It Had Been Years (9 page)

“Why so I can be Miss last night?” 

He was smiling a tired worried smile “Yes of course, oh the indecent things I could convince you to do.”  “Would I like it?” she asked playfully

“In ways you can’t even imagine my dear”, turning the car off.

“So how could I refuse? I’ll have strawberry sauce on the side” she said pulling a gym back out of the trunk while Vince gave the Valet  his room number and a few dollars tip for tolerating them being parked there.  Vincent handed her a room key and he picked up the house phone on the way in and ordered their dessert… two pieces of cheese cake and as many quarts of strawberry sauce as they could spare.  Walking down the hall with two bottles of water in hand toward the elevator as she let herself in to see a two
bedroom suite with a living room filled with fresh flowers.  She thought they were standard fare for such a room, but he in fact had the room filled with flowers just for her.  Vincent followed moments after finding her in a pair of gray sweat pants, a tank top and in the process of taking her makeup off.  They had been friends for too long to worry about such things as make up.  Shortly after the cheesecake arrived and despite being accused of being a pervert since two quarts of strawberry sauce showed up she continued to talk.  Vincent continued to listen falling asleep on the couch, she threw a blanket over him and headed off to one of the bedrooms. He stirred slightly, she kissed him on the forehead and he told her he loved her.  In truth he always had, it just was never meant to be, he couldn’t be like that with her. 

Life is often what you make of it and this Wednesday morning finds the Husker talking quietly on his new phone speaking so cryptically that you would have thought i
t
was a conversation with a CIA subcommittee, but the only security issue being addressed was the simple act of determining, the movie, the time and the theater.  Popcorn was brought up but and the secret speak ended. 

“Get some if you want, but I hate that stuff. Good bye.”  Donna had asked how big of a popcorn she should buy, knowing damn well that he hated popcorn
,  Junior
Mints were his guilty indulgence when seeing a movie. 

When it is morning on the East Coast it is of course still night on the West.  Today was a serious one and dozing off at midnight and waking at 3:30am to start his day left even the rarely rested Vincent a little jet lagged, but today was a serious one and he was on the phone at 3:40 sharp back East.  It was the kind of day when he had to put on his big boy clothes, black suit, English Blue made to measure shirt with parallel double stitching on the cuff, and a big fat Windsor knot perfectly tied hanging between the wide spread collar.    

Vincent takes a moment to collect his final thoughts, gently sets a note on the center of an otherwise empty floor where it could not be missed

Deb,

Make sure the bellman takes the flowers down for you to take home.

The accounts still open, order breakfast!!!

Tips are taken care of (so don’t give them any more money) and your fee’s on the dresser

Had a great time, talk soon,

V

All of it was true except for the fee on the dresser part, there was always a little part of him that was a jerk, he thought it was funny, at times others did not, he didn’t fucking care what others thought.  Deb would laugh and later accuse him of not actually leaving her “fee”.  Occasionally he’s send an envelope with a 20 in it to her anonymously from where ever in the world he was.  She knew it was him and had kept each of them in stack figuring by the law of averages that he’d die before her and she could slide them into his coffin with a note that read “Finally Stiff!” to get the last laugh.  Had he known he would have thought it was funny but been too stubborn to die first.

He collects his final thoughts and reaches for his briefcase passing momentarily in front of the mirror gracing the suites entrance, stopping to check the position of his tie, the part of his hair, inspecting his jacket for lint one last time.  Admittedly it’s a stall and once he steps foot out the door the day really begins.  In truth he has more than four working hours into the day, he’s been on the phone with staff back East for hours.  Going over every detail, planning, positioning, checking and rechecking everything in exasperating detail, making sure nothing was missed or misunderstood.  A decision was made, a little touch up ironing on his shirt and lapels, a shower and a fresh shave had brought him to this point in the day.  He puts his ever present shades on like a cloak of invincibility for his geeky teenage Dungeons and Dragons game and steps into the hall, down in the elevator, his wooden heels clicking authoritatively on the marble hall way leading to the lobby.  Vincent stops and slides effortlessly three steps to the right for a glass of water with lime, finishing it in one quick gulp, he passes through the main doors as the bellman and Chris finish loading his suitcase into the trunk.  He just slid himself into the passenger side back seat of the Lincoln, coming to rest with a posture that would have given his kindergarten teacher a heart attack and at that very moment he was quite certain that he could feel his grandmother’s decaying corpse spinning like a top inside of her grave.  Shins positioned exactly over his ankles, his ass on the front third of the seat, back rounded oddly forward and backward at the same time.  His arms wantonly laid at his
sides
the left hand open as if in an unbalanced meditative state in a reclined
cobblers Yoga pose.  His right hand was gripping his cell phone in what can only be described as a casual death grip incase the device at some point or another could spring to life and try a daring escape.  The hand looked relaxed but the white knuckles told a different story.

