Maybe Josh’s morality came from growing up in the northwoods. Generations ago, Thread and the environs had been the favored hangout for Chicago crime lords. Everyone in Thread knew how Al Capone once frequented the area. Not far from Thread, a minor resort in Manitowish Waters was called the Little Bohemia Lodge. The establishment still preserved the cabin where Dillinger had his famous shootout with the feds. Even in a small town, one grew up knowing crooks surrounded you. But crooks could be good guys . . . as long as they were on your side.
The thing was you had to know who your crooks were. Josh looked across at this well-dressed man who was a year or two younger than him. Whose man was he really?
Josh sighed, “I thought you invested to make money. And that’s exactly what happens once we go public. Your nine and a half million will be worth thirty times what it is today.”
“I believe it’s ten and a half million now.” Oliver took a sip of cognac and then held his look at Josh until he received confirmation.
“Of course.”
Orleans worried over what Josh gave up by accepting a heavier investment from Endicott-Meyers. She had no idea. Josh took a sip of his martini. It had grown warm, and the glass was no longer sweating with chilled condensation. Josh knew Orleans was focused on the lost opportunity costs related to potential gains, but she worried about the wrong thing.
When Josh tried to burrow into Oliver’s connections, he was shocked to find himself blocked at every turn. He was damn good at eking out hidden details, so his failure in this instance was deeply worrying. Somehow he thought Meyers’ connections were more than the usual dabbling in extortion or drug smuggling. Maybe he was connected higher up the food chain, perhaps directly to Colombian or Mexican drug lords. But that at least would seem like ordinary corruption. His true fear was that Oliver was a pawn of something much larger, something global and political.
In more reflective moments, Josh acknowledged that he was prone to wild conspiracy theories, but then he knew his own story—and that made any conspiracy theory seem more plausible. At times he had behaved in some pretty devious ways, and he wasn’t the only person of his type in the world. It was always safer to assume everyone had a hidden agenda and that they would be ruthless in pursuing those goals. Again, he came back to this basic question about Oliver: whose agenda was in play?
In those sleepless moments that sometimes plagued him at three or four in the morning, his thoughts would fixate on the political. There were many candidates: the Russians, the Chinese, Arab terrorists. He had to figure out which it was, or he would never devise a way to free Danny and his company of this cancer.
Oliver took another a sip of his cognac. “Naturally we wish you all the success with the public placement. If you’re successful, perhaps I will start drinking Louis XIII cognac instead. But then I’m not one for ostentatious spending. Money is nice, but information is better. One can leverage the right information so much more than mere cash. Surely you know that.”
Josh thought of all of the information stored within the databases at the heart of Premios. Not the listings of restaurants and hotels, or the user ratings, not even the stored credit card numbers. Rather, it was the incredible detail found in the user profiles that had been built up for their broad array of celebrity users. From the earliest days, Premios attracted the Hollywood elite, and Premios data engines captured their lives in the reservations they made, the searches they did, and the predilections of their desired purchases—all tracked by Premios to enable better and more personal recommendations.
Of course, everyone knew such data capture was private and anonymous. The terms and conditions of their unread user agreements guaranteed it. But reality seldom matched policies. Programmers were only human; they didn’t always do what they promised. Information might be gathered even when it wasn’t freely offered. Data might be used in ways people never intended.
“And speaking of information, how is your Premios Advisor feature coming along?”
“We can demonstrate its capabilities,” Josh replied.
“And does the programming staff understand what they’re building?”
“I understand it. They don’t need to.”
Oliver grimaced.
Josh continued. “The Advisor feature is being built in modules that will eventually link together. Each module makes logical sense to the person programming it. Only a few of us understand how it’s meant to come together. And of those few, I may be the only one who really understands what can be done with it.”
Now Oliver smiled. “Well, we also understand it.” He stressed the word ‘we.’ “My colleagues have been patient. But we do have our limits, and there have been a few too many disturbing incidents lately. They need to stop. Do you understand? I trust I’m clear.”
Oliver took one last gulp of his cognac, stood and exited through the 44th Street door. He didn’t wait to hear whether or not Josh understood.
Josh watched him enter a town car that had been waiting. Josh understood all right. He would put a stop to the disturbing incidents. The incidents in question just might not be the ones that Oliver was talking about.
INTERLUDE
Session Seven
Everyone has secrets. At least they think they do. And it doesn’t take an expensive shrink like you to lure those tidbits out into the open.
Early on I realized that discovering what people want to keep hidden bestows on the discoverer enormous power. The trick is to find a fast way to uncover those diamonds in the rough.
Take you, doc. You had to go to school four years to get a college degree and then how many years studying psychology and therapy? Licenses and all that, and then somehow you’re allowed to know our secrets. It’s not really necessary. People leave clues all the time to the very things they don’t want anyone to know.
Or maybe they do want someone to know. Anyone. Just to reinforce that they matter.
