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  “I once saw them tie off both sides,” Rosen said.

  Now Brenda apparently couldn’t resist and added, “You can’t do that because then the poor patient would end up with a brain like yours, Dr Rosen.”

  “Actually, it’s the internal carotids that supply the brain,” Gianni said. “But you’ve got a point there, Brenda, about Dr. Rosen I mean.”

  Once a cacophony of sound, the room was now silent. The operating room had no windows, and the only link to the outside world was an intercom on the one of the four white walls. The Mozart CD had ended but no one requested more music.

  A man’s voice on the intercom interrupted the silence. “Dr. Gianni, do you have a time estimate?”

  “No I don’t,” Gianni said emphatically.

  “Okay, just checking.”

  Rosen had hung the blood for transfusion, and it trickled into the patient’s vein. The surgical pack was soaked bright red with blood, but no new blood appeared around the packing.

  “This may just work, Will,” Gianni said.

  “I’m saying my prayers, that’s about all we can do for the next few minutes,” Drew said.

  “We can at least have some music,” Gianni said.

  Brenda selected another classical piece, and this time Rosen kept his comments to himself. His eyes were fixed on the patient and on the suction canister. Chopin played in the background now, a nice selection, Gianni thought, serious but not too gloomy.

  “Okay, Will, it’s 8:52. What do you think?” The pack remained bright red, yet still, no new blood was evident around the margins of the pack.

  “Gently we go…easy, easy,” Gianni said. He grasped the end of the gauze packing with a forceps and pulled it slowly, straight out of the wound, carefully unwinding the folds of the accordion a few inches at a time. When the end was finally withdrawn, all eyes moved to the surgical site.

  “Good,” Gianni said. “It looks good. Let’s just sit tight a little longer to make sure. And I’ll need some Avitene hemostatic, several sheets, please.”

  After another few minutes of watchful waiting, Gianni and Drew were able to place a titanium plate to bridge the gap left after the tumor was excised. The wound was finally closed with a delicate, essentially invisible subcuticular stitch.

  IT WAS 11:15 IN THE MORNING when Gianni returned to the surgeons’ lounge. He had spoken with the patient’s family after surgery, and he was slouched now in one of the well-worn lounge chairs, a bit worn himself for such an early hour. His day had really just begun. From the pocket of his scrub top he pulled out an index card that listed all of the calls he should be making today. The card was full, and the first three were all consulting physicians for some of his upcoming surgical cases next week. They could wait, as he didn’t feel quite up to those in light of the earlier excitement. The fourth note, written in his own small script the night before, said “Call BRH.” Bradford Randolph Hill. That was one he could readily handle right now. It would be a welcome diversion, they could talk about horses.

  “Dr. Gianni calling for Mr. Hill, please.”

  “One moment.”

  “Anthony! Expected I might hear from you today.”

  “Listen, I was able to get Stu to meet you for dinner some night soon. You know he rarely does that much anymore, seems to have all the clients he needs, but he does want to meet you. I guess he likes what he’s heard.”

  “Anthony, thank you, I really do appreciate that. Now which of the two-year-olds did you say you like?”

  As Gianni spoke, he picked at a small hole in the arm of the upholstered chair. “Well, I’ve taken a twenty-five percent stake in Chiefly Endeavor. As far as I know, there is still at least one share left. So maybe we can have some fun with that one. Go to the Derby together, right?”

  “Of course, isn’t that what every owner of a reasonably bred two-year-old says?” Hill asked.

  Gianni said, “An infamous Kentucky horseman once said, ‘No one ever committed suicide with an untried two-year-old in the barn.’”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Perhaps that line coined by the legendary Colonel Phil Chinn summed up the appeal of the thoroughbred game for Gianni— diversion, excitement, and potential, always lots of pure, unbridled potential. On this particular morning, it lightened the residual tension from the operating room.

  Dr. Gianni quickly dressed and walked through the hospital corridor to his office in the adjacent Doctors’ Pavilion. He had a long stride that made it difficult for others to keep up with him, and there was always a rhythmic bounce in his heels, causing his head to bob just slightly as he walked.

