Chapter 55

The groups arrived separately at the restaurant where Tate Benedict had requested a private room. The arrival of eight well-dressed but very young people raised a few eyebrows, particularly since the group already in the room was considerably older and better dressed – at least for the most part.

Tate Benedict and Jerry Goldsmith wore suits and ties. Ellen Perry wore a woolen skirt and blazer combination in dark blue, over a white blouse. Even Ben Benedict looked nice. At the shoot, he wore a T-shirt emblazed with the logo of a 1980s heavy metal band, a pair of faded jeans and dockside shoes. Now he wore a pair of cotton pants and a lime-green collared pullover. He was the first to smile when the second group entered.

Ben shook Adam's hand warmly and accepted kisses on the cheek from Allie, Sarah and Shelly with blushing gratitude before introducing himself to the rest of the party. Introductions were made of those who were unknown to the others and the larger group shared a light supper.

Ellen noticed all eight of the young people passed on the wine, although the bottle was there and no one would have checked their IDs. Her first thought was they weren't used to anything better than Old Rotgut then she checked herself. It was possible that they just didn't drink or that they wanted to create a positive impression. If the second was their goal, it worked. They looked professional when they entered and even treated her with courtesy.

The one she knew as Derrick Driller, but introduced to her as Adam Walters, even smiled when he told her it was nice to see her again. Jerry handed Adam an envelope that she knew held his check and a CD of the shoot that Renaldo had called to tell him Adam had requested. Then Jerry accepted a chaste kiss from Sarah Lewis and handed over a second check.

"If you have time later, I'd like to speak with you," Jerry said, "regarding full-time status as Dazzle's industry spokesmodel."

"I'd like that very much, Mr. Goldsmith," Sarah had replied. Two people back, Tate Benedict was having a similar conversation with Allie. He informed her that he would have the paperwork ready by the first of the week and he asked if he could announce the signing beforehand.

"Anytime you wish," Allie said politely. She had gained a real appreciation for how Daystar worked when Tate had contacted her the day before. She expected him to come in with a significantly lower offer – particularly since he couldn't know that Gloria Jackson had given her a copy of what he had sent to Elite. Instead, Tate had simply reiterated the terms he offered the first time. He didn't slice off the 13 percent she would have given to Elite. He didn't try to take advantage of her naiveté in negotiations. He offered Allie the same deal he had offered previously. Then he asked if there were any particular clauses she wanted included.

"I would like the right to pick my male coworkers," Allie said.

"No problem, check Clause C in Paragraph 14," he said. "You have the right of refusal for anyone you will work directly with. That means if you are in a scene with them, you get to say no. If they are in the same feature but not in the scene with you – or they are a peripheral part of that scene and not directly involved with you – you can't. Does that work for you?"

"Perfectly," Allie said, scanning down the contract for another paragraph that had given her pause. "I'm sorry I needed you to explain that to me. I was a little unclear on what 'directly involved' meant. I was pretty sure I knew but thanks for taking the time to clarify this. Now, Paragraph 32, I am not comfortable with the term 'other duties as may be assigned.' That incorporates entirely too much for me to agree with."

"That is standard boilerplate in all our employment contracts," Tate said. "It means if Ben pisses me off, I can make him scrub the toilets. I can see where in this instance it is overly broad. I'll rewrite it and e-mail you the changes. What it means is that you might be asked to represent Daystar at an awards ceremony or help us greet and play hostess to, say a group of young women from Europe who might shoot with us. I'll spell out the duties completely, although you didn't really have to worry anything untoward."

"I didn't, with you in charge," Allie said. "However, you've held off three takeover attempts in the last five years. I know you're in better financial shape now – and it will improve in the future, I believe – but I don't want any misunderstandings if something should happen and you are not in charge."

Tate considered that for a moment, and wondered how she knew about the attempts to leverage his debt by other web site owners.

"Perhaps you should add a clause that gives either party the right to sever the relationship if ownership changes hands," Allie suggested. "That will protect me from ever working for the people who sought to buy you out and it will keep others from being compelled to work with me if they find me objectionable. I can e-mail you the suggest text if you like."

"I would and I have no problem with that," Tate said. "In fact, I'm gratified that you would even consider cancelling the contract if they managed to boot me out of this office. I am also interested in learning how you know about those, let's call them incidents."

Allie had anticipated this question and was prepared.

"I have done extensive research on your company in the past two days," Allie admitted. "Some of it was already completed by Subarctic but some of it was new. I want you to understand, Mr. Benedict, if I come to work for you, I won't view my job to be simply putting forth a pretty face. I will do everything I can possibly do – within obvious reason – to help Daystar grow. I don't only mean grow financially. I mean to help it grow as an industry leader. If that means attending trade fairs and shaking hands, I'll do it. It if means giving you my best effort, on-screen and off-screen, in your productions, I'll do it. If it means becoming a liaison to other like-minded groups in the industry, to where we can share what we do best and accept help with things we could do better, I'll do that too.

