The Devil's Analyst (3 page)

But Midwest holiday meals fell well within his comfort zone. In the abundant sunlight of the early afternoon, he would be ready to adorn the table with a glazed ham, mashed potatoes with raisin gravy, sweet potatoes covered with marshmallows, and a green bean casserole. Readers of his old blog might deem such a menu outrageous, but he found such dishes as comforting as well-worn flannel sheets. He only wished that he knew how to deep-fry the doughnuts that his mother once made. Their taste would have been a perfect kickstart to a new millennium.

Josh strolled into their kitchen. He wanted it to be the showcase of the house, and it was resplendent with the latest in stainless steel appliances and a large butcher-block island. In the corner a small table was set for dinner. In their designer’s notes, that space was intended primarily as a place for the caterers when they had large parties. But Danny always considered it the perfect breakfast nook, and now he noticed how Josh looked at his festive setup with dismay.

“We have a dining room, you know. We don’t need to eat in here.”

“The big room is too lonely.”

So they ate in the kitchen. Josh never argued with Danny on things that Danny actually cared about. That’s why Danny loved him. The year they first met, when Josh had returned to Thread when his parents died, the two of them started their romance. By the time summer arrived, Josh had convinced Danny that he should leave northern Wisconsin and go to college in Los Angeles. He agreed at first, but then fear took hold. Even though he stayed behind when Josh returned to the West Coast, Josh never abandoned Danny. He knew Danny just needed time, and when he was ready to venture away, Josh was there to help and to make him smile.

On that New Year’s Day, with the heat and aroma of the food, and the sunlight that streamed across the tile floor, the kitchen was infused with a spirit of optimism. It infected all four of them: Cynthia and Chip, Danny and Josh. They were young. They were rich. They were friends. Everything was surely possible.

“What were you guys talking about last night?” Cynthia asked, looking at Chip and Danny.

For a moment, Danny didn’t understand her question, but then realized she must be referring to what happened in the computer center. He wasn’t certain he fully understood so he let Chip answer.

Chip stared at Josh for a moment before he replied. “I was telling Danny about an incident that happened with their company’s files last night.”

Josh set his champagne glass down with more force than required, and Danny thought it an odd reaction, especially when Josh said, “Why are you so obsessed with someone’s childish prank?”

“Do you really think that’s all it was?” Chip batted back.

“What else? Who would have a reason to mess with us?”

“Really. You don’t think you have any enemies?”

Danny wondered what had gotten into Chip. Of course, they didn’t have enemies. The very thought that people might hate them made him deeply uncomfortable. Josh and he were good people. They treated their employees well. Everyone liked them.

Josh shrugged his shoulders.

Chip wasn’t willing to let it go. “Your website is full of gossip about the rich and famous. Maybe someone is carrying a grudge, and hired a hacker to go after you.”

“Because of a shot of a star flashing more than she planned when she stepped out of a limo? Really?”

“Then there’s the fact that you’re also a successful gay couple. Lots of people don’t like your lifestyle.”

Danny found this offensive, but Josh just laughed. “There are a lot of gay people richer and more famous than us. We’re hardly worth anyone’s time or attention.”

Chip was not deterred. “Last night was not random. The world’s full of crazies. Think about that guy who was just caught trying to bomb LAX on New Year’s Eve, the one they call the Millennium Bomber . . . ”

Danny looked toward Cynthia for help. This was not the point of his holiday dinner. Cynthia, catching his glance, raised her glass.

“Enough of that,” she said. “It’s time for New Year’s resolutions and celebrating. Now that you own this place, we’ll have no excuse not to spend more time together. I resolve we do this more often.”

They raised their glasses in acknowledgement, and Danny was relieved the small storm had passed. These three people were his best friends in life. Without them, life would seem empty.

Josh in his usual way played off Cynthia’s peacemaking. “Cynthia, I think your resolution was far too easy to make because we all want to be together more. Don’t you have a darker, more challenging resolution? Surely, you harbor some secret vice. Tell us about that.”

His tone was jaunty, but Danny knew that Josh really wanted to know.

Cynthia refused to take the bait. “I don’t have secrets. Chip always says I wear my heart on my sleeve, whatever that means. But I suppose there are some things I should work harder at.”

“Do tell.” For some reason Josh’s statement made Danny laugh. Cynthia looked perturbed by that, and Danny fell quiet.

