Downward Dog in Miami

by Larry David Allman

  “I’ve got some business here, and I think there’s a connection.” I switched the subject for a moment, “You know, I’m teaching a class at the yoga center this week. You should come by. It would be good for you.”

  “Yeah, I should. Maybe you could get somebody to handle my office for me while I’m in class.”

  “Your health is the most important thing you have, Marty. Don’t neglect it.”

  “Okay, point taken. So what’s with Glade Preserves?”

  “Well, who’s the company behind it?”

  “Sherico, or Jericho, something like that. New guys. I don’t know any more than that.”

  “Siroco Investments International Corporation?”

  “Yeah, maybe, something like that. You want me to ask around?”

  “Thanks, yes. But Marty, be discreet. I don’t think they’re nice guys.”

  Marty locked up the manager’s office. We walked to our cars in the building parking lot. I thanked him for his good work and told him again that he should be careful in asking around about Siroco, and to let me know what he found out.

  As he drove away in his nice Mercedes, I took out my iPhone and got the photo of Richard Adams’ business card. I GPS’d the address of Siroco printed on the card. I recognized the area: downtown Miami. We’ve all seen it hundreds of times in the opening scenes of Miami Vice, the TV show, bathed in pastel colors at night—you can almost hear the rumbling music undergirding the area.

  I had a few hours before my yoga class. I decided to go take a look.

  * * *

  I found the building easily, near the Federal Courthouse, on Third Street near Second Ave. Were these cities, which crisscrossed streets and avenues with the same numbers, trying to test us? Thank God for the GPS function. There was a parking lot near the building; I turned in. The sign said twenty dollars for the first two hours. The attendant, a youngish Black man with earbuds, was sitting in a tiny structure with an open window. I got out and stepped up to his window. He removed one earbud but otherwise sat there with his head resting on his hand, appearing to be frozen in static laziness. I told him I’d only be a few minutes, and he said that would be twenty dollars. I had to give him my keys to park there. I held two twenties for him to see and told him to keep it close and that I wouldn’t be long, then went back to grab my briefcase. When he saw the money, he ripped the other earbud out and jumped off his seat. He appeared outside of his “office” with enhanced speed.

  “Keep it close,” I said as I smacked the two twenties forcefully into his outstretched hand, making a point probably just to myself.

  There was a block between the parking lot and the building. It was late afternoon with lots of sun. The sidewalk was broad and well-tended, and the rhythm on the street was young, stylish, energetic, and more business than salsa. The building was named Palmetto Plaza, even though it looked to be just one building. Forty-four stories; the dark glass exterior screamed professional excess and high rents, the kind of building you would come to in order to meet with your overpriced lawyers.

  I entered through circulating electric doors and was in a large foyer, two stories of openness with lots of marble and big potted plants. Elevators sat on both sides of an information station staffed by two men in uniform, powder-blue blazers, trying to look busy but vibrating complete boredom. Palmetto Plaza was neatly stitched on their breast pockets, and under that, Delray Industrial, Inc.

  “Can we help you, sir?” one of the guards asked.

  “No, thanks. Where’s the building directory?”

  “Over there.” He pointed to the wall next to the elevators on the right. The lettering on the wall indicated that those elevators were for Floors Twenty to Forty-Four. I walked up to the building directory on the wall while I made sure to stay situationally aware. The guards were acting busy, and people were coming in and out, almost all dressed for business. Nothing caught my attention.

  The directory was alphabetical. I found Siroco, located on Floors Forty-Three and Forty-Four. There were no other tenants indicated on those floors. That’s pricey real estate, two full floors in this kind of building.

  “Get the fuck off me!” I heard from the direction of the elevators around the corner. “Assholes!” It was a woman’s voice… It was angry and it was loud. I moved a few steps from the directory toward the elevators. People were stopping in the lobby to watch the scene.

  A big guy came from the elevators, followed by a small woman, then another big guy. Each held one of her arms, their big hands with firm grips. They were dragging her out of the building, and she didn’t want to go. They were rough with her—large guys, a couple of inches taller than me, and beefy. Their white-sidewall crew cut hair told me they were certainly ex-military, and the same with their ridiculous mustaches.

  She jerked at their hands clamped around her arms, and they muscled her even harder. They were going to hurt her, maybe break her shoulder. She was a tiny woman, and they were huge.

  “Whoa… Whoa!” I said as I moved in on them. “What are you doing to her?”

  I was in their operational space. They didn’t like that at all.

  “Get back. This is private business… none of yours!” Their eyes told me who they wanted me to think they were: the cold stares, the forcefulness of projected power developed from explicit training.

  “Let her go,” I said, getting my feet planted in case it got physical.

  “Yeah, let me go, assholes!” she spat at them, continuing to yank her arms, trying to get free.

  “Call 9-1-1,” I yelled to the guards.

  That was exactly what these goons did not want.

  “Who are you?” one of them snapped at me. They formed up in a line facing me. The woman held between them had stopped fighting, but they didn’t let go of her arms.

  “I’m her friend… and you assholes are not treating her properly.”

  “You want to get hurt today,” the one on the left said, releasing the woman’s arm and thinking hard about making a move.

