by Robin Cook
“That’s what I was told. Isn’t there a witness to the fact?”
“We have two good witnesses,” Lou said. “And the king of all ironies is that Angelo is the one who saved you by shooting Adam before Adam shot you.”
“That part I don’t remember,” Laurie admitted. “In fact, I don’t remember anything else until gradually waking up in the hospital.”
“It’s a good thing,” Lou said. “When we got there in the middle of Upper New York Bay, they had you rigged up with what they used to call cement boots.”
“So I heard,” Laurie said with a shudder.
“That reminds me,” Jack said. “First, how did you know she was out there, and once you did, how in tarnation did you find them out there in the middle of New York Bay in the dark?”
“That’s the best part,” Lou said. “And truthfully, I don’t mind taking a little credit. The floater we picked up Monday night scared the bejesus out of us, making me worry about a Mob war breaking out, like I told you. When I found out that the word on the street was that Vinnie Dominick was behind it, I went over to Paul Cerino’s old organization to tip them off, thinking the floater might have been in cahoots with them. As it turned out, he wasn’t, but the Vaccarros were concerned enough to follow Vinnie’s principle enforcers, Angelo and Franco, and discovered Vinnie had squirreled away a sizable yacht, which they were using for nasty purposes. The next part is the cleverest. What they did was to figure out a way to get the city, meaning me, to get rid of the competition Vinnie represented. And how they did it was secretly to put a GPS tracking device on the yacht and then wait until a good opportunity arose. Louie Barbera, Paul Cerino’s replacement, called me up Thursday evening right at the point I was despairing and offered me the website and the password and user name for the GPS device. He also told me what he thought was about to happen so we wouldn’t waste time, and we didn’t. It was just lucky we got there when we did for your benefit. At the same time, the opportunity couldn’t have been any better from a law-enforcement angle. We reeled in Vinnie Dominick and all his top guys in one fell swoop, plus another guy by the name of Michael Calabrese. And best of all, we got them all for attempted first-degree murder, hardly a minor charge. Furthermore, while the crime guys have been poring over the boat, trace blood was discovered that belonged to the two floaters, whom we have identified as Paul Yang and Amy Lucas, both from New Jersey, and both worked for Angels Healthcare.”
Laurie stiffened. “Angels Healthcare that runs the Angels hospitals?”
“None other. It’s a relatively complicated story and the investigation is ongoing, involving the FBI and the SEC. Sadly, it is just another one involving huge amounts of potential money, the kind of corruption we’ve all heard a bit too much of these days, although in this case there was a generous amount of old-fashioned crime involved, like murder, as well as the newer white-collar variety. As you correctly sensed, Laurie, the MRSA was being purposefully spread, and not just for terrorist purposes. There was a method to the madness. What a group of people was trying to do was sabotage the IPO and, in a sense, the specialty-hospital concept.”
“Who was responsible?” Laurie asked.
“Ultimately, the people behind it are lobbyists, mostly former lawyer-politicians who had morphed into becoming lobbyists after either retiring or being voted out of office. Of the particular organization we are speaking of, they had landed the perfect clients: the AHA and the FAH. What they had been hired to do was to make absolutely sure that the Senate moratorium on building specialty hospitals and registering them with CMS, or Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, be changed into law. But they didn’t do it. Somehow, they dropped the ball. Wanting to keep the AHA and the FAH as clients, they shouldered the responsibility to make absolutely certain the first IPO after the moratorium was lifted would not be successful. Hence, they conjured up the MRSA initiative, as I’ve been calling it. Their thinking was that it would be viewed as a natural phenomenon, and that investors would be driven away by the cash crunch the post-op infections would cause.”
“So it was they who recruited Walter Osgood. Was he just a pawn in this affair?”
“I’m afraid so. We know that he wasn’t extorted but did it on his own free will. He had both the background to pull it off and some very specific needs that motivated him. As I think you know, he trained in microbiology, so it wasn’t difficult for him to requisition the MRSA from the CDC and the amoeba from National Culture. He had a little private lab where he cooked up what turns out to be a pretty good bioterrorism agent, at least that’s what our consults have been telling us. He got the MRSA to invade the amoeba, proliferate, and then he got the amoeba to encyst. Once he got the amoeba to form cysts, which is apparently easy, he could dry the cysts to form an airborne infectious agent. Perhaps the cleverest part, he could use the cysts to flood an OR at the moment when patients with anesthesia with endotracheal tubes are about to be awakened. Timing was critical, and it didn’t work a hundred percent of the time, but as Osgood became more and more familiar with particular surgeons and the lengths of particular procedures, he got better and better.”
“Sounds like you have all these terms and concepts down pat,” Laurie said.
“On a case like this, I needed to be prepared for the sake of the prosecutors. All the arraignments were this morning.”
“What were Walter Osgood’s needs you mentioned?”
“He had a son who came down with a very severe form of some sort of cancer. The only treatment was deemed experimental, and the Angels Healthcare employees’ health insurance company would not pay. Walter had been paying on his own. The involved pharmaceutical company had been charging him twenty thousand a month. Can you believe it?”
