by Daniel Lyons
Doyle puts his hand on Poon’s arm and says, “William, it’s okay. Calm down.”
“That’s right,” I say. “Do what the white man tells you, Kato.”
“Oh you did not just say that.” Poon looks like he is working very hard to keep his head from exploding.
“Are you serious? That’s just fucking racist.”
“I think you’re a racist,” I say.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You know,” I say, “your hostility is upsetting me. And your bias is very evident. I think you should recuse yourself.”
He starts sputtering. Doyle takes him off to another room to cool down.
While they’re gone Bobby pulls me aside and tells me to cut the shit. “I’m serious,” he says. “Don’t fuck around with this guy.”
“I’m just trying to rattle him.”
“Well, don’t, okay? Do us both a favor.”
The deposition takes place in a room with a conference table, big leather chairs, a microphone on the table and a videocamera pointed at me. This is what we expected. I’ve been rehearsing in a studio that looks almost exactly like this. A court stenographer sits at the end of the table, along with three of Doyle’s associates, two guys and a woman, who sit with folders and stacks of paper and again those heinous Windows laptops—in this case, Dells, which are the worst of all. I try not to look at them. But there is no avoiding the sound of their fans, whirring and droning.
The assistant lawyers introduce themselves. They can barely conceal the fact that they are psyched to be meeting me. But I also know what they’re thinking: Wow, I am so going to make a fortune in the private sector after I put this asshole in prison.
“Nice to meet you too,” I say to each of them. “A real pleasure.”
On my side I’ve got Bobby D and fifteen lawyers from Apple who are each being paid four hundred bucks an hour to sit here and look formidable.
Doyle and Poon sit directly across from me. Doyle does the talking. Poon just sits there glaring at me and sliding questions to Doyle. They start out with easy questions, like my name, my date of birth, and my title at Apple. For each question, no matter what he asks, I pause for three minutes, with my hands pressed together. Then I ask Doyle to repeat the question. On questions that are more complicated than name, rank, and serial number, I look for tiny discrepancies between the way he asks the first time and the way he asks the second time, and then I ask him which question he’d like me to answer.
It’s a strategy called “Zen Crazy,” which I learned in the seventies when I was studying at the Los Altos Zen Center. The concept comes from Zen monasteries. Certain monks go bonkers from the isolation and turn into these super annoying assholes who go around bugging the shit out of the other monks. In Buddhism these guys are tolerated, and even revered, because it’s believed that their craziness is actually a way of channeling the divine. And even though what they’re saying may appear to be random or senseless, it often contains some higher truth.
Of course in the West if you do this you’re considered a mental case, and they throw you out of your own company. Which is why at certain periods of my life I’ve come very close to chucking everything and disappearing into a monastery, where I could be a complete dick and get worshipped for it. But then I realized— that’s pretty much the deal I have at Apple.
Eventually Francis X. Doyle starts getting exhausted.
“Would you like to take a break?” he says.
I tell him no, I’d rather push on. Through meditation I’ve managed to lower my pulse rate into the thirties, while Doyle is starting to sweat, and his aura has gone from a white-blue when we began to an orange-red. Poon’s aura has been glowing like the center of the sun the whole time.
We take a break anyway, because Doyle apparently has some bladder control issues, and when we reconvene he starts trying to trick me, asking the same questions multiple times but from different angles and in slightly different ways, seeing if I’ll trip up. I’m concentrating as hard as I can. No matter what he asks, I pause, wait, and ask for the question again. Then I pause again, and instead of answering, I’ll say, “Yeah, I don’t know.” Or, “Yeah, I don’t remember.” Or, “Pass. Next category.”
After six hours they let me go. Poon makes a big deal of letting me see him put on his Zune headphones. He won’t shake my hand.
Outside I’m totally pumped. Bobby, however, looks suicidal.
“What do you think you were doing in there?”
“Are you kidding? I friggin owned that guy. We should go have a drink and celebrate.”
