Better Than This (29 page)

But he could have helped, I thought, if he’d really wanted to. He could have gotten Hoffman into a clinic. There were a lot of things he could have done. Maybe he didn’t have to, but that wasn’t the point. Perhaps until then I hadn’t actually been certain I would go ahead with what I planned. But now I had no qualms.

“I think you made the wrong decision.”

“Oh?”

“As I said earlier, Mr. Hoffman was working for Spectrum, at least until a year or so ago. He had stopped drinking and was getting his life together. He came up with an idea for a software program that he thought the company should develop, a program that he thought had huge potential. Sam Mendez thought so too, but he didn’t have the money to develop the idea, so he started looking for investment capital.”

Morgan listened without comment. He knew I was getting down to the reason for this meeting.

“When he heard that Morgan Industries was negotiating to buy Spectrum, Mr. Hoffman quit,” I went on. “He told me he couldn’t bear the idea that you would profit from his work again. So, for the last year he’s been developing his own version of the idea he came up with. I’ve seen both programs by the way, and his is much better.”

Morgan absorbed all of this, and then got up and went to the window where he stood with his back to me gazing out towards the tennis court. I could still hear the sound of the woman practising out there. I let Morgan think about what I’d told him. Finally he turned around.

“And how does this involve you, Mr. Weston?”

“Mr. Hoffman came to us for help. He wanted to put his program on the Internet, so that it would be available virtually free to anyone who wanted to download it. He needed us to manage that process and make sure that people knew about it. Unfortunately he died before his plans were realized.”

“I see.”

“I wonder if you really do. I should explain a couple of things,” I continued. “Mr. Hoffman, whether justifiably or not, bore you a considerable degree of enmity. He knew he was dying and his sole purpose in all of this was to make sure you didn’t benefit from his work again. Obviously you won’t want to take my word that his program is superior. I have a sample here. Just enough to prove my point.” I took out a disc onto which parts of Hoffman’s program had been copied and I put it on the table.

“I know the investment you have in all of this,” I said. “Spectrum Software wouldn’t sell a single copy of their program if this one was released onto the Net.”

“And you have this program?” Morgan said after a moment, and now he did, I think, really begin to see.

“That’s right. Although technically it belongs to a trust that Mr. Hoffman set up to ensure his wishes are carried out after his death.”

Morgan stared at me thoughtfully. “So, as Leonard is now dead, you naturally thought you would steal this program and use it as a means to extort money.”

I smiled. “I prefer to think of it as a business transaction. I’m offering you the opportunity to purchase something that is worth a great deal of money to you to ensure it never finds its way back into the hands of the trustees.”

He considered that, his eyes never leaving me. “Assuming the program is everything you say it is, how much are you expecting me to pay for it?”

I took my time answering. My gaze never once wavered from his. I wanted him to know I’d thought about this carefully, that it wasn’t just some figure I’d plucked out of the ether. From outside came the steady rhythmic pop and whump of the woman practising on the tennis court. I wondered if she was Morgan’s wife. She appeared to be a lot younger than him. His daughter?

Girlfriend? I was aware of the dimensions of the room I was in, and of this big house protected from the outside world. I think I smiled a little when I answered him.

“Forty million dollars,” I said, upping the ante another ten from my original figure. “A mixture of cash and stock would be acceptable.”

He betrayed almost no reaction at all, apart from a slight tic in the corner of his eye.

Less than fifteen minutes later the gates at the end of the drive swung smoothly open as I approached, and I turned onto the road and headed back the way I’d come. I almost laughed out loud. I couldn’t believe that it had all been so simple. How long had I been at Morgan’s house? I looked at my watch. Less than half an hour. I worked it out, forty million divided by thirty, that’s one point three million a minute. Plus change. It was incredible, it seemed almost unbelievable. But I did believe it because I knew that it happens more than most of us think, and not to people who put in sixty hours a week for all their working lives, but to people who manipulate the system. They tap away on keyboards, shifting fortunes around the globe with a stroke of the key, or they raise venture capital for some new Internet business that will probably never make a dime, or they star in a movie, or they get a call from somebody in the know about a merger about to be announced and they buy up stock which they sell on a few weeks later and make enough money to buy a small country. So why shouldn’t it happen to me? No reason. All it took was an opportunity, the nerve to take it, and someone willing to pay. For once I had all three.

I passed a gate on my left and slowed down when I glimpsed a house through the trees. It was a three-storey modern design, constructed of steel and glass, built on a knoll that allowed views of the surrounding hills and the ocean. It didn’t have as much land as Morgan’s house, and it certainly wasn’t built on anything like the same scale, but for a family, say a couple with two or three children for instance, it would be perfect. I wondered how much a house like that would cost. It was expensive real estate here, but I figured further south towards Monterey I should be able to pick up something that would suit Sally and me for between three and five million. I knew she didn’t like any of this, but she would come round.

I was considering this when I came around the curve and saw a car pulled over on the side of the road with the hood up. The doors were open and as I passed I glanced over. It was a Ford I thought, maybe an old Mustang with darkened windows and a jacked up rear end. I remembered the dragger I’d heard earlier and when I glanced in the mirror I could see several people bent over the engine. I don’t know why but something about the scene jarred with me. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but it was there in the back of my mind like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I was still thinking about it when I hit the freeway.

