Edmund had the car brought around and the two men sat in it double-parked on East Fifty-eighth Street. Russell swore he could hear Edmund thinking.

“We have to get a head start on securitizing what we have,” Russell said.

“Yes. For certain. And look at the diabetics whose policies we own,” said Edmund. “See if it mightn’t be cheaper to cancel some rather than carry them. And we should lay off some of our sales force until further notice.”

Edmund had Russell call a contact at Goldman Sachs, a man named McDonald in the asset-backed securities division. McDonald had been interested in LifeDeals but was wary. Russell was still confident they would get one of the major players on board, and he hadn’t spoken to McDonald in a while. It happened that McDonald had a few minutes to spare an old client, and Edmund and Russell headed down to West Street in Battery Park City and Goldman’s global headquarters.

That guy’s small-time, no vision,” Edmund said, after the unsatisfying meeting. Russell had answered all the questions the traders asked about securitizing their portfolio of life settlements sooner rather than later. But the traders couldn’t see what the hurry was. From their perspective the more policies they had to bundle, the better their product was going to be. And they hadn’t done the grueling legal legwork to create the complex CDOs to be in a position to take them to market. What Russell and Edmund had been looking for was reassurance after their meeting with Gloria Croft. As they left Goldman they admitted to each other that the reaction they’d gotten wasn’t exactly negative, it just wasn’t wildly positive either.

In the car Russell and Edmund made another decision. As Gloria Croft had so devastatingly demonstrated, the main problem they were facing was with the mortality-rate bell curves that LifeDeals’ viability was predicated on and the damage that medical advances might do in terms of moving the curve to the right.

“We need to go see Henry Green,” Edmund said. Henry Green was CEO of Statistical Solutions LLC, the company that had produced all the actuarial data, including the bell curves. Edmund got out his BlackBerry. This was a call he wanted to make.

“Henry Green, please.... Okay, well, tell him Edmund Mathews is in the city and on his way over and needs to see him right away. . . . Well, I’m sure he’ll understand when you tell him. Our key data has flaws. There’s new information. We need to fix it.” Edmund hung up.

“He’ll see us,” Edmund said.

LifeDeals had put Statistical Solutions on an expensive retainer. Russell wanted to be armed with the best available statistical analysis when they went on the road selling their product. One supposed lesson from the subprime debacle was that investors wanted to know exactly what they were investing in. It might appear to be self-evident, but it wasn’t. Russell wanted to be able to show an investor the latest data, even individual policies, if they cared to see them.