The Devil's Analyst (9 page)

Danny was trusting. He was a person who wanted to believe in others. Chip had made that observation early on, and maybe that’s why both of them always tried to live up to that trust. Cynthia felt that Josh did the same. She remembered during that first season together how Josh bolstered Danny’s spirit and helped him to come out of his shell. Chip judged that perhaps Josh was a good influence for Danny and they should support the relationship. Ever since, Cynthia had. But surely there were limits to how much they should do.

During the earlier phone call, Chip summarized what he had uncovered. Calling from a downtown Los Angeles hotel named the Bonaventure where Cynthia had once stayed with him, he seemed eager to pursue his investigation. In her mind, she pictured the building’s clover-leaf-like arrangements of circular glass towers, its glass elevators that shot up from an enclosed atrium of fountains and pools to break through the atrium’s glass roof to ride along the exterior walls of the tower all the way to the uppermost floors. From those rising elevators, if you were willing to stare out the glass, you could get a perfect view of the never-ending lines of lights that defined the Los Angeles basin.

As they talked, she pictured Chip in his room, sitting in a chair against the glass wall of one of those tower suites, his drapery open, and the bowl of lights stretching behind him. She remembered how to her the patterns of the city’s lights always seemed an incomprehensible chessboard of lines.

Chip reported, “I was right to be worried. Coming here has convinced me that what happened on New Year’s Eve was a deliberate hack, aimed at Josh and Danny’s company, and designed to stay hidden. Only because my guys are talented did we identify the Internet address where the siphoned data was sent. With a little detective work, they found the real world street address of the server.

“I drove out there. I thought by coming to L.A. I would somehow swoop in and catch the crooks red-handed. At the least, I wanted to find out who owned the building. But so far, that hasn’t happened.

“My information led me to a section of old warehouses and shoddy office buildings in the San Fernando Valley. That’s north of downtown. Next door to the address was some building housing an adult porn site and video studio. But the address with our mysterious server . . . it was an empty building.”

“So did you have the wrong address?” Cynthia asked.

“No, it was the right address,” Chip replied. “I was just too late. They must have realized I was coming. It was obvious that a small, but working, data center had been recently removed. Likely it was just server equipment and routers, probably there only to execute this sting on Premios, and I think when they realized we might be able to track them, they packed up and moved elsewhere, leaving no clues behind.”

Cynthia often thought Chip pretended to be stronger than he was. He had acquired that persona out of necessity from earlier days. Tonight reminded her of a time shortly after the tribe opened their casino at American Seasons resort when they had to fend off unwanted overtures from mobsters. Luckily Chip understood the ways power could be yielded, and he never underestimated his foes. In the end, the Lattigo kept the mob out.

“You reached an impasse,” Cynthia said. “So come home.”

“I’m not giving up. This week’s just the start. I need to make the most out of being here. So I’m staying a little longer. Already, I dug into the public records and identified who held the leases on the office space . . . a dummy corporation, so maybe a dead end. But one thing’s for sure—whoever sent this computer virus our way has gone to a lot of trouble to avoid being traced.”

Cynthia wanted him home. “Chip, just hire a private detective. You have a company to run. I need you, and not to be melodramatic, but the Lattigo need you. In your office. At home.”

She knew it was a low blow to play the tribal card because Chip had fierce loyalty to his community, but Cynthia found it ridiculous that he was personally taking responsibility for a mystery that didn’t even bother the people directly affected. Let Josh do the worrying.

“No, I can’t do that. I’m sticking around, and I’ll tell you why. I had a meeting today at Premios with Josh and his CFO, Orleans. Danny was there too, which I was happy to see because I’m hoping he can put some sense into Josh.

“Not that the meeting did any good. On one hand, going through all the numbers was an eye-opener. Perhaps I should have paid more attention sooner, but I always thought of our modest investment as nothing more than a small gamble done out of friendship. Today I realized that if they successfully go public the payoff for us could be huge. But the situation is so tenuous; the company is hanging by a financial thread.

“That girl Orleans tried to paint a pretty picture, and maybe the average investor won’t see through her smoke and mirrors, but the firm is nearly out of cash. There isn’t the momentum or the customer base to reach the next level unless everything perfectly aligns.”

“Is that what Josh says?” Cynthia demanded. Chip was always distrustful of the guy.

“Of course not. Everything out of Orleans’ computer painted a rosy vision. I think Josh trusts her, but I don’t. Their monthly burn rate is about to eat through everything.

“And if this hack had been successful, it would have absolutely ensured the firm’s collapse. It’s like a hidden rot eating away at the very foundations of their business. None of the data about their customers—what they wanted or were interested in—none of it could have been trusted. Over time, customers would have drifted away because the Premios recommendations would have become less relevant. Advertisers would jump ship when they didn’t get the results expected. It would be unavoidable—a destructive circle quickly spiraling into bankruptcy.”

The longer Chip spoke, the more troubled Cynthia became. She was fluent in his secret language of pauses and tone changes. Despite his outward certainty, he clearly didn’t find his own explanation satisfactory. She had heard him when he was certain, like when he engineered the takeover of the American Seasons project away from the original investors, and in such moments, his confidence smoothed over every pause and blocked out any hesitation in his talk. Even his voice deepened and his diction cleared.

“You don’t really believe what you’re saying, do you?” she challenged.

He didn’t argue.

“Nothing makes sense. There’s something I’m not getting. Maybe if it were a different kind of company, at a different point in its trajectory, it would all fit together. But Premios isn’t a company that is already profitable, and it doesn’t really have data worth stealing. Nor does it yet have the money to fund a big blackmail payoff. Something about this reads like a long con.

