The Devil's Analyst

by Dennis Frahmann

  Josh was quite surprised. “Of course not. Why would I know anything?”

  “I don’t trust the guy,” she said. ”He almost knew too much about our business the other day. He’s tenacious and sneaky. He could be testing us.”

  “Testing us for what?”

  “You know him better than me,” she replied in a way that suggested the subject was closed, but then she reopened it. “In a way I wish he were here. I’d ask him to invest another million dollars in Premios. That would improve the balance sheets and get us through the summer. It would place less pressure on the IPO.”

  That’s what Josh liked about Orleans. She was always thinking, and he had already reached the same conclusion. They needed an additional infusion of cash—and soon. The trouble was that they couldn’t go to the banks for it. Such an act would seem desperate. It needed to come from the original investors. Unfortunately added investment at this stage would dilute his holdings more than he wanted. But so what? Better to have a few million less when they went public than to be left holding an empty bag.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t just increase your personal investment,” Orleans added. “That would be the easiest approach. And the fastest.”

  Orleans would discover it soon enough, but he felt no need to tell her quite yet. Already the accounts of both Danny and himself were heavily overleveraged. The house, the camp, and the original seed money for Premios, to say nothing of his other interests—all of it was locked up. Money only went so far.

  The single way out as he saw it was to tap the original investors. If Chip wasn’t around to help, that left Endicott-Meyers. But there was one problem. He wasn’t about to take more money from them until he knew two things: exactly whom he was dealing with and what they wanted from Premios.

  Cynthia was angry. No one cared that Chip hadn’t talked to her in days, and she couldn’t understand why. He wasn’t the kind of person simply to disappear or stop communicating. She longed to scream the obvious: he was in trouble; he had never done this before; and there must be a reason it was happening now. But another part of her rejected any possibility that he might in danger. A person as strong as Chip could not simply vanish.

  She found herself in Chip’s office. Her need to escape the house was so great and there were so few other places to go. Sitting in his office chair proved a tremendous comfort. An element of his scent clung to the leather; it was all she could do to keep herself from pushing her face into the back of that chair as though she could inhale him into her presence. She replayed his last phone call in her head. She had asked him to come home, and he promised that he would be back soon. What stopped him?

  Josh and Danny were both a disappointment. Police had their procedures. It made sense that they insisted on waiting before even accepting her missing person’s report. The world was bursting with runaway husbands and deadbeat dads, so why should they believe that Chip was different. They didn’t know him as she did.

  Chip’s sister once told her a Lattigo legend about a long-ago chief named Frozen Bear. As a child Chip had adopted that same name and used it through his twenties. According to the folklore, back in the earliest days, a trickster cast a spell that froze Frozen Bear in time and separated him from his true love. But the wily Frozen Bear employed all of the creatures of the earth and water to break through the trickster’s every barrier until, in triumph, Frozen Bear reached his love. He stretched out to meet her lips, kissed her, and restored time.

  Surely, Chip could do the same. He was as strong as any myth. In a moment, he too might come through that door, having vanquished his foes, and their lips would meet. They would laugh together about how he overcame whatever obstacles had blocked his return. Happiness would flow again and her current despair would flow away as quickly as the melting snow in spring.

  She wanted to believe such fairy tales, but she hated herself for trying to evade the obvious. Even in the myth the original Frozen Bear achieved what he did only because the Great Spirit aided him. That’s why Cynthia was praying to her own god that he could make the old story come true.

  She was so angry that Josh and Danny didn’t share her fears. Perhaps she was unfair, but in her heart, she blamed the two of them. Chip only flew to Los Angeles to investigate their problem. They should care more about his current state, because, knowing Chip as long as they had, they also knew that he wasn’t a man who could simply walk away.

  How she hated the police and their questions: Was their marriage all right? Was the business doing well? What challenges were bothering Chip? There was no way she could tell them about the computer hack. She didn’t know the details and she suspected Josh would deny that a problem even existed.

