by Ben Mezrich
In the distance, out the windshield beyond the Nicaraguan girl’s clawed grip on the dash, he saw another turn in the road, marked by a pair of palm trees. At first he felt a surge of relief, because he recognized the trees; they were only about a quarter mile from Scott’s house. But then his eyes shifted down, to the road leading up to the trees—and his stomach went tight. There was something weird about the gravel there, the way it was glistening in the moonlight, and he realized that it wasn’t just gravel, it was also sand—a lot of sand. Which, if the digital numbers on the dashboard really were real, and not just a figment of his imagination, would make it extremely hard, if not impossible, for Scott to make the turn without hitting—
Suddenly there was a scream and a horrible screech of metal and his whole world lurched up in the air, then flipped over, spinning and spinning, and then . . . nothing.
You okay? You okay?”
Brent opened his eyes. He was looking at the sky. His body was pretty much horizontal, his legs were extended right out in front of him, and yet somehow he was moving, sliding along the gravel on his butt, and then he looked straight up and saw Scott staring down at him, eyes wild, blood caked on his lower lip, hair sticking straight up from his head like a demented halo.
“You okay? You okay?” Scott repeated.
Brent realized that Scott had him by his arms and was dragging him across the road. Brent looked back toward where he’d come from—and saw the BMW on its side, windows shattered, the whole damn front of the thing crushed in like an accordion. One of the palm trees was cracked in the middle, and the other was bent over, like it was bowing to the moon.
“Holy shit,” Brent whispered. “Trent.”
“He’s good,” Scott said, relief in his voice. “We’re all good. Everybody’s good.”
They reached the side of the road, and Scott placed Brent gingerly on the grass. Brent looked over and saw Trent, sitting there next to him. At first glance, Trent didn’t look anything like good. He was holding a rag to his forehead, and there was blood everywhere, running down both of his cheeks, covering the front of his shirt, trickling all over the grass.
“Oh, man,” Brent started, but Trent offered a weak smile.
“Just cut up a little,” he managed. “The girls are okay too. But I think Scott’s got a broken ankle.”
Brent looked over to where Trent was pointing with his free hand. Scott was trying to calm the girls, who were about five yards away, also on the grass, jabbering in Spanish. Neither one of them looked hurt. When Scott left them to cross back to Brent and his brother, Brent saw that he was indeed limping pretty badly.
Scott sat on the grass next to Brent, reaching down to check out his ankle. It looked huge, swollen, and blue, and Scott grimaced as he gingerly removed his shoe.
There were suddenly sirens in the distance—still about ten minutes away, by Brent’s guess. Scott heard them too, and seemed to forget about his ankle.
“I gotta get the fuck out of here,” he said suddenly.
Brent stared at him. “What? No, man, you gotta get to a hospital. We all have to—”
“No, I gotta get out of here. I’m the CEO of a company. It’s gonna look real bad if this gets in the press.”
“You got in a car accident—”
“With a couple of hookers in the backseat. No, man, I gotta go.”
Suddenly he was up on his good foot, and then he was hobbling away from the road, into the brush. One of the girls, the Nicaraguan, saw him going and for some reason decided to follow, jogging right past Brent and Trent. She put an arm around Scott and helped him forward, deeper into what appeared to be a field of waist-high bushes and weeds.
Brent watched them go. Then he turned back to Trent, who was also staring after Scott, awe in his eyes. The bleeding didn’t look quite as bad as before, but he was definitely going to need stitches. The sirens were getting louder, and the other girl was still babbling in Spanish, but her voice was so high-pitched and she was speaking so fast, Brent had no idea what she was saying. He reached out and put a hand on his younger brother’s leg.
“Trent, I’m so sorry, man.” The kid had been in Costa Rica less than ten hours, and he’d nearly died.
Then Brent noticed that Trent was smiling.
“Sorry? This has been the best day of my life!”
