The Devil's Analyst (16 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Oliver

This was Danny’s first
visit to the Pacific Dining 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 shook 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?”

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?