The Society (50 page)

Meanwhile, desperate corporations were quickly restructured. CEOs were replaced. Other officials simply took off, some of them absconding with tens of millions in ill-gotten profits. Sentiment against continuing the status quo in health care grew like a tidal wave. The uninsured middle class became martyrs to the cause of change.

The Society national steering committee, charged with organizing the Chicago conference, had originally planned for ten to fifteen thousand attendees. Twenty-five thousand was beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, but adjustments had been made.

“I really love Chicago,” Patty said dreamily.

“And
I
really love . . . Chicago, too.”

“You know, I hope the day you realize you’re not very funny isn’t too hard on you.”

“Okay, that’s it. I’ve taken enough verbal abuse. If you don’t think I’m funny, then the wedding’s off.”

“You can call it off if you want, but you’re going to have to tell my father.”

“On second thought, I think I’ll opt for the verbal abuse.”

“Wise move.” Patty guided him back toward the convention center. “I just wish your old partner, Susan, could be here with us. She worked so damn hard in the interests of better health for all.”

“Especially for folks like Charles Newcomber.”

“Ah, yes. And let’s not forget all those women from Steadfast Health whom she helped to experience the joys of learning they had cancer and undergoing surgery and chemo. God, but I wish that bullet I fired at her had actually gone where I was aiming.”

She pointed to the center of her chest.

“What goes around, comes around,” Will said. “It ain’t over.”

“I hope not, baby, but take it from a cop, bad guys
do
get away.”

And Susan Hollister had most certainly vanished.

Even with lawyer Ed Wittenburg’s help, it had taken the state-police chopper most of the day to locate the farm. When they finally did, Susan was gone. There were bullets and bullet holes everywhere, but the bodies of the torturer Krause and Marshall Gold and his man Watkins were gone. The farmer and his wife were questioned extensively and threatened with charges, but neither caved in, and they were ultimately sent back to their farmhouse.

The Excelsius pathologist who had been paid to cooperate with Hollister and Newcomber by labeling cancerous slides with the names of women who were “given” breast cancer agreed to a plea bargain, which helped to send Boyd Halliday to prison, though not nearly for as long as Patty and Will felt he deserved. The pathologist’s statement also led to the indictment in absentia of Hollister. The lawsuits from patients were just beginning, but soon after Halliday’s arrest, Excelsius Health was dissolved. It would be years before the finances of the conglomerate were untangled and settlements awarded. In addition to the individual suits, Augie Micelli was assisting a top Boston law firm in a class action against the former health-care giant.

It was the opening session of the four-day Consortium for Effective National Health-Care Coverage, and the vast convention hall was rapidly filling up for the keynote address, to be delivered by Diana Joswick, a Texas anesthesiologist and the recently elected president of the Hippocrates Society. A banner proclaiming
AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL
stretched across the wall behind the dais. The atmosphere was electric. Will had tried to decline the Society’s request that he be seated on the dais with Joswick and other notables, citing his resignation for personal reasons from all but general membership in the organization. In the end, though, for the sake of unity, he demurred. At his request, seats in the center of the third row had been set aside for Patty and Augie Micelli.

“There’s Augie,” Patty exclaimed, pointing.

Will followed her into the row and settled temporarily into an empty seat next to hers. Micelli, much lighter and healthier-looking than he had been the day he first met Will, was beaming.

“This is a bigger happening than frigging Woodstock!” he gushed. “Talk about making a difference. You two have changed the world.”

“Let’s not get carried away, Augie.”

“Who’s getting carried away?”

“You look great,” Patty said. “How many pounds?”

“Nineteen and three-quarters, but who’s counting? It’s amazing what cutting alcohol out of your diet can do for the old waistline.”

“How long has it been?”

“Since I left for rehab? Eight months tomorrow.”

“Has it been hard?”

“Reasonably, but I’m still not ready to cave in. I keep telling myself that anyone who can come up with as much fentanyl solution as I did in as short a time can stay away from a drink for a day at a time. All those AA people I used to make fun of have helped, too.”

“In time, maybe you’ll consider going back into practice.”

“Not until this mess is straightened out I won’t.” Micelli gestured toward the banner. “Plus I still have some big-league suin’ to do.”

“Medicine’s ready for you as soon as you’re ready for it,” Will said.

“Go, they’re waving for you up there,” Micelli replied.

“I still don’t feel comfortable being—”

“Just go!”

Will took his place on the dais. He had been reasonably prepared for his introduction, in which he was presented as a physician whose courage, spirit, and dedication defined what the Hippocrates Society was all about. What he was not prepared for was the ovation—25,000 standing spontaneously and applauding, whistling, and shouting out for fully two minutes. Below him, Patty was beaming and laughing out loud at his discomfiture.

Finally, the tribute subsided and Diana Joswick was introduced.

