We'll Meet Again

percent of their patients enrolled in them.

“Today a doctor is told how many patients he must see. Some plans even go so far as to allot a doctor fifteen minutes a patient and require that he keep a time chart. It is not uncommon for doctors to work a fifty-five-hour week, for less money than they were making before the HMOs took over medicine.”

“What’s the answer?” Fran asked.

“Nonprofit HMOs run by doctors, I think. Also doctors forming their own unions. Medicine is making remarkable strides. There are many new medications and procedures available to doctors, some that enable us to prolong lives and give better quality of life. The incongruity is that these new procedures and services are being arbitrarily denied, as they were in Mrs. Gallo’s case.”

“How does Remington stack up with other HMOs, Doctor? It was, after all, founded by two doctors.”

“By two doctors who inherited the sterling mantle of a great physician, Jonathan Lasch. Gary Lasch wasn’t in the same class with his father-either as a doctor or a human being. As for Remington, it’s as lean and mean as they get. For example, they’ve been systematically shaving services and personnel at Lasch Hospital as part of their ongoing cost-cutting campaign. I only wish Remington and the HMOs they’re absorbing would be taken over by the plan that’s headed by the former surgeon general. He’s the kind of man the health system needs.”

Roy Kirkwood stood up. “I apologize, Ms. Simmons. I realize I’m just letting off steam to you. But I do have a reason. I think you would be rendering a great service if you used the power of your program to wake up the public to this increasingly callous and alarming situation. Too many people are unaware of the fact that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

Fran stood up as well. “Dr. Kirkwood, did you know Dr. Jack Morrow?”

Kirkwood smiled slightly. “Jack Morrow was the best. As smart as they come, a great diagnostician, loved his patients. His death was a tragedy.”

“It seems strange that his murder has never been solved.”

“If you think I’m upset with Remington Health Management, you should have heard Jack Morrow. I admit he probably went too far in pushing his complaints.”

“ ‘Too far’?” Fran asked quickly.

“Jack could get hot under the collar. I understand that he actually referred to Peter Black and Gary Lasch as ‘a pair of murderers.’ That’s going too far, although I confess it’s the same way I felt about Black and the system when Josephine Gallo died. But I didn’t say it.”

“Who heard Dr. Morrow make that statement, Dr. Kirkwood?”

“Well, Mrs. Russo, my receptionist, for one. She used to work for Jack. If there were others who heard him, I’m not aware of it.”

“Is she the lady outside?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Thank you for your time, Doctor.”

Fran went into the reception room and stopped at the desk. “I understand you worked for Dr. Morrow, Mrs. Russo,” she said to the small, gray-haired woman. “He was so kind to me when my father died.”

“He was kind to everyone.”

“Mrs. Russo, you knew my name when I came in. Do you know that I’m investigating Dr. Gary Lasch’s death for the True Crime television program?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Dr. Kirkwood just told me that you heard Dr. Morrow refer to Dr. Lasch and Dr. Black as a ‘pair of murderers.’ That’s pretty strong language.”

“He’d just come back from the hospital and was terribly upset. I’m sure it had been the usual business of fighting for a patient who’d been denied a procedure. And then the poor man was shot to death only a few nights later.”

“If I remember correctly, the police decided that a drug addict broke in and surprised him working late in his office.”

“That’s right. Every drawer of his desk was dumped on the floor, and the medical supply cabinet was emptied out. I understand that drug addicts can be desperate, but why did they have to shoot him? Why couldn’t they take what they wanted and just tie him up or something?” Tears glistened in the woman’s eyes.

Unless whoever broke in was afraid of being recognized, Fran thought. That’s the usual reason a burglary becomes a homicide. She started to say good-bye, then remembered the other question she wanted to ask.

“Mrs. Russo, was anyone else around when Dr. Morrow called Drs. Lasch and Black a pair of murderers?”

“Only two people, thank goodness, Miss Simmons. Wally Barry, a longtime patient of Dr. Morrow’s, and his mother, Edna.”

52

Lou Knox lived in an apartment over the garage that sat to the side of the Whitehalls ’ residence. The three- room unit suited him well. One of the few hobbies he enjoyed was woodworking, and Calvin Whitehall had allowed him use of one of the storerooms in the oversized garage for his tools and worktable. He also had permitted Knox to refinish the apartment to suit himself.

Now the living room and bedroom were paneled with bleached white oak. Shelves lined the walls, although one would not call them bookshelves, since Lou Knox was not a reader. Instead, his television, state-of-the-art stereo, and CD and video collections filled the shelves.

They were also excellent cover-ups for the large and ever-growing collection of incriminating evidence he had accumulated for possible use against Calvin Whitehall.

He was fairly certain that he would never need any of it, since he and Cal Whitehall had long ago reached an understanding on what his duties were to be. Besides, Lou knew that to use that evidence would be to incriminate himself as well. Therefore, that was a hand that Lou had no intention of ever showing except as a last resort. To do that would be to cut off your nose to spite your face, as the grandmother who raised him used to say when he complained about the butcher for whom he’d worked as a delivery boy.

“Does he pay you regular?” his grandmother would demand.

“Yes, but he asks his customers to put the tip on the bill,” Lou used to protest, “and then he counts it as part of my salary.”

All these years later it gave Lou satisfaction to remember how he had gotten back at the butcher. On his way to deliver an order, he’d open the package and take out part of it-a piece of the chicken, or a slice from the filet mignon, or enough chopped sirloin for a good hamburger.

His grandmother, who worked the four-to-midnight shift as a telephone operator at a motel ten miles away, would have left him a meal of canned spaghetti and meatballs, or something else he would find equally unappetizing. So on those days he had managed to filch some of the customers’ meat, he’d come home from his after-school job and feast on beef or chicken. Then he’d throw out whatever his grandmother had left him, and no one was the wiser.

The only person who ever caught on to what Lou was up to was Cal. One evening when Cal and he were sophomores, Cal stopped over just as he was frying a steak he’d taken from a package the butcher had sent to one of his best customers.

“You’re a jerk,” Cal had said. “You broil steak, you don’t fry it.”

That night forged an alliance between the two young men: Cal, the son of the town drunks, and Lou, the grandson of Bebe Clauss, whose only daughter had eloped with Lenny Knox and returned to town two years later just long enough to deposit her son with her mother. That burden out of her life, she’d disappeared again.

Despite his background, Cal had gone off to college, helped by his cunning and a drive to succeed. Lou drifted from job to job, in between serving thirty days in the town jail for shoplifting, and three years in the state penitentiary for aggravated assault. Then, almost sixteen years ago, he’d received a call from Cal, now known as Mr. Calvin Whitehall, of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Gotta go kiss the feet of my old buddy, was the way Lou characterized the summons to Greenwich. Cal had