Danny didn’t answer. He focused on his rear view mirror and the late model, green sedan two cars back. It seemed to be following them.
Cynthia stared at her plate. Her search for Chip had gone nowhere and she wondered what was she was doing in this restaurant. The people who surrounded her were Danny’s friends, not hers. Their so-called private room overlooked the busy floor of the New Loon Town Café. Every table below was filled and the bar was packed with an after-work, hard-drinking crowd. In the buzz, it was almost impossible to hear what anyone was saying. It would be so much quieter at home in Wisconsin.
Among these people, she only knew Danny, Wally, and Stephen—familiar faces from the old days in Thread and Lattigo. Wally’s original eatery on Thread’s main square failed years earlier, and it had been a decade since Stephen and Wally packed their bags to head west, after which Josh lured Danny to the coast as well. The life that Chip and she built in Wisconsin meant nothing to any of them. They did not know how hard her husband fought to preserve the tribal dream for American Seasons and the way he wrestled with banks and governments to make it possible. He poured his heart into creating that world, not for himself, but for the tribe. Even after attending graduate school, the call of his people was too strong. They pulled him home. Over the years, Chip’s obligation had become hers.
No one in this room understood that. Danny might admire Chip, even harbor a type of boyhood crush, but he hardly knew her husband. For Wally and Stephen, Chip was nothing more than a colorful figure from their past.
How could they comfort her? Or distract her? Or even camouflage her pain? Especially when she could see in their eyes that each one doubted Chip’s innocence. In the back of their minds, they sheltered that small question about his honor. Of course, they would never say it, but she knew. She could feel it in every action and every look. No fancy food, elaborate drink, or insider story would disguise it.
Earlier that day in his office in the historic Bradbury Building, Samuel Denkey’s eyes betrayed the same look. Regardless of his credentials as an investigator, Denkey was both a skeptical man and a poor actor. From Denkey’s conference room, Danny, Cynthia, and he held a conference call with Chip’s staff in Lattigo because Denkey wanted to hear their recollections first hand.
If only she could be among those staff members now instead of this alien restaurant. They knew Chip like she knew him. They knew what kind of man their boss was. No matter that their printouts and reconstructions suggested otherwise. No, she corrected herself, the kind of man Chip is. She had to keep thinking of him as alive. It was still possible to find and save him.
Denkey had been younger than she expected, not even forty. For her benefit, he quickly recapped his background. It included working for the Los Angeles Police and branching out as a computer programmer. He introduced his three associates, and they all sat around an inexpensive conference table, staring at a black speaker box as they interacted with disembodied voices from Wisconsin.
Denkey’s questions were direct, simple and without emotion. What was missing? Which accounts stored the money? Where was the money sent? Was it still there? According to the computer records, who authorized the transfer? What evidence suggested their accounting system had been infected with malware? Were there any markers to connect the New Year’s Eve attack on the Premios database with the impacted accounting records? Were there any common security gateways between Premios and Lattigo Industries?
The questions seemed endless. The associates all took notes on their laptops. Cynthia could feel Danny’s eyes watching her from across the table. It made her want to scream. None of this was getting them anywhere. The detective was only a distraction. Just like this dinner party diverted her from what she should be doing. Just like he acted earlier at the agency, now at the restaurant Danny was continuing to stare. Worrying. It was too much.
She knew she needed to take action. She just couldn’t imagine what action to take. She also couldn’t conceive any way that Danny would or could help.
Danny watched Cynthia. Her eyes might be focused down and toward her food—a dish that she had not touched—but he knew she was in a different place. His suggesting this dinner had been a mistake. Why had he listened to Josh’s earlier suggestion that Danny ask friends to join them in a casual meal?