  “IS HE HERE YET?” Janice Gianni shouted as she entered the reception area of her husband’s plush Manhattan office. She was dressed in a leather mini skirt, Prada stiletto heels, and a tight blouse open well down her ample pectorals. She had a deeply tanned complexion and large brown eyes. Tiny gobs of mascara clung to her eyelids, and along with the dark shadow she had applied, seemed to spoil her natural beauty.

  The receptionist finally recognized her as Dr. Gianni’s wife, though she might as well have been the Strip-O-Gram girl who just wandered in the wrong door. “Well, he is here, but he is very busy.”

  “Not too busy for my anniversary surprise,” Janice replied. “Five years today.”

  The two patients in the small waiting area looked up nervously from their magazines.

  “I’m going back,” she said, and in an instant she was through the closed door and into the treatment area.

  Dr. Gianni stood outside one of the exam rooms, reviewing a chart. He looked up at her with a combination of anger and embarrassment on his face. “Janice? Why are you here? Dressed like…that?”

  She flung her arms back, hitting one of the many elaborate diplomas adorning the hallway walls. “Happy Anniversary, baby!” she sang out, apparently oblivious, for the moment, to his dissatisfaction.

  The past five years flashed before him, a kaleidoscope leaving him with the cold realization that, apart from some incredibly good sex, he had nothing in common with the woman before him. That was painfully clear to him now.

  As Janice slowly read the expression on his face, her voluptuous smile faded to a frown, then to tears. She charged out the back door of the office, and Anthony retreated to his private office to collect himself yet again.

  Chapter 2

  Bradford Hill Jr. strode down the steps and into the foyer of Michael’s Restaurant, glancing at his Patek Philippe watch. 6:30 p.m. Right on time. Hill lived in a penthouse apartment on East 65th Street in Manhattan, and he owned a mansion on the water in Newport, Rhode Island, complete with fifty-two foot custom sailing vessel. The twenty-five years he’d spent in publishing had been good to him. A few of his friends owned racehorses, and the concept intrigued him. Dr. Gianni had told him about Bushmill Stable, and had arranged the meeting with Stuart Garrison Duncker, its venerable founder.

  Michael’s Restaurant was the media place to be, but Stuart Duncker would have much preferred the ‘21’ Club, where he might have pointed out the Bushmill colors on the jockey at the entrance, or even Gallagher’s, where his caricature was featured in the artist Peb’s mural on the bar wall.

  Hill turned to the small sitting area at the restaurant’s entrance where a few leather chairs surrounded a table with an assortment of glossy magazines. Duncker put down his copy of Hamptons magazine. This was, coincidentally, one of Hill’s publications, though Duncker didn’t know it at the time, nor would he have particularly cared if he had.

  “Mr. Duncker, this is a pleasure. Glad to see you found some good reading,” he chortled with an artificial grin. The two men now stood face to face, their prominent chins pointed at one another. They peered with matching and slightly inauthentic smiles, more like fencing partners than new friends.

  “Oh, yes,” Duncker replied politely, “I did.”

  “Well, shall we be seated?”

  Hill was dressed in a perfectly tailored, blue Brooks Brothers s
uit, club tie, expensive loafers. Duncker had settled on a blazer and his version of the club tie featuring the blue and white racing silks of Bushmill Stable.

  Both men looked tanned and fit. They were escorted to a quiet table near the far wall, just as Hill had requested. He sat first, facing the crowd, and then invited Duncker to sit opposite him.

  The waiter appeared seconds later. “May I offer you gentlemen a drink?”

  Hill smiled with recognition at the waiter and said, “I’ll have a Bombay Martini, extra, extra dry, three olives.”

  “And you, sir?”

  Duncker replied in a smooth southern drawl, “Iced tea for me, please.” He made no secret of the fact that he was a recovering alcoholic and hadn’t consumed a drink in over thirty years. Duncker had also given up the courtship of new clients long ago. The reputation of Bushmill Stable was such that he was no longer required to do it. He was blessed with plenty of clients who were more than willing to risk considerable cash on the hope and promise of a great thoroughbred. He had agreed to this meeting only because he had to be in Manhattan anyway, and Dr. Gianni had asked him to meet with Hill.

