by Thomas Waite
A look of terror crossed Rob’s face. “Dylan, what are you talking about?”
“God damn it, Rob, I know everything.” He leaned forward, pressing his face to within two inches of Rob’s. “And you’ve just removed any doubt I might have had by taking the bait and stealing Christine’s hard drive.” He moved his arm away from Rob’s throat, grasped him by the shirt, and pulled him away from the wall, spinning him around. He gave Rob a final push that sent him sprawling across the room.
“Help me out here, Dylan.” Rob’s voice shook. “I really don’t understand what you’re talking about. I just didn’t want the police to get our files, so. . . .”
“Fuck you! Selling out our Hyperfōn work to LC for ten million dollars?”
Rob’s face went pale. “What?”
“I’ve got the files, Rob. The spamming campaign, the cooked books, the payoffs for our mobile computing clients’ software, the offshore bank accounts. Everything. You must have known when LC approached you that you couldn’t do this without help. I’m sure Art and Christine jumped at the idea of selling out Hyperfōn for some quick money. They certainly had no loyalty to Joe. Getting millions of dollars instantly from LC was a lot better than waiting for revenues from Hyperfōn. Now I understand why you defended them and their decisions so often. I should have seen that tide turning, but I didn’t.”
“There must be some mistake,” Rob pleaded. “I really don’t know anything about any of this.”
“You’re lying,” Dylan said, crossing the room in three bounding steps and pulling Rob’s collar tight around his neck. “It was right in front of my nose all the time, but I didn’t see it. I know you gave the Hyperfōn plan to LC, Rob. You didn’t remember that while Hyperfōn was our client, way before Mantric, we built our own tags into the system. That was your biggest mistake. That’s the mistake that will take you down. No one from Mantric knew of those tags, only you. It was you, not Matt, who was in charge of checking the records between LC and Mantric to see if there was a connection—to see if any of our people had a windfall they couldn’t account for. But you didn’t check yourself, did you? You had access to the Hyperfōn model while we were still at MobiCelus. And the second you heard I wanted Matt to look into it as well, you sent him home to sleep. He was working too hard, you said. He needed some time to rest, you said. So considerate of you. And then you called Art and told him he had to fire Matt. But I never saw it because I trusted you.”
Rob’s eyes widened, his mouth opened, but the words didn’t come.
Dylan pulled the collar even tighter, choking Rob. “God damn it, Rob! Just take the responsibility and admit it, for once in your life!”
Rob’s face turned red, and he gasped for air. He nodded, and Dylan relaxed his grip.
“Okay,” Rob said, struggling to speak. “You’re right. I did hand over the Hyperfōn plan.”
“That’s a start.” Dylan stared hard at Rob. “And now tell me about the Bendeta Corporation.”
Rob froze for a moment. “Okay,” he gasped, sagging against the wall. “I won’t deny I was supposed to do that too, but I didn’t do it yet. Listen, this wasn’t my fault! Art told me to do it. He told me there was big money in it, and if I didn’t follow his orders he’d kick me out onto the street. He was holding Hyperfōn over my head.”
“You little fucker,” Dylan screamed. He grabbed Rob, pulled him forward, then pushed him back, hard. There was a dull thud as Rob’s head smashed against the wall. “Why, Rob? Why did you do it?”
Rob slumped down onto the floor. “For the money. I was broke and I needed the money.”
Dylan looked away for a moment then rushed back and kicked him in the gut. “Ten million! Ten—fucking—million!”
Rob let out a moan and gasped to catch his breath.
“You bastard! You actually squandered all the money you got when we were acquired? So you did this to keep up the ridiculous lifestyle you created for yourself? Christ, all you had to do was live within your means until the legitimate payday came when your stock vested. You’re pathetic.” Dylan made another motion towards Rob, who instinctively put up his arms to protect himself from further attack. “Stand up, you piece of shit.”
Rob didn’t move.
“I said stand up.”
Rob slowly took his arms down and stood.