  At the Lattigo offices everyone seemed equally unconcerned. Perhaps that was a reflection of Chip himself; he had trained them to do their job and not get distracted. With or without him, the staff continued to ensure warm water flowed in the pipes of the water park, the lights stayed bright in the casinos, and the computer servers stayed cool in the data center. The staff knew what kind of person their boss was, and so they preferred to believe he was on some deep mission—as though he were a James Bond character plotting a financial coup from afar.

  She held onto the slender hope that such an explanation would appear. After all, once Chip had disappeared for a few days only to return in triumph. It was back in 1987 when he engineered the takeover of the American Seasons resort. Recently his staff reminded her of that. They were proud his victory and it had become a tribal legend.

  But the situations weren’t at all similar. In 1987, the two were only dating, and yet Chip had warned her of his impending absence. Now they were husband and wife; they were planning a family. No, she was certain that something terrible had happened in Los Angeles.

  Only Gertie, Chip’s executive assistant, understood Cynthia’s anguish. Gertie, Chip’s secretary since the beginning, was as much a part of Chip’s life as Cynthia. They just shared alternating blocks of each day’s time, and they both knew Chip was not hiding somewhere.

  Cynthia’s thin thread of hope was that Chip found it necessary to go undercover in his search into the computer hack. At Cynthia’s request, Gertie pulled up everything she could find concerning Chip’s travels and behaviors. It was a modern age—there were online credit card statements, travel records, and cell phone bills. There was no place to hide, and yet she found no clues to Chip’s possible location. Maybe he stepped outside of time like the mythical Frozen Bear.

  The two confirmed that Chip’s credit card still held a room at the Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles, although the hotel’s manager said it appeared no one had been in the room for several days. The bed had remained neatly made for days, and the records showed his key card had not been used. The last call on his cell phone was the one made to Cynthia, while the last charge on the company credit card was for breakfast the following morning at the Pacific Dining Car, a classic 24-hour restaurant not far from the Bonaventure.

  Someone knocked at the office door.

  “Come in,” Cynthia said.

  A visibly shaken Gertie entered, holding a FedEx envelope. “This was just delivered,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Mr. Grant’s notebook.” She held up a small leather bound tablet. Cynthia recognized the small pad as her husband’s. Even addicted as he was to his Blackberry, Chip still jotted many key thoughts on paper, a habit he retained since the days before they married. His little book was precious; he would never let it go. In fact, their bedroom closet sheltered a file box filled with fifteen years worth of identical such notebooks.

  “Who sent it?”

  “There was no note, and I already called the return address. It’s a Kinko’s in downtown Los Angeles. They don’t have any record of who sent it.”

  “Maybe someone found and returned it,” Cynthia suggested. She took the book from Gertie without asking and flipped it open. “See how Chip put his address here and asked for its return
if found.”

  Gertie remained concerned. “But it also notes that he would give a reward. Don’t you think it’s odd that someone bothered to return it and didn’t give us their name? Why pass up a chance for free money?”

  Cynthia was scanning the last few pages that contained writing. Chip was prone to using his notebook to record meetings and reflect on the results. She found his brief recap of the visit to the empty server building. She noted that there was nothing written about the possibility of seeing Pete Peterson lurking outside.

  She turned the page to find one brief entry followed by blank pages. The last bit of writing simply said, “Oliver Meyers and Jesus Lopez, PDC, 7:00 am.”

  “Do you know an Oliver Meyers or Jesus Lopez?” she asked Gertie. The woman shrugged. Clearly the names meant nothing to her.

  The sounds of excited people in the anteroom drew Gertie’s attention, and she started to the door. Before she got to it, a man started talking excitedly to her approaching presence. “Gertie, is Mrs. Grant here? I need to talk to her.”

