Patty looked inside the room and deflated even more. There were five good-size cartons piled with files and papers that looked as if they had been tossed in randomly. Reflexively, she assessed the situation. Time to completely examine the materiaclass="underline" hours. Chances of coming up with anything significant: zero or close to it. End of assessment.
Later, Wendy. I think I’ll come back another time to do this.
The words were midway from her brain to her lips when she heard her voice saying, “Thanks. If I need anything, I’ll yell.”
Cursing herself for not simply backing off and letting Brasco make a fool or a hero of himself, she settled into Ben Morales’s soft leather high-backed chair and began. An hour passed with one carton done and most of a second. Outside, the afternoon light had begun to fade. Morales’s papers were mostly dry and technical and gave little feel for the man who had guided Premier Care to a very solid place in a fiercely competitive industry.
Near the bottom of the second carton, thick with bound legal documents and loose sheets, was a cardboard file pocket with the word Merger written in pencil in the upper right corner of one side. Her curiosity suddenly yanked from the doldrums, Patty dumped the contents of the file onto Morales’s empty desktop and started with the first sheet, a memo to Morales written in a flourished hand on plain white typing paper. It was dated six months ago.
Dear Ben,
I was very pleased to hear from you and to learn that, although you have reservations, you are at least willing to allow us to present the benefits to all of us from bringing our companies together. Responses from the others we have polled have been quite encouraging, but I feel that the inclusion of Premier Care would be the boost that really gets the project rolling. Ultimately, I feel certain a merger would be to the good of all. Let’s meet in the next week or two to share our feelings on this matter. After that, if we are in agreement, we can involve the lawyers and bankers and begin to tinker with possible formulas for stock disbursal.
Warmest regards,
Boyd
Boyd! It had to be Boyd Halliday. The Faneuil Hall debate where Patty had first laid eyes on Will and Boyd Halliday seemed eons ago. Will had come across that night as earnest, intelligent, humorous, and self-effacing; Halliday as brilliant, intense, droll, and urbane. The fact that Patty had a long-standing personal bias against the profit-motivated HMOs probably affected her overall negative impression of Halliday, although Will’s unassuming good looks may have had something to do with that, as well.
The legal reports seemed to be repeated attempts on the part of several different merger-and-acquisition experts to devise a formula for assigning stock and power to at least seven managed-care companies, all of them located in the Northeast. In addition to Premier Health, Cyrill Davenport’s Unity Comprehensive Health was on the list. However, the companies headed by Marcia Rising and Dr. Richard Leaf were not. Aside from the original memo, there did not seem to be any further direct contact between Halliday and Morales.
A merger, Patty thought as she set the last of the documents aside. Now, what’s that all about? Had it ever actually happened? Was it still on the table? Where did Ben Morales stand on the possibility? Were the other victims’ companies involved?
Suddenly energized, she inspected the contents of the final cartons in much less time than the first two, then called and firmed up an appointment with Gloria Davenport.
When Patty finally came downstairs, Wendy Morales was preparing macaroni and cheese in the kitchen.
“Find anything helpful?” Wendy asked.
“Maybe. Did you know anything about a merger or proposed merger between Premier Health and some other companies?”
“No, but that’s not possible. Ben would never allow it.”
“Why?”
“This company was his life. He had wonderful plans for it. Someday he hoped to use it as a vehicle for bringing health-care coverage to those who couldn’t afford it. He would sooner have lost his arm than his company.”
“Do you mind if I borrow those cartons for a while? I’d like to go through them again. I promise to return everything very soon.”
“No problem. Just a minute and I’ll help you carry them down. You can’t stop right in the middle of preparing Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, you know. I add a little ketchup and some sour cream. That’s how my mother used to make it for me.”
“Sounds delicious,” Patty said. “For me it’s always been chunks of hot dogs.”
After the last of the cartons was loaded into the Camaro, Wendy shuffled back to the house, head down. If Patty needed a reason to keep pounding away at the managed-care murders, there she was. She waited until Ben Morales’s widow had closed the door, then took the Beethoven out of the CD player and replaced it with Willie Nelson’s “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time).”
A merger, she thought again as she pulled away. Is that a piece of the puzzle, or is that the puzzle?
CHAPTER 21
The mammography unit of the Excelsius Health Cancer Center was beautifully appointed, with richly paneled walls and warm, inviting furnishings. Given the unpleasant exchange that had taken place with Charles Newcomber over the surgical referral for Grace Peng Davis, Will decided that a frontal assault on the man was the way to go rather than trying to call and set up an appointment.
Shortly after Will left home for the drive to the cancer center, Augie Micelli called his cell phone and insisted that he pull off to the side of the road.
“Okay, now,” the attorney said, “give it to me once more. I want to hear your account of the day you passed out in the OR-inch-by-inch, moment-by-moment. I want everything.”
“I just spent a while this morning retracing every move I could remember.”
“Okay, tell me about that, too. There’s a hole in this someplace and we’ve got to find it.”
The Law Doctor sounded vibrant, focused, and energized-a completely different man from the one Will had watched get progressively drunk during their first meeting. Sounding very much like a courtroom barrister, he guided Will through his account with carefully phrased, incisive questions designed to coax out information without being leading. When he was satisfied Will had nothing further to add, Micelli shared what he had learned about the pharmacology of fentanyl. It was an astounding amount of information-far more than Will had ever possessed.
“Has learning all that helped in any way?” Will asked.
“Not yet, but knowledge isn’t represented as a torch for nothing. Assuming you are telling the truth, and I choose to make that assumption, we are searching for an explanation of an event that defies explanation.”
“I understand.”
“I’m behind you all the way on this, Grant,” he said, “but I sure could use some sort of a story that makes sense about how that stuff could have gotten into your body.”
“I have a whole bunch of stories that make absolutely no sense,” Will replied. “Will that help?”
“Keep trying. And remember, it doesn’t have to be right, it just has to be plausible.”
Finally, with the promise to stay in touch at least twice a day, Will hung up and pulled off the soft shoulder, back onto the road. With his understanding of both law and medicine, Micelli was going to be a godsend. As Will headed off, he almost immediately became lost in yet another conundrum-the strange finding of the BB in Grace’s chest that did not appear in her mammogram. As with the fentanyl, no explanation made sense, but there was a reality that simply could not be ignored.
The scenario that he kept coming back to was that Grace was a rather thin woman, though broad across the shoulders. Perhaps somehow the angles of the X-ray camera in taking her breast films simply missed the BB. Not very likely but, as the Law Doctor said, plausible-certainly a possibility worth reviewing with Newcomber and also with one of the radiologists at FGH. In fact, Will decided as he pulled up to the clinic, he was going to get a second opinion no matter what. The trick would be getting back into the hospital again without being spotted by Sid Silverman or one of his security people and tossed out onto the street like a barfly. He had made it once. Making it a second time might be asking too much.