Free Limits of Justice, The by John Morgan Wilson

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    The article went on to point out that Charlotte Preston, a licensed anesthesiologist, would have had easy access to the drug. Templeton again mentioned Charlotte’s recent loss of her father, and the publication of an unauthorized biography portraying Rod Preston as a sexual deviate. According to an anonymous source, whom I presumed was me, the deceased had been distraught by the content and lurid claims of the book. Templeton had included the title and the name of the author, Randall Capri. Like all staff-written articles of national interest published in the Times, Templeton’s piece would already have moved on the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post wire, picked up by hundreds of subscribing newspapers across the country. Bookers on the TV talk shows were no doubt scrambling to schedule Randall Capri as a guest. By week’s end, I suspected, Sexual Predator might be headed for a place on the bestseller lists, thanks to the timing of Charlotte Preston’s newsworthy death.
    As I set the Metro section aside and picked up my fork to stab at the scrambled eggs, another article caught my eye. This one was on the front page of section A, lower half, left column, under a three-tier headline:
     
    ‘A IDS C OCKTAIL ’
    N OT M IRACLE C URE A S
    D OCTORS O NCE H OPED
     
    The article summed up what a lot of us had known for a long time: While the combination therapy introduced in the mid-nineties had saved countless lives and restored health to many patients, the drugs didn’t work for everybody. Sometimes the side effects were intolerable, even life-threatening in themselves. Even in cases where they were well tolerated and effective, the HIV often developed a resistance to the antiretrovirals and protease inhibitors, as they were known, and the virus came roaring back, stronger than ever. With more than forty million people infected worldwide, most of them in Third World countries, AIDS was still a voracious, deadly plague with no end in sight.
    I shoved the newspaper aside, feeling overwhelmed again by doom, part of a catastrophe that seemed too big and all-consuming to escape. I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel that way now. I was supposed to be buoyed by all the advances and opportunities for treatment, all the support groups and caring organizations, all the healthy, happy, HIV-infected people walking around, going to work, staying out of the hospital. But all I could think about was how Jacques had died a decade earlier, his body wasted away by a dozen agonizing ailments, gasping desperately for his final breaths, the way most of my other sick friends had gone. I was obsessing on the negative, and I was aware that I was obsessing, but knowing that didn’t seem to help.
    Mei-Ling whined at my feet, fixing me with her bulging eyes while performing a rapid two-step with her front paws. I gave her a taste of Maurice’s eggs, then started in on the rest, forcing them down. The phone rang. It was Templeton, calling from Times-Mirror Square.
    “Did you read my piece?”
    “Just finished it.”
    “Well?”
    “A solid, workmanlike job.”
    A pregnant pause, which gave birth to exasperation.
    “That’s it? Solid and workmanlike?”
    “Relax, Templeton. That was a compliment.”
    “Coming from you, I guess it is.”
    “You want me to tell you the article’s brilliant?”
    “I thought I did a pretty good job.”
    “That’s what I just said.”
    “Never mind, Justice. I’m a pro, I don’t need your validation.”
    “I’m glad we got that resolved.”
    “Speaking of which, I got on the phone this morning. I learned some things about Charlotte Preston that might interest you.”
    “I’ll eat while you talk. My eggs are getting cold.”
    “I spoke with Charlotte’s lawyer. It seems she died without leaving a will. No living trust, not even a quickly scrawled note about who should have her beloved dog.”
    “Seems reasonable. She was in good health, not yet forty. More than half her life ahead