In the latest suspense work from Beechcroft (Secret Kills, Chain of Vengeance, etc.), a middle-aged land developer investigates his brother's murder--and uncovers the very creepy activities of a very wealthy group of Washington lobbyists. A terribly worried sister-in-law and a missing birthday call are enough to make Steven Gammon turn the development business over to his assistant and begin a search for his missing brother Jim. No one at the foundation Jim works for seems to know where he is--but Steve is clever enough to pick up a trail of unanswered message slips and credit-card receipts that leads to his brother's decapitated corpse in Hawaii. It looks to Steve as if Jim was murdered on his way to visit one of the foundation's major donors, whose body was just found floating in his swimming pool. Jim's job at the foundation was to line up donors interested in preserving a sort of John Wayne vision of America, and Steve strongly suspects that his brother's death has something to do with those donations. He returns to Washington and begins to look closer and closer at the workings of FRETSAW (Freedom Through Specialized Awareness), relying heavily on the help of an especially attractive and disaffected employee. The more he sees of the director and chairman and the more he hears from the donors, the more convinced he becomes that FRETSAW itself did in its own best fund-raiser. . . Fast-moving but routine thriller.