Devil's Waltz Part 34

"Was she seen dancing with anyone in the club?"

"Nothing on record. Only reason the bartender remembered her leaving was he was on a smoke break, just outside."

"He wasn't considered a suspect?"

"Nope. Tell you one thing, the a.s.shole who did it came prepared-think about all those weapons. We're talking a predator, Alex. Maybe someone watching the club, prowling the area 'cause he knows there's lots of women around. He waits until he sees exactly what he's been looking for. Lone target, maybe a certain physical type, maybe he's just decided tonight's the night. With the added bonus of a convertible on a quiet, dark street. With the top down. Which is like 'You are cordially invited to a.s.sault me.' "

"Makes sense," I said, feeling my gorge rise.

"A grad student, huh? Too bad she flunked Logic One-A. I'm not trying to blame the victim, Alex, but add the dope and booze to her behavioral pattern and it doesn't sound like a lady with strong instincts for self-preservation. What'd she steal?"

As I told him, he ate more soup, used his spoon to wedge marrow out of the bone, and ate that too.

I said, "The Murtaughs said she seemed to have plenty of money even after she quit her job. And you've just added cocaine to her budget. So blackmail makes some sense, doesn't it? She latches on to the fact that one Jones kid died and the other keeps coming back into the hospital with unexplained illnesses. She steals the evidence and tries to exploit it. And now she's dead. Just like Ashmore."

He put his gla.s.s down slowly. "Big leap, from petty pilfering to putting the squeeze on biggies, Alex. And there's no reason, from the facts of the case, to think a psycho didn't cut her up. In terms of where she got her money, we still don't know her family didn't give it to her. For that matter, the c.o.ke could have been a.s.set, not a debit-maybe she dealt dope, too."

"If she had family money, why would she rent a cheap single room from the Murtaughs?"

"Slumming. We already know she played roles-the whole punk bit. And the thefts she pulled on her landlords were illogical, not for profit. Exactly the kind of thing that's likely to get discovered. She comes across disorganized to me, Alex. Not the type to plan and execute a high-level blackmail scheme."

"No one said she was good at it. Look at the way she ended up."

He looked around the empty room as if suddenly concerned about being overheard. He drained his ale gla.s.s, then lifted his spoon and pushed the soup bone around his bowl like a kid playing toy boat in a tiny green harbor.

"The way she ended up," he finally said. "So who killed her? Daddy? Mommy? Grandpa?"

"Wouldn't you say hired help? Those types don't do their own dirty work."

"Hired to slice her and do a mechanical rape?"

"Hired to make it look like a 'psycho thing' that'll never get solved unless the psycho does it again. h.e.l.l, maybe Ashmore was involved, too, and the same guy was paid to set up a phony mugging."

"Imaginative," he said. "You just sat there with those people, playing with their kid, making chitchat, and thinking all this?"

"You think I'm totally off-base?"

He ate more soup before answering. "Listen, Alex, I've known you long enough to appreciate the way your mind works. I just don't think you have much more than fantasy at this point."

"Maybe so," I said. "But it sure beats thinking about Ca.s.sie and everything we're not doing for her."

The rest of the food came. I watched him carve up his chicken. He took a long time to section the meat, showing more surgical skill and deliberation than I'd ever seen before.

"Phony psycho job on Herbert," he said. "Phony mugging for Ashmore."

"He was Herbert's boss. Owned the computers and had done a toxicology check on Chad Jones. It was logical to think he knew whatever Herbert did. Even if he didn't, whoever killed her might have taken care of him, too, just to be careful."

"Why would he be involved in blackmail? He was independently wealthy."

"He invested in real estate," I said, "and the market's sliding. What if he was leveraged to the hilt? Or maybe he hadn't quit gambling, as his wife believed. Lost big at the tables and needed some cash. Rich folk can get poor, right? The L.A. shuffle."

"If Ashmore was in on it-and I'm just playing along at this point-why would he want Herbert for a partner?"

"Who says he did? She could have found out on her own-gotten hold of his computer data and decided to free-lance."

He said nothing. Wiped his lips with his napkin, even though he hadn't eaten any chicken.

I said, "One problem, though. Ashmore was killed two months after Herbert. If their murders are related, why take so long to eliminate him?"

He tapped his fingers on the table. "Well . . . another way to look at it is, Ashmore had no knowledge of what Herbert was up to at first, but found out later. From data she'd stashed in the computer. And he either tried to capitalize on it, or told the wrong person."

