Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (74 page)

“You’d think so—but the problem is liability. Surgery centers can only expand as far as liability insurance will allow them to. Think about it: We do a brain surgery, something goes wrong, and the attorneys all scream, ‘Inadequate care! It wouldn’t have happened in a hospital!’ One suit like that would be the end of us.”

“The end of who? Who owns this place anyway?”

“It’s privately owned; that’s all I’m allowed to tell you.”

“By individual doctors?”

“Sorry. But I can tell you that doctors commonly own these places. Let’s be honest, Mr. Polchak, there’s a second reason
these facilities began to develop: doctors took a good look at the fee structure in hospitals and realized they were missing out on a lot of money. Check a hospital bill—there are professional fees, and there are hospital fees. The professional fees go to the doctor, but the hospital gets the rest. Doctors realized they would never get the lion’s share until they owned the facility itself—and outpatient surgical centers were born.”

Nick glanced around the room. “I imagine these places are very profitable.”

“There’s a very definite profit motive behind these places—and I don’t mind telling you, because it’s to your advantage. Those profits allow us to compete with any other kind of healthcare facility—hospitals included. At Westmoreland you get state-ofthe-art facilities, top-of-the-line surgical staff, privately employed nurses, and a lot more attention than you’re going to get in a hospital ward with a hundred beds. You have nothing to fear here, Mr. Polchak. We’re on the cutting edge.”

Nick steered his car onto the Penn Lincoln Parkway and waited until he emerged from the Squirrel Hill Tunnel before punching the button on his cell phone.

“Riley McKay, please.” He waited. “Riley—Nick. Can you talk? I just stopped off at Westmoreland Surgery Center and asked a few questions. What? Yes, I was tactful—aren’t I always tactful? The COO at Westmoreland told me that they can set up to perform almost any technical procedure there. The only thing that limits them is liability—but if there is no liability, then there are no limits, are there? I think we’ve got the last piece of our puzzle—and I think it’s time to call Santangelo. Are you OK with that? Then you make the call and tell them everything we’ve found—but keep Leo’s name out of it, will you? Right. I knew you would.

“What’s your caseload like today? When do you get off? Then let’s meet tonight at Leo’s, and we’ll put a few notes together and collect all the physical evidence. Ask Santangelo what he wants us to do with it, and we can drop it off. Maybe the three of us can grab dinner together—you know, to celebrate. I’m afraid it’ll have to be Italian.

“Hey, about last night. That talk you had with my mom seemed to do some good. What did she tell you? What? Well, pity is underrated. No, I’m not proud—I’ll take pity any day.

“You know, it’s been a long time since I’ve … ridden a bicycle. We sort of got interrupted. Too bad—it was just beginning to come back to me.”

The yacht’s twin diesels had barely rumbled to a stop before Cruz Santangelo leapt to his feet.

“They know everything,” he said. “They hacked into UPMC’s patient records and got a list of transplant patients. They picked the ones who dropped off the list and compared them against death records. They took the richest guy and searched his trash. They’ve identified a client, Julian—they found Vandenborre.”

“Ingenious,” Zohar said. “Really quite impressive.”

“Did you hear me? They know everything!”

“What
don’t
they know?”

“What difference does it make? They’ve found a client! All they have to do is—”

“What
don’t
they know?” he repeated patiently.

Santangelo sat down hard. “They don’t know about my involvement. They still believe there’s a federal investigation going on. That’s why they called me.”

“As we expected,” Zohar nodded.

“And they don’t know about Kaplan or Angel—but those are just details, Julian. They’ve made the connection between Lassiter and Truett and you. They know enough to put us away for life—what difference does it make what they
don’t
know?”

“It makes a great deal of difference. Remember, Dr. Polchak and Dr. McKay are helping us to identify vulnerabilities in our
system. They’re working for us, not against us—not yet anyway.”

“Santangelo is right!” Truett shouted, charging from the cockpit. “These people can destroy us with a single phone call.”

“Which they already made—to the FBI, just this afternoon.”

“But all it takes is one word to somebody else. I say it’s time to shut them down—I’ve got too much at stake here.”

“You have everything at stake here; we all do, Mr. Truett.”

“Then we deal with this
now.
”

“I agree!” Santangelo said.

Zohar paused to allow their emotions to subside. Then he smiled and spoke even more softly than before. “I agree. I think it’s time, as you say, to
shut them down
—assuming, of course, that we know who
they
are. Mr. Santangelo, have you been able to identify the third member of their party?”

“I have—and I know where he lives.”

“You’ve reviewed his vita? You’ve considered his education and background? You’re convinced he was capable of providing the necessary computer expertise?”

“He’s the one, all right. This guy has even developed software for the Bureau.”

“And you’re satisfied there’s no one else? No fourth member?”

“There will be if we don’t get moving. Who knows who else they might involve in this? The more time we spend here talking, the greater the risk.”

“On that point I disagree; the more time we spend here talking, the
smaller
the risk. Remember, gentlemen, we’re talking about ‘shutting down’ three human lives. If Dr. Lassiter were here, he would remind us that a careless course of action now will ‘raise all kinds of flags’ with the authorities.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Truett said. “We’ve got to do it
now
!”

“We do have time for this,” Zohar corrected, “but I agree that we should not delay. All I’m suggesting is that we proceed just as we’ve always done—according to
plan,
not out of passion. Mr. Santangelo, you know what to do?”

