by Todd Borg
“No. Not a chance. That young man is smart. He wanted to see how much information he could get out of me without playing any of his own cards. I also recall that he told me he was talking to several firms. He obviously wanted to play us against each other. See where he could get the best deal.”
“How do you evaluate a proposal if you don’t know what the focus of the proposal is?”
“You don’t. All he told me was that he’d developed something new that could revolutionize a high-tech industry. He said it could greatly increase the efficiency of all high-tech industries. There would even be spillovers into consumer goods. Of course, those are grandiose concepts. And ninety-nine percent of them go nowhere. But hell, good ones do come along now and then. Apple Computer, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon. Wish I had put some VC into one of those. I wouldn’t have had to work so hard in the auto and truck business.”
“If you didn’t know the invention, what could you tell him?”
“I just explained that many areas of inquiry are involved and it depends on what the invention or product category is. As a potential investment partner, we’d seek to identify the current market for the concept as well as potential future markets. What will this thing sell for and what are the potential profits? If it is a new kind of long distance service, for example, it has the advantage of being used by everyone, but the profits are measured in pennies per customer. On the other hand, if it is a new kind of luxury boat, the market is very small, but the profit per customer can be quite large. An iPod is somewhere in between.
“I explained about target demographics and the critical aspect of whether or not they are upward trending or downward trending. I talked about production costs. What kind of human resources will we need and can we find the talent? What will be the costs of the physical plants necessary to build the item, if in fact it is an item?
“Equally important is the marketing. How will we bring this to market? How long a run will it have? How easily can we lock it up with patents and such? How little time will pass before competitors jump on the idea and out-perform us?”
“How did he respond to these concepts?” I asked.
“As I said, despite his nervousness, young Mr. Warner is focused and direct. He asked me how much I needed to know before I could float him some numbers. I explained I had to know what he had before I could give him specifics. He asked me to make it hypothetical. So I got out a calculator and did a little figuring and gave him a hypothetical.”
“What was it?”
Emerson shook his head. “I work with numbers all day long. I can’t remember specifics unless I’m consulting my notes. Suffice to say that a hypothetical would be based on what our return on investment would be. Some ideas aren’t worth taking a chance on. Some are worth throwing a million or two into. Less than that and it isn’t really worth the time. The ideal for our group would be a ten million-dollar investment in return for fifty-one percent ownership and a company that had the potential of sky-high returns.” Emerson smiled at me. “We don’t expect to find the next Dell Computer. But it would be nice.”
“Is that the scenario you floated by Michael Warner?”
“Something like that.”
“Why do you think he went elsewhere?”
“He said he thought his idea might take several million or more to launch and had enormous potential. But he said he’d want to run the company and own fifty-one percent. I told him that was a smart idea, but that serious investors want control. If he worked with us, we’d insist on majority ownership, and one of our firm would be chairman and we’d pick the CEO. That fellow would naturally want to work closely with Michael, but our CEO would be in charge. I think that is what sent Michael Warner on his way.”
“I’m curious,” I said. “Why didn’t you work with him a little more? If his idea is great, wouldn’t it be worth it to let him be boss? You could still own fifty-one percent.”
“It’s a good question,” Emerson said, nodding. “It does happen where the creator ends up being the boss. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bezos at Amazon, Page and Brin at Google. Sometimes that works well. But it’s uncommon. Business skills are completely different than invention skills. You almost always have to bring in a grayhair with a lot of experience running a corporation if you
want any chance of success. But the main reason I wouldn’t do it with Michael Warner is that despite his smarts he isn’t good boss material. I’ve been in business a long time and I can read people.
“For example, one of our outfits is just starting production of a new innovative handheld device. We’re doing it all in Reno, sales and marketing, product development and manufacturing. I don’t understand the details of how this thing works, but it does nearly everything your laptop does, plus it talks to everything you own. Your office computer network, your home coffee maker, your DVD player, your garage door opener. The two guys who came up with it are wizards, but they could never manage people and run a business. So we brought in a guy from Intel to be CEO. The initial orders look like we’ve got a hit. If so, the minority ownership stake of those two young men will bring them millions. A good deal for all.”
“And you serve as chairman,” I guessed.
Emerson grinned. “Yes. But it is a figurehead position. All of us have equal shares in our group so we split the profits or losses of the group equally.”
“How many in your investment group?”
“There are seven of us. Because our original buy-in was the same for all, we each get one vote. With seven votes there is always a majority. Easy to make decisions. Our eventual goal is seven companies. Bill Reed is chairman of the second company in Mountain View. They are another manufacturer of computer peripherals. You probably know Bill? He owns a bunch of restaurants around the lake. Active in the Chamber of Commerce and such.”
My phone rang. “Sorry,” I interrupted. “I should answer this.”
“Of course. No problem at all.”
I fished my cell out of my pocket. “Owen McKenna,” I said.
“Mr. McKenna, I’m Shirley Letmeyer with Century 21. I was at the meeting where you showed all of us realtors the drawing of that house you were looking for? Well, I found it.”
