“Snore,” said Karp. “Just the story on Robinson, please. What’s he up to?”
“But all the fun is in the details!”
“No, really, V.T. Tell me about Robinson.”
“Well, since you insist, about a month ago the Southern District U.S. Attorney’s Office got an anonymous tip that Robinson’s clinics were dirty. They have a hotline for stuff like that. They did some preliminary screening and found discrepancies. Okay, no surprise there, the regs are so complicated that practically everyone in the program is in some kind of irregularity, but Robinson’s operation was big enough and funny enough to flash on the screen. Paul Menotti caught the case. You know him?”
“By rep. A hard charger.”
“To be sure. Anyway, Paul called me in, because of the state law violation, of course, but also because, though I blush to say it, if you want to find out where naughty money is flowing, I am The Man.”
“And was there naughty money flowing?”
“Mmm, that’s what we’re trying to determine. There’re a couple of different ways to defraud these programs. Most fraudulent docs just add on treatments they haven’t done and bill for them. An old lady comes in, they have some lackey slip her the happy pills, and then they bill for a full examination, with lab work. A little upscale from that is where they invent patients, which has the advantage that they don’t even have to have a real clinic, just a bunch of government patient numbers and a vivid medical imagination.”
“Where do they get the numbers?”
“Oh, from actual people, alive or dead. Mrs. Jones dies and they keep using her number for billing. Or Mrs. Jones wanders off to another provider, but she’s still, quote, getting her pills every week, unquote, and the feds’re paying. And then, finally, we have the whole lab and drug business, kickbacks to and from labs and pharmacies-the labs pad their billings and the clinics get a schmear off it. Or the clinic generates scrip for drugs, but the pharmacy doesn’t really supply them, and they get a cut of the billings. Or the pharmacy really does supply drugs, which the feds pay for, and then the drugs get sold on the street. The only limit is the human imagination.”
“This is big money?”
“Immense. A bonanza. Fifteen billion in Medicare-Medicaid money goes through New York City every year. Robinson’s clinics alone have over thirty million bucks’ worth of the pie. How much of that is skim, God only knows.”
“Assuming God is an accountant.”
“Of course God is an accountant. It’s the basis of all morality.”
“You can’t get to him? Robinson, not God.”
“Not yet. As I said, he’s a rare bird. Very smart, very smooth.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Yes, we’ve had several dates. It’s all a big misunderstanding. Dr. Robinson is a Park Avenue specialist. He maintains an interest in St. Nicholas Medical Centers, Inc., which is the holding company for the clinics, out of noblesse oblige: he has an investment in the corporation, and he gets a modest return in exchange for his medical advice and his Harvard degree. The board of the corporation and the management of the clinics are full of local fronts, of the correct ethnicity. We find any fraud, in other words, his tame Negroes and Hispanics take the fall.”
“So what happened to the money he’s supposed to be skimming here?” Karp asked.
“Ah, that’s the question,” said V.T., beaming. “And the answer? The answer is, we don’t know yet. We have to move somewhat gingerly with Robinson. He is heavily accoutered with legal counsel. What we do know is, one, he set up St. Nicholas, and two, St. Nicholas is dirty. It follows that he has his fingers in the money stream somehow, but …” V.T. shrugged elegantly. “What’s your interest in the doctor? Prostate acting up again?”
Karp laughed. “Au contraire. If anything, it is I who will be jamming large irregular objects up Doctor Robinson’s rectum. Tell me, does Dr. R. strike you as the sort of man who might remove a close associate if that associate grew troublesome?”
“ ‘Remove’? You mean the Big M?”
Karp nodded. “Could be. His nurse slash girlfriend turned up dead this past September, in his bedroom, and Robinson went through a lot of trouble to distance himself from the death. The death itself is suspicious.”
“Oh-ho,” said V.T. and was silent for a moment, playing with his lip. Then he said, “Well, since you ask, I’d have to give that a qualified yes. There is a shitload of money floating free here, and if someone was, say, threatening to tell us where it is, or trying to grab a piece of it, then, yes, I’d say Robinson could do the deed. As a moral being, Dr. Robinson is easily distinguishable from Dr. Schweitzer.”
“It sounds like it,” said Karp. “We’re digging up the nurse for a full postmortem. If it shows anything nasty, we’ll get the doc in for a frank exchange of views.”
“Speaking of which, why don’t you sit in with me and Menotti before that? It might give you some sense of a possible motive, or maybe you’ll pick up something we missed.”
Motive again, thought Karp, his mind drifting involuntarily back to Rohbling. Greed seemed so simple compared to whatever impelled young Jonathan. He made a mental note: if Waley pleaded NGI, he would have the defendant examined by somebody he trusted more than the usual Bellevue hacks.
He realized V.T. was staring at him. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Had a thought. Yeah, good idea. I’d like to meet Menotti.”
“Then come with me,” said V.T. “There’s a meeting to talk about warrants at one-thirty today.”
Still strained with each other, but holding hands nevertheless, Marlene and her daughter walked with the big dog down Canal Street toward Tranh’s noodle shop.
“Oh, no!” cried Lucy when they had come near enough to see the debris on the pavement, the police sawhorses set up as barriers, the yellow crime-scene tape. Tranh’s was a black vacancy in the row of shops, stinking of char and dripping with dirty water, from out of which presently emerged a stocky middle-aged man in a firefighter’s coat and helmet. He paused at the barrier to write on a clipboard. Marlene approached him.
“Excuse me, I’m a friend of the man who ran this place. Do you know … did anything happen to him?”
“Not as far as I know,” said the man. “Somebody lived back there behind the restaurant, but he must’ve got out.”
“This was an arson, wasn’t it?”
The officer’s face grew blank. “It’s a case under investigation.”
“Yeah, right. Look, I used to be with the D.A. Here’s my card. I saw a serious altercation the other day between the owner and a bunch of punks who were trying to extort him. I can ID them anytime you want.”
The investigator took the card and expressed his thanks. Then Lucy shouted, “Mr. Tranh!” and pointed across Canal Street, where, indeed, Mr. Tranh was emerging from the all-night Chinese movie theater. He was dressed in an army blanket, black trousers, and flip-flops, and carried a cheap Day-glo orange vinyl duffel bag. Marlene and Lucy dashed across the wide thoroughfare to him and deluged him with a babble of questions in Cantonese and French, while the dog sniffed suspiciously at Tranh’s blanket.
Tranh responded to Marlene in the latter tongue. “Madame, I beg you, relieve yourself of any concern. I am perfectly well.”
“But what happened, M. Tranh?”
“I was visited in the early morning by arsonists. Interesting, because I had just made up my mind to purchase a grille for the window. This demonstrates the necessity of acting swiftly upon one’s instincts, does it not? In any case, they threw a stone through the glass, followed by a gasoline bomb. I am not a heavy sleeper, and so I was warned and was able to escape through the back door.”
“My God! I didn’t realize you lived behind the restaurant. You must have lost everything.”