“My family. I don’t spend enough time with them.” Cynthia’s parents, Red and Barbara Trueheart, retired to Arizona a few years earlier and Cynthia rarely visited them. Red occasionally flew north for a summer fishing excursion on his long-treasured lakes. “And it’s time Chip and I got serious about starting our own family. Chip says the Lattigo tribe needs another member. So that’s my resolution: to become pregnant.” Chip touched her hand with an element of mock surprise.

Danny felt unexpected discomfort. Children would forever change the dynamics of their relationship.

“A grand idea,” said Josh. “And if you don’t know how to make that happen, I’ll volunteer to take Chip aside to give him a few pointers on how all that works.”

Danny stopped the banter. “What about you, Chip? What’s your resolution for the new century? And don’t say making babies.”

“Happiness and prosperity. All around. Not enough? Okay, seriously, I need to be a better steward for my tribe. The Lattigo are wealthier than most tribes, but there are still so many problems. If Cynthia and I have a child, I want that child to be proud of his or her Lattigo heritage. Just like I want to see that pride in my people.”

“What makes you the anointed one?” Josh ribbed.

Chip remained serious. “Because I forced them out of the reservation mindset and made them enter the modern world, and they made me the head of the Lattigo nation, and technically our Native American reservation is a separate nation. Ultimately, I’m only a trustee for my tribe, and I can’t forget how profits impact their lives.”

The sentiment stirred Danny, but Josh was quick to move on. “What about you, Danny?” he asked.

Danny hesitated
because he didn’t know where to begin. He needed dreams, but he didn’t know how to have his own. Like Cynthia, he should be closer to his father. Even though the man still lived in Thread, Danny had yet to see him on this trip. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to. The old man probably loved him, but being near him always brought back too many memories of the mother Danny lost.

Perhaps like Cynthia, he should make a resolution about his boyfriend Josh. In the year just ended, California became the first state to create a special legal status for domestic partners. Josh lit the spark of possibility years ago when he convinced Danny to move from Thread to Los Angeles. He couldn’t imagine life without Josh, so perhaps they should make their relationship official.

Danny never had a tribe like Chip. Wherever he was, whatever he did, he always felt the outsider. He never fit into the gay world, nor did he identify himself as a Wisconsinite, a second-generation Finn, or even a foodie. He was only himself and often that felt too little. When someone wrote his obituary, he was certain that none of the descriptors used would be true. Certainly, he had a wide circle of friends in Los Angeles. Many of them were people he cared deeply about, and more than a few, he hoped, returned that sentiment. But they weren’t his tribe. He wanted at least one tribe into which he could disappear.

Then he thought back to his conversation with Chip the night before, and of the computer virus attack on their company. It was odd, but in the moment of the telling and again during the dinner conversation, Danny had a sense of concern. He actually cared what happened, and that was something he never would have predicted. Suddenly he knew his resolution.

“I will become more involved with our company. It is after all our future, and Josh is working hard to take it public this year. I need to pay more attention to that. In the year 2000, I will do just that.”

Josh seemed startled, but quickly smiled until his grin shifted into laughter. “By God, Cynthia, I think we got pregnant first. Here’s to our baby. Here’s to our upcoming IPO. To Premios—may it bestow a fortune upon us.”

Cynthia and Danny smiled and raised their glasses. So did Chip—but not before quick shadows of doubt and concern crossed his face.

INTERLUDE

Session Two

I admit it.
I’ve been obsessed about Danny for years. Okay, doc, now you know my deep, dark secret. Isn’t that supposed to be how this therapy thing works? I tell you everything. No barriers. No filters. Whatever. And you record it and play it back. Listen to what I say, but you can’t judge, right?

So, yeah, it’s fair to call Danny my obsession. Maybe even a curse. Or maybe I should think of watching him as a case study. Sort of like an experiment to see what makes someone tick.

Admittedly, it’s been an experiment that’s been going on a very long time. The years have been worth it, because I do more than just watch. There’s something so pleasurable in manipulating him.

Oh, you think that’s wrong? Okay, I’m joking. I never manipulate him. I just watch. From a safe distance.

You believe that, don’t you, doc?

Of course, I could manipulate him. If I wanted to bother. I could pretty much make anyone do whatever I wanted. Even you doc.

