The real trick was to stay off the computer and the network. You thought you were alone, but you weren’t. Oliver should have known that, but people were so quick to forget unpleasant truths. Of course, few held the tools that Josh did to focus on people of interest. Josh supposed the government did, but he wasn’t likely to be of interest to them, and he meant to keep it that way.
Josh was feeling himself again, the man in control, although it took a while to get his bearings back after stepping off the stage at the BLINK conference. Barbara abandoned him like a dead weight. The panic in the hotel was infectious. Over the past few weeks, reality had a nasty way of stripping away any illusions one had about the economy. On the overnight train ride, he fell into a nightmarish slumber where he relived over and over a conversation that Barbara and Chip once had about some cat and whether it was dead or alive. In the clarity of the morning, there wasn’t a question in his mind. This dot-com cat was dead, and that rather limited Josh’s options.
He hadn’t been quick enough. The demands of Oliver and his pals kept him from dipping into the IPO sea soon enough. Their focus on proving the viability of Project Big Stick ate up his cash and delayed his real business. Josh wasn’t a miracle worker. He tried everything he knew to keep things afloat while he found a way to toss the bad guys overboard. He wanted to do it without swamping them all. It didn’t work, but he didn’t intend to drown in his own mistakes.
A safe passage was still possible. The problem was that for a while it seemed so unclear exactly what his bearings should be.
Throughout yesterday and all during the night, his Blackberry buzzed incessantly with Orleans’ calls and e-mails. Finally, he turned the device off. He wasn’t going to pick up a call no matter how many times she tried, nor was he going to look at her written pleas. They would only be a distraction.
Josh wasn’t an idiot. He understood every way in which he had allowed himself to become overextended. He knew how much of his world was built like a house of cards. One wrong burst of air and it would all be sent tumbling. Yesterday, he was pretty certain, that gust occurred. But could he keep Danny from finding out? Could he reset the playing field before Danny discovered the ways in which Josh had betrayed him? The opportunity was narrow, but there was a glimmer of an exit.
In the townhouse, Oliver failed to find Josh’s flippancy amusing. “Don’t you see it’s over?” Oliver asked with a tone that clearly conveyed that he considered it over.
“You tried to get rid of us, but we’re not playing your game. You see, you’re playing ours. If we don’t step in with more cash, Premios won’t survive and neither will your personal finances.
“Admittedly Colby Endicott is rather a fool. I whispered a few things in his ear yesterday about Danny and your net worth. After all, Josh, you’re not the only one who does his homework. We learned how much you owe, and to whom you owe it. That information is all it took with Colby. He’s easily spooked, and I suspect he called some of the bankers he knew. He probably expressed his concerns. Have you been getting calls from your bankers, Josh?”
“I don’t know,” Josh answered honestly. “I turned off my Blackberry. There’s a reason they call it a Crackberry. You can become so addicted.”
He was looking forward to what he was about to tell Oliver, because he knew all too well what Oliver was—a man who lacked any sense of discretion or honor. Perhaps Oliver thought Josh would never stumble across Lopez’s most recent novel, but Josh had seen it on Danny’s shelves. He read the book, and he knew that Lopez could only have gotten some of the details in that story from Oliver. Of course, there were some elements missing or wrong. But that didn’t really change his assessment. For reasons that didn’t really matter now, the man in front of him had wronged Danny once long ago, did it a second time by misleading Jesus Lopez, and now was attempting a third. Josh would not feel guilty about what he had to do.
Oliver was smirking. “It’s over, Josh. You lost. I know you like to think you’re the emperor of the world, always outthinking the rest of us, always one step ahead. But you’re just a man.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Josh replied. “We all have our weaknesses. Yours is that you don’t maintain a very strategic view. And for an asshole at heart, you’re also remarkably trusting of the people that you think are on your side. After all this time, you never learned that in every game, you always have to play alone. There’s no one on your side but you.”
“Whatever.” Oliver was slowly stepping backward into the hall, as though he would cross over into the den. Josh had visited this townhouse before, and knew that was where Oliver kept a gun. But that didn’t worry Josh. He wanted Oliver to have that gun.
“Your team demanded a demonstration of Big Stick,” Josh continued speaking as though he had all the time in the world. He imagined how he might talk about these topics the next time he spoke at a BLINK conference. Admittedly, he would have to do some careful editing, recast the story into a different setting, but still he could envision how what was about to happen could be transformed into an amusing anecdote.
“You may think you erased our software, but you didn’t. Actually, the last few weeks have turned out better than I thought they would. Our guy in Poland, who you so helpfully introduced, has programmed for me an incredibly effective money laundering capability. What we did with Chip and Lattigo was child’s play compared with our most recent feats. It’s too bad your guys weren’t the mafia needing to find a better tool for hiding money. I think we could have been really good at it, and everyone would have been happier.”
Oliver looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
Then Oliver gained confidence as he continued. “You never really understood anything you know. Because you’ve always been fascinated by holding information over other people, you assume that’s what we want. Such a fool, Josh. Focused always on the wrong thing. Big Stick lets us disrupt the modern world, screwing up databases and manipulating financial records. Cyber terrorism. That’s what this game is really about.”