"This is a golden opportunity and I am flattered beyond words that you thought of me. I know part of my job is to be pretty and smile a lot so all the guys who buy videos will buy them from Daystar. I'm OK with that. But you're hiring Allie Timmons to work for you and Ashley Malibu to do videos for you. Some of their skills overlap but the character I play is not the only person who is committed to helping Daystar succeed."

"I am glad to hear that, Allie," Tate said. "I'll be honest. It was your performance as Ashley Malibu that opened this door for you. But it was how you handled that terrible situation on the set that I allowed to fester that pushed it wide open. I foresee great things for Ashley Malibu but I can readily see greater things ahead for Allie Timmons. Just so long as you don't hit me up for twice the salary."

"Yeah, about that," Allie had joked.

If Tate Benedict had any reservations about making Ashley Malibu Daystar's first contract girl – which he didn't – they would have evaporated during that conversation. Just as Jerry Goldsmith's reservations about Sahara Rain would have evaporated the first time he spoke to Sarah Lewis. Tate, Allie, Jerry and Sarah finished their pre-dinner discussions while the rest of the group learned a little more about each other.

After dinner, the groups got down to business. Shelly and Mary disappeared and came back with four laptops, which they set in front of each of the Daystar and Dazzle representatives.

Shelly walked them through the same procedure as Mike had done a day earlier with identical results. Jerry Goldsmith looked up in shock when the error message appeared on his screen. His daughter followed suit a second later. They tried every mode of transferring a file they could think of and none of the worked. They tried several obscure middle-European-based torrent and upload sites with the same result. Every torrent made, every file set for transfer and every upload produced an error message.

For his part, Ben played along but showed no surprise. He expected it to work. In fact, neither he nor his father had doubted for an instant it would. They sat and looked at the Dazzle contingent with an 'I told you so' expression planted firmly on their faces.

"I was told this simply was not possible," Jerry said.

"By tech guys who make a living fleecing you out of money while they sit in their mom's basement and steal your products," Mary replied. "Let me show you something."

She walked around and clicked a folder. There were almost 50 videos in there with names Jerry recognized instantly.

"I spent 20 minutes cracking your encryption this afternoon," she said. "I didn't do it maliciously, although it would have taken me 10 seconds to crash your network and to close you down until next week. I did it simply as a security exercise for your benefit. I have looked at your bottom line. Your tech expenses are four or five times higher than the industry standard – even after I subtracted the money you pay people to hunt down illegal downloads. Plus, if I may be crass, your web site looks like crap and it's hard to find anything there. It looks like it was manufactured by a 12-year-old boy using commercially bought software."

She clicked on the internet browser and pointed to her own server. A state-of-the-art web site with Dazzle's logo and product lines appeared. Previews of existing covers scrolled across the scene in a flash-driven montage. You could access the video by clicking on the box cover.

"Oh, wow!" Ellen said. "That's, that's really sharp."

"Your site could look like that for a tenth of what you're paying now," Mary said simply. "I noticed a couple of things during what we'll call my 'security check.' You have no backup server that I can find on your network. I didn't dig too hard but it's usually pretty evident where your backups are stored. Do you follow what I'm saying?"

"Not really," Jerry said, glancing toward his daughter.

"I do," Ellen said. "It means if this server goes down our content is lost forever."

Mary pursed her lips and nodded.

"That will be the case until about one a.m. this morning," Mary said. "As a simple precaution – and solely as a courtesy to you at no charge – you will have all your content backed up on another server. I will make arrangements with you to deliver it your building tomorrow morning or to your tech guy – if you choose to keep him. Is your server housed in your building or is it with your tech guy?"

"I'm not certain," Ellen, who had taken over this portion of the conversation with her father's grateful approval, said. "But you can bet I'll know by morning."

"You should really have that stuff in-house," Mary cautioned. "Look, what happens if your tech guy's mom finds out he is hosting a porn site from her basement and throws his computer out in the yard? You're screwed – figuratively, of course. I would suggest you check with your attorney to see who owns the rights to your web site. There was a big push back a few years ago for the web designer to claim intellectual property and hold the site owner hostage. Given the size of your bill, I'm guessing you have fallen prey to that.

"The Supreme Court blocked that last term. You now have recourse to recoup what you've paid and terminate his services. I would suggest you contact your corporate attorney. If he or she is unfamiliar with tech law, I have some people I can recommend."

