Better Than This (22 page)

“Of course. And everything you say is true,” Hoffman agreed. “But it only applies if I want to compete with Morgan. That isn’t what I want to do.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t follow,” I admitted.

“Morgan will sell his version of the program for something like two hundred and fifty dollars a shot at retail. I plan to sell mine exclusively over the Internet, which takes care of packaging and distribution. Anyone who wants it can download it directly to their computer.” He paused and a sly expression crept into his eye. “For five dollars.”

“Five dollars?” I echoed incredulously. I wondered how he thought he would make any money by selling it for that amount.

He took out a single sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket which he passed over to me. I studied the columns of figures, which I saw represented a basic business plan, and my eye was drawn to a particular figure.

“Advertising budget three million dollars?”

That’s two million for media, and a million to cover your fees for creative input and managing marketing. The way I see it that should be more than enough in the first year. I think with some initial print ads and some selected links to websites that ought to cover it. Once the media hear about a great program anyone can download almost for nothing, you should get plenty of free publicity. The three million will be funded by the five dollar charge. After the first year the trust will pay Carpe

Diem an annual fee of half a million dollars to continue to manage the process. Which will be money for very little work required. Remaining money will be donated to charity.”

“The trust?” I asked. My head was spinning as I tried to take in what he was saying, and I kept going back to what he’d said would be our fee. A million in the first year.

“I’ve set up a trust which owns the rights to my program.”

I looked again at the figures. I thought there had to be a flaw, but the more I studied them the more I was forced to conclude that Hoffman had thought it all out very carefully. My eye was drawn like a moth to a night light back to the one that interested me most. A million dollars in the first year. Enough to pay back what we owed. More than enough. It was so simple. That was the beauty of it. If Hoffman’s program lived up to his claims, how could Morgan possibly compete with something that would be virtually given away? Only one question stuck in my mind.

“Why?” I asked.

He smiled as if the answer was self-evident. “I’m dying, Mr. Weston. Money is no use to me. I have no family. The last thing I can do with my life is to ensure Nelson Morgan doesn’t profit again from my work.”

I nodded my understanding. Revenge. The oldest reason in the world.

I cancelled the staff meeting planned for that afternoon, and repeated everything Hoffman had told me to Marcus. I tried to keep my voice even, to sound sceptical but I think he picked up on something beneath all that; hope. A drowning man will clutch at any lifeline, he doesn’t stop to analyse it too closely. Marcus studied the sheet of figures that Hoffman had left with me, and when he finally looked up his disbelief was apparent.

This can’t be true,” he said

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I had come up with a hundred different reasons why I shouldn’t believe him, but one thing I couldn’t answer. Why make up a story like this? That I couldn’t fathom.

“You think he’s on the level?”

“I think we ought to consider that possibility.”

Hoffman had given me his address, and told me if we were there in the morning he would show us his program. When I told Marcus where Hoffman lived his scepticism deepened. I couldn’t blame him for that. Genius software designers in California didn’t live in places like San Leandro in East Oakland. They were more likely to own a big house with a tennis court and a pool in a fashionable suburb on the western side or up in the hills overlooking the Pacific ocean, and they drove expensive European cars. San Leandro was where you lived if you were the guy who cleaned the pool or whose job it was to polish those expensive cars on the lot before they were sold, that’s if you even had a job.

“Are you serious?” Marcus said.

“Would you rather I tell those people out there they don’t have jobs any more?” I asked, gesturing beyond his office. He considered that. “Another day can’t hurt. It might change everything.”

It was the thought of our employees more than anything else that made up his mind, though I think in the end it wouldn’t have made any difference if Hoffman told us he lived in a box at the end of a disused alley. We would still have gone to meet him. What choice did we have?

In the morning we took my car and drove over the Oakland Bay Bridge. It was overcast, low cloud shrouding the Oakland hills. On days like this the surrounding area has little of the appeal and scenic attractiveness that has been captured in millions of tourist snaps. The container yards and the sprawl of industrial buildings on the east shore are as ugly as the dull grey waters of the bay. The urban sprawl is visible as concrete freeways and pale swathes on a barren landscape, noticeably devoid of trees. It’s only when the sun is shining and the bay is all dressed up in her finest glittery blue, when the trees on the hills break the slash of development and soften it, when the skyscrapers gleam against a cloudless sky, that everything is seen in a fresh light.

