by Todd Borg
“She told me that, too. We, uh, want Lucy to be comfortable. She’s not really part of our operation. But we respect that she should have some say in how things proceed in Yardley’s absence. So, yes, look around or whatever you do. But may I ask that you just look and not disturb or move things out of place?”
“Of course. What about Yardley’s computer? Do you have access to that?”
“Yardley is always leashed to his laptop. It goes where he goes. So we haven’t seen it.”
“Right. Does he have non-computer files?”
“You mean paper stuff? Yes, even total techies like Yardley have paper. See those three tall, black file cabinets in the corner? Those are his.”
“I might need to take photos of documents if I find anything useful. But you can be sure that I’m not interested in Tahoe Robotics’ proprietary information.”
“I understand. Do you think harm has come to Yardley?”
“I don’t know. I only know what Lucy told me, that Yardley has never disappeared before. Can you think of any reason why he might have gone AWOL?”
Sal shook her head.
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Yardley?”
Another head shake.
“Did he have disagreements with anyone?”
Sal made a grimace and looked down at the floor for a moment. She turned a bit as if to face as much away from the others as possible and spoke in a soft voice.
“Yardley had disagreements with everyone. There’s no one here he hasn’t argued with. Everyone will tell you that he is one of the most difficult people there is. I’m sorry to say that. But Yardley will even acknowledge it. We try to chalk it up to his genius. Yardley calls himself the conductor of this orchestra. But the truth is that most of us think of him more like a feudal lord. A tyrannical feudal lord.”
“Is there anyone here who feels he or she really understands Yardley’s work? Or maybe a better question is whether there is anyone here who thinks they are as smart as Yardley and as a result might resent his position of authority.”
Sal glanced toward the back of the room for just a moment, then seemed to rivet her eyes on me. “You didn’t hear this from me, but Tapper has actually said that he knows more about robotics software than Yardley does. And he thinks Yardley is making a significant strategic mistake in how he thinks of robotics.”
“Tapper Logan, the young man sitting at Yardley’s desk.”
“Right.”
“What could he know about computer software that Yardley doesn’t?”
“Well, his current focus is soft robotics. Tapper thinks soft robotics is the future and that Yardley is hopelessly stuck in the dark ages of rigid robotics.”
“Is it possible to explain the difference to someone who doesn’t have a Ph.D. in robotics?”
“Of course.” Sal set her hand on top of the robot in front of me. It reminded me of an adult patting a kid on the head. “Marie, here, is a rigid robot. Her internal frame is rigid as is her outside. She’s like a car. She’s very good at what she does. But she can’t wriggle her way into tight spaces. And she can’t slither down into a hole or climb up a tree. And most of all, she isn’t delicate. If I told her to pick up a raspberry, she would. But she isn’t able to moderate her strength to any degree, and the raspberry would squish and be useless. In comparison, think of a soft robot like an octopus. A soft robot can potentially do all the things that an octopus can. Softly and delicately.”
“A soft robot can pick raspberries?” I asked.
“Yes. Amazingly well. Soft robots can do things the way people can, especially when it comes to gripping things without destroying them. Soft robots can sort eggs as well as delicate fruit. They can fill orders for a wide variety of produce. In the future, soft robots will work with people, helping people move, helping them get dressed, doing jobs that used to require a skilled nurse. Tiny soft robots will help surgeons inside human bodies, crawling through a body to work on an area that needs repair or replacement.”
“Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I’d like to talk to Tapper Logan. Do you need to let him know first?”
“No,” she said. “Help yourself. Head on back.” Her tone telegraphed dislike for Tapper. I wondered if she hoped that I would bring some discomfort into his world.
“When I’m done talking to Tapper,” I said, “is there anyone else I should talk to?”
“You might want to talk to Andy Strom. He’s one of Tahoe Robotics’ vice presidents. Tapper has a higher effective rank in the company. But Andy has a higher actual rank.”
“That seems peculiar,” I said.
“Andy actually had his own startup and sold it to Yardley about six months ago. Part of the deal was a position of vice president in this company.”
“What is his focus?”
“You mean like, vice president of marketing? Or vice president of finance?” Sal stopped. I thought I saw a hint of a grin. “Maybe you should ask him.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Andy actually jokes that he’s vice president of nothing. That he has a title and nothing more. And, truth be told, he pretty much just comes to work and hangs out and works on his own projects. He’s a very creative person. And his contributions to Tahoe Robotics have been significant. But unlike some employees, he never brags or acts important.”
“Is he here today?”
Sal nodded. “He’s in the other rear corner.”
I glanced to the back of the room. “The blond guy bent over his computer keyboard?”
“Yeah. Where Tapper Logan flaunts his bad boy attitude, Andy Strom is one of the studious ones. He keeps a low profile. He’s more interested in writing innovative software. Whereas Tapper is more interested in acting the role of software superstar.”
“Is Tapper an actual software wunderkind?”
“In his own mind, sure. In other people’s assessment, not so much. Tapper spends his day on his iPhone. Andy spends his on his Mac. You can probably guess which guy gets more work done.”
