Library of the Dead

by Glenn Cooper

  Nelson Elder was arriving at the foot of the driveway of his home, a six-bedroom mansion at The Hills, in Summerlin, when his mobile phone rang. The caller ID registered PRIVATE CALLER. He answered and pulled the large Mercedes up to one of the garage bays.

  "Mr. Elder?"

  "Yes, who is this?"

  The caller's voice was pinched with tension, almost squeaky. "We met a few months ago at the Constellation. My name is Peter Benedict."

  "I'm sorry, I don't recall."

  "I was the one who caught the blackjack counters."

  "Yes! I remember! The computer guy." Strange, Elder thought. "Did I give you my cell phone number?"

  "You did," Mark lied. There wasn't a phone number in the world he couldn't grab. "Is it okay?"

  "Sure. How can I help you?"

  "Well, actually, sir, I'd like to help you."

  "How so?"

  "Your company is in trouble, Mr. Elder, but I can save it."

  Mark was breathing rapidly and visibly shaking. His cell phone was on the kitchen table, still warm from his cheek. Each step of his plan had taxed him, but this was the first requiring human interaction, and his terror was slow to dissipate. Nelson Elder would meet with him. One more chess move and the game was his.

  Then his doorbell jolted him into the next level of autonomic overdrive. He rarely had unannounced visitors, and in fear he almost bolted for his bedroom. He calmed himself and hesitantly went to the door and opened it a crack.

  "Will?" he asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

  Will stood there with a big easy smile on his face. "Weren't expecting me, were you?"

  Will could see that Mark was unsteady, like a tower of playing cards trying to maintain a composure. "No. I wasn't."

  "Hey, look, I was in town on business and thought I'd look you up. Is this a bad time?"

  "No. It's fine," Mark said mechanically. "I just wasn't expecting anybody. Would you like to come in?"

  "Sure. For a few minutes, anyway. I've got a little time to kill before I head to the airport."

  Will followed him to the living room, reading tension and discomfort in his old roomie's stiff gait and high voice. He couldn't help profiling the guy. It wasn't a parlor trick-he always had the knack, the ability to figure out someone's feelings, conflicts, and motivations with lightning speed. As a child, he'd used his natural acumen to fashion a protected triangulated space between two alcoholic parents, saying and doing the right things in the right aliquots to satisfy their neediness and preserve some measure of balance and stability in the household.

  He'd always wielded his talent to his advantage. In his personal life, he used it in a Dale Carnegie way to win friends and influence people. The women in his life would say he used it to manipulate the hell out of them. And in his career, it had given him a tangible edge over the criminals who populated his world.

  Will wondered what was making Mark so uncomfortable-a phobic, misanthropic kind of personality disorder or something more specific to his visit?

  He sat down on an unyielding sofa and sought to put him at ease. "You know, after we saw each other at the reunion, I kind of felt bad I hadn't gone to the effort to look you up all these years."

  Mark sat across from him, mute, with tightly crossed legs.

  "So, I hardly ever come out to Vegas-this is just a onenighter-and on my way to the hotel yesterday someone pointed out the Area 51 shuttle and I thought of you."

  "Really?" Mark asked with a rasp. "Why's that?"

  "That's where you sort of implied you worked, no?"

  "Did I? I don't recall saying that."

  Will remembered Mark's odd demeanor when the subject of Area 51 came up at the reunion dinner. This looked like a no-go zone. In fact he didn't care, one way or the other. Mark clearly had a high-level security clearance and took it seriously. Good for him. "Well, whatever. It doesn't matter to me where you work, it just triggered an association and I decided to drop in, that's all."

  Mark continued to look skeptical. "How'd you find me? I'm not listed."

  "Don't I know. I've got to admit it-I queried an FBI database in the local office when 411 didn't do the trick. You weren't on the radar screen, buddy. Must have an interesting job! So I called Zeckendorf to see if he had your number. He didn't, but you must've given him your address so his wife could mail you that picture." He waved at the reunion photo on the table. "I put mine on the coffee table too. I guess we're just a couple of sentimental guys. Say, you wouldn't have anything to drink, would you?"