Once I worked in a tony restaurant, and the owner had this idea about measuring customer satisfaction. He thought it would be great to follow up with his diners a day or two after they spent a bundle on a fancy meal. How would you rate your dinner, and would you recommend our place to your friend? Shit like that. So he had me call their homes and conduct a phone survey.
Boring stuff, except when you got a bewildered wife. ‘No,’ she would say, ‘we didn’t eat at that restaurant. My husband was working that night.’ Sure he was. Working on boning some new conquest. It’s amazing how often an idiot leaves a home phone number for a dinner reservation when he was setting up an affair.
That’s when I realized people carelessly drop clues to their secrets all over the place. I don’t know if it’s from stupidity, laziness, or just not realizing the implications of a small detail. But if you could put all those details together, imagine what you might find.
Well, you don’t need to imagine, do you? I guess that’s what your job is all about.
Look out, doc. The Internet and the World Wide Web might just take your craft away. With computers and the net, it becomes possible to look at everything one does and keep track of all the little details, constantly sifting through them, until you find that magical leverage you can exploit. Because secrets don’t stay hidden in the ether. Personal data is the real gold mine. As long as you got the data, and as long as people know they have a secret to protect, there’s the opportunity to conquer the world.
But then there are the mysteries you pose to yourself. Like what makes a person tick? Like who is Danny really?
You need different tactics for problems like that.
I won’t find out what I want to know about Danny by simply tracking his search history. Maybe I just need to give him the life he wanted, if only he knew that life was possible, and then snatch it away. I could do that. I could do other things. But I will find out what I need to know.
You can count on that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Oliver
This was Danny’s first visit to the Pacific Di
ning Car, a restaurant that had operated in the same spot since the 1920s. Danny wondered why he had never talked about the restaurant in his blog. Even though the neighborhood seemed a little sketchy, the quality of the wine list was astonishing. Who would think such a restaurant could exist and stay open around the clock? Leave it to Chip to choose a spot like this for a breakfast meeting.
Earlier that morning Cynthia appeared in the kitchen wearing her look of resolve that reminded Danny of the teenage Cynthia who took on tasks of initiating something new, like the high school prom. In those days, it always helped that her dad owned half of Thread. Nevertheless her perky grit always ensured that no mountain was unmovable. Once, Danny admired Cynthia for such determination. Today he feared it.
“I want to go to that restaurant where Chip had breakfast,” Cynthia said.
“Why?” Danny told her everything that Lopez had said about that meeting. Visiting the place in person wouldn’t add anything new, and could only offer a reminder that Oliver again existed in some way in Danny’s life.
“Maybe the waiter who served him is there. He might know something.”
“I’m sure the police already talked to him.”
“You know what they would think. They already convicted my husband as a runaway embezzler. Probably convinced that he has a girl stashed away. But you know that doesn’t describe Chip.”
While Cynthia wore a simple dress that seemed both dignified and yet girlish, her make-up was slightly overdone which gave her an appearance of being surprised and no one would take her questions seriously. Danny recalled Josh’s advice that investigations were best left to the professionals. But although Cynthia didn’t look like a woman of steel, it was impossible to do anything but give in to his old friend.
Soon they were driving down Riverside, through Elysian Park and taking the backside approach to the west side of downtown Los Angeles. They turned on Sixth Street. “That’s the place,” he said.
At nine in the morning, several booths were still playing host to breakfast meetings between suited types. While it was unusual to see pinstripes and vests in the typical Los Angeles restaurant, this downtown eatery catered to serious financial types and appeared more Wall Street than West Coast.
Danny didn’t feel comfortable in a spot that was almost the exact opposite of the New Loon Town Café. Here nobody looked hip or new media, and it definitely wasn’t a hangout for the Hollywood crowd. But the smell of bacon and breakfast sausage was alluring, and Danny hoped that the excursion would at least result in a good breakfast. At his house, breakfast would have been reheated croissants.
Cynthia asked for the manager. He arrived quickly and she explained her predicament. She wondered if they could meet the waiter who was on duty when her husband had been here a week ago. The manager immediately recalled the situation.
“Sit here,” said the man. “Pedro served your husband. The police talked to him a few days ago.” He motioned a waiter to come over.
The middle-aged, slightly paunchy Hispanic waiter walked up. “Are you ready to order?” He shifted uncomfortably and his tone suggested he sensed something was wrong.
Cynthia smiled warmly; she was accustomed to making others feel at ease. “We’ll order in a moment, but first we want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“About the menu?” he replied, although he seemed to know already that it was something else.
Cynthia reached out to touch his hand. “No. It’s about my husband. He disappeared and it seems the last place he may have been was this restaurant.” She pulled out a photo of Chip and her. It had been taken at a Hawaiian beach on their last vacation. “It was a week ago. Do you remember him?”
He looked at her sadly. “Señora,” he began as though his native language somehow made it easier to say what he had to say. “I’ve already told all this to the police. He was here with two men having breakfast. There was nothing out of the ordinary that day, but I remember it well because one of the three was a famous writer named Jesus Lopez. The author often eats here.”