"You know, that dovetails with something I saw the other day. Huenengarth-the head of Security-removing Ashmore's computers the morning after Ashmore's murder. My first impression was he was getting hold of Ashmore's equipment. But maybe what Huenengarth was really after was in the machines. The data. He works for Plumb-meaning he really works for Chuck Jones. Guy's a real corporate henchman type, Milo. Plus, his name came up yesterday when I was speaking to Mrs. Ashmore. He was the one who called to offer the hospital's sympathies. Was coming by with the UNICEF certificate and the plaque. Strange job for head of Security, wouldn't you say? Unless his real intention was to learn if Ashmore kept a computer at home and, if he did, to get it out of there."

Milo looked down at his plate. Finally ate. Quickly, mechanically, without much apparent pleasure. I knew how much food meant to him and felt bad for ruining his dinner.

"Intriguing," he said, "but it's still one big if."

"You're right," I said. "Let's give it a rest."

He put his fork down. "There's a basic flaw with all of it, Alex. If Grandpa knew about Junior and/or Mrs. Junior killing Chad, and cared enough about hus.h.i.+ng it up to pay blackmail money and hire a killer, why would he allow Ca.s.sie to be brought back to the same hospital?"

"Maybe he didn't know, until Herbert and/or Ashmore put the arm on him."

"Even so. Why not send Ca.s.sie somewhere else for treatment? Why run the risk of dealing with the exact same doctors who'd treated Chad and having them make the same connection the blackmailers had made? It's not like the family wouldn't have been justified. Ca.s.sie isn't getting any better-you yourself said Jones Junior's talking about medical errors. No one would blame them for getting a second opinion. Also, it's one thing to say the parents are abusers and Grandpa's protecting them, even to the point of eliminating a blackmailer. But if Grandpa knew Ca.s.sie was being poisoned, wouldn't he want to step in and stop it?"

"Maybe he's no better than they are," I said.

"Family of psychos?"

"Where do you think it starts?"

"I don't know-"

"Maybe Chuck Jones was an abusive father and that's where Chip learned it. The way he's tearing down the hospital sure doesn't make him Mr. Compa.s.sionate."

"Corporate greed is one thing, Alex. Watching your granddaughter get messed with to the point of epileptic seizures is another."

"Yeah," I said, "it's probably all fantasy-getting far afield. Would you please eat? Your pickiness is making me nervous."

He smiled for my benefit and took fork in hand. Both of us faked fascination with our food.

"Huenengarth," he said. "Don't imagine there'd be too many of that name on file. What's the first name?"

"Presley."

He smiled. "Even better. Speaking of which, I ran Ashmore and Steph. He's clean except for a couple of traffic tickets that he didn't get around to paying before he died. She's been clean for a long time, but a few years ago she had a DUI."

"Drunk driving?"

"Uh-huh. Caused a collision, no injuries. First offense, she got probation. Probably got sent to AA or a treatment center."

"So maybe that's why she's changed."

"Changed how?"

"Got thin, started putting on makeup, got into fas.h.i.+on. Image of the young professional. She has a designer coffee maker in her office. Real espresso."

"Could be," he said. "Strong coffee's part of the reformed alkie thing-to replace the booze."

Thinking of his off-and-on flirtation with the bottle, I said, "You think it means anything?"

"What, the DUI? You see any evidence she's still boozing?"

"No, but I haven't been looking for any."

"Any clear relations.h.i.+p between alcoholism and Munchausen?"

"No. But whatever problem you've got, booze makes it worse. And if she had the typical Munchausen background-abuse, incest, illness-I could understand her hitting the bottle."

He shrugged. "So you answer your own question. At the very least it means she's got something she'd like to forget. Which makes her like most of us."

20.

As we left the restaurant Milo said, "I'll try to find out what I can about Dawn Herbert, for what it's worth. What's your next step?"

"Home visit. Maybe seeing them in their natural habitat will give me some kind of insight."

"Makes sense. h.e.l.l, while you're out there you can do a little snooping-you've got the perfect cover."

"That's exactly what Stephanie said. She suggested I nose around in their medicine cabinet. Half-joking."

"Why not? You shrinks get paid to poke and probe. Don't even need a search warrant."

On the way home I stopped off at the Ashmore house-still curious about Huenengarth and wanting to see how the widow was doing. A black wreath hung on the front door and no one answered my ring.

