Ben was inside, wearing a hard hat and jeans.

  He saw me and opened his arms. We hugged each other, laughing and slapping each other on the back.

  "You should've seen Johnny's face," Ben said. His bony cheeks were red beneath his rectangular glasses. His eyes were bottle blue. "I thought he was going to pop a vein in his neck."

  "No such luck."

  "Almost done," he said, raising his voice as an empty helicopter took off for a final load.

  "Good timing," I said. "Look at that."

  Thick dark clouds were churning toward us from the west. A chilly wind whipped up the dust and grit. While we inventoried the steel, the sun disappeared behind the clouds, darkening the sky. Rain started spitting down on us, but we waited until our crews were done before we got into my truck and headed for the gate. The security guard's eyes popped out of his head and he wrung his hands together in a washing motion. He signaled us frantically to stop and walked over to the Escalade after we drove through.

  "There were some guys around here asking about you," he said. "I thought you should know. One of them had this thing on his lip. They were telling me you guys had some kids and I was like, well that's none of my business or yours, but they just stood there smiling at me for a while before they got into this black Suburban and drove off."

  I told him not to worry, thanked him, and rolled up the window. The first rumble of thunder echoed across the sky.

  "What do you want to do?" I asked Ben.

  "What can we do?"

  "Yeah," I said, taking my foot off the brake. "It's their bullshit scare tactics, like those baseball bats."

  "I hope so," Ben said.

  He was looking straight ahead at the rainy gray road, worried. He had good reason. 6

  I FELT LIKE I WAS RUNNING from something, like I'd just pulled a teenage prank. We took the parkway north to Route 17, winding our way through the Catskill Mountains, heading home. Lightning flashed and you could see the mist rising from the trees. The news was on the radio, but the clatter of the rain on the windshield was so loud I had to turn it up.

  There was a breaking story in Monticello. A man named Milo Peterman had been found shot three times in the head. Police were calling it a mob-related hit.

  "Pull over," Ben said, grabbing for the door handle, his face pale. I veered off the road, lurching to a stop. Ben leaned out and vomited. Then shut the door and wiped his lips on the back of his sleeve. He was already drenched. His straight blond hair was matted to the sides of his head and the tips of his bangs touched the rectangular glasses. He kept his eyes straight ahead and told me in a quiet voice to go.

  I checked the rearview mirror, gripped the wheel, and pulled back out onto the rain-slicked road. Milo had a fishing cabin in Monticello. He grilled hamburgers one night for Ben and me on the deck overlooking some trout stream. The only thing he had to drink were wine coolers. We rode in silence until I couldn't stand it and said, "Last time I saw you that wet was that night on New Year's in Palm Beach."

  That made him smile. We'd been college roommates, teammates too, on the football team. Ben's family had a place in Palm Beach. I'd never been south of Binghamton and he took me down there for the holidays our freshman year.

  "Those women were so sad," he said, referring to that night, closing a local bar, both of us three sheets to the wind, hormones running wild.

  "They weren't bad-looking."

  "For three a.m.," he said. "They must have been in their forties."

  We went home with them, a big place on the beach. I was with one of them in the master bedroom when we heard Ben fall into the pool. He was so drunk, I actually jumped off the balcony into the pool to save him.

  We grinned back and forth at each other until the memory faded.

  "Milo," Ben said, shaking his head. "Shit."

  "Never trust a guy who drinks wine coolers."

  "It's not funny."

  "I didn't say it was."

  "He had to have something going with the union on the side," Ben said. "Yeah, he got the permits, but I bet he's the one who kept that union two steps ahead of us. Every move we made, they knew. It took us a year to get that site prepped."

  "He showed up at the factory," I said, glancing over at Ben.

  "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

  "Didn't think anything of it, really. It was weird. He was upset, but he was an odd duck. I thought he was just pissed because he liked to have his hands in everything."

  "That's my point," Ben said. "We didn't tell him about the Sikorskys."