  “You know, when I woke up this morning, I did think to myself, What a great day to get hurt.”

  The other one let go of her too. They were deep in fight or flight, weighing what their corporate masters would prefer versus what they wanted to do to me in that heated moment. I signaled for the woman to move to me. All three started to move at the same time. We were about five feet apart.

  “You got 9-1-1 called yet?” I called out to the guards. Exactly what these thugs did not want: attention. They froze in place. She kept moving.

  “This is over. Go back to your shithole. This is the day you lost!” I said, eyeballing them, one and then the other. I leaned forward just a shade for them to see that it could get physical and that I was ready if it did.

  She continued out of their space… and walked right by me toward the door! Is this some kind of a Miami thing? Saying “goodbye” out loud was outdated. How about “thanks”?

  “Go!” I said to the thugs, signaling them toward the elevators.

  “You come back here again, it ain’t going to be pretty,” the taller of the two said to me.

  “You promise?” I taunted.

  They turned and walked away, looking over their shoulders to see what I would do. I saw the woman go out through the doors and ran after her.

  “I guess 9-1-1 was busy,” I said to the guards, who had not even picked up the phone—highly efficient.

  She was just at the sidewalk when I came out and spotted her.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  She stopped and turned. I approached her. She was crying.

  “What was that about?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have thanked you. Thank you.” She got some tissues out of her large handbag and started to clean her face.

  “Okay… So what was that about?”

  “I’m Olivia. Who are you
?”

  “My name is Derek. What happened in there?”

  “I’m a reporter with the Miami Herald. I do the Business beat. I was trying to get some information on a tenant in this building. They didn’t want to give me anything. Then they threw me out. Real jerks.”

  “Wow,” I offered lamely, studying her small frame and tawny complexion. Obviously Latina, clearly assertive. “Who’s the tenant… or should I say target? You press people can be rough.” I was trying to give her a backhanded compliment, even though what I had just done for her in the building should have been enough.

  “Okay. A company named Siroco Investments.” She threw the tissues in a waste bin near us and started to turn away again.

  I grabbed her by the arm and turned her around to face me, with just enough force to get all of her attention.

  “I can help you,” I said. She stopped moving.

  4

  I start every yoga class with the OM chant, repeated three times. The students in the class have come directly to the class from different places, hold different vibes, and have had different experiences; they are vibrating differently. Chanting OM together at the beginning of the class changes their individual vibrations. It also serves to create a group vibration of cohesiveness and unity of thought and feeling. It’s what I was taught, and it works.

  With the third OM, I said another powerful mantra, opened my eyes, and beheld the class of forty-six students. There is nothing more fulfilling than leading students into the various yoga practices, postures and breathing exercises designed expressly to create peace and wellness. Nothing strange, such as the two jerks in the class last night, caught my attention.

  I stood up and started the class.

  I had arrived at five-thirty. I’d parked a few streets away and walked to the center. Based on last night and what I had learned today, it was time to notch up to a higher level of security and awareness.

  Stephen, the director, had approached me when I’d walked in. I’d told him we’d speak after class. I had changed, taken a room they had given me to do some postures and breathing, and prepared myself for class.

  Making the transition from cyber security consultant dealing with all sorts of bad guys to yoga teacher required mental discipline, as well as some metaphysical chops which take a lot of work and experience to master. I had honed these skills, so I had gone in deep to prepare myself: Derek Randall, yoga teacher.

  * * *

  My name is Derek Randall. I am thirty-seven years old. I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I played football in high school, was second-team all-state wide receiver, and was recruited by the University of Pittsburgh, a three-hour drive away—just far enough from home. I played football in high school because it was fun, we didn’t get hurt too much, and it meant I was part of the coolest group in the school. We were around the best girls, had the best parties, and, in general, had the best time.

  I was a good student and got almost straight As. My parents were both teachers, and my mother taught English at my school. They taught me well: how to be inquisitive, how to have values, how to study efficiently. I liked math, and especially liked anything computer-related. I was good at that stuff, even way back in high school.

  I had girlfriends, but I was not so good at the relationship part—probably something to do with being an only child. That I got an athletic full-ride scholarship pleased my parents, but not quite as much as my academic accomplishments did. I had the advantages of being an only child, and I have the disadvantage of having no sisters or brothers. I got a lot of attention, maybe too much.

  The University of Pittsburgh is an excellent school, with some of the departments nationally top-rated, like the Department of Computer Science, which was where I immediately gravitated.

  During the first game of my freshman season, against Duke, I did not start, but I went into the game at the beginning of the second half. I caught my first pass, was tackled hard, and broke my left wrist. I left the game in a temporary cast, went to the hospital, had it set, and decided that football was not for me. I had never really wanted an NFL career. I wanted to work with computers.

  The following week, with a cast on my hand up to my elbow, I gave up my athletic scholarship, applied for an academic scholarship… and, to my and my parents’ surprise, got it. I look back on that decision as one of the best I ever made, because it shaped the rest of my life.