“Some other time.”
He walks off, looking grim. Whatever. I was there, and I know how it went: I nailed it. I’m so psyched that I race straight home and drink a tiny bowl of miso soup, the first thing I’ve eaten in three days, and then run upstairs to the Home Pod and take off all my clothes and stand in front of the mirrors going, “You talking me? You talking to me? Well then who are you talking to? ’Cause I’m the only one here.”
Seriously, I am the coolest person I’ve ever met.
Next morning I arrive at work to find Tom Bowditch parked outside in his Maybach. I pull into my usual handicapped space and get out to see what he’s doing here.
“Get in,” he says. He’s wearing his navy blue business suit, and he’s not yelling and spitting. He just sits there saying nothing at all. The driver heads south on Route 85 and then up Route 17 into the Santa Cruz Mountains.
“I talked to Bobby D,” Tom says. “He says you screwed the pooch pretty badly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Literally it means you had sex with a dog. But I’m speaking figuratively. Apparently things didn’t go well with Doyle.”
“No way. They got nothing out of me.”
“Bobby says you provoked them. You told that Poon kid that you cut off his mother’s ears or something? Jesus. Before they were pissed. Now they want your head on a platter.”
“What’s Bobby DiMarco doing telling you about my interview? What about attorney-client privilege?”
“No such thing. Anyway, kid, here’s the thing. Sampson and his guys have found some more problems.”
“You know what? I want Sampson fired.”
“Well I wanted to diddle Angie Dickinson, kid, but you know what? It didn’t happen. Here’s the thing. This isn’t about you anymore. It’s about the company. And the shareholders. It’s about my investment. My money. You understand? Kid, I’ve made a lot of money thanks to you. I’ve got a five-x return on my investment in ten years. You’ve done right by me, and I appreciate that. Nevertheless, if it were up to me I’d be in favor of firing you right now, or having you killed and making it look like an accident. But luckily for you, we ran some computer modeling scenarios and found out that if you were fired, or killed in a plane crash, the stock takes a thirty percent hit, day one. I hope you take comfort in that.”
“Sure,” I say. “I’m feeling real comfortable right now.”
I reach for the door handle. I figure we’re going about forty miles per hour, and if I jump out and roll just right I could survive with a couple of broken bones or maybe a concussion. But Tom’s a step ahead of me. He clicks the door locks shut. I grab the handle anyway.
“Don’t bother,” he says. “Now listen, Rain Man. Did you not hear what I just told you? You’re not going to get hurt. We need you. We’ve got to protect you. As personally distasteful as this may be to me, it’s what we have to do. So. This means we need to sacrifice some others. You familiar with the Aztecs?”
“Yeah, they built this huge system of highways in Peru, and it’s totally amazing.”
“That was the Incas. The Aztecs were in Mexico. They practiced human sacrifice. The idea was, to appease the gods, they would sacrifice some captives. Same thing now for us. We need to figure out who’s going to get killed. I figure the first victim is Sonya Bourne. She’s already lawyered up, and she walked out in the middle of all t
his, so what the hell. She’s dead to us, right?”
“Sure,” I say. “No problem.”
Maybe this sounds cruel. I’ve known Sonya for twenty years. She worked with me at NeXT, and came to Apple with me when I returned. She’s one of my oldest quasi-friend type people, and I happen to know that her husband has recently been diagnosed with some weird Stephen Hawking–type wasting-away type disease. In other words, she’s a perfect candidate. Because if she’s actually convicted of anything, her husband’s illness will be something she can use at sentencing to get her some leniency.
“Okay, so we’ve got Sonya. But one scalp isn’t gonna do it. Who else?”
“Jeez,” I say, “I don’t know. Jim Bell maybe?”
“Good one. Seriously.”
We’re driving along Skyline Boulevard, close to Neil Young’s ranch, and I’m thinking maybe we should pull in and see if he’s home. We could go in and talk politics for a while and smoke some weed and Neil can give me shit about how music sounds better on vinyl than on an iPod.
