Lou paused outside. Directly in front of the door was Jack's mountain bike, secured to a parking meter with a panoply of locks. Lou shook his head. Neither he nor Laurie could talk Jack out of using the damn thing. Lou smiled wryly about Jack constantly ragging on him about his smoking being dangerous for his health, since the danger of riding a bike in the city, particularly the way Jack rode, was a thousand times greater.
Inside the restaurant, the evening's festivities were in full swing. People were clustered about the bar to the point of impinging on the diners occupying the coveted front tables. Lou felt decidedly self-conscious, as he always did around such high rollers, particularly the glitterati who seemed to laugh and talk a bit louder than everybody else.
After making his way through the bar crowd, Lou was faced with the jam-packed dining room. Slowly, his eyes made the circuit, looking for a familiar face. With relief, he spied Jack and Laurie at a table in the far right-hand corner.
With as many tables and chairs packed into the room as humanly possible, it took Lou some time to worm his way over to his friends. En route he knocked one man's arm, causing him to spill his wine. When Lou turned around to apologize, he dragged the belt of his raincoat, which was over his arm, through another person's soup. Despite these travails, he eventually made it.
"Sorry I'm late," Lou said as he gave Laurie's cheek a peck and shook hands with Jack across the table. He made sure he didn't knock over their fluted glasses with his arm or his coat.
"No matter," Laurie said. She pulled a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and filled the glass in front of Lou.
Lou tried to drape his coat over the curved back of his chair, but his antics quickly brought an attentive waiter, who took the coat. Lou sat down and used his napkin to blot the line of perspiration that had appeared along his hairline. To him, it felt as though it was 90° inside the restaurant. He quickly undid the top button on his shirt, loosened his tie, and then fanned himself. "Next time, we'll meet down in Little Italy with my people," he said.
"You're on," Laurie said cheerfully.
After a few pleasantries, Jack said, "I'm really curious about the AmeriCare investigation. What's the news?"
"Me, too," Laurie said.
Lou eyed his friends. When he thought about their friendship, he was always a little amazed. He wasn't even friendly with his own doctor, nor his kids' doctor, for that matter. Most of Lou's friends were other police officers, although there were a couple of firemen who he played cards with on a regular basis. But Jack and Laurie were different than the other doctors Lou had encountered. They didn't look down on him for his education or what he did for a living. In fact, he felt it was just the opposite.
"Okay," Lou said. "Business before pleasure, but let's see! Where shall I begin? First off, I have to say that what Jack told me the morning Jasmine Rakoczi got shot has turned out to be prophetic. Jack, my boy, you were on the money."
Jack smiled and gave Lou a thumbs-up sign.
"However," Lou continued. "The lion's share of the kudos goes to Laurie for being persistent in the face of universal ignorance on everybody else's part, including Jack's, and for finding Rakoczi's tissue under Stephen Lewis's fingernails."
"I'll drink to that," Laurie said. She raised her flute and clicked glasses with the others.
"Now," Lou continued after putting his glass down. "Ballistics are back, and they indicate that Rakoczi's gun killed both my captain's sister-in-law and Roger Rousseau." Lou reached over and gave Laurie's forearm a squeeze. "Sorry to bring up a painful subject."
Laurie smiled and nodded acknowledgment of Lou's sensitiveness.
"Ballistics also indicate that David Rosenkrantz's gun killed Rakoczi, so that gets Jack off the hook."
"Very funny," Jack said.
"Now, I know you guys are familiar with Rousseau's head and hands being found in Rakoczi's refrigerator, since they were brought over to the OCME, so I won't go into that."
"Please don't," Laurie said.
"Since David Rosenkrantz was from out of state, the FBI jumped into the ring from day one, and lo and behold, there have been similar deaths in AmeriCare hospitals across the country. And now in each location, there is an ongoing investigation as to the perpetrator."
"Good grief!" Jack blurted. "When I suggested a conspiracy, I was thinking of one or two higher-ups and Rakoczi-certainly nothing on a national scale."
"Well, let me get to the juicy part," Lou said. He pulled his chair closer to the table and leaned forward. "Our saving that dirtbag Rosenkrantz has turned out to be key. He's copped a plea and has cooperated by implicating his immediate boss, Robert Hawthorne.
Hawthorne has turned out to be one interesting dude, and the lynchpin of the whole operation. He's a retired Army Special Forces officer and maintains contact with the military through a network of buddies. He's had an ongoing interest in dissatisfied military medical personnel. Whether he was recruited or had just cleverly created a niche for himself, we don't know. What we do know is that he has been acting like an independent contractor secretly in the employ of a big Saint Louis law firm, which specializes in plaintiff malpractice work. This firm is extremely active, carrying on simultaneous cases all over the country. As near as can be determined, Hawthorne recruited and ran a group of mostly disgruntled nurses, some of whom had been in the military, who were paid to communicate episodes of adverse outcomes from their respective hospitals, and who got bonuses if the case went to trial."
"I've heard about that," Jack said.
"Me, too," Laurie said. "It's mostly OB and anesthesia cases. It's the modern equivalent of the ambulance chasers of old."
"Well, I don't know about those details," Lou said. "But here comes the most interesting part. Over the last few years, there has been movement to make managed-care companies liable for malpractice, which, as an aside, seems reasonable to me."
"What's reasonable and what isn't has little to do with decisions about healthcare in this country," Jack interjected. "Everything is decided according to vested interests."
"By a strange twist of fate," Lou continued, "managed-care companies and malpractice plaintiff attorneys suddenly found themselves in the same bed in their desire to keep any malpractice-reform legislation from happening. I mean, the goals were slightly different in that the managed-care companies didn't want things changed so they could be sued, and the malpractice attorneys didn't want changes that would cap pain-and-suffering awards or eliminate contingency fees, among other things. Both groups employed lobbyists to make sure malpractice law did not change, which brought them together. So, essentially, their waking up in the same bed spawned a weird marriage between the two groups. How it happened is anybody's guess, but someone in AmeriCare must have realized they could use the shady services of Robert Hawthorne, since at least some of his contacts were… what should we say? Psychopaths or sociopaths capable of murder without pangs of conscience."
"The newest term is 'antisocial disorder,' " Laurie chimed in.
"Okay, whatever," Lou said. "Anyway, some AmeriCare bureaucrat-or bureaucrats, as the case may be-became interested in tapping into the law firm's cast of unsavory medical insiders, which the law firm had formed to drum up business, in order to set up an elimination scheme for high-risk subscribers. These were the subscribers who they knew would be costing them millions of dollars in specialized care and thereby put upward pressure on premium rates. I mean, it makes some sort of sick sense."
"Good grief!" Jack reiterated. "This is close to what I feared, but on a larger scale."
"Let me finish!" Lou said after making sure no one was overhearing. "Whether there was any further cooperation in the works, such that the malpractice lawyers would then take advantage of the deaths by appealing to the next of kin to sue the doctors involved, we don't know. So far, we are only aware of one suit involving a doctor at Saint Francis Hospital."