Therapy

“Did Bennett Hacker spend any time at any of those satellite offices?”

“Flora Newsome,” he said.

“She worked in parole. It seems awfully coincidental.”

“Yeah… I didn’t want to ask too much. If Hacker’s dirty, I don’t want him to know I’m snooping around. But I’ll do what I can to sniff behind the scenes.”

He drummed the table. “I’m getting that feeling- the stew is starting to simmer. But everything’s still at arm’s length- like I’m cooking in someone else’s kitchen.”

He got up, paced the room, tugged at his tie. “The way I see it, Gavin convinced himself he was gonna be some kind of investigative reporter, was nosing around in his dad’s affairs. Or, he’d noticed funny goings-on at the therapy building, first. Started doing some serious surveillance, took notes.”

“A psychologist, a parole officer, and a con,” I said. “Without Jerry Quick, it could just be some sort of treatment arrangement.”

“Precissimoso. Jerry being there takes it in a whole other direction. Jerry’s a womanizing hustler who hires someone like Angie Paul for his front gal. He’s also Sonny Koppel’s tenant. And Sonny’s Mary Lou’s business partner in the halfway houses, the moneyman. The one who referred Jerry to Mary Lou in the first place.”

“Have you found any business dealings between Sonny and Quick?”

“Not a damn thing. And I dug deep, yesterday and early today.”

He slouched over to the fridge, returned drinking pink grapefruit juice from a carton. “Can’t find a speck of dirt on ol’ Sonny. No slumlord problems, no criminal complaints, no one in Organized Crime has ever heard of him. So far he’s coming across as exactly what he claims to be: a guy who owns a lot of properties. He was also being straight about giving away big bucks. Franchise Tax Board says Charitable Planning is on the up-and-up as a tax-exempt foundation. Sonny files his papers on time and donates at least a million every year.”

“To whom?”

“The poor, the sick, the halting. Every worthy disease, plus Save the Bay, Nourish the Trees, Coddle the Spotted Owl, whatever.”

“Saint Sonny,” I said.

“If it looks too good to be true… I don’t know what that meeting was about, but the only thing that makes sense is they’re all involved in something shady. Maybe Sonny got a hook into Jerry Quick because Quick’s always cash shy. But I still can’t figure out what use Quick would be to him. Putting that aside for the moment, what kind of scam could a bunch of shrinks pull off that would make big bucks?”

“The first thing that comes to mind,” I said, “is basic fraud- overbilling insurance or the state. The easiest target would be the state- some kind of government contract. Sonny would know how to work that angle. He gets the government to finance his halfway houses and his senior citizen housing. He claims the halfway houses were Mary Lou and Larsen’s idea. Maybe that’s true, but if owning halfways helped plug Sonny into a subsidized treatment plan, that would appeal to his business sense.”

“Therapy for cons,” he said.

“A built-in supply of patients. Patients they could bill for whether or not they treated them because who’s going to complain?”

“Sonny and Mary Lou and Larsen. And Gavin saw some kind of staff meeting.”

“Gavin didn’t copy down Gull’s license number,” I said. “So maybe Gull missed the meeting. Or he wasn’t involved. He’s got personal problems, and he sweats too much. If I were setting up a slick criminal enterprise, I’d view him as a poor risk.”

“I’d still like to know why Gavin ditched him as a therapist.” He paced some more. “For a guy like Sonny to get involved in a scam, it would have to be big money.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Sonny claims he’s not into accumulating stuff. That seems to be true, meaning he’s turned on by the game- the process of making money.”

“Soaking the government.”

“Or Sonny did figure out a way to make some serious money. He claims he was holding the ground floor open until Koppel and the others decided about group therapy. If they were setting up some sort of parolee treatment that brought in big bucks, that would justify leaving the Charitable Planning suite vacant. I got into the space, yesterday. They were cleaning the carpets, and I was able to walk in. Empty, except for a small office for Sonny and a big room with some folding chairs. Why would Sonny need chairs if all he did was come in and sign checks? But they’d be useful if someone checked and you were claiming to be running groups. Of course if the person checking was your pal, you wouldn’t need to put up much of a front.”

“Bennett Hacker,” he said. “There’s some deal with the parole board, and Hacker’s the overseer.”

“A guy in Hacker’s position could also supply names in return for kickback. And Raymond Degussa, being a wily, dominant con- someone who pulled off robberies using intimidation alone- could convince the patients to cooperate.”

“Headshrinking for parolees,” he said. “Something like that could really bring in serious money?”

“If there were enough parolees,” I said. “Let’s do the math. Private practice group therapy can run between fifty and a hundred bucks an hour. Medi-Cal reimburses for much less- fifteen, twenty. But there are all sorts of other things you can bill Medi-Cal for. Individual treatment, initial intakes, follow-ups, testing, case conferences-”

“Case conferences. As in getting together, after hours, at the building. How much does Medi-Cal pay for that?”

“Thirty-six bucks for thirty minutes. If these people have hooked on to some supplemental program that adds to the Medi-Cal billing- something Sonny wangled- the fee could be substantially higher. But let’s be conservative and assume the core is group therapy at twenty dollars per patient per session. I saw at least two dozen folding chairs. If they’re running groups of twenty- or claiming to be- each group session would bring in four hundred bucks an hour. Running six groups a day five times a week would bring in twelve thousand dollars. That alone would be six hundred grand a year. Add more patients, toss in additional fees, and it could get interesting. Especially if you’re not really doing any work.”

“Millions,” he said.

“It’s not inconceivable.”

“Each con gets daily group therapy… how many groups could you justify for a single patient?”

“If you’ve set up an immersion model, you could treat him all day.”

“What, like that deal where you sat all day and some guy yelled at you for being weak-willed and wouldn’t let you pee?”

“Est, Synanon,” I said. “There’s plenty of precedent, particularly with substance abuse. A case could be made for immersion for cons, because the aim would be large-scale change on several dimensions. The answer to an inquiring skeptic would be that it was still cheaper than keeping them in prison. And that if it really straightened them out, it was a giant money saver.”

“Mary Lou and her rehab kick,” he said. “Going on the radio- she and Larsen.” He laughed. “The government pays to shrink bad guys. I’m in the wrong business. So are you, for that matter.”

I said, “How many parolees live in Sonny’s halfway houses?”

“Three houses? I’d guess a couple of hundred.”

“Think about the income if everyone got on the rolls.”

“Hundred bucks a week per con- five grand a year. A million bucks for group therapy alone.”

“Plus other charges.”

“The only problem is, Alex, a couple of shrinks doing all that billing would be physically impossible.”

“So they use assistants- peer counselors. And they flat out lie, bill for sessions that never take place.”

“Peer counselors,” he said. “Meaning other cons? Yeah, that’s the rage, ain’t it? Ex-gangbangers become facilitators, junkies go the drug-counseling route. That’s where a guy like Degussa would fit in… scumbags doing therapy. That’s legal?”

“Everything depends how the contract’s written,” I said. “And a guy like Sonny would know how to get a juicy government contract.”

“All those billable hours,” he said. “The place would be jumping. But it’s not.”