“I felt watched.”
“What?”
“It’s true. Maybe I just began to realize how alone I was at the top of these hills. It’s like you’re straddling the whole city up here, the way lines of street lights stretch to the horizon and you’re nothing but a little point at the apex, overlooking a world beyond. But sometimes I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, like when someone is watching you. But I never saw anyone.
“Just forget I said anything.”
Danny didn’t want to be too easily influenced by her scary thoughts. “So, it was all in your imagination.”
“Yeah, I guess, at least about being watched, but I did hear something. That much I know.”
“Okay.” He was beginning to suspect Kenosha was pulling his leg.
“Last night, something was scraping at the basement door, like it was trying to break in. No way was I going to tromp down all those stairs to the basement, so I walked out on this patio. You can look down to see the back door from up here.
“But storm clouds were heavy last night and there was no moonlight, so I couldn’t be sure anything was down there, but I definitely could hear something. Down in the bushes.”
Danny had an answer. “Probably a coyote. He could smell Kiisa. Everyone’s always losing their pets in this neighborhood.”
“You’re probably right.” Kenosha seemed to regret bringing up the subject.
Danny walked to the balustrade to look down into the steep backyard. He saw the small stone fence that separated the edge of their backyard, some hundred feet below, from the curling street that ran along the lot’s lower edge. On the other side of the narrow street, an ornate entrance marked one of the public stairways. Because of the steep terrain of Los Feliz, the developers built public staircases to link the main avenues below with the switchbacks of the narrow streets above. At one time servants and children climbed them to move from the streetcars to their homes. Today the stairs were largely abandoned, their steps often covered with graffiti, and the landings mainly used by kids as shielded places to do drugs—but the tiers of steps beneath the overgrown shrubbery across the street directly linked Danny’s hillside home to a major boulevard several hundred feet below.
Only once had Danny trudged the full set of steps. It was tiring but doable. Six separate flights totaling just over two hundred steps separated the edge of their lot from busy Los Feliz Boulevard.
And although he couldn’t be certain, when he scanned the lot below, he thought he detected a clear trail of broken branches and snapped twigs that led from the top of those steps to the back door of his house. As though someone had used those stairs to try to sneak into his back yard and reach the small door below.
The entry to the scary basement.
Kenosha was right. Someone had tried to break in.
Josh watched Danny and his assistant Orleans stand in front of the window of his downtown office. From this height, they could still see and hear the clamor of Main Street below. Josh felt no need to walk over and determine what held their attention. Without doubt, a dirty bum was hassling a bag lady, or something equally down and out was in progress. Some were beginning to call this tired, forgotten corner of downtown Los Angeles the Old Bank District. While the name was grand, Josh knew no proper banker from the Westside ever frequented the neighborhood.
Which was precisely why he chose to base his company headquarters here. He leased the entire top floor of a long-forgotten oil company headquarters, where the space was cheap and the natural light was great. He liked to think his decision proved he had imagination and dared to take risks. Investors liked gutsiness and vision.
At the same time, Josh was confident the location was a sure thing. Cagey developers were everywhere, snapping up these great old buildings. In a few years, everyone would want to be in this part of downtown. But Josh liked being among the first—a pioneer. That’s what he was—an innovator. So was his company—Premios. He was staking out new frontiers on the World Wide Web. Some might call him a prospector of opportunity in this Internet gold rush.
But visions of that future would have to wait. It was time to get back to the business at hand. “You two. Break away from whatever is unfolding below you, and let’s talk. We have fortunes to make.”
Orleans quickly moved away, but Danny continued to watch. For a moment Josh considered checking what Danny found so interesting. Even at one in the afternoon on a sunny January day, Main Street was the kind of place that could erupt into action so brutal that the police were needed. But when Orleans gave him a reassuring smile, he knew he didn’t need to bother.
