killings – and besides, plumbers were not exactly economically depressed. But what else did he have? If he was going on the assumption that Frannie's feelings, convictions, were accurate – which he now was – then he had to have missed something.
When the telephone rang now it startled him. He had been trying to figure out a way to contact one of Phil's friends: Hi, I think one of your co-workers might be killing people on the side. Anybody talk about anything like that? Unlikely.
'Hello.'
'Mr. Hardy, is it?' The welcome voice of Ali Singh, to that he was likely to know anything either.
'It's a little late,' Hardy said, 'but if you haven't eaten yet, I'd like to take you to lunch.'
It was a different setting than the Carnelian Room.
The Independent Unicorn was one of those San Francisco coffee houses in the avenues that always seemed to be empty and yet had been operating in the same location for thirty-some years. A postere next to the front door announced poetry readings on Wednesday nights, open-mike music on a few others, randomly. The place had picture windows, but they were covered with paisley cotton sheets, keeping the room suitably dim. There was sitar music and faint smells of patchouli and curry. A shirtless bearded man and a long-haired thin young woman dressed in black were playing chess at the counter.
Singh waved tentatively from his table at the back. Hardy's eyes, not yet adjusted to the light, made out the form, and he moved toward it, knocking into one of the tables on his way. A cat meowed at Hardy's feet and jumped up to the window ledge.
Hardy studied the table, moving on. Singh shook his hand, weakly. The little efficiency expert seemed somehow diminished, beaten down, though he put on a brave smile. When Hardy thanked him for the meeting, Singh said, 'It is my pleasure for you to come down. There is not, you see, much…' His voice stopped. He gestured around the room.
'Is this your place?' Hardy asked. 'You own it?'
A polite laugh. 'Oh, no, no.' He leaned forward, confiding. 'It is not expensive. They let me sit in here all day sometimes. It is better than being home. It is a place to come to, like work.'
The shirtless man had put on an apron for his waiter's duties, and was at their table offering the menu. Espresso, teas, whole grain bread products, lentil soup, brown rice, tabouli. Hardy ordered hummous and a salad. Singh asked if Hardy minded if he had the vegetable curry, at $4.95 the most expensive thing on the menu. Hardy said sure, anything, lunch was on him. Hardy, the sport.
When the waiter had gone, Hardy asked Singh what had happened to his job. Singh smiled sadly. 'Well, the business climate, you see…' he began, then trailed off again. He was still wearing his thin tie and his white shirt. The sportscoat was draped over the chair behind him. 'No, it is not that. I think it is just greed.'
'Greed?'
'No, that is not fair, not right. I suppose it is just business, but I am… I was with the Group for seven years and I thought…' He shrugged.
'What happened?'
'Well, the restructure, yes? The bottom line.' Singh drank from his water glass, no ice. 'I did not see this coming. It is my fault. I should have known. This is how profit is made – you trim the fat.' He laughed. 'I never saw myself as the fat, though. You see? I thought I was valuable, providing a service. Now, of course, I see.'
Hardy, having read the offering circular three times, was by now familiar with the facts: The Yerba Buena Medical Group had been in the process of changing its status from non-profit to for-profit, for well over a year – the HMO needed to attract capital if it expected to compete for patients, and it couldn't attract capital if it didn't make a profit.
'So they just let you go?'
Singh shrugged. 'Somebody else could do it more cheaply. Maybe not so well, I don't know. But I was staff, not a doctor, so…' Another shrug, the conclusion obvious. 'In any case, how do I help you? You did not come to talk about me.'
Hardy sat back on his chair. 'That’s all right, Mr. Singh. I don't mind hearing about you. You might have heard that Dr. Witt's wife was gound guilty of killing hi…'
'No, I did not. I do not follow the news since… his wife…?'
'She's my client. I'm trying to keep her from being getting sentenced to death.'
'I do not believe in that. I think execution by the State is just another form of murder.'
'Then you might want to help me?'
'If I can. But as I told you, Dr. Witt was respected.'
The food arrived, slightly more appetizing than its description. Hardy broke off some pita and dipped it in his hummous. Singh ate hungrily, beginning almost before the food was on the table.
'You also said that you and Dr. Witt had some problems over how money got spent.'
'But that was the Board, their decisions. It never came to anything. Dr. Witt did what he did in his office, what he wanted. I think he wanted more say, more control, in how the plan worked, in the decision-making.' Singh stopped eating for a second, a smile on his face. 'What he would do now, I don't know.'
'What do you mean, now?'
'Now there is no Ali Singh to discuss it with. Now, with the takeover.'
'You mean the change to for-profit?'
Singh shook his head. 'No, Mr. Hardy. That was last March. I had not bought in… almost no one did, but I think Dr. Witt, he would have arguments over this.'
Hardy stopped the pretense of eating. He felt a tingling at the back of his neck. 'I'm afraid you've lost me. I thought we were talking about the company going for profit.'
'Yes, it did that.'
Hardy waited.
'And then – this is separate, you see? Later, this summer, the Group was bought.'
'Who bought it?'
Singh had finished his curry. He pushed his plate aside. 'These are the people who let me go. The insurance people – PacRim. They paid $40 million in cash.'
Hardy pushed his own plate away. '$40 million.'
Singh was going on. 'When it filed with the State for the status change – the fee is to pay the State for your worth – it came to $535,000 dollars. That was the Group's net worth. The offer of $40 million was a great surprise, you see? No one thought the Group had that kind of value.'
Somebody did, Hardy thought. No business suddenly discovered its value had increased from $500,000 to $40 million in less than six months.
Yet the offering circular had described YBMG's financial future in the most conservative terms. No sale was contemplated – publicly – last Christmas. There had been no potential buyers and the market had been scoured at the time. The circular had been clear on that. The members shouldn't expect any windfall profit; it probably wasn't even worth the members' time to buy the nickel shares. They'd never be worth any more than that.
The tingling sensation was spreading.
'If I had been a member, I would have bought,' Singh said. 'Not many members bought but I would have. And everything now would be different.'
'The members did all right?' Hardy asked. 'The ones who bought in?'
Singh, the accountant, knew the figures. He couldn't help smiling bleakly in admiration. 'They offered forty- nine percent to the members, the doctors. That's 140,000 shares at five cents a share. How much you could buy depended on how long you had been with the Group. The most – for any one individual, you see – was 368 shares, which would be a total investment of $18.40.'
Hardy remembered that figure – 'less than twenty bucks.'
'I have been over these numbers so many times,' Singh said, 'and it is still very difficult to believe. Do you know what a nickel share is now worth?'
'I could do the math.'