“Listen,” Tom says. “How much do you like Zack? You’re pretty close with him, right?”
“When I had cancer, he visited me every day in the hospital. And his wife brought food over to our house.”
“So you’re pretty close.”
“Very close.”
“So would you throw him under a bus? I mean, if you had to? To save your own ass?”
“Tough question. Let me think about that.” I press my hands together and pretend to think. “Um, yes.”
“Kid, you’re amazing. You know that? You’ve got no loyalty at all, do you? I love it. I really do. It’s why you’re one of the great ones. You remind me of Lou Gerstner sometimes. And he was, in my opinion, the greatest of the great.”
Poor Zack shows up for the board meeting and he has no idea that he’s about to get sucker-punched. Everyone else has been prepped for the vote, and yes, fair enough, it’s against the law for members of a board of directors to meet in secret without notifying all the members, but at this point we’re so far around the bend that illegal meetings are the least of our worries.
We begin with a presentation by Charlie Sampson in which he summarizes the problems that his team has discovered so far. Tom thanks Sampson and says we need to deliberate in private. As soon as Sampson leaves, Tom says it is clear that Zack was deeply involved in this malfeasance and for the sake of the company he is presenting a motion that Zack should step down from the board.
Zack starts to protest, but he’s stammering pretty badly, and before he can say anything, the board has voted. Zack starts blabbering about how if we’re going to vote about him then we should be taking a vote of confidence in me, too, because if he was involved then certainly I was involved.
Tom ignores this and hands Zack a letter of resignation to sign. Bing! The light goes off in Zack’s head and he realizes the meeting was a setup.
“I’ll want to have my lawyer look this over before I sign anything,” he says.
“Sure thing,” Tom says. “Meanwhile, until you do sign it, for your own safety, we’re going to have some security guys from Las Vegas watch your wife and kids for you.”
Zack starts to cry. He knows it’s over. He signs the paper and runs out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Maybe this makes me an old softie, but I have to admit that for a few seconds I really feel bad for Zack. He’s an incredibly nice guy. Really honest. A good soldier, as they used to say. On the other hand, as Tom points out, Zack won’t do much prison time. Twelve to eighteen months at the most. And it’s not like he’s going to be in some super-max or anything.
But I quickly put the whole thing out of my mind because, as I’ve learned over the years, guilt is just this huge energy blocker. Mostly I’m just relieved that it’s over.
I figure we’re done. So I get up to head for the door. But Tom says, “Um, Steve? Hold on a sec.”
I turn back. None of the board members will look at me.
“Sit down,” Tom says.
Turns out Zack isn’t the only one getting sucker-punched. Tom informs me that, effective today, the company is going to have research and development reporting to Jim Bell instead of to me. Same for engineering and design. Jim’s already got manufacturing and sales, plus marketing and public relations, so what this means, basically, is that now the whole company reports to Jim.
“So I’ve been stripped of all day-to-day responsibility,” I say.
“That’s not it at all,” Tom says.
“Really? Because unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think we have any other divisions, dude.”
“We’re not taking anything away from you,” Tom says. “We’re freeing you up so you can be more creative. We’re starting a new products group, and we’re putting you in charge of it.”
“To do what? The iPhone?”
“I thought we were using a code name for that. Geronimo or something.”
“Guatama.”
“Whatever.”
“Right. So am I running that project?”
“Actually, no. That’s being rolled into engineering.”
“So what am I supposed to work on?”
“Whatever you want. That’s the beauty of it. New stuff. Next-generation stuff. Oh, and one other thing. We’ve hired Mike Dinsmore back and put him over the, um, the phone thing. Guantanamo or whatever.”
“You can’t do that.”
“We can, and we already did.”
“I fired that freak for a reason,” I say.
“A stupid reason. We hired him back for a better reason.”
I look at the rest of the board. “You’re all voting with Tom on this?”