So you asked about when this started. Danny was just a kid. I first paid attention to him after I heard how his mother offed herself. Left that poor little boy alone, to fend for himself. His dad made useless by his wife’s suicide. Who knows what went on with his crazy old man?

Of course, Danny never sensed how I kept an eye out for him. I doubt that he even knew I existed. Didn’t need him to know.

Poor kid. There’s always been something so achingly lonely about him. He looked like the world forgot he existed, and he wasn’t the kind to remind the rest of us that he was real. There’s a kind of innocence in that, I guess. Maybe that’s why I found him so attractive. He had something I never had. A good soul.

Not that I wanted one. A good soul, I mean. I just wanted to know what made a person like Danny tick. People like him didn’t really make sense to me.

Why was he the way that he was? That’s what I wanted to know.

So when I noticed his, should I call them, special qualities, I started to watch him. Just watched. At least that’s all I did at first. Paid attention to what he liked. How he acted. Who his friends were. Not that he had many of those.

And I looked at what made him happy. Which wasn’t often the case. But he never became bitter. He stayed innocent. Maybe there was a little darkness at his core, but that only made you want to protect him more.

You know, if Danny had lived during the Renaissance, some crazy artist would have found him and used him as a model. I don’t mean an artist like Michelangelo who’s creating a statue like David. Danny doesn’t have that kind of strength. You couldn’t imagine him slaying a giant. His strengths are more hidden.

So maybe it would have been a Botticelli bronze. Something smooth. Something vulnerable. A piece of art that made you ache with longing.

Because you want to crush it.

CHAPTER TWO

Home

Up ahead
was the house. It boasted almost five thousand square feet of living space. Its four levels hugged the steep hillside. White stucco walls rose from well-landscaped lawns until they reached wooden corbels that supported the red tile roof. Bougainvillea clung to the walls and stretched around the tiled entry. It was Hollywood’s version of old Spain. It was also home to Danny and Josh.

Danny was happy to be back. The airport limo rolled up the curving street, through the historic Los Feliz area neighborhood on the eastern edge of the Hollywood Hills, and into the circular driveway. This mansion was as grandiose and inappropriate to the lives of two modern men as their logging camp retreat. But unlike the Wisconsin house, this one suited Danny’s romantic spirit. Here he thought he could be happy.

As the car came to a stop near the flight of stairs leading to the front door, a hefty young woman stepped out. She grinned and said with enthusiasm, “Welcome home.”

Not waiting for the driver to open his door, Danny exited the car and rushed up the steps two at a time to reach her. Let the limo driver deal with unloading the suitcases, he thought. Wrapping his arms around Kenosha, he lifted her in a bear hug worthy of the north woods. “Kenosha Washington,” he said, “how I’ve missed you.”

Kenosha just waved away his good feelings. She looked pointedly at the car. “Where’s that boyfriend of yours? Wouldn’t think you’d take such fancy wheels unless he was along.”

“Watch your tongue. That’s your boss you’re describing. Just so you know, Josh asked to be dropped off at the office,” Danny explained. Danny felt so good to be home. Thread might have been where he was raised, but California was where he became who he was.

Sensing his feelings, Kenosha turned to the driver who was approaching the door with both men’s luggage. “Just set them there. We’ll get them where they belong.” She turned back to Danny, effectively dismissing the hired driver.

Once again, Kenosha was acting the role of a haughty black servant, which made Danny smile since he knew his old college friend had grown up in a household in Brentwood headed by two white doctors. While nobody’s servant, she seemed to have imprinted as a young girl on her black nanny and behaved as though her parents had adopted her from the depths of the South. None dared to remind her that she was really Caucasian. Even though she held a full-time job as the director of public relations for their company, she liked to housesit for them when they traveled to Wisconsin.

“I suppose Josh will expect to find me there,” Kenosha said. “He’s always so eager to talk about publicity. A regular press hound. But let him wait. Come inside. First thing this morning, I picked up some chocolate croissants at the bakery on Hillhurst. I knew your stomach would need more attention than Josh’s business.”

“You certainly know how to please me,” he said. Kenosha gave him a playful swat, and he grinned. He loved having this woman as a friend, quirks and all.

