He sipped his coffee and looked up at her. She wore a snug black-and-white striped pullover and a cotton skirt, and her hair was pulled back in a prim tight bun. Her librarian glasses were perched on her nose, and she looked very different from the woman who had climbed on top of him a week earlier and said, ‘I want your cock inside me,’ and stuck her tongue in his ear.
‘Worried?’
She shut his office door. ‘You seem so sad and lonely.’
‘I am sad, Tricia. I am lonely.’
‘I feel partly responsible.’
Timothy wanted to tell her that she was incorrect, that she was not partly responsible – she was, rather, completely responsible. Her flirtation, her infatuation, her come-ons, had caused his wife’s suicide. She had tempted him even though she knew he was married. ‘You’re not responsible,’ he said.
‘If you’re lonely, maybe you’d like some company. I can come over, cook you dinner.’
He tried to picture her in his kitchen, rattling pans over his stove, sautéing vegetables and braising meat. ‘I don’t think that’s such a great idea.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘it’s too soon, right?’
She was looking, Timothy realized, for some kind of confirmation that he was still interested in her. Maybe his wife’s death was too recent, she seemed to think, to begin an affair, but perhaps soon?
How could he tell her that this was not the case, that it would never be the case, that he considered her dull-witted and vulgar and foul-mouthed – and perhaps sexy, yes – but nothing more than a little girl, a trashy, slutty, little girl who said ‘awesome’ too frequently and who probably was great in bed, but who – when that was done – had nothing much to offer a man like himself.
‘It’s too soon,’ he agreed.
She nodded. ‘Awesome,’ she said. The word probably meant she was glad he would be open to the idea in the future, but it sounded ridiculous to Timothy, and confirmed his worst suspicions about her: that she was just a dumb girl from LA.
There was a knock on the door, and Frank Arnheim, Timothy’s lawyer, stuck his bald bullet head into the office. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Frank,’ Timothy said.
Frank said apologetically, ‘There was no one at reception so I just thought …’ His voice trailed off as he looked at Tricia.
She smiled pleasantly at him. ‘I should probably get back to the front desk.’
‘Okay,’ Timothy said.
She nodded and squeezed past Frank Arnheim in the doorway. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.
Frank glanced down at her breasts as she walked past, and then his eyes followed her ass as she departed down the hall. He closed the door behind her.
‘God,’ he said, ‘killer ass. That is the hottest receptionist I’ve ever seen. And I’m a bit of a connoisseur.’ He put a hand to his mouth. ‘Sorry. I guess that’s kind of inappropriate, especially right now, isn’t it?’
‘It’s okay,’ Timothy said. ‘I agree with you. She’s not my type, though.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Frank said, suddenly interested, as if this freed him to try to get Tricia for himself. He thought about it a moment, then snapped back. ‘I have that information you wanted. Pretty interesting stuff. I’ll tell you over lunch.’
They ate at Il Fornaio, just across University Avenue. The restaurant was filled with tables of two, and all were nearly identical – a bug-eyed young man dining with an older, better-dressed, more distinguished-looking gentleman. The young men laughed eagerly at every remark of their dining companions, and tried to stare into their eyes, and to please them. In any other city in the world it would have seemed like a room full of gigolos entertaining their sugar daddies, but here in Palo Alto, at the height of the Internet boom, everyone understood that it was something very different: the tables were filled with young entrepreneurs trying to charm a venture capitalist, or a board member, out of money, or into a job.
Timothy and Frank sat in the corner, overlooking the courtyard. Frank opened his briefcase and took out a yellow legal pad scrawled with notes. ‘I had two associates look into Armistice LLC, as you requested. I thought it would be a simple thing, you know, one hour of billable time, tops.’
‘And?’
‘Not so simple,’ Frank said. He bit into a piece of bread and tore it with his teeth. ‘So don’t be surprised when you get the bill.’
‘Your bills never surprise me, Frank.’
