“My old man won’t let you get away with this,” Dink said. He was looking very worried now.

“Your father has already had a long conversation with my associate, who is his good friend, and he has wholeheartedly approved of everything I’m telling you.”

“And if I don’t do what you want me to?”

“Oh, yes, the alternative scenario. In that case this facility will declare you competent, and you will be arrested and tried for your crimes. Carson and Parker will testify in court that you supplied her, through Parker, with drugs, then instructed her to entrap your attorney into a rape charge. You will be convicted and, when all charges are taken into account, sentenced to a term of fifteen to twenty years in a hard-core, non-country-club prison. Oh, and your father will wash his hands of you and disinherit you, as well. When you are finally released you will have to rely on the criminal and sexual skills you learned in prison to support yourself. Are you beginning to get the picture, Dink?”

“Now look, Herb,” Dink said, tears appearing in his eyes, “I want to apologize for this whole thing. It was just a big practical joke that went wrong, and I’ll do whatever I possibly can to make it up to you, really I will.”

“Well, Dink, that’s a great start on the new attitude you’re going to have to adopt if you want to be a free man before you’re forty.”

“I’ll do whatever you tell me, Herb. Trust me, I will.”

“Trust you?” Herbie laughed at that one. “You’re a junkie and a drug dealer, two of the most untrustworthy beings on the planet. You’ve just put the girl you supposedly love and your best friend, perhaps your only friend, in jeopardy of long prison sentences, and you’ve gravely endangered your relationship with the father who loves you and, not incidentally, with his very considerable fortune, and for what? You should start asking yourself that today.”

“I’ll do whatever you say, Herb,” Dink said, and he sounded truly contrite.

“You can start by stopping trying to use the people in this place who want to help you. The general consensus among them, you might like to know, is that you are a liar, a narcissist, a con man, and a sociopath who is a danger to himself and to others. You see, they are accustomed to being lied to by people like you, and they know how to deal with you.

“By the way, while we’ve been having this conversation, the staff have taken apart your very comfortable quarters and removed all of your personal possessions and confiscated them. For the foreseeable future you’ll be wearing the orange hospital gown that you already know identifies the least trustworthy patients of this facility, and you are being moved to a room that is very much like the prison cell you will be occupying, if you should give your father or me the slightest difficulty. He and I are the only people authorized to contact you, and you may not contact anyone, especially Carson and Parker. Have you grasped your situation yet?”