Chapter 17: Happiness

September 25, 1996, Dallas, Texas

“How was your meeting?” Eve asked as we walked into the restaurant to meet the seven members of the Dallas team.

“We have a handshake agreement on the licensing deal. I need to discuss it with Cindi, and then take it to the Board.”

“Unreal,” she said.

“Any issues with the landlord?”

“We can get more space on the same floor, but it’s not contiguous. They’d have to move the tenant next to us to give us contiguous space, and we’d have to cover at least some of those costs.”

“I take it you told them we’ll move?”

“Quite clearly. They were nonplussed.”

“Fine. Our costs for moving are trivial. I know we’re small potatoes here at the moment, but with Charlie’s expansion plans, that won’t be true within a couple of years.”

“I explained that. They have a larger space on another floor, but it’s about double what we need based on Charlie’s projections, and they won’t subdivide.”

“Then I bet I know what you’re doing tomorrow morning!”

“Already called an agent. We have no pressing need to be in the Galleria Towers.”

“Just keep me and Elyse posted,” I said, then gestured towards a table, “There’s the gang.”

We walked over and sat down with our team - a sales rep, four consultants, and two support engineers. With the exception of Jill Forest, the sales rep, I’d only ever spoken to the others by videoconference for their interviews, or as part of a Town Hall meeting. That made me uncomfortable - not with sitting down with new people - but that I didn’t know them beyond those ten-minute videoconferences and anything which might be called out in a high-level report.

We spent the next three hours eating and drinking, with me getting to know them. Overall, I had a very good impression, but at times the conversation felt strained. We were, truly, growing beyond a point where I could know everyone, and where everyone actually wanted to know me. More important in their lives, at least from their perspective, were Cindi, Charlie, and Cèlia, which I understood.

This was different from the past, when we’d sold off parts of the business. It wasn’t that we were losing focus, it was that our growth had made the company feel less personal, less like family. The situation in Chicago was different, and so were Colorado Springs and Pittsburgh. It was Durham and Dallas which engendered the strange feelings, most likely because they were not part of the ‘Original Three’, to make a parallel to the NHL. I’d sent people to run those original offices, and still had close relationships with them. That wasn’t true for the new offices.

When we finally left the restaurant to head back to the Westin, Eve showed me she was paying attention.

“Something is really bugging you, and it’s not your meeting with Manny.”

“No, it’s not. It’s the culture thing. Or maybe the character of the company.”

“They feel like employees, not friends or family.”

“Bingo! And I don’t know how to fix it.”

“You won’t want to hear this, but I’m not sure you CAN fix it; well, not to your satisfaction, most likely. And, if I can be direct, THAT is a major reason why you need your sister at NIKA. You don’t want to run a big company because it feels like running a big company. And you hate the very idea.”

“No kidding! There are days when I long for working out of the house, with just that small, tight group, where everyone was super-close and involved in everything. That’s Penny’s issue, too. It’s not even like when we were down in Hyde Park, and LA and Pittsburgh were small offices run by people who started with us in Chicago.”

“I think you need a break before you get burned out.”

“You noticed?”

“I take it you’ve thought about it.”

“I have,” I replied. “It’s funny, because I get time away, but time away won’t cure this issue.”

“You just need to get your head on straight about it. Find someplace you want to go and disappear for a few weeks. Spend it eating, drinking, thinking, relaxing, and fucking! And maybe not in that order!”

“And you’ll just happen to take your vacation at the same time?” I chuckled.

“No. When I say get away, I mean get away. If it weren’t for your rules, I’d say find a place where you could have a new girl every night. I know you well enough to know you could!”

“STDs make that a risky proposition, even using rubbers.”

“No shit, Sherlock! And your chiquita has school, so you can’t take her. But she’s part of ‘here’, so I wouldn’t recommend her, either.”

“Maybe McKenzie would want to go,” I chuckled.

“In a heartbeat!” Eve laughed. “But I don’t think she’s what you need.”

“Now this ought to be interesting,” I chuckled as we walked into the Westin. “What do I need?”

“Well, in a perfect world, someone who you have some kind of connection with, and who you would want to fuck, but who isn’t a part of your day-to-day life.”

“I’m not sure such a person exists.”

“Think about it.”

We got into the elevator and headed up to the eleventh floor where we each went to our own rooms. Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and let Eve into my room.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“Handcuff me and fuck me into next week!”

“I’ll do my best!”

September 26, 1996, Dallas, Texas

I woke on Thursday morning with Eve’s brunette hair splayed over my chest, and her right arm and right leg thrown over me. We’d finally decided to go to sleep around 3:30am, but I’d woken at my usual time. I didn’t move, though, because I knew Eve needed some sleep. Lying in bed gave me some time to think about her suggestion. I wondered if she had diagnosed it correctly.

