THE ALCATRAZ OPTION

by Jay Begler

  One day, he walked hand in hand with Rebecca along the coast. The mist was heavy and weather somber. As they trudged past the carcasses of ships, the skeletal remnants of animals he couldn’t identify, and the hollowed-out remnants of houses, Morales felt that the Coast’s name, “The Land God Made in Anger,” was fitting. He connected with this desolate and moody place in a way didn’t understand. Morales had a feeling which he never experienced before. It was different than happiness, or contentment. “What was it?” Morales answered his own question. Exuberance.

  Rebecca said, “Penny for your thoughts.”

  He lifted her hand, kissed it, and said, “All good.” They walked on.

  One night, while in a safari camp in Botswana, Rebecca and Morales made love on a blanket beneath a sky so full of stars it was unlike anything they had ever seen. Far in the distance they heard the faint roar of lions, which sounded more like background music than anything else. Morales stopped and said, “You know, the first time that I met you at the pool and we kissed, I knew that I loved you. I’ve always thought of that as a perfect moment. They’re rare, but I think right now, with the two of us under this beautiful sky, away from the Cartel, away from everyone and everything, this is another perfect moment. What do you think?”

  She never answered his question, but pulled him toward her and said, “I think we should continue making love.”

  The text reached Morales when they were in Zambia marveling at the grandeur of Victoria Falls.

  “Results of initial tests successful and well beyond our hopes and for lack of a better word, ‘astonishing.’ I will brief you on your return. Safe travels.”

  Morales read the text aloud and said, “Let’s get home.” No one disagreed. Morales sent a return text to Johnson: “Take the helicopter to Mexico City. We’ll pick you up there and you can start briefing us as we fly back to the hacienda.”

  They knew from Johnson’s demeanor as he skipped up the stairs to enter the Gulf Stream that he was excited and happy. Before he even sat down, he said, “The results are far better than we could have hoped for; it’s a minimum of ninety percent effective across the board. That’s the good news. Ready for the amazing news? From all the information we’ve gathered its totally addictive without, let me repeat, without the portion we were going to add. We have no idea why this is the case, but when the subjects went off the drug, they all were as desperate as meth addicts to get back on it. Oh yes, no deaths or any side effects. We’ve created a miracle drug. Our super drug has arrived.”

  Morales said, “Let’s start manufacturing and marketing.”

  The public buzz on Clarity was virtually everywhere. Within three months, the Clarity story was being aired on the news. The media hailed Clarity as a new underground drug that appeared to cure a variety of ills, some in remarkable ways. One commentator said that “Clarity was the HD for the mind.” The slogan stuck. Many said that after they took it, they understood the meaning of life. American-based physicians on the Cartel’s payroll touted Clarity as a wonder drug. Before long, Clarity was the subject of talk shows and the news media. Self-professed Clarity gurus emerged on the scene and sang the praises of the drug, much in the way that Timothy Leary once touted LSD in the Sixties and Seventies.

  Legitimate pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, FBI, and Homeland Security, reversed engineered Clarity to determine its components, but the drug did not appear to contain any of the chemicals associated with addiction. Because Clarity was a street drug, one not approved by the FDA, the agency issued warnings about potential health risks from a drug no one knew anything about. Since crime seemed to drop significantly for the first few months after Clarity’s introduction, efforts to find and stop its distribution were tame at best and not successful.

  Twenty-Eight

  •

  The Human Microcosms

  After Clarity was on the market about four months, law enforcement officials noticed a significant spike in crime. A well- developed Clarity habit was costing users anywhere from $6000 to $12,000 per month. Once the drug’s use was widespread, Morales learned that the number of grams necessary to sustain its addictive effects varied from person to person, with no correlation to size or metabolism. A petite woman might need double the amount of Clarity that a former football player had to use to reach what was being called by the press and users as the “Clarity Zone,” that serene state where everything seemed extraordinarily clear. All the users of Clarity, however, were living in a fool’s paradise, as reflected by the experiences of three early users: Max Sanford, Jerry Eckstein and Jewel Fontaine.

