Sanjay could contain himself no longer. “You’re stark raving mad! We’ll have to pull the public offering! We’ll be bankrupt by the end of the week!”
“Guys, guys, you just don’t get it, do you? The whole world is watching this unfold. In my entire career I’ve never seen a phenom like this. You couldn’t get publicity like this even if I was willing to give you another one million dollars.”
Josh clicked the projector off. “Which, by the way, I’m not.”
Chad looked alarmed. “So what are we supposed to do?”
Josh shrugged his shoulders and tried to look sympathetic, an expression that didn’t come naturally to him. “Ah, now that’s a tough one, isn’t it? I checked with our lawyers, and they couldn’t recommend a way to put a stop to the run on the bank. If you shut down the servers, there’d be a dozen lawyers filing class action suits by sundown, representing all of the sites that already have iBall contracts. The legal guys tell me you’d lose for sure. So it looks like it really doesn’t make much difference whether you claim the servers crashed, or just let this run its course – the end result will be the same. Naturally, what you actually do is your decision.”
Chad looked sideways at Sanjay, wondering whether he was leaning more towards hysteria or bloodshed.
Chad tried to sound confident and business-like, but his voice came out squeaky. “Josh, what’s with this ‘you’ stuff all of a sudden? It’s always been ‘we’ before. And I have to say, you’re acting pretty blasé with $50 million of TrashTalk’s money flying out the door.” Chad hoped he sounded more like a player than he felt.
“Ah, well, you know, it’s really okay – but I do appreciate your asking. As you guys know, we never let the grass grow under our feet here at TrashTalk. We’re always coming up with new ideas – new angles – new innovations. So of course, when the real estate bubble burst, we got to thinking. What happens now to all those smart guys that came up with credit swaps and derivatives to begin with? Nobody in their right mind is going to let them loose to sell that kind of junk on the public markets again...”. He stopped short, and then continued more thoughtfully, scribbling a note to himself, “At least, not for a few years, anyway.”
Looking up, he continued. “So where was I? Oh right! So we got to thinking – why not hire some of these guys up cheap and launch a startup to sell investment loss insurance to venture capital fund investors? That way, investors could hedge their bets. If one of our investments makes money, that’s great. But if it turns out to be a loser, our investors can just collect on the insurance they bought to insure against the loss. Then they can give us even more money to invest for them! And then we thought – why stop there? Why not set it up so our investors could get more than their money back, even make a profit on a washout? Insurance companies usually won’t pay you back more than you lost, but if we give them a few percent of our investment fund, well, everyone can be a winner. It would be like a perpetual motion money machine!”
Chad was feeling desperate. “That’s exactly what it would be like, and just as impossible! And even if you could get people to buy into such a stupid idea, how will that help you get out of this fiasco? You’re going to look like a total idiot when we go under! Who would ever let you in the door again?”
Josh tried to look hurt. “Chad! Chad! I thought we’d gotten to know each other better than that! I’m really and truly hurt. I can’t believe you’d even think that Josh Peabody would ever let himself look like an idiot.”
“Here – this will make the whole situation a lot clearer.”
Josh flicked the projector on again. The screen lit up with what looked like a sound stage, with lighting and makeup people bustling around like ants. Chad realized with a shock that the person in center stage getting his makeup adjusted was none other than Josh. And the set he was standing on was that of the hit primetime show called CrazierMoney.
Josh leaned back with evident delight. “You’ll love this! This is so awesome even I can’t believe it. Jim Crazier is dedicating a whole show to our concept! This is going to run tonight!”
With that, the camera swung to an onstage video monitor blaring the lead-in trailer that introduced CrazierMoney every night. When it swung back, there was Jim Crazier, shirtsleeves rolled up in trademark fashion. His face filling the camera, Crazier launched into his usual choppy, introductory shtick.