Josh trusted Orleans’ instinct. He detected her talents the very first day he saw her at the restaurant opened by his friends Stephen and Wally. The New Loon Town Café was on the east side of Hollywood. Even though the pair had chosen a sketchy neighborhood, Josh decided to invest in their dream. In those early days, he liked the challenge of situations that required a leap of faith. But the friends from Thread proved to know what they were doing. Everything about their business—the menu, the décor, and the buzz—was on target. That included hiring Orleans Jonas as their primary hostess.
At that point the young woman was still working on her MBA. A smart and pretty girl, she could read people at a thousand words a minute. She deciphered Josh the moment he walked through the restaurant door. She saw the swagger of a man who owned the place, which he did, at least in part. On the other hand, he liked to think he owned almost any room he entered. That wasn’t a boast. Some people—and both Orleans and he were such people—could master a situation in moments. They always said the right thing, complimented the person who needed a boost, questioned the person who craved authority, and calculated the value of every response. It wasn’t a surprise that a woman like Orleans immediately recognized Josh as the moneyman behind the New Loon Town Café and treated him accordingly.
Although he never mentioned it to Wally or Stephen, Josh credited Orleans as the main cause for the New Loon Town Café success. She captivated diners. When she roamed the dining room and talked to the guests, each one of them thought he or she was the most important diner that night. When she smiled at a walk-in and warned him the wait could be an hour, he still stuck around, just to be near her. Josh admired people with such talent. When Josh started his web investments and he learned Orleans had completed her MBA, he hired her away. He wanted her, and he didn’t care how that impacted his friends’ business. Now she was his chief financial officer, and he couldn’t imagine a better one.
Danny stepped away from the window to join Josh and Orleans. He wore a troubled expression. “I wish you hadn’t leased headquarters so close to skid row. No one wants to come here.”
“No one needs to come to this office,” Josh replied cheerfully, “they only need to visit our website. That’s what we want them to do over and over again. It’s new media, Danny. It’s not about real estate on the ground. It’s about staking territory out there. In the virtual world.” He waved his arms around to suggest this mysterious realm that everyone liked to talk about.
Danny laughed. “I get it. At least that part of our business. But you know I meant it when I said my New Year’s resolution was to understand Premios better. After all, it’s our company, isn’t it? And I shouldn’t leave it all in your hands.”
Josh thought the current situation was fine as it was, but didn’t tell Danny that. They entered the suite’s reception area, near Josh’s desk, open to the floor like every other working space at the company. Orleans sat on the sofa, placed a leather-bound folio beside her, and picked up her pen to take notes. She dressed and acted as though this office were on Wall Street. Josh liked that. When he and she met with investors, she looked more like an up-and-coming banker than a start-up Internet nerd.
“What would you like to know?” she asked. “Of course, you know you still own a controlling majority of the stock. But you should be aware that we’ve just about used up the funding from the mezzanine stage
of financing. Our monthly burn rate is significant, but then so is our rate of increase in daily impressions. More importantly, we’re seeing levels of engagement go through the roof, which totally justifies the investments we’ve made in building the brand.”
Like a traffic cop, Danny quickly held up his palm to keep her from speeding past his understanding. “You’ve already lost me in jargon land. Once upon a time, I wrote about local restaurants and tried to be amusing. People subscribed to my ‘zine and then my blog. I never thought any of that could lead to this. I certainly never wanted to be an entrepreneur. That’s Josh’s thing. But . . . ” Danny floundered.
After thirteen years together, Josh knew what bothered Danny, but he saw no sense in making him articulate it. There was something so endearing to see that fleeting look of panic when Danny got in water too deep.
There was no question that Josh was the entrepreneur in the family. More than that, he felt fate tapped him on the shoulder, gave him a rabbit’s foot, and tossed in a four-leaf clover. He always found the right spot at the right time. When his parents died, he combined the cash from their life insurance and the proceeds from selling their farm to American Seasons. He returned to Los Angeles, made some good buys in real estate, took a chance on the New Loon Town Café, and those actions made him rich.
