Chapter One

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Jungle Drug Holds Promise for Heart Disease

Researchers at Boston-based Newbury
Pharmaceuticals are heralding what they
say may be a major breakthrough in the
treatment of heart disease, now America's
number one killer. . . .

"YOU CAN'T THROW THE SEVEN OF HEARTS, BRIAN. I just picked up the eight of hearts three cards ago."

"I'm betting you've got eights."

"Okay. . . . Bad bet. . . . Gin."

Brian Holbrook watched his father score up gin plus nineteen and sweep the cards together with practiced ease. The hands that had once been thick and strong enough to crush walnuts were spotted from sixty-three years in the sun and bony from almost a decade of infirmity. But they could still handle cards.

Jack Holbrook--Black Jack Holbrook to many for as long as Brian could remember--wasn't a professional gambler. But he dearly loved to bet. He called it wagering, and he would do it on anything from the Super Bowl to whether the next car coming around the corner would be foreign-made or domestic. Two bucks, ten, a hundred--it really didn't matter to Jack. The game was the thing. He was, and always had been, the most fiercely competitive man Brian had ever known.

Careful not to let his father see, Brian glanced at his watch. Three o'clock. They had been playing gin for almost two hours. At a penny a point, they kept a running score until one of them, invariably Jack, reached