He shakes his head. “Nothing that I see.”
“Were drugs administered?”
“Yes, of course. Antibiotics, a drug to reduce swelling and pressure in the brain, but the treatment seems to have been discontinued quickly, since he was only here for a matter of minutes before he died.”
Dr. Cassel’s answers don’t surprise me; I haven’t been able to see what the death of William Simmons could possibly have to do with what we believe has been going on at the hospital.
The only connection we had was Lewinsky’s cryptic email, but for all we know, he could have been replying to someone asking the name of the murder victim. It’s just not possible to infer guilt from it, much as I would like to.
Dr. Cassel goes off to do his rounds, but before I leave I decide to stop in and talk to Mitchell Galvis, second in command at the hospital to Lewinsky. Once we told Captain Bradley about Galvis pointing us to the drug issue, and Lewinsky’s culpability, he directed us to keep pressing him.
This seems like as good a time as any.
I’m sure that Galvis would want to talk to me again at some clandestine, out of the way location, but I’m not going to indulge that. I’ve been talking to a lot of people at the hospital, and Lewinsky had somewhat reluctantly instructed people to cooperate. So I would have every reason to talk to Galvis without arousing suspicion.
When his assistant tells him that I’m here to see him, I’m ushered right in. “You said you’d leave me out of this” is his way of greeting me. He seems to be in a perpetual panic, and since Silva is involved, it’s not a reaction that surprises me.
“No, I said I’d keep your name out of it. You placed yourself in the middle.”
“I never should have spoken to you. Lewinsky has been acting funny toward me ever since. Is there any way he can know?”
“Not from me,” I say, which is true.
He doesn’t seem appeased. “What do you want?”
“I need proof that drugs are being stolen.”
He shakes his head. “I told you, Lewinsky has covered it up. The books won’t show anything.”
“Then how did you know about it?”
“Because I work here; I see a lot and people tell me things. And I saw it as it was happening.”
“Is it still happening?”
“Of course,” he says. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Then get me the proof before Lewinsky can change the books. Mitchell, right now you’re my only witness to bring down Lewinsky, and then Silva. If I have physical evidence, I don’t need you. If I don’t, then your testimony becomes crucial.”
“I won’t testify.”
“Mitchell, don’t push me. Do the right thing, and so will I.”
My meaning is clear, and Galvis is no dope. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll do what I can.”
The message is waiting for us when we get in.
Bradley wants to see us; I assume it’s for the purpose of downloading him on our current progress, or lack of it. I haven’t even told him about what happened on my trip to Vegas, and I’m sure he’ll want details. I should have taken a cell phone picture of the buffet.
I tell Jessie to come in with us, since she’s involved with a number of important aspects of the investigation. But when we get to his office, we discover that Bradley is not alone. There are two men with him, and just based on my first impression of their manner and dress, they are Federal agents.
Bradley does the introductions. “Lieutenant Doug Brock, Lieutenant Nate Alvarez, Lieutenant Jessie Allen, this is Special Agent Alex Wiggins and Special Agent Randall Kiper. They are with the FBI.”
“I thought you said there would just be the two of them,” Wiggins says. I get the hunch that he’s the leader of the pair; maybe he’s the more “special” of the two special agents.
“Jessie is a part of the team,” Nate says. “Easily as important as we are.” I’m glad he said it; I wish I had.
Wiggins just nods. It’s an acceptance of reality, not an acknowledgment of having been rebuked. “Very well.” Then he turns to Kiper and says, “Show them.”
Agent Kiper takes his cell phone out of his pocket, presses a couple of buttons, and then points it at the wall. It projects an incredibly clear photograph that takes up most of that wall.
“That is very cool,” I say, a comment which draws a response from absolutely no one.
The photo is of a crowd of people, but it’s obvious that the man in the center was the target of the photographer. The camera is above him, and he’s not looking at it, but rather straight ahead. It appears to be a crowded airport, or train station … something like that.
“Do any of you recognize him?” Wiggins asks.
Jessie says, “No,” while Nate and I shake our heads.
“Ever seen him before?” Wiggins asks.
Another “no” from Jessie, and this time one from Nate as well. I say, “I don’t think so.”
“You might have?” Wiggins asks.
“Don’t go there,” Nate says, and Bradley quickly tells him that I’ve recently experienced some memory loss. Wiggins nods as if he already knew that.
I want to move this along. “Who is he?”
“He has at least forty names that we know of, and while we think we know his birth name, it is unimportant. He hasn’t used it for many years. For the past two weeks, while he was in this country, he went by the name Isaiah Butler.”
“Why are you asking us about him?”
“Ten days ago, he entered the country and rented a van at Newark Airport. Yesterday he died in that van in an accident on Route 15 near Baker, California.”
“Do we know it was an accident?” Bradley asks. My guess is that he already has been briefed and knows where this is going.
Wiggins nods. “We have high confidence that it was. There were high winds, and a car swerved into his. A father and son in one of the other cars was killed, and the driver of a third car suffered a broken leg. The accident is not suspicious, at least not at this point.”