The door is closed by the Bell Captain and Vincent greets Chris cordially but it is not a time for small talk, he is in his own world, running through the meeting in his mind, playing and replaying the expected moves, the positioning, the talking points, and at the same time validating the data in his own mind one last time just to be sure.  What could be their reactions, objections, the precise words to choose, how to delicately deliver the message, had there been a key piece of data overlooked? 
Not very likely but mathematically possible.
  As the car winds through the Mecca of the technology industry and the information age he sees Yahoo’s marquee building in the distance, the landscape was dotted with household names, Google and HP, industry monoliths like Cisco and Sun Micro mixed in with names that never quite made it, other yet unknown with dreams of wealth and prosperity next to the empty office space still bearing the best long since lost dreams of others who failed. It was like giving birth in a cemetery while a funeral was going on, the mourners were trying not to be sad and the mother of the baby was trying to forget that she was suddenly reminded of her own mortality. At least Deb looked and seemed truly happy he thought as such pleasantries once again diminished and back to the tasks at hand.  As Chris brought the car to a stop Vincent collected all his thoughts one last time ready to play them back at the appropriate moments like a well rehearsed play.  “Are you going to wait?” 
he
asked.  “Yeah Vince, but I was going to run up the street and get a coffee.” 

“Ok, but be here in 45 minute incase the meeting runs short.” 

Vincent flips a 20 over the space between the drivers’ and passenger side front seat “Big assed Latte with three extra espresso shots dumped in, low fat or skim and whatever you want.” Pausing momentarily, he adds “I’m sorry, I should have asked. Do you mind?”  All the while his tone was that of an old friend talking to another old friend, Chris didn’t mind and now had a sponsor for
his drink also.  For as much of a jerk as Vincent was it was never to someone who was taking care of him. He worked particularly hard to take care of the everyday
person,
their lives were not luxurious, often unrewarding and unappreciated.  These were the people that he went out of his way to be polite and thankful to. 

Chris responded “No sweat!  I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.” 

“Thanks man” and with these words Vincent sat up reached for his case and began his egress from the car to the building.

It was smiles and greetings as he
entered,
while he was professional he was objective and already detached.  The target company’s CEO, CFO, and entire Senior Sales and Development Team gathered in the Chardonnay Conference Room, waiting with much the same anticipation of a young child on Christmas
,  wanting
to see if Santa really had come through again.  After all they had been good little boys and girls.  An excited energy fell over the room and the company’s CEO, Mitchell
,  began
to speak.  He proceeded with a formal set of thank
you’s
and acknowledgements more commonly found at a ladies church luncheon or a Hollywood Awards show than a Silicon Valley conference room. 

Now it was Vincent’s turn.  “I found the operation fascinating: and the market opportunity genuinely exciting, which is in fact, very rare for me. Understanding that we are firmly bound by our nondisclosure agreements I do have a few more technical questions that I would like to address in some detail.”

“Of course,” Mitchell, a Michigan born and educated electrical engineer responded.  “Wonderful” the somberly dresses stranger continued, ties were not wore in the valley, no one stopped to notice, it was the first day he had one on.

