by Beck Rowland
“Sorry Zeny,” Davey said. “We had a good plan. I really thought we had him.”
“I thought so too,” Zenaida said. She turned to Ortega. “It looks like I underestimated our adversary. What happens next?”
“You’ve woken a sleeping giant. Expect Tucksworth to come after you— he’s going to hit you hard, wherever he can hurt you the most,” Ortega warned.
“How long do we have? Is there anything I can do to prepare?” Zenaida asked.
“It could be days, could be weeks. There’s no way to know,” Ortega shrugged.
It came sooner than they expected. While Zenaida grappled with her failure, she stayed busy by clearing the conference table. Cleaning always seemed to help her think. Something about the ordered, quiet ritual of wiping down tables, putting away rubbish, and tidying up made everything feel more manageable. They hadn’t finished the food, and since nobody felt much like partying any more, Zenaida boxed it up for Davey, Ortega and Mike to take home.
She was still boxing things up when the doorbell rang. She checked the control screen and saw a pizza delivery guy, bobbing his head and wearing a pair of oversized headphones.
“Mike, you ordered way too much food. Somebody’s gonna have to take the pizza home with them,” Zenaida sighed. “Davey, can you buzz this guy in?”
“Sorry, I don’t even remember ordering pizza. My pops and I will eat it though,” Mike said.
Davey tapped a button on the control and opened the front door. Moments later, the delivery guy strutted through the office. His headphones blared obnoxiously loud rap. He tapped a control on the side and the music fell mercifully quiet.
“Is one of you Zenaida Ruiz?” he asked, reading off a piece of paper.
“Guilty,” Zenaida said, raising her hand. The delivery guy walked across and set the pizza down on the table in front of Zenaida, then handed her the bill.
Zenaida opened the pizza box, then frowned. The box was empty. She squinted at the paper in her hand.
“Zenaida Ruiz, you’ve been served,” the delivery guy said. He spun on his heel and left, turning his terrible music back to full blast as he left.
“Mierda, I knew it!” Ortega shouted. “Freaking Tucksworth is launching his counter-attack.”
“Is it him, Zenaida?” Mike asked. “Is he suing?”
“I am being sued, but not by Tucksworth,” Zenaida said, blinking away stunned tears. Her head spun, and she sat down wobbly. If she didn’t sit, she was worried her legs might give out. “The lawsuit was filed by Lara Franklin... my best friend.”
Ortega explained the case details to Zenaida in brutal, clinical detail. The lawsuit painted Zenaida as an unscrupulous sleaze who had bilked her naive, unsuspecting friend for months of financial support. It claimed that Zenaida moved in after being involved in several violent altercations, which left Lara living in constant fear of her new roommate. Then, once Zenaida came into money, the suit claimed she visited only to gloat over Lara and her poor, beleaguered mother. The suit demanded damages for debilitating emotional distress, post-traumatic stress disorder, and reconstitution for unpaid rent and utilities.
“And there’s one more piece of bad news,” Ortega said. “It says here that Lara’s lawsuit…”
“Karen’s lawsuit,” Zenaida corrected.
“…is being helped by an anonymous donor. Someone very wealthy is paying $3,000 per hour for a team of hotshot lawyers to help Karen sue you,” Ortega said.
“Tucksworth,” Zenaida sighed. Ortega nodded.
“Looks like our initial guess was correct. This is a favored tactic of the ultra-rich. Instead of fighting you head-on, they like to find any preexisting conflicts you may have, then help bankroll your enemies. Keeps their hands clean and their name out of the papers,” Ortega explained.
Zenaida stood up and paced the room. She had started to feel trapped, anxious. “What should I do?” she asked.
“A counter-suit. Point out discrepancies in the case, call Karen to the stand. Lara as well. We’ll break down their story, expose the parts that don’t make sense,” Ortega said. There was a cold glint in her eyes. She was a shark that smelled blood in the water.
“I veto that one. Zenaida isn’t going to rake one of her best friends over the coals,” Davey said flatly.