  Max Sanford: In his later years, Max Sanford used to think about the happiest day of his life. He thought it was the first day he went sailing on his newly purchased 42-foot Morris M42 luxury sailboat, which he described as the “Stradivarius of Yachts.” Max had always loved sailing and vowed that if his real-estate company ever went public, he’d buy himself a present. So, as his lawyers and accountants were fiddling with various reports for the SEC in connection with an IPO of his company, Sanford scoured yachting magazines and visited luxury yacht venues. As soon as he saw the M42, it was love at first sight.

  The maiden voyage for “Princess Darlene,” named after his wife of twenty years, was on a warmish, early, September evening. There, with Darlene and his three children, his yacht coursed through San Francisco bay. The sun at seven p.m. was low in the sky. Sanford dropped anchor just east of the Golden Gate Bridge and brought up a bottle of champagne for himself and his wife and iced tea for his children Zack, aged 16, Marisa, 14, and Olive, 12. They raised their glasses to toast each other and to toast life. The water was still and the sunlight cast a beautiful sheen on the bay. Darlene said, “To my darling husband, Max. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  It never got better than that day, though there were many other fine days that this close-knit family celebrated together. But now, Sanford was 86 His wife died two years earlier, and he was living with his oldest son, Zack, in New York City. The only reminder of that happy day was an old family photo taken just before the Princess Darlene’s maiden voyage. Almost immediately after his wife had died, Sanford lapsed into a depression. At the time, he was still living by himself on the Upper East Side. None of his children realized the depth of his depression until, he tried to kill himself, through the ingestion of copious amounts of Halcyon and Scotch. It was only a matter of luck that his daughter went to his apartment, after all of her phone calls went unanswered, and found him comatose on the floor. A regimen of anti-depressants worked to quell the depression, but over time Sanford’s behavior became erratic. At times he would rant incoherently, often in public, or seemed to display symptoms of dementia. Against the sound advice of his siblings, however, Zack desperately tried to have Sanford continue living with him.

  The episode that changed Zack’s mind occurred at three in the morning. Sanford, who had become an unpleasant legend in one of the toniest co-ops on Park Avenue, walked through the building’s austere lobby and arrived at the interior doorman’s small desk. He was shoeless and wearing only jockey shorts and an undershirt. The doorman, James Hollis, a dignified gentleman who had worked in the building for over twenty years, knew what was coming and braced himself. Sanford was tall, 6’6’ when he played basketball for Yale, but now stooped over from age. Still, he was significantly taller than Hollis and hovered over him as he began shouting. The decibel level of his rant was loud enough for the few pedestrians to hear as they passed his building. “You fucking, fucking faggot. You cocksucker. They should line you homos up and shoot you.” His tirade, laced with unimaginable slurs and often incoherent, lasted fifteen minutes, during which the doorman calmly picked up the phone, punched in some numbers and said, “Mr. Sanford, your father is at it again. Please come down and pick him up.”

  For Zack, this was going to be his last visit to Sanford’s physician, Doctor Isaac Banister. He had conferred with his sister and brother, and they agreed that it was time to place the
ir father in an assisted living facility. Banister treated Max for several years, but with limited success. Nevertheless, the Sanford children felt that Banister was competent given his credentials. They didn’t know that he also distributed drugs for the Cartel.

  Addressing Zack as if Sanford was not in the room, Banister said, “Before we find your father a nice place, his euphemism for a facility, let’s try one more drug. I have some samples from Hoffman La Roche of a drug called Saludex. It’s brand new.” He placed 60 Clarity pills in a vial bearing the name, Hoffman La Roche’s, and said, “This relatively new and may or may not work, but we’ve heard good things about it. Let me know how it goes. If it doesn’t change things, we’ll look for that nice place.”