“Thanks.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I walked past Marie and headed back between desks that seemed randomly placed. A Golden Retriever walked up to me, wagging.
“Tanya, come back here,” a woman said.
The dog paused but didn’t retreat. I was too interesting. I skirted past two desks, one of which belonged to a person with a tape fetish. There were a half-dozen dispensers with every kind of sticky-backed material: Scotch tape in two widths, masking tape, blue drafting tape, narrow striping tape, and two-inch packing tape. Apparently computer geeks still found non-electronic stuff useful.
The next desk was the corner desk where Yardley was reported to work.
I walked up in front of the desk. Tapper lounged in the desk chair, staring at the phone in his lap, his hiking boots up on the desk surface.
I waited a bit. It was obvious I was there, in his field of vision. But he ignored me.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Tapper Logan. Is that you?”
He still didn’t respond.
I said, “Lemme guess. You’re watching Youtube videos because you really need the creative inspiration to cope with life as a computer nerd, which is so hard you can barely get through your crushing routine. It would be easier to pick cotton in the sun twelve hours a day, right?”
“Oh, that’s good,” Tapper said, still not looking at me. “Really inspired. Much better than asking me if I’m hard at work.”
“Are you hard at work?”
“No,” he said as if it were cool to stake out such a bad-boy attitude. “I’m not paid to work. I’m a two-level coder, paid to think. I’m always thinking hard.”
“Thinking about software?”
He tapped on his phone, then swiped three or four times. “Software is such a cute phrase. I write code. Who are you, anyway?” He still hadn’t looked up.
“I’m a private cop, hired by Lucy to find out what happened to Yardley. Considering
your rude resistance, you are my first clue that something is wrong in this company. Which makes me wonder how hard I’d have to push you to crack your exterior.”
“Nice noirish, old guy metaphor. If you were a coder, you’d be one of those point-five-level geek wannabes who spend their time looking for smugs.”
I thought about it, trying to discern meaning.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” Tapper said. “Smugs are the type of coding bugs the only consequence of which is that they’re found and identified by people who think they’re smart but are, in fact, idiots. So if you want to burn up some more of Yardley’s money, keep standing there flapping your mouth. I’ll put it on my work log as smug mining. Yardley pays me five hundred per day. You’ve already spent one hundred of that.”
“Have you found out what happened to Yardley?” I asked.
“I didn’t know anything happened.”
“Would you have your feet up on his desk if he were here like normal?”
“There is no normal for Yardley. Now I should get back to work. You’re a pest, and you should go away and leave the smartest one percent of the species to do their work, making a world for the ninety-nine percent whose only care is to walk into Starbucks and buy their lattes by pressing a button on their phone. They don’t have a clue what is behind that process. Well, let me tell you, geezer boy, people like me - or maybe I should say, people who want to be like me - are the ones who create that world of convenience. We write the code. The philistines drink the coffee.”
“I’m wondering,” I said, “if your superior skills make you so resentful of people like Yardley grabbing all the attention, that you would try to undermine his accomplishments. Or maybe even get rid of him.”
Tapper Logan looked up at me for a moment. “Yardley LaMotte has no real accomplishment other than being able to win the State Fair hotdog-eating championship. Now, I have more thinking to do, and you are interrupting that.”
“Unfortunately, I need you to move so I can look at Yardley’s space.”
Tapper Logan flicked at his phone as if he were flicking away a bug like me. Or maybe a smug.
“Please,” I said.
Tapper looked down at his phone, doing a good imitation of ignoring me.
I turned around and pulled the packing tape dispenser off the desk behind me, then walked around Yardley’s desk and stood behind his chair.
Tapper was slow to react, still trying desperately to act the part of the hard guy. I stuck the end of the packing tape onto the chair back and, with looping motions, quickly ran two circles of tape around Tapper’s chest and the chair back. While he seemed frozen with shock, I seized the moment to tape his arms to the arms of the chair. His phone clattered to the floor.
Tapper lifted his feet off the desk and stepped down in a feeble attempt to stand up. I bent down and stuck the tape to the vertical chair post. I gave the chair a spin, and held the tape as Logan Tapper went around in a circle, and the tape looped around his feet and the chair’s vertical post, trapping him.
“What is this?! What are you doing?! Are you crazy?!”
I set the tape dispenser down, bent over in front of his chest and reached one arm across his body to the far side of his chair. I picked up the chair with him in it and carried him through the office toward the front door.
He screamed at me. “I demand you stop this! This is assault! Kidnapping! I’ll have you arrested!” He tried to kick with his legs and pull up with his arms. But the tape limited his movement to jerks.
Everyone in the office stared at us. Several stood up. Two or three dogs wagged vigorously.
No one tried to intervene.
Sal’s eyes were wide open as I went past. She looked astonished and more than a little pleased.
It was a little tight getting Tapper and his chair through the narrow opening at the reception area. I noticed Marie’s red light was back to blinking.
“May I help you, sir?” she said.
“No thanks. I’m just taking out the trash.”