“Well then, the other option is to settle. Offer a modest settlement, perhaps a million. You can afford the hit,” Ortega advised.
“None of their claims are true though,” Zenaida insisted.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ortega explained. “Hearsay or not, Lara comes across as a sympathetic underdog. Any jury would feel that way. The more you fight back, the more you come across as some rich, overbearing bully.”
“I’m not going to be forced to hand over money when I didn’t do anything wrong,” Zenaida protested. “Lara was my friend and I never treated her in any way less than that.”
“Well if you won’t consider a counter-suit, and you don’t want to settle, you’re only left with one option,” Ortega warned. “You’ll have to fight the lawsuit in court. I must warn you, this is the most dangerous option.”
“I thought you were one of the best lawyers in town?” Mike interjected.
“I am the best lawyer in town,” Ortega shot back. “But Tucksworth has paid for an entire legal team, and quantity has a quality all its own. If the case doesn’t end up going our way, you risk a sympathetic jury awarding Lara and Karen even larger damages. You could potentially lose everything.”
Zenaida rubbed the bridge of her nose. The idea of fighting a pitched legal battle against Lara struck her as fundamentally wrong. But so was settling— it wasn’t about the money, it was knowing it had been forcibly extracted by a phony lawsuit. The whole thing had given her a headache.
“This is a nightmare,” Zenaida sighed.
“It’s a distraction,” Mike said. “Look, pay a settlement, fight the case, whatever. Just don’t let Tucksworth distract you from what this is all about.”
“We can’t just ignore this. You and Lara need to—,” Davey began.
“No no, Mike is right,” Zenaida said. She turned to Ortega. “I’ll decide a strategy for the lawsuit later. Right now, we need to hit Tucksworth back. Weaken him so that he’s more amenable to our demands.”
“What do you have in mind?” Ortega asked.
Zenaida mulled it over in silence. What had she learned from her brief confrontation with Tucksworth? The man was as explosive and imposing as his reputation suggested. He was also a world-class bullshitter: his claims to respect user privacy had been delivered with a perfectly straight face. Given those traits, Tucksworth had probably crossed plenty of people on his path to the top of Silicon Valley.
“Whatever this thing with Lara is about, Tucksworth found out about and exploited it before I even realized she was mad at me,” Zenaida said. “Well, two can play at that game. I want a private investigator to do a deep dive on Jack Tucksworth. I’m talking about scrutiny down to the molecular level. Former employees, ex girlfriends, anybody. If he colored outside the lines in third grade, I want to talk to his teacher about it.”
Ortega gave a slow smile. “I know an investigator. He goes by Rashad, although that’s probably not his real name. Very discrete, very effective, but very high demand. I can call right now and see if he’s available.”
Zenaida nodded. Ortega tapped through her contact list, then set her phone on speaker and held it for Zenaida to hear. Rashad picked up on the first ring, but didn’t speak. Instead, they only heard the faint sound of breathing.
“Rashad. It’s Margaret Ortega. You’re on speaker with my boss. I’m calling to check your availability,” she said.
“Ortega… more union-busting for Tesla?” Rashad chuckled. He had a scratchy, raspy voice. It gave Zenaida the creeps.
“I’ve turned a new leaf, Rashad. Working for a new firm, focused on a new mission,” Ortega said. “Are you available or not?”
“Jack Tucksworth. Peeper CEO,” Ortega replied.
At first, Zenaida thought Rashad was having a coughing fit. After a few seconds, she realized he was laughing. It was a wheezy, raspy sound. “What’s so funny?” Zenaida demanded. She was getting tired of the reactions people had to hearing Tucksworth’s name.
“You’re the fifth person I’ve had request dirt on Tucksworth in the past year. The man has made a lot of enemies,” Rashad said. “Unfortunately, he’s also been proactive about neutering potential threats before they can become a thorn in his side.”
“Let me guess,” Ortega ventured. “He went after a few former employees for violating their non-disclosure agreement? Sued the bejeezus out of them, bankrupting them in order to act as a deterrent to others?”
