The Grave Maurice

something like that.”

“No, I don’t. You manage once a week to make up the solar system.”

Diane ignored that. “She was good in mud-”

“So is Momaday, but I wouldn’t give odds on him.”

“-she nearly met Secretariat’s record on the one course. She was only two-fifths of a second off Secretariat’s time. Imagine, not just a second but a split second can mean the difference between winning and losing.” Diane sighed. “How exhausting. Anyway, her last race was the Breeders’ Cup. Right near the end she stumbled in the backstretch, threw her jockey and shattered her leg, went down, got up and kept on going. With a shattered leg, she kept on going. She collapsed in the home stretch. They had to put her down then and there. I’ve never been one to admire determination-it’s so tiring-but can you imagine? To keep at the gallop with a broken leg? It’s something to know that in this life of travail and tears-and, fortunately, vodka”-she raised her glass-“some things never give up.”

Jury thought of Nell. “And some people.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to your mare.”

“Go for Wand had that field wired,” said Diane, sadly. “She had it wired.”

FORTY-NINE

Vernon walked into his office at eight a.m. the next morning to find Bobby and Daphne already in theirs. He could hear them even before he passed by the door of their eerily dark room. They were fighting about something; they always were. They never agreed about stocks, bonds, IPOs, hedge funds, the Dow, NASDAQ-anything. It was almost like a deeply sworn feud that provided, together with a basic exchange of knowledge, their principal entertainment.

Divesting himself of coat and laptop, Vernon went back to the dark doorway. The only light came from five computer screens. Light pulsed, shadows moved. Vernon thought of Plato’s cave. (It came as a surprise to people that Vernon had taken a first at Oxford in philosophy.) The cold bluish light of their separate screens washed over their faces, Bobby’s and Daph’s, as if submerging them. Three other computers tuned to different networks, different sources of financial information were lined up on a long table where they could view them when they needed to. It had long been a marvel to Vernon that they could share these cramped quarters and not go crazy. Perhaps the nature of the work was already so crazy that they could factor in their own without noticing.

“I want you to look into this bunch”-he tossed Nell’s folder on Bobby’s desk-“see what’s going on with this drug. And with its stock offerings.”

Bobby tore himself away from his screen. You could almost hear the rip. Even as he talked, he kept peeking at it. “Wyeth? That American pharmaceutical company? It’s Wyeth-Ayerst Labs-yeah, that’s the one that put out that diet drug called fen phen the FDA is pulling off the market. Bad, bad news that thing was.”

“Anyway, I have a friend with a passion for horses and this company makes this drug”-Vernon nodded toward the folder. “They get it from the urine of pregnant mares. Premarin, it’s called.”

Daphne made a face. “Horse urine?”

“I’m sure the horses share your opinion. Unfortunately, they have nothing to say in the matter.”

Daphne swiveled her chair around. “Wait a minute; I’ve heard of that. It’s for menopausal women. Some sort of estrogen, a hormone-replacement drug?”

“Good for you,” said Vernon. “Especially considering you’re only twenty- five.”

Bobby leaned forward, frowning. “But that must take a hell of a lot of horses.”

“Oh, it does.” Vernon described the way the urine was collected.

“God,” said Daphne, “that is horrible.”

“Wait. I haven’t even told you the downside. Most of the foals are shipped off to slaughterhouses. A few are kept to replace the mares that die.”

“God,” she said again. “Do the women taking this stuff know this?”

“I doubt it. If they knew, most would find some other drug. And there are perfectly good ones out there that do the job and without the questionable side effects.”

Bobby cocked his head. “Sounds like you’ve been researching this.”

“I have. So what I want you to look for is some way of making life less than pleasant for this pharmaceutical company. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Eyes on screens, they both waved him away in friendly fashion.

Vernon opened his laptop, leaned back in his chair and thought about Nell. He always thought about Nell.

He looked at his screen and thought about Nell. He was thinking about taking SayWhen public. No, he was thinking about Nell.

Samantha put her head round the door and tapped on the doorframe. “I’m going to the caff for breakfast take-out. What do you want?”

“Oh. Pork pie with a ploughman’s.” He thought about Nell.

“That’s not breakfast, Vernon.”

“What?” He looked at her.

She shook her head. “That’s lunch, not breakfast.”

“Oh.” He rubbed his head. Then he ordered an egg sandwich, bacon and coffee. And thought about Nell. He looked at Samantha. “Is that breakfast?”

“That’s breakfast.” She tapped her knuckles against the door again, her silver ring rapping it.

“A blueprint,” said Bobby, when Vernon later went back to the room, “for success.” He turned his computer screen so that Vernon could see it. “This company’s PR people must be first rate. You market Premarin, first by covertly selling menopause to American women as a disease, making them think they’ve just got to have hormone-replacement therapy; second, you assure everyone the horse farms are meeting ‘guidelines’ ”-Bobby made squiggles in the air to indicate the quote marks-“not government guidelines but ones laid down by Wyeth itself and, of course, by employing its own inspectors to make sure the guidelines are met; third, you stomp all over any competition, especially any bunch that wants to make a generic. You’ve locked in your patent for half a century, of course. Now, by following this simple recipe you wind up as the only manufacturer of this drug, making a billion and a half a year. And think of this: it’s not a drug taken intermittently because of illness; it’s one the woman is taking for the long haul-in other words, forever.”

Daphne was chewing gum and staring at her screen. “I don’t believe this; I mean, how could this corporation get away with this? They took out the patent in ’42 and have had no competition. These poor horses-” She turned her screen toward Vernon so that he could see the picture of the mares in their stalls. “They’re tied so they can’t move or lie down. Even calves in crates aren’t much worse off. These mares are pregnant for God’s sake. And they can’t move. Are we back in the Dark Ages?”

Vernon looked at the screen, at the condition of the horses, at the