“You think money is that important? It was just something to have because you didn’t have anything else. Tony was the boy genius, Heather was the talented designer with the amazing computer skills, and I’m the one who brought in the clients. We all drove the business. All you had was your good looks and your precious Harvard MBA. All you could do was add.”
“Dylan, please.”
“You wanted to be the rich guy, the guy who made money. You wanted lots of money, and you didn’t care how you got it.” Dylan clenched his fists.
“I’m sorry.” Rob’s mind rushed through answers. “It was Heather, man. She has such expensive tastes. Everything has to be the best. You don’t know what I went through trying to please her. I was addicted to her, I know. But listen, she’s out of my life now. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll do whatever you say. Whatever it takes.”
Dylan stared at Rob, unable to respond to his lies about Heather, angry enough to kill Rob. “You can’t give me what I want.” Dylan’s words were slow and precise. “And the funny thing is I think I’d be better off if Tony really had just died in a stupid, idiotic accident. I could have grieved, and healed, and maybe after a decade or two had the satisfaction of knowing it was so like Tony to die like that.”
“I think the police are wrong about that,” Rob spoke in a rush of words. “I’m sure it wasn’t murder. How could it be?”
“You tell me. You were there.” He watched Rob’s handsome face stiffen, his blue eyes flicker. But there was no telltale tick or sudden flush. He did not move at all. “No comment?” he demanded.
Rob licked his lips. “I’m not sure what to say. Are you asking me what I think?”
“No. I’m telling you I know you did it.”
“Okay.” Rob held up his hands. “Dylan. I know you’re upset. And I know you have every right to be. But I was at the office at the time, remember?”
“No you weren’t.”
“Dylan, we conferenced that afternoon. You know where I was. We’ve been over this.”
“I know, and I missed it. I assumed you were in your office, the way I always assume whoever I’m conferencing with on the VPN is where I think they should be, where they were the last time I talked to them, where they tell me they are. The way you thought I was in New York when actually I was here, in Christine’s office.”
“Dylan, I really was in my office. But even if I wasn’t, even if I was at home, at an Internet café, or anywhere else, I was talking to you on the VPN at four. Didn’t you tell me the time of death had been established between 3:30 and 4:30?”
“Yeah.”
“So how could I be both on the VPN and killing Tony at four o’clock?”
“You joined the conference from Tony’s computer. It was on when you got to his place. It was on when you left. It was on when I got there. You killed him, logged out of his account, and logged into yours. My God, when I think I was talking with you—what? Ten minutes after you killed him? With him lying there on the floor?”
Rob brushed a shaking hand through his disheveled hair. “That’s—no. Dylan, really, I think you’re being delusional.” Rob searched for words, tried to sound confident.
“How could you do it, Rob? How could you be capable of such a thing?” Dylan grabbed Rob by the front of his shirt and pulled him forward until Rob’s face was within inches of his own. “Tony was our friend!” He smelled the scent of fear on Rob’s stale breath.
Rob’s eyes flashed, but he did not resist. “I’m not going to fight you.”
“Tony was on to you, wasn’t he? He asked Heather’s advice about how to handle a sticky problem. And I thought he was talking about Art when he said
he had evidence about something big, but it was you. You selling out Hyperfōn. How did he find out?”
Panic continued to build; Rob grasped for an answer that didn’t come. “I don’t know. I found him there. He was already dead.”
Dylan’s eyes flashed in disbelief. “Right. And for some bizarre reason you didn’t call the police.”
“I panicked. I had a guilty conscience. I thought they’d think it was me.”
“I’m sure you did. Did he ask you to come over to talk to you? I bet he did. That was Tony. He always believed people had their reasons for what they did. I bet he even offered to help.”
Rob looked away, breathing heavily. He said nothing but scanned the walls, searching for some scrap that would convince Dylan of his innocence.
