The Devil's Analyst

by Dennis Frahmann

“Of course,” he replied.

  She gave the cue to her assistant and the floor director. The show was ready to start. From behind the stage set, Josh could see only the back of the giant screens. Behind him, the rear-screen equipment began projecting the opening video. Even from backstage, he could feel the swell of music pounding in the room. On the other side of the screen, floor lights dimmed. Spotlights swirled the room in time to the staccato bump of the music. An unseen person standing somewhere behind him in the production space used his voice of god to project over the ballroom’s speakers, “Please welcome to the stage America’s most forward thinker and visionary, Miss Barbara Linsky . . . and her special guest for this morning’s session . . . the CEO and founder of Premios.com, Mr. Josh Gunderson.”

  Applause thundered, and he felt alive. In front of him, the assistant pulled back the stage curtains. Barbara walked out, and then Josh stepped into the bright light. The stage lights blinded him to the rows and rows of people that he knew were sitting in the room; all that was clear were the arrows marked in tape on the stage risers and beyond them the shimmering confidence monitors already displaying the opening words of his scripted remarks, poised and ready to roll. The clapping rolled down through the hall to merge with the excitement of the music and the beating of his heart. It would all be okay.

  Barbara was off and running. “Welcome, everyone, to our third annual Spring BLINK, a time and place where we encounter the brightest and the newest thinkers in America. For me, it is always such a great honor and privilege to be your guide. I am the lucky one who gets to roam the entrepreneurial byways of this great country to find the first signals of innovations that will transform tomorrow. And I get to introduce it to you.

  “Our speaker this morning is one of those game changers. His company will surely prove to be one of the important dot-com innovators of this first decade of the twenty-first century. But I didn’t find this person in the Silicon Valley or in Manhattan’s Digital Gulch. Josh Gunderson is proof that many of the next new things of the Internet age will be found in the most unexpected places . . . in this case, downtown Los Angeles. There among the abandoned building of last century’s commercial district, creative minds are at work.

  “On the surface, Premios.com might seem nothing more than a content site for lifestyle information. In other hands, that might be the case. But as you are about to discover, this unpretentious West Coast firm is rethinking what it means to serve your customers, and what it takes to help them find what they are looking for.

  “Welcome to BLINK. Josh, let’s get started.”

  And Josh knew it would be all right. Each question was planned. The demonstrations were in the can. The relevant charts and illustrations were cued. Backstage, the operator of the teleprompter was trained to follow his cadence. All that was required to be added to the mix was his light-hearted wit. Barbara tossed the first easy ball question, and he lobbed it back with all the self-deprecating charm that was planned. Light laughter rippled through the room.

  It was going well. But then he noticed it. Something was off. Truthfully, Barbara realized it first. She was tuned in to the behavior of a typical BLINK talk, and he could see her shift in her chair as the audience reaction came a beat too late. Even he felt it. It was as though half the room had tuned out. As the talk went on, the sensation intensified. At times, he was convinced Barbara was no longer listening to him, but to the quiescent interest of the crowd. An earpiece allowed the event director to talk to her directly, and he wondered if a story was being whispered into Barbara’s ear that was being kept from him.

  The shifting audience reaction threw Josh off his game. He felt as though his zipper was open, and no one would tell him. Although he couldn’t see the audience, his ears detected what was happening. As the forty-five minute session went on, he became obsessed with trying to track the number of people standing up and hurrying out. He attempted to peer through the blinding lights to focus on the doors in the back, pretending to connect with the audience but actually trying to monitor his suspicions. He was right. Each person who snuck out unleashed a brief flash of light as the rear doors opened and closed. The flashes grew more frequent.

  His big debut and no one was paying any attention. He wanted them back. They didn’t know what they were missing. For a moment, he thought about tactics to grab them and ensure they stayed planted in their seats. Maybe if he disclosed everything that Premios was doing, they’d return to their places. Imagine Barbara’s face if he spilled the beans about Project Big Stick. What would the front row thick with reporters from Wired, Red Herring, Business 2.0 and others write about Barbara if they learned of her protégé’s conspiracies?

