He inhaled deep and caressed the trigger. It was his if he wanted it, but instead, he relaxed his finger and without moving anything else, nudged an elbow into the banker's ribs. Bart inhaled sharply and swung his .300 Ruger in a broad arc that startled the deer. I bit the inside of my cheek and blinked at the sound of the shot. The deer tumbled, but then jumped up and started to run.

  "Missed," James said.

  "No," Swinson said. "It went down."

  "Missed the kill shot," I said.

  We were decked out in new Cabela's camouflage jackets, pants, and hats, sitting in padded chairs lined up along the south opening of a European game stand. A twelve-by-twelve-foot tower of stone, twenty feet high with a cedar shake roof and a propane heater. The tower stood in the middle of a clover field that was flanked on either side by wooded slopes. It was early in the season for killing deer, but Cascade was a ten-thousand-acre preserve surrounded by a high fence that let us operate under a different set of rules.

  We descended the tower's stairs and went to the spot in the field where the deer had been. A spray of crimson blood was spattered across the clover. James knelt down and picked a blade. He held it up in the early dawn light and sniffed it.

  "Gut shot," he said.

  I pursed my lips and shook my head.

  "What?" Bart said.

  "Bad way to go," I said.

  "I thought these things took them down," Bart said, hefting his nickel-plated .300.

  "Got to hit them right," James said, patting him on the back. "Don't worry, we'll find it."

  "You sure?" Bart said. He was from New York City and it was his first deer.

  "Want me to call Bucky?" I asked.

  "No," James said to me. "He's showing those marine biologists from Harvard his spawning program. They can't figure out how he does it."

  "The guy who built the lodge?" Bart asked. "The guy I met last night who takes care of the place?"

  "He's the best hunter I've ever seen," James said. "Russia. South America. Africa. No one better."

  "I thought he was a builder."

  "He's everything," I said, walking in the direction the deer had run and kneeling down to pick my own cloverleaf.

  We went up a hillside and through a thick stand of saplings shot through with brambles. By the time we reached the top of the ridge, Bart had to stop, hands on his knees to catch his breath. In front of us was a field, bisected by massive power lines.

  James broke out of the trees and stood over the banker, patting his back. The sun wasn't up yet, but the sky was blue. I knew by the look on James's face that he wanted me to push on, so I started off, keeping my eyes on the blood trail, but listening to James.

  "Thane's got a plan," he said to Bart. "We should be able to get our steel in by the end of the week."

  "You cut a deal with the unions?" Bart said, his eyes wide.

  "No," James said, "we're going around them, or over them, I guess. Thane got his hands on some Sikorskys. We're airlifting in the steel."

  "Well . . . that's--"

  "Great news, right?" I said, stopping so they could catch up, then continuing on the trail.

  "Listen," James said, patting the banker hard on the back, "I get the feeling your people were ready to call in the outstanding loans we already have. I know they didn't believe a project this big could really happen. But this will put us officially 'under construction.' That'll lock in our tenants. My son Scott's got signed leases with Home Depot, JC Penney, Lord & Taylor, BJ's, Circuit City, Costco, and Target. Stores that have never even been on the same site before."

  "The biggest project ever," I said. "Every banker from London to Singapore will be camping outside our door."

  We had reached the other edge of the field and looked down into a gloomy tree-filled ravine. I put up my hand.

  "Shhh."

  I crouched down and grabbed Bart by the collar, pulling him behind a thick oak tree. The loamy scent of dirt and dead leaves filled the air.

  "He's right there," James said in a whisper. "Get your gun up."

  Bart fumbled with the .300, bringing it to his shoulder. His arms were shaking.

  "Where?" he said in a hiss, looking over the top of his scope.

  James peeked around the edge of the tree.

  "Just this side of the stream," he whispered. "Next to that big black stump."

  Bart nodded and aimed his rifle.

  "Safety off," James said, flicking the gun's safety off for him.

