The Mansion

by Boone, Ezekiel

  So maybe the way Nellie had conjured the name Takata out of the ether was partly why Shawn was generous with the terms, or maybe it was a different kind of guilt over how he had screwed Billy out of a fortune, or maybe it was just because he could afford to be generous. It was easy for Shawn to put that much money on the table: if Billy couldn’t fix Nellie, the money Shawn was offering was spare change, and if Billy could fix Nellie?

  Nellie could change everything.

  “Think of it as a performance bonus, Billy,” Shawn said. “Because as much money as I’m offering you, it’s nothing compared with what Nellie will be worth to Eagle Technology. It sounds like I’m offering you a lot, but if you can get her to work, that money is simply your share. You wouldn’t trust this offer if I said it was fair, and it’s not. You’ll end up ridiculously rich if you can get her to work, but me? If you think I’m rich now, if Eagle Technology can start selling Nellie, I’ll have so much money that I’ll be like a god. So don’t second-guess this. Take it as good fortune. Take it as the opportunity it is.”

  Billy knew Shawn was right. It was his turn to be rich, too. Not a little rich, but unimaginably rich: illions with a b kind of rich. And worst-case scenario, if he couldn’t do it—well, he and Emily could walk away with a new life, not rich but at least comfortable: debts paid, a small nest egg that, this time, he wouldn’t drink away.

  “Take it to a good lawyer out there in Seattle,” Shawn said. “Wendy will e-mail you a few names as suggestions, but you can and should get somebody else to look at it. Get two lawyers; three, if you want. I don’t think this is magically going to erase our history. I know you still think I screwed you over, but this should go a long way toward making that a thing of the past. When you left Whiskey Run with Emily, we both thought we’d agreed to different things, but you’ll be heading back to Seattle with a paper contract. With everything that’s happened, with . . .”—he held a folder close to his chest, pausing, and then handed it to Billy—“Emily and the lawsuit and everything else, just get it read by a good lawyer and make sure that everything is watertight.”

  It wasn’t particularly complex, though. If Billy couldn’t make Nellie a hundred percent but could fix the basic stability issues enough so that Shawn could integrate parts of her into Eagle Logic, he got a generous licensing fee. Not billions, sure, but ten or twenty million dollars spread out over a few years. Enough for a very comfortable rest of his and Emily’s lives. But, oh my, if he could get Nellie working the way they’d envisioned her? If she was the next generation of Eagle Technology products? He smiled at the idea. What was lost can be found again, he thought. He wouldn’t ever have a stake in Eagle Technology like Shawn did. That was a race already run. Even a moderate success, however, would mean more money than he could drink away in a thousand lifetimes, and if he could really hit it out of the park, if Nellie was as good as he and Shawn thought she could be . . . why, then he’d have more money than made any possible sense.

  And just for trying, just for flying to Baltimore and touring the house and agreeing to give it a go, Shawn had waved his magic wand and wiped away all Billy’s old mistakes. A gesture of good faith, Shawn said, an apology for any hard feelings that still lingered.

  Billy had spent the morning getting a guided tour through some of the Eagle Technology developmental labs in Baltimore, and then he’d headed out early to the airport. He had an hour or so to kill before his flight home. He was standing at the bar in a private Eagle Technology lounge at the airport—it was through an unmarked door, and you had to have special access arranged through the company—drinking a Diet Coke and methodically logging in to all his credit card accounts one at a time.

  Zeroed out. It was spooky. Every single one of them. The credit cards that Emily knew about, and the credit cards that she didn’t know about. No balances.

  Every penny of debt gone.

  He took another sip of his soda and then logged in to his and Emily’s bank account. His hand was shaking, and he had to put the phone down on the bar. On Monday morning, before he’d left his house, they’d had less than two hundred dollars in their checking account. Now there was a little more than fifty thousand dollars. He put his head down and laughed. God. Shawn’s assistant said there’d be a car waiting for him when he landed in Seattle, and maybe he’d have it swing by a flower shop. Or a jewelry store. They’d go out for dinner and celebrate. Leave their car at home and call for a cab so they could both . . . No. He’d drive. He laughed again. Fifty thousand dollars, taxes already taken out. He hadn’t done anything to fix the problem yet, and he didn’t need to show up in Whiskey Run until the first of November, but Shawn had promised fifty thousand dollars a month, taxes paid, starting right this minute, guaranteed through next June, at least, just for giving it a shot. Half a million dollars free and clear just to show up. Shawn was living up to his promise so far.

