The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [56]
“Just say it, brother. We’re listening.”
Cray turned. His face’d gone blank, and it looked for a moment like he didn’t recognize us. He let out a breath, then sat down, elbows on his knees, hands loose between his legs.
“It’s not like I’m holding a grudge or anything,” he said, and looked up at Unc. “It’s just that I hate the sons of bitches. That whole crew.”
He looked at me, took the cigar out. “You see the news the other night, that footage they ran about Charles Middleton Simons?”
I nodded. Of course I did. I’d watched it with the man’s wife.
“That whole head table,” he said, and pointed the cigar at me. “That whole crew there is what it’s about. Every one of them sons of bitches is about to fall flat on his ass and out of money, or at least out of money like they’ve been used to making.”
“How’s that?” Unc asked. His head was tilted now, him listening. He’d sensed something in Cray now, this turn. Something was coming.
Cray took a deep breath, put his hands on his knees. “It works like this: you join the faculty at the medical university, you have to join the University Medical Consortium. But being on the faculty at a medical university isn’t like being on one at a regular school. You don’t go in, talk to your class, and go home. No, you’re a doctor, and your students are interns following you around while you handle your patients. And those patients, like everybody else, have to pay. Simple as that. They pay. To be precise, their insurance pays, or Uncle Sam, one.” He sighed again, shook his head. “And they pay the University Medical Consortium. That’s who takes in the money. My million-plus a year for eleven years. Reading films and billing over a million a year, all billed to the consortium.”
He smiled, took out that cigar again, looked at it. “Reason I never light these up is because this way I get all the pleasure of smoking a cigar, without any of the pleasure of smoking a cigar.” He looked up at me, smiled. “Figure that one out.”
I glanced at Unc, who stood frozen, leaned toward him just the slightest way. “Keep going,” he said.
“Don’t worry.” He tossed the cigar into a wastebasket beneath the desk, reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out another. “But the thing of it is, you’re still a faculty member. And you’re still on salary. Assistant professor, associate, full. You get your raises, everybody gets a bonus. When I quit I was pulling in a hundred fifty a year, got a fifteen-thousand-dollar bonus.”
“Sounds like plenty to me,” I said, and as soon as I’d said it I was sorry. Unc turned toward me, his mouth closed tight: this was the kind of talk he didn’t want me giving.
Cray looked up at me, gave a single ha, shook his head. “Greed is an ugly thing, I’m here to tell you, Tonto. You make that much, and you’re right, you ought to be happy. You ought to. But then. Then you see the big dogs on the porch. Those boys—that whole head table, Carter Campbell, Buddy Rose, Franklin Cooper, Trey Morrison, Judd Bishop, Cleve Ravenel, Trey Royall—all those boys are pulling down around eight hundred grand a year. All of it because they’re the directors of the medical university. And because they’re the directors of the University Medical Consortium.” He paused, shook his head. “Coming and going they’re getting it. On salary, and senior partners in an association you got no choice but to join if you want to be employed at the medical university. And it’s all about to fall. The senate committee starts its hearings, and the boys up in Columbia find out there’s this skimming of millions to a handful of bluebloods, and that sword is going to fall. Something’s rotten in Charleston.” He looked up at Unc. “What it looks like to me, too, if you want my considered and professional opinion, is that Hungry Neck