The Society

CHAPTER 3

At five in the morning Serenity Lane was dark and still. Posed in front of the vast picture window over the kitchen counter, Cyrill Davenport carefully fork-split a Thomas’ English muffin and set the toaster oven for precisely two-point-five. Davenport was nothing if not precise-obsessive, he knew some at the company called him, but he didn’t care. He was the president and chairman of the board of the Unity Comprehensive Health HMO, and they weren’t. He could see little through the darkness beyond the window but had no trouble envisioning his yard-nearly two rolling acres of grass, gardens, walkways, majestic boulders, and ten varieties of mature trees. Not bad for someone who had to wheedle a scholarship just to attend a small state school. Now the student center at that school bore his name-his and Gloria’s.

It had been a mistake to include her name on the building, he thought now. He unwrapped a soft pat of custom-prepared butter, sliced it precisely in two, and spread each piece in concentric circles beginning at the center of the muffin halves. If he had donated a detox to the school, Gloria’s name should definitely have been on it-but otherwise, most resoundingly not. The Cyrill Davenport Student Center-that’s how it should have been. He poured eight ounces of the chilled orange juice he had squeezed the previous evening into a Waterford goblet and sipped it down as he finished the muffin. No matter, he acknowledged. Gloria gave great parties, kept a magnificent house, and handled the help impeccably. So what if she was too sloshed most of the time to be much of a wife?

Davenport pulled on his overcoat and set his dishes in the sink. This day was to be a most significant one for Unity Comprehensive Health. Depson-Hayes, one of the largest electronics-manufacturing corporations in the Northeast, was on the verge of shifting its total coverage package to Unity. By mid-morning, the announcement would be made, and the seven different HMOs that had been covering the D-H employees-including several who had been pressuring Unity to join in their merger-would be shit out of luck.

It had taken statistics and promises-a boatload of each-to convince the health people at D-H that care would not suffer despite a striking reduction in the premiums they and their employees would have to pay. Now it would be up to Davenport’s lieutenants to see to it that Unity’s hospitals and physicians made good on those promises. Davenport knew he was asking the impossible, but this was one instance, like horseshoes and hand grenades, where close would be good enough. There could be problems and complaints from the D-H policyholders, even serious ones-just not too many of them. Fortunately, although he would never broadcast the fact, both the state and federal governments had taken significant steps backward when it came to holding HMOs responsible for medical catastrophes incurred by their insured. Clearly, the powers that be understood that the HMOs and other health insurers were merely trying to make the system work by keeping costs in line. If the physicians and hospitals in the old fee-for-service system hadn’t lost sight of that goal, fee-for-service would still be the standard of care in the land.

Davenport flicked off the kitchen and hall lights and slipped out the door into the garage. As he was shutting the door behind him, he swore he heard Gloria’s prizewinning snoring emanating from the master suite, upstairs and at the far end of the house.

The broad garage door was closed, and Gloria’s neat little white BMW roadster was in its customary spot, but his Cadillac Seville was missing. Suddenly nonplussed and anxious, Davenport hit the button on the wall beside him. As the automatic door glided upward, he sighed with relief. The silver Caddy, an absolute joy from the day six months ago when he decided to make the switch from his Lincoln, was parked a dozen or so yards down the drive, right by the walk to the front door.

Curious.

Davenport distinctly remembered driving into the garage last night when he returned from work, and also closing the electronic door behind him. Only Gloria, their garage-door service company, and their attorney knew the keypad password. Not even their groundskeeper, Julio, had it.

Davenport glanced at his Rolex. Almost five-thirty. He had a mountain of work to get done before the others arrived and this most significant of days got under way. It had to have been Gloria, he decided as he stepped out onto the drive and shut the garage door behind him. She obviously ran out of booze late last night and in a moment of clarity decided to take the heavier, safer car to get restocked. Davenport grimaced at the image of her fumbling with the keypad in the Caddy, then finally giving up, leaving the car where it was and entering the house up the front walk instead. The notion of her driving sloshed, which she was even before he went to sleep, produced a knot in his throat. Gloria was capable of doing damage that not even their ten-million-dollar umbrella liability policy could cover. He wondered how the neighbors would feel having some homeless, crippled accident victim take over Sycamore Hill.

With images of another trip to rehab suddenly occupying his mind, Davenport slipped the key into the ignition and turned it. The Caddy purred to life. He put the car in reverse, checked over his right shoulder, and gently depressed the accelerator. The journey to Unity Comprehensive Health lasted just four feet. Cyrill Davenport heard the explosion a nanosecond before he and the Cadillac were blown to bits. All twenty-three windows on the south side of 3 Serenity Lane shattered.

In the second-floor master suite, Gloria Davenport, her blood-alcohol level still three times legally intoxicated, opened her eyes a slit and tried to make sense of the noise she had just heard and the chilly air she was feeling. Then she pulled the covers over her head and sank back to sleep.