Tapper tried to flex his arm and stretch the tape enough to grab her head, but his hand slipped off.
“You’re going down, dude!” he shouted, his voice somewhat muffled by my armpit. “I’m going to sue you until you bleed from your eyeballs.”
I turned around and went backward through the front door, pushing it open with my butt.
Out on the sidewalk, Tapper’s screaming intensified. “Help! I’m being kidnapped! This man is a violent terrorist!” I shifted my grip so my armpit did a better job of covering his mouth.
My arms were starting to shake from the effort, but I thought I was good for another minute. I walked to the curb, nodding and smiling at the few passersby and one or two drivers who seemed to notice. I watched the traffic, looking for a good moment.
I saw my opportunity in the form of a waste recycling pickup. It had a dumpster on its front end. Its relatively small size allowed it to navigate streets that were too narrow for the big garbage trucks. It was the satellite doing errands for the mother ship. As it crawled past me, I lifted Tapper and his chair and dropped the combo into the dumpster.
When I walked back to the Tahoe Robotics building, all of the employees seemed to be lined up at the front windows, grins on their faces. Marie’s little red light was blinking faster than normal.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I smiled at the assembled group, nodded at Marie, and walked back to Yardley’s desk. Probably, Sal had told the group the basics, that I was there at Lucy’s request, looking for any clue that might tell us where Yardley had gone, and that I would be poking around Yardley’s things.
I started with the left-most of three black file cabinets.
The top drawer was filled with legal-sized file folders. They had labels with names that made no sense to an ex-cop. I flipped through some of them. They were filled with papers printed with numbers and symbols. It was like peering into the tomb files of an advanced civilization that had gone extinct. I could grasp that the information contained in the files had order and process and, thus, some kind of value. But it was like looking at a modern version of stones carved with hieroglyphics. An alien world run by an alien government driven by alien power sources and focused on alien goals. None of which could be comprehended by an ordinary human.
I shut the drawer and pulled out the second one, trying not to succumb to the numbness and dislocation that coal miners feel when they take the tour of NASA’s rocket science laboratory. I was pretty good with a shovel and pick. But those tools are worthless in the new world.
The second drawer yielded more of the same. I couldn’t even discern the subject.
The third and fourth drawers had files with English words in the labels. A significant improvement. But inside the folders were more printouts with numbers and mathematical symbols.
I turned to the next file cabinet.
The top drawer had more of the same.
The middle drawer had more of the same.
The third drawer, way back to the rear, had something different.
There was a folder with a label that was handwritten. It said, ‘RE LLC.’
I understood a little about Limited Liability Companies. They were a type of corporation that gave the owner some liability protection. From my limited understanding, they were designed in part to protect owners from frivolous lawsuits. The version I’d heard was the person who buys coffee from a coffee shop, spills it on themselves, and claims they were burned. So they sue the coffee shop owner, saying it’s the owner’s fault for serving coffee that was hot enough to burn them.
If the coffee shop owner has put official ownership of the shop into an LLC, that helps protect the coffee shop owner from a court settlement that could otherwise decide to award the business owner’s entire bank account to the person who spilled the coffee.
I also knew that an LLC obscures the ownership of the entity in question, and it’s hard to sue the owner when you don’t know who that is. It’s also
hard to try to take away someone’s assets if you don’t know what they are.
As I looked at the file, I wondered if the letters RE LLC could refer to Real Estate Limited Liability Company.
If Yardley, or his company, had real estate in an LLC, the second scenario seemed more likely.
I flipped through multiple pages and saw a few things that seemed familiar. I realized that they looked something like the sales contract I’d signed years ago when I was on the SFPD and I bought my cabin in Tahoe as a future summer vacation cabin, unaware that life would change such that I would decide to quit the department and move to snow country to live full time in a garage-less cabin that was half the size of my small apartment in the East Bay. Half the size, but paid for. When I suddenly quit my paycheck, the attraction of no rent or mortgage was beyond my descriptive abilities.
But while the pages I was looking at in Yardley’s office had the fine print that specified endless cover-your-ass contingencies common to real estate sales, none of them had any property description or address. And there were no mentions of real estate companies or title companies.
Maybe the pages weren’t about real estate at all.
Then I thought about private sales. When people do their property sales through traditional realtors and title companies, the information is shared with endless agencies and websites and databases. Everyone from the Multiple Listing Service to the national Zillow website ends up displaying the information, complete with pictures of the property, address, price asked and price paid. And that information is archived online for eternity.
In an effort to maintain some privacy, many wealthy people sidestep the process by doing things the old fashioned way. A seller and a buyer find each other without engaging sales agencies. Instead, they meet through friends or business associates. A person puts the word out that they are interested in buying or selling something. A meeting is arranged with no intermediary. A deal is made with no broker.
Counties put the basics of real estate sales into the public record. But when no commercial agency is collecting a commission, no one is publicizing the information and using it to brag about their ability to make real estate deals. And if the buyers and sellers are LLCs or other business entities, the transaction avoids notice by nearly everyone.
