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this looks solid.” The lease’s brevity was exceeded only by its precision.
    â€œIt’s not even his land.”
    â€œIn effect, it is.”
    The pasture was long and narrow and cut into Fox Trot like a knife. On days the cows were on it, and took it into their collective heads to bunch at the lower end, they would launch a few flies into Fox Trot’s rarified air. Flies with teeth honed on cowhide.
    King said, “I can’t understand why Zarega would have agreed to such an arrangement.”
    â€œThey were friends.”
    King snorted derisively, offering an unpleasant reminder of the melting pot he’d escaped fifty years earlier: “A wop from the Bronx and a Connecticut redneck?”
    His contempt sounded real, which annoyed me, and I said, “Our traditional slur is ‘swamp Yankee.’ Though, like most slurs, it’s evolved into something of a compliment lately.”
    â€œI stand corrected,” King replied icily. “But you get my point.”
    â€œYour point misses the point. It was a genuine friendship. Mr. Zarega really was a recluse and very, very old. Mr. Butler had his problems after Vietnam. Somehow they hooked up. And the way I heard it, when the old man was ill Mr. Butler would be up here every day.”
    â€œMy lawyers say I can’t break the lease.”
    â€œIra Roth drew it up.”
    â€œI feel like a damned fool. It was right there in black and white, but I didn’t realize the distances until I’d been here awhile. I’m a city boy.”
    I’d seen stranger deals. When ordinary people sought mortgages, the banks demanded zealous title searches. Buying for cash you were on your own.
    I said, “Mr. Zarega’s house was farther from the fence. At any rate, they’re not going be on this pasture that often. It won’t sustain them.”
    â€œAm I supposed to hope that he doesn’t put his cows in there on days I’ve got clients visiting? I won’t be able to use the goddammed swimming pool. Am I supposed to put screens over my pool? And my tennis courts?”
    I had no answer beyond, “Flies go with farmland.”
    â€œI’m hiring you to reason with Butler. You’re local. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
    â€œWho told you I was a pisser?”
    King smiled easily. “I can’t reveal my sources.”
    â€œWhy’d you ask?”
    â€œLet’s get on the same page, Mr. Abbott. Do you understand that I regard this as a very serious matter?”
    â€œDo you understand that you’re in a classic country-city clash? You’ve got a lovely estate here, cheek by jowl with a cow farm. You pay for all this with money you earn elsewhere. Mr. Butler earns his right here. You’re a new arrival. He’s third generation. I could go on, but I think you get my point.”
    â€œExactly why I intend to hire the best qualified person to resolve it for me. It’s beyond the lawyers. I need a local fixer. You’re a local fixer—don’t interrupt—Not only that, you’ve worked as a private detective—don’t interrupt—I know you have no license and I don’t care. I do care that you learned your trade when you served with Naval Intelligence.”
    â€œThis is more a job for a psychiatrist.”
    â€œThe one I send my staff to charges one hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Would that be sufficient?”
    We know that my real estate business was not exactly booming that March. Although, having experienced first hand the financial markets’ ephemerality—evanescence I myself had once contributed to as an overpaid, underaged Wall Street shark in an earlier life—I had diversified my listings, scouring Newbury for commercial space to rent to the new wave of start-up businesses being founded by the recently fired. So I wasn’t starving, yet.
    But the Olds was getting very old and if a fresh coat of paint wasn’t