We'll Meet Again (19 page)

On Wednesday morning, Fran had an appointment in Greenwich with Dr. Roy Kirkwood, who had been the primary care physician of Josephine Gallo, the mother of Tim Mason’s friend, whose death Fran had been asked to investigate. She was surprised to find the doctor’s reception room empty-not a usual situation for a physician these days, she thought.

The receptionist slid open the glass that separated her desk from the waiting area. “Miss Simmons,” she said without asking Fran’s name, “the doctor is expecting you.”

Roy Kirkwood looked to be in his early sixties. His thinning silver hair, silver eyebrows, steel-frame glasses, lined forehead, and kindly, intelligent eyes all made Fran immediately think that this man
looked
like a doctor. If I were here because I was sick, I’d have confidence in him, she decided.

On the other hand, it occurred to her as he politely indicated the seat opposite his desk, she was here because one of his patients was dead.

“It’s good of you to see me, Doctor,” she began.

“No, I would say that it is
necessary
for me to see you, Ms. Simmons,” he interrupted. “You may have noticed that my reception room is empty. Other than longtime patients, for whom I will care until I can transfer their records to other physicians, I am retired.”

“Has this anything to do with Billy Gallo’s mother?”

“It has
everything
to do with her, Ms. Simmons. Mind you, Mrs. Gallo might very easily have had a fatal heart attack in any circumstances. But with a quadruple bypass she also would have had a very good chance to live. Her cardiogram was within the normal range, but a cardiogram is not the only thing that can reveal that a patient is in trouble. I suspected she might be suffering from blocked arteries and wanted to do extensive testing of her. My request, however, was vetoed.”

“By whom?”

“By management-Remington Health Management, to be specific.”

“Did you protest the veto?”

“Ms. Simmons, I protested and continued to protest until there was no point. I protested that veto as I have many others in cases where my recommendations that my patients see specialists were denied.”

“Then Billy Gallo was right-his mother might have had a longer life. Is that what you’re saying?”

Roy Kirkwood looked both defeated and sad. “Ms. Simmons, after Mrs. Gallo had the coronary occlusion, I went to Peter Black and demanded that the necessary bypass surgery be done.”

“And what did Dr. Black say?”

“He consented, reluctantly, but then Mrs. Gallo died. We might have saved her if that surgery had been authorized earlier. Of course, to the HMO she was just a statistic, and her death is a plus for the Remington profit line, so you have to wonder if they really care.”

“You did your best, Doctor,” Fran said quietly.

“Best? I’m at the end of my career and can retire comfortably. But God have pity on the new doctors. Most of them start out deep in debt and have to pay back loans for their education. Believe it or not, $100,000 is an average amount they owe.
Then
they have to borrow to equip an office and set up a practice. The way it stands today, they either work directly for a health maintenance organization, or have ninety percent of their patients enrolled in them.

“Today a doctor is told how many patients he must see. Some plans even go so far as to allot a doctor fifteen minutes a patient and require that he keep a time chart. It is not uncommon for doctors to work a fifty-five-hour week, for less money than they were making before the HMOs took over medicine.”

“What’s the answer?” Fran asked.

“Nonprofit HMOs run by doctors, I think. Also doctors forming their own unions. Medicine is making remarkable strides. There are many new medications and procedures available to doctors, some that enable us to prolong lives and give better quality of life. The incongruity is that these new procedures and services are being arbitrarily denied, as they were in Mrs. Gallo’s case.”

“How does Remington stack up with other HMOs, Doctor? It was, after all, founded by two doctors.”

“By two doctors who inherited the sterling mantle of a great physician, Jonathan Lasch. Gary Lasch wasn’t in the same class with his father-either as a doctor or a human being. As for Remington, it’s as lean and mean as they get. For example, they’ve been systematically shaving services and personnel at Lasch Hospital as part of their ongoing cost-cutting campaign. I only wish Remington and the HMOs they’re absorbing would be taken over by the plan that’s headed by the former surgeon general. He’s the kind of man the health system needs.”