“You certainly have learned a lot in a few days.”
“It’s a hot case, as you can well imagine. I’m lucky the FBI got into it big-time. They have been carrying the ball. The lobbyist organization is in Washington, D.C., as you might imagine.”
“So, in a very real way, Angels Healthcare has been subverted for the last number of months.”
“That’s a good way to describe it. But they have not been lily-white by any stretch of the imagination.”
“I should say!” Laurie agreed. “Even if they didn’t know the MRSA was being deliberately spread, they kept on doing surgery, even though people kept dying.”
“They are guilty of a little more than that in these days of Sarbanes-Oxley. This part of the case is being handled by the SEC investigators. Once Angels Healthcare got into financial difficulty with their cash flow, they were required by law to have conveyed the information to the SEC so investors could protect themselves, especially if there was an imminent IPO. And this isn’t the kind of thing you get slapped on the wrist for and told you are bad. Nowadays, this kind of oversight means big fines and stiff prison sentences. The government is intent on making examples of these white-collar criminals, because it is the little guy who is always hurt.”
“We’ve all heard of some notorious cases over the last couple of years,” Laurie said.
“That’s an understatement,” Lou said. “I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that all the Angels Healthcare principals will be able to spend some time with those more famous brethren. The CEO, CFO, and COO have all been arrested and arraigned. Two posted very high bail, but the third couldn’t.”
“What if they didn’t know they were supposed to file when their cash flow fell?”
“Ignorance of the law is not an excuse,” Lou said. “At the same time, they knew. Except for the CEO, they are experienced businesspeople, and the CEO had recently been through business school. They all knew what they should have done. In fact, the reason Paul Yang and his secretary, Amy Lucas, were killed, as near as we can tell, is because Paul wanted to file the necessary paperwork and the others put pressure on him not to do it. That’s serious business.”
“Have the Angels Healthcare executives also been charged with murder?” Laurie ask
ed with shock.
“No. We were able to learn through Freddie Capuso, who has copped a plea, that the two killings and your being put in jeopardy was from the civilian guy on the boat, Michael Calabrese.”
“I remember your mentioning him. What was his role?”
“He used to be married to the CEO, Angela Dawson, and even had a child with her. In the past, he was an investment banker with Morgan Stanley but left because of the opportunity to invest all the racketeering and drug money Vinnie Dominick controlled. He was, in essence, a professional money launderer. On top of that, he’s going to be tried for murder.”
“God, what a mess,” Laurie said.
“In a very real way, we owe you for breaking the case or, more accurately, breaking the cases. If it hadn’t been for you, all these people would be still carrying on.”
“I don’t think I deserve the credit,” Laurie said. “I’m afraid my motivations were to get Jack to postpone his surgery, so the rest is fallout.”
Lou smiled. He didn’t agree but wasn’t going to argue.
“What has Walter Osgood been charged with?” Laurie asked.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Walter Osgood committed suicide yesterday.”
“Good grief,” Laurie said.
“His son, whom he’d been trying to raise the money for, died on Saturday. Osgood had a lot of reasons to be depressed.”
“It’s a multilayered tragedy for everyone involved.”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” Jack said, speaking up for the first time. “It’s equivalent to the adage in politics that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The difference is that with medicine it’s money, not power.”
CHET McGOVERN PRESSED his nose against the bus’s window and looked across the East River at LaGuardia Airport. He was close enough to see individual windows on the jetliners as they waited to take off. He was close, but in another way he was far because Chet was on a New York City bus heading across a long two-lane bridge that not only had he never seen but he never knew even existed. Having lived in the city for fifteen years, he thought he was familiar with it, but here he was on a bridge every bit as long as the mighty George Washington, and it was his first contact, and he hoped his last. The bridge led from the borough of Queens to Rikers Island, the largest penal institution in the world. As a metaphor for incarceration, Rikers Island was a long way from its neighbor, LaGuardia Airport, which, like any airport, was a contrasting icon for freedom.
Chet’s morning had started early in the courthouse. Although he had had significant experience testifying during many trials involving all manner of death, he’d had little other contact with the courts, and that morning, he’d had to face a steep learning curve. Over the Easter weekend, he’d fretted over the news that had been in the Times concerning Angels Healthcare and its CEO and founder, Angela Dawson. She, her chief financial officer, and her chief operating officer had been arrested for an astounding array of charges, including various conspiracies, a number of different categories of fraud, money laundering, violations of the Patriot Act, and violation of Sarbanes-Oxley. An even more serious charge of accessory to depraved-heart murder had been quickly dropped.
Chet had first been angry. Here was a woman who’d impressed and charmed him into going to frivolous lengths to spend a little time with her and to get to know her, not to mention the money he’d spent on her, and now, after all the effort, he learns from a newspaper that she’s a criminal. For him, it had been yet another reminder that women, like his old college girlfriend, cannot be trusted, and keeping them at arm’s length represented an act of self-preservation.
