Iris stepped through the doorway into a large anteroom. A competent-looking middle-aged woman dressed in a conservative suit was working at a desk in a corner. Two couches upholstered in berry and ecru stripes were against the opposite corner. A small coffee table in front of them held several thick books and the remnants of refreshments that had probably been served to Kip and Bridget: a china coffee cup and saucer, a small china plate with cookies, a cut crystal glass, and a can of Pepsi. The books were about modern art. The room’s rear wall was taken up by a large window that overlooked the park-like grounds surrounding the building.
The walls were painted flat white like those in the gigantic lobby, but instead of display cases, they were hung with abstract paintings. Iris didn’t recognize any of them—which didn’t mean anything, given her thin knowledge of art. There was a carved wooden door was on one wall.
“He’s just called them in.” The woman at the desk made a sweeping gesture with her hand toward the door.
Baines opened it for Iris and she stepped into another office, larger than the anteroom. This room was also hung with paintings and furnished with a couch, chairs, and a coffee table covered with art books. The centerpiece was a huge desk made from a slab of polished black marble. The desk was void of everything except a multiline telephone. There wasn’t even a paper clip to be found. A telephone was the only tool T. Duke needed.
Yet another door led off this room and Iris wondered where she was going next in this opulent but weird place. She felt a vague and unpleasant sensation of being imprisoned.
Baines had already crossed the room and opened that door, but Iris lingered, trying to take it all in. She noticed that the throw pillows and cushions on the couch were askew and mashed as if someone had been relaxing or napping there. On the coffee table in front of it was a crumpled tissue smeared with what appeared to be pink lipstick. Iris remembered the woman at the elevator. Now a girl only removes her lipstick to avoid smearing it on herself or someone or something else. T. Duke, you old devil you, she thought to herself.
Baines was standing impatiently with a slightly disdainful curve to his lips. Iris sauntered past him and through the doorway, restraining herself from patting his cheek to irritate him.
She spotted Bridget and breathed a sigh of relief at seeing a friendly face. Bridget and Kip were seated at a large, oval table of dark wood that was circled with armless chairs upholstered in a nubby, bright raspberry-colored fabric.
Bridget smiled at Iris. She had been idly doodling with a cheap felt-tip pen on a small, spiral-bound notebook on the table in front of her. A half-full goblet of cola and ice was also on the table. She was wearing a herringbone weave suit with slacks and a cream silk blouse. She looked attentive and alert, exuding the high energy that had always made Iris, no slug herself, feel like a slacker. But Iris detected fatigue around Bridget’s eyes.
Kip, who was sitting with his back to the door, turned when Iris came in. He nodded at her, kicking his head back once and raising his eyebrows. He was wearing worn jeans, a rumpled, white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open, and flip-flops on bare feet. The soles of the shoes consisted of layers of bright colored rubber. An open laptop computer was in front of him.
From the head of the long table, T. Duke Sawyer animatedly waved Iris toward him as he continued talking. “So the blind man asks the bartender for another drink. Bartender makes it, puts it on the bar, blind man drinks it. After a while, just like he did before, the blind man picks up his Seeing Eye dog and swings it around by the tail. The bartender’s watching this. Finally, he can’t restrain himself any longer. ‘Mister,’ he says, ‘I served you three drinks, and after each drink, you pick up your dog and swing the poor thing around by the tail. I’ve just got to ask. What in heaven’s name are you doing?’ The blind guy shrugs and says, ‘Just having a look around.’”
T. Duke looked pop-eyed at his guests and then slapped his thigh, threw his head back, and laughed.
Iris laughed as well.
Baines, standing near the door, cracked a grin.
Bridget politely smiled, caught Iris’s eye across the table and raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. Iris divined the message: “Just like I described him, isn’t he?”
Kip was frowning and staring at a point in the center of the table, as if mulling over what he’d just heard.
Undaunted, T. Duke said, “See, Kip, the blind guy, the Seeing Eye dog”—T. Duke moved his arm as if swinging a lariat—“so the blind guy could have a look. Get it? Have a look. The dog could see but the guy—”
Kip puffed, “I got it. I just don’t think it’s funny.”
