“Mary Lou and her rehab kick,” he said. “Going on the radio—she and Larsen.” He laughed. “The government pays to shrink bad guys. I’m in the wrong business. So are you, for that matter.”
I said, “How many parolees live in Sonny’s halfway houses?”
“Three houses? I’d guess a couple of hundred.”
“Think about the income if everyone got on the rolls.”
“Hundred bucks a week per con—five grand a year. A million bucks for group therapy alone.”
“Plus other charges.”
“The only problem is, Alex, a couple of shrinks doing all that billing would be physically impossible.”
“So they use assistants—peer counselors. And they flat out lie, bill for sessions that never take place.”
“Peer counselors,” he said. “Meaning other cons? Yeah, that’s the rage, ain’t it? Ex-gangbangers become facilitators, junkies go the drug-counseling route. That’s where a guy like Degussa would fit in . . . scumbags doing therapy. That’s legal?”
“Everything depends how the contract’s written,” I said. “And a guy like Sonny would know how to get a juicy government contract.”
“All those billable hours,” he said. “The place would be jumping. But it’s not.”
“Maybe that discrepancy occurred to Gavin.”
“Brain-damaged ace reporter ferrets out fraud,” he said. He drank juice, put the carton down, wiped his lips with his sleeve. “All you need is a room and some chairs to make a million. Yeah, it’s a fat scam, but Sonny gives away a million a year. Why would he mess with this? The game?”
“Maybe something else,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Making Mary Lou happy.”
“She didn’t end up too happy,” he said.
“Maybe something went wrong.”
“So they were cleaning the carpet. The day after we spoke to Sonny. Who was doing it, scuzzbags like Roland Kristof?”
“Didn’t appear to be,” I said. I gave him the name of the company, and he copied it down.
“A rehab scam,” he said. “But we’re back to the same question: Where does Jerry Quick fit in?”
“That office of his,” I said. “Not much business goes on there.”
“A front.”
“Maybe his real job’s working for Sonny.”
He frowned. “This whole scenario, it makes Quick more than just a sleazy bastard. It means he knows why his son was killed and instead of telling us, he cleans out the room.”
“That could’ve been fear,” I said. “First Gavin, then Mary Lou Koppel. That’s why Quick left town. When you called the office, no one answered. Maybe Quick told Angie to take some time off.”
“He splits . . . leaves his wife behind . . . because they don’t get along anyway. He doesn’t give a damn about her.”
“That would also explain the daughter—Kelly—not coming home after Gavin’s death. Quick wants her out of the way.”
“The scam crumbling . . . if it really exists.”
“A scam would explain Flora Newsome, too. While she was working in the parole office, she learned something she shouldn’t have. Maybe Mary Lou got greedy and wanted a bigger cut. Or Gavin’s getting killed changed her perspective.”
“What, she suddenly developed moral fiber?”
“Money games are one thing, murder’s another. Perhaps Koppel panicked and wanted out. Or she tried to lean on Sonny.”
He got up again, circled the room a couple of times. “There’s another possible angle on Flora, Alex. She could’ve been in on the scam, flagging files of incoming parolees, passing along names.”
“Could be,” I said, thinking about Evelyn Newsome, living on memories, trying to put her life together.
He stared out the kitchen window for a long time. “Career criminal, parole officer, shady metals dealer. And Professor Larsen, the human rights dude. We’ve been focusing on Gull, haven’t paid much attention to Larsen.”
He drained the juice carton, let out a long, windy sigh. “I’ve got an appointment with Jerry Quick’s CPA in Brentwood. Then I’d better start doing detail work on Degussa and Hacker, find out, among other things, if either of them interfaced with Flora’s satellite office.”
He snapped the case shut and saluted. “All this still leaves Crystal, the mystery blonde.”
“Gavin’s girl,” I said. “He confided in her. Or he didn’t, and she just happened to be in the wrong place.”