Death Benefit by Robin Cook

words had had any effect.
    When they arrived, Gloria used a script she had learned from Edmund, and Edmund knew it. The two men were buzzed into the suite and shown into a glass-walled conference room, where they were left to stew for fifteen minutes. The receptionist was very polite, and they were offered coffee or water. Outside the room, the office seemed calm and peaceful, with only the hum of the air-conditioning system breaking the silence. The image exuded was of quiet authority.
    Then Gloria emerged. She’d changed her look since Edmund had last seen her. There was now a slight wave to her mid-length, lustrous brown hair. She wore a well-tailored business suit with a lavender blouse and black heels. There was just the right hint of décolletage. She looked like ten million dollars.
    “Gentlemen, I’m very sorry, something going on in Singapore.” Russell and Edmund had stood up when Gloria entered, and she walked over to each man and shook his hand. There was a slight, almost imperceptible smile on her face. She was clearly enjoying herself.
    “Follow me!” She walked out of the conference room quickly, and Edmund and Russell gathered up their coats and briefcases and hustled after her.
    “She’s got us trotting along like a couple of poodles,” Edmund muttered under his breath.
    Gloria was already sitting at her desk when the men entered her office. Some giant, abstract, and presumably very expensive painting hung on the wall behind her. The desk itself was bare save for several large telephones; carrels behind Gloria were strewn with prospectuses and various files. One entire mahogany wall was inset with the mandatory array of televisions carrying the financial channels. Gloria pressed a button on the underside of her desk, and the office door soundlessly closed. When she spoke, she sounded coy even if Edmund knew that was something she was incapable of.
    “I feel like I’m twenty-five again. Back then I was like a suckerfish hanging around the great predators, looking for the little scraps of food they missed when they fed. The ocean was full of blood. It was a lot more fun then than it is now, don’t you agree?”
    Edmund didn’t like the way this had started out. Even he wouldn’t have been this bold. Now she was the shark, and they were the suckerfish, and it was their blood she smelled in the water. He bit his tongue until Gloria started talking about the “opportunities” she had lucked into in the subprime field, opportunities she was grateful that the market (meaning Edmund and Russell) had made available to her.
    “Well, Gloria,” Edmund said, trying to control himself, “you’re just not as smart as you think you are. That subprime stuff was never designed to succeed. We knew it was going to fail. We were shorting each other. We were shorting ourselves.”
    “Maybe you were, but not till the very end. I was buying swaps five years before you”—Edmund snorted—“and you guys were still leveraging your position selling the worthless bonds right up until Lehman went down. Tell me you weren’t.”
    Gloria had at least one of her gloves off now. She felt she held a winning hand against LifeDeals. It might make for a longer game if she held her cards, but she had Edmund and Russell right where she wanted them, and she could enjoy witnessing their reaction if she played her hand now. She’d probably make just as much money in the long run if LifeDeals wasn’t a public company. It depended on how far Edmund was going to push his luck. That morning before they arrived she’d looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and said, “Payback time.”
    Gloria cleared her throat and went on: “The traders who sold those CDOs should have gone to jail. The whole of Wall Street was tarred with that brush. Immoral, greedy, selfish . . . it was stealing .”
    “Nonsense,” Edmund said. “You said it yourself: it was an opportunity . You destroyed those companies. Your fingerprints are on the