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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."

Singh smiled his sad gentle smile again. "No need, I have done it. One hundred forty-two dollars and eighty-six cents. Per share."

Hardy whistled.

"Fifty-two thousand, five hundred seventy-two dollars and forty-eight cents," Singh said.

"What's that?"

"That's what you have now if you bought your three hundred and sixty-eight shares for eighteen dollars and forty cents."

*****

"Interesting, if true. But so what?"

Freeman was on his own turf. Unlike his austere apartment, the surroundings in his office were sumptuous. A twelve-by-eighteen-foot Persian rug covered the center of the dark hardwood floors; fine leaded crystal was on display on the mirrored shelves behind the fully stocked bar; two original Bufanos and a Bateman hung on the sponge-painted walls. The corner room was large – three times the size of Hardy's – with full bookshelves, two full-size couches, several armchairs. There were drapes – not the ubiquitous louvered blinds – on the three sets of windows. Freeman's desk was a five-by-seven-foot expanse of spotless shining rosewood.

It was six o'clock and Hardy was sitting in one of the armchairs. After his discussion with Ali Singh, he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Donna Bellows again. He had also left a message with Jody Bachman at Crane amp; Crane. Then he had spent an hour or so going over the YBMG offering circular in some detail. In light of what he had discovered with Singh, it didn't read the same way it had.

"So what?" Hardy replied. "So something, at least."

Freeman grunted, handed Hardy a cold beer and went back to the bar, rummaging around down behind it.

"It's a lot of money," Hardy persisted. "It's a hell of a lot of money."

Freeman came up with a bottle of red wine. "I agree." He was taking the foil off. "But again, so what? So a bunch of doctors made a lot of money. Happens every day."

"Not a bunch. Only a few. This accountant, Singh, said he didn't think more than fifteen, twenty guys bought in."

Freeman pulled the cork, sniffed it and laid it on the bar's surface.

He lifted one of the large-bowled crystal wine glasses from behind him and poured himself a quarter of the bottle, holding it up to the window to check its color, its clarity, its legs.

Hardy crossed a leg. "Let me know if I'm bothering you, David."

He sipped at the wine. "Not at all," he said, taking another mouthful, flushing it around his mouth, gargling, finally swallowing. He came around the bar. "The '82 Bordeaux are not overrated. You really ought to try a glass."

Choosing an armchair, placing the glass on a marble-topped end table, he sat down. Hardy defiantly pulled at his beer.

Freeman sat forward. "I would love to put something together here, Dismas, believe me. I'm not seeing it."

Hardy sat back, trying to formulate his position. It would be good practice if he had to present it to Villars, or a jury. Maybe it wasn't as clear as it seemed to him. "Let's be generous. Say a maximum of fifty doctors bought the stock. There are about four hundred doctors in the Group."

Freeman waited, hearing him out, sipping his wine. "Okay?"

"Okay, so from my perspective, and I admit it's almost a year later, the cover letter looks like an outright deception."

"A year ago you hadn't started your first trial," Freeman reminded him. "You didn't work here. You didn't have two children. You'd never met Jennifer Witt, and Larry and Matt Witt were alive." He swirled more wine. "A lot can happen in a year. Perspectives change."

"I think the reason Larry got in touch with his lawyer, and then this guy down in LA, was because he thought something was fishy – back then, and he was calling them on it."

"Calling who?"

"The Board, the attorneys, I don't know. Whoever drew up this thing, whoever concocted the scam."

The bushy eyebrows went up. "Now it's a scam?"

Now Freeman sat all the way back into his chair. "Don't hang your hopes on the way you want something to be, Dismas."

"I don't think I'm doing that."

Freeman shook his head. "You want it to be a scam because if it is a scam – and you can prove it – then, maybe, you can help Jennifer with it. Although how you plan to do even that eludes me." He leaned forward again. "All you can do this round is get the death penalty mitigated. She's already guilty. You can't get her retried."