“More or less,” Rashad concurred. “A few people spoke to the press about him in Peeper’s early days and he hit them so hard, barely any of the other sources I found would risk speaking with me, even years later. And believe me, my search was extremely exhaustive.”
Ortega shook her head, visibly disheartened. Mike threw up his hands in silent frustration.
“You said you could barely find a single source,” Zenaida asked. “But you must have found at least one, right?”
“One potential source,” Rashad clarified. “An ex-girlfriend, from way back before his Peeper days. She was willing to speak with me, but only in person. She didn’t want anything on paper, nothing in writing.”
“So what did she say?” Zenaida asked.
“Never found out. I’m based in New York and the ex lives in Centreville, Illinois, a tiny little town on the other side of the country. My clients would have had to foot the bill for my flight, lodging, per diem. These clients weren’t wealthy people, just disgruntled former employees. They all opted to cancel the investigation instead,” Rashad said. Zenaida could hear the shrug in his voice.
Ortega glanced at Zenaida, who gave a firm nod.
“Rashad, my boss is a wealthy person, and we’re working on a fairly tight schedule” Ortega said. “How soon can you be on a plane to Illinois?”
“I can leave later this evening, if your boss doesn’t mind the cost of last minute tickets,” Rashad said.
Zenaida turned to Mike and whispered. “Can you jump on the call and coordinate Rashad’s tickets and expenses? Make sure he knows additional funds are available if the ex-girlfriend needs a little persuasion. I’m going to step out,” she said.
Mike nodded, then whispered back. “No problem.”
Davey gave Zenaida a worried look. “Where are you going?”
“Lara and Karen’s stupid lawsuit is still on my mind. I’m going to Murph’s,” Zenaida replied. “I need to kick the crap out of something.”
Zenaida waited anxiously for Rashad’s report. With every passing day, the DataVortex hearing crept ever closer. It was four days before it finally arrived.
The team had been gathered around the conference table, busy with the behind the scenes work necessary to turn ZenCorp from an empty office and an idea, into a full fledged corporation. Davey had helped them set up a basic website, while Mike worked on accounting and the company’s financial structure. Zenaida was on one of the Macbooks shopping for office furniture. Eventually they’d need to hire more staff, and they couldn’t run operations from a single conference table forever.
Suddenly Ortega rushed inside, an excited grin on her face. “We’ve got him!” she said. She held up a manila folder, waving it around above her head.
“Rashad’s report?!” Zenaida exclaimed. “Come on, let’s hear it!”
Ortega opened the folder and flipped through the papers inside. “It starts with notes from his interview. The ex-girlfriend says Tucksworth is proud, arrogant, blah blah. Likes to bully people around but secretly soft beneath the bluster. They broke up through mutual agreement, blah blah. You can read in detail later.”
“C’mon, get to the good stuff,” Mike urged.
“At the end of the interview, Rashad asked the ex if Tucksworth ever discussed Peeper with her. Turns out they exchanged emails about it, right when the company was first being formed,” Ortega announced. “Tucks wanted to get back together with her, so he kept bragging about his company to impress her.”
“Please tell me we got a copy of those emails,” Davey said.
“We got lucky; the ex was in a bad spot financially. This email cost a hundred thousand dollars,” Ortega said, holding up a paper.
Ortega passed the paper to Davey, who read it aloud.
“Lately I’ve been busy with my new company. It’s called Peeper, a social network that’s already growing rapidly fast. We let users add graphical overlays to their photos in exchange for a small payment and the right to use their financial info for marketing analytics. The amount of data we’re pulling in will make us a fortune! The numb fucks handing over their info have no idea how sensitive that data is, yet they’re trusting it to me… of all people!”
“Oh wow,” Zenaida breathed. “Calling Peeper users numb fucks for trusting him with their data? This is perfect! We run this in the media and people will finally see how full of it Tucksworth is! Nobody will ever trust him with anything ever again.”
Ortega smiled. “Well, I’m not sure it’ll have that big an impact, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.”
