Part 3 (1/2)

Nothing seemed to bother Doc He put his hands behind his head and lay back on his cot Flowers gave hi stare, tapped his clipboard, and walked away

”What was that all about?” I asked

Doc shrugged and picked up a ht and day, he spent every spare moment with his medical publications

”Where were you born?” I asked

”Russia,” Doc said

Doc's Russian heritage, in a roundabout way, had led to his iual physician, Victor Doovernlish In an obscure paper, Doc found a detailed account of a chemical used by the Russian arainst enemies; it was used on the arested, kept Russian soldiers war winter months It increased the soldiers' body terees They could bear the bitter cold while the enemy froze to death or retreated

A tiny footnote, buried aht Doht have overlooked The che the body te elevated the basal ht loss

Doc held bothdevelopment, for which he had earned a nuot what he'd read about in the Russian archives Two decades later, in the mid-1980s, Doc opened dozens of clinics that specialized in weight loss He treated obesity with a ”heat pill” Its priredient was the formula used by the Russians The advertisements promised that patients would lose up to fifteen pounds per ith no exercise

”Fat wo ell for Doc until his financial adviser, the overnathering evidence for the federal investigators He exposed Doc's offshore accounts He even recorded Doc talking about how best to evade taxes

”The fucking rat told the bastards where every penny was stashed”

”So you're here for tax evasion?”

”Not exactly,” Doc said ”The FDA got involved”

It turned out that DNP, the pri in 1938, though it was still used as a weed killer Prescribed in the 1920s as a weight loss drug, DNP had caused skin rashes, cataracts, and otherloss of the sense of sht loss had taken large doses and literally cooked to death from the inside out DNP's side effects were the catalyst for the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938

Doc insisted there were no permanent side effects to his heat pill because he supplemented the DNP with hormones In the doses he had prescribed, a patient's body terees ”Soer patients perspired a lot,” he said ”A small price to pay”

With DNP outlawed and with Doc's clinic serving Medicaid patients, prosecutors tacked on Medicaid fraud charges

”How much Medicaid fraud?” I asked

Doc said that depended on who you listened to Doc's lawyers argued that 40,000 ht have been fraudulent The US attorney's conservative estied between 15 million and 37 et?”

”Fifteen years,” Doc said, calet a trial of my peers” Doc insisted a jury of physicians would have understood that his heat pill wasn't a drug violation; it was part of a total treatational New Drug exception could really get a trial of my peers” Doc insisted a jury of physicians would have understood that his heat pill wasn't a drug violation; it was part of a total treatational New Drug exception

The US attorney threatened to prosecute Doc's children, ere peripherally involved in the business Doc agreed to a plea deal He expected a five-year sentence When Doc appealed the judge's fifteen-year sentence, the U S attorney described in dramatic fashi+on how Do weed killer to desperate, obese women and harbored the profits in the Cayman Islands

Doc lost the appeal and was stuck with the sentence But he was deter he could abouteverythe launch of his irandfather Harry, who tried to teach uard who had caughtthe inmate cafeteria My instructions were to move all the tables and chairs, nearly three hundred, to one side of the room, mop the empty side, and then move all the chairs and tables to the opposite side to complete the job

The cafeteria floor was checkered linoleurid with the o outside the lines Then I covered the interior squares with soapy water To divide the floor into seable quadrants, was satisfying I have a , obsession with symmetry Once a square was evenly covered and cleaned, I could admire a job well done, then move on to the next

The repetitiveThe job required no y, and my mind wandered

My pay for this as fourteen cents an hour The randfather Harry's attempt to teach an a Saturdayroutine As ould drive to don Gulfport, Mississippi, he would reet I could spend exactly one dollar on a toy

”What if I find so I really want?” I would ask ”And it's a little bit randfather said I would need to save the dollar froet next week, he explained gently, hoping the lesson would sink in

We would park in front of the old gray post office Men and women darted in and out of the departrandfather would introduce me to his friends as we passed on the sidewalk or met in the aisle of a store When my search for a one-dollar toy ended, ould find a seat at a drugstore counter and order a malted milk shake or french fries Our last stop every Saturday was always the sarandfather would take me to Hancock Bank It here everyone in our family banked

