Howard watched as Sally Mason signed the paper that turned over her half-million-dollar life insurance policy in exchange for just over $75,000, 15 percent of its value. Sally had gone quiet and didn’t say much to Howard after the transaction was completed. Howard would come by in a few days with a cashier’s check and Sally’s copy of the agreement. When he finished up and said his goodbye and left, Howard felt like going back home and taking another shower. Sally decided she’d wait a couple of hours and call her grandson, George, and leave a message. She wanted to make sure things were still going well for him in New York.

Chapter 13.

13.

GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT
MARCH 3, 2011, 6:45 A.M.

Edmund Mathews was sitting at his kitchen island with a cup of coffee when the house phone rang. Edmund picked it up in the middle of the first ring. It was Russell.

“Sorry if I woke you.”

“God no, I’ve been up for hours. You hear anything?”

“Henry Green e-mailed me a couple of minutes ago. His team has put together some numbers, and they want to show us at nine this morning. What’s the earliest I can pick you up?”

“You can pick me up now. What did he say about the numbers? Did you call him?”

“No, his message said not to call, just come by.”

“So we have no idea what they came up with. Great. Well, just swing by whenever you can. I’m ready when you are.” Edmund hung up the phone.

Nothing he’d thought about since the meeting at Statistical Solutions the previous afternoon had offered Edmund much solace. He wasn’t a numbers-cruncher like Russell, but he understood how heavily they were exposed by the insurance policies they’d purchased from diabetics. These people had looked like such a solid foundation for their business: a widespread and chronic condition with severe complications and a lot of lower-income policyholders. He’d seen more than a few e-mails from salesmen saying they’d reached someone whose policy was in arrears just as they were about to lose it. These were the perfect candidates, people happy to settle for ten cents on the dollar for something that to them was worth nothing.

Edmund wasn’t a man who spent a lot of time in regret or recrimination. If something was broken, you fixed it. The key was, you had to get ahead of the problem before it got serious. Edmund’s favorite historical character, predictably enough, was General George S. Patton. Edmund appreciated such a man of action. If Patton had been allowed to reach Berlin first in 1945, and then been allowed to keep going to Moscow, how different would things have turned out in the world? Such great men of history were always thwarted by the weak and the small-minded.