The day after we sign the office lease and pay three months security deposit, the furniture arrives. This includes: ten desks and cubicles, ten Aeron chairs ($1,400 apiece), five gun-metal gray filing cabinets, a new foosball table ($800), and an old Ms. Pac-Man arcade game ($495, not including freight). I have been told by Peter Room that these last two items are required if we hope to hire competent computer programmers.
After the furniture arrives, we bring in the computers. Because we are racing the clock, we have little time to actually interview people and hire computer experts. No matter: All it takes is one phone call. Peter Room and I get on the speakerphone with a Silicon Valley temp agency, whose principal, Bo Ringwald, proclaims that he is a talent agent to “the world’s smartest people.” I say to Bo Ringwald, “I need five IT guys to help me set up a computer infrastructure for a brand-new company.”
“Five IT guys?” Bo Ringwald says. “Done.”
“How much?” I ask.
Bo Ringwald laughs, as if such a question is ridiculous. “Do you care?” He is used to dealing with entrepreneurs flush with cash from their first round of VC funding. In a world where profitability is not expected or sought, how can cost be a concern?
“Not really,” I say, getting into the spirit of it.
The five computer guys amble into the office the next day at various times during the morning. Engineers regard 9-to-5 as a helpful suggestion. As long as you show up before noon, you are ambitious.
When enough of them arrive that we have achieved some kind of critical mass, Peter and I lead them down the hall and show them an empty windowless room with its own air-conditioning unit.
“I need an impressive-looking server room,” I say.
Their leader, a lanky dude with a soul-patch, asks, “What do you need the computers to do?”
I shrug. “Blink lights, mostly.”
The soul-patch dude nods, as if he gets this kind of request all the time. “How many computers?” he asks.
“How many can you fit in the room?” I say.
His eyes light up. It’s like asking Dale Earnhardt Jr. to soup up your car however he sees fit.
While the computer guys excitedly discuss their upcoming trip to Fry’s Electronics—the geek retail mecca in Palo Alto—arguing about what to buy, I take Peter into one of our three conference rooms.
I lay out the general outlines of the con. I trust Peter, and he is a good man, but details are dangerous. So I stick with broad strokes. I describe the piece of software I want him to build, which we will use to snare Ed Napier.
“Can you do that?” I say.
“Sure.”
“In three days?”
Peter smiles and points to me, as if to say, Whenever I talk to you, there is always a catch.
“Three days,” he says. He runs his fingers through his long red hair, dreamily, like a girl in a shampoo commercial. He thinks about it. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “I think so.”
“Then get to work.”
I wander around the vast offices. The place feels like the Astrodome after everyone goes home and they turn off the lights: creepy and empty.
At one end of the cavern, the computer geeks are still arguing at the door of the server room, debating the merits of Linux versus Windows. To call the debate academic, since the computers they are about to install need not actually do anything, is to belabor the point. This is what computer people like to do—argue about operating systems. Asking them to stop would only raise suspicions that something is not quite right here at Pythia Corporation.
I find Jess in another dark corner, playing Ms. Pac-Man. A can of Coke rests on the game table, which is helpfully equipped with a cup holder. Without looking up, she says, “Did you know that a cherry is worth a hundred points?”
“Whose cherry?” I ask.
She smiles.
I say, “I think you’ll run into Ed Napier on Thursday.”
“That’s fine.”
“Are you willing to go through with it?”
Still not looking up: “Go through with what?” She slams the game joystick left, then up. The table shudders. The Coke shimmies in the cup holder.
“Whatever it takes.”
“Whatever it takes,” she repeats. “That’s mighty Silicon Valley of you.”
“I mean, you don’t have to do it.”
For the first time, she looks up at me. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” I say. “Just concerned.”
“Don’t be.” From the game: a wah-wah-wah melting sound, as Jess’s cheese gets fatally gobbled.
“That’s fine.” I turn and walk away.
“But I appreciate it,” she calls after me. “You being jealous.”
I am about to protest that I am not jealous, but I realize the words will be hollow—and untruthful. So I say, “Thursday,” and leave to rejoin the debate over Linux versus Windows, which suddenly seems quite compelling.
When I arrive home in the evening, Toby is lying on the couch watching a professional wrestling match on the television, in which two near-naked men slap and grapple each other to the frantic screams of the announcers.
I shut the door behind me and say, “Hi, Toby.”
He doesn’t turn around. He’s been living with me the past week. What originally seemed like a good idea—an opportunity for father-son bonding—has lost some luster. Toby is waylaid by a half-length leg cast and crutches, medicated with Percodan and beer, and has a hard time moving. So he spends his time on the couch while I am in the office. Wrestling is his new hobby.
Watching wrestling.
He says, as a greeting, “Did you know you can’t lower the volume on this TV?”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Annoying,” he says.
“You want to go out?” I ask. “For drinks?” Alcohol may be the only way to lure Toby from the apartment.
“Gee, Dad, I’d really love to go out on the town with you,” he says, deadpan. “It’s just that I can’t actually, you know, move.”
I shrug, throw my keys on the table near the entry. I head for the bathroom.