“You don’t think it’s funny,” T. Duke repeated. “Well I guess humor’s a sort of individual thing.” He stood and walked around the table toward Iris. “And this must be your investment banker, Iris Thorne.”
She briskly shook his hand. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Sawyer.”
“Call me T. Duke. Everyone does. From presidents and royalty down to the folks who scrub and clean for me, bless their hearts. We have no formality here. We’re all in this together.” He still clasped her hand and laughed heartily.
From her research, Iris knew that T. Duke was fifty-six years old and a descendent of Sam Houston, the Texas statesman who was president of the Republic of Texas, then U.S. senator and governor after Texas joined the Union. Although T. Duke had made his home in California since 1979, he remained an active and vocal participant in Texan as well as Californian politics. He’d made his first million before he was twenty-five, turning a $1,000 investment in a beat-up truck into a successful overnight package delivery company. The heady mergers and acquisitions craze during the go-go eighties were custom-made for T. Duke’s skills and temperament. It all came crashing down when his ambitions got ahead of his abilities and the law.
T. Duke had a face that could either make or break a person. It was a springboard for T. Duke’s trademark self-deprecating humor. His head was shaped like an angular egg with a high and broad forehead, sharply prominent cheekbones, and a narrow, square chin that had a slight dimple in the middle. His nose was large all over, as broad as it was long. A pair of pendulous ears, showcased by T. Duke’s closely cropped and well-pomaded graying brown hair, hung like front-door wreaths on either side of his head.
But the most remarkable feature among the eclectic assortment on T. Duke’s face was his eyes, which were small in proportion to the rest of his face and dark brown. They shone with intelligence, persistence, and right now, with humor. Iris suspected that could change in an instant to malice.
He was wearing a gray suit with a fine chalk stripe, a bright white, button-down shirt, and a red tie that was fancifully printed with tiny images of Mickey Mouse—an appropriate choice since the Sawyer Company had a large position in Disney. Iris heard he always wore handmade western boots for every occasion, the heels and soles built extra high to boost his five-foot-six-inch height. Today his boots were of black, tooled leather.
Iris said, “I’m not an investment banker. I’m branch manager of McKinney Alitzer’s L.A. office. I’m hoping to use McKinney’s I.B. division to underwrite Pandora’s IPO.”
“Pandora’s IPO.” T. Duke finally let go of Iris’s hand. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” He looked at her. “Welcome and have a seat. Can I offer something? Soda pop? Coffee?”
“Anything diet.”
Without a word, Baines left the room.
T. Duke resumed his position, leaned deeply back into his chair and propped his feet on top of the table.
Iris looked around.
The room was oval, the walls painted Wedgwood blue with ornately carved crown and base moldings painted glossy white. There were several oil paintings, all nineteenth-century landscapes that contrasted sharply with the abstract work displayed in the other rooms.
Baines returned, first placing a coaster on the table in front of Iris before setting a crystal goblet filled with ice and cola on it.
T. Duke clamped his hands behind his head. “Bridget, bring me up-to-date on Pandora.”
Bridget leaned her arms against the table and spread her hands in T. Duke’s direction. “At midnight, we released the first two levels of Suckers Finish Last onto the Internet.”
T. Duke nodded as he gazed at the ceiling. “A marketing method you folks pioneered that’s now widely imitated. It’s brilliantly simple, using the same logic that turns songs into hits by playing them over and over on the radio. You get your Net surfers hooked with a small free taste and hope they want more.”
“And they do want more,” Bridget interjected. “We’ve already had a hundred-thousand orders—a twenty-five percent increase over sales of Slade Slayer 3-D during the same time period. Slade Slayer 3-D generated eighteen million in sales. I expect sales of Suckers Finish Last to top twenty-five million. There’s already buzz in the chat rooms about how Suckers’ three-D environment tops everything out there.”
“Baines took a look at the game you sent over and you thought it was pretty good, didn’t you?” T. Duke, still sitting with his hands clasped behind his head and his boots crossed on top of the table, crooked his head over his shoulder to look at Baines before returning his attention to the ceiling.