Brent was on his way to the emergency room to get his brother stitched up when the police finally found Scott crouching in the field of weeds, the prostitute curled up next to him with the bottle of tequila. The officer had his handcuffs out and ready—until Scott opened up his wallet. Two thousand dollars American, and the officer quickly went back the way he had come, leaving Scott and the girl in the field, where Hilt eventually picked them up and drove them home.
CHAPTER 20
There was something uniquely pleasant about the feel of a good hammer against your palm. Maybe it was the weight of the thing, how it pulled at the muscles of your forearm with just the right amount of force. Or maybe it was how it looked, arced back above your shoulder, the steel head of the tool poised in the air with so much pregnant power, so much potential strength.
And then the hammer was flashing downward, tearing through the air in a perfect swing. It hit the cast dead center, spraying plaster all over the newspaper Scott had spread out across the floor of his home office to cover the Oriental rug he’d had imported the week before.
Without pause, Scott brought the hammer back up above his head—and then he heard a cough from the open doorway across the room.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He looked up and saw Garin standing there, mouth agape. Garin had a laptop open in his right hand, the screen glowing with their revenue numbers for the previous week. Scott wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, or even when he’d arrived at the house. Scott had been in the home office for most of the day, his cell phone off. It was a Friday afternoon, and he knew that a lot of their Costa Rican employees would be on their way to the beach, starting the weekend early. Scott had chosen to work from home, to keep from being distracted by the early exodus.
“This thing is driving me nuts,” he responded. Then he brought the hammer down again, hitting the cast from the side. This time the cast cracked like the shell of a nut, and he laid the hammer on the newspaper and went to work with his fingers, prying the damn thing open.
“It’s only been two weeks,” Garin said, stepping into the room. “Your ankle is broken. Didn’t the doctor say you’re supposed to wear the cast for six?”
“Fuck him. He doesn’t have to walk around in it. My ankle feels fine.”
Scott got his foot free and tossed the remains of the cast into a trash can by his desk. Then he slowly rose to his feet, carefully putting weight on his injured leg. His ankle felt weak, but it didn’t hurt.
“Is this Apocalypse Now, descent-into-madness kind of shit?”
At that, Scott had to smile. Before he could respond, Hilt pushed past Garin and into the room. He had an intense look on his face.
“Got another one. This time from an M&A firm in Canada.”
Scott stretched his leg. Garin looked down at his laptop.
“How much?” Scott asked.
“Twenty-five million. I told them to go fuck themselves.”
Garin looked up, his face blanching. Hilt laughed.
“I’m kidding. I told him we weren’t looking for that sort of investment.” Then to Scott. “We’re not, are we?”
Scott shook his head. Still, it was pretty amazing to hear—yet another firm wanting to make an investment in their company. Even more amazing, he knew that the investment would just be a stepping-stone to an eventual IPO. Because these days that’s all anyone was talking about in relation to Absolute Poker—the inevitable IPO.
They were now raking in seventy thousand dollars a day in revenue and signing up players at an amazing rate. And their timing couldn’t have been better. The industry had completely exploded in the past month—beginning, of
course, with Party Poker’s IPO on the London Stock Exchange. That poker company, with the help of Morgan Stanley and DKW, had managed to pull off the largest IPO in the previous decade on the UK exchange. Its valuation had gone as high as thirteen billion dollars on the first day, ending at around nine billion. The founders of the company were now on the Forbes list.
Billionaires. Off of online poker.
And almost overnight, the industry had become real. The biggest banks in the world were calling everyone who had a piece of it to see how they could get involved. Major, respectable institutions, with teams of lawyers and auditors and CPAs.
Scott had taken many of the calls himself. He’d given the major firms access to their books, and everyone liked what they saw. One of the biggest banks, with headquarters in London, had gone into specifics; they wanted to take Absolute public—for no less than a billion dollars in an IPO. The only problem was, unlike Party Poker, which had started in such a large way that they’d been run with an IPO in mind from the very beginning, Absolute Poker had only two years of audited financials; to IPO, they’d need three at the minimum. They’d employed some of the most respectable big banks and auditing firms available, had engaged numerous high-priced legal teams, and had meticulously documented their financials. But they still needed one more year of records.
