Thomas paused for a bite of duck sausage and a sip of coffee. Bruce ate too but asked, “And so, what’s the backstory?”

“There’s a drug called Daxapene that no one knows about. Totally fictional of course, because this is a novel.”

“Got that,” Bruce said.

“Daxapene is not on the market. It is registered, has a trade name, but will never be approved. It’s not exactly legal, not exactly illegal. Not much of a drug, really, because it’s not a stimulant, not a barbiturate, not anything really. It was discovered by accident in a Chinese laboratory about twenty years ago and sold only on the black market here in the U.S.”

Another bite. Bruce waited, then asked, “And what’s the purpose of Daxapene?”

“It extends life, keeps the heart beating.”

“Then why isn’t it a miracle drug? I’d like to invest.”

“It has a rather limited market. It’s not clear if scientists and researchers understand how it works, but it stimulates the medulla, that section of the brain that controls the heart muscle. And it works only in patients who are basically, as they say, brain dead.”

Bruce and Noelle chewed on this for a moment, then she said, “Let me get this straight. There is very little brain activity but enough to pump the heart.”

“Correct,” Mercer said.

“Any side effects?” Bruce asked.

“Only blindness and severe vomiting, but these were discovered by accident in China. There are no clinical trials for patients with advanced dementia whose heart rates steadily increase. Why bother?”

Bruce was smiling and said, “So, the shady company buys the Daxapene from the shady Chinese lab, pumps it into all of its dementia patients on their last leg, keeps ’em alive for a few more months so it can collect a few more checks.”

“Gotta love fiction,” Thomas said.

“Oh, I do. In the novel, how much money is on the line?”

“The bad company owns three hundred facilities with forty-five thousand beds, ten thousand of which are occupied by Alzheimer’s patients, and all of them get a dose of Daxapene each morning either in their feeding tube or in their orange juice. The drug is packaged like it’s just another vitamin or supplement. Most patients in nursing homes get a handful of pills every day anyway, so what’s another little vitamin.”

“The staff has no clue?” Noelle asked.

“Not in the novel. At least in fiction the culture is ‘When in doubt, give ’em another pill.’?”

“Back to the money,” Bruce said.

“The money is vague because everybody eventually dies. That’s why the drug has never been tested. One patient might hang on for another six months with the help of Daxapene; for another it might be two years. In Nelson’s fictional world, the average is twelve months. That’s roughly an extra forty grand per patient, and he plays around with the figure of five thousand anticipated deaths per year, so something like two hundred million in extra cash from the government.”

“And the company’s annual gross?”

“Three billion, give or take.”

Noelle asked, “If the drug extends life, what’s illegal about it?”

Mercer replied, “Well again, in the novel, the bad guys take the position that they’re doing nothing illegal. But the good guys say it’s fraud.”

“Let’s get back to the plot,” Bruce said. “Assuming there is one.”

“Oh that,” Thomas said with a laugh. “Well, the corporate lawyer has a road-to-Damascus conversion, chucks his high-end career, sues the bad company for keeping his poor mum alive, almost gets killed several times, and eventually wins a big verdict to bring down the bad guys.”

“Predictable,” Bruce said.

“Thoroughly,” added Mercer. “I had it figured out halfway through. Does he really sell?”

“He did, yes. Nelson had some talent but he was a bit on the lazy side. I don’t think he wrote for the female audience.”

“And that’s more than half the crowd, right?”

“Sixty percent.”

“I’ll stick with the girls. And don’t call it chick lit.”

“You’ve never heard me say that.”

Noelle interrupted with “Okay, back to the book. We’re supposed to believe that this novel is responsible for Nelson’s death, right? Seems like a stretch to me.”

Thomas said, “I’ve been digging for two weeks and can’t find anything even remotely touching this story. Nelson is accurate enough with his numbers regarding dementia patients and nursing home beds and the vast sums of money and all that, but from the drug angle there’s nothing. It looks like pure fiction.”

“So who killed him?” Noelle asked.

There was a long gap in the conversation as the food kept their attention for a few moments. Mercer broke the quiet with “And we’re all convinced that it was murder, regardless of what the police might think?”

They all looked at Bruce, who nodded slightly and offered a smug, tight smile, as if he had no doubt.

“I agree,” Thomas said. “But I’m not sure this book will help. His first novel, Swan City, was about arms trafficking, and a much better book, by the way. His second, The Laundry, was about a Wall Street law firm that laundered billions in narcotics money for Latin American dictators. His third, Hard Water, dealt with Russian thugs peddling spare parts for nuclear weapons. It seems like he would have made much scarier enemies with those books.”