  Will saw that Mark was breathing easier. He'd broken the ice. The guy probably had a social anxiety disorder and needed time to warm up.

  "What would you like?" Mark asked.

  "Got scotch?"

  "Sorry, only beer."

  "When in Rome."

  When Mark went to the kitchen, Will stood up and out of curiosity had a look around. The living room was sparsely furnished with characterless modern things that could have been in the lobby of a public space. Everything was neat, with no clutter and also no feminizing touches. He knew that decorating style cold. The shiny chrome bookcase was filled with academic-type computer and software books arranged precisely by height so the rows topped off as straight as possible.

  On the white lacquered desk, next to a closed laptop computer, was a short stack of two thin manuscripts bound in brass brads. He glanced at the cover page of the one on top: Counters: a screenplay by Peter Benedict, WGA #4235567. Who's Peter Benedict? he wondered, Mark's nom de plume or some other guy? Beside the screenplays there were two black pens. He almost laughed out loud. Pentel ultrafines. The little peckers were everywhere. He was back on the sofa when Mark returned with the beers.

  "In Cambridge, didn't you mention you did some writing?" Will asked.

  "I do."

  "Those screenplays yours?" he asked, pointing.

  Mark nodded and gulped.

  "My daughter's something of a writer too. What do you write about?"

  Mark started tentatively but progressively relaxed as he talked about his most recent script. By the time Will downed the beer, he'd heard all about casinos and card-counting and Hollywood and talent agents. For a reticent guy, this was almost a blue-streak topic. During his second beer, he got a taste of Mark's postcollege, pre-Vegas life, a barren landscape of few personal bonds and endless computer work. During the third beer, Will reciprocated with details about his own past, sour marriages, busted relationships and all, and Mark listened in apparent fascination, with a growing amazement that the golden boy's life, which he had assumed was perfect, was anything but. At the same time, creeping pangs of guilt were making Will uneasy.

  After taking a leak, Will returned to the living room and announced he had to be going, but before he did, he wanted to get something off his chest. "I've got to apologize to you."

  "For what?"

  "When I look back on freshman year, I realize I was a jerk. I should have helped you out more, gotten Alex to leave you alone. I was a dumb-ass and I'm sorry." He didn't mention the duct-taping incident; he didn't have to.

  Mark involuntarily teared up and looked profoundly embarrassed.

  "I-"

  "You don't have to say anything. I don't want to cause any discomfort."

  Mark sniffed. "No, look, I appreciate it. I don't think we really knew each other."

  "True enough." Will dug his hand in his pockets for the car keys. "So, thanks for the beers and the chat. I've got to hit it."

  Mark inhaled and finally said, "I think I know why you're in town. I saw you on TV."

  "Yeah, the Doomsday case. The Vegas connection. Sure."

  "I've watched you on TV for years. And read all the magazine articles."

  "Yeah, I've had my fill of media stuff."

  "It must be exciting."

  "Believe me, it's not."

  "How's it going? The investigation, I mean."

  "I've got to tell you, it's a pain up my butt. I didn't want any part of it. I wa
s just trying to ease on down retirement road."

  "Are you making any progress?"

  "You're obviously a guy who can keep a secret. Here's one: we don't have a fucking clue."

  Mark looked weary when he said, "I don't think you're going to catch the guy."

  Will squinted at him strangely. "Why do you say that?"

  "I don't know. What I've read about it, he sounds like he's pretty clever."

  "No, no, no. I'll catch him. I always do."