Josh laughed at the ridiculous nature of Oliver’s rant. The man never understood the people he was playing with or the limits and possibilities of the technology they sought. It didn’t matter now.
Throughout Josh’s harangue, Oliver continued to inch slowly backward from the living room across the foyer and into his den. Josh obligingly followed, happy to pretend he didn’t notice what Oliver was doing. He acknowledged that he was acting a bit like a James Bond villain, making sure Oliver knew what was about to happen, but that was part of the pleasure of the plan.
“I’m afraid your guys in Beirut or Tehran or wherever they call home will never get to fully enjoy their plot. In fact, I think they will have a bit of a surprise tomorrow morning because I can confidently predict that they will discover that about $50 million in their secret accounts has vaporized. Do you think it will take them long to follow the paper trail through the offshore accounts? Sad to say but it will look quite clear that all their money was headed in your direction.” Josh smiled.
“Funny thing, though, I am also quite certain the final destination of that cash will never be determined. What choice will they have but to conclude you thought you were a bit too clever, and I am sure they would find ingenious ways to try to make you talk. A bit of advice: it’s never good to steal from terrorist gangs, especially when you work for them.”
“They know that I would never dare to double cross them. They’ll know it was you.”
“Will they? Perhaps. It will only be a coincidence that Premios attracts a surprising number of new advertisers in the coming weeks, and then that the firm just keeps growing with its unexpected business success. Believe it or not, revenue is going to save my little Internet company. But how will that have anything to do with your missing funds? That will be your problem. Not mine.”
Oliver was finally behind his desk. Like most of the furnishings in the house, it sported a very contemporary look. Josh would be disappointed to see
it covered in blood.
“You see, your guys know that I know all about them, and they also understand how you were the weak link. We may have a little bit of a Mexican standoff at the moment, but as I see it, neither side will need you to reach an appropriate and stable understanding. In fact you’re just in the way.”
Oliver quickly opened the desk drawer. “You’ve been an asshole since the day I met you.” he snarled and pulled out his handgun.
Josh only thought, “That certainly took long enough.”
Monday morning and Danny hadn’t heard from Josh all weekend. He didn’t pick up Danny’s calls; he didn’t respond to email messages. Because the circumstances seemed too much like what happened with Chip, Danny barely slept all weekend. One minute Josh was there, and the next he had vanished
Danny paced through the mansion late into the night, and was up again before the sun rose. There was no way he could sleep, and yet he was unwilling to reach out to anyone he knew. Cynthia needed no reminders of what she had lost. Kenosha and Orleans were trying to put out fires at the company, and he knew that they already doubted him when he said he couldn’t reach Josh. There were others. Francesca would dash over in a moment if he called. Certainly, Wally and Stephen would drop everything at their café if he asked for their help. But what could any of them do?
Once again he had to trust his instincts. Somehow he was certain that Josh was alive and staying hidden for his own reasons. Perhaps he just wasn’t willing to face the possibility that a cruel cosmos was pulling yet another person from his life, but Danny was sick and tired of the way fate toyed with him. So many people in his life had failed to stand by his side. His mother committed suicide for reasons he never learned. His father drifted into loneliness. Pete wanted too much and Oliver betrayed him. Perhaps, it was Danny who caused it all.
He glanced over and noticed the spine of Lopez’s book. Even his teacher was a traitor. He surely understood the implications of publishing The Dumping Ground, but Danny wondered if Lopez knew how far his story wandered from the truth.
In those days at the resort, Danny would have done anything for Oliver and Oliver surely knew it. Maybe Oliver pushed him down a path of sexual maturity faster than would otherwise have occurred, but he willingly trod that road. He was excited to experiment and a sixteen-year-old boy had a lot of energy. While Oliver was only a few years older, that time should have brought him maturity, not cruelty.
Could Oliver’s actions have been described as anything but cruelty? The boys’ bunkhouse was set well back from the rest of the lodge. It was always in the shadows of the tall pine trees that surrounded it, and the air inside had the odor of rotting wood, leaking roofs, and too many boys. All the male staff—the kitchen kids, the yard crew, the bellhops, and the marina guys—lived during the summer in that long cabin. It had been moved to the resort from a long-abandoned lumber camp. Oliver, as the oldest of the crew, carried authority and influence. The rest were just kids, impressionable, horny, and often drunk late at night. Were any of them still haunted by that night the way Danny was?
He was the youngest worker that summer, but already six feet tall, scrawny, and shy. Looking back, Danny knew he certainly wasn’t the most handsome or the most adventuresome of kids. On the other side of the resort, the comparable working girls’ cabin was filled with waitresses and room maids who swooned over Oliver. He could have had any of them. The few hundred yards that separated the two dormitories didn’t stop other boys and girls from spending nights together. The distance certainly wouldn’t have been a barrier to Oliver.
