“Then,” he said, “because you had your license suspended, the managed-care companies dropped you from their provider panels.”
“Exactly. It was a cookie-cutter response by the board and by them, without so much as an investigation or a hearing. So even though the board eventually reinstated my license, most of the companies held to their decision. Once worth suspending, always worth suspending. There was no way I could practice—at least no way I could practice and get paid for it. Well, no matter now. I make ten times more doing this than I ever did being an internist—and work a fraction of the hours. Too bad, though, because I actually liked doing it, and I was pretty damn good at it, too.”
“I’ll bet you were, Augie,” Will said. “Listen, I’m sorry for all you’ve been through. I really am. But I hope you can take some pride in the way you’ve managed to deal with all that’s happened without going down for the count. I don’t think I could have handled something happening to one of my kids that bravely even if I didn’t believe I was responsible.”
Without a word, Micelli made his way to the sideboard and poured a third drink, this one more substantial than the other two.
“So,” he said, taking a gulp, then clumsily wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, “it’s your turn now. Assume I know everything about you that the newspapers and TV can tell me.”
Clearly, Augie Micelli was now under the influence, although not strikingly so. Will debated if there was any percentage in staying. Even if he decided to leave and renew his attempts to connect with a lawyer who fit his requirements of being talented, empathetic, and reasonably affordable, he knew that the trip into Boston had been worth it. Whether he and Augie ever saw each other again or not, he still owed Susan thanks. According to the story Augie had shared, the man was hardly as responsible for his son’s tragic death as he seemed to want to believe. Still, the boy was dead.
Will’s external world was crumbling, that was all too true, but Dan and Jess were healthy, wonderful kids. And even if he hit rock bottom and lost everything else, he would still be their father and they his children. Even if the only purchase he had on the sheer wall up from this nightmare was them, he would still have a firm hold from which he could start the climb. His heart ached for Augie and the terrible emptiness he had to deal with each day, but it no longer ached for himself.
“You know what,” he said finally, “if you know that much about me and my situation, then you really are already in a position to know whether or not you can be of any help to me.”
“I can tell you right now that I can’t. This just isn’t the sort of thing I do.”
“I can see that. Listen, here are copies of some letters I brought for you to review. I’ll leave them with you anyway, just in case you can think of someone who might want to work with me. One of the letters is from a law firm that is representing my former patient. Because of a clause in my group’s malpractice policy, I don’t have any coverage for what’s happened. Fortunately, even though they’ll get everything I have if I’m found at fault, it won’t be much. All the information you need to reach me is on that sheet I filled out.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be of any help to you,” Micelli said.
“I’m sorry about your son,” Will replied.
For twenty minutes after the door closed, Augie Micelli sat, staring unseeing out the window, feet on his desk, rising once only to replenish the scotch and ice in his glass. Losing Ryan would always be the worst thing that had ever happened to him—far beyond the subsequent financial losses and breakup of his marriage. But this was the first time he could remember speaking with anyone about the pain of losing his practice. Unlike what he was doing now, practicing medicine had never been about the money.
He opened his desk drawer and set a silver-framed photo from it on his desk—one of Ryan smiling down from the limb of a massive, ancient oak.
He drained his glass. Drinking like this had been really stupid. He had made a deal with himself not to do it around clients anymore, and now he had broken that agreement. He swallowed what remained in his glass.
What in the hell difference does it make? In fact, what difference does anything make? Guilty or not, Will Grant has gotten himself into this mess. He can damn well get himself out. If he needs to, he can just go to law school or become a grocer or do landscaping or . . . or . . .
Micelli stood suddenly and hurled his tumbler into the fireplace. The shattering glass had Gladys in his office in seconds.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, fine. Sorry about the glass. I’ll clean it up myself. Meanwhile, could you please get me Gil Murray in the Middlesex County DA’s office? Tell him it’s about the Will Grant case.”
CHAPTER 15
“I miss you, Daddy.”
“I miss you, too, sport. We’ll see each other next week. Meanwhile, just keep oiling that new glove and then, with the ball in the pocket, tie it up like I showed you with one of those heavy rubber bands we bought.”
“O-okay.”
“Danny, it’s okay to cry if you want to, but please know that I’m all right and everything’s going to be fine. It’s just going to take a little time. The things that have been said and written about me aren’t true, and before long everyone will know that. Okay?”
“Okay. Sean’s mother won’t let him come over here to play anymore.”
“I’m so sorry. That must make you very sad.”
“Only a little. Sean’s a jerk most of the time, and he wasn’t my best friend anyway.”
“Just the same, it’s got to be hard for you.”
“We know you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“And that’s all that matters to me. Now, I’ll see you both next week, and before too long everything will be back to normal. Got that?”
“Got it.”
“You’re a brick.”
“You’re a wall.”
“You’re iron.”
“You’re steel.”
“Your . . . nose is running.”
“Da-ad.”
Will said good-bye and set the receiver down slowly.