  Hill asked, “So which of those two-year-olds do you like the best?” All prospective new clients and even some old ones couldn’t resist asking that one question, which in Duncker’s mind was akin to asking, “Who’s your favorite child?”

  Duncker continued in his slow southern drawl, “Why I like them all, Bradford, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought them. But I will say that I am particularly fond of Chiefly Endeavor. He is by one of this year’s leading stallions, Dynaformer. The dam is a stakes winner herself, and her first two foals are both winners too. Hard to beat that at his sale price. This is her third foal, of course. He’s a real bruiser, stands about sixteen-three and has the bone, muscle and physique to go with it. Intelligent look to him, could be a real good one.” The last three words were drawn out in slow southern longhand. “But in this business there are no guarantees. I always tell my clients that I don’t want to see a penny that you can’t afford to lose, and I absolutely mean that.” That was Duncker’s standard approach with clients—brutally honest, always with the highest hope, but low expectations.

  “Count me in on a share in Chiefly Endeavor. I’ve studied the material, and of course, I place a good deal of trust in the opinion of our mutual friend, Dr. Gianni. I guess I just needed to meet the patriarch of Bushmill Stable myself, and now that I have, well as I said, count me in on Chiefly Endeavor.”

  “I most certainly will and we are delighted to have you with us.” Even though Duncker was no longer courting clients, he was happy to have another from “the grid.” He often analyzed the demographics of his client base, rating their desirability. Manhattan’s grid, or the areas represented by zip codes 10021 and 10028, was among the best. He had many clients from the publishing industry, also a generally desirable bunch. Doctors were among the worst. They seemed to want to dissect every last detail of a pedigree or a billing statement. It was a wonder Gianni had lasted as long as he had with Bushmill. Duncker and Gianni did genuinely like and respect one another, nonetheless.

  Brad Hill, on the other hand, had just spent $75,000 for a twenty-five percent stake in a massive but fragile four-legged athlete, sight unseen, in the time it had taken for his cocktail to arrive.

  Chapter 3

  Saratoga Springs, NY

  Three months later

  The rising sun had begun to penetrate the thick fog overlying the famed Oklahoma training track in Saratoga Springs. Like the pea soup over the New England coast, Gianni thought as he approached the gate on Union Avenue, drove inside and headed towards the training track. The fog over the track reminded him of the still fog over a harbor, blurring the shapes of horses rather than boats, of jockeys not sailors. Fog so thick it feels like a misting rain when you walk through it.

  Gianni loved the early morning tranquility of both scenes, though of late he had abandoned the seascapes in favor of the training track. Once inside those gates, he felt as though he were a million miles from the hustle of Manhattan and the frenzy of a big city emergency room.

  THE WORLD INSIDE the gates of the Oklahoma Track usually exploded with activity around mid July, though it remained open from spring through late autumn. Saratoga was the venue where all owners and trainers wanted to spend the summer, hoping they had the sort of stock to compete against the best in the world.

  Brad Hill was already parked along the track, chatting with another owner when Gianni drove by. “Good morning, Mr. Hill. Hop in and I’ll drive you to the barn.”

  “Perfect vehicle for this place, Anthony,” Hill said as he opened the door of the black Jeep Wrangler.

  Gianni said, “Hold on. It’s not the ride you’re accustomed to in your Range Rover.”

  They rocked up and down over ruts in the dirt road and pulled up on the grass across from Barn 74, Jeff Willard’s barn.

  “He’s been training really well,” Gianni said. “Jeff thinks he could be ready in August, September for sure. Though nothing is really for sure where thoroughbreds are concerned. If nothing else, Brad, horses will save you from a predictable life.”

  They parked on a grassy area in front of the shedrow, a row of a dozen or so individual stalls facing a walkway. The smell of hay and manure was unmistakable when they approached the barn.

  Most of the trainers converted the end stalls to offices. As they walked towards Jeff’s office at the end of the barn, Gianni recognized their horse heading at them.

  “Look, here he comes now, right on schedule.”

  “Good looking animal,” Hill said. “I’d love to see him make his debut while we’re still in Saratoga.”