On the surface, the idea carried merit. Stephen and Wally were the other two people Cynthia knew in Los Angeles, and they had such a long history together. Josh probably imagined the fun they would have reminiscing about their early life in Thread. Although a teenager at the time, Danny enjoyed working for Wally at the original Loon Town Café. He recalled with fondness all the characters in that town, and the warmth of being surrounded by loving people. He wanted to recapture that emotion tonight feeling Cynthia needed that tonic to survive her uncertainty.
But within a few minutes, he realized nostalgia easily collapsed into melancholy. He failed to consider how the happy days he wanted to evoke were the very ones that defined Cynthia’s falling in love with Chip. One couldn’t be discussed without the other.
And whatever made him think inviting Francesca would be a good idea? Of course he could remember his original thought—how Cynthia wanted to start a family and how important being a mother was to Francesca. Yet again his best intentions proved that he was an enormous idiot. Francesca couldn’t approach discussing being a parent without being reminded how her own adoption plans had shattered. And any talk of creating babies required discussing a father, which only induced in Cynthia a painful reminder of Chip’s absence.
The table of five acted lively enough. Three bottles of wine ensured that. But beneath the surface the mood was brittle and everyone realized it. Danny needed to find a way to end this. The waiter was bringing the dessert menus, and even though he loved this restaurant’s cakes, it would be too much an act of courage to sit through one more course.
He waved the server away. “I hope you don’t mind,” Danny said to the group, “but I should drive Cynthia home. It’s been a long day, and if she needs a final sweet we have a freezer full of Haagen Dazs.”
No one disagreed.
“Don’t worry about the bill,” Stephen said. “It’s our treat tonight.”
“In that case,” joked Francesca, “bring out the champagne. These sleepy ones can go home, and we’ll have a nightcap.” But it was clear she was as willing to end the evening as were Danny and Cynthia.
Cynthia stood up so quickly that Danny feared it would appear rude. “Danny’s right. I’m ready to turn in for the night. But don’t let my leaving end your fun. Thanks so much for a wonderful evening.”
Danny had never heard a phrase uttered with so little believability. Soon they were in his car, turning onto Los Feliz Boulevard, and then going uphill on the curvy street that led to his house. He kept glancing into the rear-view mirror, even though he found the glare of headlights from behind made that painfully blinding. That driver should have dimmed them, and the brightness annoyed him because he couldn’t discern if the green car from earlier in the day was again following them. Eventually, Cynthia noticed his behavior.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He grunted no and stopped his constant looks backward. There was nothing to see anyway, and he was probably being paranoid, but since that morning when they departed the Pacific Dining Car to head to the Bradbury Building, he felt that they were being tailed.
After leaving the detective’s office, he thought he saw the same green sedan, several cars back that had been in his rear view mirror after leaving the Pacific Dining Car. When they swerved toward the onramp to the Hollywood Freeway, the auto had vanished. He couldn’t even be certain it was the same vehicle as earlier in the day. In fact, it was highly unlikely that it was. Why would anyone seek to follow them?
As they turned up Westhurst Drive, the road narrowed into a tunnel of foliage. The streetlights were now old-fashioned globes and the setting reminiscent of a former era. When he glanced once more into the rear
view mirror, no car was in sight. He relaxed. Nothing to worry about.
They neared the circular drive to the mansion, and he pressed the button that opened the massive iron gate. It had been Josh’s idea to add that ostentatious item. On this evening, Danny was glad it existed. The gate rolled back and he drove forward. They pulled up to the front door, and he looked down to be sure the gate was closing. Just then a dark sedan drove by, its lights off.
Danny felt a chill. Where had that car come from? Where was it going? And who was in it?
Josh was ready to leave. A car was waiting to take Orleans and him back to the airport. It was time to head west, but Orleans had yet to appear in the lobby. It was unusual for her to be late, and Josh found her delay this morning particularly annoying. Nothing on this trip was going the way he planned.
So many things justified his discomfort. His mental composure was being scratched away, as though he had stepped into a patch of poison oak and rolled in it like a crazed dog. Dawdling in the lobby only intensified his itch. Because his suitcase was already safely tucked into the trunk of the Lincoln town car, he had half a mind to let Orleans find her own way to JFK.
