugs, and the federal prosecutors wouldn't let us use the evidence we got. Said it was illegally procured. What bullshit."

This met with a chorus of cheers and comments from the men in the room. The group was the white-collar and financial crime section of the RCMP stationed in Toronto. It was a team of ten people who were lucky enough to pass enough tests concerning computer literacy, and who also had a lot of time on the force. Once they were assigned to the group, it was basically a cushy, desk job. More importantly, they could dress in civilian clothes, and they were not required to carry a firearm. It was easy duty.

This all suited Pat McEwan quite well. He had lost a fair bit of his ambition along with his hockey skills along the way. He was once a Class B player on the Vancouver Jets in the mid 90's. Now he was on cruise control at a desk, with a wife, two small kids and a golden retriever at home, all needing to be fed. So he was in it for the long haul.

"So what would you like us to do, then?" Pat called out to the front of the room when the briefing opened up to questions. This was the best part of the meeting as the team shared leads and strategies.

"Well, let's think about it lads," Bill Evers said. "We've got to find a way to review the operations of all the hundreds of drug companies that sell pharmaceuticals within our borders in an efficient manner for telltales of trouble or fraud. Go in and look at the cross-shipments of drugs from known areas where criminals work." Evers stepped back and took a sip of his coffee while he paused. "Dubai and China are the most likely suppliers. So let's go through manifests of companies here in Canada that are re-sellers who get their drugs from a cross-border international exchange in either Asia or the Middle East."

"That should narrow it down to about sixty companies at that point," Pat said. "Then what do we do for Chrissakes?" His coffee was kicking in now, and he was starting to think clearly.

"Well, you are now officially the head of the initiative, so you figure it out, Mr. McEwan, since you're so goddamn negative on it all."

The group cheered for Evers as he made Pat McEwan the lead on the initiative. It served him right for talking trash at the meeting, Evers thought. The meeting ended, and the group started to disperse.

"Thank you Detective. I always take my responsibility seriously. But a little guidance would always help a dolt like me," McEwan said under his breath as he got up to throw his coffee cup out. He headed back to his workstation.

As he was leaving the room, Karen Kiley, a new college graduate and recruit into the group, came up to him. She was twenty-three, and not yet tainted by the daily grind of police work.

"I've got a thought, Pat." She smiled as she looked up at the veteran detective. "Let's do a sort of all the companies that receive shipments just as Detective Evers says, and then let's compare it to a sort of complaints at Consumer Affairs by consumers who claim they're getting bad drugs from the retailers. We're bound to find something. It shouldn't be too hard."

Pat paused after tossing his cup in the trash basket. He looked at Karen and didn't want to dampen her enthusiasm. "Do you have time to run a few sorts and see what's up? What you're saying might be our answer." McEwan really didn't bloody think so, but at least it was something to do. It was a stab in the dark.

"I do have some time, Pat. Right now, even. I'll take a try at some research today, and come over when I find something."

"You do that Karen. You know where to find me if anything pops up. I'd be eternally grateful for the help." With that, McEwan headed back to his desk to check the hockey scores in the NHL from last night on the HockeyCanada Web site, the one that he bookmarked in his Favorites tab.

#

Dr. Rakesh Gupta was in a most unprofessional state. He was asleep in his bed, with his Montreal girlfriend, Elodie Pashimov, spooned in next to him. They were curled up under the big spread in the darkened loft. The heavy designer drapes were pulled over the windows to keep out the harsh morning sun.

Rakesh was snoring away, thoroughly addled from the pills, cocaine, and wine from the night before. He held Elodie's breast in his right hand, as she, too, was asleep from the debauchery of the evening. Her hair was scattered on the pillow, and Rakesh's nose was nestled deep inside one particular dark patch of thatch.

Rakesh's BlackBerry was loaded with about twenty-five e-mails about the Tundra RX customer complaints, and the testing of the bad pills. There were e-mails from Carol Ferris and her lab assistant, Wayne, all frantic in their compulsive manner, looking for direction and answers. He had none. He ignored all of the e-mails last night as the wine took hold and he met up with Elodie in a restaurant called Chanterelle.

The BlackBerry also contained two voice-mail messages, both marked urgent, from Bill Callahan telling him about his conversation with Zhu Wen. Callahan needed Rakesh to be up to speed on the plan so that he could take both the good and bad pills coming in from Lucky Pharmaceutical and stash each shipment in a different place. This was not work for amateurs, Callahan knew, and both he and Rakesh had to be on their toes on this thing. The only problem, Callahan thought, was that his chief medical officer, Rakesh, was right now passed out over in Montreal at his condo and probably not surfacing for air for another eight hours.

Callahan was right. It was now 8 a.m., and only Elodie was beginning to stir. She got up, went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth and started some coffee. Rakesh always kept several pounds of good American coffee like Peets in the freezer for weekend mornings. Her hair was in a rough bird's nest from the pillow.

Elodie slinked back into bed under the covers with the cup of coffee. Rakesh snored, and rolled over to make room for her. Elodie reached over and gently started massaging Rakesh between his legs.

He snorted out of his deep sleep. "Jesus Christ. What are you doing, for Chrissakes?" Rakesh said as he coughed up a little phlegm and then swallowed it. "It's too early, Elodie," he said in protest. "I need sleep."

"Rakesh, sweetheart, it's just a little eye-opener." By this time Elodie had the rhythm down on Rakesh's member, and he was starting to respond. She was ready and wide-eyed. "Take me any way you want, baby."

That was all she had to say to Rakesh: he needed no more encouraging. They were humping in minutes. The residual coke in his system delayed his climax for a good long time, until he ended in a rush, and the two lovers collapsed onto the bed and lay there. Rakesh soon fell back into a deep sleep.

Elodie Pashimov got up, took a shower and got dressed. Not even the click of her Jimmy Choo heels on the tile floor in the kitchen could rouse Rakesh from bed. Before she left, she checked to see that he was still breathing. He was. "Thank God," she thought. You never knew in these situations, sometimes.

She went to Rakesh's wallet, and rummaged through it. She fished out two hundred dollar bills so that she could have some spending money for the day. She thought about buying a pair of high-heeled boots today that she knew Rakesh would like.

"Bye sweetheart, sleep well," Elodie said to herself as she walked out the door of the loft townhouse. Light was coming in through the windows around the living room, as it was just past 10 a.m. "Call me when you get up."

Rakesh answered with a muffled snore and rolled over once more. Elodie quietly shut the door, locking it from the outside with the key that Rakesh had given her, instantly conferring status on their relationship.

After she left, the only sound that could be heard was the faint buzzing of Rakesh's BlackBerry on the black granite countertop, as Bill Callahan was again trying to get hold of him about the meds. That, and the sounds of Rakesh, snoring away in the bedroom. The seminar on medical records that Rakesh attended the day before was a cloud on the distant horizon, slowly fading away.

* * * * *

### Donut Provided

Massachusetts State Trooper Mike Smith had just got off his shift. He went to the gym to work out, as usual. After he finished doing five weight circuits with light weights and running on the treadmill for thirty minutes, he showered and changed into a Polo shirt and khaki pants. From the gym, he went to the state police headquarters in Framingham to hook up with a guy he knew in IT. He parked his Focus in the lot, and headed to the building. He noticed that the sun was bright and warm for February, and melted some of the snow into little puddles on the asphalt.

"Hey, Jack. I need some info. I've gotta get in touch with a cop in Toronto. I'm doing an investigation on a company up there," Mike said as he walked into the office unannounced.

Jack Thornton was a short, squat, well-manicured state police vet. He had clear, blue eyes and dark hair kept short. He was dressed in civilian clothes, like Mike. His desk and workstation were meticulous. He sat there at his computer, and watched Mike come into the office. Thornton had a reputation in the department for being very thorough and precise to the point of being a prick, but Mike always seemed to get along well with him. Thornton watched Mike suffer through his divorce a few years ago and had sympathy for him from that point on. Mike knew Jack would connect him with the right guy in Canada quickly.

"What kind of company?" Thornton asked as he took a sip from a bottle of Belmont Springs water.

"It's a drug company. One of those companies that sells online pills in Canada to customers in the States," he said, sitting down in front of Thornton. He was eating a powdered donut and drinking a cup of coffee that he got in the canteen before he came in. He saw Thornton looking at the doughnut.

"Hey, did you want one of these? I'm sorry. What a fucking dick I am. I forgot to bring you one. What's wrong with me?" he said to Thornton, laughing. "I'll get you one later."

"No, don't worry about it, you cheap bastard. If I want one, I know where to get it. See this gut? It doesn't look like I've missed many donuts, huh?" Thornton asked. "Shit, I eat too many of them as it is. I'm drinking this bullshit water instead." Thornton tapped the side of his water bottle with his pencil. "This is supposed to keep me full. It doesn't do jack shit for me. Fuck, I'd rather have the donut, you know?"

"I'm a cop. I know about donuts, Jack," Mike said.

"So, about this Canadian drug company. What does it do?" Thornton asked.

"It's a drug retailer in Canada and the US. They sell millions of pills to people in New York at cut-rate prices. Different distribution system."

"Is this personal or professional?" Thornton asked. "Don't tell me that your Erecta pills are getting lost in the mail. Tell me that isn't happening Mike." Thornton laughed, not realizing how dangerously close to home he'd hit on his first probe.

Mike turned red. "This is strictly business. I don't need that shit." They both snickered. Mike continued, "I think that there are a lot of drugs from this company that may be counterfeit that are coming in as one hundred percent pure and then being resold at full price to the public. Even if it's Erecta, we can't have guys walking around with limp dicks. We're also checking the high blood pressure and cholesterol pills too. There's a whole range of stuff coming in that might be bogus. It'd be a great international bust for us if it's real."

Mike knew he had jabbed Jack's curiosity. Working on anything international was a whole hell of a lot more interesting than DUI cases in Springfield, or running a radar gun out on the Mass Pike in the winter.

"So what do you want?" Jack asked.

"I need the name of the guy in Toronto that can help me out here. The guy from the RCMPs. We worked with him a few years ago on the child porn thing, remember?" Smith said. "He was good with computers."

"Yeah, I remember. I can find him. Guy's name was Pat something or other." Jack took a sip of his water and tapped his pencil unconsciously. He closed his eyes. "Let me see if I can find it through my Contact database. I might have it for you."

Thornton turned toward his computer, shook his mouse and quietly looked at the screen as he went through his files. After two minutes, he turned and smiled at Mike.

"Bingo. I've got him. I remember him now."

"Kind of a heavyset guy, right? Into hockey, and sports if I remember right," Mike asked.

"That's him," Thornton said. "His name is Pat McEwan, and he is based in Toronto. I'll print out his contact info for you. This database is pretty good, huh?"

"I knew you'd come through. You're a friggin' tech wizard, and I'm jerkin off over at the airport. Life's unfair, huh?" Mike said.

"Some bullshit like that."

Jack Thornton smiled and clicked his mouse. Ten feet away, on a Hewlett-Packard network printer, a page dropped out. He got up, stretched, retrieved the paper and handed it to Mike. On it was the contact details for Patrick McEwan of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Mike read it quickly. Under his specialties were listed computer investigations and online criminal activity. Mike knew he'd be finally on the right track working with McEwan up in Canada. But he'd have to be careful in asking his questions.

"What else can I do for you?" Jack Thornton asked as he rubbed his eyes.

"Nothing. You've done plenty. Come on, on my way out, let me buy you a real fucking donut," Mike said as he picked up his folder to leave.

"Yeah, why the hell not?" Jack answered. "This water sucks. I need a real sugar fix."

The two state policemen walked down the cinder block corridor that was bathed in bright fluorescent light. They caught up on police gossip and retirement packages as they headed to the canteen.

Mike bought a donut and coffee for Jack Thornton, and shot the shit with him for a little while longer as he ate it. Jack promised to help Mike if he needed any more in his investigation. Mike climbed back into his car and headed out on Route 9, to 128, to 93 to get back to his condo in South Boston. He was motivated now. He was going directly home to start his detective work.

#

Rakesh woke himself up with a start, unconsciously fighting for air. His dark hair was matted and in his eyes. He had a brief memory lapse and wondered where he was. Then slowly, it all came back to him. He knew that he went too far last night. He was staving off an enormous pill-and-red-wine hangover. His head was throbbing. He slowly started moving his limbs under the soft, expensive cotton sheets to get his circulation going.

He heard the vibration in the kitchen and couldn't place it for a second. Then he realized it was his BlackBerry and it was like an electric shock was being applied to his genitals. He quickly jumped up out of bed to get to it. He picked it up in mid-buzz from the granite countertop and pushed away the bird's nest of thick, dark Pakistani hair that was in his eyes. Rakesh looked at the screen. It was an incoming call from Bill Callahan. He also noticed that he had five voice-mails and thirty-six e-mails.

He made a snap decision not to answer the call from Callahan. It could only be trouble, him calling on Sunday morning. He checked the time on the screen and it was showing two p.m. Fuck!, he thought. He had slept right into the afternoon. He scratched his stomach as he stood there naked and thumbed the trackwheel. Rakesh snorted through his nose as he quickly reviewed his e-mail overhang. He put the BlackBerry down on the granite counter after he read the important e-mails, and formed a plan as he scratched his crotch. It started with dark coffee and a hot shower. He loaded his coffee machine with the brushed aluminum thermos with expensive, ground beans he kept in the freezer, and then headed off to the shower. Once he woke up and had a cup of coffee in hand, he'd call Callahan and get back into action. It was a good survival strategy.

* * * * *

### Hard Light of Day

Lyle Cullen was sitting on the front porch of his house in an aluminum beach chair, wondering how the fuck this all had happened to him. It was a warm, humid spring day in Georgia and the greenery was starting to break out, roused into action with weather in the low 80s. Finally the heat was coming on.

Lyle wanted to get the People magazine that was over on the chair about ten feet away. He had to get up slowly, grab his new aluminum cane, and then head over. The cane was gunmetal grey, and was the kind that had the little three-point pod at the bottom for better stability. It screamed out "old person." Lyle tried his damndest to protest when the physical therapist was fitting him for it. The problem was that when he got too excited, his tongue froze up and he couldn't speak. After keeling over twice when he first started walking, he realized that the triple-tip was probably what he needed for now. But Lyle knew that the aluminum cane was no turn-on for Sheila.

So Lyle got up, stabilized, and walked over with a pronounced limp to get the People from the seat cushion. At least he could see what kind of trouble the Hollywood tarts were getting into between stints in rehab clinics and car crashes. It pleased him to think that others had really fucked up lives and not just him. Except that they had money to solve their problems, while Lyle had nothing. In fact, he was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy at this point. But, on the good side, Lyle's speech was basically back, and he could talk with Sheila almost like normal.

He grabbed the magazine, dragged his slightly gimpy left leg back, and sat down in the seat he was in. The flimsy aluminum chair groaned under his weight, and the sun-bleached green and blue Webbing sagged almost to the breaking point. Lyle had put on about fifteen pounds from his confinement in bed and general inactivity over the last month or so, and the lawn chair was at its weight limit. He was careful not to upset the fragile equilibrium he was encased in at the moment. Lyle made a mental note to drag out one of the kitchen chairs later when he went in the house before something bad happened.

He took a sip of warm iced tea from the tall glass that was on the little side table next to him. Sheila had made it before she left for work that afternoon. The ice had melted in the heat. He let the golden liquid drift down his throat as he wiped his brow and ruminated. He had no idea how it all came about. One minute he was pumping gas, and the next he was barely alive. He cursed his luck.

He found out he had no health insurance two weeks ago when an itemized bill came from the hospital. It totaled $127,652.12. He couldn't understand a single page of the billing. It was loaded with codes and amounts and abbreviations, and when he finally could pick out a few items, he realized that there must be a mistake as they were charging him $43.17 per day for aspirin therapy. He wondered what the hell that was when he first saw the bill. He could buy the whole damn bottle of aspirin for about two dollars down at the Mart, so he knew there had to be a mistake.

Lyle had called the hospital and the very nice customer billing person assured him there was no mistake. She also assured Lyle that he had no health insurance in place that would cover the charges. So then Lyle called the Quik Mart corporate offices in Dallas to get that straightened out and get his insurance in place. He spent over two hours on the call. When he finally got through to an HR person, the response was curt.

"Mr. Cullen, you were not eligible for coverage under the company health plan."

"Why is that?" Lyle asked. "I'm a full-time employee. It says right here on the online benefits page that I'm entitled to coverage." Lyle was persistent, if nothing else.

"Please check your pay stub, Mr. Cullen. You've been working thirty-seven point five hours a week since your hiring date six months ago. That amount of work does not qualify you as a full-time employee. So you are not eligible for health benefits." The woman on the line was civil, but firm.

"There must be some mistake," Lyle said, starting to panic.

"No sir, there is no mistake."

"I think you're mistaken about there being no mistake," Lyle continued.

"I'm not mistaken by my records here on the screen. If you think there is an error, you should contact your supervisor." That ended the conversation. The room started spinning as Lyle put down the phone and he had to stay seated to fight off the dizziness.

Since then, he tried calling Jim Martz, his supervisor at the Quik Mart, every day. It had been over a month of calls. It seemed that old Jim was never available when Lyle called. He had not returned a single phone call. Not one of the twenty-seven calls that Lyle counted so far. Lyle was pissed at Martz but figured his boss or the lady in HR or the legal department probably told him to keep quiet and not return his calls.

In any event, Lyle had one last shot. When he was in the rehab unit, a lawyer, Frank Billings, had left a card on his table in the room. Billings was a medium-build, squirrely guy that visited him one afternoon for a talk. He said he did personal injury work and if what Lyle said about his pills being fake was true, then there might be a good case for damages down the road. No promises and plenty of jurisdictional issues, but at least it may be worth a shot. Those were the words that Frank Billings had used when he talked with Lyle in the break room at the rehab facility, while the two of them watched Jeopardy one afternoon. Lyle now remembered Billings' words clearly. They were like balm on an inflamed wound. Lyle had nowhere else to turn at this point.

As he thought about the possibilities of a lawsuit, he picked up his iced tea for a sip. Just as he brought the glass to his lips, the plastic Webbing on the seat on his chair ripped apart with a loud tear. It happened almost instantly. Lyle heard the sound before he was able to react. He didn't even have time to grab the arms of the chair. It was an accident that happened in slow motion.

The next thing Lyle knew, he was falling through the hole in the middle of the chair, and fast. Instinctively, he brought his good right arm over to catch his weight on the arm rest. The sudden shift in weight to the aluminum chair leg on the right caused it to buckle and start to bow. The corroded aluminum couldn't take the strain and instantly collapsed, bam! dropping Lyle to the floor, ass over tea kettle.

Luckily, he didn't hurt himself, as he landed on his weak side. He was soaked in iced tea and all caught up in the Webbing of the broken aluminum chair. He looked like a retard. Eventually he found his cane, and managed to unwind himself from the fucking chair, slowly get up, and limp into the living room. He sat for a minute and caught his breath. He was a wreck. His pants and shirt were soaked from the iced tea. It looked like he was incontinent.

Lyle went over to the low-slung white table in the corner that Sheila had bought from IKEA and put together. He rummaged around in the top drawer and found the card from the Law Offices of Attorney Frank Billings, PC. It was time. While Lyle remembered the lawyer saying "No guarantees", he didn't care. He had nothing left.

Lyle picked up the cordless phone on the table and keyed in the number. It rang seven times before a tinny voice answered on the other end. The voice sounded hollow, like someone speaking through an empty dog food can.

"Law offices of Attorney Frank Billings."

"Is he there?" Lyle asked.

"Who?" the woman answered in response.

"Frank Billings. The attorney. You know, your boss."

"This is the answering service," the voice responded drily.

Lyle was instantly disappointed. It was a bad sign that Frank Billings wasn't there for his call. He wanted to make progress today.

"Tell him Lyle Cullen called, would you? I met him in the Sisters of Mercy hospital last month. He was interested in my case. For a bunch of money. Mention that. I was the stroke guy in the TV room," Lyle said. He left his information, rang off, and put the flimsy phone back in its cradle. He took a deep breath. He felt like he made a positive effort today, to start to set things right, so that he could get on with his life. He shook his head at the prospect of being a bankrupt cripple with a triple-tipped aluminum cane for the rest of his life. It wasn't appealing by a long shot.

If he could shake a little money out of someone, somewhere, it might be part of the solution, the way forward for him and Sheila. It wouldn't hurt to try, he thought, as he headed into the bathroom with his cane to take a leak.

#

Rakesh finally sat at the kitchen table in his Montreal townhouse dressed in stonewashed jeans, brown slip-on loafers, and a light-green Oxford shirt. It was a Polo, with the little horse over the left breast. His hair was clean and combed back neatly, his face freshly shaven. He looked reasonably good and alert for having just come off a thirty-six-hour bender. It was 2:45 pm. He was fortifying himself with a second coffee from the pot that sat in his $350 coffee maker.

He could put it off no longer. He turned his Bluetooth on and then reached for his BlackBerry. He thumbed the trackwheel, and clicked on Bill Callahan's cell number. As he pressed dial, it seemed as though the line instantly connected to Callahan and he had no time to compose himself. Bad news had a way of rushing at you, Rakesh thought, as he prepared for the onslaught.

"Where the hell've you been?" Callahan said as he answered his cell phone. "You've been screwing those Montreal girls all weekend and gobbling down pills. Don't go sideways on me now, Rakesh."

"Bill, I've been available all day today," Rakesh lied. He tried to figure out if Callahan was mad or not.

"Rakesh, just stay in contact with me, will you? I have three calls in to you. Check your voice-mails. You can do all your extracurricular stuff that you want over there, but we've got to be in contact while we straighten out this mess." Callahan knew that he had to be calm with Rakesh because he was too fragile. He knew that Rakesh was a doctor with a medium-sized drug habit, and if Callahan rattled him, he'd crumble and be useless.

"Did you fix the testing protocols with Carol before you left?" Callahan asked.

"I did. We're all set to run new tests on Monday, and we'll be fine. I'm personally selecting the samples. They'll be clean, I can promise you that."

"Good. We need to put this whole thing back on track. I can't keep worrying about this stuff. It's making me old."

"Neither can I. I'm too young to be feeling so old all of a sudden."

"Rakesh, just cut back on the pills and the Russian women, and you'll be fine. Trust me."

Callahan was in his living room, sitting on his couch with a recent James Bond movie paused on the fifty-two-inch flat-screen. Jennifer Marshall, his new friend from the Gold Mine, was next to him with her head on his shoulder. She was bored with the movie, and started to rub his crotch as he talked on the phone. Callahan kept trying to move her hand away, but she was persistent.

"Look, Rakesh, I've got to go. Someone's at the door. Thanks for finally checking in. If anything else happens this afternoon, call me. Otherwise I'll see you in the office tomorrow, hopefully with those clean test results." Callahan ended the call abruptly, and dropped the phone on the floor.

