by Neil Plakcy
He clicked open the folder for the shopping center near the Newark airport. “One of the conditions for the mortgage is that the borrower keep us up to date on tenants, leases and rental income. Here’s a spreadsheet that tracks all that. He pointed at the screen. “See this store? Jose’s Dominican Market? It was closed when I drove past. There’s no way the owner is still paying rent. I’ll bet that’s the case with almost all the other tenants.”
“And if they aren’t paying rent, and the LLC that owns the property is bankrupt, then these income figures can’t be true,” I said, pointing at the revenue that was supposed to be coming in.
“Exactly.”
I sat back in my chair. “This property is clearly in trouble, and the spreadsheets aren’t telling the true story,” I said. “You think there are other properties with similar problems?”
“I do. These are high-risk mortgages, remember. That’s how come Beauceron can charge them such a high interest rate. I’m afraid that there are a lot more properties in our portfolio in similar trouble. And that means that there’s no way we can legitimately be paying out such high returns to our investors.”
He sat back in his chair. “Can you figure out which other properties in the portfolio are in trouble?” he asked. “I know computer guys. You must have some way to automate the process.”
I shook my head. “What you really need is someone to compare the Beauceron numbers to reality. But you can’t know what reality is without doing a lot of other research—the way you went to that shopping center in person.”
My hands were resting on the keyboard, and Rochester leaned his head up and nudged my elbow. Probably to remind me that he was there and wanted me to pay attention to him – but instead, I accidentally hit the combination of keys that took me to the very bottom of the file.
A hyperlink sat in the final cell of the spreadsheet. “Any idea what this is?” I asked Doug.
He leaned in close, then shook his head. “No idea.”
I clicked the hyperlink and Excel tried to open another spreadsheet, one that wasn’t in the batch Doug had downloaded for me. I was curious, so I logged back into the Beauceron server using Doug’s ID and password, then tried the hyperlink again.
This time, a window popped up asking me for a password to open the file. We tried Doug’s password, and it didn’t work. “This may be a key to what’s going on,” I said. “Let me see if I can download the file without the password.”
No luck.
“That’s got to be important,” Doug said. “Why else would it have its own password? Can you figure it out?”
“The password request means that the entire Excel document is encrypted with the RC4 stream cipher—a standard way to protect a document. If whoever set this up allowed the cipher to create the password, then it could be very difficult to figure it out, because it’s randomly generated.”
Doug looked disappointed.
“But most people use their own simple passwords rather than remember, or write down, a complex series,” I said. “I have a password cracker program at home that can analyze the contents of the file, discover where the password is stored, and then run a series of tries to figure it out. Even then it could take a long time.”
“But you can try?” he asked. “I’m sure there has to be a clue there. Why go through all this stuff unless there’s something to protect?”
“It could be just that Shawn’s extra careful,” I said. “He’s a smart guy, right? So he probably knows that it’s important to protect your data.”
Doug left, and I shut down my laptop. While I watched the system go through its routines, I sat back and let my mind wander. Was I doing anything illegal? I didn’t think so, because Doug had given me the files and asked me to look at them. He might get in trouble for releasing confidential documents, but I was in the clear, as long as I didn’t use that information to benefit myself.
I still felt uneasy. Back in college, I’d gone to Vermont with some friends over Christmas break to learn to ski. I remembered one trail in particular. It started out with a gentle slope, and I was moving downhill in an easy slalom. Then suddenly the terrain got steeper, and I was going much faster than I was comfortable with. I tried to remember what I’d learned about using turns to slow down, but quickly I was out of control and I ended up tumbling down, hitting a tree, and popping the bindings off my skis. I was lucky I hadn’t been hurt, but the experience put me off skiing.
Why hadn’t all the trouble I’d gotten into when hacking made me stop? And what was I doing, snooping into these files when I had no idea what I was looking for?
7 – Party Time
Sunday morning I was up early, walking Rochester and then making sure everything was in order for the concluding brunch. Doug made a few brief remarks, sending folks off with some action items they could accomplish that would move them forward in their path to financial understanding.
I announced I’d be emailing them all a link to a survey, and thanked them all for joining us. As they filtered out, Doug came up to me. “You’re going to look into that password protected file today?”
“I’m going to try,” I said. “But honestly, right now I want to go home and take a nap.” I patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll look into it. I promise.”
I locked up the center and drive back home. When I got there, Lili reminded me that we had to leave almost immediately for Justin Morgan’s party.
“Crap. There go my nap plans. Do we have a gift for this kid?”
She nodded. “I asked Tamsen what he’d like and she said an iTunes gift card, so I picked one up yesterday. And that reminded me it’s my sister-in-law’s birthday next week so I stopped at Mark’s antique shop yesterday and found this great Tiffany charm for her, in its original little blue bag. I’ll have to show it to you later.”
We left a few minutes later. As Lili, Rochester and I walked up to Tamsen’s house, we heard the squeals and screams of kids at play in the back yard. Rochester must have smelled his friend Rascal there, because he pulled ahead, dragging me along like the tail of a kite.
