Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,26
counsellor. The local HQ of a political party. All were dark, except for one. Across the street, at the far end of the block. It was lit up bright. It had been rebuilt like a traditional old storefront. It had a sign in the window. Printed on the glass, in big letters, in an old-fashioned style, like the Marine Corps typewriters of Reacher’s youth. The sign said: The Public Law Project.
There are three of them, Mrs. Shevick had said.
From a public law project.
Three nice young men.
Behind the window was a modern blond-wood workspace, crammed with old-fashioned khaki-and-white paperwork. There were three guys sitting at desks. Young, certainly. Reacher couldn’t tell if they were nice. He wasn’t prepared to venture an opinion. They were all dressed the same, in tan chino pants and blue button-down shirts.
Reacher crossed the street. Up close he saw what were presumably their names, printed on the glass of the door. Same typewriter style, but smaller. The names were Julian Harvey Wood, Gino Vettoretto, and Isaac Mehay-Byford. Which Reacher thought was a whole lot of names, for just three guys. They all had a lot of letters after their names. All kinds of doctoral degrees. One from Stanford Law, one from Harvard, one from Yale.
He pulled the door and stepped inside.
Chapter 11
All three guys looked up, surprised. One was dark, one was fair, and one was in the middle. They all looked to be in their late twenties. They all looked tired. Hard work, late nights, pizza and coffee. Like law school all over again.
The dark one said, “Can we help you?”
“Which one are you?” Reacher said. “Julian, Gino, or Isaac?”
“I’m Gino.”
“Pleased to meet you, Gino,” Reacher said. “Any chance you know an old couple named Shevick?”
“Why?”
“I just spent a little time with them. I became familiar with their troubles. They told me they had three lawyers from a public law project. I’m wondering if that’s you. In fact I’m assuming it is. I’m asking myself how many public law projects a city this size could support.”
The fair one said, “If they’re our clients, then obviously we can’t discuss their case.”
“Which one are you?”
“I’m Julian.”
The neither dark nor fair one said, “And I’m Isaac.”
“I’m Reacher. Pleased to meet you all. Are the Shevicks your clients?”
“Yes, they are,” Gino said. “So we can’t talk about them.”
“Make it like a hypothetical example. In a case like theirs, is either one of the no-fault funds likely to pay out within the next seven days?”
Isaac said, “We really shouldn’t discuss it.”
“Just theoretically,” Reacher said. “As an abstract illustration.”
“It’s complicated,” Julian said.
“By what?”
“I mean, theoretically speaking, such a case would start out simple, but then it would get very complicated if family members stepped in to act as guarantors. Such a move would downgrade the urgency. I mean that literally. It would mark it down a grade. The no-fault funds are dealing with tens of thousands of cases. Maybe hundreds of thousands. If they know for sure a patient is currently receiving care anyway, they assign a different code. Like a lower grade. Not exactly bottom of the pile, but more like back burner. While more urgent stuff is handled first.”
“So the Shevicks made a mistake by signing the paper.”
“We can’t discuss the Shevicks,” Gino said. “There are confidentiality issues.”
“Theoretically,” Reacher said. “Hypothetically. Would it be a mistake for hypothetical parents to sign the paper?”
“Of course it would,” Isaac said. “Think about it from a bureaucrat’s point of view. The patient is getting treatment. The bureaucrat doesn’t care how. All he knows is there’s no negative PR liability for him. So he can take his sweet time. The hypothetical parents should have stood firm and said no. They should have refused to sign.”
“I guess they couldn’t bring themselves to do that.”
“I agree, it would have been tough, under the circumstances. But it would have worked. The bureaucrat would have been obliged to get his checkbook out. Right there and then. No choice.”
“It’s an education thing,” Gino said. “People need to know their rights ahead of time. It can’t be done in the moment. It’s your kid, lying on a gurney. There’s too much emotion.”
Reacher asked, “Is anything going to happen in the next seven days?”
No one answered.
Which Reacher figured was an answer in itself.
Eventually Julian said, “The problem is, now they have time to argue. The government fund is taxpayer money. The legislation is unpopular. Therefore the government will want the insurance fund to pay. The insurance fund is