The Society

coverage for what’s happened. Fortunately, even though they’ll get everything I have if I’m found at fault, it won’t be much. All the information you need to reach me is on that sheet I filled out.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be of any help to you,” Micelli said.

“I’m sorry about your son,” Will replied.

For twenty minutes after the door closed, Augie Micelli sat, staring unseeing out the window, feet on his desk, rising once only to replenish the scotch and ice in his glass. Losing Ryan would always be the worst thing that had ever happened to him-far beyond the subsequent financial losses and breakup of his marriage. But this was the first time he could remember speaking with anyone about the pain of losing his practice. Unlike what he was doing now, practicing medicine had never been about the money.

He opened his desk drawer and set a silver-framed photo from it on his desk-one of Ryan smiling down from the limb of a massive, ancient oak.

He drained his glass. Drinking like this had been really stupid. He had made a deal with himself not to do it around clients anymore, and now he had broken that agreement. He swallowed what remained in his glass.

What in the hell difference does it make? In fact, what difference does anything make? Guilty or not, Will Grant has gotten himself into this mess. He can damn well get himself out. If he needs to, he can just go to law school or become a grocer or do landscaping or. . or. .

Micelli stood suddenly and hurled his tumbler into the fireplace. The shattering glass had Gladys in his office in seconds.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, fine. Sorry about the glass. I’ll clean it up myself. Meanwhile, could you please get me Gil Murray in the Middlesex County DA’s office? Tell him it’s about the Will Grant case.”

CHAPTER 15

“I miss you, Daddy.”

“I miss you, too, sport. We’ll see each other next week. Meanwhile, just keep oiling that new glove and then, with the ball in the pocket, tie it up like I showed you with one of those heavy rubber bands we bought.”

“O-okay.”

“Danny, it’s okay to cry if you want to, but please know that I’m all right and everything’s going to be fine. It’s just going to take a little time. The things that have been said and written about me aren’t true, and before long everyone will know that. Okay?”

“Okay. Sean’s mother won’t let him come over here to play anymore.”

“I’m so sorry. That must make you very sad.”

“Only a little. Sean’s a jerk most of the time, and he wasn’t my best friend anyway.”

“Just the same, it’s got to be hard for you.”

“We know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“And that’s all that matters to me. Now, I’ll see you both next week, and before too long everything will be back to normal. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“You’re a brick.”

“You’re a wall.”

“You’re iron.”

“You’re steel.”

“Your. . nose is running.”

“Da-ad.”

Will said good-bye and set the receiver down slowly.

“You bastards,” he muttered, at once sickened and furious at the pain that the twins were experiencing. “You fucking bastards.”

Augie Micelli’s story had been a heavy dose of perspective for him, but the reality of his situation was still overwhelming and, it seemed at the moment, virtually hopeless. Whoever had set out to destroy him had done a masterful job. He was a rag doll, hung out to dry and swinging helplessly in the breeze. Even worse, aside from a few friends like Benois Beane, he was alone in the certainty of his innocence. There was no grass-roots crusade mounting, no letter-writing campaign, no pass-it-on e-mails. Even his partners and a number of his friends seemed to have stepped back and taken a wait-and-see position.

You can only do what you can do, he reminded himself for the thousandth time. You can only do what you can do.

He was sifting aimlessly through the mound of mail on the coffee table when the phone began ringing. The caller ID read simply ERROR. Will hesitated. Then, both curious and prepared to hang up, he picked up the handset.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Will Grant,” the electronically distorted voice said. “Your life has certainly been quite eventful since we last spoke.”

Will wondered if Patty was on top of this. She hadn’t given him any instructions in terms of whether or not he needed to keep the killer on the line for any specific length of time, like the cops in the movies always tried to do. In fact, she hadn’t even told him whether the tap on his line was done at his phone, at the line outside, or at the phone company. Stay calm but sound upset, he told himself. Calm but upset.

“I don’t want you to call me anymore,” he pleaded. “Give yourself up and I’ll see to it you get the best therapist around. You’re sick. You need help.”

“I need help? Goodness, but those are strong words from a man who has done what the papers and TV say you’ve done. Face-first into a patient’s incision. That sort of publicity isn’t good for our cause, Dr. Grant. Not good at all. We have no place in this crusade for drug addicts.”

“I’m not one of you, and I’m not a drug addict.”

“Oh, but you are. These managed-care companies are your enemy just as they are ours. I read where you are claiming to have been set up.”

“I was.”

“Well, if not one of the managed-care companies you exposed at Faneuil Hall, then who? Was it Halliday? Because if it was, he could and should be moved up the list, say to tonight.”

“Stop it! Please, you’ve got to stop this insanity!”

“Funny, that’s precisely what we begged our mother’s so-called caregivers. You’ve got to stop her insanity, we told them.”

A mental-health patient! This is all about a mental-health patient. Will flashed on the many instances he had encountered over the years of managed-care companies refusing detox or even counseling for alcoholics and cutting short hospitalizations for psychiatric cases, even though there was concern that the patient was or might be suicidal. Of all the patients the industry had shortchanged since its rise to power, those with mental illness headed the list.

“Did your mother kill herself?” he asked. “Is that what’s behind all this?”

“When you have proven yourself reliable, Dr. Grant, we will increase your level of responsibility and knowledge. In the meantime, if you have any information as to who might have set you up, or you need to contact us for any reason, any reason at all, simply place a personal ad in the Herald containing the phrase In war there are casualties. We will contact you. Meanwhile, I suggest that you stay safely indoors tonight. The piper’s on the loose and he must be paid. Good day, Dr. Grant.”

“Wait!. .”

The tension had become almost unbearable around the state police in general and among the Middlesex detectives in particular. It had been over a week since the managed-care killer had been heard from-a week that coincided with Will Grant’s bizarre drug overdose in the OR. Spurred on by what he and Jack Court considered Patty’s reckless and potentially disastrous solo visit to the apartment of their only suspect, Brasco was keeping the