Rick answered the door, wearing a bandanna, a striped shirt and vest, and brandishing a plastic knife. “Ahoy, mateys, welcome to the party,” he said, and I couldn’t help laughing.
“Laugh now, buddy. Grab a hat and an eye patch or Justin will make you walk the plank. And the whole pirate theme should make you feel right at home.”
I had a brief flash that reminded me of the password cracking I needed to do for Doug, but Lili was already digging through a big box of props and costumes. She handed me a blue and white checkered bandanna for Rochester, who had his paws up on Rick’s waist, sniffing him for clues to Rascal’s location. I tied the bandana around his neck and let him rush forward into the house in search of his matey. A cascade of barking let us know they had met.
“There’s another dog here,” Rick said. “A little Yorkie named Pixie.”
“Doug Guilfoyle’s dog? Is Doug here?”
Rick shook his head. “Don’t know who that is. The dog came with Tamsen’s cousin and her kids.”
I processed that information as I put on a tri-cornered pirate hat with a plastic skull and crossbones on the front, then stuck a plastic dagger into my belt and looked at myself in the hall mirror. I looked properly piratical. Maybe I should dress this way whenever I needed to snoop around online.
Lili wrapped a long red scarf around her waist and clipped on big gold-colored hoop earrings. Then Rick led us to the kitchen, where Tamsen and her sister Hannah were laughing and drinking wine.
Tamsen was the kind of beautiful woman who could pose for magazine ads – healthy and wholesome looking, with shoulder-length blonde hair and a broad smile. She wore a blousy white top and a black bustier with a red handkerchief stuck in the top. She made a very sexy pirate wench and I had to remind myself that she was Rick’s girlfriend, and that I was damn lucky to have Lili by my side.
Tamsen and Hannah were both tall and sl
im, though Hannah’s hair was darker and she wasn’t quite as pretty as Tamsen. She was dressed more demurely as well, in a high-necked white blouse and white jeans, with a red handkerchief that matched her sister’s.
“Thanks for coming,” Tamsen said. She kissed both of us hello. “We need some more adults here to balance out all those wild kids.”
“They aren’t so wild,” Rick said. “It’s the dogs who are crazy.” He pointed through the sliding glass doors to where the kids were playing in the back yard. Rascal and Rochester appeared to be trying to mug one of the little girls. “I’d better get out there.”
As he hurried out, a slim, dark-haired woman came inside, wearing blue jeans and a black T shirt with a skull and crossbones on it. “Wine,” she said, staggering theatrically. She had the perfectly groomed and manicured look of a pampered wife, from her perfectly cut hair to her French manicure, down to the leather slip-ons on her feet. Living with Lili had taught me that the simpler the shoe, the more expensive it was.
Tamsen handed her a glass. “This is my cousin Catherine. Cath, this is Rick’s friend Steve and his girlfriend Lili.”
Suddenly everything clicked. Doug had said that his ex-wife had cousins in Stewart’s Crossing. Doug’s dog and his kids were here. And the woman across from me was his the woman he’d dated through college, who I’d shared a few classes with. She was twenty years older, but I could still see the girl she’d been.
“Steve Levitan,” I said, as I reached out to shake Catherine’s hand. “You and I went to Eastern together.”
“Really?”
I guess I wasn’t as memorable as I thought. Tamsen turned to help her sister take a platter of miniature pizzas from the oven as I told Catherine about a couple of classes we’d shared, and she smiled and said that she believed me, she just didn’t remember me.
“I just spent the weekend with Doug,” I said, and began to explain about the seminar he had led.
Hannah pulled me aside and whispered, “Doug Guilfoyle is not a good subject.” Then she turned to her cousin and Lili. “You guys want to help me pass out these pizzas to the ravening hordes?”
After the three of them left, I joined Tamsen at the counter, slipping on to a stool next to her.
She picked up her wine glass. “It’s funny, I knew that Cath and Doug both went to Eastern, but I never connected them to you.”
“Obviously your cousin has forgotten me,” I said. “I might have had a bit of a crush on her when we were classmates. If I recall correctly she ignored me back then, too. But I assumed it was because she was in love with Doug.”
Tamsen drank some wine, then put the glass back down on the counter with a sharp noise. “Well, she isn’t any more. She’s pretty angry that he followed her down here. She thought it would be good for Ethan and Maddie to grow up around family, so when she and the kids were visiting last year, she looked around for property and found the house she bought. She figured Doug would stay in New York.”
“You can’t blame him for wanting to be near his kids,” I said.
“Oh, no, I don’t blame him at all. I’m very sympathetic. I’ve seen what it’s like for Justin to grow up without a dad around and I wouldn’t wish that on Ethan and Maddie.” She sighed. “Catherine’s my cousin, and she loves her kids. But she has issues. She’s still thinking like she’s a Wall Street wife, not a woman who needs to make her own way in the world.”
“Does she have a career?”
Tamsen shook her head. “She’s been working on a children’s book, and she’s sure she’s going to be the next J.K. Rowling.”
“Doug mentioned she was writing. Has she published anything?”