  “Billy?”

  He looked up. An East Asian guy about Billy’s age. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail and he was wearing a black shirt and black jeans and holding a leather bag that even Billy could tell was expensive.

  The man stuck out his hand. “Billy Stafford. Holy crap. I haven’t seen you since senior seminar. You don’t remember me?”

  It came to Billy in a flash. It had been a small class. Fifteen students. The cream of the crop from the computing program at Cortaca University. You had to apply for admission with Professor King. She was a cranky old bitch who didn’t suffer fools lightly. Rumor was that she was secretly filthy rich, that she had stakes in dozens of start-ups, but you couldn’t tell. She didn’t care about clothes and drove a rusty old Subaru. If you didn’t bust your ass for her, she set you on fire. At least three students dropped the class midsemester that year, one kid even running out of the classroom crying because of the way Professor King ripped him apart.

  “No, of course. Raj. Good to see you.” He shook Raj’s hand. He’d never been particularly close to him, but they’d never had any issues, either. He remembered that Raj had left Cortaca with a cushy job at Amazon already in hand.

  “What the hell are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re in Baltimore to see the legendary Shawn Eagle. Did you guys kiss and make up? You back in business together?” He laughed and motioned to the bartender. “Just kidding. Here, let me get you a drink.”

  “No, I’m—”

  “Come on, man. I’ve only got a few minutes before my flight. I’d say I’m buying, but it’s not like they charge here. Got to love Eagle Technology, huh? Thank god they opened this lounge.” He turned to the bartender. “I’ll have a Macallan 25.”

  “Sorry sir, we only have Macallan 12.”

  “Pfft. Really?” The bartender nodded and Raj rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. I mean, I’d kind of expect that at a standard airport lounge where the drinks are free, but come on, what’s the point of Eagle Technology having their own private lounge if it’s serving crap? Tell Shawn he’s got to up his game.” Raj looked at Billy. “How about you? What do you want? You a whiskey guy?”

  “Bombay Sapphire and tonic.” The words just fell out of his mouth. He touched his pocket, a part of him trying not to think of the missing sobriety coin. This wouldn’t count. He’d get his two-year sobriety coin soon enough. He wouldn’t lose that one.

  Raj leaned into the bar. “I read Learning to Soar, of course, but mostly for the juicy bits. I know it was an authorized bio, but the author really soft-pedaled the lawsuit stuff. I think your claims should have held up, or at the very least, the compensation should have been more generous than the table scraps shoveled your way. But you know, without a signed contract, it’s tough. You got screwed, though.”

  “I don’t mean to be a dick, Raj, but—”

  “No, I get it.” He held up his palms to Billy. “You can’t talk about it. Legally binding and all that. But you’re good? I remember that seminar. I have nightmares about it sometimes. Did you know Professor King is still teaching the seminar? She’s got to be like a
hundred and fifty. But man, she had a hard-on for you. You could have taken a shit on an iPod and she would have called it the next great advancement in computing. And what’s-his-name, too. His code was always so slick. The Japanese guy.”

  “Takata.”

  “Yeah. When you three went off together to go hole up in that cabin, the entire class was jealous. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I had a cushy job waiting, and I’ve done well for myself. I mean, I didn’t do Shawn Eagle well, but who has? I don’t think I would have had the stones to turn down the gig at Amazon and go into the woods with you guys, even if I had been invited, but the rumor was that you guys told Amazon, Apple, and Google to go screw themselves.”

