The King of Torts by John Grisham Page A

mess, and sneaked out without a trace. During the steaks and after the first bottle of Bordeaux, Max said there was something else waiting for Clay after Tarvan. “Something much bigger,” Max said, and he actually glanced around the restaurant to see if spies were listening.
    “What?” Clay said after a long wait.
    Another quick search for eavesdroppers, then, “My client has a competitor who’s put a bad drug on the market. No one knows it yet. Their drug is outperforming our drug. But my client now has reliable proof that the bad drug causes tumors. My client has been waiting for the perfect moment to attack.”
    “Attack?”
    “Yes, as in a class-action suit brought by a young aggressive attorney who possesses the right evidence.”
    “You’re offering me another case?”
    “Yes. You take the Tarvan deal, wrap things up in thirty days, then we’ll hand you a file that will be worth millions.”
    “More than Tarvan?”
    “Much more.”
    Clay had thus far managed to choke down half his filet mignon without tasting anything. The other half would remain untouched. He was starving but had no appetite. “Why me?” he asked, more to himself than to his new friend.
    “That’s the same question lottery winners ask. You’ve won the lottery, Clay. The lawyer’s lottery. You were smart enough to pick up the scent of Tarvan, and at the same time we were searching desperately for a young lawyer we could trust. We found each other, Clay, and we have this one brief moment in time in which you make a decision that will alter the course of your life. Say yes, and you will become a very big lawyer. Say no, and you lose the lottery.”
    “I get the message. I need some time to think, to clear my head.”
    “You have the weekend.”
    “Thanks. Look, I’m taking a quick trip, leaving in the morning, coming back Sunday night. I really don’t think you guys need to follow me.”
    “May I ask where?”
    “Abaco, in the Bahamas.”
    “To see your father?”
    Clay was surprised, but then he should not have been. “Yes,” he said.
    “For what purpose?”
    “None of your business. Fishing.”
    “Sorry, but we’re very nervous. I hope you understand.”
    “Not really. I’ll give you my flights, just don’t follow me, okay?”
    “You have my word.”

    C HAPTER 10   
    Great Abaco Island is a long narrow strip of land at the northern edge of the Bahamas, about a hundred miles east of Florida. Clay had been there once before, four years earlier when he’d scraped together enough money for the airfare. That trip had been a long weekend, one in which Clay had planned to discuss serious issues with his father and discard some baggage. It didn’t happen. Jarrett Carter was still too close to his disgrace and concerned primarily with drinking rum punch from noon on. He was willing to talk about anything but the law and lawyers.
    This visit would be different.
    Clay arrived late in the afternoon on a very warm and very crowded Coconut Air turboprop. The gentleman at Customs glanced at his passport and waved him through. The taxi ride into Marsh Harbor took five minutes, on the wrong side of the road. The driver likedloud gospel music and Clay was not in the mood to argue. Nor was he in the mood to tip. He got out of the car at the harbor and went looking for his father.
    __________
    J ARRETT C ARTER had once filed suit against the President of the United States, and though he lost the case, the experience taught him that every subsequent defendant was an easier target. He feared no one, in court or out. His reputation had been secured with one great victory—a large malpractice verdict against the President of the American Medical Association, a fine doctor who’d made a mistake in surgery. A pitiless jury in a conservative county had returned the verdict, and Jarrett Carter was suddenly a trial lawyer in demand. He picked the toughest cases, won most of them, and by the age of forty was a litigator with a wide