“Do you take them back?”

“Rarely. If they know they can come back, then they’re more likely to screw up.”

“What happens to the other third?”

“That’s why we’re here, Mr. Carter. That’s why I’m a counselor. Those folks, like me, survive in the world, and they do it with a toughness no one else understands. We’ve been to hell and back and it’s an ugly road. Many of our survivors work with other addicts.”

“How many people can you house at one time?”

“We have eighty beds, all full. We have room for twice that many, but there’s never enough money.”

“Who funds you?”

“Eighty percent federal grants, and there’s no guarantee from year to year. The rest we beg from private foundations. We’re too busy to raise a lot of money.”

Clay turned a page and made a note. “There’s not a single family member I can talk to?”

Talmadge X shuffled through the file, shaking his head. “Maybe an aunt somewhere, but don’t expect much. Even if you found one, how could she help you?”

“She can’t. But it’s nice to have a family member to contact.”

Talmadge X kept flipping through the file as if he had something in mind. Clay suspected he was looking for notes or entries to be removed before it was handed over.

“When can I see that?” Clay asked.

“How about tomorrow? I’d like to review it first.”

Clay shrugged. If Talmadge X said tomorrow, then it would be tomorrow. “All right, Mr. Carter, I don’t get his motive. Tell me why.”

“I can’t. You tell me. You’ve known him for almost four months. No history of violence or guns. No propensity for fighting. Sounds like he was the model patient. You’ve seen it all. You tell me why.”

“I’ve seen everything,” Talmadge X said, his eyes even sadder than before. “But I’ve never seen this. The boy was afraid of violence. We don’t tolerate fighting in here, but boys will be boys, and there are always the little rituals of intimidation. Tequila was one of the weak ones. There’s no way he would leave here, steal a gun, pick a random victim, and kill him. And there’s no way he would jump on a guy in jail and send him to the hospital. I just don’t believe it.”

“So what do I tell the jury?”

“What jury? This is a guilty plea and you know it. He’s gone, off to prison for the rest of his life. I’m sure he knows plenty of folk there.”

There was a long gap in the conversation, a break that seemed not to bother Talmadge X in the least. He closed the file and shoved it away. The meeting was about to be over. But Clay was the visitor. It was time to leave.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “What time?”

“After ten o’clock,” Talmadge X said. “I’ll walk you out.”

“It’s not necessary,” Clay said, delighted with the escort.

The gang had grown and appeared to be waiting for the lawyer to exit D Camp. They were sitting and leaning on the Accord, which was still there and still in one piece. Whatever fun they’d planned was quickly forgotten at the sight of Talmadge X. With a quick jerk of his head he scattered the gang, and Clay sped away, untouched and dreading his return the next day.

He drove eight blocks and found Lamont Street, then the corner of Georgia Avenue, where he stopped for a moment for a quick look around. There was no shortage of alleys in which one might shoot someone, and he was not about to go looking for blood. The neighborhood was as desolate as the one he’d just left. He’d come back later with Rodney, a black paralegal who knew the streets, and they’d poke around and ask questions.

5

The Potomac Country Club in McLean, Virginia, was established a hundred years earlier by some wealthy people who’d been snubbed by the other country clubs. Rich folks can tolerate almost anything, but not rejection. The outcasts pumped their considerable resources into Potomac and built the finest club in the D.C. area. They picked off a few Senators from rival clubs and enticed other trophy members, and before long Potomac had bought respectability. Once it had enough members to sustain itself, it began the obligatory practice of excluding others. Though it was still known as a new country club, it looked and felt and acted like all the rest.

It did, however, differ in one significant way. Potomac had never denied the fact that its memberships could be bought outright if a person had enough money. Forget waiting lists and screening committees and secret votes by the admissions board. If you were new to D.C., or if you suddenly struck it rich, then status and prestige could be obtained overnight if your check was large enough. As a result, Potomac had the nicest golf course, tennis facilities, pools, clubhouses, dining room, everything an ambitious country club could want.

As far as Clay could tell, Bennett Van Horn had written the big check. Regardless of which cloud of smoke he was blowing at the moment, Clay’s parents did not have money and certainly would not have been accepted at Potomac. His father had sued Bennett eighteen years earlier over a bad real estate deal in Alexandria. At the time, Bennett was a big-talking Realtor with lots of debts and very few unencumbered assets. He was not a member of the Potomac Country Club then, though he now acted as if he’d been born there.

Bennett the Bulldozer struck gold in the late eighties when he invaded the rolling hills of the Virginia countryside. Deals fell into place. Partners were found. He didn’t invent the slash-and-burn style of suburban development, but he certainly perfected it. On pristine hills he built malls. Near a hallowed battleground, he built a subdivision. He leveled an entire village for one of his planned developments—apartments, condos, big houses, small houses, a park in the center with a shallow muddy pond and two tennis courts, a quaint little shopping district that looked nice in the architect’s office but never got built. Ironically, though irony was lost on Bennett, he named his cookie-cutter projects after the landscape he was destroying—Rolling Meadows, Whispering Oaks, Forest Hills, etcetera. He joined other sprawl artists and lobbied the state legislature in Richmond for more money for more roads so more subdivisions could be thrown up and more traffic created. In doing so, he became a figure in the political game, and his ego swelled.

In the early nineties, his BVH Group grew rapidly, with revenues increasing at a slightly faster rate than loan payments. He and his wife, Barb, bought a home in a prestigious section of McLean. They joined the Potomac Country Club and became fixtures. They worked hard at creating the illusion that they had always had money.

In 1994, according to the SEC filings that Clay had studied diligently and kept copies of, Bennett decided to take his company public and raise $200 million. He planned to use the money to retire some debt, but, more important, to ”... invest in the unlimited future of Northern Virginia.” In other words, more bulldozers, more slash-and-burn developments. The thought of Bennett Van Horn with that kind of cash no doubt thrilled the local Caterpillar dealers. And it should have horrified the local governments, but they were asleep.

With a blue-chip investment banker leading the way, BVHG stock roared out of the blocks at $10 a share and peaked at $16.50, not a bad run but far short of what its founder and CEO had predicted. A week before the public offering he had boasted in the Daily Profit, a local business tabloid, that ”... the boys on Wall Street are sure it’ll hit forty bucks a share.” In the Over the Counter market, the stock floated back to earth and landed with a thud in the $6.00 range. Bennett had unwisely refused to dump some stock like all good entrepreneurs do. He held on to all of his four million shares and watched as his market value went from sixty-six million to almost nothing.