So you've seen it?" Gavallan had demanded as Grafton Byrnes entered his office.

"Yeah, I've seen it," answered Byrnes with a calm Gavallan did not share. "Not the best PR one of our deals has ever gotten, but not the worst, either."

"I'm not so sure. Timing couldn't be worse, that's for certain."

Byrnes strolled across the room with the easy authority that was his trademark. He was taller by an inch, dressed in a navy crew neck sweater over a white oxford button-down, brown corduroy slacks, and Belgian loafers polished to a spit shine. His face was craggy and lean, with eyes that appraised but never accused, and a smile that forgave all sins.

"Want something to drink? Pellegrino?" Gavallan spun in his chair and opened the compact refrigerator hidden in his credenza. "I've got one those new lattes in a bottle. How 'bout that?"

Byrnes took up position behind him, peering over his shoulder. "Nothing with caffeine, thanks. I'll take a mineral water. No, no… one without any bubbles."

Gavallan handed him a bottle of Ozarka and selected an ice-cold can of Orange Crush for himself. He considered his teenager's sweet tooth his only vice. Vintage European automobiles, chilled Russian vodka, and Stevie Ray Vaughan playing the blues at excruciating volumes counted as passions, and were thus exempt.

"Skoal, brother," he said, lifting the can of soda pop.

"Skoal, my man."

It was a joke between Texans, "Skoal" being both an informal "Cheers" and the tried-and-true chewing tobacco of their youths.

Gavallan had known Grafton Byrnes his entire adult life. They had met at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where Byrnes had played regimental commanding officer to Gavallan's plebe. Every time Gavallan mouthed off, it was Byrnes who administered the punishment. A hundred push-ups on the deck. A thousand-yard sprint in shorts and tennis shoes through waist-high drifts of midwinter snow. Two hours of reciting the Uniform Code of Military Justice while doing Roman chairs against the commons room wall. If harsh, the abuse was well-intentioned. It was Byrnes's job to make sure Cadet John J. Gavallan made it through the Zoo, and to that end he tutored him in calculus, instructed him on how to properly hold his knife and fork, and taught him to iron a razor-sharp crease into his trousers.

Retiring from the Air Force a major, Byrnes had followed him to Stanford Business School, then to Black Jet Securities two years after its founding. He was pretty much Gavallan's older brother, and as close a friend as he could ever hope for.

"You know this guy, the Private Eye-PO?" Gavallan asked.

Byrnes shrugged, offering a wry smile. "I do now. Who is he exactly? Or should I say 'what'? Some sort of Internet gadfly?"

"You could say that. Calls himself the Robin Hood of the Valley's pink slip brigade. He spies on the rich to protect the poor."

"The poor being who?" smirked Byrnes. "The laid-off techies who can't afford their Beamer payments?"

"More like the average investor who lost his shirt when tech stocks took a beating."

"Oh, you mean our retail clientele. So he's the bastard responsible for the plunge in our commission revenues. Got it."

Outside, a blanket of fog sprawled across the Bay Area, a pea soup so thick Gavallan had trouble making out the gargoyles on the roof of the Peabody Building a hundred feet away. Rising from his chair, he circled the desk, swiveling the computer monitor 180 degrees so they could both read from the screen. As usual the Private Eye-PO's posting was written in a style somewhere between the Motley Fool and a fifties Hollywood tabloid.

For weeks now, Wall Street has been in a lather for the $2 billion Mercury Broadband deal being brought to market by Black Jet Securities. Well, kids, your own Private Eye-PO has learned that the offering is fully subscribed, with plenty of savvy investors looking to get in on the action. Caveat emptor. Mercury is not what it appears. My own no less savvy gumshoes swear to me that Mercury is only a shadow of its trumped-up self, and Red Star, a sheep in AOL's clothing. What do you expect from Black Jet Securities, itself a pretender to the throne? When will Mr. Gavallan learn? Black Jet can never be white-shoe. But, hey, friends, why listen when you can look? After all, isn't seeing believing?

"You sure you don't know this guy?" asked Byrnes. "This stuff sounds almost personal. He had as much fun knocking you as he did Mercury."

"No one knows him," Gavallan replied testily. "That's his gig. He keeps a bag on his head while he goes around savaging companies. Mercury's not the first company he's skewered."

"I suggest we find him on the double and shut him up."

"I know a guy we can call. Does some work for the government. I'll get on it right away." Sighing, Gavallan turned away from the monitor, massaging the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Every time I read it I feel like I've been socked in the gut. This is not what we need right now."

"No, it's not," Byrnes agreed, "but it's what we got, so we deal with it and move on." His eyes narrowed with concern over a different matter. "You okay, kid? You look a little tired."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. It's just this on top of all the other crap lately…" The words trailed off.

"If it's Manzini who's bothering you, forget it. You had to let his team go. They knew the rules. Around here you eat what you kill. We're not a bulge bracket firm that can rely on our granddaddy's clients to throw us some scraps. GM's not knocking down our door wondering if we might underwrite some debt for them. IBM isn't about to ask us to do a secondary offering. We have to go out and get it."

"Yeah," said Gavallan. "We make money the old-fashioned way- we earn it."

"Damn right," said Byrnes emphatically. "Don't beat yourself up over it. They were lucky you kept them on as long as you did. Half those guys were earning a base of three hundred. Look, the Internet vertical was dying. They didn't produce, they got canned. End of story. We're not running a charity here."

A "vertical" was banking jargon for a particular industry segment. The tech sector was divided into E-commerce, web infrastructure, optical equipment, software, and so on. Each vertical was assigned a team of bankers to service businesses operating in that sector. The team consisted of an equity analyst, a few capital markets specialists, the investment bankers who actually drummed up the business, and two or three associates to do the grunt work.

"I'm well aware of that," said Gavallan. "Next time it can be your turn to fire the guy you've been going to Warrior games with for five years. Carroll Manzini's a friend."

But he could see from Byrnes's skeptical expression that he wasn't buying. Byrnes had a more unyielding attitude toward business. You performed or you got cut. That simple. He'd governed by the same draconian principles when Gavallan had served under him at Stealth training in Tonopah, Nevada, the two-thousand-square-mile cut of yucca and scrub known to conspiracy buffs as Area 51. The funny thing was that back then Gavallan had been happy to live by those rules. He was as confident of his own skills as he was disdainful of the saps who didn't make the grade.

Strangely, as chief executive of Black Jet Securities, he was unable to demand of his employees the uncompromising standards he asked of himself. He regretted the most recent firing of twenty-six of his executives and couldn't help but feel in some way responsible for their inability to generate income for the firm. So what if financing activity in the Internet sector had dried up as quickly as a summer squall? That not a single IPO had been done for an Internet play in months? Or that every other bank on the street had slashed their staffs long before?