“Why do you care about him?” I ask.
“He’s part of a group that supplies arms, explosives, and advice to bad actors; if you want to kill people in large numbers, and you have a lot of money to spend, these are the people you turn to for your equipment and expertise.”
“What does this have to do with us?”
“Through the GPS on the van, we were able to track its movements since he rented it. It made stops in New Jersey and Vegas that we believe were drop-offs.”
“Drop-offs of what?” Nate asks.
“Without knowing exactly, we know it is something we would be very interested in finding.”
“They are aware of our investigation, and think that Butler, or whatever his name is, might be involved,” Bradley says.
“You think the drop-offs were to Silva and Tartaro?” Nate asks.
Wiggins answers with a question to me. “What were you doing in Vegas?”
“How did you know I was there?”
“We know a lot of things. What were you doing there?”
I’m about to tell him to kiss my ass when a slight nod from Captain Bradley indicates that I should answer the question. “Talking to witnesses.”
“Tartaro is a witness?” Wiggins asks.
The question tells me that they’ve been monitoring what I’ve been doing; either that or they’re monitoring Tartaro and I got swept up in it. “He’s a suspect in a drug investigation.”
“So what did you learn out there?”
“That the buffets are worth every penny.”
Wiggins doesn’t seem amused; either he didn’t appreciate the joke or he has a different view of the buffets. He tells Bradley that he and the Bureau need to be kept informed of any progress in our investigation, and Bradley agrees, which annoys me.
The meeting breaks up, leaving Bradley, Nate, Jessie, and me alone. Jessie asks the obvious question. “Why would Silva and Tartaro need explosives to peddle drugs?”
“I could hav
e twenty people on this and not get through it,” Jessie says.
“It’s like proofreading the Library of Congress.”
Jessie is sitting at her computer in her house; when everything you do is online, it’s pretty easy to bring your work home with you. Nate and I don’t have that luxury, unless we decide to hold a criminals dinner party.
“Talk to Uncle Dougie,” I say.
“Uncle Dougie is going to find himself sleeping on the couchie with Bobo if he keeps talking like that.”
“Sorry. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay. The hospital records and the drug company records have been coming in, and by ‘coming in,’ I mean we are being flooded with them. Do you have any idea how many drugs a hospital this size uses? Do you know what their damn aspirin bill is?”
“No.”
“Good. You don’t want to know. But it’s huge, and Tylenol is even more.”
“Those aren’t the drugs we’re interested in.”
She stares a dagger at me; this is not going well. “I know, but what I don’t know is what the hell we are looking for. You know all the opioids, all the names of drugs that would have street value? And then their generic names?”
“No.”
“Then how the hell should I?” she asks.
“Maybe we need to get you some consulting help, like a doctor, or better yet, a pharmacist.”
“Doug, this is impossible.”
“Don’t focus on the drugs,” I say. “Focus on the money.”
She shakes her head. “No, that’s what I’ve been doing, but it doesn’t work. Let’s say the hospital bought a million dollars’ worth of drugs from a company, and believe me I’m using a low amount just to make it easier.”
“Okay.”
“So the books show that they paid the company a million dollars, and the company’s books show that they received a million dollars. Looks good, right?”
“In that case, yes,” I say.
“But it’s not, or at least we don’t know one way or the other. Because we don’t know what happened to the drugs. Let’s say the hospital actually dispensed three-quarters of what they received to patients. That leaves a quarter million dollars of drugs at wholesale price that were never dispensed. You know how much street value that would have? A fortune.”
“Okay, I see what you’re saying. So focus on the dispensing side.”
“How? If it says Sylvia Swathouse got twenty OxyContin for pain, how can I know if she did? For all I know she’s allergic to the stuff, or she had pneumonia and no need for pain meds, or there was no Sylvia Swathouse in the first place.
“And if I knew how to get through all of this, there still might be nothing to find. Galvis said that Lewinsky covered his tracks, remember? The dispensing would be the easiest thing for him to fake, because it’s all internal.”
I have no answer for any of this, so instead I just ask another question. “And how would Rita Carlisle know about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she was in hospital administration. How would she know if the medicine was actually prescribed? That wasn’t her area at all.”
She nods. “True. Maybe she was told about it by someone else. Or maybe she overheard something she shouldn’t have. Or maybe she was the ringleader. Who the hell knows? We need Galvis to catch him in the act.”
“Won’t happen,” I say. “Galvis is scared to death, and sorry he came to me in the first place.”
“He should be scared, because based on what that FBI agent said, Silva might be about to kill a lot of people, maybe blow up the hospital.”
The FBI briefing, if that’s what it was, is something I’ve been trying to ignore. I simply cannot make the connection to the Carlisle case. Maybe Silva and Tartaro are planning some terrorist plot, but it seems very unlikely and out of character. These guys are interested in money and power; they are not ideologues. What would they have to gain by killing a bunch of people, or taking down a building, or both?
Whatever that is about, I’m operating under the assumption that it is separate and apart from our Carlisle drug investigation. It is not stretching logic to think that organized crime figures can do two illegal things at the same time. They can steal and chew gum.