Jennifer considered herself to be a good barkeep and service provider of the first order. She knew how to keep her customers happy. Before Bill Callahan could take the movie off Pause, she had pulled off the quilt that covered them both, started unzipping his pants, and sprang into action.

* * * * *

### Jockeying

Mike Smith got home, ate a quick ham and cheese sandwich, washed it down with a Budweiser, and then went directly to work at his beat-up kitchen table. Following up on leads was what he did best. He always liked the gumshoe part of his trade, and he didn't have to wear a uniform to do it. He quickly got on the line with Pat McEwan.

"Pat, it's Mike Smith from the Massachusetts State Police. We met three years ago on that child abuse case out of Montreal. You came down for the hearing, and we went out to a Bruins game afterwards, remember? We got really shitfaced together."

"Mike. Yeah, Indeed I do. It's been a while. How ya doin? The Bruins aren't doing too well this season, unfortunately," Pat said.

Pat was actually on the Web as he was talking to Mike, poking around a sports site. He sat back in his chair and focused on the conversation as he spoke. "You didn't call me up from Boston to talk about the Bruins, though. How can I help you today?" Pat got right down to business.

"Pat, the deductive powers have not left. You're still sharp," Mike deadpanned. McEwan rubbed his eyes as he listened to Mike's story about the phony drugs coming down from Canada. He told Pat everything, embellished with a little light shading. Mike talked about several reports in Massachusetts of bad Erecta and other drugs that were floating around. He just didn't mention the fact that he was one of the Erecta users that was having problems.

"You lame shits, having to take stuff like Erecta to get hard-ons. It's bad, is what it is. Canadian men don't need that bullshit. Deer steak and Molson beer is what we take to keep our plumbing working around here, aye."

"That, and a lot of hockey on the flat screen."

"Yeah, for sure," Pat said. "Now, what was the name of that company you want me to check out?"

Mike cleared his throat. He covered the phone momentarily, and spit into the kitchen trash basket as he walked around the room.

"Tundra RX. Can you do a basic background check and tell me what shows up?"

"No problem," the Canadian detective said. "I owe you one anyway. Give me about a week, and I'll tell you what I find."

The two detectives talked shop and hockey for another ten minutes, and then Mike rang off. He had to finish some laundry, and then get ready for a date with Susan.

#

Monday came, and the day was clear and mild. Spring was in the air. At Tundra RX, the orders rolled in. Bill Callahan continued to have a bad vibe, though. He was concerned that his own, in-house staff were armed with test results on company inventory that showed some of the drugs they were selling were tainted. Something like that leaking out would be a public relations nightmare, and could potentially torpedo sales. Like an STD outbreak in a whorehouse, the publicity would be devastating.

He called Rakesh and Carol into his office at nine am for a damage control meeting and follow-up from Friday. Callahan had a clean, blue button down Oxford shirt on and khakis—his typical uniform.

"So where do we stand with the testing?" Callahan said to the two executives in his office. They were sitting around his office conference room table on mismatched chairs. Callahan like to give the impression of cheapness to the staff while the company itself was printing money. Tundra RX was closely held—in fact, Callahan owned over eighty percent of the shares. So the record-keeping was his to control and keep clandestine. Everybody knew the firm was profitable as their year-end profit sharing checks had grown tremendously, but they didn't know by how much. The answer was that Bill Callahan could easily afford new office furniture.

He continued. "We can't let bad press get out. More importantly, we can't have bad pills being sold to the public. Our reputation depends on our quality." Callahan shot a glance at Rakesh, who nodded as he sipped his Starbucks coffee. Rakesh didn't need this bullshit dramatic harangue from Callahan so early in the morning, but he played along. He nervously fidgeted in his chair as it squeaked from lack of lubrication.

Carol jumped into action. She couldn't let any negativity from the testing threaten her job. She needed the income, being a single mom with two kids in private school, one of them with special needs. And the money was good at Tundra RX. She quickly dived into the fireman's role.

"We're doing another round of testing right now. We'll know in two hours where we stand. Wayne is down in the lab. The results from Friday were probably random. We've never had results like that before, so it may have been the equipment, our protocols, or a one-time problem from the factory." Carol was decidedly positive and drove the conversation that way. She was quick to downplay the significance of the bad pills.

"I think Carol's right," Rakesh said. "This is all very unusual for us." He wore a bright orange tie with a dark blue fitted shirt, looking very much like a Big Pharma executive. He looked good.

"Okay. I can believe that," Callahan said. "So call me with the results. We all know that we need to keep this in check." Callahan ended the meeting, ushering Carol out. He held Rakesh for a minute.

"Did you fix this thing or not?"

"She's testing pure, unadulterated Erecta right now. I'm certain," Rakesh said.

"Good. We need some positive results to keep everybody from having a mutiny. This shit's not good for business."

Callahan left the office late that morning and went to the bank where he met with the senior vice president of the local office. They gossiped for five minutes, then Callahan got down to business. He set up a wire transfer of a substantial amount of cash that was in one of his personal investment accounts to a trust in the Bahamas. It was then wired to Zurich, passing through the Cayman Islands, and then back to the Bahamas. At that point it was untraceable.

He had the funds invested in a money market account to get the best short-term interest rate possible. The sum he wired was sizable, at 4.5-million dollars. It was part of his share of the profit from two good years of operations at the company. Callahan decided that he needed his net worth to stay liquid and very portable. He never knew when something bad could happen. Possibly, even now. He had to protect his downside.

Callahan went back to the office after lunch, and was immersed in meetings. Selling pills over the Internet was an intense retail business, and it required a lot of work. Carol called Callahan around two pm.

"Great news!" she said. "All the tests were clean. Every pill we sampled had exactly the right active ingredients. No variations. One hundred percent legitimate." She was relieved herself.

"That's good to hear," Callahan said. He took a deep breath and relaxed. It felt like he had dodged a huge bullet. Rakesh had worked his magic. "Now work with Rakesh to test the inventory on a routinary basis, going forward. Don't go crazy but beef up the sampling some. Make sure Rakesh sets the protocols and is involved with every test. He's our MD, and we need him to oversee the work if we want to get some benefit from this in the press and on the Web site."

"I'm already on it," Carol said. She called Rakesh immediately, and told him the good news. He was not surprised and also a little relieved.

"Thank God everything is okay. I hope this round of testing lets us put all this crap behind us now."

"Amen," Carol said. But she knew that the situation wouldn't resolve itself so easily as Rakesh thought it would.

Callahan called Rakesh about ten minutes later. "Doctor, we got our asses out of the sling this time. We may not be so lucky in the future. Please try to ride herd on the research group a little more closely going forward, okay?"

"Bill, you have my word on it."

"And one other thing—try to keep your pill habit in check. Recreational use on the weekends is one thing but you've got to stop it there."

"Sorry?"

"You know what I'm talking about," Callahan said. "Cut the shit. You can't be junked up and run this pill dodge for us effectively."

Callahan left early and went over to the Gold Mine to celebrate the good day it had been. Jennifer happened to be on duty, serving up happy-hour mojitos to the younger part of the crowd. He decided to stay a while and have dinner at the bar, and see what developed. He patted his suitcoat instinctively to be sure that his foil pack of Erecta was there in the side pocket. It was. He did, indeed, like that Jennifer.

* * * * *

### The Spark

Bad things happen in threes.

The e-mail that Pam Tolliver, Dr. Archer's assistant, wrote up and signed under his signature and AMA license number, made the inquiry official enough to be routed to the Canadian Drug Enforcement Agency in Montreal. The message was sent with a PDF attachment of the test results from the hospital in Georgia where Lyle Cullen had stayed—it showed all the chemical contents from the pills that Lyle had been taking from Tundra RX. The e-mail ultimately found its way to the Investigations Department. This was routine, as it was a claim by a licensed MD, not a crank American customer thinking he was getting ripped off. The claim had the color of legitimacy.

The Investigations section of the Canadian DEA was staffed with specialists who knew their way around computers and database searching. The department had manpower. The claim was eventually routed to Paul Morgan, an investigator on the force for seven years, with a master's degree in computer forensics from Toronto University. He enjoyed his work.

The first thing Investigator Morgan did was begin running the big, obvious database searches on Tundra RX that showed information within the Canadian licensing system on the company.

"What are you working on?" Stan Smith, another investigator, asked from the adjacent cube. Morgan had been deep into it for about three hours. Stan and Morgan were co-workers for seven years, and the two helped each other out on almost everything they worked on.

"Interesting complaint. It's for a Web drug reseller. I'm doing some base-level research to see if the group is legit."

"Who is it?" Smith asked.

"Tundra RX, in Edmonton," Morgan said.

"Whoa, they're big. They're probably in the top ten in the Canadian market right now."

"No shit. Their growth has been phenomenal. I even buy stuff there."

"I love the ads they run for the ED drugs. Those little donkeys with the dicks are great."

"I know. Crazy bullshit. Is that where you buy your Erecta, Stan?" Morgan asked.

"Get fucked. I don't need that stuff. Three kids, remember?" Smith said as he laughed and turned back to his computer.

The two talked between their cubes for the rest of the morning, as Morgan ran a screen of basic searches on Tundra RX for background and authenticity. It was all in order, so far. The company had been formed in 2001 as a drug reseller in Edmonton, authorized to sell Class 2 and 3 pharmaceuticals in Canada and the United States. They had a license for both mail and online sales.

He checked the incorporation papers online from the Secretary of Corporations. The company was legitimate. It showed that William Callahan initially owned one hundred percent of the voting common stock, and that he had posted a $500,000 bond, as required, through a letter of credit from United Bancorp. It was renewed every year, in March.

It all looked in order. They used Rand & Sharp for their filings, which was a white-shoe law firm headquarted in Montreal. Every quarterly report was filed on time, and signed by William Callahan.

He moved over to the insurance tab, and even the company's insurance policies, required under Canadian law, were in place. Their limits were double the minimum required. They had five million Canadian dollars for basic liability coverage, and then an umbrella of ten million Canadian dollars on top of that as protection in the event of lawsuits or personal injury claims. It was good coverage for an online seller, Morgan knew. Most of the groups he looked at were on the edge, with cheap lawyers, out-of-date paperwork, and lapsed insurance policies.

Not Tundra RX. Everything looked to be in order here. The company used good support firms, and they were diligent in keeping their records and filings up to date.

He went to the Canadian tax filings next. He had to have a special password to get into this system, as this was the official database of tax records for Canadian companies—it had all their filings. As an official investigator at the Canadian DEA, he had the clearance for this database. With a special password, he was into the tax records of the Canadian public, and was drawing a bead on Tundra RX.

He looked hard and spent some time poking around. The company's revenue was increasing big-time from year to year. They had tripled sales in over four years. Morgan wasn't surprised. Tundra RX blasted the online world with constant advertising. You couldn't avoid them if you were shopping for drugs online in Canada. They were in the top ten for sure.

After a while, Stan, asked, "You find anything interesting yet?"

"Nothing. These guys are in order on everything so far. They file their papers on time, and use a big law firm to make sure they're done correctly."

"How about revenue and taxes?"

"I'm looking there right now," Archer said." He peered at the blue screen and jumped through pages of tax returns. "So far, they file and pay their taxes like clockwork. Not a lot of research and development to write off. Just advertising, which is a big number."

"Anything funky under amortization or depreciation, or write-off of start up costs?" Smith asked as he sat back with his feet on his trash basket and watched Morgan working. "Sometimes there's some good hidden shit in there that you can take apart."

"I know. Nothing here yet that seems obvious." Morgan continued to scroll down the pages. "Take a guess at how much the owner, Bill Callahan, made last year," Morgan asked his suitemate.

"A million dollars Canadian."

"Wrong. How about 2.7-million dollars, Canadian? Pretty good business, huh?" Morgan said as he shook his head and sighed.

"No shit. Just about what we make, right?

"That's a hell of a lot of money for one guy and one company, isn't it?"

"Keep looking, you'll find something eventually if it's there," Smith said. "Hey, let's go get some lunch before we both keel over from hunger. I'm starving."

"Right by me," Morgan said. He logged out of the database for the time being.

#

Julie Sontag was sitting with Carol Ferris in the deli of the industrial park where Tundra RX was officed. She wore her hair pulled back and clipped behind her head. She had on a white turtleneck, and a large, striking necklace of small turquoise stones. Her cheeks were flushed as she sat across from Carol.

It was crowded today in the deli, and the two women decided to come to the cafeteria at noon, to be as inconspicuous as possible and blend into the crowd of hungry midday eaters.

"Something's going on at the company, and I don't know what it is," Julie said as she looked directly across at Carol. The two women were eating big salads, along with bottles of sparkling water. "We've been getting a ton of complaints lately from customers at the call center."

"What do you mean?" Carol said as she poked at pieces of romaine lettuce with her plastic fork. Her stomach immediately turned over at Julie's comment.

"Well, it's like we suddenly started having bad drugs in the pipeline. Everybody is complaining about the pills. I've never seen it like this before. It's like a rash flared up, or something."

Carol took a sip of her sparkling water and paused. She quickly decided to come clean with Julie about what was happening in the lab recently. She needed a confidant and ally. "Well, that's not so strange. We just tested three drugs last week for purity and all three came up seriously adulterated—basically at placebo levels." She looked across the table, staring at Julie.

"What does that mean?" Julie asked with a half-blank stare.

"It means that there were no active ingredients in the pills. They were fakes, blanks, sugar pills for God's sake."

"But how could that happen? Did someone at the factory screw up? Was it a mistake?" Julie was having a hard time following the conversation. She took a sip of her orange-flavored water and waited. Her head started to spin.

Carol tapped her fork against the plastic plate and paused before launching into her theory. "That's just it. We're buying and selling pharmaceuticals here. These aren't widgets. This is specialty medical production." Carol continued eating as she talked.

"What do you mean?" Julie asked.

"Look, someone made these pills intentionally. There's no other answer. What I'm trying to find out is whether it's the manufacturers doing this to us and just selling us phony drugs as the real thing, or if it's something else."

"What else would it be?"

Carol shrugged her shoulders and continued. "What it could be is Bill and Rakesh are running a scam, and Tundra RX is selling fake pills instead of real ones."

"That sounds crazy," Julie said. "Do you think it's possible?"

"Unfortunately, I do. I haven't slept in two nights, but here's the deal. Bill and Rakesh acted surprised when we got the disastrous testing results at first. But I could sense that they weren't that upset."

"That's interesting," Julie said as she fingered her bottle of water. "You know, they've been acting strange lately, and Rakesh seems like he's back on some kind of drug habit again."

"You knew?" Carol said.

"Everybody does. He keeps it low-key, but we all know he goes to Montreal for weekend benders. He likes the drugs and the women. Have you seen his hands shake lately?" Julie said.

Carol continued. "Anyway, Rakesh and Bill made a big deal of being concerned to Wayne and me. Rakesh is now deeply involved, and is supposedly setting up a protocol of doing in-depth testing of our drugs going forward to confirm quality."

"Well, that's good isn't it? Then we'll know what's going on," Julie said.

"I think Rakesh is just feeding me clean samples to test so that the results will be positive," Carol said, matter-of-factly.

"No shit!" Julie was wide-eyed. "How do you know? And what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm doing my own set of testing from inventory lots coming in that Rakesh thinks I'm not even aware of. We need to know what's going on for real here."

"You're not telling Rakesh?"

"Absolutely not."

"What happens if the drugs are intentionally phony?" Julie asked.

"It'll be a big problem. It would basically be a shitstorm. We'd have to go to the police—that's a federal crime. Plus, people out there could get sick or die from taking our junk medicine."

Julie was quiet now. "Wow. What the hell is going on? I don't know where this all came from." She paused, then continued. "I guess you're right though, about going to the authorities and all. That would take the whole company down for sure. It would be incredible if it's true."

"Yeah, it's a lot more serious than just not getting a hard-on from bad Erecta tabs," Carol said. "You're right, too—it'll blow the place up."

"Wow. Heavy stuff. We've got to keep this quiet until we know what's going on," Julie said. "It might all be nothing."

"I know," Carole answered. "I'm a little scared, though, to tell you the truth."

The two women continued to talk, and shared bits and pieces of info while they ate. They put the puzzle together as best they could. Carol continued the conversation as they stacked their trays on the way out, walking down the carpeted corridor towards the back entrance of Tundra RX.

"Look, you're the only one who knows what I know. We have to keep this between the two of us. It will take me until next week to complete this other testing. I'm doing it myself secretly after hours. Even Wayne doesn't know."

"Okay," Julie said. "No e-mails. We'll just talk by phone. I'm going to poke around some more on the customer feedback site and see what I can dig up. I'll tell you if I find anything interesting."

#

Susan and Mike finished making love in her cozy condominium in Cohasset, and lay back, exhausted, in Susan's big bed. It was a Renaissance masterpiece with a canopy and curtains. It even had a little stair set to climb up onto the bed. It was great fun. On a weekend, they could spend hours in it, lost in the covers, with the canopy curtains closed. Susan stroked Mike's chest as they lay back and talked.

"So how's your sleuthing coming, Detective Smith?" she asked as she covered her breasts and pulled the covers up to her chin.

"Not bad. I'm making some progress." Mike sniffed a bit, and thought. "I used a chit I had with a Canadian cop in Toronto. He said he'd look into Tundra RX and get back to me this week."

"And what do you think?" Susan said. "I think we're on to something here. Where there's smoke, there's fire. I think those guys are dirty," she added.

"You may be right. I don't know. Let's see what my guy digs up this week. He left me a voice-mail that said he had a few promising leads."

"Well, all I can say is that since you stopped taking the Erecta, you haven't had any trouble with your machinery."

Mike smiled. "I know. Everything on this old cop body seems to be working fine. Even the pecker."

"Particularly the pecker," Susan said as she moved close.

The two of them continued to talk, and soon enough, Susan reached her hand down under the covers to see if Mike was interested in a repeat performance.

"No! Not again, honey. Not right now," he protested. "I can't! No Erecta."

"What better time? You don't need any Erecta," Susan said. "Don't say that I didn't offer you the opportunity, at least."

Mike knew that a tab of Erecta would have been just the thing he needed to finish off the task in Susan's hand. At fifty, serial lovemaking wasn't in the cards. But he had sworn off the Tundra RX pills.

He decided then to get some real Erecta from a local doctor instead, and have it in reserve. He'd use it occasionally, but not more. Once in a while to spice things up, like now. Otherwise, he couldn't keep up this level of sex without some help for much longer.

* * * * *

### Complications

Rakesh sat at the kitchen table in his apartment in Edmonton with a glass of expensive merlot wine. He had just opened the bottle when he came home from work, poured the glass, and sat down to take stock of the situation.

He felt things were in control, were positive. He swirled the deep red wine in the glass, around and around. The dark liquid slid down the inside in big swirls. He thought that he finally had the testing situation under control at the company. He had gone in and changed the bar codes on twenty-five samples of pills for testing by Carol and that fey sidekick of hers, Wayne Tower. His plan was to keep feeding them clean samples every ten days for testing so that they had an established testing protocol. That way, they could build a track record of regular testing with good, clean results to show if they ever got audited.

It was also important to get good testing results to shore up Carol and Julie Sontag psychologically. He was a little worried that they were suspicious of what was going on with the tests and the pills at the company. Just all the bullshit. He had to get them under control, and make sure things were cool at Tundra RX. He had been sloppy in getting the bogus drugs into the inventory over the past six months. But the pills had been flying out the door so quickly that he never thought Carol would catch the substitutions in any kind of testing protocol along the way.

Rakesh sighed and shook his head. He knew he was sloppy. He took out the cufflinks on his shirt and rolled up the cuffs, one turn. The wine was starting to take effect and he felt himself relaxing. All in all, things were good. He and Bill Callahan were making money hand-over-fist, and business was strong. He still couldn't believe his good luck. Three years, ago he was a clinical doctor at a seedy drug rehab center in Montreal. Publically funded, it was a shithole of a facility. It was loaded with junkies, and he was almost one himself, getting paid at a civil servant's wages. Dispensing methadone and other drugs to users everyday was a dead-end street.

Things were different now. He had a great job, made good money, and had ready access to all kinds of pills that he could sample without fear of getting caught—he was the executive in charge of all the company inventory. Life was good. He went over to the pill vials he had on the countertop, and took out two small green pills. He palmed them for a second, popped them in his mouth and washed them down with a gulp of the dark wine. Rakesh had convinced himself that he didn't have a serious pill habit as he confined his usage to after work and weekends only. It was strictly recreational, he told himself.

He picked up his cell phone and called Callahan to check on things. It was after seven pm, but the two men talked frequently after-hours. There were no boundaries at Tundra RX. He took another sip of wine as the call clicked through.

Callahan picked up the phone on the third ring. "Rakesh, you must be clairvoyant. I was just thinking about you."

"Good thoughts, Bill?" Rakesh asked, half-jokingly.

"I don't know. You tell me. How did the testing end up today?"

"Well, you know that I substituted the drugs so that we had all clean samples for Carol and Wayne to test today. The results were good, as expected. I think that we're back on track."

Rakesh took a sip of wine and waited for Callahan's response.

"I think that we're still not out of the woods yet. We have to be careful going forward," Callahan said. He was still at work and badly wanted a drink himself, but he had to grind through a mountain of paperwork that had built up on his desk. "We were lucky that you were able to float in the clean pills for testing today after those bad results last week. But we can't rely on luck going forward or we'll be up shit's creek."

Rakesh knew that he had to placate Callahan and not argue with him in situations like this. "Yeah, you're right. I'm going to be very watchful with the girls going forward."

"Watchful my fucking ass. Vigilant is the term I'd use. Vigilant for both our jobs and our livelihood. Just make sure that the testing stays clean, or we're screwed. That's your number one job."

"I understand."

"Okay. Enough said. I don't want to beat it anymore 'cause I think you understand the seriousness of the situation."

With that Callahan hung up the phone. He was a man of few words, Rakesh knew, and the message had been sent.

Now that the call was behind him, Rakesh poured a second glass of wine. He called in a take-out pizza from Pizza Express next door—green peppers and onions on half, mushrooms on the other. They knew his account well. Twenty minutes max for delivery.

Rakesh settled back in his chair and took off his expensive black slip-in shoes. He padded across the tile floor in the kitchen in his Gold Toe socks to the wine bottle on the table. As he poured more wine, he felt the pills kicking in, and he was starting to unwind.

It was cold and clear outside in the Canadian night. The wind was gusty, and blew big drafts against the plate glass sliders in the living room near the back of the apartment. You could hear the sound as it pushed against the wooden exterior and buffeted the building.

Rakesh punched in the speed dial for Elodie. He figured that he'd have a little phone sex while he waited for the pizza. He was getting hungry now, and the red wine fueled his appetite. He couldn't wait for the weekend to go to Montreal and have her over and just forget about Tundra RX. This business of selling drugs to the public was much more stressful than he ever thought possible.

Elodie recognized his number and picked up on the second ring.