FORTY-SIX
I asked Shirley to hold, covered the phone, thanked Emerson, told him I had to go.
“Yes, of course.” He swirled the still-full snifter. “Come back any time. It was good to talk to you.”
Once outside, I got in my car before I resumed talking on the phone.
“The house matches the drawing?” I said to Shirley.
“Yes. I went to a listing call and I spotted it just down the street. I looked for a long time. Of course, I was very careful. No one could see me holding the drawing under my steering wheel.”
“You got the address?”
“Yes. It’s over in the North Upper Truckee neighborhood. It’s on one of those loops. There’s a fence around it and there’s another house right next door. But they’re the only two houses on that part of the street. The other nearby lots are vacant. They’re probably unbuildable because they are steep and one of them has what looks like some seasonal seepage. And you know how the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is about water flow...”
I interrupted her and asked for the address. She read it off as I backed out of Emerson’s driveway.
It was quite dark and the moon was just rising over Heavenly, looking very full even though it wasn’t technically full for two more nights. I drove across town out to North Upper Truckee and began to watch the street signs closely. I drove past the road with the target house, continued two more blocks and turned off to the west. I came to the end of a loop, parked and shut off the engine.
I had a flashlight in the car, but I wanted more privacy than that, so I waited a couple of minutes for my eyes to adjust to the moonlit night.
It was easy to find a way around the neighboring houses. I came through the woods and approached the target house, eager to see if it matched the drawi
ng that Silence had presumably sent on a paper airplane flight to the neighbor. Even though I approached from the back and side, the match was obvious. Roof layout, gable dormers, shed dormer and window positions. I eased my way closer to the backyard fence and studied the tree that was just outside of the upstairs window.
The branches were clear in the neighbor’s yard light. I counted each section from the first split above the trunk. Two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one. I moved around to one of the nearby vacant lots, staying in the shadows, peering out from behind the large trunks of mature Jeffrey pines.
In front of the house were three motorcycles glistening in the dark, the chrome reflecting every tiny bit of light from distant houses. I didn’t recognize the Low Rider painted blue with yellow pinstripes. But the Fat Boy had a green gas tank and the chopper a red tank. Marky and Tiptoe.
Inside the house was the blue light of a TV in the living room. There were no other lights on down or up.
I gradually traced most of a circle around the house and ended up near the neighbor’s house. I made note of the number, then worked my way back through the woods to my Jeep.
Back on the East Shore, I stopped at Street’s. We sipped wine in front of her fire while I gave her a summary of what I learned. An hour later, we said goodnight and Spot and I headed up the mountain to my cabin.
Spot, drunk on hotdogs and hugs from Street, lay down and went to sleep while I got to work on the computer.
The house where Marky and Tiptoe possibly held Silence was owned by a woman in Modesto. There was no way to tell if Marky and Tiptoe were connected to her or had her permission to use her house as their base camp.
The neighbor’s house was owned by Mathew and Tillie Bilkenstein. They had lived there for thirty-two years. A little more research revealed that Mathew had been deceased eight of those thirty-two years and Tillie, 88, had lived there alone ever since. Then I found a reference to another Bilkenstein in a law enforcement journal. The article, dated two years earlier, related the case of a San Jose-area woman who was shot and killed in her house by a robber dressed in a police uniform. The victim was Mandy Bilkenstein. She was single, 59, with no children or siblings. Her only surviving relative was her mother in Tahoe, Tillie Bilkenstein.
Was Tillie the police-phobic letter carrier, confused and frightened by the bikers next door? Did she find the paper airplanes in her yard and deliver them to the high school? I wanted to bring her some flowers and knock on her door and drink her tea and ask her if she’d seen the girl in the upstairs window next door. But I didn’t dare risk the attention of Marky and Tiptoe.
Knowing where Silence might be, where she’d been imprisoned for two weeks, burned a hot hole in my gut and I could barely keep myself from going back there now, this time with Spot, and drive my Jeep through the front wall of the house and send Spot in with the attack command. I was enough cranked up about it that I actually thought I would have half a chance. Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated. A one-man blitz against three dirtballs.
Now I was more restrained. I wanted to think my restraint was mature judgement rather than lack of courage.
I turned off my computer and sat in my rocker in the dark and rested my legs on his largeness and drank a couple beers.
With nothing else to do but churn, I went to bed.
Hours of sleepless fatigue later, I still lay in bed, unable to sleep, heart pounding with adrenaline-powered anger as I thought about Silence.
I thought of her mother’s video and remembered the way Silence looked away from inquiring eyes, moved in her strange repetitive fashion, performing her daily chores in the ritualistic way that gave her comfort knowing that each part of life had its predictable rhythm and its proper place.
I saw her retreat from the celebrations of others, confusion and worry on her face, uncomprehending how other people had the easy speech that allowed them to say what they think, tell what they want, give voice to their dreams.
I saw her crushing the poor unknowing dog in the powerful grip of desperation and desire. I saw her crawling under her mattress for the squeeze that helped her shut out a harsh world where noise and visual commotion and the overwhelming jumble of life rose to a crescendo and threatened her sanity. I saw her unable to communicate, speak or write, living in a place where her thoughts and worries and hopes were locked in a brain with no ordinary outlet.