  "So when we flew the steel over their heads today," I said, "they figured Milo double-crossed them."

  "Honestly," Ben said, "I don't give a shit about Milo and his Presidential Rolex and his greasy hair. I care about them showing up and talking about our kids. Jesus."

  "Your kids are in Palo Alto," I said, sorry when I did. Ben's wife had taken off with them a year ago.

  "Who talks like that though," he said. "About someone's kids."

  "Someone trying to scare you," I said, talking braver than I felt. I thought of Tommy and Jessica at home. My foot pressed a little harder on the gas.

  "That Johnny," Ben said. "They call him boss, but he doesn't run the whole union, right?"

  "Pension fund treasurer or some crap," I say. "James said he's pretty high up in the Buffalino Family."

  "Yeah. James also said we didn't have to worry," Ben said.

  That's when I saw the lights coming at us from behind. I sped up even more, checking the mirror.

  "What are you doing?" Ben asked. He looked behind us. "Shit."

  The lights kept coming. The red arm on the speedometer crept up over eighty and my hands were sweaty on the wheel. I could barely see through the pounding rain. The lights were close. A black Suburban. The shape of two heads behind the windshield. I thought about Milo. Dead. They came right up our ass and bumped me. My heart felt like it was going to bust out of my ribs, and I grabbed the wheel so hard I couldn't feel my hands. My foot went to the brake, but I had this idea that I should punch the accelerator.

  Ben braced his hands on the dash.

  We shot ahead and I felt that electric thrill of running down an open field with a ball tucked under my arm. My truck had a big engine and it could fly. I took the next bend and felt the wheels going, but eased up just enough to keep us from a wipeout.

  "Shit, slow down," Ben said, yelling above the sound of the rain.

  I didn't. I punched it again. I could barely see the road in the dark rain, but they were right behind me. I focused on the white line at the far edge of the headlight beam. My hands sweated as I held tight.

  "God damn," Ben yelled.

  I didn't even respond. Then we hit this long straight stretch and soon the truck was even with us. I took a quick look and saw the pale moon of a face looking over at me. Union goons I didn't recognize, but that's who they had to be. I knew what they were going to do the instant before it came. They slammed into me and I fought to stay on the road. My foot went back to the brake, and I was all of a sudden burning to kill them. I slammed my Escalade right back into them and punched the gas again, driving them toward the shoulder. Ben was screaming at me. I was just reacting. When their truck hit the guardrail, it sprang back at us and both vehicles swung toward the other side of the road. I was just getting it straight when my right wheel hit the beginning of another rail and we were airborne.

  I don't know how many times we flipped. That's a blur. But I heard the crash and felt the airbag blow up in my face. I was upside down and I felt this warm trickle of blood running down my cheek and tickling my hairline. We were both coughing from that powdery crap in the airbags. The stink of hot rubber and gasoline was everywhere and I was afraid I'd throw up and choke on it hanging there. Somewhere above us I heard the sound of a vehicle door slamming shut. There was the glow of headlights and I could make out a steep bank that led up to the road. I couldn't see who, but someone was splashing through puddles, coming toward us.

  The beam of a flashlight bounced around. I froze with my mouth clamped tight. The storm was whipping itself against the underside of my truck and thunder rumbled through the hills. The flashlight was on me and I winced in its glare. I pulled my hand free from the airbag, shielding my eyes. Whoever was holding the flashlight had a gun in their other hand.

  7

  "It wasn't the guys who ran us off the road," I say. "They must have kept going. It was witches from the FBI."

  "Witches?" the shrink asks.

  "That's a habit from Jessica. You didn't use the B word around her."

  "A nasty woman you'd call a bitch," he says, puckering those fat lips. "Witches. That's something more."

  "I guess they were more. Like part of it all."

  "What? A conspiracy?"

  "I don't know. Maybe destiny," I say. "You believe in that? Like it's a script and we just read the lines?"

  He looks down at his hands.

  Without looking up, he says, "Do you think you know what their lines were?"

  "Of course. Look around."