I got back in the car, cranked up the stereo, and made it all the way home without thinking about death and disease. I checked in with my service. Robin had left word she'd be back around six. The morning paper was still on the dining room table, neatly folded, the way she always left it.

Recalling Dan Kornblatt's peevish comment in the cafeteria, I paged through the paper, trying to find what had upset him. Nothing in the front pages or Metro, but it jumped out at me from the second page of the Business section.

I never read the financial pages, but even if I did, I could have missed it. Small piece, lower bottom corner, next to the foreign exchange rates.

The headline read HEALTH CARE IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR: THE OPTIMISM FADES. The gist of the article was that the for-profit hospital business, once seen by Wall Street as a rich financial lode, had turned out to be anything but. That premise was backed up by examples of hospitals and HMOs gone bust, and interviews with financial honchos, one of them George Plumb, formerly CEO of MGS Healthcare Consultants, Pittsburgh, and currently CEO of Western Pediatric Medical Center, Los Angeles.

Pittsburgh . . . The outfit revamping the library with an outmoded computer system-BIO-DAT-was from Pittsburgh too.

One hand feeding the other? I read on.

The honchos' main complaints centered on government meddling and "market-restricting" fee schedules but also touched upon difficulties dealing with insurance companies, the skyrocketing cost of new technologies, the salary demands of doctors and nurses, and the failure of sick people to behave like statistics.

"One AIDS patient, alone, can cost us millions," lamented one East Coast administrator. "And we still haven't seen the light at the end of that tunnel. This is a disease no one knew about when any of the plans were put together. The rules have been changed in the middle of the game."

The HIV epidemic was cited repeatedly by executives, as if the plague were a bit of naughtiness devised to throw the actuaries off track.

Plumb's special contribution to the gripe-fest had to do with the difficulties of running inner-city hospitals due to "unfavorable demographics and social problems that seep into the inst.i.tution from the surrounding neighborhoods. Add to that, rapidly deteriorating physical plants and shrinking revenues, and the paying consumer and his or her provider is unwilling to contract for care."

When asked for solutions, Plumb suggested that the wave of the future might be "decentralization-replacing the large urban hospital with smaller, easily managed health-care units strategically located in positive-growth suburban areas."

"However," he cautioned, "careful economic a.n.a.lyses need to be done before planning anything of that magnitude. And nonpecuniary issues must also be considered. Many established inst.i.tutions inspire a high degree of loyalty in those whose memories are grounded in the good old days."

It sounded awfully like a trial balloon-testing public opinion before proposing radical surgery: putting the "physical plant" up for sale and heading for suburban pastures. And if cornered, Plumb could always brush off his comments as detached expert a.n.a.lysis.

Kornblatt's remark about selling off the hospital's real estate began to sound less like paranoia and more like an educated guess.

Of course, Plumb was only a mouthpiece. Speaking for the man I'd just proposed as a possible murder contractor and accessory to child abuse.

I remembered what Stephanie had told me about Chuck Jones's background. Before becoming Western Peds's chairman of the board, he'd managed the hospital's investment portfolio. Who'd know more about the precise value of Western Peds's a.s.sets-including the land-than the man who kept the books?

I visualized him and Plumb and the gray-twin numbers crunchers, Roberts and Novak, hunched over a moldy ledger, like predators out of a Thomas Nast cartoon.

Could the hospital's dismal financial situation be due to more than unfortunate demographics and shrinking revenues? Had Jones mismanaged Western Peds's money to the point of crisis, and was he now planning to cover his losses with a flashy real estate sale?

Adding insult to injury by taking a nice fat commission on the deal?

Strategically located in positive-growth suburban areas.

Like the fifty lots Chip Jones owned out in the West Valley?

One hand feeding the other . . .

But to pull off that kind of thing, appearances would have to be kept up, Jones and company exhibiting unwavering loyalty to the urban dinosaur until it drew its last breath.

Pulling the chairman's granddaughter out of treatment wouldn't be part of that.

In the meantime, though, steps could be taken to hasten the dinosaur's death.

Shut down clinical programs. Discourage research. Freeze salaries and keep the wards understaffed.

Encourage senior doctors to leave and replace them with inexperienced help, so that private physicians lost confidence and stopped referring their paying patients.

Then, when redemption was out of the question, give an impa.s.sioned speech about insoluble social issues and the need to move fearlessly into the future.

Destroying the hospital to save it.