Iris casually followed the direction of T. Duke’s gaze and was surprised by what she saw there. The high ceiling was painted with a trompe l’oeil fresco of winged cherubs staring down from an expansive blue sky strewn with white clouds backlit by yellow sunlight. The painting gave the illusion that the flat ceiling was domed. The cherubs were positioned in a circle and looked as if they were peering down onto the visitors below. Their faces were oddly quirky, even ugly.
“It has some good stuff in it,” Baines said.
Bridget continued. “For Suckers, Kip created a radically different graphics engine that produces mesmerizing three-D modeling with detail that’s unprecedented in the industry. Baines, maybe you’ve noticed in other games that are out there and in our previous Slade Slayer releases, that a surface—like a wall or an alien character—will look solid until you get close to it. Then it disintegrates into blocks of colors—the pixels the image is built with.”
Iris looked away from the ceiling and refocused her attention on the meeting, but something compelled her to take another look. She now knew why the cherubs seemed peculiar—one of them looked like T. Duke. She covertly glanced at the real-life version and again at the other one, to be sure. It was a younger image, but it was him. The cherub flying next to him had a beautiful woman’s face. The two others had the faces of young girls. T. Duke had immortalized himself and his family as heavenly creatures. Iris found the gesture both pompous and touching.
Iris looked more closely at one of the clouds. It was white and puffy like the others, but was irregularly shaped and had a dark shadow behind it. T. Duke spotted Iris looking at the ceiling. She returned her attention to Baines.
Baines’s eyes were bright with the most interest Iris had seen since he’d watched the prostitute get on the elevator. “I know what you mean. But in this game, you can almost get toe-to-toe with your enemies.”
“That’s thanks to Kip’s new graphics engine,” Bridget enthused. “The detail is finer and closer to reality than anything out there.”
Iris looked at Kip. Even though his work was the topic of conversation, he sat with his chair pushed far back from the table as was his habit at meetings. One leg was propped on top of the other, and his arms were folded across his chest with one hand stroking his eyebrow. He slowly and rhythmically rocked his upper body back and forth. His eyes were focused on a point three feet in front of him. He seemed completely detached from the scene, but Iris knew better. She had seen Kip like this before and had also seen him abruptly speak after a long period of silence, interrupting whoever had the floor, and draw the conclusion that no one else had seen or answer the question that had eluded everyone else.
“So you’ve got a promising new product, a stream of revenue, and you think Pandora’s sexy enough to interest investors in an IPO,” T. Duke said. “But even though the computer-games industry has grown twenty-five percent over the past few years, you’re in the middle of an industry shakeout. There’s dozens of small game companies like you out there now. In five years, they’ll be consolidated into a handful of big players.”
“Pandora is going to be one of those players.” Bridget folded her hands in front of her on top of the table as if demonstrating the barrier she was setting around Pandora. “We’re going to do it by making a major commitment to the game platform of the future today. In the early days of computer gaming, the predominant platform was dedicated, stand-alone consoles for interactive video games. Sega and Sony dominated the industry. Today, the primary platform is PC-based with groups of contestants playing over networks. Stand-alone machines offer speed and performance that most networks can’t yet achieve, but the gap is closing. The Pentium opened doors for graphics acceleration development. New technologies are springing up daily, and performance is doubling about once every eighteen months.”
Bridget warmed to her topic. “But games played over PC-based networks will soon be a thing of the past. The gaming platform for the future will be the Internet. Pandora already has a Web site where competitors can play each other, but the number of players is limited and the speed is not there. The race is underway to develop cyberspace arenas where literally millions of PC users separated by thousands of miles will be able to electronically locate opponents in activities ranging from flight simulators to sports competitions to hunt-or-be-hunted games like Suckers.”
T. Duke removed his feet from the table, scooted his chair forward, rested his elbows where his feet had been, and formed a steeple with his hands, pressing the point of it against his long nose as he listened.
Kip was still staring hard into space, rocking and stroking his eyebrow. Once or twice, Iris caught him longingly glancing at the laptop computer, like a punished child might look at his friends playing outside.
Iris listened to Bridget with admiration. Her friend was in control of her subject and the meeting. She was a natural leader and had always been calmly certain about any challenge she undertook. Iris had always envied Bridget’s inbred confidence and had emulated it with mixed success, feeling sometimes as if she were folding the flimsy tabs of elegant paper doll dresses over her own, naked insecurity.
