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Fifteen minutes later she was shaking Joe Hutnik’s hand. He was in his cubbyhole off the computer-filled Greenwich Time’s newsroom. About fifty years old, with broad, dark eyebrows and alert, intelligent eyes, he waved her to the mini-sized love seat, half of which was piled with books.
“What brings you to ‘The Gateway to New England,’ as our fair town is known, Fran?” He did not wait for an answer. “No, let me guess. Molly Lasch. The word is that you’re doing a program on her for True Crime.”
“The word moves too fast for my taste,” Fran told him. “Joe, can we level with each other?”
“Of course. Provided it doesn’t cost me a headline.” Fran raised her eyebrows. “You’re my kind of guy. Question: Did you cover Molly’s trial?”
“Who didn’t? It was a slow news time, and she filled it for us.”
“Joe, I can pull all the information I need from the Internet, but no matter how much testimony you read, it’s a lot easier to judge truth when you get to see the demeanor of the witnesses, especially under cross-examination. You obviously think Molly Lasch killed her husband.”
“Absolutely.”
“Next question. What did you think of Dr. Gary Lasch?”
Joe Hutnik leaned back in his desk chair, swiveling from side to side as he considered his answer. Then he said slowly, “Fran, I’ve lived around Greenwich all my life. My mother is seventy-six years old. She tells the story of when my sister had pneumonia forty years ago. She was three months old. In those days doctors came to the house. It was known as a house call. You weren’t told to bundle up sick kids and take them to an emergency room, right?”
Hutnik stopped swiveling the chair and folded his hands on the desk. “We lived at the top of a pretty steep hill. Dr. Lasch, Jonathan Lasch, I mean, Gary ’s father, couldn’t get his car up the hill. The wheels kept spi
“Was Gary Lasch that kind of doctor?” Fran asked.
Hutnik thought for a moment before responding. “There are still plenty of dedicated physicians in Greenwich, and everywhere else, I assume. Was Gary Lasch one of them? I honestly don’t know the answer to that, Fran, but from what I hear, he and his partner, Dr. Peter Black, were more into the business end of medicine and perhaps a little less into the actual care giving.”
“It looks like they’ve been successful. Lasch Hospital has doubled in size since I saw it last,” Fran commented. She hoped her voice sounded steady.
“Since your father died there,” Hutnik said quickly. “Look, Fran, I’ve been around a long time. I knew your father. He was a nice man. Needless to say, like a lot of other residents, I wasn’t thrilled to see all the donations disappear the way they did. That money was going to build a library in one of our less classy sections of town, so that kids could walk to it easily.”
Fran winced and looked away.
“Sorry,” Hutnik said. “I shouldn’t bring that up. Let’s stick to Gary Lasch. After his father died, he brought in his medical school buddy, Dr. Peter Black, from Chicago. They turned the Jonathan Lasch Clinic into Lasch Hospital. They began the Remington Health Management Organization, which has been one of the really successful HMOs.”
“What do you think of health maintenance organizations in general?” Fran asked.
“What most people do. They stink. Even the best of them-and I think Remington may be in that category-are putting doctors between a rock and a hard place. Most doctors have to belong to one or maybe even a number of health maintenance plans, which means, of course, that their diagnoses are subject to review, and that if they feel a patient needs to see a specialist, their judgment may be overridden. In addition, doctors are forced to wait for their money-I mean to a point where many of them are placed in a tight financial position. Patients are being sent to out-of-the-way facilities just to discourage them from having too many visits. And at the very time when drugs and treatments are available to make people’s lives easier, the guys who decide whether you get a treatment are the ones who make the money if you don’t. Great progress, wouldn’t you say?”
Joe shook his head indignantly. “Right now Remington Health Management, meaning CEO Dr. Peter Black and Chairman Cal Whitehall, our resident tycoon, are negotiating with the state for permission to take over four smaller HMOs. If that happens, the company stock will fly like a birdie. Is there a problem with that? Not really. Except that American National Insurance would also like to take over the smaller HMOs, and there’s talk they may attempt a hostile takeover of Remington as well.”
“Is that likely to happen?”
“Who knows? Probably not. Remington Health Management and Lasch Hospital have a good reputation. They’ve rebounded from the scandal revolving around the murder of Dr. Gary Lasch and the revelation that he was fooling around with a young nurse, but I’m sure Peter Black and Cal Whitehall would have liked to have had the new deal completed before Molly Lasch arrived back in town with her suggestion there was more to the story of the doctor’s murder than came out initially.”
“What kind of ‘more to the story’ could possibly affect a merger?” Fran asked.
Joe shrugged. “Honey, quaint as it may seem, sleaze is on the way out, at least temporarily. American National is headed by a former surgeon general who vows he’s going to reform health maintenance organizations. Remington still has the inside track on the acquisition, but in this crazy world, any cold wind can freeze the harvest. And any hint of scandal could squelch the deal.”
18
There is no one I can count on, was Molly’s first waking thought. She glanced at the clock. Ten past six. Not bad, she decided. She had gone to bed shortly after Je
In prison there were many nights when she didn’t sleep at all, when sleep was like a chunk of ice pressing between her eyes as she willed it to melt and flow through her.
She stretched, and her left arm touched the empty pillow beside her. She had never visualized Gary next to her on the narrow prison bed, but now she was constantly aware of his absence, even after all these years. It was as though the entire time had been simply a dream sequence. Dream? No-nightmare!
She had felt so totally one with him; “We’re joined at the hip” had been her favorite expression in those days. Had she been deluding herself?
I sounded smug and self-satisfied back then, Molly thought, and perhaps I was. Obviously I was stupid as well. She sat up, fully awake now. I’ve got to know, she thought. How long did that affair with the nurse go on? How long was my life with Gary a lie?
A
At nine she phoned Fran Simmons’s office and left Dr. Daniels’s name. At ten she phoned Philip Matthews. She had only been in his office a few times, but she could visualize it clearly. He had a view of the Statue of Liberty from his World Trade Center office. When she had been there, listening to him plan her defense, it had seemed incongruous to her-clients in danger of going to prison, observing the symbol of liberty.
Molly remembered telling Philip that, and he’d said that he considered the view of the statue to be a harbinger: when he took on a client, his goal was liberty for them.