“Gloria Croft is so full of it you wouldn’t believe,” Edmund continued. “She was carrying on, telling us that our life settlement bonds were a bad product. Blah, blah, blah. She even told us that we should have been prosecuted over subprime.”

“She is one sanctimonious bitch, I know that for sure,” Jerry agreed.

“She was enjoying telling us about the research, twisting the knife.”

The pasta was set at each man’s place. There was slightly less tension around the table now—the problem had been identified, there was a common enemy, and the four of them were on the same side. Soup could be resisted, but the pasta was a different proposition, and each of the four men ate.

“Of course, there is a medical angle here, Jerry, that we think you can help us with. And Statistical Solutions is drawing up projections of the effect on revenue if we have to pull the diabetics’ policies. We’re going to need more capital. We can see if we can fill in these capital shortfalls with different initiatives. We’ve already directed our sales teams to go back and beat the bushes for metastatic cancer patients with big policies. It costs more money to buy those policies, but it’s completely risk-free.”

“More money, how so?” Higgins said.

“We’ve authorized the salesmen to offer more than the standard fifteen percent. Metastatic cancer patients are not going to cause us any problem about dying on time. It’s just that we have to be more aggressive to find them.”

“Okay, Edmund, I’m hearing you. Needless to say, Max and I will have to put our heads together and talk about this research issue. We want to see that Statistical Solutions data as soon as you have it, of course. And we have a bunch of meetings this afternoon, so I’m sorry but we have to eat and run.”

Jerry downed another forkful of his lunch and chased it with the remnants of his third glass of wine. The leave-takings were quick and less effusive than the greetings had been when the four men met. Trotter and Higgins left Edmund and Russell behind, picked up their coats and got into their waiting town car on Fifty-fourth Street.

So?” Trotter asked when he was settled in his seat. They were heading south on Park Avenue.

“Gloria Croft,” Higgins said. “She’s a pit bull.”

“I sense there’s history there with Edmund—perhaps it’s more about that than about the product.”

“Maybe it’s both. She’s found a flaw in the model, and it just happens to be Edmund Mathews, so it’s a bonus.”

“Be that as it may, we have to do something,” Jerry said. “And we can’t leave it to those two. They’re floundering, you can tell. There’s too much time till we can sell the stock.”