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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 hishead 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 waspainfully 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 65 th 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 assortmentof 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 suit, club tie, expensive loafers. Duncker had settled on a blazer and his version of the club tie