Frank wasn’t sure what to make of that. He looked up at Timothy, then shrugged. ‘So here’s where it comes out. Armistice LLC owns the Citibank account that you gave me. Armistice LLC is a Delaware corporation – but really, it’s a nothing: no assets, no income, no taxes, no place of business. Not really uncommon. But –’ He started reading from his notes now. ‘Armistice LLC is in turn owned by a company called Chelsea Partners. Chelsea Partners is not a partnership, incidentally, just another corporation, this one registered in Nevada. Okay, so Chelsea Partners is in turn owned by a company registered in the Bahamas, called Keystone Group. You following this?’ Without waiting for an answer, he continued. ‘Keystone Group is just a shell – all the contact information points to an offshore corporate services company in Nassau, and they have no idea who Keystone Group is, and – even if they did – they probably wouldn’t tell me. By the way, that’s where most lawyers would stop. They’d tell you, that’s all I can find out; the search ended at Keystone Group in Nassau. And then they’d hand you a bill right then and there.’
‘But you didn’t stop there, Frank, did you?’
‘Of course not.’ He turned the page on his legal pad. ‘So we did a legal search on Keystone. It turns out that you can find references to Keystone Group in the registration of a Panamanian shell company called Stillwater Group. Stillwater and Keystone are joint partners in a third company, Amber Corp. Still with me? Amber Corp is registered in the State of Florida. They’re totally legit, by the way, in good standing with Florida Secretary of State, all taxes and fees up-to-date and current.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Well, yes, “That’s it”’ – he made quotation marks in the air – ‘as you put it so dismissively, but I think you might be interested in one more thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Amber Corp. is a Florida corporation, right? Why Florida, you ask? I have no idea. But they have another business office listed in their annual filing. Want to know where it is?’
‘Sure.’
‘Their office is on Sand Hill Road, right down the street from here, in Menlo Park. 3625 Sand Hill Road. What are the chances of that?’
19
At three o’clock in the afternoon, Timothy pulled his BMW out of the underground parking garage and drove toward the Stanford University campus.
Stanford began at Palm Drive, which was both an avenue and a triumph of stage management. Broad, lined by majestic Canary Island Palms, it ushered people onto the campus, rising at a gentle grade – perfect for rollerblades and ten-speeds – and ending, to the west, at the Oval, a green space filled with taut Stanford men and women playing frisbee. Behind them was Memorial Church, a terracotta cathedral, with a giant exterior mural of Jesus ministering to his disciples among what clearly looked like Northern California foothills. Every time he drove toward the mural, Timothy half-expected to see Jesus, robe flying, catching a frisbee between his legs.
In August there were few students on campus, just a handful of rollerbladers, gliding lackadaisically down Palm Drive. Timothy drove past them, then cut across the campus to Sand Hill Road.
Sand Hill was as famous, in its way, as Park Avenue or Champs-Elysées, except instead of storefronts and cafes, it offered nondescript low-rises and fields of California oatgrass. It was the most expensive real-estate in the state, costing more per square foot than downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles, but was spectacularly nondescript: a two-lane street in a prairie formerly known for its excellent cattle grazing.
But the cattle were gone now. They had been rep
laced with two other commodities: cash and brains. For within those plain office boxes congregated the world’s smartest people – computer scientists, biologists, genetic engineers – and, in the same buildings, the highest concentration of venture capital anywhere on the earth. It was this combination that gave Sand Hill its frisson; Sand Hill was a street where a scientist could run into a financier at the hot-dog stand at noon, off-handedly mention the project he was working on, and be offered twenty-five million dollars to start a company before dinner.
Sand Hill Road cut through Timothy’s world like the lifeline on a crone’s hand. He had driven it hundreds of times, in his continual search for new money and new investors. When you are a successful venture capitalist, and each year your share of your partnership’s profits, twenty or thirty million dollars, drops into your lap like a sack of potatoes, then you have a problem: what to do with the cash? Venture capitalists are the only people in the world who do not want to invest their wealth in venture capital: it means too many eggs in one basket – and a single industry downturn will ruin them.
So Timothy was a problem-solver. Osiris took the cash, fed it back into the financial markets, and made it grow by between fifteen and twenty percent a year – not exactly venture capital returns, but respectable enough, and certainly better than any bank or real estate investment could offer.