She leaned forward to get a better look at what she at first thought was a dirty smudge on Bridget’s jaw. It appeared to be a bruise that Bridget had tried to conceal with makeup. Her eyes must have conveyed her concern because Bridget casually rested her fingertips against her chin, hiding it.
Bridget lost her train of thought, pausing in her presentation and frowning as she grappled for words. She recovered and now avoided Iris’s eyes, focusing only on T. Duke. “There are currently several heavily financed start-up companies developing cyberspace arenas. My goal is to position Pandora at the vanguard. I’ve already started the process to recruit some of the top system architects in the field.”
“If we build it, they will come,” T. Duke declared. He moved his chair back, pushed himself up with his hands against his knees, walked to the window that formed one wall of the room, and stood there with his hands clasped behind his back. “Legions of anonymous players will be able to slaughter each other in cyberspace.”
Kip finally spoke. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
T. Duke turned and focused his penetrating eyes on Kip. “I’m stating a fact.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked down his big nose at them. “R and D costs money. You think you’ll raise enough with your IPO. I don’t think you will.”
“Of course we will,” Bridget insisted.
T. Duke’s eyebrows shot up as if startled over being asked to put his checkbook away. “Bad timing for an IPO. The market’s dropped close to a thousand points over the past two weeks. If you’re faced with a bear market, Marilyn Monroe wouldn’t look sexy to investors.”
“I see it as an expected and long-overdue correction,” Iris said hopefully. “The worst is over.”
“Whatever you want to call it, there’s a chill in the market. Many analysts claim that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The IPO parade has passed you by. Firms who were planning IPOs are pulling back and waiting. Investors have grown skeptical after the rash of offerings by Internet firms that still haven’t turned a profit.”
Iris said, “Granted, there was a lot of foam on the cappuccino with high valuations for Internet companies which had illusory profits. That’s not the case with Pandora.”
“If the dog’s head isn’t in the dish, you’re not going to have any takers for your IPO,” T. Duke said with finality. “Pandora’s living on credit and dreams. You’ve got a good revenue stream, but you’ve overextended yourself and you haven’t spent the five million in venture capital my group invested according to the plan we agreed upon.”
“That’s not true,” Bridget protested. “We hired people, invested in equipment, moved into larger office space—”
“I guess you can call that airplane hangar with that tree house inside it offices.” T. Duke laughed good-naturedly, but his eyes didn’t convey warmth.
“The competition is fierce for good people,” Bridget continued. “I can’t afford top salaries yet so I thought the money was better invested in creating a unique, fun, and supportive working environment.”
“And that’s why you give away food and soft drinks and have in-house baby-sitting and a company basketball court. Does seem like a fun place to work. I see your people spending half the day playing basketball.”
“My people frequently work twelve-hour days, seven days a week. They need someplace to blow off steam.” Bridget glared at T. Duke. “I’m surprised about your lack of enthusiasm over an IPO. The venture capitalist’s goal is to invest in a company, build it, take it public, and realize a return.”
“Dear, believe me,” T. Duke said, “I do want a return on my investment, but an IPO is not the way for Pandora to go.” He again sat down, leaned forward onto the table, and steepled his hands. “I’ve got a better mousetrap for you. I want to make Pandora a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sawyer Company. I’ll either swap Sawyer stock for Pandora or pay you cash outright.”
Iris and Bridget gaped at T. Duke. Kip stopped rocking. Bridget asked the question that was on all their minds. “Why?”
“The Sawyer Company owns several Internet service providers, Web publishing outfits, high-tech magazines, and games firms. My goal is a synergy among the companies I acquire. I see Pandora as a cornerstone of an Internet-based games division. Bridget, you’ll head up the profit center. Kip, you’ll be our resident guru. You’ll be free to design systems to your heart’s content on whatever projects tickle your fancy. I’m prepared to take on your entire staff and give them cash bonuses to stay on, up to a hundred grand to your top people, as well as trade their options in Pandora for Sawyer stock. You know I’m very generous with bonuses to my management. Last year, our MIS Director earned a million-dollar bonus. Our head of publishing earned five hundred thousand. Both of you can do the same. You don’t have to make a decision today. I’m sure you’ll want to think about it.”