  He squelched that thought. He wasn’t about to commit career suicide. He had to ignore whatever was going on with the audience. Just get through what had been rehearsed. After all, he would still need Barbara after this morning. The investment houses and bankers still needed to believe in the company.

  Finally, it was over. The closing applause was a weak echo of the earlier greeting. The mild clapping pissed him off. As soon as they were behind the curtains, he handed his head mike to the tech rep and he turned on Barbara.

  “What the hell was going on out there?”

  “NASDAQ is crashing,” she replied “Already down hundreds of points.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, but no one cared what he thought.

  Barbara was already in conference with her executive assistant. “How many attendees are left? Do you think we can get them back in the room after the break?”

  “I don’t know,” the woman replied. “They’re all jittery. The index just keeps dropping, and you know how much it fell already this week. It’s plummeted again this morning. People are losing their shirts. The lucky ones want to lock in whatever profits they already have. The rest . . . well, they’re dealing with margin calls. They have to come up with more cash. Today, no one is going to be interested in the trends of tomorrow. They’ve got to survive the morning.”

  Barbara walked off with this assistant and didn’t even bother to say goodbye. Josh was left abandoned among the back stage crew and the banks of computer monitors—each one displaying the respective title slide of the speakers’ presentations still to come. A few staff huddled around the table with stale Danish and over-boiled coffee. They weren’t interested in him either, and he felt scared.

  The day didn’t get better. By four p.m., Josh needed a drink. During the day, the Dow dropped more than six hundred points, over five percent of its value. Percentage-wise, the S&P was down even more. But the real measure of his life—the index for high tech stocks, the NASDAQ—fell over nine percent. That represented a loss of over twenty-five percent for the week, and a vaporization of billions of dollars in value since its peak just a month earlier.

  In such conditions, what company could possibly go public? In a market gone crazy, who would want to risk buying Premios? Josh was fucked.

  Cynthia still remained in Los Angeles. Each day since driving back with Danny from Phoenix the previous month, she promised herself that she would soon return to Wisconsin. But she was deluding herself. She wasn’t ready to go back. After a few days of staying again with Josh and Danny, she found living under such conditions suffocating and asked her old friend Wally to help her find a week-to-week rental near the beach in Santa Monica.

  Being physically separated from Danny actually made it easier for the two of them to spend more time together. They met in neutral places, favoring the New Loon Town Café. Sometimes hanging around in Wally and Stephen’s restaurant, Cynthia felt almost as though she were a teenager again. For a few moments, she could imagine her existence before that first moment when Chip walked into the Thread café.

  Everyone wanted to know why she didn’t go home. But thinking of sitting alone in a Wisconsin house in April seemed too cold and bleak. There were phones to answer the questions that came from people back there, and she had friends who could check on her home.
Just that morning, she talked to the office staff at Lattigo Industries, who reported it snowed again. Why was it snowing on April 14?

  As long as she remained in this city, she could cling to the hope, however slight it might be, that one day she would uncover the truth behind her husband’s murder. No one else cared. The L.A. cops pretty much closed down their case the month before, and the tribal police were ill equipped to investigate further. Wondering about Chip was solely her chore. More than once she paid a visit to the spot where Chip’s body was found. She never told Danny about those hikes into the canyon woods. He might find it too macabre.

  She also never mentioned how she drove to the university to interview Professor Jesus Lopez. Even though Danny studied under the man, he bristled so at the mention of the man’s name. Cynthia didn’t care. The fact was that Lopez was one of the last people to see her husband alive. Why wouldn’t she want to talk to him? Plus he knew Oliver Meyers, and she felt certain there was something still she needed to learn about Meyers.