... other people want to make friends – I’m – into – MAKING – MONEY! Unless you keep UP with the MARKET, you’ll – get – HAMMERED. You’ve got to INNOVATE to STAY AHEAD!
That’s why I’m dedicating this show tonight to an AWESOME new market play invented by an AWESOME market PLAYER. My guest tonight is legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist JOSH PEABODY, of TRASHTALK!
Josh clapped. “Isn’t this guy just the greatest? I can’t get enough of him!” Crazier and Josh shook hands, and Crazier started speaking again.
So tell us Josh, what’s this new market strategy all about?
I’ll do better than that, Jim. Let’s watch the numbers play out in real time so you can really get the feel of it.
That sounds GREAT Josh! So what are we seeing on that monitor over there?
That one is showing the action on the new secondary market we’ve set up to trade in VC fund insurance securities. With these securities, VC investors can’t lose. Not only that, every average Joe in America can become their own VC, too, and all without any risk! What we’re watching is trading in insurance securities we sold a few months ago to protect our valued investors in case any of our investments doesn’t turn out quite as we hoped.
Wow, Josh, that trading is really ACTIVE! It looks like there’s LOTS of BUYING and SELLING going on! What’s causing all that volatility?
[Laughing] Well, any of your viewers that are into online gaming will really enjoy this.
The camera swung around to another monitor. On it was a number in dollars. The number was spinning rapidly like a gas pump in reverse selling $10 a gallon gasoline.
Huh! That number’s dropping like a STONE, Josh! Tell the audience what they’re looking at there!
That [pausing for dramatic effect] is the bank account of one of our portfolio companies – an outfit called iBalls.com.
Sanjay let out a shriek of animal rage and tried to leap over the table. But Josh was ready for him, and made it to the door with time to spare. Chad heard the door locking from the outside, leaving him in shock, and Sanjay sobbing in helpless frustration, spread-eagled on the conference room table.
Back in Washington, D.C., Frank couldn’t help himself. He logged on one more time using his neighbor’s WiFi network, and headed straight to his iBallZapper! account: now it read $342,852.58.
Funny, isn’t it, he mused, sending one more iBall to its doom so he could hear Meg Ryan’s convincingly sincere climax one more time. And all these years I thought that venture capital was just for losers.
* * *
12
Now You See Me (and Now You Don’t!)
Frank had been leaning back in his cubicle chair for two hours now, feet up on his desktop. From that angle, he could keep an eye on Carl Cummings’ temporary office down the corridor. But the agent refused to show his face. The guy must have the bladder of a camel, Frank thought. Wouldn’t he ever need to relieve himself?
Finally, Cummings emerged. Frank leaned forward nonchalantly, still tapping away on his laptop. But once the agent had passed behind him, Frank leaned backward again to see where Cummings would go.
Good. Cummings was headed for the reception area door – and now he was through it. Frank waited for a minute to pass, then grabbed his coat, his laptop, and his more-than-usually full backpack. He idled slowly up the corridor, waiting for the agent to return.
When he finally saw Cummings through the glass of the reception area, Frank walked the last few steps to the front desk. As expected, Cummings noticed that Frank was on his way out the door. Pretending that a headline had caught his eye, the agent picked a ne
wspaper up from the reception area table within easy earshot. Perfect again.
Frank stopped in front of Mary’s desk and waited until she irritably glanced up from the celebrity magazine that was commanding her full attention.
“What?” she snapped.
“I’ll be back in a couple hours, Mary. I vowed last year I’d never leave my Christmas shopping until the last minute again.”
“Good for you,” she grunted, eyes already back on her magazine.
Frank pointed to his back pack. “Especially when I realize I should return half the stuff I bought already.” Mary ignored him. Smiling to himself, Frank walked out into the hallway.
Someone else was now standing in front of Mary’s desk. She looked up in annoyance, and then broke into a broad smile instead. This time it was that good looking young CIA agent.
“Oh! Hello! What can I do for you, Agent Cummings?”
