“Meeting of the nasty little minds,” he said. “Perfect till it wasn’t.”
I said, “Gavin’s accident started the downward spiral. He underwent personality changes, turned into a stalker, got busted, and needed court-ordered therapy. Sonny could fix that, by sending Gavin to someone who could be counted upon to say the right things to the court. But that good deed came back to bite him, because Gavin started thinking of himself as a muckraker. He snooped and found some serious muck.”
Milo closed his eyes, and sat without moving. For a moment I thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he sat up and stared at me, blankly, as if he’d been dreaming.
I said, “You still with me?”
Slow nod.
“Jerry lied to us about the referral, made up the story about Dr. Silver being his golf partner precisely because he wanted to hide his ties to the group. He suggested it was a sex crime. Another attempt to deflect you.”
“Dear old Dad,” he said. “Claims to be a metals dealer, but he’s really a pimp.”
“With Gavin’s stalking problem, Jerry probably figured he was being a great dad by setting him up with Christi. And Gavin seemed happy, bragged to Kayla about his sex life with his new girlfriend. The only trouble was his brain injury continued to skew his thinking. He took down license numbers, including his father’s. Someone found out, and that got him and poor Christi Marsh killed. Mary Lou figured it out, and it scared the hell out of her. Bilking the Department of Corrections is one thing, murder’s another. Maybe she pressured Sonny and Larsen to drop the whole thing. She knew Sonny carried a torch for her, thought she had him under control. But cornered, Sonny wasn’t harmless, at all. And neither was Albin Larsen.”
“If Bumaya can be believed about Larsen, we’re talking monster.”
“Monster with a Ph.D.,” I said. “Clever, calculating, dangerous. Mary Lou overvalued her own charisma.”
“What about Sheila? In the dark about all of it?”
“Sheila’s got serious emotional problems. She and Jerry have been unavailable to each other for years, but he’s stuck by her for appearances. Now one kid’s out of the house, and the other’s dead. Toss in some panic, and it would be the perfect time for him to split.”
“Appearances,” said Milo. “The house, the Benz, B.H. school district for the kids. Then Gavin gets his cranium shaken up, and it all falls apart. What about the impalement? The sexual angle? For simple executions, shooting would’ve been enough.”
“The impalement’s icing on the cake,” I said. “Someone who enjoys killing. Someone who’s done it before.”
“Ray Degussa,” he said. He got up, walked to the door, looked up and down the empty corridor, said, “It’s quiet,” and sat back down. “So Mary scammed but couldn’t handle murder?”
“She could’ve rationalized the scam, told herself they were doing good, just padding the bill a bit. Who was the victim anyway? A corrupt prison bureaucracy.”
“It’s exactly the line of bullshit an asshole like Larsen would’ve fed her.” He frowned. “Problem is, this whole house of cards is predicated upon a scam, and we don’t even know one exists.”
“I’ll check with Olivia in a few hours.”
“You really think Mary Lou would be foolish enough to threaten Larsen and the others? Would she be blind to the kind of people she was dealing with?”
“Believing your own PR can be very dangerous.”
“What about Gull?”
“Either he was involved, or he wasn’t.”
“I wonder why Gavin fired him.”
“Me, too.”
“Crazy kid,” he said. “Stupid, crazy kid. Crazy family.”
“What about the other kid in the family?” I said. “The one who didn’t come home after her brother died. Sometimes it’s the ones who get away who have the most interesting things to say.”
“Kelly, the law student at BU.”
“Her first year at law school would be over by now. But she stayed in Boston.”
“Another item for the old to-do list. Lots of to-dos. I need to sleep.”
“We both do,” I said.
He struggled to his feet. The rims of his eyes were scarlet, and his face was gray. “Enough,” he said. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”
CHAPTER 37
The phone woke me up. I’d gone to bed at 3:30 A.M.
As my eyes cleared, I focused on the clock. Six hours later.
I grabbed the receiver, fumbled, got hold of it.
“Found it,” said Olivia Brickerman. “The key was divergent thinking.”
“Morning,” I said.
“You sound groggy.”
“Long night.”
“Poor baby. Want to brush your teeth and call me back?”
I laughed. “No, tell me.”
“The problem,” she said, “was that I was being too limited, concentrating on awards and grants. As if that’s the only way stuff gets funded. Finally, I shifted gears and voila! This thing was legislated, Alex. Tacked on as a rider to a tough felony sentencing law. Assemblyman Reynard Bird, D-Oakland- you know him, used to be a Black Panther?”
“Sure.”
“Bird got the rider stuck on the bill as part of the old give-and-take. So now you can send bad guys to prison for long periods, but when they get out, they get free therapy.”
“Any bad guys?”
“Any paroled felons who ask for treatment get it. Up to a year of individual and/or group for each bad guy, no restriction on hours, and the funding comes straight from Medi-Cal. That’s why I couldn’t find the money stream. It’s a drop in the ocean of general medical payments.”
“Sweet deal for felons,” I said. “And for providers.”
“Sure is, but few providers have taken the state up on it. Either they don’t know about it, or they don’t want criminals crowding their waiting rooms. Probably the former. Bird never publicized it, and usually he’s the first to throw a press conference. I found out his third wife’s a psychologist, and guess what: She’s running two of the biggest programs in Oakland and Berkeley. Almost all the activity’s up north. There’s another program in Redwood City, and some groups in Santa Cruz that are run by an eighty-five-year-old shrink who practiced in L.A. and retired. The one you’re probably interested in is Pacifica Psychological Services, Beverly Hills, California. Right?”
“How’d you know?”
“It’s the only program in Southern Cal.”
“Payment straight out of the Medi-Cal cookie jar,” I said. “What’s the reimbursement level?”
“Wait, there’s more, darling. We’re talking Medi-Cal plus. The bill authorizes surcharges because of an ‘exigency’ clause. The funds come out of some legislative slush account, but the administration’s through Medi-Cal.”
“Meaning these are patients your average doctor wouldn’t want to treat, so the state provides an incentive. How much of one?”
“Double reimbursement,” she said. “Actually a bit more than double. Medi-Cal pays fourteen dollars for group therapy by a Ph.D., fifteen for an MD. Providers under this bill get thirty-five. The same goes for individual therapy. From twenty an hour to forty-five. Seventy bucks for the initial intake and forty-eight for case conferences.”
“Thirty-five an hour for group,” I said, recalculating my previous estimates. Lots of zeroes. “Not bad.”
“There’s no fiscal oversight I can find, just bill the state and collect.”
“Any way to find out how much each program has billed?”
“Not for me, but Milo could probably do it,” she said. “If he wants to pursue it further, I’d call Sacramento. Ask for Dwight Zevonsky, he’s a good guy who investigates fraud.”
I copied down the number.
“What’s the official name of the program?” I said.