  Ten days later, Sanford returned to his lobby, but at six PM just when James had started his shift. When saw Max, James thought it was someone else. The man approaching was well groomed and wore an expensive suit. He even stood taller. Sanford held a bottle of expensive Scotch housed in a gift bag. The shocked doorman had not seen Sanford so clear-eyed and well put together for many years. Nor could he remember seeing him at this time of the day. The only time Sanford made an appearance in the lobby was after midnight and then only to berate him.

  “James,” he said in a voice that resonated confidence and rationality. “This is for you. I’m so terribly sorry for the abuse I’ve heaped upon you. Really, I feel awful. I know I can’t make up for my insane behavior, but please accept this little gift and my deepest apologies.” He also wrote a similar note to the Board of Directors of the co-op who threatened to bring an eviction proceeding if Zack didn’t move his father out of the building.

  Earlier that day, Zack called his sister and brother and said, “You will not believe this; he’s like another person. He’s like dad used to be before mom died. Meet us at Le Bernardin tonight. I scored a table.”

  This evoked, “Two miracles, dad is sane, and you got a table at Le Bernardin. But do you think it’s ok; that he won’t go crazy?”

  “No worries. Just show up and prepare to be amazed.”

  It was the best evening they had with their father in years. He was charming and incisive. They reminisced, laughed and cried, mostly about their mother. Sanford was also apologetic for what she had put her children through. He said with the authority he used to command when they were younger and he was still the patriarch of the family: “Look kids, I’ve made an executive decision. I don’t want to be a burden to you. And I hope Zack you don’t mind. I saw Dr. Bannister about a senior living facility. Just to rub his face into it a bit I said, ‘You know a nice place.’ My condition pleased him, and we spoke for an hour about my options. I just need to visit a few to see which I like best.”

  When his daughter said she would accompany him, Sanford replied that he would be fine on his own.

  It was Sanford’s bad luck that his supply of Clarity ran out when Dr. Bannister was on vacation. Through a practice that many of his patients admired and many disliked, Bannister left his cell phone at home with an out of office message ending with, “If this is an emergency, please call my colleague Doctor Harold Wong at 212-551-9000. Wong, seeing the vial given to Sanford by Bannister, the one that had Saludex and Hoffman La Roche on the label, Wong wrote a prescription for a one-month supply of that drug. The product had no effect on Sanford, and his psychological state quickly deteriorated from depressed to hostile to deranged.

  “I know from Mr. Sanford that he was taking some new drug. His transformation was nothing short of remarkable.” James was speaking to two of the Coop’s residents, when he spotted Max running towards them. His first thought was that Sanford was running rather fast for a man of his age. Then he realized that he was naked, and holding a gun. He shouted, “He has a gun. Get out of here.”

  The residents escaped out the front door just as he started to shoot. Out of habit, James held the door open for them. A bullet struck him in the spine and he fell paralyzed to the ground. Sanford stood over James and pointed the gun towards him and said nothing for a few minutes. Police, guns drawn, charged through the door.

  “Police. Drop the gun!”

  Sanford turned and did something so bizarre that the whole incident played on the news for several days and even made it to the Hollywood Reporter. No one had an explanation for it. Sanford faced the police, raised his gun, and said in a voice that the two officers said was reminiscent of Al Pacino’s in Scarface, “Say hello to my little friend.” Before he could squeeze the trigger, Sanford was shot dead by the two policemen.

  Jerry Eckstein. To say that Eckstein was a slacker would be a colossal understatement. He was the kind of twenty-year-old kid who was so perplexing and disappointing to his parents that they rarely spoke to each other about their only child, and when they did so it was often with their heads shaking negatively. When friends bragged about how their children were doing in college, his parents, Martha and Dwight, both CPAs with strong work ethics, never replied. The salvaged some bragging rights temporarily when Berkeley accepted him. Unbeknownst to their friends, Eckstein’s admission to Berkeley was through pull. Both of his parents were Berkley graduates, were active in the Alumni fund-raising activities, and gave generously to the school. At the end of his first semester, the school asked him to leave. The dean of the school, an old friend of his parents, cautioned them about Eckstein’s excessive drinking, and academic failures. He then enrolled at a second college of significantly lesser stature and history repeated itself.