“You bastards,” he muttered, at once sickened and furious at the pain that the twins were experiencing. “You fucking bastards.”
Augie Micelli’s story had been a heavy dose of perspective for him, but the reality of his situation was still overwhelming and, it seemed at the moment, virtually hopeless. Whoever had set out to destroy him had done a masterful job. He was a rag doll, hung out to dry and swinging helplessly in the breeze. Even worse, aside from a few friends like Benois Beane, he was alone in the certainty of his innocence. There was no grass-roots crusade mounting, no letter-writing campaign, no pass-it-on e-mails. Even his partners and a number of his friends seemed to have stepped back and taken a wait-and-see position.
You can only do what you can do, he reminded himself for the thousandth time. You can only do what you can do.
He was sifting aimlessly through the mound of mail on the coffee table when the phone began ringing. The caller ID read simply ERROR. Will hesitated. Then, both curious and prepared to hang up, he picked up the handset.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Will Grant,” the electronically distorted voice said. “Your life has certainly been quite eventful since we last spoke.”
Will wondered if Patty was on top of this. She hadn’t given him any instructions in terms of whether or not he needed to keep the killer on the line for any specific length of time, like the cops in the movies always tried to do. In fact, she hadn’t even told him whether the tap on his line was done at his phone, at the line outside, or at the phone company. Stay calm but sound upset, he told himself. Calm but upset.
“I don’t want you to call me anymore,” he pleaded. “Give yourself up and I’ll see to it you get the best therapist around. You’re sick. You need help.”
“I need help? Goodness, but those are strong words from a man who has done what the papers and TV say you’ve done. F
ace-first into a patient’s incision. That sort of publicity isn’t good for our cause, Dr. Grant. Not good at all. We have no place in this crusade for drug addicts.”
“I’m not one of you, and I’m not a drug addict.”
“Oh, but you are. These managed-care companies are your enemy just as they are ours. I read where you are claiming to have been set up.”
“I was.”
“Well, if not one of the managed-care companies you exposed at Faneuil Hall, then who? Was it Halliday? Because if it was, he could and should be moved up the list, say to tonight.”
“Stop it! Please, you’ve got to stop this insanity!”
“Funny, that’s precisely what we begged our mother’s so-called caregivers. You’ve got to stop her insanity, we told them.”
A mental-health patient! This is all about a mental-health patient. Will flashed on the many instances he had encountered over the years of managed-care companies refusing detox or even counseling for alcoholics and cutting short hospitalizations for psychiatric cases, even though there was concern that the patient was or might be suicidal. Of all the patients the industry had shortchanged since its rise to power, those with mental illness headed the list.
“Did your mother kill herself?” he asked. “Is that what’s behind all this?”
“When you have proven yourself reliable, Dr. Grant, we will increase your level of responsibility and knowledge. In the meantime, if you have any information as to who might have set you up, or you need to contact us for any reason, any reason at all, simply place a personal ad in the Herald containing the phrase In war there are casualties. We will contact you. Meanwhile, I suggest that you stay safely indoors tonight. The piper’s on the loose and he must be paid. Good day, Dr. Grant.”
“Wait! . . .”
The tension had become almost unbearable around the state police in general and among the Middlesex detectives in particular. It had been over a week since the managed-care killer had been heard from—a week that coincided with Will Grant’s bizarre drug overdose in the OR. Spurred on by what he and Jack Court considered Patty’s reckless and potentially disastrous solo visit to the apartment of their only suspect, Brasco was keeping the pressure on her with a constant barrage of callous remarks and a string of time-consuming ticky-tack assignments related to their case, the latest of which was reinterviewing the security people in the Fredrickston Medical Arts Building. Meanwhile, there had been no letup in the day-to-day business of robberies, assaults, drug deals, and various other demonstrations of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man and to society. The result, from the CO down to the rawest rookie, was stress.
The afternoon was heavily overcast and more humid than any early spring day had the right to be. It was ten after three when Patty swung the Camaro into her spot and made her way through the sparsely patronized mall to her office. There was yet another meeting scheduled with Court to review the lack of progress on their biggest, most visible case. In order to appease Brasco, Patty had not only interviewed those security people on duty the night before and the day of the killer’s intrusion into Will’s office, but she had tracked down all the personnel who had covered the company for the past month. Not surprisingly, she had come away with nothing except the hassling she was about to get for being late to Court’s meeting.
She punched in her code on the security pad, waved to veteran Brian Tomasetti, who was building a pyramid of magnetic balls on the top of a Dunkin’ Donuts carton, and hurried past Brasco’s empty cubicle. She paused at the door to her own space long enough to toss her jacket onto the back of her chair, and was just about to race off when she saw the light flashing on her voice mail. Even before she keyed in her password, she knew it was trouble. Three messages. The first was prefaced by Gil Kinchley at the phone company—the man who had turned the court order she had obtained into a wiretap.
“Well, Sergeant Moriarity,” he said, “I think this is what you’ve been waiting for.”