If I delayed until December, then I could probably take Maria Cristina with me, but December was tough because of Christmas, which meant traveling to Pittsburgh and Colorado Springs for their Christmas parties, as well as all the stuff that went on at home, not to mention my anniversary. But that same limit more or less precluded the one person not in my regular circle who had come to mind - Karla Timmer.

Karla was in school, but I was sure she’d be happy to spend all of her time with me except for when she was in class or practicing soccer. And Amsterdam certainly would be a place to ‘get away from it all’ where I didn’t have any work to do. The question was, though, would two weeks in Amsterdam actually help me adapt to the realities of NIKA? I didn’t think so, because the minute I returned, they would come crashing down on me once again.

And the more I thought about it, even Stephanie coming on board wouldn’t actually fix the problem, it would just push it out of sight most of the time. Fundamentally, the only way to actually solve the problem, as it were, would be to reduce the size of the company significantly, and focus mostly on Chicago. And THAT was exactly the opposite strategy to what we had actually done.

Ultimately, ‘getting away’ wasn’t possible. What I had to do was change my thinking and accept the reality of the situation, and find a way to adapt. Getting away for a time to think about that, and figure out how to change my attitude might be a good idea, but in my mind that meant having someone to talk to, even if that person wasn’t a lover. I thought of Katy, but I knew she was booked solid through March, and it just felt wrong to ask her to cancel someone’s reservation on my behalf.

I briefly thought about flying to Japan to visit Yoshiro, but that was a long way to fly for what would likely amount to a few brief conversations. That might be worth it if my other close friend were available, but there was no way Sakurako and I could spend time together without causing a scandal, even if it was completely platonic, or perhaps better characterized as courtly love between a knight and his lord’s wife.

Someone from a Rap Session might be a good choice, but I hadn’t held those in Chicago for quite some time, and the people who were still around were friends, and from the perspective of getting an outside opinion, too close. Of course, there were the new friends I had in San Diego, which was certainly far enough away, and they were completely removed from my life in Chicago. I suppressed a chuckle at the thought of sitting in the hotel in San Diego, discussing philosophy with four naked co-eds.

But maybe there was something to that. The tea leaves indicated that the sessions Dean Barkley had established were not going to continue, because one fragile young woman had complained they were ‘offensive’ to her. The very trend which Dean Barkley had hoped to counter, was actually accelerated by the sessions he had arranged to counter it. The very concept that speech on campus could, once again, be suppressed, but this time by the students, boggled my mind.

I’d been wondering about how to continue those sessions, and perhaps I could combine Eve’s idea, minus the sex, with Dean Barkley’s idea, and kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. A week in the hotel in San Diego would be awesome, and so long as I could get a reservation, I had the beginnings of a plan. The only real question in my mind was: would a group of college undergrads and graduates be able to help me deal with the changes with which I was struggling? It was something I’d have to think about.

That last question actually argued against most of the people I might talk with, as I couldn’t think of who, amongst my friends and acquaintances, would be able to help. Maybe a call to Doctor Mercer was in order. I hadn’t spoken to her since my trip to Cincinnati the previous November, and I was sure she would be able to give me some pointers, even if it wasn’t exactly her area of expertise.

Eve finally stirred about an hour after I woke and we took a joint shower before dressing, packing our things, and checking out of the hotel. We ate breakfast, then headed to the office. She spent the morning with an agent while I made phone calls and handled my email. We met again for lunch, then headed to the airport for our flight home. She’d found a couple of promising properties and was waiting for the agent to get to her with answers to some questions before deciding which one we’d take.

September 27, 1996, Chicago, Illinois

“Are you fucking kidding me? Why the FUCK would we do that?”

“Because it’s a path to seriously hurting Dante. What do you think will happen if he grows Peach?”

“But Lone Star is a competitor!” Cindi protested.

“For now,” I grinned.

“Wait! You’re thinking about buying them again?”

I nodded, “I have a personal right of first refusal on any sale. To the point where they can’t even put the company up for sale without offering it to me BEFORE they talk to anyone else.”

“Personal? Not NIKA?”

“I couldn’t let anyone see those contracts.”

“But why make Lone Star worth more?”

“First of all, it wouldn’t impact the price I pay for Lone Star. Second, if I chose not to buy them, we’d continue to collect the license fees, meaning whoever did buy them would be paying for the privilege of paying us. And we get more copies of the software out there.”

“But why give Lone Star a leg up?”

“Who’s more dangerous? Peach run by Dante, or Lone Star who I can buy by simply picking up the phone and negotiating a price? And THIS time, we can’t get screwed by Nathan Edwards. When Dallas Capital Partners recapitalized Lone Star, he was forced to surrender all of his shares. DCP owns Lone Star, lock, stock, and barrel.”

“What about the government? It seems like some sort of conspiracy or cartel. Doesn’t anti-trust law come into play?”