“Not yet. She asked me to look at a few chapters of her book last week, and in my opinion, the book wasn’t ready yet but anything I tried to suggest she shot down.” She sipped her wine again. “Not that I’m an expert, but I read whatever Justin does, and I couldn’t see him having the patience to wade through all this historical detail and introspection.”
“I took a creative writing class with her at Eastern back in the day, and she was touchy then, too.”
“The bigger problem is that Catherine is seeing someone new who’s been talking about marriage, but he teaches at George School and barely has two nickels to rub together, and he certainly can’t support her the way she wants to live. She has this delusion that Doug will continue supporting her if she remarries, even though the divorce degree says he doesn’t have to.”
“I got away easy,” I said. “My ex-wife always made more money than I did, and she was eager to get rid of me once I went to prison. She didn’t ask for anything more than having the house deeded over to her name.”
“Divorce is so difficult,” Tamsen said. “Sometimes I think that if I had to be on my own again with Justin, I was lucky to be a widow instead of a divorcee.” She sipped her wine. “Look at Rick and Tiffany. They’re just the opposite of Doug and Catherine. She doesn’t want to let him go.”
“Really?” That was news to me. As far as I knew, Rick and his ex had broken up on bad terms and he’d been quite bitter about her.
“She broke up with her latest loser a few months ago, and she drunk-dialed Rick to cry on his shoulder. He didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head.
“He told me, because he said he didn’t want to keep any secrets from me. That they had been part of each other’s lives for a long time, and he didn’t want her to feel totally alone.”
“He’s a good guy,” I said.
“I know. Justin worships him, and they’re really good together.”
“And how about you? You’re not just seeing him because he’s good with your son, are you?”
“Remember, I’m a good Quaker girl. We don’t talk about sex and romance, except in our connection to the Divine.” She smiled, and stood up. “Come on, let’s go see if the kids left us any of those pizzas.”
We walked outside, where a dozen kids in different kinds of pirate costumes romped around the yard. I recognized Justin and his cousin Nathaniel, Hannah’s son, and Ethan and Madison Guilfoyle. The other kids were strangers to me.
Rick was acting the role of pirate captain, putting on a voice and marshaling a scavenger hunt around the yard. Rochester and Rascal chased poor Pixie until she took cover in an azalea bush, and then they stood there barking at her until she came out so they could chase her again.
Catherine came up to me. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember you right away,” she said. “I’ve tried to put Eastern and the rest of my past in a drawer and lock it away. But we were in Professor Parker’s creative writing class together, weren’t we?”
“We were,” I said. “You wrote a story about waiting for someone at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, didn’t you? I remember something about pigeons roosting in the ceiling. It was beautiful.”
“Adolescent junk,” she said. “Parker was right to trash me but I couldn’t see it back then. I’m trying to remember what you wrote.”
“I was in love with Ernest Hemingway back then,” I said. “I was working on a story about an American spy being held in a Mexican jail. Parker asked me if I had ever been in jail. Or in Mexico. And I said no.”
“Oh, I remember!” she said. “He went into one of his rants about how we should only write about what we know.” I wondered if she remembered my story, or just Parker’s rant.
“He said that since we were such callow youths we should write about childhood.” She laughed. “Took me long enough to follow that advice.”
I realized that if I wanted to write that story, I’d finally have the experience Parker had wanted, though surely back in college he couldn’t have predicted how I’d get it.
We talked about the children’s book Catherine was working on, a historical novel about a young Lenni Lenape girl living on the banks of the Delaware at the time of first contact with Europeans. I tried to channel Parker’s fusty manner. “Have you ever been a young American Indian girl, Miss Hollister?”
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“Here’s what we both should have said to him back then. I don’t need to have lived the story of my characters. I just need to be able to imagine how they live and act, and put that down on paper.”
I nodded. “Excellent reply. The French call that l’esprit de l’escalier, thinking of what you should have said after a conversation is over.”
“Exactly! Although in this case that conversation has been over for almost twenty-five years.”
The kids had each been given a map that showed the location of various pieces of pirate booty. Madison found the special one, a small pirate chest filled with candy and toys, and she generously shared it with the other kids.
When the party broke up, we drove home, and it was very nice to be back in my own house. When Lili moved in, we gave away my dad’s lumpy old couch and bought a new one, with rolled arms and plump cushions, and a big plaid comforter to protect it from dog hair. We’d replaced my dining room chairs with hers, and she’d filled the walls with her own photographs, and work she’d collected in her travels. The photo over the dining room table, a blurry shot of Parisian lovers in the rain by a photographer Lili admired, was the first big gift I’d given her.
The shelves were a mix of her souvenirs and books, and my books and the golden retriever picture frames, little statues and cute signs I’d begun to collect after Rochester came into my life.
The subject of all that adoration nosed me, reminding me it was time for his walk. I hooked up his leash and Lili and I walked outside. “Tamsen said something interesting this evening,” I said as we walked. “Rick has been back in touch with Tiffany, his ex.”
“Really? Why?”
“She divorced the guy she left him for, and I guess she’s feeling like she made a couple of wrong moves. But the last time Rick and I talked about Tiffany, he was still angry and bitter.”