* * * * *

### Dogged Pursuit

Karen Kiley had a raft of energy for police work. McEwan was amazed. She was in his office talking with him about what she'd found on Tundra RX so far. The two were sitting close, because Pat McEwan's office was a simple 8x8 cube in the bowels of the administration building in the Toronto office of the RCMP.

McEwan did have an Aeron chair, though. All the fat cops, both young and old, the desk sitters, had them to help ease the strain on their backs. The RCMP bought the chairs for everybody, as they quickly determined that it was cheaper to buy an expensive chair for a cop than pay for a disability claim for a bad back for the next twenty years.

Karen was in a black pencil skirt, sitting on a low-slung, movable file cabinet, talking to McEwan. She was slim and attractive, dark Irish, with shoulder-length black hair that she wore loose. Her father had been a detective, and she was interested in the business since she was little, despite all his efforts to steer her away from police work. She didn't notice McEwan looking at her as she was too wrapped up in telling him about what she had found out so far.

McEwan was a forty-five-year-old married man with a stay-at-home wife and two grade school kids. He appreciated Karen's attractiveness and enthusiasm, and the fact that she was a window into a world that was beginning to fade from his life. He expended half of his energy just getting out of the house in the morning. He pushed down on the lever on the left-hand side of his Aeron chair, and began to slowly rock back and forth as he listened to his young associate recount her steps.

"Now slow down and tell me what you've found again," Pat said.

"Well, it's been interesting," Karen said. "I spent about four hours going through the complaints that were filed against Tundra RX at the Consumer Board."

"Find anything interesting?" McEwan rocked back and forth lightly as he looked up at the overhead pipes running across the ceiling.

"I did. I found that there were twenty-seven complaints from consumers over a six-month period, starting in October."

"Anything consistent?"

"Yeah. All the complaints were basically related to ED drugs." Karen paused and looked at Pat. He looked back at her blankly as he slowly stroked his walrus moustache.

"Would you mind telling me what ED drugs are, now that you've developed this medical specialty?" he said.

"Sure," Karen said. "ED. It stands for erectile dysfunction. You know, drugs that help men perform. Erections. Erecta, and drugs like that." She uncrossed her legs and stared straight back at the older man.

Pat McEwan turned red. "Ahhhh. Now I understand. Performance enhancers. Erecta, indeed." He paused before continuing. "But that's strange. Now why would the complaints be just about that one drug?"

Karen continued. "I asked myself the same question. But then I thought about it, and it makes sense. Nobody is going to complain about their high blood pressure medication not working. They'd probably never know. But an erection is a little more obvious." Karen blushed slightly. "If they can't get erection from an Erecta pill, they'd know pretty quickly."

McEwan pursed his lips as he thought. He was wearing a blue argyle sweater vest that matched his eyes. Karen thought he was handsome, in an old cop sort of way. "So you're telling me that you've got at least twenty-seven people who called and complained about their sexual problems with Consumer Affairs? Sweet Jesus. Is nothing sacred?" McEwan said as he winked at Karen.

"All the complaints were from Americans, you know. Nothing embarrasses them."

They both laughed at her comment.

"True enough." McEwan folded his arms over his big stomach. "So the question is, what do we do next with this information?"

"I was thinking that I start e-mailing or calling the people who fielded a complaint and see what the circumstances were," Karen said.

McEwan looked at her. "That's one way and that probably makes sense. Now I've got a theory that will maybe take us in a different direction. Why don't you do this: do some research, and see if the company has a free trade exchange connection in either Dubai or Mexico. That's where you need to start."

"What will that show?" Karen asked, now interested.

"I think you've uncovered that there may be something going on with the Tundra RX pills. Let's see if they're getting their drugs from foreign manufacturers. If they are, then a free trade gateway would be a huge open door for them to bring a lot of phony drugs into the country without any checking. And those would be the drugs that they're selling to their customers. At a big profit, I'd expect. The pills are probably just junk that they're bringing in."

Karen looked at the older cop wide-eyed. "Great idea! That would be good corroborating evidence to the calls to consumer affairs. Now how do I do that?"

"Check their importation records with the Trade Commission," Pat said. "Their suppliers and locations should show up there." He took a sip of water from a plastic bottle that was sitting on his desk, put the top back on, and pointed it at Karen. "I think you're on to something here. Root around and see what you find."

Karen got up and left, fueled on enthusiasm to do more research and learn from the older veteran detective. McEwan stroked his moustache as he thought about the situation. Karen had done some good initial work. There actually might be something there, but it'd be very hard to catch a company like Tundra RX with an international supply chain shipping product through the Middle East or Mexico. They probably covered their tracks pretty well if they were scamming drugs, he thought.

McEwan wheeled his chair back to his desk, grabbed hold of his mouse, brought his screen to life, and went back to the Hockey World site. If Karen brought back some more interesting stuff next time on Tundra RX, he'd start to focus on the case. It wasn't time just yet, as it all may be a dead end. He continued reading about the Canadians and their chances in the upcoming NHL playoffs.

#

Julie Sontag had set up a meeting with Rakesh in the afternoon to talk about the consumer feedback line and the responses that the company was getting. She was sitting in the main conference room, fiddling with the audio buttons on the Polycom starfish. She always had trouble getting the expensive speakerphone to work right. Julie was dressed in a tan power-business suit. She had been at an outside meeting in the morning at the Chamber of Commerce, and had dressed for the occasion.

Julie had set up the meeting to get Rakesh's reaction to some of the calls that they were receiving on the customer service line. She had queued up a series of calls from the center that were all complaints about bad Erecta. They were all recent calls. Julie was doing her own research here—amateur research—as she wanted to see how Rakesh responded to her probes on the bad pills. She knew that if Carol was right, and there was something going on at the company, he had to be involved at some level.

Rakesh was curious about the meeting. He would periodically sit with the marketing team and review the consumer call-ins and the Web log to see what the customers were happy or pissed off at. But Rakesh thought it was coincidental that Julie would pick today to talk about the calls that came in on ED drugs, particularly after what was going on with the recent testing problems. Rakesh thought that Julie knew nothing about the recent bad test results from Carol, but he couldn't be sure.

Julie started in. "Rakesh, what we're seeing is a rash of call-ins on the ED front. These are our all-star drugs, with big profit margins. It's a little troubling, because we've never had so many complaints about this product line as we have now." Julie was earnest in her presentation to the doctor. She knew that she had to start with the facts, or she wouldn't get anywhere and he'd be suspicious. She played it straight up.

"How are sales?" Rakesh said impatiently as he frowned and looked at the summary sheets that Julie handed to him. He scanned the page and could immediately see that the complaints had multiplied tenfold over the last six months, which was exactly the timeframe when they had started pumping the fake pills into the system in earnest.

"The good news is that sales are way up. We've been running a heavy promotional set on all our ED drugs since July," Julie said

"Well, it's likely that our calls are going up as our sales spike. It's a logical ratio. It looks like our sales for this period are up thirty percent by this chart," Rakesh said as he took his pen and circled the key stats that were increasing. He desperately wanted to keep the conversation logical and superficial.

"Yes, you're right," Julie said. She leaned forward to respond to the numbers that he had circled. Her perfume drifted across the table, and Rakesh got a hint of the scent. It was expensive and sexy. He inhaled it as he listened to her talk. "But it's more than just the increased sales," Julie said." We're getting a lot of complaints about Erecta, specifically."

Rakesh nodded before responding. "More promotions mean more sales. Which mean more complaints. It's a direct relationship. No big deal."

"That's what I thought too," Julie said. "But it all seems to settle in around the Erecta and how it's not working., nothing about our other sales at all. It's strange." She turned and started to key in numbers on the conference phone. "Here. Listen to this call. It's typical."

Her red fingernails punched in the participant code to get into the system and she cued up a call for them to listen to.

"Hi. This is Bill St. Clair from Milwaukee. Your fucking Erecta doesn't work worth shit."

Both Rakesh and Julie burst out laughing. This time Julie blushed.

"That's some salty language there," Rakesh said.

"Yeah, it sounds like he's a little pissed off," she deadpanned.

"It was probably coitus interruptus," Rakesh said.

Julie pushed the pause button on the phone. Her index finger tapped the keyboard as she looked over at Rakesh to see if he was following along. She thought for a brief moment that he was a very handsome Pakistani man with deep, dark eyes and nice hair. She decided that under different circumstances, she would have been interested in him. But she had an ironclad rule that she didn't date people she worked with. She kept it strictly professional. She needed to protect her career and her paycheck.

"Why are we listening to this?" Rakesh asked." I don't need to feel this fellow's pain."

"Stop complaining and listen," Julie said as she pushed the pause button again. "The interesting part is coming right up."

Bill from Milwaukee continued. "I loved your pills. My dick was like a hammer when I took your Erecta. My girlfriend was crying—she was so happy. Plus, you had the best prices on the Web. Hands down. You guys were the balls. Then something happened. I bought a replacement dose of my Erecta and started taking 'em, like usual." The caller was almost yelling now. "But like overnight, the pills stopped working. Nothing would fucking happen. Nothing! I'd pop a pill, start to get it on, and no stirring in my loins, nothing. I couldn't get it up with your freakin' pills. I was soft as a mushroom. My girlfriend laughed at me. She finally left me for some construction guy. What the fuck happened? I want my money back!"

Julie stopped the playback. She had been watching Rakesh the whole time. She could tell that he was uncomfortable during the call. He fidgeted, and it wasn't from the male thing about erections. It was something else.

"Wow." Rakesh said and looked over at Julie. "That poor bastard."

"Do you think there's something wrong with our pills?" she asked.

"Why do you ask that?" Rakesh asked nonchalantly. He started to panic lightly underneath.

"Just wondering if the guy's a kook or if we have a bigger problem that we don't know about. We've had a lot of these complaints over the past several months. They were random, crank calls to start, but now they're fairly routine about the Erecta not working."

Rakesh paused and rubbed his chin in mock thought. He gave it a few seconds to have maximum impact.

"Well, it's not surprising. We're selling what, twenty thousand pills a day? Ten percent of those sales are Erecta? It's our biggest specialty drug. It's just simple statistics that we're going to have more complaints." Rakesh was on firm ground here. "It's not a magic pill."

"You're right," Julie responded. "Absolutely. But it just seems strange that he bought pills from us that he said worked fine in the beginning, then they suddenly stopped working when he got a replacement order," she said. She was play acting now herself.

"Who knows?" Rakesh threw his hands up in mock exasperation. He raised his finger slightly. "Here's two other thoughts that should give you and us some comfort. Erecta is an ED drug that has a psychological component. A lot of these guys are impotent to begin with, so it's no surprise that they're still having trouble, even with our Erecta. If these impotent patients aren't primed to have an erection, they're not going to get one. That's a big factor. The key is their psychological disposition when they take our medicine."

Rakesh nodded his head as he spoke to emphasize his point. "And more importantly Julie, we have new, stricter testing protocols on our pills coming into the company. Ask Carol about them—they're in place now. We can prove that our pills are clean going forward without a doubt."

Julie had taken it as far as she could. "Of course you're right, Rakesh. Carol did tell me about the testing procedures. Getting good test results will be our best defense here. I just wanted to meet with you and get your perspective before this thing escalates any further. I need to respond to all these crank calls, and I don't want customers out there just slandering the company."

Julie had accomplished what she wanted. They talked for a few minutes longer, exchanging small talk. Rakesh said he would keep Julie on the distribution list for the testing results, going forward. She could then use the test results for marketing purposes to send to customers who complained, assuming the results were clean. Julie told Rakesh that she was already prepping a campaign geared around it.

The meeting ended on a positive note between the two managers. But after Rakesh left, Julie was still not sure if he was in on a cover-up at the company or not. She decided to keep her eyes on him, going forward. She'd watch how he responded to the crisis, and if there were any telltales.

Later in the afternoon, Julie called Carol.

"So how'd it go? Were Rakesh's left fingers shaking at all?" Carol asked. She had her suspicions as well.

"Yeah, he did have a slight twitch. The right hand was more pronounced, though."

"I think he's still using," Carol said. "He has unlimited access to the inventory, and we'd never know if he's sampling. Anyway, what did he say?"

"He played it straight down the line. He thinks it's just a function of the number of Erecta pills we're selling. More pills, more complaints. No big deal."

"What do you think?"

"I think he's bullshitting us," Julie said to her friend. "He just didn't seem that concerned. He clearly wanted to get the meeting over with, though."

"Well, we'll see," Carol whispered. "I'm doing testing now that he doesn't know about. Rakesh is feeding us drugs to test and I'm pretty sure all the samples are clean. I'm taking samples that he doesn't know about, and I'll test them for purity. The proof will be in the pudding."

"I love when you talk Betty Crocker to me," Julie said, laughing. "Call me if you get something." The two women ended the call, and Julie headed to the kitchenette near her office to get another bottle of sparkling water. Detective work made her thirsty.

* * * * *

### Legal Interest

Lyle Cullen sat in the office of Attorney Frank Billings. It was a shabby spot in a strip mall in southeast Athens. The store to the left of the law office was empty. The parking lot had ten cars, but it could easily hold two hundred. There was a Pentecostal ministry two storefronts down, and a Goodwill store next door.

Lyle had placed a secretarial station in the storefront, along with a couch and two chairs for client seating. There was nobody at the desk when he walked in. It was totally clean. There was a small version of the scales of justice on the right-hand side, in tarnished brass. Billings' version of advertising, Lyle thought.

He walked in to Frank Billing's private office in the rear. It was the only office with a window. The window was high up, and just let light in as the view from the rear of the office was of the dumpster and air conditioning compressor. The room was a simple, square, sheetrocked affair. Frank Billings was not an interior decorator, and the only items on the wall were his Georgia State University degree and his law school diploma from the Georgia College of the Law. Lyle had never heard of it. He leaned his aluminum cane against Billings' desk after he sat down.

"So how's my case?" Lyle said as he sized Frank Billings up. He knew that Billings wasn't much of an attorney but Lyle was desperate now.

"Not bad. It might have legs," Billings said curtly. He was stocky, and dressed in a white shirt with a conservative, dark-red patterned tie. The tie sat about an inch above his belt. He looked like a Saturday Night Live parody of a real lawyer, Lyle thought. An Athens, Ga. version of a big-firm Atlanta professional. It was all he had at this point.

Billings tapped his pencil on a clean sheet of yellow paper as he sat back in his chair. He had barely reviewed Lyle's case before he came into the room. He knew few of the facts.

"We'll get these assholes, Mr. Cullen," was what he started with.

Lyle looked at Billings. "You ever do trial work? Like argue in front of a jury? That's what this case will likely take, you know."

"All the time. I'm known for my jury work. Clarke County, where you were injured, is a very plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction," he said. "But we may not have to even go to trial. I looked at your case. I think you have good grounds for a settlement. Early on." Frank Billings looked directly back at Lyle. "Early settlement" were the words of balm that he added to every conversation he had with a potential medical malpractice client. Their eyes lit up and their hearts went happy, he knew, whenever they heard it.

"Well that would be my preferred route. I'm tight for money now and the hospital is breathing down my goddamn neck for some kind of payment plan. I've got jack shit for that," Lyle answered, "as you can imagine."

"No problem in that area. I can front you five-thousand dollars for spending cash today before you go, if you need it. If the pills are bad, and the hospital's lab can prove it, we've got good grounds for damages, including your pain and suffering."

"How much?"

"What?"

"Pain and suffering, how much for that? Just tell me the bottom line."

"At least five-hundred-thousand dollars. Maybe more."

"That'd be nice," Lyle said. "I could pay my bills and have something left to go on vacation with Sheila, too." He was daydreaming now.

"Where would you go?" Billings asked, continuing Lyle's fantasy.

"Probably the Caribbean. Never been there yet."

"It's nice this time of year. But before you go spending your money, I have to get it first, and we have one problem."

Lyle's heart sank. There was always one problem in everything in his life. An ongoing red light. Nothing was easy, he thought.

"Jurisdiction. Getting it may be a problem. The company is Canadian. It's based in Edmonton. It may be hard to get them in a Georgia court of law, that's all."

"Well, how do you do it?" Lyle asked. He was crestfallen now. He started thinking of bankruptcy again.

"That's my job. We'll find a way to get jurisdiction. Even if I have to lure the president down to New York and serve him a court order while he's eating breakfast at the Four Seasons, or folding dollar bills in a tittie bar. I'll figure it out.

"Or while he's counting his money, more likely. The fucker," Lyle said.

"That too," Billings said. The two men talked on about the case.

Billings explained how long it would take if they went the settlement route, and about how he'd take thirty-three percent right off the top after expenses were reimbursed as his share of the settlement. Lyle nodded agreement. Nothing from nothing was still just nothing as far as he was concerned, so sharing whatever settlement he got was no big deal in his mind.

Billings picked up the phone and punched in a number. "Anita, do you have that retainer agreement finished like I asked? Yeah, bring it in, will ya?"

A minute later, a tall sultry blond came into Frank Billings' office. She was around forty, and on the edge of being over the hill. But Lyle immediately noticed that she was very attractive, a real looker. Above the knee skirt, with high black heels and hose. Her hair was loose, and streaked with blond highlights. Lyle knew that there weren't many women that dressed up like that anymore in offices. Most of them now wore jeans and flats. This was a different animal, Lyle thought.

Frank smiled and looked up at his secretary. "Thanks, Anita. Did you fill it out with Mr. Cullen's information?" he asked.

"I did, Frank. I broke a nail while I was doing it, too. I filed it down, though."

"You are resourceful, sweetheart," he said. Billings quickly looked at the papers while Anita hovered over the two men. Lyle could smell her perfume.

"Now Lyle, please sign here if you would," Frank Billings said as he leaned over and pointed to a signature block on the second page of a dense two-page document.

Lyle Cullen laughed. "What am I signing?"

"This is our standard retainer agreement. You agree to pay me thirty-three percent of any settlement money that we get, after I pay my costs of the litigation first out of the proceeds." Billings looked up at Anita. She smiled and swayed on her heels as she watched Lyle pick up a pen from the desk.

"Sounds fair to me," Lyle said as he signed the retainer and kept one copy for himself. He folded it in fours, and put it in his shirt pocket, never reading one word of the agreement.

"We're in business then. I'm going to start going after those bastards right now, today," Billings said.

He got up and shook Lyle's hand. Anita helped Lyle with his cane and escorted him out of the office.

Once the door closed, Frank Billings called out to his secretary.

"Anita, come in here for a second, will you?"

Anita Simmons locked the front door before she went back into Frank Billings' office.

"Come over here for a second, hon, will you?" he said. "Take a letter." He laughed and rolled his chair back from the desk.

"A letter, huh, Frank?" Anita asked as she smiled and walked over to him.

"Anita, you know new business always makes me horny," he said as he patted his lap.

Anita Simmons, no stranger to the pursuit of pleasure, went over and sat on Billings' lap and crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up, and she showed her long, lanky thighs.

"Frank, lately it seems like everything makes you horny," Anita said as she smiled and started to undo his tie. Billings leaned back in his chair, and sighed.

"I know it. Must be something in that bottled water I'm drinking, I expect." With that, his hand slid up onto Anita's blouse, and he quickly undid her buttons and started his investigative work in earnest.

#

Free Trade Zones Ease Passage of Counterfeit Drugs to US

New York Times, December 17, 2007

Dubai, United Arab Emirates—Along a seemingly endless row of identical gray warehouses, a lone guard stands watch over a shuttered storage area with a peeling green and yellow sign: Euro Gulf Trading.

Three months ago, when the authorities announced that they had seized a large cache of counterfeit drugs from Euro Gulf's warehouse deep inside a sprawling free-trade zone here, they gave no hint of the raid's global significance.

But an examination of the case reveals its link to a complex supply chain of fake drugs that ran from China through Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the Bahamas, ultimately leading to an Internet pharmacy whose American customers believed they were buying medicine from Canada, according to interviews with regulators and drug company investigators in six countries.

The seizure highlights how counterfeit drugs move in a global economy, and why they are so difficult to trace. And it underscores the role played by free trade zones—areas specially designated by a growing number of countries to encourage trade, where tariffs are waived, and there is minimal regulatory oversight.

The problem is that counterfeiters use free-trade zones to hide—or sanitize—a drug's provenance, or to make, market, or relabel adulterated products, according to anti-counterfeiting experts.

"Free-trade zones allow counterfeiters to evade the laws of the country, because often times the regulations are lax in these zones," said Ilisa Bernstein, director of pharmacy affairs at the United States Food and Drug Administration. "This is where some of the Internet sellers work," she added.

Walt Bogdanich.

* * * * *

### Continuing Investigation

"That's a hit. No fucking doubt about it." The two men sat peering over a terminal at the Canadian Food and Drug Administration. They were in a modern office building in Vancouver. The room was a big, open-spaced area with fifteen modern cubicles with powerful desktop computers in each one. The section was Enforcement, and the constant clicking of keyboards could be heard throughout the area.

The men talking were enforcement agents. Bill Kettles was a veteran agent. Overweight and slightly sloppy, he was a master at desktop investigations. The other man, Jack Calvin, was a younger, mid-level staffer, still learning the ropes of the online investigative business.

There, on the light-blue screen in front of the men, was a summary of Tundra RX, who its worldwide manufacturing partners were, and how the drugs it bought were shipped to Canada to be resold to the public. Listed below the company were four big international pharmaceutical companies. They were the known heavyweights in Big Pharma: Smith Planter, Mack, Kingston Allen Carter, and Bantol.

"How'd you get there?" Calvin asked the older man. He scratched the bridge of his nose as he watched Bill Kettles work the screen.

Kettles was hunched over, reading what had come up. "Not hard at all. I went into the company's supplier listing. It has to file its inventory sources to get its primary license every year."

"So are these guys clean? Everybody listed is international and well-known. Those guys are just shipping clean product to Tundra RX, right?" The younger Calvin took a sip from a diet Coke and put it down. He waited for Kettles to respond.

"Don't jump to conclusions so fast, Jack. And don't be bloody stupid." He started clicking and jumped down two screens to bring up new information.

On the next page were the listings of the international drug manufacturing companies that did business with Tundra RX. The first two names and addresses were that of Lucky Pharmaceutical in China, and Pharmaceutico Real in Mexico.

"Now here, look at this," Kettles grunted. He pointed his thick stubby index finger at the screen. "What do you think of this?"

"What?"

The older investigator could see that his partner had a way to go before he'd be good at computer forensic work.

"Right there in front of you. Look where Tundra RX gets its drugs. From Mexico and China. Two hotspots in the world." The older man let out a sigh and paused with his hands intertwined on his large stomach. He pushed his smudged glasses back up on his nose, as he pondered the screen for a moment.

"So how do we know there's anything bogus about the companies? Tundra RX buys drugs from all over the world," Calvin said. He was groping for answers.