“Never in our history,” she began, “have our medical students and residents been better prepared for the rigors of taking care of patients. But ironically, never has the care their patients are receiving been poorer. Hospitals are no longer safe, accessible havens for the ill and injured. Getting admitted to one is often more difficult than getting into an Ivy League college. Cost of care has become our standard of care. The stethoscope and careful physical exam have been replaced by paperwork and excessive documentation. And all of this for only one and a half trillion dollars a year—many, many times what the very effective and accessible Canadian health-care system costs.

“Health care in America, the most affluent and resource-blessed nation in the history of the world, is a disgrace, and expecting change to come from insurance executives, who are the oilmen of medicine, is just not going to cut it. That is like asking the fox to build improvements in the chicken coop. It is time, my friends, to step forward and be heard. It is time to step forward and be counted. It is time we made health care something other than an oxymoron.”

Applause reverberated throughout the cavernous hall, as it would again and again throughout her forty-minute address.

Five thousand miles to the south, in a barrio of the village of Talavera, in the state of Guaira, in south central Paraguay, the assassin sat slumped on a rickety wooden bench near the corner of a cantina, asleep to all appearances. In truth, beneath the broad brim of her straw hat, her dark hawk’s eyes were open a slit and fixed on the doorway of the building across the street—
Clinica Médico
.

Beneath her loose cotton robe, her right hand, inside a rubber glove, was loosely wrapped about a snub-nosed .38. Not daring to try to bring a gun into the country, she had settled for the best the shopkeeper in Asunción had to offer. The pistol, which he said was Russian, felt cheaply made, and the price was inflated, but no matter. He had let her fire it at some bottles, and her plan called for only close-range shots—very close range. The .38 would be enough.

An hour passed, then most of another. Nothing. For three days she had watched from the bench, noting the comings and goings of her prey. For three days, the doctor had arrived at the clinic almost precisely at nine and remained alone inside until she opened the door to patients at ten. Casually checking through a side window, two days in a row, the hunter had watched as her quarry performed advanced martial-arts forms in the small waiting area. Power, balance, speed.

Had something gone wrong today? Had she taken the day off?

The assassin was casting about, looking for signs of trouble, when she spotted the doctor approaching casually through the dust and hazy mid-morning heat, nodding to a woman hanging out clothes, waving to a fruit vendor. Relaxed. Happy. The woman on the bench clenched her jaw and tightened her grip on the pistol. She had waited long enough—it was time. Even though the doctor was two hours later than usual, she showed no indication of opening the clinic to the public right away. For five minutes, ten, the door remained closed. The doctor was alone inside, probably practicing her forms. Finally, her hat still pulled low across her eyes, the assassin rose, ambled across the street, and knocked on the door.

“
Somos cierros
,” the doctor’s voice, slightly breathless, called from within.
We’re closed
.

Another series of knocks.

Come on . . . Come on . . .

Footsteps from within.

That’s it. . . . Soon now, very soon.

The door opened, first a bit, then all the way.

“Hola, buenas dias.
¿
Enque le puedo servir
?”

“May I please come in?”

There was surprise on the doctor’s face at hearing English.

“I suppose. I’m very busy right now.”

She stepped back and allowed the assassin two steps into the waiting area where she had been working out.

“Dr. Hollister, we’ve had a hell of a time finding you.”

The assassin brushed her hat up away from her eyes.

Recognition took a few seconds. By then, the .38 was in position.

“Grace Davis?”

“Your grateful, devoted patient.”

Grace could see Susan Hollister’s hands tense and knew the professional killer could take her in an instant. She and her husband had given up more than eight months of their lives and all of their savings, pointing to this moment. Throughout their hunt, Grace pictured the confrontation over and over in her mind—pictured it and wondered if she could do it, if she could actually pull the trigger, if she could actually kill. Now it took less than a second to find out. As Hollister swung her foot up in what would have been the equivalent of a decapitating kick, Grace fired into her spinning form—once, then again. Hollister’s lethal pirouette stopped in midair. She stumbled back against a table and fell heavily, blood expanding from two rents in the side of her white T. Her eyes widened as Grace stepped forward, the barrel of the .38 leveled at her forehead.

“Don’t do it,” Hollister gasped. “Don’t—”

The third bullet, fired from less than three feet, entered the center of Susan Hollister’s forehead and exited the back of her skull with enough force to embed itself in the clay floor.

Grace Peng Davis stripped off her robe and dropped it next to the body along with the gun. Then she exited through the back door of the clinic and calmly made her way along the street leading out of the village. A block down the road, Mark Davis pulled over in a rented Kia.

“Is it over?” he asked as his wife climbed in and he pulled away.

Grace bit down on her lower lip and nodded. Her eyes were full.

“Take me home,” she said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL PALMER, M.D., spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and is now an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s physician health program.

Also by Michael Palmer

FROM BANTAM BOOKS

The Sisterhood

Side Effects

Flashback

Extreme Measures

Natural Causes

Silent Treatment

Critical Judgment

Miracle Cure

The Patient

Fatal

THE SOCIETY

A Bantam Book / August 2004

Published by

Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2004 by Michael Palmer

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher except where permitted by law.

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www.bantamdell.com

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

eISBN: 0-553-90057-9

Published simultaneously in Canada

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