"But who would host our server?" Ellen asked. "I mean a huge amount of what we pay is in bandwidth."

"You would host the server, Subarctic could handle the site," Mary said simply. "The bandwidth charge is high no matter where you go. But I still think your tech guy is charging you a premium price for it. I mean, he's adding on additional surcharges or he is simply charging you more than he is being charged."

"I would like to do a full investigation and get back with you," Elle said, her lips pursed. "Do you need an answer tonight?"

"Of course not," Mary said. "When I drop off your backup server, I'll show someone in-house how to make sure the content is updated. But you need to have a serious discussion with your internet guy about security. I was able to access your billing records and to gather credit card information, names and addresses. Not only could I steal from your customers, worse yet, given the nature of the majority of your business, I could publish the list and ruin some of them. And I'll admit that I am far from being an elite hacker."

Jerry's eyes widened further.

"Ellen, could you see to this first thing in the morning?" he asked. Ellen simply nodded, all too aware of what Mary's revelation could mean.

"I'd like your approval to have the server moved in-house if it located elsewhere," Ellen said. "I want that done before this weekend is over, even if we have to shut the site down for a day or two."

"I'll have your back-up server running about an hour after I drop it off," Mary said. "You can run it as long as you want. It fully mirrors your primary – unless your guy is a lot better than he appears to be. If he balks or makes threats about loss of content, let him know you have a fully functioning backup server in place that has exponentially better security than the primary has. If you're comfortable with it – after you test it out – you might consider running it as your primary server. At least until you can have an outside professional give your main server a thorough check. I don't mean to denigrate the person who works for you. I simply wanted to point out that you are not getting even a fraction of the services you are paying for."

"Could you do the same for Daystar?" Tate asked.

"I could but you're in pretty good shape already," Mary replied. "Your encryption system is good, not great, but good. You also back-check log-ins against IP addresses, another good security measure – and one I added to your back-up server, Mr. Goldsmith – that stops people from sharing passwords. Your best security feature is the way your customer data is stored. I found it, eventually, but I couldn't access it or download it without an administrative password. That is another feature I've added to Mr. Goldsmith's back-up machine.

"Daystar's web sites are what they are. They give you a good overview of content and plenty of naked women to peruse while you're choosing. I can put together something flashier but you are pretty much as user-friendly as you're going to get."

"Unless you can get a hand to reach out the computer to help the guy along," Ben joked. "If you know what I mean..."

The group groaned at the poor humor.

"The thing is... ," Tate looked to his son then back to Mary. "Fine, I don't like our tech guy. He gives me the creeps. He is exactly like Mary described Jerry's guy. He's a fat little toad, face full of zits, who works out of an office behind his house – his mom's house, where he lives in the basement. He might be the nicest guy on the planet for all I know. When I spoke to him about your anti-piracy tool, I could hear him orgasm over the phone. He told me, and I quote, 'Dude, if that is true, you are dealing with a future billionaire. Marry her yourself or send her my way.' Please don't be offended when I tell you that if those were your only offers, Ms. Rose, I would gladly marry you myself."

"I probably sit beside him in class," Mary remarked. "Not all of the tech weenies are as vivacious as I am."

"Thank God," Rachelle muttered softly.

"So, we've seen what you can do for us," Jerry said. "And I am highly impressed. If you draw up an offer sheet of what your company will provide and the costs entailed for each, I will let my tech guy do the same. If he can do what you obviously can for the same price, I probably will let him. Can you give me a ballpark figure of what your services might cost?"

Mary glanced at Rachelle, who stood.

"That, Mr. Goldsmith," she said, "is where things get tricky."

Rachelle took a moment to gather herself before she started. Ben knew what was coming and so did Tate, Adam suspected. If he had to guess, Jerry had figured it out or been clued in. That left Ellen. She might throw a temper tantrum right there on the floor.

"Our services extend well past technical matters," Rachelle began. "Ben, I know you've been pricing what it would cost to do a feature production – a major feature production. What is your biggest cost and biggest concern?"

Ben followed along like he was clued in on the script.

"The cost of on-location shooting," he answered. "I would give the same response to Part 2 of your question. This is not financially feasible unless I can find a way to cut expenses."

"That is what we figured out, too," Rachelle answered. Ben beamed like he'd won first prize at the spelling bee. "Now, last night with our investors, we used a plasma screen TV. For now, we'll have to use the laptop. Do you all see a folder called Walt on your desktop? Open the folder and double click on the file marked Number 1."

The video of Allie and Sarah sitting at the table drinking coffee appeared.

"Now click Number 2," Rachelle said with a smile. Ben watched for a moment and looked up with alarm. Ellen did the same thing.