"Yeah, they do. They even look legitimate from where we're sitting." Kettles looked over at the desk. He saw a half-opened bag of Old Canadian smoked beef jerky chips. He pointed. "Here, pass me those will you, lad?"

"Sure, boss. Here you go." Calvin passed the bag of beef jerky chips, and the two men began eating them as they pondered the mystery in front of them on the screen.

"You know there's a ton of nitrates in these things, don't you?" Calvin said, looking at Kettles girth as they ate the dried beef. "Not good for the heart."

Kettles shook his head and frowned. "Fuck it," he said. He ignored health warnings as much as possible.

"Now here's where we'll check," he said as he worked his jaw on the chewy beef. "Let's go to the international registry, and see how those drugs are coming in." He started typing on the keyboard and going to different screens. Eventually he got to where he wanted.

"Bingo. Take a look. All of Tundra RX's international inventory purchases come through two spots." The older man was happy. He had a lead.

"Where's that?" Calvin asked.

Kettles nodded his head. "Dubai and Panama City. The big international free-trade zones. That's where."

"Isn't that for tax purposes?"

"On the surface it is. What it's really for is smuggling fake drugs. If the complaint from this doctor in Atlanta is real, there's a good chance that Tundra RX's supply of fake drugs is coming in through one or both of these terminals. It's a perfect laundry point."

"So what do we do now?" Calvin asked. He popped another piece of beef jerky in his mouth. "This stuff is addicting," he said as he looked at the bag of dried meat. He read the label. "No wonder too, it's loaded with MSG."

Kettles continued to ignore him.

"What we do now is get a search warrant, then use our contact in Dubai at the free trade zone, and discreetly open a shipment of the company's drugs to see if they're legit. Basic stuff, right?"

"We giving the company notice on the warrant?"

"Hell no. It's ex parte all the way. Otherwise, if they're dirty, they'll move the container before we can inspect it. The goal here is to check them out quietly, and then figure out what to do if we find something."

The two men continued the search on Tundra RX for the next two hours, getting all sorts of details about the company's suppliers and methods. Then they went to their supervisor to get the approval to go to court for the search warrant they needed. Once they got it, they faxed it over to Dubai. The customs agents in Dubai needed a real court order before they could open any shipping container in the free trade zone.

And with that, the wheels of Canadian justice began to turn, ever so slowly.

* * * * *

### Restart

Lyle sat on the living room couch with the floral pattern and the broken spring as he sipped a glass of wine. To his left was Sheila, who was also drinking wine and reading People. They sat next to each other, close enough to be close, but positioned far enough away from the dead spot at the end of the sofa that sagged onto the springs below. The couch was old, like Lyle.

Sheila was a tall drink of water, as they said in the South. She was thumbing the magazine and sipping her wine, with her long legs crossed over one another. She looked good. Her pink floral dress was draped across her legs as she sat back and relaxed. Lyle could see some cleavage at the top, where her breasts pushed out of the cotton fabric. It had been a long six months since Lyle's accident, and they were just starting to get back to normal.

"How was your dinner?" Sheila said as she sipped her wine. They had just come back from going out to dinner at the Red Lobster on Cloverdale at the mall.

"Good. The popcorn shrimp weren't half-bad," Lyle said as he put his glass down on the side table.

"You didn't leave any, that's for sure."

'Yeah, I know. We should have shared some more."

"It's okay. My crab cakes were good. And the chowder. I like that Red Lobster. It's the best one."

"It's not bad. You know the one over on I-75 closed last month."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It was never clean in there. The fish always looked bad in the tank, too. Kind of ready to float to the top," Lyle added jokingly.

"Stop it. That's disgusting," Sheila said.

They began watching a porn DVD that Lyle had picked up at the Speedee Mart on the way home. His aluminum cane was next to the couch. With its three feet, it stood straight up by itself, no balancing needed.

Since Lyle got his new credit card and it started working, he was able to charge little things again. Then when Frank Billings gave him that five thousand dollars advance against future settlement proceeds, his life started to get back together. Two women on the TV were giving a young guy with a moustache and gold chain a blowjob.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Sheila said.

"Do what?" Lyle said. He was starting to slowly stroke her leg. His hand moved up her thigh.

"Do what your doin', now," she said. "Make love. If you keep going, I'm going to want to finish it off, Lyle." Sheila looked at Lyle and sighed. She put her drink down and moved her arm up on top of the couch so that Lyle had more room to work.

"We haven't had sex in six months. I think I forgot what it's like."

"Don't worry, baby. Everything's going to be fine," Lyle said.

"I'm kind of afraid to do it after the stroke and all, baby. Did the doctor say it's all right?" Sheila opened her legs a bit as she talked and started getting into the video. "A little more to the right, sweetheart."

"No worries," Lyle said. "Dr. Archer said I'm good to go."

Sheila's hand slid over to Lyle's pants and she started to rub him as she got into the action on the television.

"Wow. What is this I'm feeling, honey?" she asked. "You can get it up!" Sheila's hand could feel Lyle's erection through his pants.

"Yeah. I took an Erecta before we went out to dinner," Lyle said, matter-of-factly.

"Erecta! You're kidding, aren't you?" Sheila asked. "I thought you couldn't take that stuff after your stroke?" She turned to look at Lyle.

"Yeah, that's what that doctor said. But I don't fuckin' care," Lyle answered, now focused on his work.

"Oh, right there sweetheart. That's it," she added. "Yeah baby."

Lyle's hand had moved up under Sheila's dress.

"I bought a ten-pack from Tundra RX last week, and thought we'd try it out tonight on our inaugural, here."

"But that's the company that you're suing, isn't it?"

Lyle nodded. "Yeah. It is. But they sent me a great flyer with what they call lifestyle meds at twenty percent off. For existing customers. It looked pretty good. I figured that they can't screw that stuff up. I'm getting my other drugs from Price-Mart now, so I'm safe."

Sheila didn't answer him for a minute. The growing groundswell in Lyle's crotch was all the answer she needed.

"Sweetheart, right there. Yeah, baby. Don't stop," Sheila said. She leaned forward and pulled her dress up over her head. For a forty-five year-old, her body held its own against the ravages of time and middle-age. She was still a looker. Lyle quickly went to work with all of the limited skills that he could muster, weak arm and all. It had been a while.

#

"Baby, that was great," Sheila said later on.

"Not bad for beginners, huh?" Lyle responded.

"Yeah. Maybe our lives will get back to normal now. I sure hope so," Sheila said as she smiled and stretched out. She was naked and the light from the TV screen reflected against her silhouette. The action on the DVD continued, unabated. She ignored it.

"More sex like this and a job. That's what we need," Lyle added. "That, and some money from my lawsuit, and we'll be okay. Christ, I hope it happens."

#

Chinese Chemicals Flow Unchecked to Market

New York Times, Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Milan—In January, Honor International Pharmtech was accused of shipping counterfeit drugs into the United States. Even so, the Chinese chemical company—whose motto is "Thinking Much of Honor"—was openly marketing its products in October to thousands of buyers here at the world's biggest trade show for pharmaceutical ingredients.

"Under-regulated manufacturers are increasingly becoming the source of active pharmaceutical ingredients used in the production of counterfeit medicine," R. John Theriault—until recently Pfizer's head of global security—said in a statement to Congress.

"The facts are irrefutable," Mr. Theriault told Congress. "The importation of counterfeit, infringing, misbranded and unapproved pharmaceutical products in the United States is increasing exponentially." Pfizer makes Viagra, one of the drugs most often counterfeited.

The company exhibiting in Milan, Honor International Pharmtech, was also the subject of a customs investigation. In January, agents seized 3,041 fake Viagra pills sent by the company to a DHL shipping hub in Wilmington, Ohio, according to customs.

The shipment, disguised as grape seed extract, was destined for an Internet pharmacy in Central America, said agents who requested anonymity because the investigation continues.—Walt Bogdanich, et al.

* * * * *

### Police Progress

Pat McEwan looked over at the digital clock on the wall of the meeting room. It was only 9:30 in the morning, and he was bored already. It was going to be a long day, if the staff meeting he was sitting in was any indication of things to come. He hadn't made much progress on three separate investigations that he was working on. He'd be getting pressure from above to make headway on the cases soon enough.

Karen Kiley, his assistant, was next to him in the meeting. McEwan looked over at her as the staff sergeant droned on about community policing. She was taking notes. She was attentive and interested in learning everything she could about police work in the provinces. He thought that she'd grow into being a good cop if she was able to handle the petty office politics in the department.

Karen turned and saw Pat looking at her. She thought that it was about the pills case. She ripped off a sheet of paper from her notepad, and scribbled a note on it. She raised her eyebrows, and handed it to him.

He looked back at her and then opened the paper. Very melodramatic, he thought. On the sheet of steno paper in black ink was written "I've found some good stuff on Tundra RX!"

He glanced up from the note and then shrugged his shoulders at Karen, wondering what could be so interesting about the company. He looked back down at the note and noticed that the handwriting was written in Palmer script—wide, looping letters that were perfectly formed. Nobody wrote like that anymore. He thought the nuns back in her grammar school in Saskatchewan did their job well, beating those good penmanship habits into the Canadian youth. McEwan refolded the note and looked back at her and smiled. The meeting ended fifteen minutes later, and the two police officers headed to the canteen for morning coffee.

"So tell me, what did you find out about our favorite company, Tundra RX?" McEwan said as he bit into a powdered donut. The sugar clung to his moustache. Karen thought he looked like a walrus. McEwan wiped his mouth with a cheap paper napkin, and waited.

"Just like you said, Pat," Karen answered. She was drinking a cup of tea with lemon. McEwan looked at the dark liquid and thought that it couldn't possibly look more tasteless and unappetizing.

"I searched our database, and Tundra RX came up with pharmaceutical purchases all over the world."

"That's not surprising," he said.

"But then I looked at the transit routes. You called it. Spot on. They use free-trade zones in both Panama and Dubai. Especially Dubai. They've had six shipments go through Dubai in the last three months."

McEwan was quiet as he stroked his moustache and listened as Karen rattled off more details about Tundra RX's pill traffic around the world. He continued to be amazed at what computers could keep track of so easily. He finished off his donut, crumpled his napkin and waited for Karen to complete her update. She finally paused and looked over at him.

"Well what do you think?"

"You've done a balls-up job so far," Pat said. "But now I think that it's time that we brought in some help."

"What do you mean?"

"I think we should call the Canadian DEA," Pat said as he belched lightly and folded his arms.

"Why do we need them, Pat? Let's push on ourselves here. This may be a good case. We can at least go visit the company and ask some questions. They're only a shuttle flight away."

Karen was ready to board a plane to Edmonton and break down the door at Tundra RX with a ram, McEwan thought. He tried to slow her down.

"I think our next step is to ask our internal groups if they know anything about Tundra RX first. Maybe there's an active investigation going on now somewhere else. Who knows?" he shrugged. The last thing he wanted to do was to actually go visit Tundra RX in Edmonton and just poke around. He wanted something solid before he went any further. McEwan knew there was no budget for a junket to a western province without some cold, hard facts first.

Karen sighed, sensing a small roadblock, but kept her thoughts to herself. She knew she had to work with McEwan, or she'd never get the case to move forward.

"Okay, then. I'll set up a call with DEA. For this afternoon. How's your schedule?"

The two mounties talked for another thirty minutes as they strategized how to proceed with the Tundra RX case.

#

At 4:30 pm, Karen Kiley and Pat McEwan were huddled in a small conference room on the main detective floor in the building. It was an interior room with reflected ceiling lights and a small rectangular table with four uncomfortable chairs. No windows, and a Canadian flag poster on the wall. The two policemen were seated in front of a Polycom speakerphone.

"Yeah, we do have something on Tundra RX," Bill Kettles' voice boomed over the speaker. Karen quickly adjusted the volume down. "We got a complaint on them last month from a doctor down in the States."

"What kind of complaint?" McEwan asked.

"There was report filed on fake Tenata in Georgia. A guy had a stroke down in Atlanta while he was taking pills that he got from Tundra RX, they think. They tested the drugs, and lo and behold, there wasn't an API in over fifty pills. Good stuff."

"What's an API?" Karen asked.

"Active pharmaceutical ingredient," Kettles said. "It's the real chemicals in the pills that you pay for. It turns out that Tundra RX didn't put any in those pills. Or so it's alleged by this good doctor down in the US. No reason not to believe him."

"And what do you think?" Pat said.

"It's possible. Shit happens. The company has a free-trade zone listing in Dubai. It's a perfect front door to bring in bad pills."

"Yeah, we saw that too."

"That makes it a whole lot more likely that there's a problem with these guys," Kettles said.

"You think they're dirty?"

"Might be. It's funny that you guys are looking at them too."

Karen nodded her head. "We thought it was strange that they had so many complaints about bad pills."

"There's really only one way for us to find out, though. We need to break into a box of theirs in Dubai and test some pills."

"Then we'll know," Pat said.

"Then we'll definitely know," Kettles said from the other end of the speakerphone.

"So what are you waiting for?"

"We're not. We just got a warrant for PC yesterday from a magistrate up here," Kettles said. He felt good, as they were well out in front on this one. "The judge agreed there was probable cause, and issued a full search warrant yesterday."

"What happens next?" Karen asked. She didn't know much about international investigations. She wanted to learn as much as she could.

"We already faxed it to the port of Dubai. They're going to search a Tundra RX shipping container this week," Kettles said.

"Why wait so long?" Karen asked in frustration. She looked over at Pat McEwan, who shrugged. She mouthed the word "slow" at him.

"Well, they have to find it first. There're about 10,000 shipping containers in the Dubai Free Trade Zone, and even with bar codes and RFID, it's not easy to find the right one. But they'll get it eventually," Kettles said. "Our Dubai colleagues are good once they get on the scent.

"What then?" Karen said.

"They'll test the pills and we'll know. Then we'll decide what to do."

"What do you think?" Pat said.

"I think their dirty," Kettles replied. "Dubai is the place to go if you want to move fake pills around the world."

"Keep us in the loop," McEwan said. "This may be a live one."

"Yeah, it may," Kettles said. "We'll give you an update next week."

* * * * *

### The Cruel Truth

Carol Ferris was nervous. She stirred her cosmopolitan with a straw, then took a big gulp of the sweet drink. She and Julie Sontag were sitting in a dark corner of Seasons, a local restaurant. They had gone there for drinks and food after work.

"You're not going to believe what we found in the testing," Carol said as she put her glass down and looked over at her friend Julie. Julie was dressed in a white turtleneck and grey skirt. She had on knee-high boots with heels. She was a head-turner, and Carol noticed the men that gave her second looks when they entered the bar.

"I'm hoping that it's not what I think I'm about to hear," Julie said as she ran her hand through her brown hair. "Tell me. What did you find?"

Carol waited until the waitress left with their dinner order. The two women were close together in the corner as Carol launched into her story.

"It's incredible. It's worse than we thought before," Carol said as she gulped her drink. "Rakesh came in on Monday and gave me ten samples to test. He said he took them randomly from the deliveries that came in over the weekend. He had on the academic-doctor look and everything. Every one of the samples was traceable with a bar code. He made it all seem so legitimate."

"And what happened? How were the samples?" Julie asked expectantly.

"Every one of them turned out clean. One-hundred percent pure, with actual pharmaceutical ingredients in each."

"So that's great!" Julie said. "That proves that we don't have a problem. So why are you saying it's a problem?" She sipped her chardonnay as she looked at Carol.

"Because later on, I went down to the warehouse and took my own samples from a shipment that had come in from Lucky Pharmaceutical. It was all ED drugs. It was a big shipment."

"Erecta?" Julie asked.

"Yes, in a lot of different dosages," Carol said. "We tested randomly. And guess what? Over eighty percent of the pills were fake! Bogus. Nothing in them at all for APIs. Nothing, Julie! Absolutely nothing." Carol took a deep drink from her glass, and paused to let the information sink in.

"So what does that mean? The pills Rakesh had given you were good. It sounds like you're getting inconsistent results."

"No, Julie. Get real. Rakesh is feeding me pills that he handpicks to sample. They're set up. When I went to the shipment and picked out my own pills, they turned up bogus. I think Rakesh is in on it now."

Julie drank some more wine as the thought of that sank in. After a few seconds she said "We need to tell Bill about this."

Carol looked over at Julie. "Sweetheart, don't be so naïve. I think Bill Callahan may be in on this too."

"Why? Why do you think that? Rakesh is the one with the drug problem," Julie said. She was trying to quickly digest all the information Carol was throwing at her.

"Nobody at Tundra RX can just import bogus pills like that by himself. It's too complicated. You'd need another person to pull it off. I think Bill is in this up to his eyeballs," Carol said. She was a scientist and she always looked for the truth. "I thought about this all last night and I can't come to any other conclusion."

"But why would they do this? The company is already making a lot of money as it is."

"They're making a lot more by selling fake pills, and they're doing it under cover of daylight. It's the oldest trick in the book."

Julie went quiet and drank more of her white wine. After a while, she asked "So what do we do about it?"

"I think we have to go to the police," Carol said. She was a straight shooter from the get-go. "We need to expose this fraud, if there is one. We can't be implicated in any of this stuff."

Julie sipped her wine and thought for a minute, as she listened to her friend.

"No, Carol. Not so fast. We need to be methodical. We should do nothing right now. We lay low and try to put the pieces together, first."

"Shouldn't we go to the police first?" Carol said.

"We may lose our jobs and crater the company. Let's not rush into anything yet. We're not going to find jobs that pay what we're making here anywhere else in Edmonton, or Canada, for that matter." Julie let the thought of that sink in. "You're a single mom with two kids. And one's disabled. Where are you going to find work like this?"

Carol shook her head. She was on her second cosmopolitan at this point. "You're right. I'm not. But this doesn't feel good. If we're selling fake drugs, it's all going to come apart anyway, at some point. Convictions and criminal stuff."

"I agree," Julie said. "But it's not us doing it. Look, we need to start pulling the pieces together."

Julie finished off her second glass of wine. She inhaled deeply and tried to compose herself. The world was spinning. She was a marketing person, though, who had dealt with public relation disasters like this before. She could deal with curve balls. She just needed time to figure it out.

"Look, let's start looking around at the company and see who's in on this. We need some facts before we blow the whistle." Julie's street smarts kicked in. She would take control and start to figure it out.

"Okay, if you say so," Carol reluctantly agreed. "I'll do some more testing over the next two weeks, and we'll see what turns up in the other drugs."

'Maybe it's a fluke," Julie said, a little more upbeat as their food came and she tried to put some spin on the situation. Both of them had ordered blackened tuna, the special of the day.

Carol looked over at Julie. "Julie, this is no fucking fluke," she said. "There's something going on at the company."

#

Carol went home an hour later to her kids. The babysitter had stayed late. Her son, Seth, said "Hi" quietly, as she walked in the door. He was wrapped up in his video game, killing people on a simulated battlefront in an alien dimension. The volume was loud, and Carol had to shout above the din.

"Did you take your pills yet, Seth?"

'Not yet. I need you to put them out for me," he said. He looked up at her for a second, then went back to the game. She could see the love in his eyes.

Carole had forgotten to set out his nighttime pills that morning before she left for work, as she had been in a hurry and distracted. Seth had ADD-related symptoms, and took a handful of medicines to combat the twitches and erratic behavior that the chemicals in his brain produced. It was a constant struggle for both him and Carol, and all her attempts to keep the family together with some semblance of normalcy were only half successful.

She reached into the kitchen cabinet and pulled down the plastic Ziploc bag that contained nine bottles of pills. She knew Seth's nighttime pills by their distinctive large-sized containers. She took out the one for the stimulant, and noticed that the prescription was filled by none other than Tundra RX. Her own company was the supplier for some of the critical meds that Seth took! She hadn't thought about it before, but now that all the test results came back bad on the pills she had just tested, she paused. She wondered if there was something wrong with her own son's pills. She didn't know what to think but she did notice that he seemed to be acting more erratic lately. She wondered.

A second later she heaved the container of pills into the trash container and it landed with a bang as it bounced off the side and dropped to the bottom.

"What was that?" Seth yelled in from the other room.

"Nothing, hon. You're low on Securol. I have to get you some more tomorrow from CHP with a new prescription."

"Is that okay?"

"One night without the medicine is fine. You have some in your system already from this morning."

"If you say so," Seth said and went back to playing his game.

Carol shuddered at the thought of him getting bad drugs from Tundra RX for his ADD, and decided that she would come clean with the police soon if the situation was as bad as it appeared to be. She couldn't take the guilt and potential exposure of a scam that gave people bad meds.

* * * * *

### Momentum

Mike Smith was in Terminal D, the Delta airlines terminal, on a Wednesday afternoon in May. The small trees outside the windows were all in bloom, and the sun was shining. It was a good afternoon to be a state cop at Logan Airport in Boston.

Mike was seated in the corner of the terminal where the shuttle flights to New York originated. It was 2 p.m., and still quiet before the afternoon rush taking business people back home to NYC started. He was in full uniform, as he always was at the airport, and his blue jodhpurs were riding high and tight on his crotch and into his ass crack. His balls were killing him. He'd been to the men's room three times so far, trying to pull his pants out of his ass. No luck. He looked like a ballet dancer in a production with a codpiece. He made a serious mental note to order some new pants that fit looser this week when he was back in the barracks.

Mike was sitting at the end of a row of grey plastic seats with molded arms and backs. He delicately balanced a Dunkin' Donuts coffee on the right arm of his seat, along with a powdered donut. He had taken two bites when his cell phone rang.

"So what have you found out, guy?" he said into the phone. His right leg was crossed over his knee, and his shiny black boot hung out in front. He was having trouble getting comfortable. He took a sip from the cup full of scalding hot coffee with cream and sugar that he had in his hand, and waited for a response.

"Some interesting stuff," Pat McEwan said over the phone. "Myself and another detective have found some possibly incriminating information about the company."

"Yeah?" Mike said, mildly excited. "Like what?"

"What was it you were interested in, Mike? Refresh my memory," Pat McEwan said. He was sitting in his office in Toronto, feet up, eating fried crisps from a bag and washing them down with Barq's root beer. He made a huge belch off to the side, then continued. "Oh yeah, now I remember. It was the counterfeit Erecta pills you bought from Tundra RX, wasn't it?" He popped a chip into his mouth, crunched, and waited for an answer.

Mike almost dropped his coffee. He couldn't have his Canadian cop friend telling his little secret around the police circuit. He put his cup down, pulled at his crotch once more to get comfortable, and then jumped into the conversation.

"It's not me, Pat. I told you already." He started laughing. "I said it was for a "friend." You know, a fucking friend. A friend of mine had problems with the goddamn pills. You know, friends?" Mike said.

Pat McEwan responded. "I know Mike. We all know that you American men have a lot of "friends" that don't need Erecta to get hard-ons. But why are sales of those ED drugs in the States off the charts then?" He was wound up now. "Take a bloody page from the Canadian male playbook. Mike, are you still there, for Chrissakes?"

