The Devil's Analyst (15 page)

After all they had done to rebuild this house, could a hidden room still be there? Could someone be looking for it?

Josh sat alone
at the table in the corner of the Charlotte Bar just off the lobby of the Millennium Hotel in Manhattan. The seat provided a perfect angle for spotting anyone entering the place. His day had been long, filled with meetings, and it wasn’t over yet. The most important session of the day was still ahead, and for that he sent Orleans away.

The way he insisted she go back to her room likely prompted her to wonder if he was having an affair. But he had to get rid of her. The presentations had been grueling. Both needed more than one drink to wind down. After a long day, she talked too much and asked too many questions. And she wouldn’t let any detail go. She wanted to recap every question and recall each special slide she had been forced to present. But he was tired of it all. After all the questions at Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and the half dozen other executive conference rooms they had entered and exited over the past three days, he was pretty certain Orleans pulled up every single slideshow she ever created at Premios. He felt no need to repeat the performance over cocktails.

Still he questioned whether her stellar performance was enough. Kenosha had failed to think broadly enough when she created her comprehensive set of media questions and answers. Or maybe Orleans underestimated the Wall Street crowd. Whatever the truth, they had prepared for the wrong set of questions. Not one banker doubted the value in Premios’s heavy burn rate; they understood the need to build up customer loyalty and a well-known brand because everyone believed in the promise of being the first mover. But bankers were an impatient lot. They badgered Josh over how long it would take to achieve dominance. Thank God the extra million dollars had been invested by Endicott-Meyers. Without that financial cushion, Orleans and Josh might have been laughed out of many of the conference rooms. But as he liked to remind Orleans, people want to believe what others believe. As long as someone was willing to pour money into this business, no banker was going to walk away—no matter how much of a rat’s nest they feared existed in the bowels of the business. There was one thing Josh knew for sure: the potential to win big would always win out over the possibility of a loss.

Until it didn’t. Then all of Wall Street would become a gold rush in reverse. As quick as the money guys embraced those it deemed winners, they could be even faster fleeing the potential losers. Given the recent gyrations of mainstream stocks, Wall Street was already in a tizzy with everyone questioning whether the new world of the Internet was the great hope they had convinced themselves it was. Time was running out. Any initial public offering carried with it a certain number of legal requirements that couldn’t be rushed, but that didn’t mean it was wise to allow the process to get delayed. In every room Josh and Orleans entered on this trip there lurked a contagious bearer of fear.

The payoff was tantalizingly close. Josh could feel it, but he knew it wasn’t guaranteed. For Orleans’ sake, he pretended it was. Despite her otherwise remarkable acumen, he found that she was easily lulled into complacency. Tonight he worked his magic to ensure that she would leave the bar with all qualms about the tour erased. He diverted her with misdirecting indications that he was nervously awaiting a meeting with someone special. Even when she reminded him that he had a loyal partner at home, he didn’t protest or explain otherwise. Let her think he was waiting for some hot Times Square hooker.

He knew that Danny had never cheated on him. That was why he had to have this meeting tonight. It was for Danny.

Josh leaned back
against the leather of the wingback chair. Few guests were left in the lobby bar. Because the hotel was just off Times Square and the theater district, Josh thought more people might show up when the shows let out. But that didn’t worry him. He had chosen this specific spot because it offered dark corners. An added bonus was that his chair gave him an excellent view of 44th Street and the hotel’s entrance. No one could enter without him seeing the person first. An extra moment of preparation was always useful.

“Hello, Josh,”

He looked up startled. Where had this man come from?

The man laughed. “Did I interrupt your sleuthing? Were you expecting me to come into the lobby from that street? The hotel lobby runs through to 45th Street, and I entered from the north. Hope that doesn’t upset you in any way.”

The man sat down opposite him without requesting permission. Josh, noticing how well trimmed and polished the man’s nails were, remembered how they once were so rough. But the hands still looked strong, and the man himself was handsome in a tough sort of way. If Orleans happened to walk by and noticed the two of them talking, it would only confirm her suspicion that he was meeting with some street trade. Of course, if she noticed the quality of the Brioni suit, she might also realize the man spent more money on his clothing than a well-paid male hooker would dare.

The man motioned for the waitress. When he caught her attention, he said, “Cognac, please.”

“Hello, Oliver,” Josh said. This was certainly not Josh’s first meeting with Oliver Meyers, although he would prefer it to be his last. That wasn’t likely.

Oliver replied, “Do you have good news for me?”

Had this asshole been so smug when they first met? Josh couldn’t recall. He always knew there was something about the man that he shouldn’t trust. But beggars can’t be choosers.

“The tour’s good,” he replied. “We’ve encountered a lot of interest in the initial offering. The stock should soar on opening day . . . as long as we get out there on time.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Oliver said. The waitress appeared with the cognac and set it on the small table. She placed a small glass of water on a separate cocktail napkin beside the snifter. Oliver’s smile promised a big tip ahead.

Josh had to admit the man had charm. Over the years, Oliver had clearly put it to good use. He had many friends, and worked a web of connections with various sorts of people, both good and bad. It was the bad ones that worried Josh.

“Really? Endicott-Meyers are the biggest investors in Premios. Why did you put in all those millions if you weren’t anxious to see us go public?” Josh tried to make a joke out of it.

Oliver was having none of it. “You know why we invested.”

There was just one problem with that statement. Of course Josh clearly understood the “why” of the firm’s investment; he just had no insight into the “we.” He only knew two things for certain. One was that the firm of Colby Endicott didn’t care one bit about the source of Oliver Meyers’ money and the second was that Josh knew the money certainly wasn’t Oliver’s.

When Colby and Oliver first showed up waving their checkbook, it had appeared too good to be true. But then the heady days of Internet investing were like that. Everyone wanted a chance at the golden ring. Still, Josh was cautious. He researched how Colby inherited his wealth; he wanted an equally solid understanding of Oliver. He dug a little and concluded that it might be mob money, but that didn’t particularly bother him. Mob money turned remarkably respectable after a generation. Just look at how Joseph Kennedy transformed a rum running past into becoming the scion of an American aristocracy. Josh wasn’t one to judge.

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.