  Cynthia felt enormous relief. Chip must have contacted someone at the office. Everything would be explained. She knew the young man who walked in. His name was Andrew, and he was the firm’s financial comptroller as well as a trusted member of the Lattigo tribe. Chip always said he saw great promise in Andrew. This young man was exactly the person Chip would use as an ally, but today Andrew seemed frazzled, as though he had run from the Accounting cubicles one floor below.

  “What is it,” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking with nervousness.

  “Mrs. Grant, something horrible is happening. A million dollars just disappeared from our accounts.”

  Danny was waiting impatiently. Earlier Josh promised they would call Cynthia together when he arrived home, and an hour had passed since Josh drove up. It was already late evening in Wisconsin, and Cynthia might be going to bed soon, but Danny still wanted to talk to her this night. Time was running out. But Josh was in high spirits and keen on following his own schedule.

  As soon as he walked through the door Josh asked, “Do we still have that bottle of Opus One in the wine cellar?” Danny paid little attention to what wineries or vintages were represented in the basement wine cellar. That was Josh’s fascination; Danny hardly ever went into the room. He didn’t even care for wine, and to him there was nothing more boring than to talk about body, tannins, legs, and the like. His dad had it right. Back in Wisconsin, people drank beer and brandy. He inherited that preference although it was a personal taste he could never acknowledge in his blog writings.

  “Only you would know for sure. Unless you already drank it, anything you placed in the cellar is still down there,” Danny replied. “But can’t a drink wait until after we talk to Cynthia? She needs help. Nothing’s changed. Chip still hasn’t shown up.”

  Josh wasn’t swayed. “Sure, sure. But first I’d like a good glass of wine. I’m feeling lucky tonight.”

  When Danny was at the Premios offices just before lunch, Josh and Orleans were holed up in the conference room going over the books. In his attempt to get their attention for just a few minutes, he saw Josh at his surliest. In that instant, he stopped worrying about Chip’s disappearance and wondered what might be wrong with the business. Had the hackers reappeared?

  But when Danny walked out and the door was shut in his face all he could perceive was their shadowy silhouettes beyond the glass. A hazy glow of multicolored line charts projected on the screen suggested a financial review. For the briefest of moments, he reconsidered his resolution to be more involved with the business and contemplated forcing himself into the room. After all, it was his company too. But instead he retreated to Kenosha’s desk and his steadiest of companions, so together they could speculate about Chip. Danny might have forged a life with Josh but the man didn’t really understand what motivated him.

  He looked at Josh now wondering why he couldn’t understand how important it was for them to reach out to Cynthia, together, as a couple. “I don’t want to wait. Let’s call first and then you can have the wine with dinner.”

  “It’ll only take moment. I’ll be right back.”

  Josh opened the door to the narrow back staircase, a leftover of the days when houses had their own routes for the servants to reach the lower floors. When Josh had an idea, it was hard to resist his enthusiasm. “You’ll love this wine. A good glass of alcohol will help us focus on Cynthia. You’ll see.”

  As the door swung shut behind Josh, Danny could hear the rapid set of footfalls of the man dashing down two flights of stairs to the lowest level. He pictured Josh walking across the theater room to the middle of the floor, opening the heavy door into the wine room that was dug into the hillside. It had been a great remodeling expense to outfit one of the old cellar storage rooms for wine, and so far Josh only stored a few cases there. But often at dinners involving a potential investor or contributor, Josh boasted about his cellar in a way that might lead one to think it was one of the best in the city. Francesca had been fooled by Josh’s talk. She wanted to see it and even suggested to Danny that perhaps it could be the basis of a story about how the rich collected the best vintages. Danny carefully steered her away from the topic.

  He also remembered Francesca’s talk about the old director’s hidden rooms in the basement. Since returning from Wisconsin, Danny avoided the basement. He didn’t tell Josh, but the fact that Kenosha heard an attempted intrusion wrapped the entire bottom floor in danger. Like their camp in Wisconsin, he was beginning to find this Los Feliz mansion too big. Public and service hallways provided multiple paths between rooms that existed with no modern purpose. One could easily live day to day without ever putting a foot into most of them.