  I gaze around the empty room. Fluorescent lightbulbs shine down. One flickers like a dying insect. Blue paint, surplus, a color no one wants, covers the walls.

  "You get to think a lot in here," I say.

  "Tell me about them, the witches."

  "They were following us," I say. "Me and Ben. After Milo, I guess they figured we'd either be the next targets or the next ones to go on the take. Either way, we were close to the action and that's where they wanted to be."

  I sat in the backseat of the car with Ben. They took us to a diner up the road in a little place called Roscoe. We were both wet. I was bloody from a gash in my neck.

  One of them was a redhead. Pale skin. No makeup. Green eyes, though, the deep emerald kind, and actually kind of pretty. The other had this frizzy nest of gray hair pulled back as tight as it would go, leaving a wild bunch of it resting on her back like a squirrel's tail. She was wiry and muscular like a man. She had gray eyes, and even though her skin had this yellow cast to it, you could tell she was too young to have all that gray in her hair. Young or not, she had the angry look of a woman who'd felt some hard knocks and maybe that's what the gray was all about.

  The diner's booths were empty. Dinner hour was long gone. The only sign of life was a bleached-blond waitress in a white apron whose eyes went wide at the sight of us.

  "Are you folks all right?" the waitress said, stretching her neck to look at my cut and touching my arm.

  "Just wet and dirty," the frizzy-haired agent said, showing her badge. "Do you have a phone I could use?"

  "Only place on earth where your cell phone won't work," the waitress said, proud. She motioned toward the back. Ben told me he'd call a car service and followed too. I could see the redhead was spattered with mud, her wet clothes clinging to her skin. She swept a strand of straight red hair out of her eye and introduced herself as Agent Lee. We sat down in a booth. Outside the storm carried on. Flashing. Rumbling. Teeming rain.

  The other one with the frizzy gray hair came out, sat down with a huff, and said, "Forty minutes for the troopers."

  The waitress filled the coffee cups in front of us, studying our dripping and bedraggled clothes. Agent Lee asked me if I wanted anything and I ordered coffee.

  Ben came back and said, "I got a Town Car. They said thirty minutes."

  "Faster than the troopers," the agent with the frizzy hair said. "High rollers."

  Agent Lee said, "Agent Rooks and I are with an Organized Crime task force. We think we can help you. We were at Milo Peterman's earlier today."

  "We heard about him getting killed on the news," I said, picking up a spoon and turning it over.

  "Milo was seen eight months ago with Johnny G at a strip club in Newark," Agent Lee said. "These people don't just kill someone and walk away, there's too much money in a project like yours. They'll try to contact one of you. Getting run off the road like that is kind of like a calling card."

  "Welcome to the neighborhood," Agent Rooks said.

  "They almost killed us," Ben said.

  Agent Lee looked at him without speaking for a moment until she said, "We'd like the two of you to let us know if they try to contact you. Especially Johnny G."

  "I thought you said you wanted to help us," I said.

  "We can help each other," Agent Lee said.

  "You should talk to James King," I said, swallowing some coffee.

  "I read that article about James King in the New York Times," Agent Lee said softly. She slid two of her cards across the table at us. "About the autonomy he gives his top people. I'm guessing that you're exactly who we should be talking to."

  "If anyone besides James is calling shots, it'd probably be Scott, his son," I said. "Maybe you should talk to him."

  Agent Lee shrugged, but kept her eyes locked on me. "Call it a hunch. We can help you, Mr. Coder. We've been watching John Garret for over a year."

  "That didn't help Milo, did it?" I said.

  "Maybe he was part of the problem," Agent Rooks said. "You ever hear of learning from other people's mistakes? You help us, we help you. We just pulled your ass out of a burning wreck, so you're up, right?"

  "How are we helping?" Ben asked, his eyes sharp behind the rims of his wire glasses.

  "We call people like yourselves Cooperating Witnesses," Agent Lee said. I snorted.

  "A wiretap?" Ben said.