  What worried his parents more than his irresponsibility and lack of any discernible interest in his future was that Eckstein was destined to be an alcoholic. They knew the symptoms better than most. Dwight and Martha’s partner was an alcoholic, a condition that led to the dissolution of the partnership. Determined that their son would not go down the path of their partner, their absolute condition for a new school was that he not only seek counseling, but that he attend weekly AA meetings. Despite encouraging reports from his mentor, they had misgivings. They knew the routine and how people fell off the wagon.

  So, it was surprising to them when he came home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Cleanly shaven, extremely well groomed, Eckstein announced that he had chosen economics a major, a prelude to law school, and would stay home to prepare for certain exams. His delighted parents didn’t know what to make of it. At dinner they had asked him, as diplomatically as they could, why he changed so dramatically. He couldn’t tell them he thought it was due to the Clarity pills he was taking, which gave him not only a feeling of wonderful serenity but enabled him to get a clear picture of the steps he needed to take to make his life successful. News of the drug had spread quickly through his school. Many of his peers were becoming users. He answered, “I think I’m just seeing things more clearly. Chalk it up to maturity.” For the first time in many years, his mother laughed and said, “Well, it’s about time.”

  In times past, this type of remark would have been interpreted as a rebuff and resulted in a tantrum or something far worse. This time, however, Eckstein smiled and said, “So true.” And then he said, “Look, I need to say something.” His parents braced themselves. “I know I am an alcoholic. That’s an inherent condition, and I acknowledge it every day. That’s ok. I just want to say how sorry I am for being such a disappointment to you.”

  He seemed so serene and calm that his parents thought that perhaps he was on some form of tranquilizer, but when pressed on the issue he responded that he had been meditating daily. That seemed a plausible explanation, and he had no physical symptoms of being on a drug. His satisfied and grateful parents assumed that their son was finally on the right path.

  His decline began several days after he ran out of Clarity. Eckstein’s yearning for the pills was so overwhelming that he promised to give his supplier $30,000, his entire college spending fund, if he could get Clarity. When his supplier told him, he couldn’t even get any himself, Eckstein did something he hadn’t done in years: he began crying. “What am I going to do? I need t
hose pills.”

  “Well, I have a lot of other shit. You name it. It might hold you until the fresh supply of Clarity comes in.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know for sure. The demand for it has been incredible, way beyond anything I’ve ever sold. My guess is two weeks; maybe a month.”

  Typical of most Clarity users, Eckstein resisted for two weeks, but finally driven by an uncontrollable hunger for the pills, he took his first hit of crack-cocaine. The rush of euphoria from the first hit gave him hope. When, two months later, the supply came in, Eckstein bought 200 Clarity pills, at the market-driven price of $225 per pill. Within three months he was clean, at least with respect to the crack-cocaine and resumed his “healthy lifestyle.” He even began meditation. By this time, Clarity was all the rage on campuses throughout the country.

  Several weeks after Eckstein depleted his $30,000 college fund, he phoned his parents. His mother was midstream into bragging to a few dinner guests about how well her son was doing in his new college when the phone rang. Mothers and fathers are often attuned to the slightest variation in their children’s voices and can tell whether they will receive good news or bad news. His mother knew immediately that something was wrong as soon as she heard a trembling, “Hello Mom.” His voice confirmed her concern when she asked, “How is everything?” and he replied in a cracked-whisper, “Not so good.”

  Police had arrested Eckstein while he attempted fruitlessly to break an unbreakable window at Tiffany’s in San Francisco. What made no sense was that he attempted to do this in the middle of the afternoon with a small hammer and a chisel. It was such a ridiculous exercise that his first stop was Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital. His seemingly bizarre actions were more the rule than the exception for users of Clarity after their own money ran out. Once off the drug, many lost all sense of rationality and turned to various criminal activities to support their habit.