  Bart nodded again. James raised his own gun, aiming it. I saw him pull the trigger almost the instant Bart shot. The deer went over like a duck in a shooting gallery. James dropped his gun to his side and Bart jumped up, whooping and hugging us, slapping high-fives.

  "God damn," Bart said. "I did it."

  We half walked, half slid down into the bottom of the ravine. James took out his hunting knife and slit open the animal's belly. Bart lost some color and looked away.

  "Nice one," James said. "Big day for you, Bart. First kill and a huge new deal with King Corp."

  "Deal?"

  "We thought we'd give you a chance to do the deal," James said. "You're our biggest bank relationship."

  James cut the deer's throat and spilled the guts out onto the ground. He sliced off a wedge of the liver and held it up to Bart.

  "First deer," he said. "You gotta eat the liver."

  "Two billion dollars at one hundred over LIBOR," I said, gripping the banker's bony shoulder through the jacket. LIBOR was the lending rate set by the London banks between themselves. One hundred points over that was merely one percent.

  Bart looked from the scarlet meat to James and made a laughing sound.

  "I can't do that."

  James shrugged and, dangling the meat, said, "Then you're out. You gotta do this though."

  "That's what they do?" Bart said, blinking at him. "Really?"

  "Everyone."

  Bart took it from him and nibbled at it, wincing.

  "The whole thing," I said, slapping his back. "Come on."

  Bart put it in his mouth and swallowed, choking, but keeping it down. James and I laughed.

  "Come on," James said, "you don't get the deal, but you got the buck. This'll look great over your fireplace."

  James grabbed one of the deer's hind legs. I grabbed the other and we started dragging it to the top of the ravine, sticks snapping beneath our boots. Bart stood there watching.

  "We can do a deal," Bart said, scrambling to catch up and helping himself up by grasping the trunks of small trees.

  "No, you're out," James said, looking back.

  We were at the top of the ridge now and breathing hard. James looked out over the open field at the orange glow in the eastern sky and inhaled deeply.

  "You know what I love?" James said, nudging the carcass with his boot. "Bucky's boys will clean this up, butcher it like they do at the grocery store, and it'll show up on the table in a week or so with a good bottle of Meritage."

  "Why am I out?" Bart asked.

  James looked off at the sky again, then back at Bart and said, "Because I gave you a chance and you don't want it. The Bank of Switzerland will take it and be glad."

  James shook Bart's hand.

  "Congratulations," he said. "Bucky will be along to get you. Let him know if you want it mounted. He's got a great taxidermist."

  James turned and started to walk away across the field, leaving us.

  "James," Bart said, raising his voice. "I can't do one hundred over LIBOR. No one can. Two fifty I can do, maybe."

  James kept walking.

  "It's the biggest retail development in the world," I said. "It's thirty minutes from New York City and it's ours. It's happening."

  "You guys are overextended," Bart said, his voice as clear as a bell, directing it at James's back.

  "Everyone knows that too. This thing's gone on for three years. You've leveraged every project you own. This preserve, even. There are other banks you owe. If your loans get called, King Corp could go under. You can't demand one hundred over LIBOR from that position."

  "We'll find out when he gets back to the lodge," I said.

  "James, you don't just do deals like this," Bart said, yelling to him.

  "When he capitalizes this deal," I said, my voice low, but carrying clearly in the quiet dawn, "the rest of our projects will drop like fruit. If you're out, you know what he'll do to you. He'll spend the next six months refinancing every project your bank owns and your bonus will look like a dishwasher's paycheck."

  "One hundred is insane, James," Bart yelled. "I could be a laughingstock."

  James was across the field now, and he ducked into the woods.

  All of a sudden, Bart took off running after him. I jogged along, chuckling. Sticks snapped under his feet as he chased James down into the wooded ravine.

  When he caught up, he said, "Jesus, how am I going to look?"

  "Like you beat everyone else to the punch," James said, smiling, reaching up the hill, and holding out his hand. "Now you go wait for Bucky with the deer and we'll meet you. Come on, Thane."