  Agent Lee let her head tilt to the side.

  "We're businessmen," I said, getting up from the table. "Straight up. Milo wasn't. Here's a deal for you, you do your job and we'll do ours."

  Agent Lee cleared her throat and Agent Rooks said, "You weren't so straight up when you claimed that Mercedes convertible your wife drives as a business expense, were you?"

  I kept my face blank.

  "My wife works for my corporation," I said. "You can talk to my accountant."

  "Your accountant put that pool in?" Agent Rooks said, a crooked smile on her face. "The one with the stepping-stones and all that granite?"

  "I paid for that," I said, swallowing some bile.

  "You wrote a check for ten thousand dollars," Rooks said, her teeth showing as yellow as her skin.

  "That was a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar custom pool. And it's funny, isn't it? That the same company got the contract for that King Corp hotel in Toronto."

  My stomach tightened and I felt Ben's eyes on me. Jessica had been hounding me for that pool and when I had a chance to steer the hotel concrete work to whichever contractor I wanted, I hadn't been able to resist the massive discount one of them offered me for my own pool.

  "Are we under arrest or something?" I asked, shoving my hands in my pockets.

  "Mr. Coder, relax," Agent Lee said, shooting her partner a glance.

  "Not yet," Rooks said, ignoring the look and grinning up at me.

  I looked from one of them to the other, smiled, and said, "You're wet."

  "The state police will want a statement," Agent Lee said.

  "Tell them to call my lawyer," I said.

  Ben slid out of the booth without looking at them, which lifted my spirits. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw him glance at me before slipping one of the agent's cards off the table and into his pocket. I never imagined Ben would do something like that to me, and it cut me, deep. 8

  "Why?" the shrink asks.

  "We were like brothers," I say. "That love-hate thing. Those witches were out to get me. He knew that. He heard them. So I let them build me a pool, cheap. Is that any reason to turn on a friend? Because you want nice things?"

  "Because you wanted them, or her?" he asks.

  "Of course she wanted nice things," I say. "Every woman wants nice things. Imagine growing up with that cow shit smell and flies running across your face on a summer night; you'd want them even more."

  "But you? You wanted them too, right?"

  "Who doesn't? We had these plans for this twenty-thousand-square-foot house, right next to the one we had. A ten-acre lot on the lake. What's that look for?"

  He shrugs and says, "You're talking to a guy who grew up with one bathroom for seven people."

  "Well, Doctor," I say, "you wouldn't like going back to one bathroom any more than me. The more you have, the more you want.

  "That's just how it is. Me. Her. You. Everyone. Five years before this crap I had partnerships in four other King Corp projects besides Garden State, I had three, four million dollars' worth of equity. My problem was that when the stock market started its free fall in 2000, I bought into it.

  "I rode it up in the late nineties, yeah, but then I rode it down. Hard. The worse it got, the more I bought. Then I started buying on margin."

  "Like doubling down at black jack," he says, nodding his head. My hands are sweating and I tuck them between the chair and my legs.

  "Yeah."

  "But your luck changed."

  "No. I hit bottom and got bailed out."

  "By?"

  "James."

  I watch for the lids of his eyes to raise. They don't and I say, "You don't seem surprised."

  "Lots of times," he says, nodding, "the folks we have the hardest time with are the ones who saved our ass. He gave you the money?"

  "With strings. Accelerated payouts. Basically he bought back my ownership interest in the projects. Turned out to be a hell of a deal for him. Tripled his money. Like he needed it. When all was said and done my equity was zero. I had three car payments, a three-million-dollar home with a monster mortgage, a six-figure American Express bill, and a wife itching to build a castle.

  "Garden State Center was the light at the end of the tunnel. The biggest shopping mall on earth. Fifty movie theaters. Twelve department stores. Seven hundred shops. Two hotels. Bigger than the Mall of America. Ben and I were the construction partners. Two percent each. The windfall payout on the financing would be two hundred million easy. Four million in my pocket. Tax-free.