They all kind of shrug and nod. None of them dares to actually speak to me—they’re not that bold yet—but it’s clear they’re no longer in my camp.
“We’re setting you up with a secret skunk works,” Tom says. “An advanced research lab in Palo Alto. Close to your house.”
“So now I can’t even come in to work here at my office?”
“You can do whatever you want. But we thought you’d like your own lab, and this space became available in Palo Alto, so we took out a lease. We wanted to surprise you. We thought you’d be excited! Steve, we need to get you thinking again. We don’t want you distracted by being dragged into all this crap with the SEC. We need you in an environment where you can create. Do anything you want with the building. Hire I. M. Pei or Frank Gehry. Go wild. Take a dozen of the best engineers, anyone you want. Go back to your roots, like when you invented the Macintosh. Be a pirate again. Think outside the box. We need you to invent the future of this company.”
“If that’s the case,” I say, “why does it feel like you’re throwing me out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet?”
“That,” Tom says, “is something you need to take up with your therapist.”
Mrs. Jobs is in Atherton attending a birthday party for some venture capitalist’s five-year-old kid when I reach her. “Same old same old,” she says. “Pony rides, jugglers, clowns. They’ve got Cirque du Soleil from Las Vegas, because Debbie hired them for Noah’s party so now everybody has to do it. Then at three they’ve got Sammy Hagar doing a solo acoustic set.”
“I thought they were getting Sting.”
“Sting wanted a hundred thousand bucks, and Sammy does it for ten, and the kids don’t know the difference, so who cares. What’s up?”
“I think I just got thrown out of my company again.”
“You what?”
I explain about the meeting.
“Can they do that?” she says.
“They just did.”
“You should leave anyway. They don’t deserve you. How about we do some traveling? You want to go to Nepal? We should go before all the snow melts from the global warming.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Poor baby.”
“I know.”
“It’s the price you pay for the gift you hav
e. Nobody ever loves an artist.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know.” My eyes are starting to well up. I don’t want her to hear me cry. “I should go.”
“Oh shit, hold on,” she says. There’s commotion in the background. “Shit, some kid just fell off the climbing wall. I’ll call you back, okay? I love you.”
“Love you too,” I say, but she’s already hung up.
Ross Ziehm puts out a press release announcing that we’ve found yet more problems with our accounting. We include a quote that Ross wrote for me in which I apologize to the shareholders and pretend to be contrite. We also announce that Sonya has left the company and that Zack is leaving the board. We’re pretty sure people can read between the lines and understand that those two are to blame for everything, and that I’m just the victim of their shenanigans.
By evening the announcement has hit all the news sites and all the investor shows on TV. As expected, they skewer Zack and Sonya and gloss over any mention of me.
Next morning when the market opens our stock has gone up two dollars. On bad news. This is the power of communications. It’s one area where Apple really outperforms every other company in the world, and I’m really proud of what we’ve managed to achieve.
I’m home having breakfast when Zack calls. He’s sobbing, which is really annoying because I’m really trying to focus on my cantaloupe. Also, he’s back in his full-blown stammering and stuttering mode, which I swear is worse for me than it is for him.
“Steve,” he says, “h-h-h-how could you d-d-d-do this to me?”
He says he never got anything out of this, and it was all for my benefit, not his own, and he was doing it to help me, he bent the rules because he was loyal to me, and because he was my friend.
“And n-n-n-now,” he says, “you’re throwing m-m-m-me to the w-w-w-wolves?”
“Zack, I think you’re being a little bit melodramatic here, don’t you?”
“To the w-w-w-wolves, Steve. You’re throwing me to the wolves.”
I do my Zen thing and start talking to him in riddles. I tell him the story of the Zen master who was asked by a student, “If you believe in freedom, why do you keep your bird in a cage?” So the Zen master opened the cage and the bird flew away out the window. The Zen master then told his student, “Now you owe me a bird.”