  "But you're not calling UBS, right?"

  "We have a deal, don't we?"

  Bart nodded.

  James set off through the woods at a pace that left me breathing hard, taking long strides until we came to the bridge. Across the water, rising out of the mist, the lodge lay sleeping like a giant.

  "Look at that," James said. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a brief squeeze. "Family. At the end of the day, that's what it's about."

  4

  "What about your family?" the shrink asks in a voice too quiet for a man his size.

  "Blue-collar. My dad was a whip-your-ass-with-the-belt guy until my older brother died. Drunk driving with his friends. After that, my old man's hair turned white. He barely talked.

  "My mom dropped out too. She'd sit in this old La-Z-Boy rocker, eyes glued to the tube or a romance novel. Meals pretty much came from a can or they didn't come at all."

  "It's hard for any of us to think of parents as just people," he says.

  "I remember when I got a scholarship at Syracuse to play football," I say. "They gave me some spending cash--the school, I mean--and I got my mom one of those reclining chairs that gives you a massage that she used to beg my dad for. She never even sat in it. That's where she stacked her books."

  "You said a scholarship," he says in a hushed tone. "That's a big deal where I come from."

  I twist up my lips, nod, and say, "I was a second-team All-America middle linebacker, drafted in the sixth round by the Giants. The American dream. Right. Four days into camp I tore up my rotator cuff. That was it. Big deal."

  "And you felt, how?"

  "Like a loser."

  "You went further than a lot of people."

  "After I met Jessica, I did. The development business was like checkers to her. She could show you how to move a piece and there you'd be, staring at a triple jump. Not like Machiavellian tactics, just little maneuvers that changed the balance.

  "They all loved her. Bankers. Tenants. She had this easygoing way, looking people in the eye, listening to their stories, laughing at their jokes, and really laughing, having fun, everybody liking her and me too by extension. Anytime there was a big deal to get done, if I could get that guy and his wife together with me and Jessica, it was in the bag.

  "She was on top of things, office politics, the deals being done, and we'd strategize together about how to get ahead. And she was nice about it. It didn't seem like some campaign strategy. She didn't nag me. We were partners and she always made me feel like I was in the lead, like I finally found the way I could climb to the top and that she was just there to carry my water bottle."

  "A wife can be a big asset," he says.

  "I think she wanted me to do well because of how she grew up," I say. "Her father died and left them with a bunch of debts, and they lost their house and lived in a tenant trailer on a dairy farm. Right next to the barn. She, her mom, and her older brother all worked it for some old guy who wanted to get into her pants. He paid them crap. They ate a lot of ketchup sandwiches and wore three layers of clothes to try to stay warm in the winter.

  "But she got out," I say. "Academic scholarship, then me."

  "You met at school?" he asks.

  "No, I was already working for James and she was going to Hunter College in New York City. I was there on business, I finished this deal, and took a walk in Central Park. One of those warm spring days. That Literary Walk where they have the American elms, you been there?"

  He shakes his head no, and says, "I took my kids to that zoo a couple years ago. The penguins."

  "Yeah. So, she was sitting there by the Shakespeare statue, studying biology. This weird picture of a beetle with a stalk of some disgusting plant busting through its shell.

  "You ever hear of a nematode? It's some fungus-dispersing worm that infects the beetle's brain and takes over. The beetle crawls up into the treetops, above the jungle, then it kills the beetle and sprouts so its spores get spread by the wind."

  The shrink makes a kind of unpleasant face.

  "I thought, man, this girl is too pretty to be that smart. Glossy black hair. Little upturned nose. Big brown eyes. The kind that can look inside you. People always thought she was a lot younger than she was.

  "She was wearing this khaki skirt and a black tank top. Very nice. We ended up at one of those outdoor cafes on Columbus Avenue. She was on the outs with some rich boyfriend. Life is timing, right?"

  "And then you two had a family," he says.

  "A broken one," I say.

  He raises his eyebrows and waits.