Toby says, “That Mexican fella came by.”
I stop in my tracks. “Mexican?”
“Your landlord.”
“The young guy?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s Arabian,” I explain. “Maybe Egyptian.”
“Interesting,” Toby says to the TV, not sounding particularly interested. On the screen, to the jeers of the crowd, one of the wrestlers climbs atop the ropes of the ring and prepares to launch himself, airborne, onto the windpipe of his supine opponent. “Anyway, he was real nosy. Asking a lot of questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Who I am. What you do for a living.”
I wait for Toby to continue. He does not. On the television, the wrestler flies off the ropes and lands with a thud on the canvas, barely missing the gullet of his opponent.
I say, “What did you tell him?”
“Tell him? That you’re a con man and that you cheat people out of their hard-earned money.”
“No you didn’t,” I say, suddenly appreciative of his dry sense of humor. But then I realize I’m not entirely certain he has one. So I say: “Did you?”
“No, knucklehead. I told him you’re an entrepreneur.”
“Much better,” I say.
“And that’s how you cheat people out of money.”
I leave Toby and his roomful of irony to go to the bathroom, where I piss and wash my hands and face. I stare at myself in the mirror. I look beat. The days of preparation before the con, where your time is spent waiting and planning, are the most exhausting. Once you’re on stage, adrenaline kicks in, and everything takes on a nervous edge. Until then, you fight boredom and torpor. I splash cold water on my face.
I return to the living room and join Toby, squeezing beside him on the couch.
“Anyway, I
was thinking,” Toby says.
“Oh?”
“Maybe I can help.”
“With what?”
“Whatever you’re doing. Your—you know . . . your job.”
“My job?” I repeat stupidly. I’m so amazed that he’s proposing it, I don’t know what else to say.
He thinks I don’t understand what he’s talking about. That he needs to be more specific. He says: “The con job you’re doing. I can help.”
I shake my head. “But . . . you’re . . .” I wave at his cast. “Injured.”
“I have crutches. I can get around. I’ll say it was a skiing accident. Lots of people have casts.”
I shake my head. “But the whole point of this,” I explain, “is to protect you. To help you get out of trouble.”
“Is it?”
“So I don’t want you involved in something that could . . . go wrong.”
“You asked that woman to help. The hot one.”
He means Jess. “But she’s a friend.”
“What am I?”
“You’re my son.”
For the first time, he turns to me. “Dad, you’re risking your entire life for me. I haven’t told you how much I appreciate it.”
“You’re my son,” I say again.
“So let me help. You’re doing something for me. Let me contribute. I’m a grown man now, as much as you refuse to believe it. I can make adult decisions.”
“Toby, if something goes wrong . . .”
“Then we’re going down. I know. But at least we’ll go down together. Father and son. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?”
No, I want to say. The way it’s supposed to be is that the father protects the son. That the son climbs atop the father’s shoulders, so the son can reach further. That the son leaves the father behind.
But I am overcome by selfishness. I relish the chance to show Toby my world, which I have hidden from him for so long. I never realized I possessed it, but his request unlocks the floodgates of my desire, and suddenly I want to show Toby everything: the weeks of preparation, the care, the planning, the skill. For so long, Toby has known me as the loser in Lompoc, the white-collar criminal who cheated Midwestern fatties out of their money. Now I can show him who I really am: a professional, someone who has worked for years—his whole life—perfecting an art.
I say halfheartedly, “Toby, it’s not a good idea.”
But he and I both know the same thing: that this argument is like the wrestling match now on the television in front of us—not even remotely a fair fight—and, like the blond muscleman with the glistening oiled pecs, Toby won the match even before he stepped into the ring.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It’s Thursday morning and I’m following Ed Napier in my Honda, twenty yards back. I’ve been tailing him all week, so that now we’re old friends. Like a lover, I know his schedule, his peccadilloes. Each morning, he rises at six, exits his Woodside estate by the north gate, and chats for a minute with a security man who looks like a former linebacker. Then Napier, dressed in gray sweats, sets off down Skyline Boulevard and jogs a three-mile loop. He returns home at six-thirty and disappears into the mansion, presumably to shower. At eight o’clock he pulls out of the driveway in a cherry-red Mercedes SL convertible, top down, and heads over to Buck’s for breakfast. Three out of the four days that I have followed, he has a meeting while he eats.
What I see through the restaurant’s big front window is this: Two young men sit across from him, too nervous to touch their pancakes, while they walk Napier through a PowerPoint presentation on their laptop. Napier chews contentedly while they tap—tap—tap the spacebar of their keyboard to advance the presentation to the next slide. Each time they peer intently at Napier to divine his reaction: Should they advance to the next slide? Talk more about this one? Move on to the next section? Speed up? Slow down?
In case you ever have an opportunity to present to Ed Napier, here’s a hint: Speed up.
Like a churlish teen, Napier can’t control his display of emotion. Typically that emotion is boredom. So as the young men talk about their company, describing no doubt how they will become the next Microsoft, Napier’s eyelids droop. His chewing slows. His body slouches.