One more year, and they’d be worth a billion dollars. No problem, Scott had told the London bankers. We’ll get one more year on the books. By the end of 2006, they’d be ready to go big—Party Poker big.
So this, now, was their trajectory. If all went well, in one more year they would all be on their way to becoming billionaires.
Between now and then they just had to keep their heads down, keep the revenues flowing, and turn down all the investors who were trying to buy their way into an industry on steroids. But Scott felt they also had to make a few changes—because now that the industry was legitimate and first class, they needed to get respectable—first world.
“It’s not money we need,” Scott responded. “We’re in the due-diligence phase now. We need to look clean and pretty. Look at Ultimate Bet—those offices in Portland were top-notch. We need to look like that.”
“You mean we need to get out of Costa Rica,” Hilt said. “Open another headquarters somewhere respectable, where we can hire professional talent and make sure the big banks continue to take us seriously.”
Scott nodded. He had been going through this with Hilt for a while, and they had already chosen a place they felt was right for them: Vancouver, Canada. First world, close to the United States, relatively cheap, and with highly educated talent that would look very good to the major European banks and exchanges. They’d even come up with who they thought they might bring in to help open the new office—someone who knew their business intimately and also had a strong background in marketing. The current conversation wasn’t spontaneous—it was really for Garin’s benefit.
Because Scott and Hilt had also recently come to another conclusion: they needed to make some other changes as well, for similar, somewhat cosmetic reasons.
“Along those lines,” Scott said tentatively, “we need to make some slight changes involving the shareholder structures. Specifically, we’ve decided to tweak the board of directors.”
At this, Garin paused, shutting his laptop. He looked from Scott to Hilt.
“What do you mean, ‘tweak’?”
“Gray it up,” Scott said. “Put a little age into it, because the bankers who look this shit over don’t want to see a bunch of twenty-five-year-olds running a billion-dollar company. Some of us can stay on, but we need to switch some out to add some of our older investors.”
Garin’s face was reddening, and Scott could tell he was getting angry. Scott didn’t want this to get personal; it was just business, and good business at that.
“We think that since you’re more focused on the day-to-day—the TV spending and marketing, stuff like that—it makes more sense for you to step back.”
There, he’d said it. Like pulling off a Band-Aid. Hilt had remained silent throughout the conversation. Still, Garin kept glancing his way. For a brief moment, Scott thought that something was going to happen—something ugly. But then Garin seemed to slump his shoulders, just the littlest bit.
“I assume you two will stay on the board. And your dad?”
Scott nodded. His dad was good for the image of the company, as a high-powered financial player in Seattle. And he and Hilt—well, they really were running the show. And Shane, now that he was clean, would also remain on the board; his family had put up a significant portion of the money that had kept them afloat, making them and him major shareholders. But the rest of the board would be older, respectable shareholders.
Garin was obviously angered by the change, but in the end he’d have to accept things as they were. A battle right now would be foolish; this was a train that none of them wanted to get off.
Scott turned away, so that he didn’t have to look at the cauliflowers of red still spreading across Garin’s cheeks. He forced his mind to whirl forward, away from the tension in the room. He had other, more important things to focus on.
Billionaires. Was it really possible? Internet billionaires—the idea seemed hard to fathom. But if things continued the way they were going, it was inevitable—Scott would soon be nearly a billionaire. A nobody kid from a trailer park in Montana, who’d barely survived childhood—on his way to becoming a billionaire.
All they needed to do was get clean and pretty—and somehow stay that way until the banks were ready to take them public.
CHAPTER 21
It was definitely the most difficult pitch Pete Barovich had ever had to make.