Barely breathing, she sank into her chair, the receiver pressed against her ear, and listened to the eerie exchange between Will and the killer.
“It’s Gil again,” the second message said. “Our people say he—if it even is a he—was probably using a call diverter, more likely two. It’s like call forwarding, only it doesn’t go through us. The technology is readily available in any spy store. The equipment is well made, very effective, and makes a call almost impossible to trace. Ring me if you need anything. We’ll keep on this.”
The third message was from Will.
“Patty, it’s Will. I hope you got that. Call and let me know what you think and what I’m supposed to do. I tried keeping him on the phone as long as I could.”
Wayne Brasco appeared at the doorway, startling her.
“Sergeant, are you going to join the rest of us at the meeting you’re already late for, or are you going to exercise a woman’s prerogative to talk on the phone no matter what?”
“I think you’d better bring Lieutenant Court in here,” she said, ignoring the remark.
“Tell me again,” Court said after he, Patty, and three other detectives had listened to the message on speaker for the second time. “When did the call come in?”
Patty knew this was coming. She also knew she deserved it.
“Two hours ago.”
“But you just picked the message up now?”
“I had meant to forward it to my cell phone, but I was racing around so much I forgot.”
Ask that gorilla next to you why I was racing around so much.
“So we’ve lost two hours.”
We wouldn’t have had this tap at all if I hadn’t gone out and gotten it! she wanted to scream.
“There’s still time,” she said.
“To do what?” This time it was Brasco.
“He’s going to kill tonight.”
“A brilliant deduction, Mrs. Holmes.”
Patty stood and glared at Brasco.
“Back to my office, everyone!” Court snapped, intercepting any escalation in the hostilities. He waited until the others had gone past him, then stepped in front of Patty. “Moriarity, we’re having enough trouble without losing two hours like this,” he said.
“I understand. I’ll be more careful from now on.”
“And another thing.”
“Yes?”
“What’s going on with this guy Grant that he’s calling you Patty?”
“I . . . um . . . I don’t know.”
She had never been much of a liar, and it was clear from her CO’s expression that he wasn’t buying her denial.
“You just be careful,” he said. “Be damn careful.”
Without waiting for a response, Court turned and headed back to his office. Patty snatched her briefcase from the floor and followed.
“All right,” Court said when the team had settled back in his office, “thoughts?”
“I still think Grant’s dirty in this,” Brasco said. “I think he’s playing us like a violin. His big screwup was overdosing on that drug. Now it’s damage control for him—using someone from that damn Society of his to make it seem like he isn’t involved in these killings.”
“Patty?”
“I think the call strongly suggests Grant is innocent, but at the moment that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the call also implies someone is going to get killed tonight.”
“So?”
Patty withdrew a manila file folder from her briefcase and opened it.
“Well, believe it or not, there are ninety-seven managed-care or health-insurance companies of one kind or another headquartered in Massachusetts alone—HMOs, PPOs, MCOs—alphabet soup. Most of them are within thirty miles of Boston. There are another twelve in New Hampshire and a few more in Vermont and Maine. If we limit ourselves to this state and eliminate the three companies where someone’s already been killed—and I’m not at all sure we should do that—we have ninety-four companies to contact and warn. I have a list of them here with phone
numbers and a contact person, usually the membership or PR coordinator.”
There was silence while the group waited for a reaction from Court. Patty sensed that the last thing he wanted to do was to find any merit in her suggestion, but she also knew contacting the CEOs of the companies was the thing to do.
Finally, Court inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.
“Okay, we have enough people here to make these calls over the next hour or two. Might as well include the companies that have already had someone murdered. What do we tell them—just for all their executives to be careful?”
“Don’t go walking around alone,” Patty said. “Bring a guard along when they walk to their car. Keep their personal cars out in the open, not in their garage where someone can work an explosive into place without being seen.”
“Is it worth notifying the TV and radio stations?”
“I don’t know. The killer must suspect that Will Grant’s phone is tapped, otherwise he wouldn’t take the sort of precautions he has. But if we go public, we remove any doubt. I hate to put the guy in harm’s way.”
“I say go with it,” Brasco blustered. “Grant’s a damn drug addict. Almost killed his patient. The execs who have been murdered were all upstanding citizens. They all were big into charitable causes.”
“So is Will Grant,” Patty snapped. “He started the Open Hearth soup kitchen in Fredrickston when he was a medical student, and he still volunteers there.”
“That doesn’t change anything, and neither does your grandstanding here. You just conveniently neglected to mention that list you’re holding is one I told you to put together.”
“You know, Brasco, I’ve just about had it with you, you sexist—”
“Enough!” Jack Court slammed his fist on his desk. “Moriarity, divide up those phone numbers. I’m warning you, you and Wayne better find a way to work together on this thing, or one of you is going to go. And I’m warning you about something else, too. Keep your personal life separate from your work.”
The Society Page 16
