But Chip wasn’t a banker. Something else motivated him, and Josh knew they should definitely not underestimate the man. Josh first met him during those heady days when a group of real estate investors contrived to launch a major casino resort near Thread. They sought to pull a good one over Chip’s tribe. Instead, Chip leveraged his New York contacts and turned the tables. When everyone walked away, it was Chip and his allies who controlled the project. On the other hand, the man who originally led the American Seasons resort team spiraled into personal bankruptcy—so broke that Josh and Danny now owned the financier’s former camp in Thread. Josh knew firsthand where Chip’s questioning mind could lead. It was time to put a stop to it.
“Chip,” Josh interrupted Orleans in the middle of her charts, “these questions are great. They really are. They’re exactly the details that will interest a Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs when we start our investor tour.
“But what is really going on here? You didn’t fly all the way to Los Angeles to talk about reports that we could have e-mailed you.”
Josh stopped there and remained quiet. It was an old trick, but even smart guys like Chip couldn’t abide silence for long.
Chip shifted in his chair, and Josh thought he had won. Clearly Chip was trying to decide how much he was willing to say. Mentally, Josh ran through the potential concerns. Likely Chip already processed all the facts and figures from Orleans and was correctly computing that Premios was ramping up its investments so recklessly that it could run out of money by June. The only way it could survive would be through a successful springtime initial public offering of stock, or IPO.
But a failed IPO wasn’t in the cards. The market was hot. You had to bet big to win big. That was Josh’s motto.
Maybe Josh was missing something. Chip could be surprisingly moralistic. The other night Josh noticed how Chip looked at Jesus Lopez with disdain. If he didn’t like Lopez’s novels, he also probably didn’t like the methods that Premios was using to feed its blogs and contents. The truth was that sites like Premios were little more than gossip sites gussied up in new tuxedos. They thrived on secrets told by people spilling the hidden details of others. But again, that strategy didn’t worry Josh. Orleans and he protected the firm by using a strong set of safeguards to distance the worst scum.
Then again maybe Chip was skeptical about the reported numbers. Premios was using pretty sophisticated approaches to boost the count of site visitors, and maybe there was a bit of exaggeration built into how they measured unique visitors or average time spent on the site. That was true of everyone in the business; every advertiser knew he had to take those numbers with a grain of salt. Besides, who even knew what accuracy was? Ultimately, this new world was all about growth and buzz.
On that topic, Colby Endicott agreed with Josh one hundred per cent. That’s why the man had been so eager for his firm to be an early investor. God, he hoped Chip wasn’t interested in knowing more about Colby. That might be a harder relationship to explain. Josh allowed a frown to creep across his face just by thinking about the complications.
Orleans misread Josh’s facial expression and thought he was asking her to drag Chip back into the numbers. “Chip,” she said, “just tell me the details you want to see, and we will pull up the right files.”
“It’s the files themselves,” Chip said.
Orleans look confused, “What do you mean?”
Chip looked at Josh, “You know, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Someone is trying to corrupt your customer data. Ultimately, the Premios business is all about the information you collect from your users. That’s how you direct advertising to the individuals most likely to be interested. That’s why advertisers even care. User data is your golden goose.”
Josh couldn’t disagree with such a fundamental fact. “Look,” he replied, “it’s no secret that companies like Premios will ultimately make money from selling focused advertising. Currently, the subscription fees and sponsorships just help to keep the lights on. So, yes, in the long run, customer data is key. But who’s trying to corrupt our data? What would that that even mean?”
Chip made no attempt to disguise his contempt at Josh’s reply. “You know what it means. It took me a while, but I realize now that you were the one who insisted on visiting the data center with me on New Year’s Eve. You had a purpose. Somehow you knew we would find a Trojan horse in the system. That’s why you detected it so quickly. You were expecting to see it and you wanted us to notice. But I’m guessing you didn’t anticipate that I would ask my team to dig into it.
“Here’s what I think. Someone is blackmailing you or your company. They alerted you to what their programs could do. They needed to provide a demonstration of their power. Because, as I think you know, that computer program on New Year’s Eve wasn’t designed to completely replace your customer user data with junk. It was just a way to prove that they could do it. So what do they want from you? Is it money? If your blackmailers were to go public with this threat, that alone would be enough to torpedo your potential stock offering. And delaying your IPO would kill your company.
“You’re in deep trouble, but I can help. Tell me what’s really going on. After all, I am part owner.”
Josh heaved a sigh of relief, which Chip noticed, but Josh didn’t care. This was so much better than he feared. Chip had no clue as to what was really going on. Thank God. Josh still had a chance to make it all work. In fact, maybe this was a good thing. Maybe he could use Chip and his connections to force Colby Endicott out.
In retrospect, bringing in Endicott and Meyers as investors had been the stupidest thing Josh ever did. Colby Endicott might appear an unsophisticated frat boy with too much money to spend, but now he was partnering with a more dangerous crowd. It took Josh a while to realize it, but he was convinced that Colby Endicott’s firm was somehow laundering money and intending to take over the Premios e-commerce engine for some much larger mission.
Josh needed to discover where Colby’s money came from. He knew the real partner was not Meyers. There was definitely another source of money, so much bigger than what flowed from Colby’s trust fund, and it wasn’t all flowing to Josh. Some of it was headed elsewhere in Los Angeles. Josh imagined all sorts of possibilities: mob money from the East Coast, Columbian or Mexican drug money, or maybe even Chinese or Middle Eastern ill-gotten gains. Whatever the money’s source, the firm of Endicott Meyers existed to put it to work. They needed a respected face in the dot com world to make it happen, and unfortunately they had chosen Premios to be that front.
Josh knew only one thing for certain. He needed to be ruthless in excising this partner. He needed to do it without anyone finding out. And he needed to do it soon. While he still had a company to run.
Josh had never felt so alive.
Cynthia uneasily watched the horizon. Outside, the northern lights shifted in a jagged pattern of dancing green across the far northern skies. Alone in the house and missing Chip, Cynthia found the aura unsettling. While she knew they were a natural phenomena associated with surges of energy from the sun, somehow they seemed a harbinger of unwanted days. Even in the far northern reaches of Wisconsin, they rarely appeared, but tonight they shimmered and jerked in an ever-changing undulation.
She turned away from the north-facing window. The phone call just ended with Chip left her spooked. Days earlier, she tried to talk him out of flying to Los Angeles when she said someone else could dig into the problem because it wasn’t even their issue. Now she begged him to come home and let others deal with what he had uncovered.
Chip was too principled to do that. He took ownership of issues She saw that the very first time he walked through the doors of the old Loon Town Café. She had been a waitress in Thread, and on that day business was unusually slow. His profile caught by the timeless sunlight of that long ago morning caused her to skip a breath. Remembering the moment still had impact. How was it possible to know with one look that she had encountered the one person she
needed to be with for the rest of her life?
Danny was a busboy in the same restaurant that summer. Cynthia had been on a hopeless quest to light some spark of sexual connection with the brooding boy, but once she saw Chip, she began to envision a different goal. Kissing the tall, dark, and much older Native American leader from the nearby reservation became her new fantasy. Her father hated the local Indian tribe, so she couldn’t mention her new-found fascination, but keeping the idea locked within her heart only made it grow faster.
From the beginning, she was attracted by the purpose and intent in Chip’s every action. He had a drive that was fueled by his pride in doing the right thing for his tribe and all those he considered important. Now, she knew better than to expect that Chip would let go of any strand of an unraveling mystery. He would judge it his duty to alert Josh and Danny of perceived dangers, and she couldn’t argue with such a noble intention.
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.
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