Marcus had barely said a word since leaving the office. He was sunk in his seat, absorbed in his own thoughts.

“Did you talk to Alice about this yet?” I asked.

He looked over at me quickly, jerked from whatever he’d been thinking. “Alice?”

“Yes. Did you tell her about Hoffman?”

“No.”

I thought that was strange. Sally and I had talked about nothing else the whole evening. At least I’d talked, and Sally had mostly listened, though she’d picked up on my burgeoning hope and cautioned me not to get too carried away until I was certain that Hoffman wasn’t some nut.

“Actually Alice moved out,” Marcus said.

I did a double take. I couldn’t believe something like that had happened and I didn’t know about it. “When?”

“A couple of days ago. She’s staying on the boat.”

I wanted to ask what had happened, but it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it, at least not with me. He stared back out the windshield looking sullen and I wondered if somehow he blamed me for this too. I could imagine Alice’s reaction when she heard we didn’t get the Spectrum account. No doubt she’d reminded Marcus what an asshole I was and how she’d always warned him he shouldn’t let me get away with the things he did. Secretly I wondered if perhaps once Alice had heard the news she’d decided Marcus was no longer a reliable meal ticket. Out loud though I said I was sorry.

“Is it permanent?” I ventured.

He glanced at me, and there was an odd look in his eye which I couldn’t fathom. “I don’t know.”

I thought this was sudden, but then I realized it probably wasn’t. It only seemed that way because I hadn’t known about it. There had been a time once when he would have confided in me long before this. “You know, if you want to talk,” I said tentatively, and let the rest hang in the air.

For a second something seemed to amuse him, then he looked away. “Yeah.”

I knew I shouldn’t hold my breath.

We took 580 south off the bridge and exited at Fruitvale. The address Hoffman had given us was a few streets back from the International Strip. Once this boulevard had such an unenviable reputation for drug gangs and shootings that it had been renamed East 14th street in an effort to erase the past. I had never even been to this area before. I mean, who would? We passed under the elevated freeway and the BART track. The concrete pillars were sprayed with gang graffiti and the dirt ground was littered with all kinds of garbage. Where once there had stood a notorious housing project which was the haunt of hookers and pushers and was the scene of daily episodes of violence both domestic and gang related, there now stood a new shopping mall. The old projects had been torn down in a plan to rejuvenate the area, but a block further on the pervading sense was of a neighbourhood that remained steeped in decay and deprivation. A lingering whiff of menace seeped from the cracks in the concrete, and from the faces both brown and white who stared at my shiny new convertible Saab as we drove by, from sidewalks and sagging porches of what I was certain were crack houses. I was glad I had the top up. But I wished we had brought Marcus’s car.

We found the main strip, and turned off again following the directions Hoffman had given us. I felt as if I had trespassed into a foreign land. One I only knew from TV shows. An unfamiliar unease stirred in the pit of my gut as we passed pawnbrokers and dollar stores housed in beat up ugly buildings with garish signs over the door. Many of the stores had Spanish names and heavy iron grilles over the windows. El Polio Loco jostled for space with Jack In The Box and the Supermarcardo. Street sellers had set up their carts outside Renta Centa selling corn and chilli pretzels. Liquor stores were on every corner, heavy grilles on the windows. We turned into a residential street. An old woman pushed a shopping cart loaded with junk. She was dressed in bright reds and yellows. A guy lay sleeping on a corner, one shoeless foot in the gutter. Piles of paper and rags, cardboard boxes and other crap littered the sidewalk and sometimes the street.

“Where to now?” I said at an intersection. I hoped this wasn’t all a bad joke because I didn’t like driving around here. I thought we’d been along this same street once already.

“Go left,” Marcus said, studying Hoffman’s directions and a map. “Then make a right two blocks down.”