Orleans rushed into the lobby. “Sorry, I’m late,” she said, “but it was the guy from Lehman Brothers. He wanted to clarify one of our slides. He said it contradicted something later in the pack. It turns out we didn’t update one figure when we did our last minute edits. But I was able to explain the discrepancy to his satisfaction.”
She seemed pleased with herself. Whatever. There were bigger concerns on his plate than one minor functionary at a third-rate investment bank.
“I predict they’re on board,” she said. “He’s a smart guy to notice a single wrong detail in the whole pack. But we had a lot to update when we had to account for the extra million in the financing. The good news is he sees our potential. I think they’re in.”
The driver opened the door to the rear seat and Orleans slid in and across the seat to make room for Josh. She was well dressed for the flight home, even wearing heels. Christ, the show was over, Josh thought, but he also knew how Orleans worked. In her mind, there was always the chance that a six-hour flight back to Los Angeles might turn out to be a priceless opportunity to make a deal. You never knew who might sit next to you.
“I’m not on the same flight as you,” he said. Josh could see that Orleans was surprised. The driver firmly closed the door and moved toward the front seat.
“Where to, sir?” the driver asked.
“United Airlines, JFK. Take the Midtown Tunnel,” he said. Orleans was about to ask him questions, but Josh pointed toward the driver to signal Orleans to stop before she even started. She took the hint and instead unfolded her Wall Street Journal.
He needed quiet. Too much was going on, and everything was unfolding more rapidly that he planned. On the phone earlier, Danny was glum. Clearly, his little detective work with Cynthia wouldn’t prove to be illuminating. Josh tried to tell him to leave things like that to the professionals, and that it would have been better for everyone if Cynthia had stayed at home. Josh didn’t need her wandering around the City of Angels and getting in the way.
At times, Josh envied people who led simple lives. Like his parents did. They were simple farmers on a hardscrabble farm on which it was nearly impossible to make a living. But they knew what each day would bring. Get up, stoke the wood furnace, head to the barn to milk the cows, come back in for a hearty breakfast, tend the fields, mend the fences, and the routine never ended. But it was straightforward and clean . . . until it ended.
Everything must end eventually, and he reminded himself that his parents’ life wasn’t really such an idyllic one. Despite all that work, they still failed to keep their furnace flues clean. As a result they died from a small chimney fire, which Josh knew the townsfolk of Thread blamed on the bats that took up residence and over a summer filled his parents’ chimney with guano. But Josh had a different perspective. His dad should have known better. He should have cleaned those chimneys in the fall. Both his parents died that autumn morning because his dad did not pay attention to all the details. His parents’ deaths were his dad’s fault. No one else’s.
Josh noticed Orleans was watching him with concern, and he realized he was lightly pounding his fist against his briefcase in frustration. He stopped.
“Did something happen last night?” she asked.
It was so easy to let your guard down, to let details pass by without notice, and suddenly to find yourself caught in a morass you created. He couldn’t let that kind of inattention to detail kill him the way it killed his parents. Nor could he let it take down Danny.
What was really upsetting him had nothing to do with the financial markets or the increasing fragility of their upcoming public offering. The problem was centered in Los Angeles and the person he loved. Danny told him about the car he thought was following him. Josh dismissed Danny’s concerns as the result of an overactive imagination, and he counseled against Danny even mentioning it to Cynthia. It would all be better in the morning he advised. Once again, he wasn’t telling Danny the truth.
Well, it was morning and he doubted very much that any of it was better. Josh knew better than to hope that Chip would reappear. He knew what kind of people had pushed their tentacles into Premios, and he feared that Chip walked right into their grasp. Their friend could have left things alone, but he had to go digging.