In another way, Danny also made him rich. He added something to his life that he could no longer imagine living without. When Josh first saw Danny that autumn in Thread, Josh had been walking into his hometown as the exotic charmer from Los Angeles. At least that’s how he thought of himself. He never expected to have his self-confidence hit in the face by encountering a guy still in high school. He had never been attracted to younger men, and still wasn’t. But Danny proved different. Perhaps it was because Danny was tall, when Josh was short, blonde while Josh was dark, tentative while he was supremely confident. But that approach seemed too simplistic. There was something else that made him want to be in Danny’s presence and coax that smile from his troubled face. And when he thought he could return to California and leave Danny back to grow up in the cold woods of Wisconsin, he discovered it wasn’t doable. He had to go back until he convinced Danny to join him on the West Coast.
It took a while, but once he convinced Danny to move west, they were happy. Eventually Danny found himself and what he wanted to be. He enrolled in the writing program at USC, then started a little ‘zine called InnerEatz when he got the idea to write about food by hanging around Stephen and Wally’s restaurant and meeting their various foodie friends. Josh was the one who suggested moving it online to be a blog. Even in the early days of the Internet, Josh sensed that someday people would scramble to find interesting content that pulled in the eyeballs. He guided Danny and helped him add the Hollywood gossip that eventually made InnerEatz such a hot media property that AOL America came knocking with a paycheck, because the new media giant was on a buying spree as they sought out more and more material to keep their subscribers happy.
Who could say no to a check with six zeroes? The sale put a lot of money in the bank, which in turn made it practical to buy the house in Los Feliz. Again, a move touched by serendipity. The pair closed just before the real estate market started to rebound, which meant their balance sheet bottom line soon was even bigger. The sale of InnerEatz also bankrolled the start of Premios. Thinking about that made Josh consider whether they shouldn’t change the company name officially to premios.com. Adding “.com” to a name seemed to make a property hot in the current bull market.
Too bad that Danny was one of those people who needed everything washed in clarity. Maybe having a suicidal mother and a slightly loco father did that to him. But Josh was always happy to help Danny understand whatever he felt he needed to comprehend.
Josh jumped in. “Don’t worry, Danny, Orleans and I will explain anything you need clarified. Do you want to go over the financials? The marketing plan? See the thumbnails for the new site? How about talk about the investor roadshow? Whatever you want. Just tell us.”
“None of that.”
“Okay.”
Danny blushed by what he was about to say, “I’m worried that someone is trying to sabotage us. And I want you to take it seriously.”
Orleans dropped her fountain pen, picked it up, and looked toward Josh with an expression he couldn’t decipher.
“Why would you say that?” Josh asked. “Who in the world would want to harm our business? Or do you mean the two of us, you and me?”
“I mean the company. It’s about what Chip told us in Wisconsin. About the computer worm that attacked our site’s database.”
Josh thought of it more as a Trojan horse, not a worm or a virus, but he shrugged away Danny’s concern. There hadn’t been any danger. “Why would you worry about that? It was just a hackers’ prank. Probably not even aimed at us. Some crazy programmer released that code to create a little havoc. Besides we caught it in time. No harm done.”
“Chip seemed worried.”
“Chip’s a worrier. Always has been. It was nothing.”
Danny was wavering, but not convinced. Josh pressed on. “Okay, what else. Spill it.”
Danny paused for just a moment. “Kenosha thinks someone was watching our house while we were gone.”
Once he voiced a worry aloud, Danny always relaxed. Josh recognized this habit of Danny’s: sharing the problem moved the responsibility to Josh.
For once, Josh wasn’t going to pick it up. As some of his business friends liked to put it, one didn’t let others place stray monkeys on your back, especially if those monkeys would be nothing but trouble. “I know she’s your friend, but Kenosha’s too imaginative. Always thinking something’s going on. Remember when she claimed her house was haunted by a bloody ghost, and it turned out it was just her tom cat sitting in the bathtub and dripping blood from a urinary infection.”
