Chapter 70

"Sale all squared away?" Harry asked.

"All done," Alex said. "We're going to get a lawyer and accountant to keep the tees dotted and eyes crossed, or however that goes."

Harry grinned.

"You're improving. At least your sense of humor is. A couple of weeks ago you didn't have one."

"Yeah. Jess says so."

"You used to make word jokes a lot," Jessica said. "Transposing letters that way, saying words backward. Do you remember any of that?"

"Yeah, seem to. Don't know much I remember and how much I'm learning again. But we got work to do."

"We've been busy," Harry said. "We've got quite a bit to go over."

Karen and Jennifer were there, along with Elizabeth.

"Let's get to it." Alex said.

Harry walked over to a large whiteboard that hadn't been there on their previous visits. A large multicolored diagram covered most of it.

"This is what I showed you before," he said, "with some updates. You see those dark red spots, twenty-two of them. Those are the directly managed hospitals. That's probably the biggest piece of the pie, but the others are considerable.

"The green lines, for example, show the flow of money to Plano for consulting. That's a rather nebulous term, deliberately so. You can assign a monetary value to something that doesn't exist, and no one can prove it doesn't. There's another thirty-something hospitals, in addition to the managed ones, paying for these consulting services.

"The yellow lines connect pharmatceutical distrbutors. There are three - Smith in Jonesboro, Phillips in Spartanburg, and Barnes in Chattanooga. They supply almost every hospital in those two groups. The third group - about sixty - we're still working on. That's a little too consistent for my taste.

"Then you have the supplies - everything from cleaning supplies to surgical instruments - there's a lot of disposable stuff, syringes, swabs, bandages, anything that gets used in hospitals. Even janitorial supplies are part of it. And it all goes to these distributors.."

He used his laser pointer to indicate several points on the map.

"You'll notice suppliers in Chattanooga, Spartanburg, and Cleveland."

"Cleveland?" asked Alex.

"Tennessee," Harry replied. "About a half hour from Chattanooga."

"I see." Alex said.

"Yeah," Harry said. "We suspect, given the proximity and general setup. It'll be the same people or someone related in some way."`

"How do we use this information," asked Jessica. "We know about business relationships, but they probably are legitimate, at least on the surface."

"Right. We have to find the dirty part. The kickbacks, the numbers manipulation. And we'll need to get a bit deeper, inside."

"How?" Jessica asked.

"Alex may have some ideas," Harry replied. "We need to get into their internal network. Alex, got any ideas?"

Beats me. I built stuff, didn't spend much time trying to break other peoples' stuff.

"You mean break into their... the hospitals, systems? It's doable, but not what I was doing. What am I looking at?"

Harry took a folder from the table and handed it to Alex.

"This give you any ideas?"

Alex looked through the contents of the folder.

"Some samples," Harry said. "Liz has to be careful, taking screenshots and emailing them to her personal email, then printing them out. There's smoke there, but we need to get to the source. We need to penetrate the networks of the hospitals. Got any ideas?"

"You mean breaking in, exploring?"

"Pretty much. We know what we want, it's a matter of finding it."

"I don't remember... I did security work, naturally." Alex said. "I don't think I ever did much trying to get in places I wasn't supposed to be. From what I do remember... I don't know.

"Do any of your contacts have that kind of expertise?"

"I can probably find some." Harry replied.

"What about Doug?" asked Jessica.

Doug. Why was it, something..."

"He seemed interested in some things I wasn't," Alex said. "I believe he played games a lot. I don't remember being much of a gamer."

"You weren't. But yeah, Doug is. How do we figure out how to get in?"

"Have Liz send me an email from the office, for starters," Alex said. "Let me locate the network, I can do some basic probing. We can work from there."

"Sounds good," Harry said. "Liz, let's start there."

Way he looks at Liz. They gettin' friendly?

"I've got feelers out in the areas where the managed hospitals are," Harry said. "For now I'll have them work up a profile, get their reviews, local news with any references. Try to get a list of kep personnel, boards of directors, doctors, stuff like that. I'll see if I can identify any that look to be especially bad, like ACCH. Probably some of them aren't aware of what they're into. Once I identify them we'll try to penetrate them first.

"I also want to go after these distibutors. If I had to guess I'd guess there are bribes or kickbacks or both involved with some of them. Probably all of them. Same goes for other suppliers - medical equipment and supplies, even cleaning supplies - there's a lot of money there."

"How long do you think it will take?" asked Jennifer.

"Quite a while, I'm afraid." Harry replied. "If it's as big as I think it is.

"Mary Ann is working on your and Karen's records. They're in about as bad shape as Alex's are, just not as many of they. But once they're sorted out I'll get a lawyer on it. Whatever comes of the lawsuits it will give them something to think about, and attract attention. They don't want that."

"You have any doctors among your resources?" Alex asked.

"I don't know any," replied Harry. "Maybe some of my contacts do. Why?"

"I got a message through the site, from a guy who claims to know Copeland. I haven't replied yet."

"Give me a day or two ask around before you do," Harry said. "I'll see if anything comes to mind."

Mary Ann entered.

"Pizza's here." she said.

"Thanks, Mary Ann," Harry said. "Let's go lunch."

They followed her to the conference room where several Domino's boxes were open, with an assortment of beverages on a side table. Afterwards Harry and Alex went out for a smoke.

"I don't want to talk about this in front of the women," Harry said. "Except Jessica, and maybe Liz. It could at some point get dangerous."

"The hillbilly mafia?"

"They're the most likely to be involved if it gets nasty. No more snooping than we've done so far we're getting some sideways looks when we ask certain questions about certain people. So far I'm backing away when I see a red flag, hoping we can get the goods without arousing suspicion. That's why we want to get in their network if we can. If we can put the right information in the hands of the law they may do most of the work for us."

"Be nice if we could," Alex said. "You don't sound real confident."

Harry grinned.

"I know too much about how things work. Usually something has to get broken. Have the right person get upset. Or scared."

"Let me see what I can do without them noticing." Alex said. "See if Doug comes up with anything."

They went inside. They assembled in the conference room Mary Ann joined them, giving each a report binder with about two dozen pages.

"These have what we know so far," Harry told them. "Don't let them out of your hands. There's nothing in them to indicate who made them, but as I just told Alex we're not going to be able to stay off the radar for long."