“I’m off to a meeting, Mary. If anyone calls, it’ll probably be a couple of hours before I’m back.”
“Why of course, Agent Cummings. A couple of hours. I’ll be sure to let them know.” Mary made a show of writing this down. But when she looked up again, he was gone.
Once in the hallway, Cummings popped his earpiece in and punched the speed dial on his cellphone.
“IT Rat is leaving the building. Tail him and report back. I’ll provide support. Confirm.”
“Tail IT Rat and report back; you’ll support.”
Cummings was feeling livid as he strode down the hallway. “You’ll have the resources you need,” Marchand had promised. Resources, indeed! Here he was relying on some kid straight out of school. He’d be lucky if Bert Tyro even managed to spot Frank leaving the building.
Cummings took the elevator to the lobby level. As he marched out, Agent Tyro’s voice crackled in his earpiece.
“IT Rat just caught a cab.”
Cummings left the LoC lobby and walked across the broad pavement to the cab stand, listening carefully.
“Following IT Rat West on Independence.”
Cummings eased himself slowly into a taxi. “North on 3rd.”
The cab driver waited for instructions, but Carl wasn’t yet sure where to go. The driver turned to look over his shoulder, and Carl stalled for time. “What department stores are nearby?”
“Well, we got your Filene’s, and your Macy’s. Neiman Marcus. Marshall’s, you name it. This ain’t East Podunk.”
“West on Pennsylvania Ave,” came the voice in his ear.
Carl took a guess. “Okay, Macy’s – that’s on G Street, right?”
“Last time I checked, yeah.”
The cab driver saw his fare scowling in the rear view mirror, and wheeled away from the curb without further comment. If he can’t take a joke, well, the hell with him.
Before they reached the department store, Agent Tyro confirmed Carl’s guess. Not long after, Cummings was sitting in a “hubby” chair in the jewelry and perfume department on the first floor of Macy’s. Hiding behind the front section of the Washington Post, his mood grew blacker by the minute as Tyro’s youthful voice passed on the mundane details of Frank’s miserable shopping expedition. For this, Carl had given up a better paying career in the private sector?
Frank, it seemed, was running up his charge card on the third floor, half-filling two shopping bags with the kind of innocuous items a middle-aged man without much imagination might buy for relatives he rarely saw. Agent Tyro grew increasingly bored; even worried that someone might think he was shoplifting as he loitered around the floor. He fingered the badge in his pocket, just in case someone approached him. Seeing Frank looking lost in the housewares section, Tyro debated making a wisecrack to Cummings. Nope; bad bet. Tyro might be a newbie, but he’d already figured out that Cummings’ sense of humor had been surgically removed at birth.
Meanwhile, Frank had enlisted the help of a floor walker. He was following her from one department to another, walking back and forth past the elevator bank. How about a Sweater? No? Maybe a quilt? No? Then surely this nice afghan over here would be just right? Huh. Well….
Tyro rolled his eyes as the sales assistant and her indecisive poodle of a shopper headed off across the floor again. The agent glanced down and scrolled through his email. Nothing interesting there, either.
Tyro looked up, and saw that the floor walker was looking around with a surprised look on her face.
He jerked to attention. Frank had vanished! He must have ducked into an elevator this time as they walked past. Damn!
Tyro reported in to Cummings in an agitated voice as he all but ran towards the elevators. “IT Rat headed up by elevator. I’ll take the fourth floor; you take the fifth.” Then his cellphone cut out as the elevator doors shut behind him.
Cummings stood up and headed towards the elevator bank on the first floor, but ignored Tyro’s request. With both of them hopping in and out of elevators, Frank could easily elude them. With a disgusted look on his face, he stood twenty feet back from the wall where he could get a clear view of the floor indicator lights as they flashed on and off and the main entrance as well.
But which of the elevators was Frank on? Damn it, there were four elevators, and the building had eight floors!