We would wait in line on the black-and-white marble floor with the other custorandfather would prop me up on his knee and introduce me to the teller, as if he knew this bank and its employees would play a vital role in my future Then he would say, ”We need to check on our money” The teller would walk away to check the balance in s account Upon her return, she would present us with a handwritten balance I would look at the figure and read it aloud to ht, would nod and srandfather wasn't alive to see me in prison I would be ashaet beaten down by incarceration I wanted to hold on to, even hone,business when I was released With a felony conviction, Ihired, but there was no law that prohibited felons fro his future, and I would do the sanprospectus I would use this time to plan my financial resurrection If I could repay ive them a return on their money-it would feel like the money had been invested instead of lost And I could be back on top

In the middle of my fifth square, as I neared the five hundred uard walked into the cafeteria

The guard yelled out, ”Too slow! You're too slow, inot nothin' couards told all the inot nothin' coured anyone orked as a prison guard didn't haveeither, so it really didn't botherhim to call me by my name I also wanted to ask why he never woke Jefferson and the prisoners from their sluht about ative journalism in Oxford, Mississippi At twenty-four, I had launched an alternative newspaper to take on the sarnered lots of accolades, I offended a number of politicians and powerful businesspeople But I did have one very important champion: Willie Morris

The former editor of Harper's Harper's and author of and author of North Toward Home North Toward Home, Willie was the writer-in-residence at The University of Mississippi He took great interest incareer as a newspaper editor and publisher Not so much because he was ie crush on my mother, who had recently moved to town fresh from her third divorce

Willie would call our newspaper offices late at night, inebriated, after the bars had closed and the stores had stopped selling beer ”Mister Editor,” he would slur ”For a mere six-pack of chilled beer, I will pen a piece for your fine paper on the ten greatest dogs I have ever known”

I would stop working on the newspaper and take a six-pack to Willie's houests partook of the beer while Willie sat at his dining room table and wrote out his piece with a black felt-tipped pen on white legal paper Sometimes, to avoid interruptions, he would put the telephone inside his oven When he finished, Willie would stu ive hi story and another piece on the greatest Ole Miss football players of all tireeted iti the first side of the rooed the tables and chairs fro his famous writer friends to Oxford He seemed more than happy to introduce the Alex Haley, Williae Plimpton all visited Willie He kneas a Plimpton fan Not so much for his literature, but for his participatory journalis an undercover journalist, secretly docu hidden worlds Willie arranged for me to meet Plimpton, to interview hi was personal I wanted to know everything he knew about i, and io undercover, to write about things no one has any business knowing

I asked Plimpton about his thirty-yard loss in a preseason professional football game when he posed as a quarterback with the Detroit Lions And about his short stint in professional boxing And, of course, about his astounding April Fool's hoax in Sports Illustrated Sports Illustrated when he convinced the azine's readers, and ue pitcher who had studied ancient Eastern techniques would change the game forever because he had learned to throw a baseball over 120 azine's readers, and ue pitcher who had studied ancient Eastern techniques would change the game forever because he had learned to throw a baseball over 120 miles per hour

Now, as I mopped the cafeteria floor, a hundred checkered blocks at a tiined what Plimpton would do in my place And it was obvious He would write about it

With mop in hand, I decided I would not be a federal convict I would simply pretend pretend to be an inmate I would record the stories of the leprosy patients, the convicts, the actions of the guards, and the overn inmates and lepers And if one of us came doith the disease, I would have the documentation for an expose to be an inmate I would record the stories of the leprosy patients, the convicts, the actions of the guards, and the overn inmates and lepers And if one of us came doith the disease, I would have the docureat plan This was precisely what I needed to do As a participatory reporter, I could earn respect When the guards called me ”inmate,” it wouldn't matter-it would beto and befriending other in any leprosy patient ould talk to ined azine piece I had written aboutovation, I would reach the podiu the audience with e and corit and heroisazine features, newspaper reports, and radio interviews And, ultimately, perhaps a television special

I put away htful spot, and ader wanted to be transferred Obviously, I was here for a reason I was in a ree Plimpton, even This was the perfect plan And I knew the perfect place to start