“In minutes you’ll feel the best you ever have.” Rabun jammed the needle of a massive hypodermic into Warlock’s ass.

“Jesus!” he roared.

“I’m a little rusty. This is my own secret concoction.”

Warlock had barely made it back to the living room when a shimmering, golden power seized his body; a sense of ease, grace, strength. The stranger turned out to be the dreaded phone maven, Feingold, who presented Warlock with a wheel of Stilton cheese shipped straight from Harrods in London.

“A peace offering. Why don’t you just take your phone off the hook during dinner?”

“Swell idea. Thank you.” Warlock stared happily at his favorite cheese. “You sound small on the phone. God, Rabun, what the fuck was in that shot?”

“I can’t tell you. You might become a drug addict. I limit myself to one a month.”

“I must know,” Warlock insisted with a false note of petulance. He had the sensation that he could jump straight through the ceiling into the open sky above.

“Well, Feingold flew up for an hour and I wanted you cooking on all cylinders. The concoction includes an anti-spasmodic, morphine, Nembutal, cocaine, Methedrine, and an enormous amount of B12.”

“You should patent it. What a boon it would be for the sick.”

“You can buy all the ingredients on the street in Detroit,” Feingold quipped. “I’ve read that they’re giving something similar to terminal cancer patients in England.”

“Are you suggesting that I have cancer?” Warlock turned in anger on Feingold, then looked questioningly at Rabun.

“Who knows? However, cancer isn’t the subject of the meeting today.”

Hours later they had made enough progress for Feingold to leave. Warlock decided that he had severely underestimated the man’s intelligence, though there was a slight air of the supercilious nosepicker. The health spa lawsuit was actually the last of three central problems as far as cash outflow, the other two being Rabun’s wife and son. Feingold was fairly certain that any settlement would fall within Rabun’s liability limits. The spending habits of mom and son were humiliatingly perverse to the three of them. There was a two hundred percent cost overrun on Mrs. Rabun’s new house, and the son was demanding a quarter mil to start a restaurant in Key West. There was implication of threat in the son’s request, with overtones of knowledge of some of Rabun’s tax shenanigans.

“That little cocksucker must have snooped in my files. I’m going to have him permanently locked in a closet. He’s a bigger bitch than his mother.” Rabun stomped around in his balloon boots. “Why couldn’t my son turn out to be an android football player or something normal. No, he’s down there in the tropics playing with weenies.”

“At least he hasn’t murdered anyone.” Warlock searched for a shred of condolence.