  “We—”

  “No, no. I don’t mean it like that. I couldn’t have kept up with you guys. I’m smart, but you were something else. A deep thinker, man, and then with Takata to make things slick? And Shawn, well, he just had that aura. Even in college he seemed to have things figured out. What happened, though? You only ever hear about you and Shawn and the whole lawsuit thing. What happened to Takata? I’ve never even seen a single mention of him in any of the stories about the history of Eagle Technology. I ran into Mirabella a few years ago—I don’t know if you remember her, but she’s working for the State Department now—and she said she heard that Takata split almost immediately.”

  “Amicable split. He decided to go backpacking through Europe instead of spending the winter in the cabin,” Billy said. “Never heard from him again. He just sort of disappeared off the map.”

  That was the official story. He and Shawn covered their tracks. It had worked: they’d erased Takata from the history of Eagle Technology, from his and Shawn’s story. Only a few people knew Takata had even been there in the first place. And only he and Shawn knew what really happened.

  Jesus.

  The sound of the shovel in dirt.

  Billy took a sip of his drink, finishing it, and noticed that his hand was still shaking. He held up the glass to the bartender, motioning for another. He had an hour to go before his flight.

  Raj shook his head. “Can you imagine that? Having the chance to be part of Eagle Technology from the beginning but bailing out on it? Wherever he is, he must want to kill himself. No wonder he’s completely off the map. He’s probably hiding out as a Buddhist monk in some temple in the countryside. It’s like being that dude, the fifth Beatle, the one who got kicked out of the band just before they hit the big time. Listen, you out in Silicon Valley?”

  “Seattle.”

  “Ah. Okay. Amazon? No, no. Don’t worry. Point is, I’ve got a little outfit in San Francisco now that specializes in predictive mapping. Hush-hush of course, but Eagle Technology is talking about buying us out. That’s why I’m here. I’m pitching a valuation of two fifty, and I’ve got a thirty percent stake. Seventy-five million into my pocket if Eagle goes for it.” He laughed. “This will be the third start-up I’ve gotten scooped up. I’m thinking about just saying forget it and buying an island or something. Stocking it with girls and spending the rest of my life getting laid and soaking up sun. Ah. Who am I kidding? Even blow jobs would get old after a while. Well, probably not the blow jobs, but you know. Just get in touch if you’ve got something hot working.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a business card. “Hope you and Shawn had a good talk.” He tossed the card on the bar, shook Billy’s hand, and strolled out of the lounge.

  Billy picked up the business card. It was printed on thick stock that felt creamy to the touch. Such an anachronistic thing, business cards, Billy thought. The card had a red, bubble-shaped car as a logo and the name of the company, FNSTIR, on it, with Raj’s name, a phone number, and an e-mail address. That was it. Billy guessed that was a sign of being important. Your business card didn’t need to say what you did or what your title was or what your company was trying to accomplish. FNSTIR. What did FNSTIR even mean? Weren’t there any real words left?

  The bartender drifted his way.

  “Another drink, sir?”

  Billy looked down at the ice in his glass, blinking. That had gone down easy. He looked at his watch. He had plenty of time still, and then a long flight ahead of him.

  “Sure,” he said. “Another.”

  One last drink, and then back on the wagon.

  ELEVEN

  * * *

  SEATTLE

  There was a young woman sitting on their stoop when Emily parked her car. The woman was wearing the familiar Eagle Technology Store gold polo shirt, and behind her was a stack of boxes the size of a love seat.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Just need to see some ID and then have you sign for this,” the woman said. “I’ve been waiting here since one o’clock.” She didn’t sound impatient. Just resigned.

  Emily fished her wallet out of her purse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get off until four.”

  The woman took her driver’s license, scanned it with her tablet, waited for the friendly beep, and then handed both the license and the tablet to Emily. Emily scrawled her signature. “What is this, exactly?”

  The woman glanced back at the pile of boxes. “More or less? It’s everything. Enjoy.”