Roy Kirkwood stood up. “I apologize, Ms. Simmons. I realize I’m just letting off steam to you. But I do have a reason. I think you would be rendering a great service if you used the power of your program to wake up the public to this increasingly callous and alarming situation. Too many people are unaware of the fact that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

Fran stood up as well. “Dr. Kirkwood, did you know Dr. Jack Morrow?”

Kirkwood smiled slightly. “Jack Morrow was the best. As smart as they come, a great diagnostician, loved his patients. His death was a tragedy.”

“It seems strange that his murder has never been solved.”

“If you think
I’m
upset with Remington Health Management, you should have heard Jack Morrow. I admit he probably went too far in pushing his complaints.”

“ ‘Too far’?” Fran asked quickly.

“Jack could get hot under the collar. I understand that he actually referred to Peter Black and Gary Lasch as ‘a pair of murderers.’ That’s going too far, although I confess it’s the same way I felt about Black and the system when Josephine Gallo died. But I didn’t
say
it.”

“Who heard Dr. Morrow make that statement, Dr. Kirkwood?”

“Well, Mrs. Russo, my receptionist, for one. She used to work for Jack. If there were others who heard him, I’m not aware of it.”

“Is she the lady outside?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Thank you for your time, Doctor.”

Fran went into the reception room and stopped at the desk. “I understand you worked for Dr. Morrow, Mrs. Russo,” she said to the small, gray-haired woman. “He was so kind to me when my father died.”

“He was kind to everyone.”

“Mrs. Russo, you knew my name when I came in. Do you know that I’m investigating Dr. Gary Lasch’s death for the
True Crime
television program?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Dr. Kirkwood just told me that you heard Dr. Morrow refer to Dr. Lasch and Dr. Black as a ‘pair of murderers.’ That’s pretty strong language.”

“He’d just come back from the hospital and was terribly upset. I’m sure it had been the usual business of fighting for a patient who’d been denied a procedure. And then the poor man was shot to death only a few nights later.”

“If I remember correctly, the police decided that a drug addict broke in and surprised him working late in his office.”

“That’s right. Every drawer of his desk was dumped on the floor, and the medical supply cabinet was emptied out. I understand that drug addicts can be desperate, but why did they have to shoot him? Why couldn’t they take what they wanted and just tie him up or something?” Tears glistened in the woman’s eyes.

Unless whoever broke in was afraid of being recognized, Fran thought. That’s the usual reason a burglary becomes a homicide. She started to say good-bye, then remembered the other question she wanted to ask.

“Mrs. Russo, was anyone else around when Dr. Morrow called Drs. Lasch and Black a pair of murderers?”

“Only two people, thank goodness, Miss Simmons. Wally Barry, a longtime patient of Dr. Morrow’s, and his mother, Edna.”

Lou Knox lived in an apartment over the garage that sat to the side of the Whitehalls ’ residence. The three-room unit suited him well. One of the few hobbies he enjoyed was woodworking, and Calvin Whitehall had allowed him use of one of the storerooms in the oversized garage for his tools and worktable. He also had permitted Knox to refinish the apartment to suit himself.

Now the living room and bedroom were paneled with bleached white oak. Shelves lined the walls, although one would not call them bookshelves, since Lou Knox was not a reader. Instead, his television, state-of-the-art stereo, and CD and video collections filled the shelves.

They were also excellent cover-ups for the large and ever-growing collection of incriminating evidence he had accumulated for possible use against Calvin Whitehall.

He was fairly certain that he would never need any of it, since he and Cal Whitehall had long ago reached an understanding on what his duties were to be. Besides, Lou knew that to use that evidence would be to incriminate himself as well. Therefore, that was a hand that Lou had no intention of ever showing except as a last resort. To do that would be to cut off your nose to spite your face, as the grandmother who raised him used to say when he complained about the butcher for whom he’d worked as a delivery boy.

“Does he pay you regular?” his grandmother would demand.

“Yes, but he asks his customers to put the tip on the bill,” Lou used to protest, “and then he counts it as part of my salary.”

All these years later it gave Lou satisfaction to remember how he had gotten back at the butcher. On his way to deliver an order, he’d open the package and take out part of it-a piece of the chicken, or a slice from the filet mignon, or enough chopped sirloin for a good hamburger.