  Her visit to the campus failed to help her better understand either her husband or his final meeting. Most of the time with Lopez was spent talking about Danny. She was surprised how warmly Lopez thought of Danny. Unexpectedly, he handed her a slim volume when she left. It was Lopez’s latest novel, The Dumping Ground, and when she started reading it that evening—alone in her rented condo and watching the sun set over the Santa Monica Bay—she recognized that the protagonist of the story was likely modeled after Danny. This disturbed her because she wondered how much of the plot was also taken from his life. The mere fact that Lopez knew this story, which Danny had only ever hinted to her, even more deeply bothered her. Why would Danny tell a mere acquaintance such details? By the time she finished the book, she decided she would throw it away and never let Danny know she read it.

  She remained haunted by one passage, and wondered how much of it might be truly the story of Danny:

  As the years passed, each of the men would think of the other and of the blissful summer afternoons when love and innocence still seemed possible, of the lingering moments when a physical brush of the lips or caress of the hands was not just a stolen pleasure but a moment for possibility. For the lost child grown into a sullen man, those fragments of the past were always tinged with a bitterness that poisoned the memory. For the older mentor who knew he had fallen into a love which frightened him with its unexpected nature that became a catalyst to committing unbearable cruelty, there was always the lingering hope that the past could be repaired, that second and third acts of even teenage love were possible, and that one horrible but foolish act wouldn’t assign two lives into the dumping ground of decay.

  Thinking about that passage almost made Cynthia fear seeing Danny. Even though she knew the book was fiction, she couldn’t help but wonder if there weren’t some truth to it and that thought caused her to question so much of what she knew about her friend.

  Danny asked to meet Cynthia at the Premios offices. She balked because that wasn’t neutral ground, but eventually gave in. Now as she sat in the glassed-in conference room, she was annoyed that Danny had not arrived before her—and she had even been deliberately late. Already, she suffered through five minutes of catching up with Kenosha who eventually left Cynthia alone with her cup of coffee. Cynthia told herself she should feel more at home in these offices. After all, she owned a percentage of the company. Chip’s death didn’t change the fact he was an original investor and now that made her one.

  Danny walked in, trailed by Orleans, and while he tried to signal to Cynthia his apologies at being late, Orleans was demanding his attention.

  “Danny, we need to talk. It can’t wait.”

  “Whatever it is, it can wait,” Danny replied. “I only stopped by to pick up Cynthia so we could walk over to the Temporary Contemporary art museum in Little Tokyo. I’ve held up Cynthia long enough. We need to go.”

  “You can’t go. Josh has disappeared again. I can’t find him, and I need a decision made. Time is running out.”

  Danny just stared at his company’s chief financial officer. He clearly had no idea what concerned her. Cynthia thought that she should leave the room.

  “Okay, just tell me.”

  “No. Not with Cynthia here. It’s about the business and is highly confidential.”

  Danny didn’t care. “Cynthia is a major investor,” he countered.

  “It also concerns your personal funds.”

  That didn’t faze Danny. “Cynthia is one of my closest and oldest friends. Just tell me, so we can get on our way.”

  Cynthia stood up. “I think I should go.”

  “No,” Danny insisted. “Please sit and take a moment. If this is so important, then maybe I’ll need your help. Let’s hear it together.” He turned toward Orleans. “You’ve got the floor.”

  The woman gave in. She brushed some loose hair back behind her ear. “Financially, things are critical. You have to make a decision.”

  “Why aren’t you talking to Josh? I know he’s at that BLINK conference in Manhattan, but he’s got his Blackberry. Just call him. Send him an email.”

  “I just told you I tried and he hasn’t answered. No one at the conference knows where he is. He disappeared as soon as his talk ended earlier this morning, and he checked out of the Hyatt. The market’s crashing around us, and the bankers are getting nervous.”

  “Okay,” Danny said but he was mentally checking out. Cynthia was reminded of the high school boy he once was.

  Orleans didn’t notice. She had a message to deliver. “We’re out of cash. We may not be able to make payroll.”

  Danny just looked at her. “How can that be? Endicott-Meyers invested an extra million back in January, and I know our subscription rates have been going up every month since then. We can’t be low on funds.”