Today Timothy drove down Sand Hill Road searching not for other people’s money, but for his own. There was that small, curious matter of the hundred and fifty thousand dollars that he had given to Katherine on the day before her death, money which was somehow, apparently with Katherine’s permission, transformed into bits and bytes and then beamed through fiber optic cables and microwave towers, first into the Bahamas, and then into Panama, and then, according to Frank Arnheim, back to Menlo Park. Not exactly, Timothy thought, the typical way home remodeling gets done.
Timothy found the address he was looking for, turned left across two lanes of traffic and pulled into the parking lot at the 3600 complex. He got out of the car and locked the BMW with his keychain remote. Even at three o’clock the August sun was high overhead, baking the asphalt, making the air beside his hubcaps shimmer.
There were two buildings on opposite ends of the parking lot. Timothy followed a flagstone path past the first building, which said: ‘3700-3799.’ He continued on through a courtyard into the shade of newly planted sycamore trees, and then past a bronze sculpture shaped like an automobile-sized egg. Ahead he saw the second office building, and a sign above the entry that said: ‘3600-3699.’
Timothy bounded up three shallow steps leading to the building. He pushed open the glass doors and found himself in an empty lobby, all cool air and marble. Across the lobby he saw a directory.
He scanned the directory, running his finger over the small plastic letters inserted into black corduroy. It took him a moment to find what he was looking for. There, between Aegis Capital and Angus Biotech, he saw: ‘Amber Corp. – Suite 301.’
Timothy studied the directory: all venture capital partnerships, law firms, and vaguely futuristic-sounding research companies. Another line of the directory caught his eye: ‘Ho, Dr. Clarence – Suite 301.’
Suite 301, Timothy thought, must be a very crowded place.
Timothy decided to pay Dr. Clarence Ho a visit. He walked across the lobby, his shoes echoing on the marble floor. At the far end he found a concrete staircase and started to climb. At the second floor, his bad knee began to ache. The change in temperature – the heat of the parking lot, then the sudden chill of the lobby – must have aggravated it, he decided.
On the third floor the stairs stopped at a carpeted hallway. Timothy wandered past Suite 304, and then 302. The hallway was lit with buzzing fluorescent bulbs, and had the familiar smell of a dental office – disinfectant and perfume.
He came to Suite 301. A small plaque on the door – easily removed and replaced, Timothy noted – said: ‘Amber Corp.’ Timothy turned the knob and pushed open the door.
He entered what looked like a doctor’s office: a small waiting room with padded chairs lined against the wall. A glass window separated the waiting room from a receptionist station. Behind the window, the reception area was dark and deserted. A sign in front of the window said, ‘We prefer payment at the time services are rendered.’
In the corner of the waiting area, near the chairs, there was a low, white Formica table, the kind of table that doctors use to display magazines, to keep waiting patients occupied. But this table was empty, and so too was the waiting room. No magazines, Timothy thought, and no patients.
Timothy called out, ‘Hello?’
No answer. Timothy heard only a soft buzzing sound coming from somewhere behind the reception area. ‘Hello?’ Timothy called again.
A door leading to the back room swung open. A Chinese man with a slight, pipe-cleaner body leaned his torso into the waiting room. He wore a white lab coat, pens in his chest pocket, and small wire-frame glasses. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘May I help you?’
Timothy took a step toward him. ‘Dr. Ho? Dr. Clarence Ho?’
The Chinese man was noncommittal. He kept the door pulled tightly beside his body, as if ready to pull back inside and lock Timothy out. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m here to talk to you about Katherine Van Bender. Do you know her?’
But even before he could finish asking the question, Dr. Ho pushed open the door, waved his hand, and beckoned Timothy inside. It was clear that he did.
Dr. Ho led Timothy down a florescent-bathed corridor, past rooms marked simply Lab #1 and Lab #2. He stopped at an open doorway, reached around the wall, and flipped on the lights.