“I’m ready.”

“Please keep me posted on your progress.”

“What about the next procedure?” Truett said. “It’s coming up fast. Are we still on?”

“Of course. I’ll inform the rest of the committee about the details. Remember, we have a client who’s depending on us—and I think Mr. Santangelo can guarantee that there will be no more prying eyes.”

“You got it,” Santangelo said.

Zohar smiled and looked at both of them. “Our last two meetings on this beautiful vessel have been so …
depressing.
May I suggest that our next gathering here be a kind of celebration? The end of one era and the beginning of another. What do you say, gentlemen? I’ll bring the champagne.”

Atoast,” Leo said, raising his glass. “To the finest team of forensic exterminators ever assembled.”

They touched their glasses together and drank. Leo’s kitchen table was crowded with paper: strip-shredded documents reassembled into tiny woven mats, thousands of bits of confetti sandwiched between plastic sheets, and one neat stack of computer-generated reproductions. Beside the table, a mound of black-and-white garbage bags still rested.

“And now,” Leo said with a flourish, “I would like to invite both of you to join me in a triumphal feast.”

“Great idea,” Nick said. “There’s a little Polish deli just around the corner.”

Leo twisted from side to side, as if searching for a place to spit. “How have I offended you? How have I sinned, that you would assign me this penance?”

“OK then, we’ll let Riley decide.”

They turned to her. Riley folded her arms.

“Has it ever occurred to you two that I’m
Scottish
?”

Nick squinted at her. “You want to go to McDonald’s?”

She turned up her nose to him. “Just for that, I vote for Italian.”

Leo raised his hands to the sky. “I promise you an unforgettable evening. Cost is no object, thanks to the good Mr. Vandenborre.”

“Mr. Vandenborre?”

Leo picked up the top sheet of paper from the table. “Mr. Vandenborre has been kind enough to loan us his Visa card for the evening. I find this to be a poetic justice not even the FBI can attain.”

Nick turned to Riley. “That reminds me: How was Santangelo when you told him?”

“Stunned. He didn’t say anything at all for a minute—I thought we got disconnected at first. Then he kept asking me to repeat myself, asking for more and more details. Boys, I think we flat-out wowed the FBI.”

“No complaints? No rebukes? No requests to give up your trivial pathology career and join the FBI?”

Riley laughed. “I wish I could have been there when he reported this to his superiors. I hope we didn’t embarrass him too much.”

“All authorities need to be embarrassed from time to time,” Nick said. “It keeps them humble.”

“I hate to change the subject,” Leo said, “but I need my kitchen table back. What do we do with all of this?”

“I told Santangelo I’d call him again once we had time to organize it. Is this everything?”

“I should include a copy of the entomological evaluation I did for you,” Nick said. “I need to polish the report and get the specimens mounted.”

“This is everything I’ve got,” Leo said, “except for the keystroke logs from Lassiter’s computer. I saw no reason to include those, since the FBI has been monitoring them as well.”

“We should throw those in too,” Nick said. “We want them to know we’re holding nothing back; better to give them too much than too little.”

“It will only take a minute.” Leo sat down at the computer and began to call up the spyware reports and send them one by one to the laser printer. Suddenly, he stopped and studied the screen. “Nick,” he said. “Is this what I think it is?”

Nick stepped up behind him and peered over his shoulder. “What have you got?”

“An encrypted e-mail Lassiter sent less than an hour ago. Take a look.”

The message read:

NEXT PROCEDURE AS SCHEDULED
DONOR: SARAH JEAN MCKAY
3162 ROCKFORD AVE APT 17/ MT.
LEBANON
O POSITIVE

“Riley,” Nick called back to the kitchen, “isn’t your sister named Sarah?”

“What’s she done now?” Riley said, grinning as she stepped into the living room—but her smile instantly vanished when she saw the look on both of their faces. She charged to the computer and pushed Nick aside.

“Oh no,” she whispered.
“Sarah!”

“Was your sister part of PharmaGen’s population study?” Nick asked.

“She’s a
nurse
—half the medical people in the city are a part of it!”

Leo examined the screen again. “It says next
procedure.
She’s referred to as a
donor,
and even her blood type is listed. There can be no doubt what this is.”

Riley covered her face and turned away from the screen.

“Easy,” Nick said. “Everything’s OK.”

Riley spun around. “Everything’s OK? Dr. Lassiter did autopsies on three people who are
not
OK—three people who walked into the wrong alley or stopped to change a tire or felt a little needle prick in the back of the neck—and they never woke up again! Well, my sister is
not
going to be the next one!”

“Riley, listen to me,” Leo said. “The FBI is monitoring Lassiter’s computer just like we are. They’ve seen this message too.”

“Have they? What time do federal agents knock off for the evening? You got this message less than an hour ago—what if they
haven’t
seen it yet? The message says, ‘Next procedure
as scheduled’
—scheduled when? What if it’s scheduled
tonight
?”

She rushed to the kitchen counter and shoved her hand into her
purse, fumbling for her cell phone. She turned the purse upside-down and dumped its contents onto the counter. She flipped open her wallet and pulled out a business card with a black and gold seal.

“Who are you calling?”

“Special Agent Santangelo. I’m going to make sure they’ve seen this message.” She dialed the number and waited an eternity for it to connect.