  The clomps on the stair treads grew nearer. Josh swung open the door and brandished a bottle. “It was there, just like I thought.”

  Josh had the maniacal look of success. Sometimes, when seeing Josh in these moments of high energy, Danny recalled a book he once read in high school called Lord of the Flies. He pictured the leader of the boys who hunted down Piggy as a younger version of Josh. It wasn’t very complimentary he knew to think of his lover caught in the excitement and frenzy of the chase, unabashedly anticipating his quarry’s capture, so sometimes he tried to turn the general thought into something more wholesome—like an Indian chief with his braves about to snare a buffalo to feed the tribe. But that never rang true. Josh was a man of reckless abandon, and even though that was why Danny found him so attractive, it wasn’t a feature he always liked.

  “What happened today? You’re a different man than this morning,” Danny complained.

  “I solved a problem. That’s all.”

  Josh pulled open a drawer on the large kitchen island and pawed for a corkscrew. Quickly he scored the foil around the top of the wine bottle, removed it, and extracted the cork. He grabbed two large balloon glasses from the cupboard and proceeded to pour the wine, swirling the garnet red around the rim, as he watched the wine’s heavy legs coat the glass.

  “Get a whiff of that nose,” he pushed a glass toward Danny. “This is gonna be great.”

  “What was the problem?” Danny asked. The bouquet of the wine was big.

  “A technical one. You wouldn’t understand. Let’s call Cynthia.”

  Suddenly, Josh focused entirely on fulfilling Danny’s request. He pulled out his cell phone, pressed the speaker button, dialed the number, and set the phone on the island. After two rings, Cynthia picked up.

  “Have you heard from Chip?”

  Danny found it disturbingly sad that she didn’t even say hello first. Hope and desperation battled in her voice. Suddenly Danny wished Josh wasn’t with him.

  “No,” Danny said.

  While she didn’t say anything to that, not even a sigh of acceptance, her silence told them everything about her state of mind.

  “Have you?” he asked.

  Because he didn’t expect a reply, he was all the more astonished to hear he
r recount the unexpected appearance of Chip’s notebook. Even Josh seemed surprised.

  “I was hoping the book would clear up something,” Cynthia explained. “But it only held one fact that I didn’t already know. Chip scribbled the details for a breakfast meeting. The appointment showed two names. If he had that meeting, they must have been the last people to see him. The two were Jesus Lopez and Oliver Meyers.”

  A speeding car, a crash into a light pole, pianos falling from the sky, cataclysmic sinkholes opening beneath him . . . for a second Danny thought he must be dreaming, but even in his worst nightmares, he would never have joined the two men named by Cynthia.

  He could understand the possibility that Chip might seek to meet Lopez. The two met at the party the night Chip arrived in Los Angeles. Still, Danny could never imagine that Chip might have found this writer intriguing enough to invite for breakfast.

  Oliver Meyers was something totally different. Danny couldn’t even imagine a connection between Chip and Oliver, or for that matter, Lopez and Oliver—and certainly not among all three. This could not be the same Oliver Meyers who haunted his past.

  He had loved that Oliver. At least he had loved the twenty-year-old worker at the resort as much as a sixteen-year-old innocent could. When he first saw Oliver in the kitchen of that old-fashioned resort with its crazy name of White Bark Pines, Danny forgave his father for shipping him to slave at this place for the entire summer. Something about Oliver made Danny eager to be in his presence, and happy that they would be working together for the next two and a half months. Just looking at Oliver’s hand seemed enough. Of course, Oliver eventually let him see more than that.

  In retrospect, he realized that Oliver played on Danny’s infatuation from the start. Some dewy-eyed longing probably lit up Danny’s eyes in the first moment he saw Oliver instructing him on operating a dishwasher. There certainly might have been more romantic settings at the secluded resort, but it didn’t take much to ignite the passion of a teenager slowly coming to grips with his true emotions. Any setting could serve.