He showed Timothy into a small office. Not much larger than a closet, it was crowded with bookshelves on three walls, and piles of paper on the floor. There was barely enough room for a desk, which itself was crammed high with stacks of manila folders. Ho stepped over a pile of folders on the floor and squeezed behind his desk. He gestured for Timothy to take one of the two seats across from him.
‘Excuse the mess,’ Ho said.
Timothy sat down. The doctor, like many Chinese men, was of indeterminate age. His skin was smooth, without wrinkles, but his hair was streaked with gray. His tiny spectacles were too tight, buried deep into the bridge of his nose, so the wire frame became almost a part of his brow.
‘Well, well,’ Ho said. He looked at Timothy wearily. ‘You must be Mr. Van Bender.’
‘I am.’
‘I’ve been expecting you.’ With a sudden burst of energy he leaned across his desk and began flipping through a pile of manila folders, searching for one in particular, like a card sharp working his way down a deck to find his assistant’s chosen card. As he flipped, he said: ‘I figured you’d be paying me a visit. I’m sorry about your wife.’
‘How exactly did you know my wife?’
Ho didn’t answer. He kept working his way through the pile, picking up each folder, looking at its label, then tossing it aside. ‘Let’s see. It should be here …’ He flipped another folder from the pile. ‘Ah, here. Katherine Van Bender.’ Then, holding the folder up for Timothy to see: ‘Your wife.’
He opened the folder, riffled the papers inside. From Timothy’s view it seemed that Ho was skimming medical charts and hand-scribbled notes. ‘I am your wife’s doctor,’ Ho said, finally answering Timothy’s earlier question. ‘Did your wife tell you about her illness?’
Timothy shook his head.
‘No,’ Ho said, ‘I thought not. She had mentioned to me that she wanted to keep it from you. Often my patients make that decision. I neither encourage nor discourage it.’
‘Exactly what kind of doctor are you, Dr. Ho?’
Ho looked up from the folder, a faint smile playing on the corners of his mouth. He looked down again at the medical chart in front of him and answered a different question. ‘Your wife suffered from a very rare and very deadly form of ovarian cancer. She came to me seeking an experimental treatment that I – and my com
pany – have pioneered.’
Timothy looked around the room, the whirlwind of papers and sagging bookshelves. It seemed hard to believe that a man in this three-by-five cubicle, with papers stacked haphazardly and shin-high, was pioneering anything, let alone a treatment for ovarian cancer. But then Timothy’s eye landed on a row of diplomas hanging on the wall behind Ho, and the large calligraphy told him something different: that Dr. Clarence Ho had, first, graduated in 1982 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a B.S. degree in biochemistry, and then received an M.D. from Stanford University in 1985, and then further completed a Fellowship in neurology from Stanford in 1992. Dr. Ho was, apparently, a well-educated man.
Ho saw Timothy staring at the diplomas. ‘You see?’ Ho said. ‘Not acupuncture or herbal medicine. Was that your fear?’
‘Did my wife pay you one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?’
‘She did.’
‘For what, exactly?’
Ho closed Katherine’s folder. He clasped his hands together on top of his desk, and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m afraid that at the present time I’m not at liberty to discuss your wife’s course of treatment. This is a very gray legal area, Mr. Van Bender, since you are her husband. I can appreciate that it must be painful for you. But I hope you understand my position.’
Timothy looked at Ho. ‘I’m not sure I understand what your position is,’ he said. ‘Did you know my wife was going to kill herself?’
‘Again, Mr. Van Bender, at the present time I cannot discuss my treatment of your wife.’
‘I asked about her suicide, not her treatment.’
Ho was silent.
‘Exactly what kind of treatment did you perform on my wife, Dr. Ho?’
Dr. Ho stood up and gestured at the door to his office. It was clear the interview was over. ‘I’m afraid I’m out of time. I’m certain that I must have other patients to see.’
Timothy thought about the pristine, empty waiting room – no magazines, no receptionist, no patients – and wondered exactly where those mysterious patients were that Dr. Ho was in a rush to see, and exactly what Dr. Ho would do to them, if they ever turned up.
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