A tall guy, black, maybe thirty or so watched us go by. His hand went to his pocket, perhaps reaching for a cigarette. Or maybe a gun. A car lot on the corner was full of bargains for under five grand. Rusting gas guzzlers or beat up Japanese compacts. A Honda passed in the opposite direction, gleaming black, gold trim and wheels, a low rider driven by a youth wearing a baseball cap on backwards, one hand nonchalantly on the wheel the other on his girlfriend’s thigh, or maybe an Uzi he kept on the seat. The cars parked against the kerb were often missing a hubcap or two or else were marked by dents and scratches and bore the same overall look of neglect as their surroundings. My nine month-old Saab convertible stood out like a beacon. It might as well have had a sign on the window that read STEAL ME.

We finally found Hoffman’s building and pulled up behind a big green monster with fat wheels and darkened windows. Across the street three brown skinned Latino kids wearing baggy jailhouse trousers that rode on their hips stared sullenly at us. They eyed the way we were dressed and my car.

“There’s going to be nothing left of this when we get out of here,” I said to Marcus.

“Give them money.”

“What?”

“To take care of it.”

“Great idea. And then they’ll have my money as well as my CD player and wheels.”

“Maybe they’re not as bad as you think.”

“Right,” I said. He was always prepared to see the best in people. “They’re probably just waiting for their applications to the police force to come through.”

He shrugged at my cynicism. “It’s your car.”

I decided to give his idea a shot since I didn’t have a better one myself and when we crossed the street I went over to where they were lounging on the steps. A young woman walked by. She was perhaps eighteen or nineteen wearing a short skirt and a skin-tight top through which her nipples stood out like hard little cherries. She had long black hair and was pushing a baby stroller and as she went by the kids all made clicking noises at the back of their throats and spoke in soft Spanish undertones. I had no idea what they were saying but I doubted they were commenting on the likelihood of rain that day. The girl threw them a disdainful look and said something that came off her tongue like the rat-a-tat of a machine gun, then she tossed her hair and walked away, swaying her hips in an exaggerated fashion. This seemed to delight them and they whooped and cackled in high pitched voices and one of them, the youngest who was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, stood up and grasped at his crutch and made thrusting movements in her direction, to which, when she glanced back, she responded with a sharply up-thrust finger. This triggered more laughter. It was an ugly sound. Under the general merriment there was a dangerous edge born of boredom and deprivation. I felt exposed to a subculture that I normally only got a glimpse of on the evening news, where violence hung in the air like the stillness before a heavy electrical storm.

When the girl had gone the kids turned their attention back to me. They seemed mildly curious by this totally foreign presence that had appeared unexpectedly among them and they were waiting to see if it had possible entertainment value. Or should they just squish it.

“Hey, how’re you doing?” I said, knowing that I looked and sounded exactly like some white guy from across the bay trying to look as if I came to neighbour hoods like this one every day. They grinned back at me with amused contempt, flashing brilliant white teeth. I picked on the one who appeared to be the eldest and who I figured from the way he was sprawled with his legs out, leaning back on the top step, the others occupying positions just below him, was their de facto leader. He had short hair like the others, and a wisp of a moustache across his top lip that I was sure he was very proud of. It had probably taken him a year to cultivate it to that point. He was perhaps nineteen or twenty.

“I need to leave my car there for a little while. I thought you guys might like to take care of it for me.” I had already taken a fifty out of my wallet, which I let him see.

He looked beyond me to the car with a lazy gaze. “Take care o’ that, man? You fuckin’ serious?”

His two buddies giggled, their bright eyes full of anticipation.

“We gotta lotta do. Got bui’ness to take care of. Can’t hang round here takin’ care some fuckin’ car, man.”

“Right. Your time is precious. I know that,” I said with veiled sarcasm. “I’ll give you another twenty okay?”

His gaze flicked over me, taking in my designer jeans, the five-hundred dollar jacket, and then he looked at Marcus who was hanging back by the corner. He affected a look of disdain mingled with boredom. “Hunnerd, man. Tha’s it.”