"I'm here Pat. I'm looking for evidence to nail these phony pharmacists up in Canada. They're goddamn criminals. What have you got for me?" Mike took another sip of coffee. It was drinkable now, as it started to cool.

McEwan paused for effect and got quiet. He spoke softly into the phone. "Mike, all you have to do is just rub the head of your pecker with a little Canadian bear grease every night, and then have the missus jump up on it and rotate. That's what we all do up here. Works every time. You'll never need a ten-dollar little green pill again," he said. He laughed.

"Pat, that must be my problem," Mike answered. "I'm divorced. I don't have a missus to jump up on any part of my body. Except maybe my asshole when she comes to ream it out with her lawyer, looking for her alimony payments. Now cut the shit and tell me what you found."

Pat finally got serious and told Mike about the international production facilities that Tundra RX used, and the interesting connections with the free trade zones. They talked for fifteen minutes.

"Look, there are some other Canadian enforcement agencies that are suddenly interested in this company, too. Our DEA, for one. We just took a warrant out to inspect one of the company's cargo containers this week in Dubai."

"No shit! Do you think you'll find anything?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"Good. Can you keep me in the loop? This is official police business."

"Okay, Mike. You'll be the first to know."

The two men traded thoughts on the upcoming hockey playoffs for a few minutes, and the fact that the Boston Bruins looked like shit. On this topic, they agreed. They rang off with Pat promising that he would call with the results from the search over in Dubai when he got them.

Mike finished his coffee and donut, feeling good. The Canadian cops were making progress, and there might be something there that would prove his pecker was sabotaged a number of times. He got up and threw the paper coffee cup away, along with the remnants of the donut. His pants were still riding high and killing him. He tried, once again, to discreetly adjust the stretchy blue nylon at his crotch and get comfortable without everybody in the terminal noticing. Then he sauntered off toward the curb to write some tickets. He had to write twenty-five tickets a day, or answer to the shift captain, who'd fry his ass. What a pain-in-the-ass job he thought, as he headed for the street.

#

"I don't like it," Bill Callahan said. "Something didn't feel right about that meeting. Or about the way that the girls are treating me now." Callahan looked over at Rakesh. Both men were holed up in Callahan's office with the door closed. It was after 7 p.m., and most of the staff had left.

The parking lot at the industrial park still had a lot of cars as several of Tundra RX's neighbors were manufacturing operations that ran second and third shifts. Callahan looked outside into the cold Canadian night, and could pick out his Ford Explorer, lit up under the sodium vapor lamps in the parking lot. The orange light cast an eerie glow across the landscape.

"The girls?" Rakesh asked trying to place who Callahan was talking about. "Who are the girls?"

"The girls. Carol and Julie. They've been acting strange for the last several weeks. They're asking me a lot of questions about bad pharmaceuticals and bogus pills. They're constantly talking about all the customer complaints that we're getting. I may just be dreaming, but I think they stumbled onto something." Callahan was exasperated and looked over at Rakesh for support. He was drumming a mechanical pencil on a yellow pad as he thought.

"This time I don't disagree with you," Rakesh said. "I was in a meeting last week with Julie and we listened to tapes from customers complaining about bad Erecta. It was unsettling, I have to tell you." The Pakistani doctor shook his head and fidgeted with the cuffs on his dark-blue cotton shirt.

His cufflinks were two replicas of Canectin pills. The sales rep from Smith Planter had given them to him last month, after they had a full night of drinking and strip clubs in Montreal. The yellow pill cufflinks were a nice contrast to the deep blue of his shirt.

"Bad fucking Erecta. Is that all I ever hear about?" Callahan asked. "I'm sick of it, and I think we need to cut back on streaming fake pills through our inventory for a while," he said at last, as he looked over at Rakesh.

"I think you're right. Laying low for a while may be our best policy for a few months. We can always start back up again when things have settled down," Rakesh answered.

"What time is it?"

"Seven thirty," Rakesh said looking at his Cartier watch.

"Let's call Zhu Wen right now and cancel those extra orders for the next sixty days."

Callahan punched on the Polycomm speakerphone on his desk. He had the head of production's number for Lucky Pharmaceuticals programmed into his speed dial. The line was silent for a few seconds, then came alive as the call to China went through.

"Zhu. We've got to stop the special orders for a little while. We're getting too many questions here in Canada about the fake drugs that you're making for us."

Zhu Wen was smoking a Zhongnanhai Light cigarette as he listened. He inhaled deeply as Callahan spoke. He nodded his head silently. He was at a stand up desk in his office, looking out through a glass window onto the gleaming drug manufacturing floor of Lucky Pharmaceutical. He was working the mouse on his laptop on the high desk as he listened. The manufacturing records for Tundra RX popped up on the screen.

"I see that we've been producing a lot of special batches for you recently," Zhu Wen said. "They've been perfect reproductions."

Bill Callahan waited. "Reproduction is exactly the right word, Zhu. We need to lay low, and only buy legit one-hundred-percent API stuff for a while." Callahan got right to the point. "We have to clean it up for a bit."

"'How long, Bill, do you want to stop the special orders? They're very profitable for us, too," Zhu said as he blew cigarette smoke into the air.

"Look, they're profitable for everybody, but they'll be a pain in the ass if we get caught with thousands of your fake pills in our inventory," Callahan said as he looked over at Rakesh. "It'll be a bad business for all of us."

Zhu Wen was quiet. Lucky Pharmaceutical was well-connected in the Chinese Communist party, so he wasn't afraid so much of getting caught in China. They were protected. But Tundra RX was a big customer and he couldn't afford to ruin the relationship.

"No problem, Bill," the production manager said. "We'll stop the runs today."

"Good," Callahan replied. He felt a little better now that he was in control again, and could stop the flow of fake pills into the company. "This won't be for long, Zhu. As soon as things settle down, we'll go back to the special orders. They're our biggest profit margin items. Anyway, do you have any special orders in production now for us?" Callahan asked.

"No, we finished several days ago," Zhu Wen lied. He could see from his laptop that there was a large order of fake Tenata ready to ship today from Lucky.

"Excellent. Don't send anymore for now."

The men spoke for a few more minutes. Zhu Wen was a chain-smoker, and lit another cigarette during the conversation. They agreed to talk in a week.

After the call, Zhu called down to the factory floor on his house phone. He spoke in rapid Cantonese to the floor supervisor.

"Be sure to ship out the big Tundra RX order tonight to them. They're asking for an order change and we don't want to be stuck with the product that we just produced."

"Where is it going in the interim?" the supervisor asked.

"The computer indicates the Dubai FTZ. Ship it tonight."

Zhu Wen hung up and sat down. He rolled the lit cigarette between his fingers as he thought. The Americans were not going to stick Lucky Pharmaceutical with incriminating evidence if he could help it. It wouldn't be good for the company's reputation, or his career. The family's hog farm in central China that he left five years ago was not that far away, he knew, if he screwed up.

* * * * *

### Hot Desert

Abdul Doha, day supervisor at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, the oldest and largest free-trade zone in Dubai, looked at the faxed search warrant from Toronto Canada. He noticed how clear and legible it was for a fax. Some of the shit he saw that was passed off as legitimate documentation was barely readable, like reading a page of hieroglyphics. Along with the warrant, the approved international jurisdiction form that the Port of Dubai Police had signed came in as well. Everything looked in order. He glanced up at the two customs police officers who were waiting. They spoke in slow Arabic.

"It looks like the papers are in order," the port supervisor said as he looked up at the two intent police faces in front of him.

"Where is the container that we're opening?" one of the customs policemen asked.

Abdul smiled and walked over to the viewing window in the office. The free trade zone office was in a control tower building four stories off the ground. It had floor-to-ceiling glass, so the controllers could see all the activity outside. There was an endless sea of maritime shipping containers around them. Yellow, blue, red, rusted, old, new—every kind of container that traveled on a ship or train was there in the facility, from eight to forty feet in length. There was also an army of blue crawlers that rode around and hydraulically lifted the containers as necessary for shipping or access.

"Out there, my friend. There it is, straight in front of you." Abdul pointed outside to the yard.

"Which one?" the inspector asked as he laughed.

"Ah, you don't see it?" Abdul went to his computer and typed in some numbers. A bar code reference popped up. He toggled over to another program, with a GPS base, and entered the bar code. When he clicked the mouse, the screen showed graphically a section of the yard with all the stacked containers, and the box in question was outlined in red—four down in an eight-container stack. "Come here," he said. "You couldn't find this one, eh?" Abdul pointed at the screen. "Your eyes aren't good enough for this kind of work."

Abdul called out to one of the nearby cargo crane drivers on his Nextel. They spoke quickly in Arabic. In ten minutes, one of the hulking blue behemoths straddled the pile in question, and began moving containers. In fifteen minutes, the operator had a blue Maersk fourty-foot shipping container, previously sandwiched in the stack of eight, down on the ground. The three men walked over to the rear door of the box.

Abdul had a special bolt cutter and a small device to disable the electronic security on the handle. They unlocked the mechanism, and opened the big steel door. Inside were wall-to-wall boxes of drugs, all labeled from Lucky Pharmaceutical. The container was three-quarters full. The men started unloading the boxes onto the hot tarmac. The temperature was one hundred and five degrees, and still rising.

The customs police sorted through the boxes, and picked five of them that were addressed to Tundra RX that looked interesting. All three men were sweating heavily in the Dubai mid-day sun. The droplets of sweat dripped down onto the corrugated cardboard as they inspected shipping labels. The men had to document their actions in detail so that they could use the search as evidence if they found contraband material. One of the inspectors took pictures of each sealed box that they picked to remove and test.

"What will you do now with the boxes?" Abdul asked Khmal, one of the customs inspectors, as they began putting the remaining boxes back into the shipping container. They had to reload the boxes so that they fit inside and the big steel doors could be closed and locked again. Abdul was grateful that the box was only three quarters full, so there was room for some sloppiness in the repacking. He just wanted to get done and get back into the comfort of the air-conditioned control tower.

"We'll take the drugs to a testing lab in Dubai that the medical community uses. We have a contract with them."

"What then?"

"Then we test samples from each of the boxes for the pharmaceutical ingredients that are listed on the containers. We are looking for drug impurity."

"And do you find it usually?" Abdul asked.

"Sometimes yes. And sometimes no." Khamal said. He was a thin man who took his job seriously. His uniform shirt was dark with sweat, but his police badge gleamed on his front pocket.

Abdul had not met this inspector before. It wasn't surprising, though, as there were about twenty customs inspectors working in the free trade zone now. Different people worked on the various shifts every day.

"And what do you think about this stuff?" Abdul said as he wiped his forehead and pointed to the five boxes on the pavement.

"Well, somebody wants this shipment inspected, so there's got to be some interest somewhere back in North America."

"What's you guess?"

"I'm guessing that this stuff is dirty, that the drugs are fake. The company ships through here to avoid taxes and detailed customs searches. It's the only reason." Khamal shrugged his shoulders.

The three men loaded the five boxes into a customs car and headed back to the control tower.

"The testing will take a week or so. We'll send you the results when we find out. Maybe we'll be the lucky ones this time, eh?" Khamal said as he smiled.

Abdul laughed at the lame joke. He got out of the car at the control tower and the men said goodbye. He moved through the doors to get inside the frigid offices.

#

At the same time, several thousand miles away, Zhu Wen was looking at his computer screen in China. He was smoking another of his Zhongnanhai cigarettes. He loved smoking, and was a confirmed Chinese nicotine addict. As he smoked and worked at his computer, an alert popped up on his screen from the special security software that Lucky had installed.

A GPS tracking device listed an intrusion at the free-trade zone in Dubai. A container that Lucky just shipped six days ago was in the Dubai port. A listing with the bar code for the container was displayed on the screen. The red alert button flashed like a strobe. Zhu Wen disabled it. The smoke from his cigarette wreathed up over the top of the screen as he worked his mouse.

"Shit," he said quietly to himself. He drilled through the screens and saw that the shipment was bound for Tundra RX in Canada. He also could see what the inventory was in the shipping container. It consisted of, among other things, the Tenata and Erecta that the factory had specially produced last week. It was all the remaining counterfeit pills. He frowned. This was the final production run he was trying to ship to Tundra RX quickly.

He snatched up his cell phone and called a contact that he had in the Dubai free trade zone. He lit another cigarette while waiting for the call to go through. Twenty seconds later, he was connected to the Middle East.

"Yes, Zhu. Our contact here says that customs inspectors went in today and confiscated boxes from that container. How many and what, I don't know. But it was official." The voice paused. "Is there a problem?"

"No, I don't think so," Zhu Wen said automatically. "Thanks for the information." He hung up the phone. Zhu pulled on his cigarette and let the news sink in.

"Damn," he said under his breath. This may be trouble for Lucky, he thought.

#

Carol Ferris called Julie a few days later.

"Julie, I just sent a package of information for overnight delivery to the Drug Enforcement agency with our test results."

"What?" Julie said. "Why would you do something like that? Are you crazy! We may lose our jobs over this thing. Jesus Christ, Carol!"

"I don't care," Carol said. "I looked at some more test results on the so-called random pills that Rakesh had in the warehouse. They were all bogus."

"And?"

"Peoples' lives may be at risk here. I'm the head of research, and if there's a problem and I don't report it, there may be a criminal investigation. It's too dangerous. I could go to jail for withholding this information."

"What did you send them?" Julie asked, trying to stay calm.

"I sent them all the lab results and they were clearly marked. Let's see if someone picks up on it and investigates us," Carol said to Julie over the phone. "Don't panic yet. It may get lost in a mountain of stuff that they get from a lot of companies."

"I'm not panicking but I don't like it. We're not in control of the information now, and it may come back to haunt us."

"Look," Carol said, "just be sure to clean up your files and keep all your stuff ready to be inspected by the cops. It may happen soon."

"Is that what you've done?"

"For sure. My stuff is ready for an investigation. Get smart, girl, and protect yourself. Bill and Rakesh don't deserve to be saved with this bullshit going on. Wake up!" Carol said, exasperated.

"Yeah, unfortunately I think you're right," Julie said. "Thanks for the call. I'm going to clear my calendar this afternoon. Put all my stuff in order. Who knows what could happen at the company."

"Who knows, indeed," Carol echoed into the phone.

The two women ended the call and agreed to talk everyday, going forward.

* * * * *

### Try and Try Again

Mike Smith was inquisitive by nature, which was generally not in character for a state cop. Most of his partners were narrow, dull, in-the-box thinkers. But the Erecta situation, with its personal effect on him, held his interest and caused him to expand his horizons while analyzing this situation.

He kept remembering the great sex he had with Susan when he took the Erecta and the pills worked. It was good. But when they didn't work, it was awful. The limp pecker syndrome he was occasionally getting when they had sex after he took the little green pill was becoming unbearable.

He was getting ready to go out to dinner with Susan at their favorite restaurant in Cohasset. She had already asked him to stay over for the night, so he was bringing a change of clothes for the morning. That also meant that there would be plenty of sex as well.

That's why Mike had gone to the Harvard Insight health clinic the week before. He went in and saw an anonymous physician's assistant—not even a real doctor. He was thrilled as he laid out his story. No MD to probe around the edges of his ailment and ask embarrassing questions. He knew that PA's were usually prescription machines.

"Doc, I'm divorced and just starting to date again. I'm a fifty-year-old state cop. I'm out of shape and I have trouble getting it up. Look at me, I'm a public servant and goddamn wreck. Can you give me something to help my erections, if you know what I mean?" Mike tilted his head slightly and gave the assistant doctor his genuine, clear-eyed policeman's smile.

It worked, like magic. He had the maximum dose Erecta prescription in his pocket in no more than twenty minutes, all in. He was back like greased lightning in his unmarked cruiser, which he had inconspicuously parked in the back of the parking lot. Mike filled the prescription at the HFS drug store in South Boston, not his regular store, but one on the other side of town, so the Asian pharmacist wouldn't recognize him.

He started to get dressed. He looked at his watch and did a quick calculation. He figured it was at least four hours until he'd be required to perform with Susan. He pushed the little green pill out of its foil cocoon and swallowed it with a sip of Budweiser beer. Tonight would be his personal test of the new Erecta pills. If they worked without a hitch from HFS, then it was probably true that the pills from Tundra RX were bogus.

#

Dinner was wonderful. Mike and Susan went to their favorite harborside restaurant in Cohasset, the Dock. There, over candlelight and chilled chardonnay, the couple talked and romanced.

"Mike, I'm glad we're still together," Susan said as she relaxed and sipped her wine.

"Yeah, I am too. It seems like it's working again," he said.

"Sort of surprising, with all this craziness with the ED drugs and all."

"I know it. I'm off the Tundra RX stuff for good now."

"That's probably good for us in the long run."

"Yeah. Let's keep it going, and see what happens. I always manage to screw relationships up. I'm a cop, for Chrissakes. I'm trying real hard, though, not to let that happen this time," Mike said. "You're the first woman in a long time that I can actually talk to. Not easy for me."

"Why would you say that? I think you're very articulate. For a state cop," Susan added as she smiled.

"I know. I know." Mike said. "State cops are not known for their conversational skills. We're more like cavemen, the GEICO guys."

"I don't know about that," Susan replied. "I don't think you're dull. And besides, I like a little caveman once in a while."

They finished dinner and had an after dinner drink at another local bar on the water. Small candles on the bar and Christmas lights overhead gave the place a casual ambiance. Susan and Mike sat at the bar, Susan sipping wine and Mike drinking a beer. He wanted to be ready, so he didn't have any hard liquor. They had one drink, then decided to head home.

They got back to Susan's house twenty minutes later, horny as motherfuckers. Mike knew what the tentative agenda was from the get-go, before they even got to the living room couch. They started kissing, first lightly, then passionately, while leaning against the doorjamb in the hall.

"Umm, looks like you're happy to see me, Officer Smith," Susan said as she pushed back for a second and began rubbing his crotch. As he responded, she quickly moved the action to the bedroom.

The Erecta kicked in and Mike performed like a Marine. He went for thirty minutes, had a brief pause, then came back strong, for an encore. With the help of the little green pill, he was a contender all night. Later, when it was over, the two of them lay exhausted and spent on the sheets. Susan's blond hair was spread over the pillow. She looked over at Mike.

"No kidding, you're back on the Erecta again, aren't you?" she asked. "Tell me that. You only perform like this when you have that little helper. I can tell. I thought you were off that stuff," she said.

"Yeah, you're right. I took a pill tonight. A real pill. The good stuff," he said, nervous for a second that she wanted him to quit taking the medication once and for all.

"No, it's okay occasionally. It's great when it works right," Susan said. "I get bummed out when you take it and nothing happens or you pass out. Where did you get the pill you took tonight?" Susan asked.

"Interesting that you ask," Mike said. "This is an HFS pill that I got prescribed from my HMO. All good-quality, American stuff."

"Well that tells us something, doesn't it? It worked fine. That means the pills from Tundra RX are definitely junk."

"I know it. I'm off them forever," Mike said. "And I'm going to follow up with Pat McEwan in Toronto to see if we can investigate 'em and find out what the hell is going on up there. God, I'd love to bust them."

Thank God for the little green pill, Mike thought to himself, as Susan moved her hand under the covers to rest it gently on top of his pecker. In the nature of a scientist, she was going to test the powers of the wonder drug again.

"Once more, honey?" Susan smiled at Mike. "What do you think? No sense letting the pill go to waste, huh?"

"God bless Erecta," was all he could say, as he slowly came to attention and then went back to work.

* * * * *

### Pleadings

Frank Billings and his secretary, Anita Simmons, had been busy the past thirty days. Frank had decided that Lyle Cullen did, in fact, have a good case against Tundra RX. Not a great one, but a good one. Since he didn't have any other big-dollar medical malpractice actions—or any other malpractice actions for that matter—he quickly decided to invest the time in Lyle's situation.

He had spent about three days researching tort law, and found some good cases on medical injuries caused by suspect pharmaceuticals. The cases weren't anywhere close to Lyle Cullen's fact pattern, phony drugs purchased over the Internet and received by mail, but Frank didn't care. He got his law degree from a little school in Georgia that he attended nights. It took him four times to pass the bar. It was the best he could do.

"How do I answer this question here, Frank?" Anita asked as she looked at a particular jurisdictional form on the screen. She had found it using Westlaw's form generation software. She wasn't stupid. She had been Frank's secretary and paralegal for the last seven years, with occasional shags thrown in free of charge. She knew how to do most of the pleadings and filings better than Frank.

"I don't know, Anita. Just do your best and make it look real legal-like," Frank said. "We don't want them to think we're nothing but asshole hillbillies down here in Clarke County." Frank was busy on the desktop in his office. He was Googling Tundra RX for their headquarters address and executive information. He couldn't seem to find the "Contact Us" button. He needed an address to have good service of process for the lawsuit, or it was going nowhere.

He sat hunched over his desk, in an old wooden swivel chair. He picked it up at a flea market about ten years ago, and had refinished it to its natural oak veneer. Putting a fresh coat of polyurethane on the chair was about the extent of his wood refinishing skills. It was the only genuine antique in the entire office. Everything else was junk.

Frank, shirtsleeves rolled up and tie loosened, moved the mouse connected to the old Dell machine. He was mildly excited, as he finally had a real case with some prospect for success. He smiled as he typed. He wasn't the brightest bulb in the Georgia legal profession, and the irony of looking things up on Google in order to complete his legal filings wasn't lost on him. He was just another Southern cracker lawyer trying to make a buck.

"I don't give a shit, Anita. We have just got to get this lawsuit filed. Just do your best. We can amend our pleadings once we get something filed and accepted by the damn court."

"We've never filed anything in Canada before."

"We're filing right here in Georgia, in Clarke County, sweetheart." Frank was happy at the thought. "Make 'em come to us. Give them a little taste of Georgia justice." He smiled.

"That should scare the shit out of them," Anita said as she put together a big batch of forms and exhibits. She worked in high heels and a skirt, and a clingy, white cotton blouse. "Do you think we'll be okay to get jurisdiction over them?" she asked.

Anita always dressed up for work, even at the barren, nondescript offices of Frank Billings, Esquire. It was one of the reasons why Frank kept her on the payroll. She was a legal secretary who was easy on the eyes. That and the fact that they would occasionally screw right there on the couch in his office, if, and when, the mood struck.

"Damned if I know, but we can only try and see what happens. They'll probably file fifteen motions to dismiss and a 12(b)6, but we'll deal with that then," he said.

"Aren't they gonna know that we're a small firm?" Anita asked. "We're going up against a big company this time. They've got revenue in the millions."

'They'll find out pretty quick," Billings agreed.

"Then what happens?"

"What happens is that we file suit, and start the process. They'll hire some big firm to try and get the action dismissed out of hand. Then all hell breaks loose."

"You're not too good with that kind of paperwork, that I'm aware of," Anita said. "We'll never make it past the pleadings before they bury us with depositions and interrogatories."