Inevitably the entrepreneurs don’t notice. So they go on talking, about Internet this, or IP that—about monetizing eyeballs, or eyeballing money—about portals and gateways—until, mercifully, the check comes, and Napier grabs it and says his goodbye.
After Buck’s, Napier heads to his office, a low-slung building near the Redwood City Marina. He parks in the underground lot and disappears from my view for the next three hours, which he probably spends on his speakerphone, his voice booming through the office, driving his receptionist and assistant crazy.
At twelve noon, like clockwork, he reappears, and pulls his Mercedes out of the garage and hightails it to lunch. Usual destination: Zibibbo’s, in Palo Alto. Typical duration: two hours. Typical beverage: a bottle of Sancerre.
More meetings at lunch. Most of them seem to be with fawning reporters, since they take copious notes while they converse, and some carry their own cameras. However, I also witness one meeting with an attractive young redhead who, I suspect, never went to journalism school. I doubt that Mrs. Lauren Napier will ever learn about this lunch.
After lunch, Napier typically calls it a day. He heads back to his Woodside house, where he disappears from view, or over to the Menlo Club for a round of golf before having drinks on the veranda.
Not exactly a tough life. And not a workaholic’s. But if I had a couple billion dollars in my bank account, I’m not sure I’d work any harder—or even, come to think of it, at all.
Now it’s eight o’clock in the morning, and I’m following Napier as he pulls his red Mercedes out of his estate. As soon as he turns left on Woodside and I’m sure he’s heading to Buck’s for breakfast, I take out my cell phone and dial Jess. She’s already stationed at the restaurant, waiting for Napier’s entrance.
She picks up my call on the first ring. “Yes?” she says.
“He’s coming. He’ll be there in five.”
“I’m ready,” she says.
“Good luck.”
“I’ll see you in an hour,” she says, and hangs up.
I follow three car-lengths behind Napier as far as the Buck’s parking lot. When I see him climb from the Mercedes and head into the restaurant, I speed off toward Pythia’s offices. I know exactly what will happen to Ed Napier next. It has been scripted and planned. This is the pickup. This is where Ed Napier thinks he is in charge, that he is making all the decisions, that his life is under his own control. But a con man knows something different: that your choices are never your own, that when you choose your own path, you are actually walking into a trap that has been laid for you. Walking happily. In a big rush.
Here is what happens next.
Napier walks into the restaurant, perhaps intending to meet young entrepreneurs for a pitch, or perhaps simply to eat alone. No matter: When he sees Jess sitting by herself at a table in the front of the room, looking at her watch, annoyed, he jettisons whatever plans he has.
He saunters to her table. “Hi,” he says to her. “Jessica Smith, right?”
She looks up. “Yes.” For a moment her face remains blank. She knows him from somewhere, but where? Then, a flash of recognition, and a bright smile, big and white, enough to melt any man’s heart. “Yes,” she says again. “Mr. Napier.”
“Please,” he says. “Mr. Napier was my dad. Call me Ed.”
“Ed.”
“Coming or leaving?” he asks.
“Here for a meeting,” she says. She looks at her watch again. “But I was stood up. You VCs. So selfish.”
“Tell me his name and I’ll have him killed.”
“Wouldn’t that make me an accomplice?”
“It’s not a crime if you don’t get caught,” he says. Pulling up a chair, sitting down, he asks, “Can I join you?”
“Sure.”
“Have you ordered?”
“No.”
“My treat.” He waves his hand at the waitress. She comes and takes their order. Napier requests his usual: a Lumberjack—two eggs over easy, three silver-dollar pancakes, bacon. Jess orders the same.
When the waitress leaves, Napier leans over the table, as if to confide in Jess. He says, “I looked up Pythia in the encyclopedia.”
“Sorry?”
“Pythia. Isn’t that the name of your company? I looked her up. She was the prophet at Delphi. In ancient Greece.”
“Very good.”
“But I still don’t get it,” he says.
“Get what?”
“What the name means.”
Jess says, “The Greeks believed she could see the future. Men traveled hundreds of miles to hear her speak.”
“I see,” Napier says, though he doesn’t. He thinks about it. Then he says: “So what does your company do, see the future?”
Jess smiles. “What we do is—” She stops mid-sentence, shakes her head. “Franklin would kill me if he knew I was talking to you.”
“Franklin?”
“My partner.”
It takes Napier a minute to recall me. “Oh, the older guy.”
“He thinks we shouldn’t tell anyone what we do.”
Napier nods. “A lot of people are like that. Too secretive. Like I’m going to walk out of the meeting and run into my secret laboratory, to reproduce what they’ve spent years working on. As if I could.”
“Franklin’s a very suspicious person.”
It is at this point, I suspect, that Napier asks: “You and Franklin—are you . . .” He gestures vaguely with his hands.
“Together? Oh no. We’re just business associates.”
Napier’s face shows relief. Maybe he leans over the table, with lupine grace. “I can’t say I’m disappointed to hear that.”
Jess says, “What are you doing after breakfast?”
Napier shrugs. Is it possible? Is she coming on to him?
She continues, “Come over to my office. I’ll show you what we do.”
Con Ed Page 12