His grandmother, who worked the four-to-midnight shift as a telephone operator at a motel ten miles away, would have left him a meal of canned spaghetti and meatballs, or something else he would find equally unappetizing. So on those days he had managed to filch some of the customers’ meat, he’d come home from his after-school job and feast on beef or chicken. Then he’d throw out whatever his grandmother had left him, and no one was the wiser.

The only person who ever caught on to what Lou was up to was Cal. One evening when Cal and he were sophomores, Cal stopped over just as he was frying a steak he’d taken from a package the butcher had sent to one of his best customers.

“You’re a jerk,” Cal had said. “You broil steak, you don’t fry it.”

That night forged an alliance between the two young men: Cal, the son of the town drunks, and Lou, the grandson of Bebe Clauss, whose only daughter had eloped with Lenny Knox and returned to town two years later just long enough to deposit her son with her mother. That burden out of her life, she’d disappeared again.

Despite his background, Cal had gone off to college, helped by his cunning and a drive to succeed. Lou drifted from job to job, in between serving thirty days in the town jail for shoplifting, and three years in the state penitentiary for aggravated assault. Then, almost sixteen years ago, he’d received a call from Cal, now known as Mr. Calvin Whitehall, of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Gotta go kiss the feet of my old buddy, was the way Lou characterized the summons to Greenwich. Cal had made it eminently clear that their reunion was based solely on Lou’s potential value to him as a kind of all-purpose handyman.

Lou moved to Greenwich that day, into a spare bedroom in the house Cal had bought. The house was far smaller than the one he lived in now, but it was definitely in the right location.

Cal ’s courtship of Jenna Graham was an eye-opener for Lou. Here was a classy, drop-dead beauty being pursued by a guy who looked like an ex-prizefighter. What on earth could she be expected to see in him?

Even as he asked the question, Lou figured out the answer. Power. Raw, naked power. Jenna loved the fact that Cal had it, and she was fascinated by the way he used it. He might not have had her pedigree, and he might not have come from her kind of world, but the guy could handle himself in any situation; her world was soon his home. And no matter what some of the old guard might think of Cal Whitehall, they knew better than to cross him.

Cal ’s parents were never invited to visit their son. When they died within a short time of each other, Lou was the one sent to make arrangements and to rush their bodies to the crematorium as fast as possible. Cal was no sentimentalist.

Over the years, Lou’s value to Cal had increased significantly-he knew that. Even so, he had no doubt that if at any point it suited Calvin Whitehall to dispose of him, he, Lou Knox, would be thrown to the wolves. So it was with a certain degree of grim amusement that he remembered how jobs he had carried out for Cal were planned in such a way that Cal could wash his hands of any involvement. So if anyone was left holding the bag, guess who that would be?

Well, two could play that game, he thought with a sly smile.

Now it was up to him to see if Fran Simmons was going to be merely a nuisance, or if she was becoming dangerous. It should be interesting, he decided. Like father, like daughter?

Lou smiled as he remembered Fran’s father, that eager-to-please jerk whose mother never taught him not to trust the Calvin Whitehalls of this world. So when he finally learned his lesson, it was a little too late.

Dr. Peter Black seldom made the trip to West Redding during the day. It was about a forty-minute drive from Greenwich, even when traffic was light, but more important, he made the trip frequently enough that he worried about becoming too familiar a face in the area. His destination was a remote farmhouse equipped with a state-of-the-art laboratory on its second floor.

On the tax rolls of the county, the structure was listed as a private home owned and occupied by Dr. Adrian Logue, a retired ophthalmologist. In fact, the property and the laboratory belonged to Remington Health Management, and when supplies were needed there, they traveled from the main lab in the trunk of Peter Black’s car.

By the time he had pulled up in front of the farmhouse, Black’s palms were sweating. He was dreading the inevitable argument ahead of him; moreover he knew it was one he would not win.

When he left less than half an hour later, he was carrying a package, the weight of which did not justify the strain he felt as he put it in the trunk of his car and started home.