“Let me guess. He made the mistake of telling you he hadn’t told anyone yet. And you saw that as your way out. You saw a way you wouldn’t have to lose everything. Once you saw how easy it was to make millions without losing your job or your reputation—without earning it—you just couldn’t stop, could you? And the only person who stood in your way was Tony!” Rob turned his face away, but not before Dylan saw the spasm of anger cross his face. Dylan released him and stepped back. “How did it go down, Rob?”
Rob turned slowly, his demeanor changed. “One day he said he knew something was wrong, something he wanted to talk to me about. There was something in the way he looked at me, the way he spoke, that told me he knew it all. I knew then I had to find out more, that I had to do something to convince him not to say anything. I stopped by to find out what he knew.”
“And? Come on! Don’t fuck with me, Rob!” Dylan demanded.
Rob stood up straight. “We were supposed to meet at a restaurant, but I didn’t want to talk about it in public, so I went to his house early. As soon as he answered the door, I saw by the look on his face he knew why I was there. He told me about looking at the Hyperfōn account, and it took him no time at all to put two and two together. He knew I was living beyond my means, and when he told me I had to tell you about this—Dylan—I got angry. I was tired of being the one person in the group who had to hang onto everyone else’s shirttails. I wanted out of this group, and Hyperfōn was my ticket. I shoved him and he fell, hitting his head. He was unconscious, so I stripped an electric cord from his workroom, wrapped it around him, and plugged it in. The bare end of the wire electrocuted him. I thought it would look like an accident.” Rob, bereft of all emotion, turned and stared at Dylan. “You just don’t understand, Dylan. He was in the way.”
Dylan stepped back from Rob, unable to speak for several moments, and then he turned his head and called. “Did you get it all?” he asked.
“What?” Rob said.
Heather stepped through the slightly opened door with an mp3 recorder in her hand. “Yes, absolutely everything.” She walked over to Rob and just stared at him.
“What are you doing here?” Rob asked.
“Getting to the truth.” She drew back her open hand and struck him across the face, forcing him backward into the wall. She turned back to Dylan. “We need to call the police. Right now.”
Chapter 33
June 15, 8:30 a.m. Boston
An early summer storm had raged up the Atlantic coast, bringing showers quickly followed by intense heat and oppressive humidity. Small pools of water shimmered on the road below.
Dylan and Heather sat on Dylan’s rooftop deck, their feet propped up on the railings. Heather, her hair in a ponytail, was dressed in a flowing brown cotton skirt and a peach-colored top that left her arms and most of her shoulders bare against the blazing heat. She looked a lot like the college girl who had caught Dylan’s attention several years earlier. Dylan wore his favorite khaki shorts, an old MIT T-shirt, and Top-Siders without socks.
Every once in a while, a slight breeze wafted across the roof, causing just a hint of relief from the heat, but little more than that. Sweat trickled down the back of Heather’s shirt. She focused her attention on a man walking a dog on the brick sidewalk below.
Dylan took a long sip from a large glass of iced coffee. A cold drop of sweat from the glass wandered down his hand and meandered in a crooked path further down his arm to his elbow. He wiped his arm on his shirt, opened up his iPad, and started reading the business section of Boston.com.
“Hey, listen to this one. ‘Mantric’s stock scraped along for the last week at pennies a share due to the frantic efforts of a host of mid-level managers as they attempted to salvage what little remains of the company. Yesterday, Art Williams and Christine Rohnmann, once the darlings of the technology world, were formally charged with fraud, causing the once proud MNTR symbol to quietly disappear from the list of public companies trading on the NASDAQ.’” He closed the cover of his iPad and adjusted his sunglasses.
Heather turned to him. “I feel sorry for Stephanie and Sandeep and those left behind, but they really need to just give it up and move on.”
“At least one person is never going to be allowed to move on,” he said, his voice edgy and angry.
Heather nodded slowly, knowing he was talking about Rob. The betrayal was still raw for both of them. She decided to change the subject and snatched Dylan’s iPad. She flipped through various news sites and scanned the financial pages. “Wow! The press really has whipped itself into a frenzy over this. It’s amazing how they’ve filled their pages with self-righteous claims of the inevitability of something like this. They’re so angry, they’re blaming Mantric for the NASDAQ’s seven consecutive days of decline.”