"The strategy is to get them to settle early on. I'm going to use the Georgia Consumer Protection Statute. We'll probably get some kind of jurisdiction. Then push for a quick settlement for $500,000 to go away. Who the hell knows how it'll play out?" Frank said, exasperated. "If we get jurisdiction in Clarke County, they'll be scared shitless, I can tell you that."

He knew Anita was dead-on in her legal assessment. "Look, it's all we've got. Shit. Otherwise it's just wills and drunk driving cases. We're not getting rich doing that stuff. This is our one shot at glory."

Frank finished off the pleadings and service of process forms by 8 p.m. that night. They hadn't worked that hard in years. Then he finished off Anita on the couch in his office for a little stress relief for the both of them. He made her keep her heels on during the sex. Then the two of them went out for martinis and steaks after they shut the office.

Later that week, Frank Billings found a constable who was willing to travel to Canada to complete the service of process for the lawsuit, LYLE B. CULLEN V. TUNDRA RX, INC. Frank had to pay for the airfare, hotel, and rental car for the guy in advance, before he would agree to go to Edmonton to serve process for the suit. It was expensive, but necessary. Frank put it all on his office credit card.

Frank's solace was that it was going to cause a hell of a stink-up at Tundra RX and get someone's attention pretty quick.

* * * * *

### Service of Process

The test results came in to the Dubai Customs Inspector's Office about fourteen days later. They were unequivocal. The Sandoz lab randomly tested thirty-two samples from all the pills the police had confiscated that blazingly hot day in the free trade zone.

Every pill tested negative. No pharmaceutically active ingredients in any of them. Nothing. All of the Erecta and Tenata pills were bogus. The tabs were essentially made from sugar and other non-medicinal substances.

The Customs Office passed the test results on to the Canadian Drug Enforcement agency via e-mail with no formal follow-up. They were too busy monitoring containers coming inbound into the zone for the payment of fees. They had little time for chasing garden variety drug smugglers and cheats. The fact that the test results showed that contraband product was being shipped through the FTZ was also something that the Dubai authorities were not going to actively pursue. It was bad publicity for their business.

"No shit. I think we've finally got something," Paul Morgan said out loud as he was reading the e-mail that had arrived from the Dubai customs police on his computer. He was sipping a Mr. Smith's coffee with cream and three sugars, and eating a jelly donut. It was spring in Toronto, and the world was starting to thaw in the great Canadian north. He had a feeling that it was going to be a good day early on, from when he started scanning his e-mails and he took his first sip of the hot, sugary liquid.

"Stan, check this out," he said as he called over to his partner who was across the room working on some paperwork.

"What's up?"

"That Internet drug company, Tundra RX? Remember them?"

"Who?" Stan said again, trying to remember. He was still focused on the expense reimbursement form he was filling out. "You mean the guys with the bad Tenata?"

"Yeah, that's them. The guys that sell the prescription meds over the Internet." Morgan sipped his coffee and took a bite of the jelly donut, waiting, savoring the moment. This was going to be good.

"Yeah, what about them?"

Morgan swallowed and sipped. "Check these test results out. They're all bloody negative. The drugs are all fake. Those guys are dirty." He let it sink in.

"Lemme look," Smith said, his curiosity piqued now. He opened the forwarded e-mail and reviewed the results. After five minutes of scrolling through the information and studying it, he shook his head. "This is good stuff. I think we finally have a case against one of these bastards. Feels like a winner."

"Yeah, I think so too," Paul said. "This is going to be a big one for us. Maybe a raid, plenty of publicity if we do it right."

"I know. Maybe we do a SWAT team with a TV crew behind us. A little bit of everything." Stan was excited. This could finally be the career-maker that both the men were waiting for.

"Maybe even a promotion, if this works out right," Paul said.

"You never know, now do you?"

The two men spent the next three hours calling Dubai to verify the test results. Later that afternoon there was an all-hands-on-deck meeting between the two detectives, their department supervisors, and the Canadian federal prosecutor's office. Things were suddenly moving very quickly.

#

The court papers arrived at Tundra RX on Wednesday, May 25th. Summer was fast approaching, and everything was turning green. There was a buzz in the air for the upcoming long summer days that would soon bring bright sunshine onto the landscape.

"Is Mr. William Callahan available?" Frank Colburn, the short barrel-chested man, asked the receptionist at Tundra RX when he walked in. Colburn was the process server that Frank Billings had hired from the Internet. Billings had dropped off the papers to Colburn in an Atlanta bait shop where Colburn worked, serving up minnows and nightcrawlers to Georgia fishermen as his full-time job. The process-serving was a sideline of his for extra cash.

Colburn had changed into his official State of Georgia process server uniform at the Motel Six where he stayed the night before. He looked like a security guard, but he had an official-looking brass badge over his left breast pocket and a black plastic nameplate with OFFICER COLBURN attached to his right pocket to highlight his authenticity.

"May I ask what this is in reference to?" Monica Summers, the receptionist asked. She looked the process server up and down to determine if he was important or not. She thought that he looked hokey, like a low-grade security guard with the badge and all, but she couldn't tell if he really had legitimate business with Bill Callahan or not. As best that she could read him, he was a loser.

Monica was a dark-haired knockout, chewing gum and reading Harper's Bazaar at the low-slung desk just inside the company's entrance. Callahan had made it an unspoken requirement that Human Resources hire only young, attractive women for the receptionist slot. He figured that if the company was actually going to pay for a receptionist, it should get its money's worth. Which, for Callahan, meant less skillsets and more good looks. While it was hard to write those criteria into the job description, HR caught on quickly as to the necessary job requirements. They had been through six receptionists in three years, each girl more attractive than the one before.

"State of Georgia business, ma'am. I have some official papers for Mr. Callahan."

"He's travelling today," Monica said automatically as she looked up from her magazine.

"Then I need to leave these papers with his personal secretary," Colburn said. He said it with real authority. It was also true. He needed to leave the documents with Bill Callahan or someone as close as possible to him for the service of process to be effective. This was the tricky part.

"I'll sign for them. It's not a problem," Monica said.

"No, ma'am. I need to physically go to her desk and see her. Official rules of the state."

"Georgia, huh? Where's that?" Monica said as she uncrossed her legs and stood up to walk down to Fran Harrington's desk outside Callahan's office. She tugged at her short skirt to put it in place as she rose and motioned for Colburn to follow behind her. Monica, six feet tall in high, black heels, towered over the thickset, shorter man.

"State of Georgia, in the United States of America. A little south of here, ma'am," Colburn said. He barely acknowledged her legs as she walked in front and led him down the corridor.

This was his critical moment. He needed to give the summons and copy of the lawsuit to Bill Callahan, or a close personal aide. They walked down two corridors and took three turns to get to Callahan's office and work area.

"Fran, this guy needs to leave something for Bill with you. He wouldn't leave it at the front desk," Monica said when they arrived.

Fran Harrington, Callahan's personal assistant, was working on her desktop. She was a middle-aged, very efficient gatekeeper for the CEO.

"What's it for?" she asked when Frank flashed the package at her. "Is it a FedEx that I can just sign for? Can you put it on the pile there with all the other stuff?"

Frank Colburn was quickly looking around now. He could see an older, distinguished man in a big office right behind Fran, working on papers at his desk. It was clear that it was Bill Callahan. "Bingo!" he thought. Colburn suddenly ignored Fran and Monica and walked around her desk and right into Callahan's office. He went right up to his desk and stood in front, as Callahan was signing a document.

"Are you William Callahan, chief executive officer of Tundra RX?" He looked right at Callahan. Bill Callahan looked at Frank Colburn quickly and confused him with a delivery man in a uniform.

"Yeah, that's me. What have you got?" Callahan said as he paused from signing.

"Then can you please sign here?" Colburn said as he thrust the single acceptance page for the service of process at Callahan. He covered the full page and only the signature block showed. Callahan signed distractedly, without reading it.

"What is this shit anyway? More drug samples?"

"No sir. I am officially serving you as defendant in the lawsuit of Lyle B. Cullen versus Tundra RX."

And with that he dropped a manila envelope down on Callahan's desk with about two inches of documents inside. Frank Colburn couldn't believe how lucky he had been. He actually got to serve the papers on Bill Callahan himself, and Callahan signed for them. Service of process would be airtight. This was as good as it got in his business.

Colburn turned, walked out of the office, thanked the women, and headed back to the receptionist area. His job was done. He was out of the building a minute later. It had been a hugely successful day for him and it was only 9:30 in the morning. He got in the rental car and headed back onto the highway. He was thinking he could get an earlier flight back to Atlanta, and maybe catch the Braves game on TV that night. He could also charge an extra one hundred dollars as he completed service of process to the named individual in the lawsuit. It was a standard fee. He knew that Frank Billings would be ecstatic, and wouldn't care about the extra fee when he heard the news and saw Callahan's signature on the papers.

#

"I don't even know how this asshole got in here," Bill Callahan said later in the meeting, exasperated. "How the fuck did this happen, can someone at least tell me that?" He was sitting in the fishbowl office down the corridor from the marketing department. The thin aluminum mini-blinds were pulled down in the room so people couldn't see in. In the room were Callahan, Julie Sontag, and Phil Anderson, the outside counsel for the company. He was the first person Bill Callahan called after he started reading the pleadings that were served on him.

It was 5:15 p.m., and the office was starting to quiet down. The hush of air coming into the room could barely be heard through the ceiling ventilation grid. It was almost too quiet. Everyone could feel Callahan slowly simmer. Julie thought that he was starting to unravel right before her eyes.

He tapped his fingers on the conference room table top and waited. He was pissed. He continued with his rant. "Why didn't Monica stop the stupid bastard from coming into my office? Shit. We never should have hired her."

"Wait a second, Bill," Julie said, jumping to the receptionist's defense. She didn't like the bubbleheaded girl either, but she saw her getting trashed, and that meant her own trashing wasn't far behind. She stepped up to take control. "She had no idea what the guy wanted you for. She was just doing her job," Julie said.

"She brought the bastard right down the corridor, straight to me. Could it be any easier to serve a lawsuit?" Callahan asked.

"It doesn't matter, Bill, in the long run," Phil Anderson, the outside lawyer said calmly. "They probably had good service of process right when he gave the lawsuit to the receptionist in the lobby. That's sufficient delivery in the law's eyes."

Anderson, as outside counsel went, was a Hollywood typecast. He was a handsome Canadian, with a grey salt-and-pepper beard. He had a little stomach hanging over his belt, just enough to show that he spent a lot of time in command of a desk, and all the hard work and intellectual firepower that entailed.

Callahan looked over at him, and tried to calm down and rationally assess the situation. He looked at the lawyer, and knew that Anderson, as a partner at Dodge and Ketrick, the big Canadian law firm specializing in litigation, was charging 750 dollars an hour. That started right from the first phone call. Tundra RX would spend millions defending this lawsuit by the time it was over, he thought. He wouldn't survive two years of litigation and depositions.

Julie Sontag was in shock. This lawsuit confirmed everything that she and Carole were worried about. Here it was in black and white, someone claiming that the company sold fake drugs to them. She knew that there must be some truth to the situation, as this person down in the US hired a law firm and everything. They wouldn't have started this without a good case. She would read the pleadings tonight to get the details.

Overall, she knew that it didn't look good. But for now, she had to rally and help defend Callahan and the company. There was nothing else to do. "I'll write a press release tonight and clearly say that we think the lawsuit is groundless and defamatory," she said after composing herself. Julie was a survivor and good team player, and would energize the public relations firm they used to help defend against the claim in the popular press. She started writing in her notebook all the tasks she needed to do tonight to get the company's defenses in gear.

"I need to review the facts of the case and assemble a Dodge team," Phil Anderson said. He scratched his beard and spoke. "Look, we may be able to get the case dismissed out of hand or changed to a venue here in Canada. There are a lot of possibilities here. We're in good shape to start."

Callahan quieted himself down, went into a Zen mode, and listened to the litigation partner expound on the hundred ways that Tundra RX could defend and ultimately win the case. Callahan himself had read the pleadings in the morning, and the fact pattern that was the basis of the claim. If there really was a US medical doctor or team that would testify that the Tenata that the customer took was bad and came from Tundra RX, the company was cooked.

Callahan was worried because he knew that they had been selling bad Tenata for a while now. He and Rakesh had started down this path twenty four months ago. If these facts came out, the shit would hit the fan. Forget about the lawsuit for this guy who stroked out, the cops would come for both of them for federal drug trafficking violations. Callahan knew that if the trail got warm, it could turn red hot very quickly. He closed his eyes and thought.

He needed to put together an action plan. He'd do it tonight with Rakesh. He opened his eyes, focused, and joined the conversation again. "That all sounds great, Phil. Let's fight these bastards to the finish. We didn't do anything wrong. Tundra RX is a good company. This lawsuit is bullshit."

They finished up an hour later with a plan. Callahan went back to his office, and pulled out his BlackBerry after the others left. He speed dialled Rakesh. He picked up on the first ring. Callahan didn't have time for any pleasantries.

"Meet me in a half hour at The Gold Mine. The shit's starting to hit the fan."

* * * * *

### Bags Packed

Bill Callahan was sitting in the Toronto headquarters of USB in an LL Bean-blue blazer, a dark pair of slacks, and polished penny loafers. He looked like a business-casual CEO—which he was. He still had his outdoor good looks, despite the stress lines that had formed over the last several months. But he was no match for the buttoned-down investment bankers in the USB office and their $2,500 tailored suits.

He had taken a flight over three days after he had the papers served on him in the Lyle Cullen case. He first spent the weekend cobbling together his financial life from shoe boxes and bank statements in his house. Callahan was not a man to waste any time, particularly when it came to his own money and personal freedom.

He had a lot of meetings on that Monday at Tundra RX, but he cleared his calendar. He told Fran, his assistant, that he had some important business to attend to. She got concerned, and thought that it might be cancer or some other life-threatening medical emergency, like Steve Jobs at Apple, because he almost never took a day off from work. He told her that he needed to go to an important meeting with the company's bankers, and that calmed her down that there wasn't some kind of health problem lurking.

USB stood for United Swiss Bank. It was the huge international bank and investment house that, among many things, handled rich people's money. While Bill Callahan didn't look the part, he was now one of the wealthy elite, particularly with Tundra RX's cash flow over the last two years.

He was in the Wealth Management area, and had been greeted by a stunning brunette in a tailored suit. Very attractive with a refined manner. He was impressed. These guys knew how to do it, he thought, how to create the aura of money, privilege, and sex in a totally professional way.

He was ushered into the private office of Paul Christiansen, a managing director in the bank. Paul was an understated, no-frills investment manager in a simple white shirt and expensive tie. His office was big, and Callahan sat on a couch in the corner, with Christiansen in a side chair opposite him.

"I want to start moving some of my money out of here and over to the Cayman Islands trust we set up last year," Callahan said. He didn't waste any time on small talk and got right to the point with the banker.

"We can do that Bill, no problem." Christiansen was sizing up Callahan, and wondering what the hell was going on. "What's happening? This is a little unique. Usually we keep most of your money in investment accounts based here in Toronto. The interest rate is better, and you generate mostly tax-free income from muni bonds."

"I don't care," Callahan said. "I need to start taking some chips off the table right now, and think about my retirement."

"Are you thinking about retiring?" Christiansen said. He immediately was thinking that there might be other services that USB could offer Callahan, like selling his company for him and raking in a huge investment banking fee along the way. He probed a little more. "If you're ever thinking about selling Tundra RX, our banking group could give you a top-side valuation quickly. I think you'd be surprised at the multiple we could get."

"You're not listening, Paul. I want you to start moving my money over to the Caymans. That's why I'm banking with you. That's why I'm here in your office. All those quiet Swiss accounts and secrecy? Does all that stuff still work?"

"It works famously," Christiansen said, back on point. He was focused now. He was hearing a client wanting to move his money quickly. He didn't want to piss him off. "The accounts that we set up can transfer your funds with total secrecy."

"Canadian officials can't get at it?"

"Officials?"

"Like police and lawyers and creditors. Those kind of officials and bothersome people," Callahan asked bluntly.

"Nobody can get at it. Swiss law prevents them from getting access to the accounts once it moves to Zurich. It's been tested in the courts. Many times."

Callahan felt better. "How much do I have with you?"

"You have over 40-million US dollars with us in all of your accounts, combined." Christiansen had reviewed Callahan's accounts in detail before the meeting to be sharp, so he knew how much was in play. "How much would you like to move?"

"Most of it. Almost all of it. Split one million among the accounts to keep them active, but that's it. Start moving all the rest, and liquidate my positions."

"That's a lot of money and positions, Bill. When do you want to do these transfers? It may take us a little while to close your positions and not sell at fire sale prices or at a loss."

Callahan thought about it for a second. "Start moving the money now. This week. Not all of it in a rush, but I want most of it moved in the next five business days."

"What's the urgency, Bill?" Paul Christiansen was worried that he was going to lose the account.

"We've had a lawsuit filed against Tundra RX that names me personally. It's frivolous, and our counsel tells me that it will be dismissed out of hand. But who knows? The world is a strange place."

Now the investment manager understood. "Indeed it is Bill. We can help here to insulate your assets."

"I can't have my accounts attached and my money tied up for four years while I'm fighting a bullshit lawsuit. I've worked too hard."

"I understand. Not a problem. I'll put the transfers in motion today."

"Good. Call me Friday with an update. This may be an overreaction on my part, but it's time to sock some of my net worth away." Callahan was careful not to alarm the USB banker. There was no need to make him panic.

They ended the meeting an hour later, after Christiansen reviewed all the thirty-two stock, bond, and money market positions that Callahan was invested in. It was a formidable portfolio. Selling prescription medicine and pills over the Internet was a profitable business, when done right.

* * * * *

### Loose Ends

Zhu Wen was in a management meeting when his PDA went off. He kept it in a black leather holster on his belt like a gunslinger. Most of the managers and executives at Lucky Pharmaceutical did the same thing. They mimicked their Western counterparts who were always tethered to their devices when they came to China to visit the Lucky manufacturing plant.

Zhu pulled the PDA out of his pocket as it vibrated. He looked at the screen and saw the alert for an incoming call. The number that flashed on the screen was one that was not familiar to Zhu, and it said only Private Call on the screen. Zhu let it run to voice mail. The caller called back again but left no message. Finally Zhu left his meeting on the third attempt and took the call in the corridor.

"Zhu Wen here. Hello?"

The caller didn't identify himself. He spoke good English. "Remember our discussion about the Dubai police last week? They had a court order and they opened one of your shipments in transit?"

"I remember," Zhu said as his heart skipped a beat. "What happened with it?" He got right to the point.

"The inspectors tested thirty-two drug samples."

"And what about them?"

"They all came back negative. The pills were fakes."

Zhu's stomach dropped into his shoes. It was the final special Tenata and Erecta run that Lucky had produced for Tundra RX. He remembered the conversation when Callahan called to stop Lucky from making any more fake pills. He should have listened to Callahan then, and stopped before sending out that last order, he thought.

"What now?" Zhu Wen finally said.

The caller continued. "The inspection group sent the results back to the Canadian DEA. They started it all with a warrant. You better be careful. And you better call the company because the customs inspectors may pursue this back in Canada."

"Thanks," Zhu Wen said just before the caller hung up.

Lucky paid a monthly retainer to a small company in Dubai called Inspectional Services LLC for exactly this kind of call. Zhu never asked who the caller was or how he got his information. This was only the second time the company had called concerning inspections of Lucky's shipments. Zhu was grateful both times for the information. Now he could react and cover Lucky's trail.

Zhu went back to his office and started to comb through his files. He needed to make sure that there was nothing in the Lucky Pharmaceutical area that linked the company to the shipment of the bogus drugs. When push came to shove, he would deny that Lucky ever made fake drugs for Tundra RX. They had detailed records reflecting the production and shipping of large amounts of bona fide drugs to Tundra RX, and that was enough to support his claim. Stonewalling would definitely be his defense of choice if they were questioned. It worked effectively every other time an investigator asked questions at Lucky Pharmaceutical before.

Four hours later, Zhu Wen continued to plot strategy in his office by himself. He was smoking a Red Pagoda Mountain cigarette. Another one in a long line of chain smoked cigarettes to relieve the stress after the phone call from Dubai earlier in the morning. His mouth was like a chimney, but he didn't care. He enjoyed the harsh aftertaste by this point.

Customs inspectors and drug testing were not what Lucky Pharmaceuticals was about. Lucky was about servicing the free market economy with cheap, plentiful drugs. Pill quality was sometimes secondary. That fact was not in the company marketing literature, but as head of production, he knew it was true.

He was about to provide the ultimate customer service to a long and valued customer. He liked Bill Callahan, and they had done a lot of business together over the past several years. Tundra RX was one of their larger customers. If a bomb was dropped on them, it wouldn't be good for Lucky either, he knew. He hoped against hope that this would all blow over, like a storm cloud on a hot summer's day. He couldn't be sure that it would though, so he had to cover his ass. After all the Lucky company files were scrubbed clean, he picked up the phone and called Bill Callahan.

Zhu Wen tapped his next cigarette, filter end down, on his mouse pad as he waited for the call to connect. He was calling Callahan's cell, and it was 11:30 a.m. in Edmonton. Zhu was tired as he waited—it had been a long day in Guangzhou.

"Hello?" Callahan said from inside the warehouse attached to the rear of the Tundra RX offices. "Who's this?" He was in the company's distribution center lined with racks of pharmaceuticals stacked twelve feet high. An employee with a hydraulic picker was talking to Callahan, describing the new order packing technology they just put in place, before Callahan's cell rang.

Zhu Wen knew that Callahan was in the warehouse as his voice sounded tinny and hollow, and rattled around over the phone.

"It's me, Bill. Zhu Wen."

Callahan immediately knew that it must be important for Zhu to call him at this time of the day, as he calculated it being near midnight in China. He moved away from the stock picker, and over to a secluded part of the warehouse for a private conversation. His heart started to palpitate. He got right to the point, as always.

"What's up?"

"Trouble," Zhu answered. "Our last shipment to you was raided in the port of Dubai two days ago." He went on to describe in detail what had happened. It was a one way conversation as Callahan just listened, trying to absorb the bad news quickly, and plot battle strategy at the same time.

Zhu continued. "So, the testing was done on our special order and the tests showed that all the samples had no APIs in them."

"What?"

"All bad drugs."

"Who ordered the tests?" Callahan asked trying to keep composed. "And I thought I told you not to send any more bogus pills to us for a while, didn't I?"

"The Canadian Drug Enforcement Agency. It was official. They had a warrant. I tried to stop shipping the pills after we talked, but it was too late. The last order had already shipped."

"You're lying, Zhu," Callahan said quietly into the phone. "You sent that last batch of pills after I said not to do it."

"I have spent all day cleaning our records. You should do the same," Zhu said to Callahan, ignoring his comment about the pills. "Nothing may come of this, but I needed to call and tell you. You better prepare. You're a valuable customer."