He was sitting in the sunlit, tastefully modern kitchen of his brand-new home in Phoenix, Arizona. His hands were cupped around a mug of fresh coffee, and his two Labrador retrievers were curled up at his feet. The dogs were almost as new as the house, both jumbles of puppy energy; even though they’d spent the whole morning running around the construction site that was the backyard—new pool, new Jacuzzi, a deck for barbecue parties, even an outdoor wet bar—they were taking turns pawing at the laces of Pete’s shoes. But Pete wasn’t focused on the dogs or the coffee; across the table, his wife, Brandi, was sipping from her own mug, watching him intensely. She’d already guessed the theme of what he was going to say, but she was going to make him say it anyway.
“We have to do this,” he finally opened.
It wasn’t the strongest opening, but this was an unusual situation. Pete had been honing his marketing skills since his fraternity days; he’d become a true expert at selling, not just objects or ideas but the big picture. With Brandi it was different, because with Brandi he had only one option, and that was to be utterly truthful. It was like playing poker if your only move was to immediately lay down all of your cards.
“Fine,” Brandi responded, brushing long strands of her brownish-blond hair out of her eyes. At twenty-six, she was a staggeringly pretty woman—a former pageant girl who’d made it all the way to Miss Montana, she should have been way out of Pete’s league. More evidence that even back in college, where he’d first met her, he could market snow to Eskimos. “What is it, exactly, that we have to do?”
Yes, she was going to make him spell it out, every word. Because really, it was so damn insane. They’d literally just moved into their new house two days earlier. Adopted the two Labs. Started construction on the pool, as well as the refinishing of the three bathrooms in the gorgeous split-level ranch-style home.
“We have to sell everything. Take a massive pay cut and move out of the country. And we have to do it right away.”
Pete laid it out for Brandi, step by step; the bottom line was, he had been dead wrong. He had underestimated Scott and his idea. He had thought poker couldn’t work over the Internet—and he had been wrong.
Absolute Poker’s biggest competitors were IPO’ing in the billions. Absolute Poker was now generating close to a hundr
ed thousand dollars a day, and had raised more than fifteen million in working capital. The company was being groomed for a billion-dollar IPO by prestigious banks and hedge funds, who were all hoping to get in on the ground floor of an industry that had taken the financial world by storm.
When Scott had called Pete the night before, offering him a VP job—and explained that they were also in the process of hiring a Canadian CFO and setting up a respectable office in Vancouver—Pete had been forced to admit to himself, and to his friend, how wrong he’d been. To Scott’s credit, he hadn’t rubbed it in at all; to the contrary, he’d explained that Pete was an important piece in the puzzle, that they needed a guy like him to help get the company to the next step. Then again, Scott had always been very good at telling people what they wanted to hear—and at making people see his way. In Pete’s mind, that’s really why Scott had succeeded, why he’d been able to build his company from nothing and, in a way, help invent an entire industry out of something that Pete had thought had no potential. Maybe Pete could sell snow to Eskimos—but Scott could sell Scott to anyone.
However it had happened, now Absolute Poker was on an IPO path; all the banks needed were one more year of audited financials and a real, first-world headquarters—with an outstanding accounting department and a first-class CFO. The fact that Scott had turned to Pete to help build the Vancouver office, even after Pete had turned him down numerous times when the company was nothing but a pipe dream—it was humbling.
Pete would have accepted the offer right on the phone, if he hadn’t had one last sale to make before he could pack up his suitcase and get on a plane.
“I’m not going to tell you that it’s not crazy,” he continued to Brandi, while the dogs chewed at his laces. “Because it’s completely insane. But it’s also an opportunity we may never have again.”
That afternoon Pete and his wife called in an ad to the local paper—moving sale, everything must go. At five thirty in the morning the day after the ad ran, there was a line of fifty people waiting by their garage door. By noon, people were buying the salsa out of the refrigerator, and Pete was trying to figure out how to ship two rambunctious Labradors and an angry wife to Vancouver, Canada.