Josh was beginning to realize his approach seldom matched that of his partners. He had been rash and full of braggadocio when he initially convinced Colby Endicott to invest in Premios. He hadn’t bothered to check out the firm or really understand the source of its money. But that was his smaller error. His true hubris was allowing a vivid imagination to paint too brilliant of an opportunity for the firm’s ability to track user behavior. In a sense, nothing said at his meeting with Endicott-Meyers was untrue. In reality, all things were possible with enough money and time. But even when something was possible, it didn’t mean it should happen.
Endicott-Meyers was the magic lamp that Josh rubbed until a djinn appeared—and it was an evil one, but still one that was initially quite willing to grant his wishes. Money flowed in, along with more hidden forms of support. Premios became real.
Oliver helped him recruit some pretty clever programmers. More accurately, these individuals should be called hackers. They knew how to write code to sneak into the most protected sites. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Meyers’ people weren’t interested in hacking the Pentagon or the Federal Reserve. No, they seemed focused on uncovering the more mundane and individual truths . . . information that would allow them to manipulate people of power . . . creating profiles of their online behavior . . . leaving behind worms that dug through personal files in their quest to feed an ever-hungrier master.
Josh chose to ride this horse, thinking he could tame it. And he could. And he would. He just needed to ensure that this beast didn’t buck anyone else into oblivion.
Josh had held them off for a while, while he plotted his escape path. But he had ignored an obvious thing. He needed to know their weaknesses and secrets. He needed his own worm to penetrate the heart of those behind Endicott-Meyers. He needed to find the real masters.
Their town car was passing Flushing Park and the giant metal sculpture of a globe left over from the 1964 World’s Fair. He turned to comment on it to Orleans only to discover that she had been watching him.
“What’s going on now?” she asked. “Why aren’t you returning to L.A. with me?”
“There are people I have to see in Chicago,” he said with conviction. It was time to go on the offense.
Danny wondered what he should do about Cynthia. Even though they shared a house, they were barely speaking. Truthfully, there was little for Cynthia to investigate, and the detective needed time to work. Josh had been correct when he said she should stay in Wisconsin. Danny heard his phone ring and he picked up the mobile from the kitchen table. Cynthia looked up for a
moment but then returned to reading the Los Angeles Times.
“Danny, come down to the office. Right now. They’re here.” Kenosha was slightly whispering and seemed unduly excited.
“Who’s ‘they’?” he asked. He hadn’t the slightest idea what his friend was talking about.
“Colby Endicott and his partner, Oliver Meyers. The mythic Meyers just showed up. Can you believe it? And he wants to talk to you. I thought Josh told us that there wasn’t even a Meyers, but he’s here. And he’s pretty good looking.”
That assessment annoyed Danny. “Don’t they want Josh? Why do I need to come?”
“Because they specifically asked for you. Besides no one even knows how to reach Josh. Orleans told me that he said he was heading to Chicago, and that he ditched her at JFK. Do you know what’s going on?”
Embarrassingly, he didn’t. The last time they talked, Josh simply said he was stopping in Chicago, Danny never thought to ask why. He simply assumed it involved the investor tour. For that matter, he had anticipated that Orleans would be traveling with Josh.
“If Orleans is back, can’t she deal with them? I don’t know anything about the business.” He told himself that it wouldn’t be good to leave Cynthia alone in the house.
“Danny, Orleans is still on her way home. Anyway I told you they asked specifically for you . . . and Cynthia.” Kenosha lowered her voice even further. “They know about Chip and the missing money. They say they want to help.”
Danny dreaded asking the question he was about to pose, but he needed to know. “This may sound odd, but can you describe Oliver Meyers?”
From the shift in her tone of voice, Danny knew that Kenosha was taken aback, but she quickly replied. “Okay, and not to be flippant, but he’s your type of guy, so I’d think you’d want to meet him. He’s probably in his mid-thirties, your height, well built, kind of dark, dangerous and Italian looking. Very well dressed.”
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