“Yeah, Kenosha can be imaginative. But this time I believe her. There were footprints among the shrubs at the back of our lot. Someone was back there.”
Josh and Orleans exchanged such startled looks that Josh feared even Danny would see how his comments concerned them.
Danny did. “All right, you two. What’s going on? Is there something wrong with our company? Do we keep some kind of data people don’t want us to have?”
Cynthia had always appreciated the destructive power of cold weather, and she hated it. Her dad always warned that when temperatures dropped low enough even well protected water pipes could seize into ice and burst. But on rare January nights in northern Wisconsin, temperatures can flirt with thirty degrees or more below zero and fuel oil starts to run sluggish. Such nights can even burst human spirit. The previous night had been that kind of January night.
But now it was morning and Cynthia had other thoughts on her mind. She ignored the deep blue morning sky outside, as well as the slight chill that found its way through the triple-paned glass of their breakfast room. Cynthia had a question she wanted answered.
Both Cynthia and Chip were seated for breakfast. He was dressed for the office, wearing a well-tailored jacket and open shirt. Eggs and bacon were on their plates. Steam rose from their coffee cups. The morning’s Wall Street Journal lay beside Chip’s plate, unopened, and Chip seemed distracted. Normally by this time, he had left for his office. She also knew he hadn’t slept well, and as a result she also suffered a bad night.
“You seem moody,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
Since New Year’s Eve, something had transformed her normally calm husband into a different personality. After leaving Josh and Danny’s camp late on New Year’s Day, he seemed distracted. Days later, he remained edgy. She needed to understand why.
Surely, it had nothing to do with the tribe’s business. The resort was filled with vacationing Midwesterners. Its enclosed water park was always the most popular when the outside air was the coldest. Somehow an arctic blast goaded kids to slip down the giant slides with greater giddiness. Maybe a rushing glance at snow-covered p
ines on the opposite side of the glass increased the sense of danger.
She had so many questions. “What exactly happened at the camp? Why are you worried? What haven’t you told me? I’ve always felt you never really liked Josh.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then tell me what is bothering you.”
After a dozen years of marriage, Cynthia realized that her husband needed to run through his own complicated mental calculus of pros and cons. She would just need to wait to hear his conclusion.
“Do you remember when we talked about the computer malware we encountered during the Y2K countdown?” he finally said.
“Of course. You nearly destroyed Danny’s New Year’s dinner talking about it.”
“I let the topic go that day, but it’s still worrying me.”
“Why? I don’t remember Josh being concerned.” Josh and her husband were two completely opposing kinds of thinkers—one was a man of emotions who made all his decisions with total ease and confidence, and the other was steeped in analysis and synthesis. No decision came quick or easy to Chip.
Still, Cynthia never doubted that Chip was the right kind of person for her. No matter what happened, she would know that every step Chip took was carefully thought through as to the risks and opportunities. Whatever the outcome, good or bad, Cynthia would never face any consequence with regrets because she would be confident that Chip’s decision was the best-reasoned one that could possibly be made.
“You think more carefully than Josh. So at least tell me what you haven’t told him. Because you haven’t told him everything, have you?”
Chip set his napkin on the table and prepared to stand. “He wouldn’t pay attention to me.”
“I will, so tell me,” Cynthia said, and then waited.
Chip gave the slightest nod of acknowledgement. “You win,” he said. He sat down again.
“Here’s what I know. While in the data center on New Year’s Eve, something activated a type of malware within our software. Once alive, it began to destroy the database underlying Josh and Danny’s company. Luckily we detected the problem almost immediately, stopped it, and restored the data. Nothing was lost. Everyone was happy. It was easy to say it was just a hacker’s prank.
The Devil's Analyst Page 4