“What about the other man?” Danny asked. He didn’t know why he blurted that out.
“I did not know him, and I do not think he had been here before because he studied the menu a long time,” the waiter replied. “He was about your age, maybe a little older. Dark-haired man. Good looking, I guess.”
Not much to go on, Danny thought, but it sounded like it could be the Oliver Meyer of his youth. Then he thought of the book back in the bedroom, The Dumping Ground. Lopez could never have written that story unless he knew the same Oliver. So far, Danny had avoided reading any part of the book. There was no need, since the text on the flyleaf was enough to convince him that the novel was stolen from his own youth.
Cynthia continued to press. “Did they argue? Or did they laugh? Did it seem a business meeting?”
“As I told the police, the only thing I remember is that when I brought the bill, your husband’s cell phone rang. He answered it, listened for a while, and then told the other two that the call would take a while, that he’d pay the bill and they could leave. And they did.”
Realizing there was nothing to be learned, Cynthia’s perkiness deflated. She accepted the unlikely nature of her quest and glumly ordered oatmeal and fresh berries. Danny asked for the special scramble with eggs, sausage, and spinach.
Danny tried to find a positive spin. “When we’re done here, we could drive to the investigator’s office that Kenosha suggested. She says it’s someone with expertise in computer and accounting forensics. Maybe he can track the missing money.”
Danny knew Cynthia was still in another space. Nothing ever remained hidden about her emotions, and no one could doubt her love for Chip or her worry. Danny sometimes wondered what others thought of Josh and him. Could they appreciate the bonds that united them?
Last night, he tried to call Josh several times, but he never answered. Danny wondered if Josh mistakenly turned off his phone or left it in the hotel room when he went to a meeting. An investment tour was stressful, and Danny didn’t want to distract Josh but at the same time he felt an urgent need to confer. Normally when Josh traveled on business, they talked every evening. Missing that connection, Danny slept fitfully the entire night, haunted by a fear that whatever happened to Chip might happen to Josh. Luckily, Josh called early in the morning and apologized profusely for missing the previous night’s call, explaining that it was so late by the time he realized they hadn’t talked that he didn’t want to risk waking Danny.
Throughout the morning call, Josh was cheerful and extraordinarily positive. Listening to his recounting of the day, Danny knew he was supposed to believe every investor was ready to jump in on the initial offering, but Danny didn’t fully accept that. The day before, Kenosha reported how Orleans had fretted about the extremely challenging questions posed in nearly every financial presentation. Danny knew how Josh liked to shield him from mundane details, and he resolved again to better understand the business. Leaving it all in Josh’s hands was an easy, but inappropriate, way out.
On the other hand, he suspected Chip and Cynthia lived under the same arrangement because he doubted that she knew much about the inner workings of Lattigo Industries. Neither Cynthia nor Danny was the questioning type; yet now they were trying to be private eyes. It was ludicrous, considering how ill prepared they were for the task.
Having said very little to each other, they finished breakfast. Pedro brought back Danny’s credit card and leaned in. “I thought of something. You should ask the valet if he saw anything. No one ever parks on the street. In this neighborhood, especially early in the morning, people are wary about the street. Maybe he’ll remember something.”
They took the waiter’s advice. The first guy they asked hadn’t been working that day, but he brought over the other valet.
“Yeah, I remember him. Cause he walked here. No one ever does that. But then when he left, he stood by the front door for a while. I asked him if he needed a cab. But he sh
ook his head and then this big green sedan pulled up, and like he checked out who the driver was before he opened up the door and got in. The car drove west. Last I saw of him.”
Danny wondered why the car would have gone in the direction of the distant ocean when Chip’s downtown hotel lay in the opposite direction. “Do you remember anything else about the car or the driver?”
“Not really, I think it was a late model Ford, but don’t know for sure. The driver was wearing some kind of hat. That was kind of odd. It wasn’t no baseball cap, but then they were gone.”
Another diner stepped out of the restaurant and waved his parking slip. The valet gave a look as though to say “that’s all,” and dashed over to pick up the ticket and find the keys. By then, the other worker was pulling up with Danny’s car.
“Ready to see the private eye?” Danny asked Cynthia. The valet rushed to open the door for Cynthia, and she settled in. Danny and she both looked at one another, while Danny wondered if Cynthia had any idea who would have picked Chip up. Cynthia said nothing.
He pulled out of the parking lot to enter Sixth Street and head east toward downtown. His route took them through the new business district on Bunker Hill and then at the bottom, they turned left on Broadway, bringing them into the old center of Los Angeles. The buildings had largely been built in the 1920s and now, except for the ground floors given over to Latino merchants, stood mostly vacant. The detective’s office was in the Bradbury Building, a landmark of old L.A. that was glimmering with the polish of a recent renovation.
“The police never mentioned that someone picked Chip up,” Cynthia said. “I wonder who it was. And why would they drive away from Chip’s hotel?”
The Devil's Analyst Page 14