“Out of respect for everyone’s time I suggest that only the C Team, Senior Level Product Design and Corporate Council need to be present” 
Ahh
, he was suggesting, controlling the situation but allowing others to feel they were making the decisions.  Almost instantly an over worked Sales & Marketing, Operations and Manufacturing Planning Senior Team members excused themselves,  Vincent taking time to shake each members hand and thank them specifically and with detail for each contribution they
had made during the process,  they were after all very good and talented people.  He wanted to be remembered fondly by them. 

As the last one, left the smile faded from Mitchell’s face, he knew this wasn’t good and was expecting a shake down under the rouse of technical concerns.  An attempt to rework the terms while not unheard of was considered unprofessional once both parties attorney’s had agreed to the contract language.  Mitchell went from being a gracious host to interrogator in one question.  It was his money, it was his reputation, it was his dream that was about to be called into question and he didn’t like it at all.  With a sharp tone of in his voice “What is the nature of your “technical concerns?”” 

Vincent just folded his hands on the table “I need to get some of the team on a call, just to review a few things.  They’re waiting on an audio
bridge,
I see no sense in dialing them in until Design and Engineering is here.  I also strongly suggest that your Corporate Council be present.” 
He
subtlety emphasized the last four words.  Mitch was no longer worried about this being a shake
down,
this wasn’t about price or terms. This was something much more serious.  “Is there anyone else who should be brought in?”  Vincent sitting calmly at his end of the table “You may want whoever handles your intellectual property rights, patents, and licensing agreements here.” He said sliding Mitchell the dial-in information for the audio bridge.  Mitchell excused himself. 

The Chardonnay Room was decorated in soft golden yellow hues, earth tone brown leather chairs and wide tinted windows looking out to the California sunshine.  The room is full of executives who are rarely motionless and even less often
speechless,
all of them sitting there like statues, each of their own minds racing in a million different directions on what could possibly be happening or why.  Mitchell returns with the CTO, the Chief Design Engineer and the Senior Design Team.  Corporate Council hustles in and in a winded voice “Smith and Wallace are dialed in
”  they
were the company’s Intellectual Property Specialists. 

Vincent took a deep breath, closed his eyes, pausing just for the briefest moment before exhalation, thought to
himself
, “I hope no one has spent anything they thought they were going to make on
this deal.”  With that he opens his eyes, releases his breath and reaches for the speaker phone in the center of the table.  Sometime the world moves so fast, all of this had taken twelve minutes from the time he walked through the front door.  Chris had just moved up in line to fifth from next at the coffee shop, he hadn’t even ordered yet and Vincent had an entire room, if not an entire company full of people reeling.  After everyone present and on the phone did the customary,
My
name is…
who ever
they work for and whatever they are responsible for in their own little
fifedoms
.  Vincent once again spoke “There are
area’s
of concern as I mentioned, as the old saying goes the games not over until the fat lady sings, specifically there is a concern not over functionality or interoperability but the concern is specifically over 2300 lines of code and the ROM bus and actions on the 3C-59 chipset.  The words hadn’t even settled when the Senior Design Engineer spoke,
Ramesh
.  He was chief architect of that portion of the content delivery system.  He was
agast
, appalled and physically disturbed by the question.  He rambled on about the authenticity of his design, about the random often identically created lines of code and chip set similarities.  Vincent looked up from his papers, Mitchell was dazed, the CTO had begun to perspire, Corporate Council had all but crushed the pen she was holding in her hand she was squeezing it so tightly and writing so furiously. Everyone on the phone that was dialed in was strangely silent.  Vincent continued “So with such accurate awareness of our findings before I could even detail them, I’m certain this can be resolved quite easily.”  Vincent was lying, he knew he was lying, as so did everyone else present but it was presented in such a way that so many wanted to still have hope that no one called him on it.  Once again, before details could be given
Ramesh
spoke, this time pressing for the detail to and the nature of the concerns, in painfully explicit detail. “We believe strongly that the specific section of code, the subset operating functions and portions of the chip set and green board infringes on the Intellectual Property Rights, and patents of WUZ.  Is there an agreement that I over looked, or a partnership or royalty contract that inadvertently failed to be presented?” Vincent inquired.  At this point Vincent’s investment and engineering review teams spoke, everyone just
listened except for
Ramesh
his protests grew more aggravated as they detailed the concerns.