“I’m charging them a reasonable royalty and setting no restrictions on the price or who they can sell to or anything else. It will be re-skinned, and nothing will identify it as our software. So long as we continue to license it to them at reasonable rates and compete with them in a way the government accepts as not being ‘unfair’, there are no issues. And acquiring them is actually less of an issue than it might have been in the past, because both Hastings Mill and Chickasaw are more established, along with the regional competitors in California and New York.”

“Do they get the source code?”

“No. The agreement will specify how they report bugs and how quickly we need to fix them, but to be honest, that’s in our interest as well. The more users, the better.”

“How do the license fees compare to our margin?”

“They’ll be a bit higher because we calculate and include development and support costs into our margin.”

“So we’ll make more from THEM selling than us selling? Damn!”

“I’m not an idiot, Cindi!”

“I never thought you were. This is just so out of left field. And as I think about it, it really sticks the knife into Dante. Two firms selling into his core market, both also strong in the market he wants to move into.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s in it for Lone Star?”

“Not having to send people to Dante or to us for ‘sole-practitioner’ software. They make money, we make money, and Dante gets DP’d without lube!”

Cindi laughed, “How long have you been waiting to make THAT joke?”

“It’s been made before; I just don’t remember exactly when. Are you game?”

“Now that I’m over my initial shock, yes.”

“Cool. Now I need to sell the idea to the Board. How are things going in the sobriety department?”

“Good. No slips.”

“And Stuart?”

She shook her head, “That’s dead and gone. I accepted a date with a lawyer at Lasker-Hanson. Do you know Bill Sullivan?”

I shook my head, “No. I think I’ve talked to Hanson once since they became customers, but that’s it. And good for you!”

“Hoping you won’t have to pay off?” she asked with a silly smile.

“I think you and I are at an age where paying up would be VERY different from what it would have been at twenty or twenty-two.”

“Did you just call me old?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

“No. I’m just saying we’re very different people. Neither of us has anything to prove to the other. Not that we actually did in the past, but putting it in those terms seems wrong now. Back then it was part of the dance.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if you’re in a position where you have the freedom, I’ll be happy to be with you. But it’s not going to be insane or over the top. It’ll be two friends having a very nice time together.”

“Interesting.”

“We’ll talk about it next Summer. Deal?”

“Deal!”

We exchanged a quick hug and I walked back to my office to call Joyce. Before I could dial, my cell phone rang.

“They found Monroe’s wife in Athens!” Stephanie said breathlessly.

“Athens? What the hell?”

“I don’t know any details beyond the fact that they arrested her for flying under a false identity. Greece is planning to deport her to the US.”

“That ought to be interesting. Any other leads?”

“With our help, the IRS and SEC found Foulkes’ unmonitored account. It’s been frozen and will be seized.”

“What’s the point of the regulation about monitored accounts?”

“To ensure brokers aren’t ‘front-running’ their clients. Every trade executed in monitored accounts goes to the SEC and they look for patterns compared to actual trades made at Spurgeon. If they see the broker trading before his customers, that’s a violation. So is trading on inside information before it’s available to the general public. But, simply trading in an unmonitored account is sufficient cause to have your license revoked, and can subject you to administrative or criminal penalties.”

“So, you mean, I have a trade for 100,000 shares of XYZ from a client, so I buy my shares, then execute the bigger trade, hoping to drive the price up so I can sell?”

“Exactly. Or vice-versa. What that means is, no matter what else Foulkes did, they can charge him under the provisions of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and/or the Investment Company Act of 1940, all of which have been amended, and cover this kind of thing. There’s also the National Securities Markets Improvement Act of 1996 which clarifies jurisdiction. It basically gives the SEC exclusive jurisdiction over covered securities and tightens up regulations. We have to wait for the SEC to publish new rules to know for sure what we have to do to be in compliance.”

“That seems like an insane amount of regulation.”

“All things being equal,” Stephanie said, “I agree with you, but every single one of those rules was created because some asshole tried to pull a fast one in some way. I usually agree with you on overregulation, but we’re dealing with a situation where individual investors are at such a serious disadvantage to professional and institutional investors, and where there is such wide gap in understanding, it’s hard to see how this could be done without regulation.”

“I’ll take your word for it. So what happens to whoever fronted the account for him, or whatever it’s called?”

“It was a nephew. Most likely, nothing. It appears he didn’t even have access to the account. If that’s the case, then they can get Foulkes on fraudulently establishing the account in the nephew’s name.”

“What about Matheson?” I asked.

“What’s that phrase you like from that computer game? Something about twisty passages?”

“YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.“

“That’s about it. He moved money in and out of a number of accounts in several different countries. And with banking secrecy laws, it’s difficult, though not completely impossible, to trace.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“Because there are official securities-fraud, banking-fraud, money-laundering, and tax-evasion cases, there is a bit of leeway. We can’t necessarily get the names of the account holders, but we can trace the money through the accounts. But it’s like those hackers in GoldenEye bouncing their modem connections around the world, or Simon in Die Hard with a Vengeance bouncing his call around.”