Chapter 23

He's serious. He's a serious guy, I can tell. Sayin' the Devil behind everything.

"I see." Jessica said. "That bad?"

"Well, he's behind all evil. We accept it as evil when crimials do bad things, rob, rape, murder. Big organized crime. Small organized crime. Governments, expecially at the federal level, are almost entirely evil, one way or another. Whether it's a small evil, like lying to get elected, or taking a small bribe, or the big ones. And the big ones usually start out with small ones. Why would medicine be different?"

"Yeah," Jessica said, "I always knew there was corruption. I was a nurse. My mother has had cancer, I've been around doctors and hospitals a lot. The people, doctors and nurses, almost all seem like good people. It's not easy to see the dark side from the hospital rooms, where you're trying to help people, not worrying abut anything else."

"And they are," Harry said. "Almost with out exception. There may be some here and there, not very nice as people but do good work and do it right. That's not where the evil is. It's up there in the office and conference rooms where the suits, most of them these days not even medical people. Business adminstration degrees. climbing the corporate ladder.

"It's all about money, and the kind of life they can buy for themselves with that money. It's bad enough if they're responsible for making cars or computers, or running a bank or an airline. There your mistakes cost the company money, or cause people down the food chain to lose their jobs. But here they're using people, and their lives, as game pieces."

"The love of money," Jessica said.

"Pretty much. You hear about human trafficking, I don't know how this compares to other kinds, but it's pretty despicable."

"Children at one end, helpless sick people on the other."

"And most often the sick people are old people." Harry said. "Someone said that there's no money to be made from healthy people, and none to be had from dead people - the profit is in the middle."

"You don't get more cynical that that, I suppose."

"Like I said, don't get me started. Let's talk about your case. What do you want to do? Sue them, I'd guess."

"We should. But would that solve the problem?"

"If you could get a lawyer to take it - and I've talked to the guys in Little Rock and Memphis, a couple in St. Louis and they're not interested unless it's an easy-to-win contingency case that would most likely be settled out of court - you could win. With what you've got, it's dead-bang, and they'd offer you a million or two, even if you took it to trial and won, their insurance would pay off. Their insurance rates go up some, but it's negligible compared to what they're taking in. But I have yet to find a lawyer that'll take it, let you pay him by the hour to do it. They all want the big score. And the easy one. This.." tapping the folder "is too much work. No one wants to work for it any more."

"How much would we have to sweeten the pot? Guarantee a certain amount. A couple hundred, a quarter million? On top of his fee."

"You can do that?"

"We can. And we'll offer to split the award as if he'd taken it on congingency, whatever that would be."

"I can ask around. There might be one interested. But I'm guessing that's not all you're after."

"If there are no consequences for the guilty, there's not enough money they can pay us. Who keeps the doctors from continuing to maim and kill people?"

"Short of somehow getting criminal charges against them," Harry said, "you probably can't. I'm looking into the doctor at ACCH, and I expect to find what I usually do. Incompetents, wear out their welcome at one place, move on. Always someone to hire them. As I said, the penalties are all financial and already factored in."

"So nothing stops the Doctor Copelands of the world."

"Copeland? Him again. I wonder if he's the only doctor they got over there. Could be, low-budget as it looks."

"You know about him?"

"Not much. Yet. But he's on the other three cases I've got."

Jessica looking over at me.

"Alex?"

Sonofabitch almost killed me. Did cripple me, in mind and body.

"Take him down. Them. Whatever it takes."

"What do you need from us? The money's no problem, just tell us."

"For now, let's see what we've got to work with. One of the cases I've got is a dead-bang wrongful death. Twenty-four old kid, did whatever they do to them over there for a few days, dismissed him. Next day he had to be taken go NEA, blood clots in his lungs. He was too far gone by then. His mother works for a hospital over in Walnut Ridge. Not a nurse, works in the office. But she knows a good bit. But they're like most, don't have the money to get anything done, even if lawyers or law enforcement would do it. I have an assistant comes in a couple of days a week. If you'll bring the records over, I'll have her copy them and start working up a narrative, in case I do find a lawyer that wants it.

"I'll see where that leads. Meanwhile, I'm about to take a good hard look at that hospital. Who owns it, who runs it, and I'll hit the streets, buy some drinks for some people. There's way too much smoke for there not to be something on fire."

"How much do you need to get started?" Jessica asked.

"Let's start with a thousand and see how far that goes."

"How about two? We won't have to reload so often. Although I suspect we're going to be talking regularly."

"Two's good if you're comfortable with it. Bring the records by as soon as you can, Mary Ann will be in tomorrow so the sooner we have them... "

"Gotcha. Good talking to you, and we'll be by tomorrow."