  Emily watched the woman bounce down the steps and then get into an unmarked white van that was parked only a few spaces down from where her own junky car was parked. She turned back to the boxes. It took her several minutes to carry them in. She stacked them in a succession of pyramids on the floor behind the couch. As near as she could tell, the girl hadn’t been exaggerating: If Eagle Technology made it, it was now in her living room, sometimes in pairs. A Noah’s ark of computing: two laptops, two tablets, two of the newest phones, two watches. All Eagle Titanium series, the premium, top-of-the-line stuff. Some things there was only one of: a snap-on telephoto lens for the phones; one each of eight different pairs of headphones and three different wireless speakers; an external monitor; an Eagle Technology television that was so big she had to slide the box across the porch, lift up one end, and then slide it into their apartment. There was a single envelope, too, addressed to Billy. It wasn’t sealed. She felt furtive, watched, while she opened it, but she opened it anyway. Inside was a single sheet of paper with an Eagle Technology username on it, an accompanying thirty-two-character password, and a short typed message:

  Billy,

  Get up to speed.

  —Shawn

  She folded the paper and slid it back into the envelope.

  The pile of boxes was overwhelming. No wonder the girl had waited for her to sign for it. How much was it worth? Twenty thousand dollars? Fifty thousand? More? Could she return it all and use the money to pay down their credit cards? Billy had told her to trust him, but it had been a long time since she’d been able to do that. Better to make the best of things while she still could, before the smoke cleared from whatever this was between Shawn and Billy and she had to look at the financial destruction of their lives in a clear light again. With what she made at Bright Apple Preschool and what he made working as a custodian, it was all they could do to live in a complete shithole of an apartment and mostly pay the monthly minimums on their credit cards. They were drowning in slow increments. Best case, she figured, they could stretch it another six months or a year before they’d have to declare bankruptcy, but if she returned all this crap to the store? It wouldn’t be enough to wipe all their debts away. Maybe it would cover a fifth? A quarter? Of what she knew about. Billy swore he wasn’t drinking in secret anymore, but she had a sneaking suspicion that there might be debts hidden somewhere. Still, returning all this stuff might mean enough money to give them a fighting chance.

  She pulled out her five-year-old iPhone, a yellow legal pad, and a pen, and went onto the Eagle Technology website. It took the better part of thirty minutes to look up all the prices and make a tally.

  The number made her feel sick. One of the watches was apparently the high-end, limited-edition model, and that alone was enough to pay off their American Express card. She didn�
�t even know you could spend that much on a smartwatch.

  Even if she couldn’t return this stuff, even if she had to sell it online and could get only three-quarters of the value, it was a small fortune. Half their debt? It would buy them daylight. She took a breath. Time to see how much the piper needed to be paid. She swiped over to the Citibank icon and logged in to their account. They had three different credit cards with Citibank, and all three of them were maxed.

  Were maxed.

  Were.

  Past tense.

  It had to be a mistake.

  She looked at the screen for a full minute, and then she logged out and logged back in. Zero. She thought she was going to start hyperventilating. Quickly, she logged in to the other accounts. Nine credit cards that should have been redlined, but all nine of them were blank. Pure as the driven snow.

  She stared at the phone, and then, suddenly, as if it were a snake about to bite her, she threw it on the couch. She didn’t want to be in there with the boxes and boxes and boxes of shiny toys. It was like she could hear them humming, gathering an electrical charge so they could strike. The noise was building in her ears and she realized she was trying not to cry again.

  Nothing, she knew, absolutely nothing, came without a price.

  She snatched her purse from the wobbly dining room table that they’d bought at a yard sale for six dollars and ran out the front door. She slammed the door behind her and tried to lock it, but her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t get the key in the lock. When she finally slid it home and heard the thunk of the dead bolt closing, it was as if the pressure released.

  She took a step down the porch and looked in through the window. The room was so dim that from the outside the boxes barely took shape behind the couch, just an ominous lump that hinted at discrete pieces pushed together. She heard something sharp and trilling, and she realized that her phone, still on the couch, was ringing. For some reason she was sure it was her sister, Beth, calling from Chicago. Part of her wanted to hurry inside and tell her about the credit cards, but a bigger part of her wanted to go down the steps and get in her car, head to the highway, and drive and drive and drive until she was in Chicago, until she was safely inside Beth’s condo and could tell her in person.