The only similarity and possible connection is that it involves both Tartaro and Silva, possibly working in tandem. But even that is not a surprise; if they have a good and profitable working relationship, it can be varied.
“Let the FBI handle that side of it,” I say. “We’ve got enough on our plate.”
Jessie nods. “More than enough.”
Galvis is ready to meet with me again.
And again he doesn’t want it to be at the hospital, he wants me to pick him up behind the Village Diner, like last time. Since last time worked out pretty well, I agree.
“When?” I ask.
“Fifteen minutes?”
I go along with it, even though it will not give me time to get fitted with a wire. This conversation will therefore not be recorded, and will rely on my memory, which is fairly ironic. I can just imagine a defense attorney having a field day with that.
Once Galvis is in the car, I ask if he got what I wanted, which was current evidence that Lewinsky was involved in the drug theft and fraud.
“In a manner of speaking,” he says, which doesn’t thrill me.
“Let’s hear it.”
He holds up a folder and says, “In here are the medical records of one Travis Mauer, a fifty-two-year-old with two herniated disks. The records show that he was in the hospital for a solid week on pain meds and epidurals. He went home with a healthy supply of those meds as well.”
“So?”
“So Travis Mauer doesn’t exist. He was never a patient at the hospital, and certainly never received any medication. Believe me, Travis is not alone; I would think the list of nonexistent patients is a long one.”
“Why did you say that you have what I asked for, ‘in a manner of speaking,’” I ask.
“Because I don’t have proof tying Lewinsky to it. I can prove that Travis Mauer was not a patient and that his medical records are a fake, but I can’t prove that Lewinsky did it.”
“Is there anyone else that could have?”
“I don’t see how; not without it being detected.”
“I understand. Get me more.”
He just about moans his distress. “Come on, I did what you asked.”
“And I appreciate that. Now do it again.”
“I don’t work for you,” he says. He’s a little feistier this time.
“No, you work for a crook, and you need to help me put him away.”
He thinks about it for a few moments. “I’m getting tired of this.”
“Join the club,” I say. “Does the name William Simmons mean anything to you?” I’ve gotten the medical assessment of Simmons’ case from Cassel; I want to find out if Galvis can learn whether or not Lewinsky had anything to do with it.
“I don’t think it does. Who is he?”
“A murder victim who died at your hospital a while back. Look him up, see if there’s anything unusual in his records.”
“Unusual how?”
“I don’t know; I’m hoping you’ll tell me. Maybe he didn’t exist, either.”
“Okay. I’ll find out what I can.” He hesitates for a moment, then adds, “There’s one other thing.”
“What is it?”
“I think something is going to happen on the sixteenth.”
The sixteenth is only one week away. “What is going to happen?”
“I don’t know; I heard Lewinsky mention it on a phone call.” He explains, “My office is right next to his; if I put my ear to the wall, I can hear everything he’s saying.”
I don’t tell him what I’m thinking, that the sixteenth could be the date that the terrorist action the FBI is expecting could happen. I still don’t see what Lewinsky and the drug conspiracy could have to do with it, but I think
there’s a lot that I’m not seeing.
I take Galvis back to his car and then head to the office. I give Jessie the medical records of the nonexistent Travis Mauer with his nonexistent herniated discs, so that she can examine them. Maybe it can point her in the right direction as she works her way through the subpoenaed documents we have.
Nate comes in for a strategy session. We both have the feeling that we’re just running in place; we might be getting a little closer to nailing Lewinsky, but it isn’t moving at the pace we’d like, and taking the next step of getting Silva seems way off in the distance.
“We need to move this along,” I say, and Nate nods in agreement. “Otherwise this is going to turn into a pissing contest between two sets of accountants looking at two sets of books.”
“So we pressure Lewinsky.”
“Yes, we do.”
We find Bradley and tell him what we’re going to do, and Bradley agrees. I think he’s getting increased pressure from the chief to make progress, which is why he grabs onto the idea without having to be convinced.
Sitting in Bradley’s office with him and Nate, I call Lewinsky. “Mr. Lewinsky, we need to have another talk.”
“This is getting tiring, Lieutenant. People here are complaining about the intrusion.”
“Well, this won’t feel quite so intrusive, because the talk we’re going to have will be down here, at the precinct.”
He laughs a short laugh. “You can’t be serious. I’m a busy man; I have neither the time nor the inclination to go to your office.”
“I’m sorry … did I give you the impression this was voluntary?”
There is a silence of at least ten seconds, which seems a lot longer. Then, “Detective, are you attempting to arrest me?”
“We never ‘attempt’ to arrest, Mr. Lewinsky. They don’t teach that at the police academy. We just ‘arrest.’ Which is something we are not doing now. But I strongly advise you that it is in your interest to come down here and cooperate.”
Another pause. “Very well. I will be bringing my attorney.”
“I’ll make sure we have enough chairs.”
We set a time for this afternoon and hang up. Bradley has one piece of advice for us.
Fade to Black Page 14