"Thanks, Zhu, for the heads up," Callahan finally said, composing himself. "I appreciate it, but it may be too late."

"What will you do?"

"I'm hoping that it will all blow over and nothing will come of it. Just like you say."

"And if something does come of it? If your authorities pursue it?"

"Then it's a problem. You'll probably lose a big customer."

The two men ended the call and prepared themselves for a possible ass-kicking.

* * * * *

### Surrendering the Fort

"Look, we don't have much time," Callahan said to Rakesh. "We may need to cut and run quickly here." He frowned and took a sip of the Code Red energy drink that sat in a small, thin aluminum can on the table in front of him. Callahan was on edge, and tapped his fingers nervously as he spoke.

The two men were in the medium conference room near the research area of Tundra RX. It was 8 pm on Tuesday night. They were sitting under the reflected glow of the ceiling fluorescent lights. The room was stark with cheap office furniture and several framed prints of pharmaceutical marketing material. They were gifts from the drug reps that came to the offices frequently. Bill Callahan thought of how far they had come. He also was thinking about how far they could fall—and how quickly it could happen.

He had called the meeting with Rakesh. He didn't want to have it at The Gold Mine where alcohol would have clouded their judgment. This was a time for clear thinking. It was just the two of them in the quiet of the office.

"When did Zhu Wen call you?" Rakesh asked. He was starting now to think about an exit strategy as well, and his heart raced a bit at the thoughts going through his head. He was a doctor, not a criminal, and it wasn't easy to think with an evasive mindset.

"Yesterday. Around lunch time," Callahan said. "He seemed worried when he called me. I didn't like it."

"So what do you think?" Rakesh asked. "Are you worried?"

"I'm getting there. This wasn't just an inspection by the Dubai port authorities. These guys had a search warrant from Canada. Somebody over here doesn't like us, Rakesh. That's clear."

"That may be. I did some research into the Lyle Cullen thing. I spoke with a doctor friend in Atlanta, who reviewed the case for me on a peer basis," Rakesh said. He was sitting back in his chair, breathing deeply to stay calm and focused. He had on a white shirt and blue Hermes tie. He looked like a model for the pharmaceutical world's chief medical officer. He paused before he spoke, for effect.

Callahan waited. "So tell me some good news," he said.

"Unfortunately, there isn't any good news to tell. There is clear probable cause that Cullen was using drugs that were not manufactured to specification. The statins had no API's, and Cullen had been taking the medicine for six months. Our pills quite possibly could have been the cause of his stroke."

"Did we do that?" Callahan asked.

"We were making fake Tenata for several large runs, and mixing those pills into the containers with the real ones, yes."

"We're probably screwed, then," Bill Callahan said matter-of-factly. He reached down to scratch his crotch. "That doesn't concern me as much Rakesh, because our counsel says that hayseed lawyer from the US handling Cullen's case may never get the right jurisdiction to proceed against us. The case may never see light of day for technical reasons." Now Callahan paused for effect. "But then again, it may. Who knows?" Callahan took another sip of the energy drink. "Let me be frank, Rakesh. I got a call from a friend of a friend in the Canadian Mounties last night."

Rakesh raised his eyebrow. He waited.

"Don't be surprised. I pay for this kind of information. Anyway, we've been pumping fake pills into the market for two years now, and I knew it could come to this sooner or later," Callahan said as he looked at Rakesh. "I don't know exactly when yet, but the police are planning a raid on our offices, probably as early as next week. Search warrants and everything. They're coming after us for the importation of illegal pharmaceuticals into the country. It's not pretty, by a long shot."

Rakesh looked at Callahan. "Shit. Those are federal crimes. We could go to jail for this. We're looking at prison here."

"My thoughts exactly. We still have bogus pills down in the warehouse now, too. They'll confiscate everything."

"I can't go to prison, Bill. I'm already on probation from my prior situation at the rehab center."

"Rakesh, I can't do time either. I've thought about it over the weekend, and I hate to tell you this, but we've got to get out of the country. Abandon ship. Like in the next three or four days. Pronto."

Rakesh went quiet. He looked absently over at the shiny aluminum mini-blinds as his mind raced ahead. "Where to go?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm going south, probably to Brazil."

'Why there?"

"There's no extradition treaty with Canada or the US, that's why, for starters."

"Are you sure?" Rakesh asked nervously.

"I just had two separate law firms research the issue independently, and tell me. I think it's solid, or at least solid enough for now. Besides, I don't have a lot of other options."

Rakesh let the information sink in. "I can't go south. I think that I may go to the Middle East. No particular reason. But maybe to Pakistan. I'd probably be safer there."

"Suit yourself. But you better pack your things tonight. Right now, even. Because we don't have much time. Remember, we've done a good job in not keeping any records of the bogus pills being ordered by us over here. We may be able to hang it on Lucky Pharmaceuticals in the end. Say we never knew about the bad pills. With weak evidence and enough time, this may all go away. But we're not going to be able to empty the warehouse of all the fakes before the raid happens. They'll have some good evidence. We need time to mount a defense. I just don't want to mount it from inside a prison cell."

"You're right. There is some hope and a possible defense for us," Rakesh said. He paused. "I'll miss the women in Montreal. Maybe I should go to Bangkok for a while to get my bearings straight."

"Be careful following your pecker, Rakesh," Callahan said. "But wherever you go, you better get your plane ticket soon. Like probably tomorrow. The police are coming here next week."

And with that, the two men stayed late in the office, ordering take-out pizza from Dominos and a six pack of Molson Golden ale. They ate the pizza and drank beer as they combed the files, making sure all records that had to do with any compromised pill shipments were deleted or shredded. There wasn't much to get rid of, as the two men had always been methodical along the way. As they ate, Callahan told Rakesh about the finer points of transferring money out of the country, and how he needed to move quickly tomorrow to do it, if he expected to stay in his current lifestyle somewhere else in the world.

* * * * *

### Interdiction

Three different Canadian police groups sat together in Pat McEwan's conference room on the sixth floor of the Federal Administration Building in Toronto. The coordination was no small feat. It had taken them three days just to schedule the meeting.

Pat McEwan was there, along with Karen Kiley. He had on his best checked shirt for the occasion. It was dark blue, with a button-down collar. As important as this meeting was, he couldn't bring himself to put on a tie. Besides, he didn't own a casual shirt that had a collar big enough for him to button around his thick neck. He saved one XXL white shirt for tie wearing at family weddings and police funerals.

Bill Kettles from the Canadian DEA, and Jack Calvin were there. There was also a lieutenant and four members of an RCMP SWAT team. Everybody was alive, excited at the prospect of a possible big bust. Not to mention a hell of a lot of publicity, and possibly a route to promotion for one or two officers in the group.

That's what Pat McEwan was thinking, at least. He was being very visible in the situation and volunteered to participate in the actual raid. "I'm staying in on this deal," he said to his supervisor, when given the chance to pass off the follow-up to two younger men in the group. "It's important. We've got to make an example of these fucking pill scammers." That got him a flight to Edmonton and a role in the raid.

"Right, so where are we now?" Phil Demarche asked. He was the SWAT team leader and the man in charge of the raid. He was young and strong, and built like a football linebacker, with a military background and a short haircut to match. "Are we all set for Wednesday?"

"Yeah, we are. Wednesday's the day," one of his team members said.

"Alright, let's go over the plan then. We'll go in the morning, around nine thirty am."

"They should all have their coffee and donuts and be settled in by then," Pat McEwan said.

"I hope so." Demarche laughed. "And then we'll hit 'em with the arrest and search warrants. Pat, I want you to take part of the team and go to the warehouse side of the building and enter from the loading dock. That way they can't try to get any of the junk out at the back, while we go in from the front."

McEwan laughed to himself, as he thought about warehouse people trying to scurry out the back door with boxes of pills. It was a whole warehouse, for Chrissakes. He didn't see it happening. They'd all probably be at their desks eating breakfast.

"Right, Phil, I agree. These guys could be packing too. Who knows?" Pat said, putting a little polish on the apple.

"Unlikely. But we're all going in with vests on to be safe, either underneath or on top of your clothes. It's mandatory. You'll all need to get fitted out this afternoon at the storeroom on Victoria."

Bill Kettles looked over at McEwan and winked. "Do they have a size vest biggest enough for Pat?" he asked DeMarche.

"Yeah, they do," Demarche said as he laughed. "They're adjustable in the large and extra large sizes."

The game plan was to go in under the cover of daylight and arrest Bill Callahan and Rakesh Gupta for violations of federal drug importation laws. They would also go into the warehouse and yellow tape the entire inventory, then sift through the boxes later to find bogus pills, if there were any. Once they found fake pills for sale right there in Edmonton, on Canadian soil, it would be much easier to prosecute the company execs. Then they could apply pressure to go back up into the distribution chain. The white collar guys usually cracked pretty quickly when faced with the prospect of hard time, the cops knew.

#

Later that day, Bill Callahan got an anonymous call from a disposable cell phone in Toronto. He was driving in his big Ford SUV with a large cup of Starbucks coffee in his hand. He had just left the drycleaners with three clean shirts for travelling, and was headed to the liquor store to restock his single-malt whiskey supply. He was drinking more heavily now, with all the shit that was happening, but it was better than pills he thought. He spent the whole day doing errands, getting ready.

He didn't recognize the number as it flashed on the screen of his BlackBerry but he knew enough to take it. He was slightly on edge, with all the shit that was happening. There was no introduction on the call, just a voice.

"It's happening. Wednesday morning. There's going to be a big raid at your offices. The whole team is coming in." That was it, the full extent of the call. The caller hung up, and placed the phone in a trash bin in the Toronto bus station where he was standing.

That was the call that Bill Callahan was waiting for. He had paid ten thousand Canadian dollars last year, no questions asked, to a friend of a friend for just this kind of insurance policy after they had started selling fake drugs through the company. He knew then that the pill dilution would be tremendously profitable, but very dangerous, and that something like this could happen very suddenly. His instincts proved to be right on the money.

He was in the parking lot of the Buy-Right Liquor store. He put the car in park, turned the fan down on the heater so that it was quiet, and started dialing. Callahan called Rakesh first.

"They're coming for us on Wednesday morning. The police, that's who. It might be at home or at the office, I don't know. You better pack up your socks and underwear now. Are you coming with me or not, cause there's room on the plane. I have to tell flight control today and put you on the roster, if you are."

"Where in Brazil?" Gupta asked.

"Does it matter?" Callahan asked. "But if it makes a difference to you, I'm going to Rio de Janeiro to start. There's plenty of women and action there, Rakesh. Don't worry. And good food."

"I know, Bill," Rakesh said and then paused. "I've thought about it a lot over the past twenty four hours. I've decided that I'm going to Pakistan to lay low. At least for now."

"Suit yourself, Rakesh. Just make your plans today, or you'll be in jail on Wednesday. We don't have much time."

At this point, Callahan was making quick decisions to protect his own interests first. He wasn't sure if Rakesh would be as responsive. He didn't care at this point. He figured that Rakesh would turn state's evidence quickly, particularly with his drug habit if pressure was applied, and be a star witness against him and Tundra RX if it meant less prison time if he were caught. Callahan had planned for this eventuality.

Callahan honestly liked Rakesh, and he hoped Rakesh's self-preservation instincts would kick in, and that he'd get the hell out of town before it was too late. But he couldn't be certain.

It was every man for himself at this point. Callahan had done a thorough job of removing any implicating evidence at Tundra RX, so he knew that he had a good chance of fighting any criminal charges that came up. Phil Anderson, their attorney, had told him that the jurisdictional issues alone on the Cullen case in civil court would take two years to resolve if he was focused on fighting them.

Callahan took a sip of the now lukewarm French roast coffee and speed dialled another number. The call went through quickly.

"Paul Christiansen, please."

"He's in a meeting just now," the female voice answered smoothly on the line. "Can I take a message and have him get back to you?"

"I'll hold. Tell him it's Bill Callahan," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Callahan. I'll see when he's available." Callahan was put on hold. But not for long. The investment banker's admin knew which calls needed to go through, and which clients were not to wait for call-backs. Bill Callahan was one of them. A minute later Paul Christiansen was on the line.

"Hello, Bill. What's up?"

"Sorry to bother you Paul, but a couple things have come up pretty quickly. Where are you in moving all the funds at this point?"

"We're done. We moved them as you and I discussed last week. Everything other than a maintenance balance is now in the offshore accounts."

"And it all moved through the Cayman account to Zurich first?"

"We kept it there for twenty-four hours to establish a nexus. Swiss rules now apply. We are prevented from disclosure. I sent the account information to you this morning."

"Great. You're a big help, Paul. I just needed to get my personal investment situation in order. I'll be in touch next week for some investment alternatives. Get ready and do some research. I want to reinvest most of the funds."

"No rush, Bill. It's all parked in money market funds in the Caymans. You're getting a competitive rate for the time being."

"Thanks much, Paul. I've gotta run." Callahan ended the call.

His next call was to the 800 number for the Execu-Jet travel service. He had some last minute itinerary details to confirm before his flight that night. After the call, he left the car and went into the liquor store. It was a big retail outlet with bright lights and pennant flags hanging down over the aisles. It had a big assortment of hard liquor and Canadian beer, catering to the locals.

Callahan picked up a bottle of Lafroig single-malt scotch for the flight that night. He decided that it was going to be a celebration of new beginnings, not a dirge for the past. He threw the bottle into the back seat, got back into the SUV and headed home to pack for the trip. He knew that packing would be light, as he really didn't need much more than his passport.

* * * * *

### Flight Plan

Later that night, around 10:30 p.m., Bill Callahan walked across the tarmac at the private jet terminal in Edmonton. It was a cold, clear night. He was wearing a black leather bomber jacket, pressed khaki pants and kiltie tassel slip-on loafers. He had one carry on—a new blue canvas gym bag that he bought at the Sports Authority the day before. He had a few Polo shirts in it, some socks and underwear, his laptop, and the bottle of Lafroig scotch that he got for the trip.

Callahan wasn't alone. A striking blond woman in her twenties was talking with him, as they walked across the asphalt to the private jet under the pool of bright white lights in front of the civil aviation terminal.

She was dressed in a short grey wool coat, with tight jeans and black heels. She had one piece of TravelPro luggage. It was a small roll-on that she wheeled across the pavement. She and Callahan laughed and chatted with excitement as they headed to the jet. Callahan was slightly nervous, as they weren't in the air yet.

The jet was a big Gulfstream IV. It could seat ten people comfortably, but for the long haul that night, it was only scheduled to take Bill Callahan and his one guest to Rio de Janeiro. It would be an intimate flight. They were scheduled to stop in Miami to refuel in five hours, then go directly on to Rio from there. The fuel stop was scheduled to last no more than thirty minutes.

The two pilots readied the plane from the cockpit. The co-pilot checked the manifest and flight plan. There was one flight steward who greeted the two passengers as they climbed the small set of steps into the plane.

"Mr. Callahan. Welcome aboard," the young man said.

"Thanks. You can call me Bill," Callahan said. "I'm now a man of the people."

"Yes sir. Anybody who flies our G-4 is a man of the people," the steward said.

"You like this plane?" Callahan asked, making small talk. He knew very little about private jets.

"This is the top of the Gulfstream line, Bill—the G-4. Every private jet in the world is compared to this one. It's aviation's version of a Cadillac Escalade.

"Sounds good to me," Callahan said as he moved into the cabin. "It looks big enough."

A few seconds later, Jennifer Marshall, the bartender at The Gold Mine, came onboard and looked around the private jet. She had never been in one before.

"Hey, sweetheart. What do you think?" Callahan asked, looking over at Jennifer.

"Wow. Pretty cool. I think this is going to be the best vacation of my life, Bill. I'm ready," she said.

Jennifer came in and sat facing Callahan in the plush leather seat next to the window. She looked out and took in all the sights. She knew instinctively that this was going to be a fun trip. She stretched out in the seat to get comfortable, and her white cashmere top rode slightly up over her waist. Callahan noticed. Jennifer could sense his interest and took her manicured hand and casually rubbed Callahan's legs crossed in front of her.

"Thanks for inviting me on the trip, Bill. This is exciting. We'll have a great time," Jennifer said as she smiled and looked over at him.

"Yeah, I think we will," he said as he took a shrimp cocktail appetizer and glass of champagne that the flight steward was offering.

Fifteen minutes, later the hatch was closed, the pilots came on the intercom, and the jet moved down the taxiway. Once they were in position and cleared for takeoff, the pilot in the left hand seat pushed the throttles forward to the stops. The small jet leapt forward. Because of the power in the plane, they rode the runway for only a short distance, getting airborne in ten seconds, then banking to the left. The plane quickly climbed to altitude and leveled off, as the wing and fuselage strobe lights blinked red and white in the dark Canadian night.

Bill Callahan settled in with his thoughts. He took the single-malt Lafroig bottle out of his carry-on bag and went to the bar. He poured three fingers into a short whiskey glass he found in a rack nearby. He sipped and looked out at the vast Canadian sky, and hoped to hell that Rakesh made it to at least New York that night in his travels heading east. Anywhere but Canada by tomorrow was essential, he knew.

Jennifer pulled out her iPod and put her headphones on after she got a glass of white wine from the jet's bar. She put Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers greatest hits on to mellow out with. She was a Southern girl rocker at heart. She sipped her chardonnay, and grooved to the guitar riffs as she looked out at the stars in the night sky.

Bill Callahan reached down into his bag and fished around. He found the one hundred tabs of Erecta that he took from the office. They were full strength, the real deal. He put them back in the bag. He knew that he'd plough right through this stash of pills with Jennifer along on the trip, but at least it was a start for whatever happened down in Brazil.

Modern medicine was wonderful, he thought. He poured three more fingers of scotch as he pondered his new life unfolding outside of Canada. He wondered what he'd do, and if he'd be bored. He figured Jennifer would keep him busy for part of the time, until he figured out what to do. Life was all about change and trying out new things. He'd find something.

* * * * *

### Enter The Dragon

Three different Canadian law enforcement agencies all arrived the night before in Edmonton, and were staying at the Embassy Suites hotel over on Gateway about five miles from the Tundra RX offices and warehouse. They had two black SUVS that they drove over from Toronto. The vehicles belonged to the SWAT team and held all their equipment.

The group was all in one of the hotel rooms, checking radios and going over last minute details. There was shit everywhere: tasers, two-way radios, and a forest of protective gear. There were big, thick Kevlar vests and helmets, shin protectors, and forearm guards. It was like a sporting goods store had been dumped into two of the rooms. They didn't plan on wearing most of the gear, but they brought it along anyway.

They ordered eight pizzas from Domino's, along with liter-bottles of Coke Zero and Diet Sprite to nosh on while they prepped. The pizza and sodas were well within their combined per diem meal allowance, so everyone was happy. Nobody went out of pocket for the food. Pizza boxes and plastic cups ended up scattered around the room, mixed in with all the high tech equipment.

Phil Demarche, the SWAT team leader, was glowing from the rush of adrenaline. He lived for this kind of action, and truth be told, it didn't happen all that often. Most of his SWAT work was training exercises and paperwork. Demarche was too busy checking the stun guns and radios to eat any pizza now. He led the pre-raid meeting.

"All right now people. Are we ready? We'll go in calm and collected tomorrow morning. Very business-like, very professional. Remember, these people are office workers, so we're not expecting any resistance."

Pat McEwan tuned Demarche out quickly. He thought the guy was full of bullshit anyway. He had quickly grabbed two slices of pepperoni pizza and found a chair partly facing the TV to sit in and be part of the raid prep meeting. At the same time, he found the clicker and turned on Hockey Night in Canada. It was his favorite program of the week. He thumbed the volume way down, to just above mute and left it there. He was looking at Don Cherry, dressed in an outrageous suitcoat. He couldn't believe how lucky he was. Phil Demarche didn't notice.

"Pat, we'll take the front entrance and the windows along the perimeter," Demarche said looking squarely at McEwan. "Are you okay to go to the warehouse and secure that area?"

Pat swallowed a mouthful of pepperoni pizza and nodded. "Roger that. I'll have Karen with me, and two of your men, and we'll cover the warehouse." He sipped from a giant plastic cup of Coke, nodding his head to add punctuation to the discussion.

"Good. Don't let them take anything from the warehouse and move it to their cars, or try to throw stuff down the toilet."

"Phil, it's a fucking warehouse for Chrissakes," McEwan said. "I don't bloody think they're going to try to flush ten boxes of pills down the loo when we surprise them, you know?"

"You never know with these drug guys," Demarche said.

And so it went for the rest of the night. Radio checks, and gun checks, and pepper spray checks. They went over everything a hundred times, and coordinated it all. Phil Demarche would be the first man in, with arrest warrants in hand for both Bill Callahan and Rakesh Gupta, the two executives at the company. He was ready to have a full-on assault of Tundra RX in the morning, if need be.

At midnight, the planning and checking was over. Demarche let everybody catch some sleep for a while before they headed out. The wake-up call was for five am. They planned on being at the front door of Tundra RX at nine am, no earlier. They wanted to have Callahan and Gupta in the building so that they could serve the warrants in person, and take them out in handcuffs. The publicity would be great for a white collar raid.

Karen Kiley had a sleeping bag, and bunked down on the floor in the corner of one of the bedrooms. Pat McEwan didn't leave his chair. He was not going to the floor, and figured that he could catch an hour's sleep in the chair he was in and that'd be good enough. He'd be back at home in Toronto on a mid-afternoon flight tomorrow, if all went well. He'd sleep then.

#

The morning came, and the raid went off pretty much as planned. Pat and Karen went in their own car, as there was no room in the two GMC Yukons for the SWAT team. They were big, gas-guzzling vehicles, with the step-up side rails, shiny alloy rims and the full smoke tinting on the windows. Beautiful and powerful rigs. The DEA had confiscated them in a drug bust six months earlier. The problem was that they couldn't hold everybody, as the group was too big, with all the gear they were carrying.

Pat had rented a car from Budget when he landed at Richardson airport the day before, anyway. The counter guy gave him the biggest car they had on the lot, a burgundy-red Chrysler M 300. He fingered the seat adjustment buttons to put the driver's seat low and way back. He looked like a drug dealer from Detroit as he sat back in the comfortable leather seat, head back and straight-arming the big veneer steering wheel. The car was easily big enough to fit him and Karen in the front, two SWAT guys in the back, and a shitload of gear in the trunk.

"Do you want me to drive, Pat?" Karen asked as McEwan sat wedged behind the steering wheel in the driver's seat. He was wearing a big Kevlar vest that said POLICE in bright orange letters. With the vest on over his big gut, he looked like a giant bear.

"No, I don't. But Christ, I can't wear this thing while I'm driving. I'll put it on when I get there." He shimmied out, went around to the rear of the car and put the vest in the trunk next to all the other protective gear and guns that they had. McEwan was basically afraid of guns and checked to make sure they weren't loaded for the ride over to Tundra RX. The last thing he needed was for a round to go off in the trunk and fill his ass with buckshot. He'd never get promoted if that happened.