  JUNE 28, 2009

  LAS VEGAS

  T he call from Peter Benedict rattled Elder. It was deeply unsettling to receive an offer to help Desert Life from a man he had met once in a casino. And he was almost certain he hadn't given out his mobile number. Add to that the FBI's sudden interest in him and his company, and this was shaping up to be a worrisome weekend. During times of trouble he preferred to be in his headquarters with his people surrounding him, a general among his troops. He thought nothing of pulling in his executive team during a crisis to work on Saturdays and Sundays but needed to deal with this situation alone. Even Bert Myers, his confidant and consigliore, would have to be blacked-out until he knew what he was dealing with.

  Only he and Myers knew the extent of Desert Life's problems because the two of them were the sole architects of a scheme to get the company out of its financial hole. Undoubtedly, the correct adjective to describe the scheme was "fraudulent," but Elder preferred to think of it as "aggressive." The plan was in its early stages, but unfortunately it wasn't working yet. In fact, it was backfiring and the hole was getting deeper. In desperation, they had decided to shift some cash from their reserves to artificially boost profits for the last quarter and shore up the stock price.

  Dangerous ground, the path to Hell, or at least prison.

  They knew it, but in for a penny, in for a pound. And God willing, Elder thought, things would turn around in the next quarter. It had to. He had built this company with his own two hands. It was his life's work and his one true love. It meant more to him than his arid country club wife or his dissolute offspring and it had to be saved, so if this Peter Benedict character had a viable idea, then he was obligated to hear it.

  The backbone of Desert Life's business was life insurance. The company was the largest underwriter of life insurance policies west of the Mississippi. Elder had cut his teeth in the business as a life insurance man. The steady actuarial predictability of forecasting death rates had always attracted him. If you tried to predict an individual's time of death and put money on it, you'd be wrong too often to make a consistent profit. To get around trying to figure out an individual's risk, insurers relied instead on the "law of large numbers" and employed armies of actuaries and statisticians to conduct analyses on past performance to help predict the future. While no one could calculate what premium you'd have to charge one individual to make money, you could predict with confidence the economics of insuring, say, thirty-five-year-old male nonsmokers with negative drug screens and a family history of heart disease.

  Still, profit margins were tight. For every dollar Desert Life took in as premiums, thirty cents went to expenses, most went to cover losses, and the little left over was profit. Profits in the insurance game came two ways: underwriting profits and investment income.

  Insurance companies were huge investors, putting billions of dollars into play every day. The returns from those investments were the cornerstone of their business. Some companies even underwrote to a loss-taking a dollar of premium and expecting to pay more than a dollar in losses and expenses but hoping to make it up in investment income. Elder disdained that strategy but his appetite for investment returns was large.

  Desert Life's problems were growth-related. Over the years, as he'd enlarged the business and expanded his empire through acquisitions, he diversified away from dependence on life insurance. He branched out into homeowners and auto insurance for individuals and property, casualty and liability insurance for businesses.

  For years business boomed, but then the worm turned.

  "Hurricanes, goddamn hurricanes," he'd grumble out loud, even when he was alone. One after another, they slammed into Florida and the Gulf coast and beat the stuffing out of his profits. His surplus reserves-the funds available to pay out future claims-were falling to red-flag levels. State and federal insurance regulators were taking notice and so was Wall Street. His stock was nose-diving and that was turning his life into something out of Dante's Inferno.

  Bert Myers, financial genius, to the rescue.

  Myers wasn't an insurance guy; he had a background in investment banking. Elder had brought him in a few years earlier to help with their acquisition strategy. As far as corporate finance types went, he was a very sharp knife in a very large drawer, one of the smartest guys on the Street.

  Faced with dwindling profits, Myers hatched a plan. He couldn't control Mother Nature and all those damage claims against the company but he could boost their investment returns by "wandering over the line," as he put it. Government regulators, not to mention their own internal charter, imposed strict restrictions on the kinds of investments they could make, mostly low-return, nonrisky forays in the bond market and conservative investments in mortgages, consumer loans, and real estate.

