Victor Conte strolls across the lobby, hand extended, eyes squinting from below a hairline deep into its winter of discontent and above a mustache borrowed from Howard Hughes. He wears a sleek sport coat and a Cheshire grin that only Harold Hill's mother could love. He comes bearing gifts -- a bright yellow bag stuffed with bright blue shirts emblazoned with the bright white suspension bridge logo of the now-defunct Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. BALCO, for short. An acronym as infamous as KGB, IRS and DDT, a name synonymous with the biggest steroid scandal in the history of sports, give or take a couple dozen East German female swimmers sporting curiously copious cheek stubble and testosterone levels to shame a saber-toothed tiger.

Read "The Ringmaster Rolls On" by Patrick Hruby.