“So I took a position with the equipment suppliers instead,” she said. “The money is better. You don’t see very many patients. It’s mostly paperwork. I can save enough to get back into school.”

She stopped and looked over at me: I was at a loss.

“That’s admirable, Ms. Carmen. You’re what, twenty-two? Three?” I said, guessing low, because women like that.

“And you’re working toward a better education. That’s always a good thing. But please, go on. My understanding is that you’ve discovered something untoward in the accounting for this business?”

Her hands were back together; the rubbing of the thumb on knuckles had begun yet again.

“It is a small office, Mr. Freeman. There are two treatment rooms stacked only with boxes of forms. There are three wheelchairs, very expensive, top of the line, six-thousand-dollar wheelchairs that are set up for display purposes in the reception area. There are no prosthetics at all-none.”

This time when she stopped, I didn’t prod. I was thinking instead of the wheelchair that Sherry owned, and the busy, equipment-filled therapy rooms at Broward General Hospital where she did her rehabilitation. Sherry was already talking about the possibility of a prosthetic that could replace her lower leg and allow her to run, like some guy trying to get into the Olympics with a thing that looks like a fiberglass spatula attached to his partially missing leg.

“They are stealing,” Carmen said with enough force to snap me back to attention. “They are stealing the Medicare and Medicaid numbers of patients and using them to order expensive wheelchairs and medical equipment, and then cashing in the reimbursements themselves.”

Again I didn’t prod; I just rolled the scenario around in my head. Money from government programs meant to help disabled people was being funneled into the hands of con men who figured out how to game the system-nothing new.