Dylan nodded. “Yep. And in another week, Mantric will become old news when some new scandal feeds their insatiable appetites.”
Dylan had spent the first few days of the collapse being interviewed by an Assistant U.S. Attorney named Morgan Banion. Her interest in the story peaked when he provided details on the information in Schedule B, but waned when she deemed that any other information was not pertinent to the case, or more accurately, to her success.
He watched Heather out of the corner of his eye. She was engrossed in the iPad. He reached up and caught an errant curl that had skittered across her face, and moved it behind her ear. She smiled.
Dylan thought about the world of things that had happened in the past few weeks. He’d lost almost everything except for his condo, which luckily he had enough cash to cover. Heather lost her own condo in Cambridge and ended up collecting unemployment. Dylan offered her his extra room. She agreed, with absolutely no interest in the “extra” room. Their future was uncertain, and they both agreed to take life as it came, clinging to that understanding.
He realized their relationship would never really go back to what it was just a few months earlier, especially when the two other people they had been closest to were now gone from their lives. So much of what they thought they had known about the world had been completely overturned. At least their shared experience had bonded them together; moreover, Dylan knew he wanted to be with her. He grinned as that errant tress wriggled away from her ear and blew across her face again.
“Did you see where Art and Christine failed to post bond of one million each?” said Dylan.
“Frankly, I’m surprised. I thought for sure Christine or Art or both of them would be able to snatch such a small amount out of one of their ‘off-shore’ accounts!” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and laughed. She pulled the hair away from her face and attempted to, once again, anchor it behind her ear.
He laughed too and topped off their glasses. They turned their attention to well-dressed men and women six stories below, who had places to go and money to make. “It seems odd not to be part of that bustling crowd,” he said, leaning his arms on the railing and staring down at the activity below. “To have nowhere to go and nothing to do.”
“You give any thought to doing another start-up?”
“I don’t know. Guess I’d need to find another catchy name.”
A warm breeze wafted across his arms.
&nbs
p; “It was Tony’s idea. MobiCelus.”
“So it was.” He half-smiled, remembering.
She flashed him a dazzling smile, placed the iPad on the deck, and stretched. “I’m going to have to do something soon. I’m running out of all the money I don’t have.”
“Me too. I can’t plan on living on my savings and investments forever.” He took a sip of his cold drink. “Joe Ferrano called me Saturday. I filled him in on the details I could talk about. He’s pretty shook up. He liked Rob.” Dylan stopped and shook his head. It was still all so hard to believe.
Heather nodded, a sad look in her eyes.
Dylan continued. “So anyway, I told him what our lawyer is doing to try to keep us from being sucked any further into this mess. I told Joe we were beached. And get this—he said he wanted to help out somehow. As a favor.”
“Really! What’s he thinking?”
“He wondered if we had any new projects that he might be able to invest in. He might be able to recoup a lot of money, since LC is now in such hot water over the Hyperfōn situation.”
Heather sat forward, an expression of interest on her face. “Us? He wants to partner with us?”
“Yeah. You’re the one he really wants, but he figures he can use me somehow,” Dylan smirked.
“Very funny. Tell me more.”
“Joe’s itching to figure out his next move. He called to ask if I had any ideas.”
Heather raised an eyebrow. “A very good man.”
“Yeah.”
“So what did you tell him?”
“That we might have something. I was thinking about Tony’s wireless electricity device. Mr. Caruso has inherited all of Tony’s patents and, believe it or not, Tony had actually already filed one on it. What do you think about approaching Tony’s dad and suggesting we try to commercialize it? He’ll have a rough time without the money Tony used to send him, not to mention the evaporation of the Mantric stock. This could make his life a lot easier. Plus give him the satisfaction of watching his son’s work see the light of day.”
