AMERICAN PAIN Read Online Free PDF

already thought he was crazy. Better, he thought, to leave a little mystery.
    Derik never really explained to anybody what he thought about his father. He knew that a beast had lived inside Robert Nolan. But most of the rest of the time, he hadn’t been a bad father. Derik had a temper, could kind of understand how someone could do what his father had done, snap under the pressure of family and work, especially if you saw your wife with another man. He didn’t hate his dad. What good would that do? Instead, Derik directed his hate toward the cops and prosecutors who tried to put his father away.
    Derik grew up, but he didn’t plan for the future. He was easily influenced by friends. He liked swords and slingshots and fistfights and blowing things up. People sometimes told Derik he was basically a 6'1" child, even at thirty years old. Derik didn’t mind because he knew it was true, and because he felt like acting like a kid was something everybody should try—it was fun. Still, he was smart enough, and he worked hard. He made good money as a plumber and used it to start building houses. He believed he’d found his one gift: running a business day-to-day. And then Chris George came along, and gave him a shot at the pain management racket.

    When his cell phone lit up with Chris George’s phone number, Derik was crossing the Royal Park Bridge on his way home from a window job on Palm Beach. It was March 2008, a couple weeks after Derik had completed the renovation of Chris’s pain clinic. Even as recession loomed, the Florida dream was everywhere around him, a cluster of sparkling white boats bobbing on the intracoastal marina to his left, coral-and-white office towers and condos of downtown West Palm standing tall straight ahead.
    Derik answered the call.
    Chris needed a favor. South Florida Pain had opened the previous week and was already pulling in decent traffic, fifteen to twenty patients a day. But Chris’s father needed him to go to the west coast for the day on Majestic Homes business. So Chris asked if Derik could keep an eye on the pain clinic while Chris was gone, make sure Dianna was safe. Because, Chris said, everyone in the place was a fucking junkie.
    Chris didn’t want to leave Dianna alone with those people, all the cash and pills lying around. He said Dianna would be happy to drive Derik to the clinic, since he still had no license. Two hundred bucks for the day. Easy money.
    Derik pondered Chris’s offer. He’d thought he was done with South Florida Pain when he’d finished the renovation. Derik was on probation, couldn’t afford to get in trouble. And this sounded sketchy. He wasn’t even supposed to leave Palm Beach County, and South Florida Pain was in Broward. Besides, Derik was a construction superintendent, not a security guard.
    But no one had ever accused Derik of being prudent, a good decision maker. He had a hard time saying no to friends, especially Chris. When they were renovating the clinic building, Chris had explained to him how the place would work, and Derik was curious to see it in action.
    So Derik told Chris he’d do it, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea.
    In fact, what Derik said was this: Man, you’re gonna get me locked up again.

    So Derik hung out at the clinic the next day, twiddling his thumbs, helping out when he could. There wasn’t much need for muscle. The patients got what they came for and went away happy. The place felt illegitimate to Derik. The exam rooms had examination tables and blood pressure cuffs and anatomical posters depicting the human spine, just enough medical stuff to be identifiable as a doctor’s office—but somehow it didn’t feel real . Derik doubted the patients ever actually lay down on the exam tables.
    It was a simple operation. Dianna greeted patients through the customer window, explaining that seeing the doctor required cash or credit card up front. No health insurance. Dr. Overstreet, the clinic’s sole physician,