Thirty seconds after stepping into the elevator, Frank stepped briskly out onto the fourth floor and immediately ducked through the adjacent fire door and into the stairwell beyond. He raced down to the basement level landing, and then worked as quickly as possible.
Into one of the shopping bags went the contents of the other. Over the railing it went, down towards the utility sub-basement. He listened for it to hit. Good. Out of the backpack and onto Frank’s head went a wig and dark glasses left over from a long ago Halloween party. Then he pulled out and donned a woman’s reversible raincoat. Last of all he stuffed his backpack and the coat he had been wearing into the second shopping bag and raced back up to the first floor landing.
A moment later, Frank opened the stairwell door and walked out as a reasonable facsimile of his elderly mother. A few steps later and he had walked past Carl Cummings and onto the street. And now he was just one more anonymous shopper riding the escalator down into the Metro Center subway station.
Long before Cummings and Tyro faced up to the fact that they’d been snookered, Frank was boarding a Glenmont train for another short ride. By the time Cummings was banging on the security guard’s office door to commandeer the video tapes of Macy’s stairwells and exits, Frank was walking into Union Station, Washington’s Amtrak terminal. And as Carl was steeling himself to report to headquarters that Frank had given him the slip, his quarry was leaving a train station restroom, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and his eyes cast down.
At one point, the Amtrak station security video tapes Cummings later reviewed revealed a nondescript, possibly middle-aged, presumably homeless man shambling across the concourse, a garbage bag slung over his shoulder. In it were all of the belongings the figure had to his name, at least for now.
That was the last blurry image that Cummings saw that might arguably have been Frank, as he wearily screened tape after tape from bus stations, terminals and other exit points. It hardly mattered, though, because he knew that by now Frank was long gone.
The question, of course, was where?
* * *
13
Welcome to Las Vegas!
Two and a half days after dropping off the map in Washington, Frank staggered off a Greyhound bus in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Though tired and dirty, he felt remarkably energized. It was time to get down to work! But first, he had to find his next ride.
With his knapsack slung over one shoulder, Frank scanned the bus terminal for anyone that might be Earl Jenkins. He had assembled a mental picture of the kind of man that would post an ad in Millennial Survivalist and Assault Rifle Monthly, and assumed it would be easy to pick him out of a crowd. Problem was, just about everyone hanging around in the Las Vegas bus station looked like they mig
ht be a charter subscriber. Now what?
“Mr. Columbo?”
Frank turned to find a tired looking, forty-ish woman in jeans, flannel shirt and hiking boots. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Thought it might be,” she said, looking at his North Face coat. “My Pappy asked me to meet you here. He don’t get down to Vegas much, so he figured he’d hit the craps tables some before heading out again. Hope you don’t mind too much if we have to go hunt him up.”
After two and a half days without a shower or a decent meal, Frank actually did mind too much. But there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he shrugged and said, “Please call me Carter.”
“Ida May Jukes is my name, but just plain Ida works right well.”
Frank followed Ida May Jukes as she walked out of the bus station and swung herself up into an old pickup truck. Frank did the same as she started up the ancient heap. Soon they were heading south on Main Street.
Frank had never been to Vegas before. Once they merged onto the Strip, his tired eyes widened as they passed bastardized versions of the Eiffel Tower, New York City skyline (complete with a roller coaster he didn’t recall noticing in the original version), a castle with multicolored turret roofs reminiscent of an enormous PlayMobil® toy set, a Sphinx, and a huge black pyramid (“At night it’s got some kinda laser thing com’in out of it!” Ida explained). She took a right off the Strip just after the pyramid, and then a left into a huge parking garage.
“Pappy likes to start at Mandalay Bay. He thinks the dice runs best there. But if they ain’t break’n right, he moves up the Strip to the Excalibur. Their tables is pretty good, too, and they got great burgers. Food’s a whole lot cheaper, too.”
The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1) Page 11