  “Wouldn’t we all.”

  Chiefly Endeavor was slotted for one of the earlier sets, and the muscular colt was now prancing sideways, full of himself, with Alison McKensie in the saddle. Alison was one of Jeff’s strongest exercise riders, and she had taken a special interest in the Chief, her nickname for the fractious two-year-old. Her legs were covered by leather chaps that hugged the barrel of the horse, and her blond hair was tied in a long pony tail that wagged behind her safety helmet, nearly in unison with the horse’s tail.

  “Come on,” Gianni said. “Let’s go watch from the viewing stand.” They changed direction and walked back across a grassy area to the training track.

  At every barn there were grooms tending to horses in the stalls, hot walkers circling them around the shedrows after their workouts, and exercise riders up and down on horses in a continual parade to and from the track. Trainers walked from the barn to the track and back again, on foot or on horseback, stopping to exchange words with anxious owners who always had questions for which there were often no answers.

  From a host of illegals just up from Mexico, to the likes of the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts, the world inside the gates was a microcosm of the world outside. Even the horses exhibited a class system. Each barn had its alpha male, with others assuming more submissive roles, not unlike a litter of dogs. Among the two-year-olds in Jeff Willard’s barn, word was spreading that Chiefly Endeavor was the new alpha-elect.

  Gianni could see Jeff standing in front of the viewing stand, a small bleacher-like structure raised several feet above ground level. At six-foot-three, Jeff could forego the stand. He looked back and forth between the stopwatch in his hand and his horse on the track.

  “Four furlongs in forty-nine and one. Not bad, not bad,” he said.

  “Good morning, Jeff.”

  “Morning, Doc. Your colt is next.”

  “Jeff, meet Brad Hill.” They exchanged pleasantries, and then the three climbed the stairs of the viewing stand.

  “He’ll be going five furlongs on the turf.”

  The fog had lifted, and the trio had a clear view across the track to the far side of the turf course. At the five-eighths marker they could see Chiefly Endeavor accelerate.

  “Good stride,” Jeff said. “Look at the way he holds his head,
he’s fluid and he has a good long stride. That’s a good horse.”

  As he crossed in front of the finish pole, Jeff clicked his timer. “Looks like 1:02 flat, without looking like he had to work all that hard. That’s good.” Jeff began to walk back towards his barn with Gianni and Brad Hill at his side.

  Jeff said, “Doc, I was going to call you this morning. Chiefly Endeavor is our good news of the day, but I’m afraid I have some bad news as well. The filly got very sick yesterday.”

  Gianni only had one filly, so he knew Jeff was referring to his three-year-old, a pretty chestnut named Boots. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “After that last race, when she ran so poorly, I thought she might have a laryngeal paralysis. The jockey said she seemed to just quit, and she was blowing hard like she couldn’t get air.”

  “The vet was going to look at her next week, right?”

  “Yeah, and in the meantime she started to drain this foul smelling mucus out of her nose, on one side only. The vet scoped her and at first he thought it was a tumor. Then on closer examination, he found and removed a sponge.”

  “A what?”

  “A sponge,” Jeff replied.

  “How the hell did a sponge get in her nose?”

  “You’ve never heard or read anything about sponging?”

  Gianni stopped walking and looked quizzically at the trainer, then at Hill.

  Jeff continued, “Sponging. A piece of sponge is inserted deep into one of the nostrils. It interferes with breathing, and obviously with the horse’s ability to run. Longer term, it will cause infection and a whole host of problems if it’s not found in time.”

  “My God, who would do that to a horse?” Hill asked.

  “Hard core gamblers, organized crime, crooked trainers or owners,” Jeff said.

  Gianni shook his head in disgust. “I want to see her.”

  “In her case, I can’t figure any motive,” Jeff said. “That race was a low level claiming race, so an owner or trainer would have to be pretty desperate for a lousy win. And she wasn’t enough of a threat in that race for some high stakes gambler to target her and try to put her out of the running. In fact, the favorite won that race and paid peanuts. Right now it’s in the hands of the police and the Racing and Wagering Board.”