“But what could it be? At first, I thought it was some weird idea for a blackmail scheme, that the whole thing was staged just so that we would discover the program. And I even thought of spite. Maybe someone is trying to make the company pay for something published on Premios. You know all the mean crap that site publishes. But who’s that crazy? Besides the company is basically a reservations website mixed with reviews and gossip. What could it possibly have reported that would prompt such retribution?

“I know some people get pretty offended by stuff disclosed on the web; and maybe some celebrities would have the resources to try to go after them. But still. All I’ve got is conjecture, and I feel I’m missing some key angle.”

“Then come home.”

“Not yet, I’m staying another day or two. That’s it. I promise that there are just a few more things I want to check out, and then I’ll take the first flight home.”

Cynthia decided to be satisfied. Already she had appealed to his loyalty to the reservation, and her only remaining card would be to call his sister Jacqueline in Paris since she could sometimes exert influence when no one else succeeded. But Cynthia feared Jacqueline would side with her brother.

Unexpectedly Chip brought up a new subject.

“Hey, honey, do you remember that weirdo who used to own the movie theater in Thread?”

“Pete Peterson,” she replied.

“Yeah, him. After he lost that theater, didn’t he used to project silent movies on the outside of his garage? Remember how the old ladies in town would go out and watch him. Some crazy thing like that.”

Cynthia remembered. “That was Pete. He lived next door to Danny and his father. But he left town years ago, and I don’t know if anyone knows what happened to him. Whatever made you think of him?’

“It’s weird. When I came out of that empty office, there was someone in a car outside that porno studio across the street. And the driver was wearing one of those dumpy, broad-brimmed fisherman sun hats. You know the ones that are all round? I remember how Pete used to wear one of those hats even when he went to church. It just seemed odd, seeing that kind of headgear in L.A. and it made me think of Pete. I’m sure it’s nothing, just a weird jarring of memory.

“Night, honey. I love you. See you soon.”

“Someone is following me
,” Danny insisted a few days later. “Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”

Since he was a small child, Danny always believed he was tapped into something greater than the usual five senses. While others might consider him illogical, he often felt that prickling on the neck when someone was staring, the discomfort from a ripping in the fabric of fortune, or the presentiment of a looming emotional chasm. Josh scoffed whenever Danny referenced this supposed power. Danny didn’t care. He could remember still the afternoon when his mother committed suicide, how throughout his classes that day at school and during the bus ride home he dreaded what he was certain he was about to discover in his parents’ bedroom. With all he had suffered in life, nothing seemed more undeserved than being given advance notice of the worse moments ahead.

“Kenosha spooked you,” Josh replied. “That’s all. Why would anyone follow you?”

As always, Josh was trying to keep Danny from jumping into his own terrors. Danny looked into the eyes of this man whom he loved so deeply. He knew beyond a doubt how much that love was reciprocated. But it was precisely because they shared a life together that Danny understood how Josh always sought to smooth the rough patches. It was his nature. He liked being surrounded with acquaintances who laughed easily at his jests. He attracted those who enjoyed a good time, and he floated through a world made smooth by good luck.

Josh was a creature of luck. He could never understand the dark depths of Danny’s past, nor would Danny ever try to explain how his years of growing up tested him. Under the most trying of situations, Josh would somehow find a way to wrap himself with a silken chrysalis and emerge a beautiful butterfly. It was his nature. One couldn’t fault him for that. In fact, Danny loved him precisely for his ability to always find such wonderment. Take the way they both suffered an unexpected loss of parents. For Josh, it had been the death of his parents in a freak incident of carbon monoxide poisoning, and Josh mourned, but quickly found a way to move on. Danny could never get past his bad moments,

When someone could float the way that Josh did, when one’s toes never so much as dipped into the murkiness that sometimes entrapped Danny’s soul, then there was no need for a special alert into the dangers ahead. But just because Josh didn’t acknowledge such warnings didn’t mean that Danny would ignore his own.

“Scoff if you like,” Danny said, “but I believe someone tried to break into our house when we were gone. Kenosha didn’t imagine it. I saw the broken plants in the back yard. But it’s not just that. How do you explain what happened at the computer center with the computer virus.”

“It wasn’t a virus, more of a Trojan horse.” As usual, Josh tried deflection as a strategy to end a discussion.

“Whatever you call it, you should be worried. Chip is.”

“Chip has better things to do than worry about a minor incident with our computer center.”

“You can’t dismiss him. He’s one of our investors,” Danny said, “and besides it’s not his money he’s worried about. We’re his friends. He’s convinced someone’s setting us up.”

Josh crossed the room to sit on the sofa beside Danny. Perched atop the crest of a hill, their living room faced northward across the dark hills of Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills, where in the distance, there was a hint of the glow of the Valley several miles away. On the opposing side, the living room opened onto a terrace that faced southward, providing a vantage point for lines of streetlights marching in darkness toward the unseen ocean. The world was theirs.

“Danny, I am here to protect you. Since the day we met, I have always been at your side. Let this worry go.”

Danny wanted to, but he just couldn’t.

From the day
they met in Thread, Josh had never led him astray. Danny had been such a gangly, clumsy teenager that summer when he worked in the original Loon Town Café. What did a sophisticated and fun person like Josh, who was already in his mid-twenties, see in someone still in high school? But Danny knew that Josh kept returning to the café because he wanted to see him. Slowly over the summer, Josh made Danny feel like life was worth living and that joy was possible. After being betrayed by so many people in so many ways in his young life, Danny finally learned to laugh. He accepted that life was worth living.

Shortly after Josh returned to Los Angeles, the Loon Town Café in Thread closed down, and Cynthia became engaged to Chip. Everything was changing and Danny felt lost again. He couldn’t leave with Josh; he had to stay. Only his father Toivo and Danny’s daily treks to attend the community college in Timberton created a structure in his life, unsatisfactory as that structure was.