  They couldn't take their precious reserves and bet them up the road on the roulette tables. But Myers had his eye on a hedge fund run by some math whizzes in Connecticut who had reaped enormous returns by correctly betting on international currency fluctuations. The fund, International Advisory Partners, was off-the-chart from a risk perspective, and investing in it was not an option for a company like Desert Life. But once Elder signed off on the scheme, Myers set up a dummy real estate partnership, ostensibly meeting the Desert Life risk profile, and passed a billion plus in reserves into IAP, hoping for outsized returns to repair their profit statements.

  Myer's timing was not good. IAP used Desert Life's cash infusion to bet that the yen would fall relative to the dollar-and didn't the Japanese finance minister have to mess things up by making an adverse statement about Japanese monetary policy?

  Their first quarter: down fourteen percent on their investment. The IAP guys were insisting that this was an anomaly and their strategy was sound. Myers just needed to hang on and everything would come out roses. So, in the full desert heat, their palms were sweating but they were holding on as tightly as they could.

  Elder decided to meet Peter Benedict on a Sunday morning to keep it low-key and far away from his office. A down-market waffle house in North Las Vegas seemed like a venue his employees or friends were unlikely to frequent, and with the smell of maple syrup in his nostrils he sat and waited in an interior booth, dressed in white poplin golf trousers and a thin orange cashmere sweater. He wasn't sure he remembered what the man looked like and he scanned each patron.

  Mark arrived a few minutes late, an unassuming presence in jeans and his ubiquitous Lakers cap, carrying a manila envelope. He spotted Elder first, steeled himself, and made his way to the booth. Elder rose and extended his hand, "Hello, Peter, nice to see you again."

  Mark was shy, uncomfortable. Elder's culture demanded some small talk but it was painful for Mark. Blackjack was their only known common ground so Elder chatted about cards for a few minutes before insisting they order some breakfast. Mark became distracted by the fluttering in his chest, which he worried might be turning into something pathological. He sipped ice water and tried to control his breathing but his heart raced. Should he get up and leave?

  It was too late for that.

  The statutory small talk ended and Elder got down to it. The pleasantries done, his tone was flinty: "So, Peter, tell me why you think my company is in trouble?"

  Mark had no formal finance background but he had taught himself how to read financial statements in Silicon Valley. He'd begun by dissecting his own data security company's SEC filings then moved on to other high-tech companies, looking for good investments. When he came across an accounting concept he d
idn't understand, he read about it until he had amassed a body of knowledge a CPA would envy. His mind had so much horsepower, he found the logic and the mathematics underpinning accountancy trivial.

  Now, in a constricted voice, he began rattling mechanically through all the subtle anomalies in Desert Life's last 10-Q: the quarterly financial report filed with the government. He had detected faint footprints of fraud that no one on Wall Street had noticed. He even guessed correctly that the company might be trawling in prohibited waters for high-yield returns.

  Elder listened with a queasy fascination.

  When Mark was done, Elder cut into a waffle, took a small bite and quietly chewed. When he swallowed, he said, "I'm not commenting whether you're right or wrong. Suppose you just tell me how you think you can help Desert Life."

  Peter took the manila envelope he'd been keeping on his lap and handed it across the table. He said nothing but it was clear to the older man that the envelope was to be opened. Inside were a bunch of newspaper clippings.

  All of them were about the Doomsday Killer.

  "What the hell is this?" Elder asked.

  "It's the way to save your company," Mark almost whispered. The moment was upon him and he felt woozy.

  Then the moment seemed to slip away.

  Elder reacted viscerally and started to get up. "What are you, some kind of a sicko? For your information, I know one of the victims!"

  "Which one?" Mark croaked.

  "David Swisher." He reached for his wallet.

  Mark mustered his courage and said, "You should sit down. He wasn't a victim."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Please sit down and listen to me."

  Elder complied. "I've got to tell you, I don't like where this conversation is going. You've got a minute to explain yourself or I'm out of here, understand?"

  "Well, he was a victim, I guess. He just wasn't a victim of the Doomsday Killer."