Soon they were seated on the patio outside the living room’s French doors. Strange, Danny thought, the way Josh and his two separate homes both had broad windows facing beautiful natural views. The terrace’s balustrade looked west toward the Griffith Observatory and a hint of the Hollywood sign. On days when Los Angeles held its smog in check, there was even an ocean view. Under nearly perfect conditions, one could squint out a distant dividing line between the light blue of the sea’s surface and the hazy tint of the darker sky. But on the most rare of perfect days, the view became a David Hockney painting where the sky, hills and distant sea transformed into a distinct geometry of lines. Today was not such a day.

“Anything exciting while we were gone?” Danny asked.

In the pattern
of sunlight that dappled Kenosha’s face some wrinkle seemed to come and go as though she recalled a disturbing fact, considered mentioning it, and changed her mind. She wasn’t a good actress.

“Kenosha Jayne Washington,” he liked using her full name when making a point. “I’ve known you since we were sophomores at USC. You never could fool me. What happened? Did something get Kiisa? Did she get out at night and run into a coyote?”

Using the Finnish word for “cat” to name their pet seemed to amuse Josh, but the cat and its name often reminded Danny of his mother. It would have been fine with him if one of those mangy coyotes had made Kiisa a meal. Then he felt guilty for thinking such a dreadful thought.

Kenosha made a show of being offended. She knew Danny secretly hated that cat. “You’d be happy if I let Kiisa be eaten. She’s only around because she showed up at your door half-dead and you’re too kind-hearted to ask a vet to put her to sleep. Sorry, though, there’s no missing cat. No coyote attacks. Not even a rampaging raccoon or tree rat. Although I did smell a couple of skunks.”

“What then?” Danny knew there was something. Kenosha had made a half-hearted joke. It was a dead giveaway.

“This house. It gives me the creeps with all its dark corners and levels. Who needs a projector room? The place is just overkill. You know I’m accustomed to the sleek and modern.”

It’s true, Danny thought. Kenosha had been raised in one of those Case Study houses from the fifties. Everything was built-in with well-defined vertical and horizontal lines. Her parents couldn’t abide the Spanish baroque spirit that was so popular in the early twentieth century and still infused most of these early Los Feliz estates.

In its initial days, the neighborhood had offered the height of style. The founder of the
Los Angeles Times
built a huge estate in the area, as did many celebrities during the beginning of the movie industry. Over the decades, the influential moved westward toward the favorable neighborhoods near the ocean, places like Brentwood where Kenosha was raised. A few years ago when Josh really began to make money, he wanted nothing to do with the Westside. He read in
Variety
that the popular singer Madonna had bought in the Los Feliz neighborhood and he predicted that her presence would revive the community as fashionable. As usual, he was right.

When they first saw this house, it had been a wreck. The realtor even resisted showing it. On the market for over 200 days, the estate was a probate sale. Squabbles among the heirs kept the house from even being properly cleaned and staged. But there was another reason that the real estate listing was poison.

Someone died on the premises. A once-famous director of horror movies, Augustus Cambrian, had lived long enough that the world largely forgot who he was, so when he passed away at home in quiet anonymity, no one quite realized he was dead for over a week. Eventually the smell drifted over the pool of the hot young screenwriter renovating his house next door. It was probably more the current celebrity of the writer than Cambrian’s former renown that ensured the discovery of Augustus received a well-placed story in the
Los Angeles Times
.

Given California’s strong disclosure laws for real estate, the history of the unfortunate corpse deterred buyers. It didn’t help that the rooms were filled with memorabilia. The old man had been a packrat of the demonic and obscure. Some said he tried to preserve the relics of the early days of horror films, but to Danny, it always seemed more than that. But none of that history could explain Kenosha’s current feelings. She never entered the house before the heirs had emptied it, so she couldn’t have flashbacks to things she had never seen.

“It’s so quiet up here,” Kenosha explained, “it’s easy to start imagining things.”

Danny had always
preferred to conjure scenes of glamour and romance. When the realtor first drove them through the gates into the circular drive, Danny was smitten. He liked the house’s asymmetrical lines and the way the circular tower intersected the house’s two wings at odd angles. Elaborate terra cotta cladding and tile work surrounded the door. Intricate wrought iron graced the balconies. Blooming birds of paradise lined the twenty-step staircase from the drive to the front door. The pieces fit together in an unexpected way, and convinced him that this house was where he belonged.

