The Edge

his tweed jacket. "I wanted to continue along a certain line of research. The people at VioTech deemed it too expensive to continue the research, not enough projected payback even if the drug could be perfected, and so they canceled it. They wanted Jilly and me to go into AIDS research. Our interests just don't lie there. When Alyssum Tarcher offered to finance us, we took him up on it."

    "What exactly is the drug, Paul?" I asked. "It's a memory drug, nothing more than that." "I don't know what you mean by a memory drug," Savich said. "We know so little about the mind, about how memory even works. What does it do to the memory?"

    "It's meant to take away the physical responses to bad memories when they surface. You see, the drug seems to be activated when there are sudden physical manifestations of distress-heightened adrenaline levels, rapid heartbeat, dilated pupils-things like that. Its purpose is to shut down the power of the memory by reducing the physical distress and substituting a sense of well-being.

    "The benefits might be enormous in treating someone who has lived through something terrible, for example, soldiers surviving battles, or physical or sexual abuse as a child. Once the emotional baggage of the memory is dissipated, so is its physiological power."

    I sat forward on the sofa, my hands clasped between my knees. Finally he was talking. I had to keep him going. "The physical reactions you're describing, Paul, aren't just prompted by a bad memory. They can happen with a whole lot of things, like fear, excitement, tension."

    "True enough, but you see, the drug is meant to be given in a controlled setting in which the memory is repeatedly triggered. So the drug is focused."

    "It sounds incredible," Savich said slowly. "But how can you continue research by yourself, in a home laboratory?"

    "I was very close to success when I left VioTech, although none of the decision makers at VioTech agreed. It's just a matter of fine-tuning some of the drug's side chains."

    "Would the drug be addictive?" I asked.

    "Oh no," Paul said, shaking his head. "Oh no."

    "What about military uses?" Savich asked. "After all, if you can lessen all the physical manifestations of distress, why, then you could give your soldiers a shot and produce a battalion of heroes."

    "No, I won't ever have anything to do with the military."

    Paul looked incredibly tired, his voice flat, as if he simply didn't care about anything anymore.

    "When I asked you about this before," I said, "you just laughed it off as a fountain of youth drug. This is something else entirely."

    "It doesn't matter. None of this has anything to do with Jilly's disappearance. It doesn't have anything to do with anything at all. Go away, Mac. I don't want to talk to either of you anymore. Please leave now."

    "Oh?" I asked, an eyebrow up. "You just want to attack women who happen to wander into your house?"

    "Maggie told you about it all wrong. She was coming on to me and when I decided to do something about it, she turned on me. A man gets horny, you know that. Maggie's nothing but a tease, Mac."

    "Tell me where Jilly is, Paul."

    "I don't know. If I did, I'd be with her."

    "Look, Paul," I continued after a moment, "it's time to drop the pretense. Laura told me she's DEA, that she was undercover. They know about this drug. They know about Molinas. There were then two attempts on Laura's life after Jilly disappeared. Who ordered them, Paul? You? Tarcher? This arch criminal, Del Cabrizo? Tell us how Tarcher's involved. Tell us about John Molinas."

    "I don't have to talk to you, and I want you to go away, both of you." With those words, Paul got up and walked out of the living room.

    I went after him. When he heard me coming, he broke into a run, took the stairs three at a time. By the time I caught up to him, he was locked in his laboratory. Jesus, I thought, this was nuts. It was a steel-reinforced door. I didn't have a prayer of breaking it open. I told him to let me in, pleaded with him to tell me what was going on before they came in with a search warrant, but he remained completely silent.

    After ten minutes, I felt Savich touch my arm. "Let's go," he said. "We need to regroup. Maybe it's time for Laura to call her boss at the DEA and let them take over. A search warrant doesn't sound like such a bad idea. They can haul both him and Tarcher in and interrogate them big time. Jesus, I'm tired. That late flight is catching up with me."

    "Maybe you