Instead, he chose Danny and that could only have been the man’s innate cruelty. No other explanation made sense, but Lopez omitted that cruelty from his fictional retelling of that summer. Lopez portrayed Danny as the precocious Lolita pursuing the reticent Oliver when it had been the exact opposite. Danny suspected Oliver knew from the very first moment where he intended to lead the summer sequence of events—to the night of Danny’s abasement on the moldy decrepit sofa.
Everything about that night was set up. It had to be. There was no other explanation for why all of the other boys would have crept in quietly into the cabin’s common room on a night with no moon, reassembling at midnight after Danny drank too many brandies and was laying naked against that crusty sofa giving head to a fully clothed Oliver. Oliver, the exhibitionist, always found a reason to discard his clothing. But not that night . . . when the lights suddenly blazed on and a naked Danny was sprawled on a sofa with Oliver in his mouth, when he was surrounded by a circle of coworkers laughing at him, when he looked up at Oliver sneering.
“I love this little cocksucker,” Oliver chortled. “You should all give him a try.” Danny still blazed red just thinking of how he wanted to sink into the ground and disappear forever. But he was caught.
If he could have, he would have killed Oliver that night.
But he never told anyone the details. And yet the newest book by this prizewinning novelist detailed a virtually identical scene. Only Oliver could have made it happen.
The doorbell rang. Danny broke out of his unpleasant reverie. When he reached the foyer, he opened the door to find Kenosha. She walked in without waiting. “We have to talk,” she said.
He motioned his friend to follow him back into the kitchen. “I told you already I don’t know where Josh is,” he jumped in. He figured Orleans and Kenosha thought he was still holding out. “He hasn’t been in contact all weekend, and I’m starting to worry this is a repeat of Chip.”
“No, it’s not,” she replied sternly. “Josh just called me. Actually, he only left a cryptic message that said I had to help you find the secret room.”
That made no sense to Danny. There was no secret room, and why wouldn’t Josh call him if he had a message to deliver. “That’s all he said?”
“That’s it. Everything’s falling to pieces at work. People can tell that money’s running out, and I think some of those programming rats are abandoning ship. We need Josh. I don’t know what kind of sick game he’s playing, and I’m in no mood to go along, so just tell me about this secret room.”
“There isn’t one.”
“Really? I don’t believe you. Don’t you remember how Francesca told us her tales of this place? That old director loved that kind of shit. If he built a hidden room, it has to be on the bottom level. That’s where people tried to break in.”
“I tell you. There’s no such room. I don’t know what Josh meant.”
Kenosha stood there, grim and determined, and Danny wasn’t in a mood to fight her, because she had confirmed what he already felt. Josh was alive somewhere, but then he wondered.
“How can you be sure the message was from Josh?”
“Because the voice sounded like his. Because the call came from his number. Because no one else would have sent it.” She softened a bit, perhaps because she could see how little sleep Danny had had. “Tell you what. Let’s just go to the bottom level and look. If there is a room, there has to be a switch or knob or something that opens the door.”
Soft morning light was filtering through the lower windows, which provided a view over the back of the lot, the street, and the arched entrance to the stairs across the street. Kenosha looked at the room appraisingly.
“If there’s a hidden space down here it has to be on the back side, and built into the hill, like the wine cellar is. The rest of the space is accounted for. So if there’s a way in, it’s probably on these shelves at the back of the room, or from inside the wine cellar itself.”
“If there is such a space . . . ” Danny was having none of it. Josh would have told him if such a room had been uncovered during the remodeling, because Josh was no Nancy Drew character who had to hide away.
“I’m going to start in the wine cellar,” Kenosha said. “You never go in there, and we know that space was all rebuilt during the renovation.” She walked in. Danny stood behind.
“Are you coming or not? Josh asked me to help. There must be a rea
son.”
He followed. Kenosha was methodical. Assuming the entrance wouldn’t likely be along the back wall, which was already deep into the hillside, she instead examined the two adjoining walls.
“What are you looking for?” Danny asked.
“If there’s a door, it’s probably not where the wall is covered in stacks of wine bottles.” She pointed to a sidewall with a small built-in bar for tasting. “That seems the most likely spot.”
She stooped under the bar and examined it for a while, then pushed on one side, which caused it to slip upward into a vertical position. She stood. She looked at Danny as though waiting for a signal to proceed. He nodded his head okay, and she pushed against the wall. The space behind the bar smoothly swung open, carrying the bar shelf with it.
As the door opened, lights automatically came on in the space beyond. They peered into a good-sized room, maybe twelve by sixteen. It was filled with bookcases, a desk, and two easy chairs. A thick Oriental carpet lay on the floor.
“Welcome to the secret lair,” Kenosha said. But there was neither humor nor satisfaction in her voice.
INTERLUDE
The Final Session
Sooner or later, it was going to be time to rip the Band-Aid off. Now is that time.
Sorry I have to phone this session in, doc, but I can’t be in your office right now. But I know you’ll understand. Just like you get why I’m always interfering in Danny’s life, trying to test him, and to see what he will do. Maybe the final test is to let him know me for who I really am. I think he deserves that.
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