Yet by late Easter Sunday, Chet’s initial response had mellowed enough for him to question the charges, since they hardly fit the mental and emotional image he’d begun to construct of Angela Dawson. He also reminded himself of a basic tenet of American jurisprudence: namely, that people are innocent until proven guilty. It was at that point that another fact had begun to bother him: All three individuals had been offered bail, but only two had posted it. Angela Dawson had not done so, and the reason given was that she’d consumed all her equity in trying to prop up her floundering company.
From there on it had been downhill, as far as Chet’s sense of well-being was concerned. He’d been unable to get two images out of his mind. One was Angela chained to a bare stone wall in a damp, dungeonlike cell with rats and cockroaches running around. The second was a ten-year-old daughter crying incessantly. By Monday, Chet had made a decision, which he assumed was irrational and surely had more to do with his own needs than with chivalry. And by that morning, Tuesday, he’d started the process by calling a bail bondsman and arranging for a quick meeting.
It had been at that point that Chet’s learning curve about criminal law had had to begin. He’d always had a rather simplified view of posting bail. A person brought the money, handed it over, and that was it. But, particularly in high-profile cases, such as Angela’s, especially when the bail amount was high, as it was, there was a bit more involved. In fact, it took all morning for Chet and the bail bondsman to arrange for a court surety hearing to make sure Chet’s twenty-five thousand cash and his collateral for the other two hundred thousand were coming from legitimate sources and not drug money or something similar. Forced to wait even over a court adjournment for lunch, Chet had not gotten the final determination that the bail had been met until one-thirty. It was for that reason that it was now almost three as he was at last approaching Rikers Island.
Chet looked around the bus’s interior. The other riders were mostly female and appeared to reside mostly on the south side of the poverty line. Although it was abundantly clear that rich people were as capable as anyone else of committing crime, the lion’s share of the burden of paying for it fell on the poor.
After what seemed like an exceptionally long drive, the bus drove onto Rikers Island proper and presently came to a stop at the Rikers Island Visitors Center. As Chet climbed down from the bus, he got the immediate impression the complex was generally dirty and run-down. It was not a happy place.
Unsure of where to go, Chet followed the crowd into the scarred and scuffed building. The atmosphere was repressive. As the others who’d come on the bus with Chet filed off to their respective destinations, Chet stopped. He didn’t know where to go. He’d not realized how large the place was. Spotting an official-appearing person, Chet started in his direction for advice, but he didn’t need it. He saw Angela sitting among a crowd who plainly had more in common with one another than with her.
Angela had been staring ahead blankly until she caught sight of Chet. Her first reaction was confusion, as if she recognized him but couldn’t quite remember who he was. Chet walked directly up to her and looked down into her eyes, which suddenly reflected recognition. She stood up with confusion.
“Chet,” she said, as much a question as a statement.
“What a coincidence meeting you here,” Chet said spontaneously. He’d not planned on what he should say.
Angela laughed uneasily. “I had no idea it would be you. Suddenly, I was told my bail had been posted and that I was to be picked up. I thought maybe by my CFO or my COO, but never you.”
“I hope I’m not a disappointment.”
“Hardly,” Angela said. She reached out and gave him a hug, pinning his arms to his sides. For a moment, she wouldn’t let go. When she did, he saw her eyes had become significantly wetter. “Thank you, and my daughter thanks you. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Thanks is fine,” Chet said. “And you’re welcome.” Then he hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Maybe we should try to catch the bus I came out here on. Otherwise, I don’t know how long we will have to wait.”
“Let’s for sure!” Angela said eagerly. She wanted to put as much distance between herself and Rikers Island as possible, and as quickly as possible. She picked up her small bag. Together, they headed for the exit. Both were
self-conscious. They didn’t touch.
“Why did you do it?” Angela asked when they got outside.
“To be honest, I don’t know.”
Angela stopped for a moment and glanced around. “When you are locked up, you realize how much you take freedom for granted. This has been the worst experience of my life.”
“I think we better hurry,” Chet said. The bus was still standing where Chet had gotten off, but the line to board was down to three people.
Chet and Angela ran and climbed on. The first empty double seat was close to the very rear.
“I guess I posted your bail because I don’t think you could have done the things you are charged with.”
“I’m sorry to disabuse you of that belief,” Angela said, turning to Chet. “I did do some of them, but hardly as charged. I have had a number of miserable hours thinking about everything. The main thing is that I knowingly did not file an eight-K. It’s a required SEC form. But do you know something? There was never a precise moment when it should have been filed. I mean, at first there was no cash-flow problem. It happened over time, and we thought the MRSA would be easily handled. We never suspected it was being deliberately spread.”
“I spoke to a lawyer friend of mine,” Chet said. “He told me in cases like this, the judge has a lot of discretion.”
“I hope so,” Angela said. “My biggest worry right now is the threat of losing my medical license, which is a very real possibility. For me, that will be the worst punishment, because I’ve finally seen the light. As a businesswoman, I don’t like the person I’ve become. It’s like I’ve had blinders on. I’ve come to realize that money is a seductive but illusionary goal, and it’s addictive. The problem is one’s never satisfied, and no matter how much money is made, it can’t shake a stick at how I remember feeling after helping an office full of patients. What I’m saying is I want to go back to medicine.”
