“Let me guess,” Neal said. “Does the Bank have millions of dollars sunk into AgriTech?”

Graham’s sudden appearance was starting to make sense to Neal.

“That’s my boy,” Graham said.

That says it, too, Neal thought. I’m Graham’s boy, I’m Levine’s boy, but most of all, I’m the Bank’s boy.

The Bank was a quiet little financial institute in Providence, Rhode Island, that promised its wealthy clients two things: absolute privacy from the prying eyes of the press, the public, and the prosecutors; and discreet help on the side with those little problems of life that couldn’t be settled with just plain cash.

That was where Neal came in. He and Graham worked for a secret branch of the bank called “Friends of the Family.” There was no sign on the door, but anybody who had the necessary portfolio knew that he could come into the back office if he had a problem and talk to Ethan Kitteredge, and that Ethan Kitteredge would find a way to work things out, free of charge.

Usually Kitteredge, known to his employees as “the Man,” would work things out by buzzing for Ed Levine, who would phone down to New York for Joe Graham, who would fetch Neal Carey. Neal would then trundle off to find somebody’s daughter, or take a picture of somebody’s wife playing Hide-the-Hot-Dog in the Plaza Hotel, or break into somebody’s apartment to find that all-important second set of books.

In exchange, Friends had sent him to a toney private school, paid his rent, and picked up his college bills.

“So,” Neal said, “The Bank has a humongous loan out to AgriTech, and one of its star scientists has taken a sabbatical. So what?”

“Chickenshit.”

“Yeah, right. What’s the big deal about chickenshit?”

“Not any chickenshit. Pendleton’s chickenshit. Chickenshit is fertilizer, right? You spread it on stuff to make it grow, which sounds pretty fucking gross to me, but hey… Anyway, Pendleton’s been working for umptedy-zumptedy years on a way to squeeze more growing juice out of chickenshit by mixing it with water treated with certain bacteria. This, by the way, is called an ‘enhancing process.’