  “Danny, believe me when I tell you our run rate has burned through all the reserves. If we had gone public by now, which was our plan, that step would have provided ample new financing. But we haven’t been able to do that.”

  Danny was still unconcerned. “I don’t know a lot about the books, but why don’t Josh and I put more of our money into the company to tide it over? Josh always tells me he wants other people to take the risk, but, hey, we’re rich, aren’t we? If there’s a rough patch, Josh and I can afford taking the other investors through it.”

  Cynthia watched Orleans, and thought how she had never before seen this woman so unsure and unable to speak.

  “Danny,” Orleans finally determined what to say. “You know that I’m not only the CFO for Premios, but that I also head finances for Josh’s personal company including all of his real estate holdings.”

  “That’s really Josh’s thing, not mine. But, yeah, I know you’re his right hand man, woman, whatever.”

  Orleans was slowly finding her ground. “When I said earlier that the bankers are calling, it’s not the potential investors in Premios, it’s the guys holding the mortgages on all of Josh’s other holdings. Everything he owns, everything you own, is mortgaged to the hilt—and then some. Josh’s stake in Premios is without a doubt the most important part of his collateral. In the bankers’ eyes, the rout on Wall Street is pretty much reducing that stake to the value of a piece of shit. They’re threatening to call the loans. All of them. And there’s no cash.”

  While Cynthia was sitting in the room, it was clear she no longer mattered to Orleans. The woman was locked onto Danny whose face was ashen. He struggled to appear unsurprised, but Cynthia could tell he was deeply shocked. Orleans clearly realized the same, and began to backpedal on the harsh disclosures. “Are you aware of other resources you could tap?” she asked.

  “What about the house in Los Feliz? The camp in Wisconsin? Each is worth millions. Can’t we tap into them?”

  Orleans had the decency to look to the ground. “Already done.”

  “Okay,” Danny’s voice was halting. “What about my proceeds from the sale of my blog InnerEatz. When we sold that t
o AOL, we invested my share in a bunch of mutual funds. We can use that, can’t we?

  “Danny, you gave Josh full power of attorney over those investment accounts. They’ve already been emptied. I am sorry that I have to tell you this, but Josh has faced several reversals in his real estate developments. Everything hinges on the success of Premios. And this company has just been flushed down the drain.”

  Danny slumped into the chair next to Cynthia. She grasped his hand, but he didn’t seem to care or even notice.

  “Is everything gone?” he whispered.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Oliver. He was standing on the high stoop of a newly built townhouse not far from Chicago’s McCormick Center. The street was stately but rather barren—the kind of in-town development mostly occupied by the young and newly rich. He quickly glanced in both directions to see who might be watching. But it wasn’t the kind of street to attract nosy neighbors.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Josh asked.

  A brisk spring wind was blowing off the lake. The patch of daffodils in the small bed by the bottom step didn’t seem to be doing well in the chill. Josh understood how they felt. He wanted out of the weather.

  Oliver stepped aside and motioned him to enter. Josh walked in, unbuttoned his coat, threw it on a chair in the foyer, and strolled into the living room where he promptly sat. He smiled because he didn’t care whether Oliver wanted him there or not. He knew what had to be done.

  “We’ve had our offices and computers scanned,” Oliver said, knowing that Josh would understand what he meant. “We found the malware left behind from your last visit. It’s gone now, so your snooping days are over. You should behave more carefully. My colleagues aren’t happy.”

  “Who can be happy in times like these?” Josh asked rhetorically. There was something exhilarating when you reached the point of no return. There would be no safe harbor ahead unless he created it.

  Everything was so monitored these days. It was getting harder and harder to avoid scrutiny, he thought. Credit card records could be tracked. Video cameras were becoming more and more common in public spaces. But there were still ways around all of that. That’s why he boarded Amtrak’s Broadway Limited the night before to take a sleeper into Chicago from Manhattan. No one paid attention to anyone’s identification when you took the train, especially when you paid with cash. He saw no reason to make it easy for anyone to discover his unannounced stop in this Lincoln Park neighborhood.