“I warned you, Bridget,” Kip said. “You gave him an inch, now he wants everything. The answer is no. Pandora is not for sale.”
T. Duke smiled crookedly. “Forgive me, Kip, but your wife is the majority shareholder and is the only one who can make that decision. I’m prepared to offer seven dollars a share for Pandora. That’s very generous and more than you’d expect to receive as a lay down price in an IPO in these market conditions.”
“That’s barely equal to the equity of the firm,” Iris said.
“We’d easily get more than that from an IPO,” Bridget added.
T. Duke clasped his hands behind his head. “It’s typical for an entrepreneur to overestimate the value of her firm.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Kip said. “None of you get it. This isn’t about money. It was never about making money. Money was something that just happened. It’s about vision. It’s about doing what we love and having the freedom to do it.”
“You’ll have all the freedom you could ever want.”
“Bull.” Kip put both his feet on the ground. “You try to control Pandora now. If it was up to you, you’d turn the Slade Slayer games into advertising vehicles for the Sawyer Company.” He imitated T. Duke’s Texas accent. “‘How about a nice little ol’ billboard on this street for Computer Nation magazine? What about embedding United Telephone’s logo along this wall, sort of a subliminal suggestion to the game’s players?’” Kip scowled. “You’ve already tried to influence our games’ content.” He again imitated T. Duke. “‘How about less violence, kids? Does Slade Slayer have to use the Lord’s name in vain?’”
T. Duke jabbed his finger angrily in Kip’s direction. “You don’t consider embedding pentagrams into a wall pattern or having a statue of Jesus lifting his robes destructive to the youth of this nation?”
Kip sniggered. “Look how fast his folksy, cornpone act goes sour once he doesn’t get what he wants.”
“No—you think it’s funny, just some sort of big joke. Now you’ve inserted even more sexual content into the game with this Cherry Divine character.”
Kip looked at Baines. “So, my man Baines made it to the tenth level? All right! But I bet you didn’t kill her, did you?”
Baines ignored him.
“All this is part of what made Pandora what it is today,” Bridget interjected. “We’re out there, on the edge. That’s what our customers want, that’s what they like, and that’s why we’re number one. You of all people ought to understand that.”
“It saddens me that you had a perfect opportunity to set a good example for the young people of this nation and you chose to use your brilliant minds and talents to create something sordid.”
Kip stood and began prowling back and forth. “This was a violent world before I developed my first game ten years ago. I think I’m providing a service. Kids can play one of my games, kill dozens of bad guys in cyberspace, release their aggressions, then turn off the computer and go peacefully into the world.”
“T. Duke, I’m confused,” Iris said. “Last year, you approached Pandora with the offer of venture capital knowing full well what the firm was all about, even though you apparently have a problem with the product. Now, instead of encouraging the firm to go public so you can see a return on your investment, you want to shell out more cash to buy it and pay its employees top dollar to stay on. None of this makes good investment sense. If I was a member of your USA Assets group, I’d be angry.”
“When I see a good investment, I pounce. My sole goal in offering to buy Pandora is to own what I consider the best of Pandora—the patents on the games engines and the intellects of Kip and Bridget Cross. It’s the only way I have a prayer of getting back the five million in venture capital my group invested. Five million that you two spent inappropriately.”
“That’s not true,” Bridget said. “I just explained to you how it was spent.”
“Yes, and you conveniently left out the cars and that hilltop mansion and all the other trappings of the good life that you and your husband felt you had to have as newly minted high-tech superstars. The only thing you bring to the table to remedy the situation is an ill-timed IPO. We’re not going to make any money off that. And that’s the bottom line.”
Iris glanced at Bridget who seemed at a loss for words. Kip was pacing sullenly, staring at the carpet, his arms folded across his chest. T. Duke looked irritatingly self-satisfied.
Iris broke the tense silence. “T. Duke, you’ve done a lot of talking about making money, which is why we’re here, after all.”