“Are you kidding? Peeper will start hemorrhaging users immediately. Who’s gonna give their data to someone who says shit like this?” Zenaida asked. She slammed a fist into her palm and grinned. “Mike, can you start reaching out to publishers? Newspaper, news channels, everybody.”
Mike spent the rest of the afternoon hunched over a Macbook, phone wedged between his shoulder and ear as he discussed with reporters. His first calls were to the major mainstream news sources, offering exclusive first-run rights on the story. Ortega chipped in, adding business publications, financial papers, and tech-focused journalists who would be interested in exposing Peeper. Zenaida paced the room and listened. It was taking a lot longer than she expected.
The realization sunk in gradually, one unsuccessful call after another. Nobody wanted to run the story. The deterrent effect of Tucksworth’s wealth, connections, and reputation became increasingly clear as each publication politely declined to run the story.
As word spread through the journalism industry, Mike and Ortega started having trouble reaching their contacts. Editors were suddenly tied up in meetings. Writers were out sick. It was a collective cold shoulder.
“I was afraid of this,” Ortega admitted. “At the end of the day, business comes down to interpersonal relationships. Tucksworth’s hyper-aggro ‘tech bro’ image and reputation for being a tough sonuvabitch is probably his single most valuable asset.”
“We’re not giving up,” Zenaida announced. “Mike, let’s change tact. Start reaching out to tech blogs, especially those that have run critical pieces on social networks before. We’re not stopping until someone agrees to run this story.”
In the end, they found a major tech blog that agreed to make the Tucksworth email expose their top story. It only took a few hours for their journalists to get the story online. By evening, Zenaida was watching the story spread across the Internet. Ironically, much of the web traffic towards the story was driven by Peeper itself. Zenaida wondered how long it would take users to begin deleting their accounts, or at least stop giving Peeper their credit card information.
She smiled to herself as she reviewed the web traffic numbers. Tucksworth had blocked her first attack, but he would find it much harder to combat the combined outrage of millions of users. With the court hearing only twenty four hours away, it finally seemed things were turning their way.
The next day, Davey finished work early and came by the ZenCorp office. He tapped away at a laptop, alternating between working on updates to the ZenCorp website and browsing the Internet. Zenaida had ordered Kore
an-Mexican fusion for dinner, and the ZenCorp team were dining on Bulgogi Tacos while they worked.
“You’re not going to get in trouble for cutting out of work early to help ZenCorp, are you?” Zenaida asked. “I know your regular job is still important to you.”
Davey grinned. “My manager might be pissed, but once my IT Cert arrives in the mail there won’t be much he can say. They’ll put me in charge of my own team and I’ll be on the same level as him… maybe even higher.”
“Good to know. How’s our website coming along?” Zenaida asked around a mouthful of taco.
“Sorry, I was taking a break from coding and—” Suddenly Davey leaned forward and groaned. “Crap, a new tech story just broke: Jack Tucksworth announces Peeper Augmented Reality,” he read. “The feature will allow Peeper users to transform 2D photographs of their friends into 3D models, then interact with them virtually. The story is pushing your email expose out of the headlines.”
“What?!” Zenaida exclaimed. “He can’t change the narrative that easily.”
“It’s already kicking in. Look at this part: industry analysts expect the new feature to increase Peeper userbase by up to 17% over the next quarter,” Davey said. Zenaida glanced at the article, then groaned.
“Damnit…” she cursed quietly. She pushed her tacos away. Bad news always made her lose her appetite.
“Listen, are you sure you want to keep doing this? The Peeper DataVortex case is tomorrow and… it’s not looking good,” Ortega said. She wore a tired, worried expression.
Zenaida shot her a sharp look and frowned. “You think I should give up?”
“Your first attack fizzled when Tucksworth deployed those drones, and we’re still dealing with his counterattack,” Ortega reminded her. “Lara’s lawsuit hasn’t gone away, and we still haven’t even formulated a response yet. Now your second attack is failing, and who knows what Tucksworth’s counterattack will be...”