Mostly, I saw her spinning round and round, shutting out the inputs, smoothing away the roughness of life, bowing her head to face the earth as if it held in its elemental purity some kind of safety zone.
And I saw the smile. Her gleeful response to spinning that had escaped notice by the rest of the world.
The silent grin.
I looked at the clock. 5:00 a.m.
I got out of bed and pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt and running shoes. Spot always senses a break in pattern and he stood at my side, looking up at me, ears focused, brow furrowed, nose pushing at my hip, wondering what I was up to.
We walked outside under a cold night sky lit by a moon so bright that only the most brilliant stars could be seen. Across the lake the snow-covered mountains stood in stark white relief against the black sky. In the far distance was the tiny flash of the anti-collision strobes on a jet, one or two hundred people cruising south, six or seven miles above the Central Valley or maybe above the coastal range or maybe even out over the Pacific, on course to land in L.A. or San Diego or Acapulco.
I stood alone in my frozen driveway and bowed my head like Silence did. Then I slowly turned around one full rotation, then did it again fast. My cabin wavered and tilted and I felt a touch light-headed. In a moment the world steadied. Spot was wagging, giving me the look that means he is considering jumping on me. I turned twice again and the same little dizziness crept up, then evaporated away. I remembered turning as a child and feeling the giddy dizziness that it brought on. I liked it then.
I rotated three more times in a row and stopped as the uncomfortable feeling returned. I didn’t like it now.
Spot liked it. He bounced on his front feet, ready to leap. I held out my palm.
Maybe the trick was found in constancy. When Silence began spinning she kept going, speeding up, becoming more stable not less.
So I took a couple of deep breaths and counted one, two, three, go.
I pushed off into a fast spin and kept it going, pushing it harder as the world streaked and blurred and Spot elongated into a moonlit rush of black and white and his barks roared from one ear to the other and I went faster and faster still.
And then the ground went vertical and slammed my knee and hip and elbow, and my head suddenly felt as though it had twisted a few degrees too far on my neck, and my sinuses made that prickly sensation that comes from a shock to the skull.
I lay my head down on the dirt while Spot bounded around my prostrate form, and I thought about Silence trapped in the upstairs room in that house with three big stinking men standing guard. Silence’s only ally was an old lady next door, a woman with no family, who lived alone, whose friends had probably all died, a woman frightened to death of anyone in a police uniform. I wanted to rush in and save the child, but I felt the powerlessness that comes from being a pariah, from being alone at night, from not having a sound plan.
I couldn’t even spin.
FORTY-SEVEN
The next day I explained my plan to Street. She was predictably concerned, not just for my safety, but also about whether she would do her part perfectly, for everything depended on her acting ability.
I assured her she would do fine and added that she’d have Spot with her for protection, and that Diamond would cover her as well. Then I called Diamond and explained my request.
“A lot could go wrong,” he said.
“I know. But the potential problems are small against a girl’s life. One more day until the full moon.”
“If the full moon thing is real.”
“Can’t take the chance it isn’t,” I s
aid.
Diamond was silent. Then he said, “This will be unofficial?”
“I did it the official way before.”
“And it blew up in your face,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I left Spot with Street and asked her to wait for my call in approximately two hours. Then I drove through town to the house where I believed Silence was held prisoner. I parked three blocks away. The Jeep would be my safety vehicle. I chose a place that would be easy to get to in the dark in case my plan didn’t work.
At the end of the road I found one of the many entrance trails that lead to the large network of trails in the forest between the North Upper Truckee neighborhood and the ridge from Angora Peak to Echo Peak to Flagpole Peak. I followed the trail back toward the street with the target house. There was another trail that led to that street as well, but I stayed in the forest and found a small rise with a group of fir trees. It took a bit of shifting to get comfortable, but I was able to lie under them and have a clear view through their branches. My binoculars are eight-power, have a small field and are lightweight. So it is hard to get a steady view. After arranging small piles of needles to make hollows for my elbows, I settled down to watch, my body and arms holding the glasses steady as if they were on a tripod.
The same three bikes were out front. Marky’s and Tiptoe’s and a third. Except for two Steller’s jays playing tag in the fir in the front yard, there was no movement. Nothing moved in any of the windows, upstairs or down.
I studied the house again, revisiting the question of how much it matched Silence’s drawing. It seemed perfect in every way.
But so did the one in the Sierra Tract neighborhood. And in that one Diamond even saw a girl who looked like Silence.
Here, I had no indication of a girl. I watched the upstairs window. There was no light, no movement, nothing to reinforce my thinking that she was there. All I had was three motorcycles, and I couldn’t be positive that any of them were Marky’s and Tiptoe’s. I hadn’t gotten the license numbers. I couldn’t see the license plates now, either. How many other bikes in the basin looked just like these? There could be many. And while the house looked just like the drawing, how many other houses were there like that, built to the same design, perhaps built by the same builder?