  It took me three years to complete college. I took extra courses. The instructors often gave me extra credit because I helped them in the same way a graduate assistant would. Two of the professors had ties to Microsoft and pushed my name to the HR director there. A Microsoft rep came to campus, interviewed me, and offered me a job at the end of the interview: business applications programmer. The rep made it almost impossible to refuse the offer: a one-hundred-thousand-dollar starting salary, a housing subsidy, and stock options that vested fully after five years. That happened around Christmas of my third year, which was technically my senior year. I accepted and joined Microsoft when I graduated in May. I moved to Redmond and started my working career.

  Working at Microsoft was a uniquely American experience. I enjoyed it immensely. The company used me in several different positions. I did a lot of work on Microsoft Office products. I was promoted to senior systems analyst and got a whole different perspective on how large and powerful the company was. They increased my salary and my stock options without my having to ask. I had a good future there… if I wanted it. I stayed for six years. It was invaluable.

  Around the same time I was at Microsoft, a company called Google, down in the Valley, was making a lot of noise with its online activities. The Google people were younger than the established Microsoft people and had a kind of energy and vision that was intoxicating. After about five years at Microsoft, one of the honchos from Google came up and arranged a secret meeting with me at one of those dark, woody bars with plants and subdued music and tried to take me away from Microsoft. I was already a millionaire, at least on paper. Google offered the real thing, money and stock, with none of that vesting stuff. I told her I would think about it. She came back twice more and made me salivate with the various projects I could be working on, literally creating the future. That rep was beautiful and whip-smart.

  Partly because my Microsoft stock options had fully vested, but mainly because I felt that I had learned about as much as I could at Microsoft, I accepted the offer to work at Google. It was a sad and painful experience to tell my managers that I would be leaving, and more painful to tell my friends there. I told my best friends that I would be back in touch with them at some point, because I was starting to get a vision for my future, and it did not involve working for a big company. It was all about getting skilled at the highest level and then deploying those skills in the most intelligent way. I left Microsoft with a net worth of around three million—not bad for a twenty-six-year-old kid.

  I moved to Palo Alto and started a new career track at Google: futurist. For the first six months, I roamed around and learned how things worked there and what they worked on. Mainly, I learned about systems in the online world. The hardware was easy: it went from A to B as instructed. Systems, networks, and the software to run them, that’s where the real power would be in the twenty-first century. And I was learning from the leaders.

  I was assigned to the email platform: mainly gmail.com, its cash cow. It was staggering how much information it suctioned from the users, and then it sold that same information, after it had been batched and over-analyzed, back to vendors and major corporations. I became adept in algorithms, which sounds a little dry, but in reality, algorithms can be lethal and produce billions of dollars (or euros, or francs, et cetera) daily if applied effectively. Just look at how algorithms are shaping the stock market, as one example. There’s also a lot of usage in the military, but you don’t hear much about that—well, sometimes information slips out about the NSA…
Remember TIA?

  After three years at Google, something was stirring in me. My work there was interesting and challenging, and I had made some good friends. But something was stirring: a need for autonomy. I was a team leader at Google—but it wasn’t my team. I started thinking about a change.

  One night, at a favorite bar near the Google campus, a professor at Stanford whom I knew took me aside. He said he had a friend who had taken a start-up business, a couple of software programs which he had turned into must-have apps, and sold it to IBM, but retained control and management. He was having some intrusions, some security breaches, and could not solve his problems. Neither could the professor. Would I like to take a look? Of course, I agreed, it would be different and maybe fun. I met with the friend, looked over his operation, including all of his proprietary systems, and discovered a small worm buried where no one else had looked. I was able to link it to an employee who had gotten into a drug problem, needed extra money, and sold out by sticking a thumb drive into her computer. I used my computer skills, plus some human engineering with the employee, to find out what had happened. When the matter was completed successfully and in just three days, the friend offered me twenty-five thousand dollars for the work.

  I had not even thought to ask for payment for this work when I had agreed to check it out. I had enjoyed it, a lot, and it opened my eyes. This was the kind of work that I would like to be doing. My future came to me in that moment. I spent the next three months planning and reviewing my skills and resources for what would be needed to be successful in my new business… and it would be my business!

  My skills deserve special mention. While I was at the University of Pittsburgh, in my second year, I had a girlfriend who was a yoga teacher. She took me to her yoga class. She wanted to expose me to these all-natural practices which gave her so much pleasure and good health. I was probably the least flexible person in that first class. Even with that, there was something about it that clicked: the energy, the peacefulness, the control it gave me over myself. I got it and was sold. Yoga was for me. I could do it wherever and whenever I wanted or needed it. It was self-contained; I did not have to go anywhere or buy any equipment. And it made me feel good, like nothing else. After a year, I went to an ashram and became a certified yoga teacher, and I started teaching yoga classes at the university and off campus at a yoga center. After teaching for a while, I took an advanced training and became what you might say is a master yoga teacher. I enjoyed it totally, and with more and more experience teaching all levels of students, from beginners to advanced, I got pretty good at it. I can say that my life now revolves around yoga. That’s the center, the core, and everything else—the business, the social, et cetera—needs to fit around my teaching and my personal yoga practice: good health and wellness are foundational to success in life, in business, in everything.