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runaway indentured servant, or a Hudson Bay trapper way off course. In fact, Chevalleys have been around Newbury almost as long as Abbotts. Borough records locate one Anton “Chevalier” in Newbury’s first stockade. The charge was “carousing” and not a lot has changed since. My mother’s brothers, cousins and nephews are excellent companions in bar brawls, off-season deer hunts, and drag races. Their women learn young to cope.
    I stared. Albert stared back.
    Dennis lumbered closer. Dennis seemed dumb as Albert. But he was a secret watcher—eyes mean and busy—like a pig waiting to see who wandered close enough to eat.
    â€œSecurity,” he explained.
    There was plenty of that: motion detectors to turn on the floodlights, laser eyes between the gate posts, a seven-strand electric deer fence that took up where the walls ended. There was even a pressure plate in the driveway, which curved up into the deep woods that blocked any sight of the house. On the gatehouse roof a TV camera panned the approach.
    â€œI’m not going to tell you my name.”
    â€œThen we can’t let you in.”
    I picked up my cell phone. “If you don’t open that gate I’m going to tell our mutual cousin Pinkerton Chevalley to bring the new wrecker.” (The “new” wrecker was a 1973 Peterbilt for hauling tandem tractor trailer trucks out of deep ditches.) “We’ll hook that goddammed gate right off the posts and drag it up the driveway and tell Mr. King you and Dennis made us do it.”
    Cousin Pink was a full-size Chevalley, very large indeed, who set standards of disorganization and willfully unsocial skills Albert and Dennis could only dream of. The death of his brother had left him in charge of Chevalley Enterprises’ seven repair bays, two tow trucks, and a dozen drivers and mechanics. A lot for a man who operated on impulse, which made his short fuse shorter.
    I, too, had been known to get wild on occasion—my reputation pegged to a youthful skirmish involving Trooper Moody’s state police car and a very long logging chain.
    â€œAw, come on Ben, give us your name.”
    â€œBenjamin Constantine Abbott III.”
    I helped them spell Constantine. He was the China Trade pirate who had enriched Aunt Connie’s branch of the family. I got stuck with it because for two centuries Abbotts of modest means have hoped they couldn’t go wrong naming kids after wealthy relatives. (There is no evidence that as much as a penny was ever shifted from one Abbott to another by this maneuver, and Connie’s will leaves her considerable fortune to charity.)
    The gate swung on silent machinery.
    â€œWhat’s with the security?” (Corporate titans have reason to fear violence in our time. But any terrorists who attacked Henry King ran the risk of at least half the nation applauding their efforts. Although, come to think of it, as a fund-raising ploy….)
    Albert tossed a shaggy-minotaur nod toward the Butler farm, hidden behind the brow of the mountain. “Old Man Butler’s making trouble.”
    â€œWhat kind of trouble?”
    â€œNeighbor trouble,” said Dennis. When I pressed for details, the brothers got all glowery and said they weren’t supposed to talk to the guests. Which was certainly the basis on which I would have hired them.
    â€œDon’t get sucked in,” I said. “Dicky’s out.”
    Their response to my warning was pure Chevalley: broad, gap-toothed grins at the prospect of a bloody fight.
    I drove on through the gate and entered Fox Trot onto land I hadn’t seen since I’d snuck over the fence with Dicky Butler back when we were twelve.

Chapter 2
    Henry King had gone private after the first of the Bush mobs shut him out for badmouthing their international tomfoolery. Criticizing his boss publicly had seemed to me a clumsy mistake by a diplomat so smooth he was known as the Silver Fox.