T. Duke smiled indulgently at her.
“For all your assertions about how you need to show a return on your investments, the Sawyer Company—a hodgepodge of business interests, a few dating from your takeover days—isn’t making money. Any of this so-called synergy that you were talking about not only eludes me, but Wall Street isn’t getting it either. During a bull market, Sawyer stock’s performed poorly. Plus, the firm’s carrying a high level of debt due to these high-priced acquisitions you mentioned. Some analysts have soured on Sawyer stock, and many mutual fund managers are dumping it. If interest rates go up, you could be in a lot of trouble.” She casually crossed her legs.
“Iris, I’m pleased to see you’ve done your homework. You’re a smart lady—and beautiful too, by the way—but darlin’, what’s your point?”
Iris noticed Bridget stiffen at T. Duke’s comment, but she took it in stride. “Why take on more debt to own Pandora? It doesn’t make sense.”
T. Duke stood and gave his trousers a hitch before he strolled across the room. “Iris, anyone who knows me understands that money is what makes T. Duke Sawyer tick. I have a long-term perspective in terms of the Sawyer Company. Being of the MTV generation, you probably don’t have an appreciation for that sort of thing. As a balance, my venture capital group, USA Assets, is positioned to take advantage of near-term profits.”
“So take your profits, with a Pandora IPO,” Iris said with emotion. “I know the market for IPOs has cooled, but Pandora has a good track record and reputation. USA Assets would see a nice return.”
T. Duke put his hands in his pockets. “Iris, we’ve been over this already.”
“There’s another thing that bothers me,” Iris persisted. “I can’t find any information on USA Assets. I’ve asked around, but no one can tell me who the other partners are. Why the secrecy?”
“Why not?” T. Duke winked at her.
“Iris is right,” Bridget said, looking at her husband, who was still wearing a path into the carpet at the far end of the room. “There are many things that don’t make sense in relation to the Sawyer Company and USA Assets.”
“Bridget, you sound as if you regret having jumped into bed with me. Fact of the matter is, we are in bed and we’ve got a problem.”
Kip stopped pacing and faced T. Duke, his arms straight by his sides. “Enough!” he yelled. “I want you out of my company. I’ll buy you out. How much?”
“You don’t have the ten million I’d ask for my twenty percent stake.”
“Ten million? You only invested five,” Bridget said.
T. Duke shrugged. “USA Assets has entrusted me to show a return on our money.”
Bridget sat erect in her chair. “I’m not interested in being a subsidiary of the Sawyer Company. I’m going to take Pandora public. You’ll get your return on your investment that way.”
Kip bitterly shook his head. “We can buy him out. VC firms call us all the time. We can get ten million. It would be worth it to get him out.”
Bridget looked at Kip with annoyance. “We’re taking the firm public.”
“You’re doomed to failure,” T. Duke said. “In my humble opinion. I’ve offered you a parachute and you’re about to let it slip through your fingers.”
Bridget laced her fingers on the table. “T. Duke, you yourself told me that if you want to run with the big dogs, you have to lift a leg.”
“I’m full of old sayings. Here’s another one: There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“You’re not getting my company, T. Duke,” Bridget said with finality.
“So this is your company now,” Kip said. “I’m the one writing code all night long and now it’s your company.”
“Ma’am, I always get what I want,” T. Duke said. “I’d advise you to take my offer now. It will be best for you and your husband in the long run.”
“Is that some sort of a threat?”
“Of course not.”
Bridget stood. “You’ve got twenty percent of Pandora and that’s all you’re going to get unless you buy more stock after we go public.”
“Dear heart, that’s one of the great misconceptions about life. Everything’s for sale. All you have to do is determine the price.”
Bridget hoisted her briefcase from the floor onto the table, slipped her notebook and pen inside, and snapped the lid shut. Kip closed the personal computer and zipped its case closed.
T. Duke walked to Bridget with his hand extended. She reluctantly took it. “I so enjoyed our meeting. Thanks for stopping by. We’ll be in touch.”
Iris stood and took a last look at the fresco on the ceiling. She now had a better view and could see that the irregularly shaped cloud disguised the vague outline of another cherub. T. Duke had apparently had the image of someone painted over.