At the sound Yoiyo Calderón was instantly up on his feet in the dark, scrabbling in a desk drawer for his pistol and at the same time kicking away the light blanket that constrained his feet. He was not in his bed, he had not been in his bed for several nights, not since the dreams had begun; he was sleeping on the long, lush leather of the couch in his den. His nights were now spent here because he did not want to disturb the sleep of his wife, not that he was ever particularly sensitive to her rest or any other aspect of her being, but she asked questions and gossiped and had a wide circle of acquaintances. He did not want it abroad in the Cuban community that J. X. F. Calderón was losing it, was goingloco, was afraid of bumps in the night.

The sounds were coming from the front of the house, he thought. Thumps and scratchings, like rending wood, and a low coughing growl. He looked briefly at the phone. Call the police? No, not in the house, looking around, asking questions, poking into his affairs. Instead, he slipped into a light robe, and pistol in hand, he walked out of the room and down the stairs in the dark. In the entrance hall he stopped and listened again. It was cool now, the air conditioners were silent for the season, the only noises were the quiet clicking of automatic machinery in the house, a distant vehicle, the ever-present rattle and swish of tropical foliage in the breeze. He looked at the security panel, the little green lights said all locked up, secure, which was far from how he felt, and with a soft curse, he switched the thing off and unlocked the front door.

There was his front walk, his lawn, the peaceful Gables street. He took a step outside, pointing the gun. There was a black lump of something on the path, and when he leaned over to look at it, he cursed again, this time aloud. It was a pile of feces, of a vaguely familiar type. Calderón was hardly an expert on cat shit, coming as he did from a social stratum that employed others to empty cat boxes, but his daughter had always had cats, and he had observed the occasional accident. This was cat, and if its volume was any indication, it had emerged from a beast the size of a man.

A sound behind him made him whirl, gun outstretched, finger closing on the trigger. He saw two things at once. One was his front door, its oak surface torn to ribbons by long scratches. The other was his daughter, Victoria, standing in the doorway, dressed in pink silk pajamas, her mouth gaping in shock. Calderón shoved the pistol into the pocket of his robe. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. Go back to bed.” He started for the doorway.

“It’s not nothing. I heard sounds. That’s why I got up. And you were pointing a gun.”

“Well, obviously itwas nothing or I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you,” said Calderón, raising his voice. He was staring at the soft earth of the flower beds on either side of the walk. With his slippered foot he effaced the pugmarks of a gigantic cat, or at least those he could reach from the walk.

“What are you doing?” Victoria asked.

“Nothing! How many times do I have to say it? Now go back to bed or we’ll have your mother down here and that’s all I need.”

He made a shooing motion with his hand, and after a few seconds, she turned and walked away. He followed her into the house, and as he switched on the security system a dissatisfied frown appeared on his face, as it often did when he contemplated his daughter. Calderón was not happy with his children. Juan Jr., the elder, or Jonni, as he called himself, was in New York, attempting to become an actor or singer and living rather prematurely the life of a star on his father’s money. This girl had been married off right out of college in a wedding that left little change from a hundred grand, to the Pinero boy, a connection with one of the wealthiest Cuban families in Miami. Who drank, as it turned out, and had peculiar tastes (although this was not discussed among the Calderóns) and who had, three months into the marriage, run his Mercedes off Alligator Alley and into a canal. Victoria returned home, where she would probably remain forever. Not a beauty, unfortunately, but at least she wasn’t like some of these girls he saw around town, Cuban girls, from good families, too, with their bodies hanging out of their clothes and up to God-knew-what craziness. His one concession to modernity was to allow her to work, under his eye, naturally, and here, at least, she had proven her father’s daughter. He’d started her in the development office at JXF, where she’d shown an excellent eye for property and had, in fact, been the lead on the Consuela Coast deal. He was glad she was competent, but it irked him like an unscratchable itch that it was the girl and not the boy who was in the business.

Calderón returned to the den, where he dozed uncomfortably in front of a stupid movie on the gigantic television, until dawn appeared through the windows. When he heard the servants stirring, he called down and ordered Carmel the maid to clean up the mess on the front walk, and then got his construction manager out of bed and told him that some kids had vandalized his front door and that he wanted it replaced instantly. Some hours later, when he walked out, a crew was already at work on the door. Asked what he wanted done with the old door, Calderón said, “Burn it.”

But the door and what it represented was not so easily removed from his mind. All during that morning he found himself drifting away at meetings, brought out of fearful reveries by an unnatural silence, looking up at a table full of worried or too-interested faces, and having to fake some response. This could not be tolerated, for his empire was sustained by an inverted pyramid of deals, each one larger than the last, each one secured by what had gone before. Should the word get around in certain circles that Yoiyo Calderón was losing it, should his Consuela Resort go sour…it was not worth thinking about, it wasn’t going to happen, he would…

What? Like many men of his generation and profession and culture, he had no true friends. He had contacts and associates instead, and he certainly was not going to bring up what had happened last night with Garza and Ibanez. He’d promised to handle any problems with the Puxto timber deal, and that was all they needed to know. His wife was a decoration, his father senile, his son useless, he had no brothers, he could not discuss these things with an employee.

He had a meeting after lunch about Consuela Coast with Gary Rivas, his VP for sales, and Oscar Clemente, his CFO, and some of their junior people. And his daughter. The discussion was about cash flow, as nearly all his meetings seemed to be about recently. Like any big project, the Coast, as the firm called it, got its initial funding from banks, collateralized by the property itself, which money was used for initial planning and the obtaining of permits, then the construction of the first units and the amenities, in this case a country/yacht club, golf course, and marina. The money from the sales of the first units would be used to service the loans and allow construction of the next tranche of units. Actual profits would not kick in until 70 percent of the homes and condos had been sold; until then, the company was running on vapor. This was the nature of the business, and it was not for the faint of heart. This was why Calderón liked it.

They sat, they talked small a little, and then Rivas and Clemente passed out spreadsheets and went into their presentations. Rivas had the bad news, although he did not call it that. He was about Victoria’s age, dark-haired, generous of gesture, cap-toothed, and tailored to an almost unnatural degree of perfection, as if injection-molded from plastic, like Barbie’s Ken. It seemed that the nineties were over, and condos on the west coast of Florida were not leaping off the shelves at a low end of $1.2 million. He thought he would make his targets off the Europeans and the Asians, and the thankful decline of the dollar, but it would be a near thing. Victoria looked at his projections and thought it would be an impossible one, even if the Coast became the most fashionable buy for every plutocrat from Lisbon to Shanghai, but she remained silent. Her father didn’t question the figures either, and they moved on to Clemente.