Stepping inside the building made his belief momentarily quaver. It smelled like a house sealed up too long with an old man’s collection. A few weeks’ airing by open windows had failed to dissipate an odor that seemed baked into the paint of the hand-troweled walls. Most of the director’s possessions were still in place during the showing. The realtor explained that the heirs were arguing over their disposal. Although none had seen the man in years, each was convinced that his moldering collection had to be worth a fortune.

Dimness cloaked everything. It wasn’t a problem of light. The windows had been washed and the old brocade draperies removed. Rather, it was the accumulated remnants of decades. Every room was painted in a color of the past. The kitchen hadn’t been touched since the sixties, and the bathrooms still sported the green and black tile of the twenties. But Danny saw a potential luster in the peg and groove floors. He knew current artisans couldn’t easily duplicate the original plaster walls or the ornate bronze sconces. The staircases, fireplaces, and outdoor fountains constituted a museum showcasing early handmade tile firms: Malibu. Batchelder. Catalina. Gladding McBean. The original designer had not worried about consistency or loyalty or logic. The house pulled together whatever caught the fancy of the moment. Josh called it “a potpourri of the hodgepodge.” Danny guessed it was as good a way to describe the style as any, and he liked the result.

As long as he avoided thinking about the chamber of horrors they found, Danny didn’t mind the house’s past. The villa’s lowest level, a vast basement with few windows and just one small wooden exit to the back of the street-to-street lot, had been the director’s so-called museum: a nightmare of old props from long-forgotten films; imaginary torture devices featured in one plot or another; and racks of decaying costumes. Mixed among that were genuine relics of the Dark Ages and the Spanish Inquisition. Eventually, the heirs managed to sell most of it for a good profit to one type of collector or another. None of it remained when Josh and Danny took possession. But on the first showing when Danny walked into that basement, it was all still there and it felt evil.

Josh called Danny crazy to judge a room so harshly and so Danny never told anyone how he felt, especially Kenosha. If she was spooked by the house now, it wasn’t because she knew of its past.

“So what did you imagine?” he asked.

He expected to hear about the mysterious creaks and groans of an eighty-year-old house. Perhaps lights still flickered or pipes gurgled, even though Josh arranged for the entire house to be rewired and replumbed. Maybe the cat Kiisa scared her.

“I felt watched.”

“What?”

“It’s true. Maybe I just began to realize how alone I was at the top of these hills. It’s like you’re straddling the whole city up here, the way lines of street lights stretch to the horizon and you’re nothing but a little point at the apex, overlooking a world beyond. But sometimes I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, like when someone is watching you. But I never saw anyone.

“Just forget I said anything.”

Danny didn’t want to be too easily influenced by her scary thoughts. “So, it was all in your imagination.”

“Yeah, I guess, at least about being watched, but I did hear something. That much I know.”

“Okay.” He was beginning to suspect Kenosha was pulling his leg.

“Last night, something was scraping at the basement door, like it was trying to break in. No way was I going to tromp down all those stairs to the basement, so I walked out on this patio. You can look down to see the back door from up here.

“But storm clouds were heavy last night and there was no moonlight, so I couldn’t be sure anything was down there, but I definitely could hear something. Down in the bushes.”

Danny had an answer. “Probably a coyote. He could smell Kiisa. Everyone’s always losing their pets in this neighborhood.”

“You’re probably right.” Kenosha seemed to regret bringing up the subject.

Danny walked to the balustrade to look down into the steep backyard. He saw the small stone fence that separated the edge of their backyard, some hundred feet below, from the curling street that ran along the lot’s lower edge. On the other side of the narrow street, an ornate entrance marked one of the public stairways. Because of the steep terrain of Los Feliz, the developers built public staircases to link the main avenues below with the switchbacks of the narrow streets above. At one time servants and children climbed them to move from the streetcars to their homes. Today the stairs were largely abandoned, their steps often covered with graffiti, and the landings mainly used by kids as shielded places to do drugs—but the tiers of steps beneath the overgrown shrubbery across the street directly linked Danny’s hillside home to a major boulevard several hundred feet below.

Only once had Danny trudged the full set of steps. It was tiring but doable. Six separate flights totaling just over two hundred steps separated the edge of their lot from busy Los Feliz Boulevard.

And although he couldn’t be certain, when he scanned the lot below, he thought he detected a clear trail of broken branches and snapped twigs that led from the top of those steps to the back door of his house. As though someone had used those stairs to try to sneak into his back yard and reach the small door below.