So away they went, down Route 53 to the Tundra RX offices by nine am. They arrived early, so they sat in the parking lot in front of another building in the industrial park to stay slightly hidden. Pat McEwan figured the nine am start should give the people in the building plenty of time to get settled in with their coffee and donuts.

The two Yukons arrived soon after in the parking lot, and everybody donned their vests and fanned out. Phil Demarche and his three fellow entrance raiders went in through the front door.

Monica, the Tundra RX receptionist, was surprised to say the least. She had just started painting her nails Cherry Delight when Demarche yelled, "Police raid! Hands over your heads!" She jumped and spilled the red nail polish all over the desk. She just missed getting it on her new sheath dress. She was lucky.

All hell quickly broke loose. People were yelling and screaming in the office, as the police SWAT team streamed in through the front doors. Luckily, the door to the right of the main revolver was unlocked, and everybody was able to walk right in. The team didn't have to use the ram to knock out any plate glass. Eight policemen came in the front and went through the offices.

Meanwhile, Pat McEwan and his small crew went to warehouse in the back. The building was like a fortress because it held pharmaceutical-level drugs. It was loaded with security doors and cameras. McEwan drove around the building and saw that the loading dock was open. He pulled the big Chrysler right into an open bay, next to the dumpster. The team got out and the two SWAT policemen pulled out shotguns from the trunk.

"Put those bloody things away," McEwan said to the SWAT guys. "You'll end up shooting one of us, for Chrissakes. Cut the shit." They climbed the metal stairs next to the yellow scissor-lift, and went into the building through one of the big open loading dock doors. So much for security, McEwan thought, as he tried to catch his breath on the way in after going up the eight stairs.

The big warehouse looked almost eerily empty. It had about five people in it, mostly order pickers who travelled the stacks in motorized forklifts and grabbed drugs and filled orders. The workers were mainly pharmacy techs who were still in school getting degrees.

"Police. Who's in charge here?" one of the SWAT team said to the first warehouse person they met. They had to go to the break room near the toilets to find him.

"Huh?" the T-shirted worker said. "I'm not in charge, that's for shit sure. Frank Clayton's the supervisor, but he's over in the office right now. Can I help you?" He was sitting at a big empty table eating a donut and drinking a Mr. Smith's coffee, like everyone else in Canada.

"Tundra RX is under criminal investigation. We're searching this building. Nothing can go in or out until we say so. You need to stay where you are."

"Fine with me," the warehouse worker said. He took another donut from a box on the table. He was skinny, with long straggly hair, and had a wrinkled black T-shirt on that said The Nails in jagged red letters across his chest. He had powdered sugar on his lips as he chewed, and listened, and watched the SWAT policemen in action. He saw Pat McEwan looking at the donut box on the table.

"You want one?" he said to Pat. "Help yourself."

"Sure, if you don't mind," McEwan said. He took a plain donut and drifted out of the break room and into the big warehouse.

Pat could see that there was not a lot going on in the cavernous building. Karen and another SWAT cop were starting to unroll yellow POLICE tape, and wrap it around the entrance doors and the big loading dock bollards to seal the area off.

McEwan had no interest in really participating. He decided to declare victory early. He thumbed his Nextel and spoke to Demarche. "We're all secure in the warehouse, Phil. Over." McEwan loved saying "Over" after every sentence. It wasn't necessary, but was a great tweak on the bullshit police procedural stuff. He lived for the time-wasting, circle-jerking stuff that made the police department operate. His mind drifted for a second, thinking that they could maybe catch an earlier flight back to Toronto if the rest of the day went as smoothly as this so far.

Demarche was quick to reply. "Good, Pat. Hold the building. We're looking for our guys over here. We haven't found them yet."

Once he knew that they were essentially secure in the warehouse, Pat McEwan settled everybody into the break room. He brought all the warehouse people into the room, and everybody got a seat and started talking or watching CNN on the flat-screen on the wall. They all got coffees from the Keurig machine, and tucked into the remaining donuts. The day was done by ten o'clock.

Meanwhile, over in the Tundra RX offices, Phil Demarche had run into a dry hole. He had barrel-assed his way over to the executive suite area with the warrant for Bill Callahan in his hand.

"We're looking for William D. Callahan and Rakesh Gupta. Do you know where these men are?" Demarche asked Fran Harrington, Callahan's personal assistant.

"Bill? My boss? Usually he's in by now, but he called last night and left a message on my voice-mail saying he was going to be a little late today, that he had a doctor's appointment. He's not here yet. Have a seat and I'll call him." Fran pointed to a chair outside Callahan's office. She was so nervous at that point with all the policemen around, she could have shit a brick.

"And where's Dr. Gupta?" Demarche asked.

"Rakesh said that he had some meetings in Vancouver today and tomorrow, and would call in later this morning, too," Fran answered. She had no idea what was going on, with all the police in the office, or why everyone was looking for Bill and Rakesh.

Before she even finished getting the words out of her mouth, Phil Demarche suddenly had a sagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something didn't feel right that both of the men were not in the office where they usually were most mornings. He went in Callahan's office and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place. But he knew he had to call in some backup quickly and have the local police go to the homes of Callahan and Gupta to check it out. They were the prize for the whole bust, along with the drugs in the warehouse. There'd be egg on everybody's face if the two head honchos slipped out and were on the loose, Demarche knew.

"Moondog, see if you can send the locals to Callahan's and Gupta's cribs and pick 'em up there. They're not here. Or anywhere. Something's up."

"Whaddaya mean not there?" the dispatch voice said over the police Nextel.

"Not here. As in vanished, flown the coop. They didn't make it here this morning yet. Location unknown." Demarche frowned as he said it. Something really didn't feel right.

The voice at the dispatch HQ was quiet for a moment then came back. "You screw the pooch?"

"Something's going on, not sure what. Just go check their cribs. Right now." Demarche pocketed his cell phone then took off his vest and put it on Callahan's desk.

He had been on enough of these big, public busts to know that something wasn't going according to plan on this one. He began to think that they may, in fact, have screwed the pooch, as the dispatcher so elegantly stated. As he started to settle in and go through things on Callahan's desk, he realized that the promotion to police captain he was interested in may be a longer time in coming than he originally thought. A whole lot longer, if this turned out to be a cluster fuck, and it all landed on his shoulders.

* * * * *

### En Route

Meanwhile, things elsewhere were progressing as planned. Rakesh had arrived in New York on a late flight Tuesday. He was tired, and he wanted to stay over and go to the strip clubs in the city, but his instinct for preservation prevailed. He instead made his connection to London on time. Once at Heathrow, he boarded a big British Air 777 connecting flight to Pakistan. He had taken a Miloden, and had three glasses of red wine with the dinner service. He was now soundly asleep, flying east in business class, snoring.

On the other side of the world, Bill Callahan was starting his new adventure on a high note as well. The Gulfstream jet had made good time, heading down across the United States aided by a fifty-knot tailwind. They arrived in Miami early, and quickly took on 5,000 pounds of jet fuel. Then they got right back in the air, leveled at 35,000 feet, and headed directly south, to Rio de Janeiro.

It was bright in the cabin, and Callahan and Jennifer were talking and eating breakfast. They got large Starbucks coffees and fresh bagels at the corporate service terminal on the stopover in Miami. The sun streamed into the cabin from all four big left-hand side windows in blinding shafts. They were settled in, full tummies, enjoying the trip.

"So what do you want to do when we get there?" Jennifer said. She drank her coffee and pulled at a bagel.

Callahan looked over at her and thought she looked great. Sweater top, jeans, heels, he had made the right decision inviting her along on his "vacation" to Brazil. He had been mildly surprised, even shocked, when she said yes that she would go with him.

"I'm thinking a big Brazilian steak with a bottle of Rioja is what we need tonight when we land," he said, circling the paper coffee cup around in his fingers. "I need some man-food."

"I want to see the Jesus statue on top of the mountain. And I want to put on my bathing suit and sit at the pool for a while. Just soak up the sun."

"Oh?" Callahan asked.

"I bought a few interesting ones before we left."

Callahan smiled. "I'm sure they're attractive."

"You can decide yourself," Jennifer said as she smiled and finished off her coffee. Then she got up and put all the paper remains in the trash in the jet's galley.

She freshened up in the small bathroom, and came back and nuzzled in, close to Callahan. She felt empowered on the trip, out of the harsh Canadian weather, and headed toward the South American warmth.

"And speaking of being taken care of, are you in the mile-high club?" Jennifer said as she moved closer to Callahan.

"What's that?" he asked.

"You're about to become a member," she said. She pulled a fleece blanket over the two of them and then put her hand on Callahan's belt and began unbuckling. He quickly understood, as he closed his eyes and then moved his seat into the recline position. Youthful enthusiasm took over, and Jennifer got down to the business at hand. Bill Callahan soon became a card-carrying member of the club, in almost no time at all.

Outside, the white contrail from the jet ran in a long straight line, hanging in the still upper atmosphere, as the G-4 streaked forward on its journey to Rio.

* * * * *

### The New World

Rio. It was just like Bill Callahan pictured, only more vital. It was hot and tropical, loaded with beautiful women, high-rise buildings, restaurants, and hip people. It didn't feel much like exile at all.

They had landed at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Callahan had arranged for a private car to take them to the Four Seasons hotel, where they were staying in the city. They were in a suite with a small deck and tropical greenery all around. It was expensive, and very private.

The first thing Callahan did after the bellman brought their bags to the room was order a bottle of champagne, a nice, expensive bottle of Dom Perignon. He had slept on the jet after Jennifer gave him the hand job, had a Heineken and read a novel the rest of the way. His battery was charged.

After they got settled in at the hotel room suite, Callahan started to get the rest of the day organized. He had a full agenda that needed doing. Twenty minutes later, the champagne came, it was opened, and the two of them sipped the sparkling liquid and relaxed on the couch. It was heady.

That night they went down to the hotel restaurant for steaks and red wine. The restaurant was small and outdoors, tucked into a corner of the hotel with trees overhanging the tables. They sipped the Spanish red wine and talked.

"You know, I may be staying down here longer than just a vacation," Callahan said as they sat at the table.

"Oh. Why is that?" Jennifer said. Her curiosity was piqued. "What about your company?"

"I may be in a little trouble back in Canada."

"What sort of trouble?" Now she was interested.

"I don't know yet. Trouble with the government over the company. Tundra RX stuff. There are some rules about importing pharmaceuticals that the government is saying we didn't follow."

"That sounds strange."

"I know. We're just sorting it out."

"How long will you be staying here?"

"It might be a while."

"Oh, really," Jennifer said, as she drank the red wine and let it roll around her tongue. She wouldn't be too quick to commit to the open invitation that Callahan was putting on the table.

"A longer stay. Just until things get sorted out."

"Let's see how it goes. We may not even like each other," she said in a low-key way, as the steaks came and they ate dinner in the warm Brazilian night.

Callahan and Jennifer went native quickly enough. Free of the Canadian cold, office politics and business bullshit, Callahan took up the retro Miami Vice look. He let his hair grow longer in the back, bought some tropical shirts and started wearing an expensive, fruity cologne that Jennifer liked and had picked out for him at the mall.

He had also found a small gold chain in his suitcoat that had a replica of an Erecta pill, also in gold, as a pendant. It was a sales gimmick that a Mack salesman had given to Rakesh back in Edmonton. Rakesh had put it in Callahan's suitcoat pocket on the day they last saw each other in the office. He had put a note with the pendant. It said "It's a good life, if you don't weaken. Stay strong. Rakesh."

The chain and pendant were pure camp. But good memories for Callahan of Rakesh, and what they had built with Tundra RX in Edmonton. He started wearing the chain around his neck, under his shirt. It was small and subtle, and you couldn't make out that it was an Erecta pill unless you were in his chest hair. Jennifer thought it was cool and just right for an old guy like Callahan to wear.

#

They camped out at the Four Seasons for a month. They stayed in the suite, and Callahan set up his laptop on a desk with a speakerphone and a comfortable couch nearby. It was almost like he was working from home. The first thing he did when he arrived was check his bank accounts. Sure enough, the money was all there, and his balance in the master account in the Cayman Islands trust was fourty-five million dollars. He was rich enough to retire, and he knew it. That took the immediate edge off of his sojourn down in South America.

Paul Christiansen had done his job well, and the money was sitting in accounts that were beyond attachment by the Canadian authorities. Being as superstitious as he was, and always worried about downside risk, Callahan had also made his USB banker set up other accounts also cloaked in many layers of secrecy in other parts of the world. Then he spread the money around so that it resided in smaller chunks in about ten accounts, all in faraway places under layers of shell companies. He had wire transfers wash the money, as he moved it from one place to another. It was all hidden and clandestine, and untraceable. Even a determined assistant federal prosecutor in Canada with a lot of time on her hands and a lot of savvy about international banking rules would get lost trying to track the money through the warren of accounts he had set up. Callahan also strategized that even if one or two of the accounts got flushed out by police investigators, he'd still have the rest scattered around the world for safety.

So, once he was secure that he had plenty of money to live on, Bill Callahan took up his two blossoming passions: screwing Jennifer as much as possible and defending himself in the Canadian court system with every legal means available.

He'd spend mornings on conference calls with attorneys in Toronto. Once Canada realized that he had left the country, they issued a warrant for his arrest that very day.

"Well, what can we do about it?" Callahan asked Frank Matson, his lead attorney at 850 dollars per hour at Strauss Ferguson, the Canadian criminal defense firm for white collar crime.

"Challenge the jurisdiction, for starters," was Matson's answer.

"Then let's do it. Let's fight them on all fronts. Everywhere. On substance and procedure. Get bloody cranking on it. I'm lonely down here, and feeling like a victim of the system. Help me defend myself." He almost laughed as he said it. Callahan was going to work every angle available to him, with a vengeance.

"It's not going to come cheap, Bill," Matson said on the very first call.

"I don't care Frank. I want to come back as soon as possible. I'm not going to be a fucking Latin American dictator. Get working on it. There's no hockey down here."

Callahan had a special corporate account with 10-million dollars in it just for litigation expenses. He was prepared to use it all to defend himself going forward. If he spent all the money, so be it.

His work done each day by noon, Callahan then threw himself into remaking his companion Jennifer with gusto. Callahan bankrolled an entirely new wardrobe for her at the most exclusive stores in the fashionable parts of Rio. She looked gorgeous in heels and wrap skirts, and a whole new sophisticated fashion wardrobe.

They made love often. In the Four Seasons suite, no room was untouched—in the living room, on the couch and the floor, on the countertop, in the kitchenette, in every known position in the bedroom on the big, king sized bed. Callahan, free of the constraints of running Tundra RX and the trouble it had become, had channeled his newly found energy into his girlfriend Jennifer.

"Bill, that was great sweetheart. How many more of those pills do you have?" Jennifer said as she lay on the bed, propped up on her elbow, running her hand through Callahan's graying hair. He was spread-eagled and spent, face down on a pillow, beside her. "I'm going to start calling you my Forever Man, like Eric Clapton."

"Huh?"

"That's because you can keep it up forever when you're fueled on those Erecta pills," she said as she laughed.

He struggled to turn over and carry on a conversation with her. "I brought about a hundred tabs from Edmonton with me when we started. I'm almost through 'em, though. But don't worry. I found a pharmacy yesterday by Santana Park that sold them, and some other stuff, too. I bought a hundred and fifty tabs. They looked real. The pricing was good, by the way."

"You're funny. You still look at pill prices, even down here."

"I'm a businessman, sweetheart. Nothing else."

"Has the Erecta ever given you a four-hour erection?" Jennifer asked smiling. "That must hurt."

"Thank Christ, I haven't got one yet," Callahan replied. "I won't make it if I have a four-hour hard-on."

The two were quiet for a while in the bed.

"Edmonton seems so far away, doesn't it?" Jennifer said.

"Yeah, but I don't miss it. This is a great business climate down here, better than I thought. This may work out," Callahan answered.

"It is kind of fun down here. I've never been in a place anything like it."

#

And the days passed, just like that. Shopping and screwing, fine dinners out, and drinking wine. Life was good. Jennifer browned up like a Brazilian nut in two weeks with an all-over tan, owing to the fact that she wore nothing but the smallest of bikini thongs at the hotel pool or the beach when she sat out in the sun, which was almost all of the time she wasn't shopping or working out. Like most of the women on the beach, she went exclusively topless.

Callahan even got a little sun on his face and arms to go slightly native. But he used a lot of number 30 sunblock, too. He knew that he was an American gringo down in the tropics. So he ended up getting a farmer's tan. He spent most of his time in the suite anyway, working on his laptop. He was either checking his bank accounts, talking to the attorneys in Canada, making investments, or surfing the Web. Jennifer was amazed at the time he spent on the computer.

The only thing that could tear him away was sex. And Jennifer supplied a lot of it along the way to keep her sugar daddy happy.

* * * * *

### Green Shoots

It seemed like three months passed in an instant. Bill Callahan was sitting at a desk, in a neat little office in the business section of Rio. He was working on a desktop with a big twenty-inch flat-screen monitor. He had found a two-room office with a real estate agent when he began looking for an apartment in one of the tonier sections of Rio. He couldn't stay at the Four Seasons Hotel forever. He was carrying too many plastic bags of chips and salsa, along with large amounts of booze, back to the suite every day and the hotel staff was giving him the evil eye. Fuck it, he thought, time to put some roots down.

He and Jennifer had searched the neighborhoods, until they found a cozy little apartment in a small building with trees and a deck. Callahan needed to be able to grill steaks at night, and sit outside as the sun set, sipping beers and rum cocktails. They found a townhouse-style apartment in the Barra da Tijuca area that fit the bill. It also had plenty of hip, small restaurants and bars in the immediate neighborhood for hanging out.

But a lot had changed. For starters, Jennifer Marshall moved back to Canada. She got a call from the manager at The Gold Mine who told her that her job was gone if she didn't come back in three weeks. She thought long and hard about it.

"Bill, I think I'm going to go back to Edmonton." She surfaced the topic one night after a seafood paella and a bottle of Pinot Grigio. "I miss my family and girlfriends."

They were working on after-dinner cocktails on their small deck.

"What's back there?" Callahan said casually.

"My life, that's what. This is fun but I can't do it forever. I like you a lot but there's got be something more." She was half-drunk, under the stars, with a breeze blowing through her blond hair.

Callahan noticed how beautiful she really was. Helped by his money, she had accentuated all her good features. With long gym workouts, spa treatments, and expensive clothes, Jennifer Marshall was at the top of her game. She had the blush of youth, good looks, and expensive maintenance all combined in a very effective package.

He looked at her with his gimlet eye. "You mean something more than this?" He winked. He had been ready for this moment since the Gulfstream jet had touched down in Rio months ago. "What else is there?"

"Maybe marriage. Or an engagement. That's what else there is." She moved the pineapple chunk around in her drink with the straw. "I don't know. I can't live on Erecta-fueled sex for the next ten years."

"That's too bad," Callahan said, slightly wounded.

* * * * *

Encore

In the end, they didn't fight. Callahan let Jennifer go with an open invitation to come back. He was grateful that she came in the first place. It eased the transition into his brave new world. He knew that he was too old for her anyway, and that she needed youth in her life.

Jennifer packed up and left the following week, and it was after that when Callahan finally started to focus. He cut back on the booze, started exercising a little, and decided to do what he was good at and what he loved best.

So there he was in the small office he had rented, under the dimmed fluorescent lights, directing three other people. They were all Web designers, all working like monks on large desktop monitors, like his, in an open bullpen area.

Callahan sat at his desk. There, on his screen, was the prototype for WellManPlus+ Pharmaceuticals. It was a beautiful shot of a backdrop of the mountains of Rio, and a view to the water. The outline of a man looking out to sea was superimposed on the screen. The heading at the top said:

### Medicine for Good Health and Wellness for Men over 50

### Enjoy Life with WellManPlus+ Now

Callahan had dreamed up the prototype about a month ago.

"I think the lead page is good, but we need to have more colors and more imagery here at the front end," he said as he pointed. "The portal has to have more punch. It's flat, there's no stickiness."

"Sticky?"

"People aren't drawn to it. They don't stay."

"Ah. I see now."

"I'm thinking more blue here. Maybe a different tone than the ocean?" one of the men said sitting next to Callahan.

"Possibly, maybe also a more distinct, smaller silhouette of the guy on the mountain looking out, something more rugged."

"Okay, we can try that," the programmer said.

"These are wellness meds for fifty-year-olds. They're looking to recapture their youth. They want the energy of their thirties before all the bad shit came on. A Ponce de Leon fountain-of-youth thing. You've got that going for you down here in the Brazilian mountains. It's a hidden stream out in the rain forest or the Pantanal somewhere. Go with it. It's evocative, like I said."

The Spanish Web designer was young and hip. He smiled at Callahan.

"Is it possible? Do we have such a drug? My uncle wants it. Fuck, I want it, too." He had short, spiky dark hair and was wearing a leather thong around his neck.

Callahan smiled and sat up on the edge of the desk. He stretched.

"I don't know, Abilio. It's definitely possible. That's what we're creating here, a vibe. Something to sell to the world that screams out lost youth and good health. And possibly good sex, if we can fold that in, too," Callahan continued. "Listen, there are millions of men up in America shouting. They're shouting: 'Give me ten years of pain-free living in a pill! Please, fucking Jesus! I won't waste it this time!'"

Callahan paused for a second and looked over at the three Web designers who were all rapt, listening to him at this point. "That's our inspiration. Our zeitgeist. The desperation of the over-the-hill American male, looking to hold on to life for a little bit longer. And looking for a medicine to help do that. Think of guys just like me."

Callahan offered himself up with all his flaws. He looked around the room at the three young Brazilian men. "That's what I want. Now I need you to give me that, but on the screen, and in a vehicle that we can sell off of. That's it. Now create it with your talent."

Heads nodded, mice moved, and fingers rolled scrollwheels as the design work pushed on.

The days flew by, now that Callahan found something to do with his life that he thought was worthwhile and important. Something that would save the world, something that had meaning, and something that could possibly put several more million dollars in his pocket.

#

It was seven at night on a Thursday in September. Bill Callahan stepped out from the confines of his office into the night air of Rio after a long, full day of work. It was warm and dark. He breathed in deeply and let the humid air wash through his hair and face. He was headed to dinner with a woman he had met in a bar in the same block as his apartment. She was young, and dark, and Brazilian.

Callahan reached into his suitcoat pocket, and found the foil card he was searching for. He thumbed one of the small blue Erecta pills out of the blister pack, and popped it in his mouth as he walked down the street. This was his third date with the woman, and things were progressing nicely. She seemed to be interested in him, Callahan thought, as he swallowed the little pill.

The night was young and he had to be ready for possibility, however it arose.

### END