  "The worst thing that can happen," I say, staring into his dark eyes, willing him to feel just a touch of the agony. I feel the gears in my mind slipping, everything spinning, heating up, smoking. Going nowhere.

  "We had a baby," I say. "He died."

  I shake my head and let it hang down.

  "When we found out she was pregnant, we painted his room. Just the two of us, drinking a little wine, spattering each other with paint. Laughing until we cried. These cool green mountains and a night sky with the moon rising. All the stars on the ceiling."

  I shake my head and go silent.

  "You want to tell me what happened?"

  "No," I say, and the word comes out louder than I meant it to. He sits and waits.

  "After we were together awhile, she came back upstate," I say. "She did everything for me. Cooked. Massaged my back. Let me go out with my buddies. Never calling all the time and harping like some wives. I was crazy about her. I would have . . ."

  "What?"

  "I was going to say 'killed for her,'" I say with a stupid smile, shaking my head.

  "And you did," he says.

  "It was the union," I say.

  "How so?"

  5

  I WATCHED ONE OF OUR THREE BIG Sikorsky helicopters lift off in a cloud of dust, its blades pounding the air. Under its belly hung a bundle of steel girders. It rose slowly over the high fence and then tilted toward the woods beyond. On the far side of the job site, we found an abandoned factory with a railroad spur, a line of track off the main railroad, where we could ship and stockpile our steel. On the other side of the site, just off the interstate, the union had a picket line that the trucks wouldn't go through. The union wanted a payoff. Cash. Big money. And, for King Corp to use union construction labor at high rates. Men getting paid sometimes without even showing up. James never played that game, because, if you could beat the union, go around their picket lines, you could put the millions they normally skimmed into your own pocket.

  We needed to get the steel on-site to start construction, big I-beams, tall as telephone poles. Once the steel is up, a project is considered a go. You can get financing. Money from the bank starts to flow. Ben Evans, my college roommate, teammate, and best friend, pulled up to the picket line that morning with a convoy of thirty trucks carrying steel. A decoy, while I got the real stuff flown in from the opposite direction. We both had partnership interests in the project, so beating the union put money into our pockets too.

  Around ten a.m., two guys in a Buick showed up at the gates of the old factory, but we had two state troopers sitting there in a patrol car. At eleven, the troopers let Milo Peterman past. Milo was a King Corp partner in the Garden State project. James brought Milo in because he knew everybody in northern New Jersey. Connected. Not in a mob sort of way, but legitimate political connections. A guy who could get all the permits you need to do a job that big.

  He was a sloppy-looking man, even in a suit, with thin greasy hair, big black plastic glasses, and a belly stretching his white dress shirt, bulging from his dark suit. Milo heaved himself out of his BMW and stamped toward me with his hand on the flap of hair covering his head to keep it in place as a Sikorsky hammered by overhead.

  "What the fuck are you doing?" he said. His forehead was crunched tight and his dark eyebrows made a steep V.

  "Getting the steel in," I said, wondering why he was acting so crazy.

  "Why the fuck didn't I know?" he said, spittle flying from his lips.

  "James said not to bother you," I said. "That you had enough going on."

  Milo clenched his hands and turned this way and that, looking at the piles of steel, the railroad tracks, and one of the big helicopters as a crew in hard hats tethered up another bundle of steel.

  "Fuck me," Milo said, and when he turned back my way, his face had fallen. He looked right through me and I saw that his eyes were wet.

  "Fuck me," he said again, this time a pitiful squeak.

  I watched him stagger off and climb into his car. He pulled away fast, with his tires kicking up stones and making a little dust cloud of its own. I shrugged and got back to work. Around four, I got into my Escalade and drove over to the front entrance to the job site. The only thing left of the picket line were three rusty oil drums on the roadside. Two overflowed with garbage. The third was still smoldering from the union's fire, and I could smell the stench of burnt plastic as I rolled down my window to tell the security guard to unlock the gates. A ten-foot chain-link fence topped by a roll of razor wire surrounded the two-hundred-acre site.