Leonard Hoffman was laid to his final rest in Fairlawns Cemetery which lay thirty miles east of the Bay. Aside from myself there were no other mourners. On a nice day it would be a pleasant spot, the cemetery was well kept with plenty of shade trees growing among the gravestones, where relatives could come and sit out of the sun on the seats provided and contemplate the peaceful surroundings while they remembered their loved ones. But on this, the day after my meeting with Nelson Morgan, I stood underneath an elm sheltering from the pouring rain. The sky was leaden and the ground underfoot soggy. The rain fell in slanting grey sheets making the world appear shot in monochrome. Thirty feet away a hole in the earth contained Hoffman’s casket. The priest had left as soon as he’d delivered his brief eulogy, his black garments flapping wetly as he scuttled off among the gravestones looking like a drenched crow. A pile of mud waited to fill the hole, a roll of turf beside it like a bedspread. The two men whose job it was to do the filling stood further away, sheltering under another tree. I could barely make them out as they stared out morosely and waited for the rain to stop.

I was wearing a coat, my shoulders hunched, with the collar up and my hands in my pockets. It wasn’t cold but heavy drips of water splashed from the branches above. I looked down at my shoes, the soles of which were caked with heavy reddish mud. The rain wasn’t about to end anytime soon, and I decided I’d done my duty, but as I made to leave I saw somebody approaching along the path. He too was wearing a long dark coat, and when he saw me he hesitated then came over to join me.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” I said to Brinkman.

“I had a meeting,” he said curtly. He mopped the rain from his face with a handkerchief and squinted up at the tree, disappointed it seemed by the scant protection it offered.

“Nobody else came,” I observed.

Brinkman glanced towards the grave. “He didn’t have any relatives.”

“He was married a few times wasn’t he?”

“I informed his most recent wife of his death. She asked if he’d left her anything and when I said no she hung up.”

I’d wondered if Morgan might show up. I hadn’t told him about the funeral arrangements which Hoffman had made himself, apparently some time ago, but I assumed it would’ve been easy enough for him to find out. I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t come. Morgan didn’t strike me as the sentimental type. Apart from the fact that he and Hoffman hadn’t been friends for many years, Hoffman’s last act on earth was going to cost Morgan a great deal of money.

I had only been to one other funeral in my life. It had rained the day my dad was buried too, though not heavily like this. Unlike Hoffman my dad knew a lot of people and he was respected, if not exactly seen as the life and soul of the party. He was always a quiet type, a little introverted. All the men who had worked for him came along, even though they had all lost their jobs when his business failed. And a dozen or so from the street where we lived turned up as well, plus my dad’s sister and mother who was still alive then. That had been a desolate enough occasion I thought, but this was worse. To be buried without anybody to mourn his passing as Hoffman had been was a sad testament to his time on earth I thought.

“Why did you come?” Brinkman asked suddenly and I realized he’d been watching me. I was surprised by his question and I had to think for a moment.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know him very well. I felt sorry for him I suppose.”

“Sorry for him? Why?”

I shrugged. “He was clever. He had a particular talent for something that in this age of technology makes people like him wealthy. But look how he ended up. He died with hardly a cent to his name.”

“Don’t tell me,” Brinkman said, ‘that you have a sentimental attachment to the underdog.”

I noted the cynicism in his tone. “Not one you share obviously.”

“Whatever talent he had, he wasted it. He drowned it in the bottom of a bottle.”

“He stopped drinking at the end,” I pointed out. “He was sober for his last year.”

“And how did he spend that time? He devoted himself to a plan for taking revenge on his old partner. Hardly a proud epitaph.”

“He had his reasons.”

Brinkman smiled coldly. “Which of course you feel should be honoured.”

I didn’t say anything. The rain showed no signs of letting up. Water was running past my collar and trickling down my back. The ground was turning into a swamp, every dip and hollow turning into a miniature muddy reservoir. Brinkman and I started walking back towards the parking lot, our feet splashing through puddles.

“Did the program turn up yet?” I asked him.

“No.”

“So there’s no contract.”

“Obviously.”

We reached the lot and stood between our cars. “And you have no idea who took it?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, then he smiled thinly. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that exactly.” Then he turned and went back to his car.

I thought about our conversation as I drove back to the city. Brinkman had asked why I’d gone to the funeral, and my answer had been vague. The truth was, I admitted to myself, that I felt guilty. I’d argued to Sally that Hoffman’s motives weren’t exactly laudable, but that was no justification for what I was doing. Sally knew that. I thought Brinkman suspected that was why I was there. His parting comment made me certain he knew I had the program, though I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t come out and openly accuse me. On reflection he seemed too sure of himself for my liking. If I had been him I would have been making more threatening noises, trying to scare me into handing over the program and the fact that he hadn’t done that seemed to me somehow wrong.

When I reached the office I asked Stacey if there were any messages for me.

“Just the one.” She handed me a message slip with a number on it which I didn’t recognize, but no name.

“Who’s it from?”

“He didn’t give his name. All he said was that you should call him about the matter you discussed yesterday.”

“Mysterious,” I joked.

“Actually he was kind of rude. He gave me that number and hung up.”

It had to be Morgan. I thanked Stacey and went through to my office and while I took off my damp jacket I punched in the number. It turned out to be his private line and was answered by somebody I assumed was the butler. I gave my name and asked for Mr. Morgan and was told to wait. A minute later he was on the line.

“Mr. Weston?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve had time to have a look at the item you left me. It seems to be everything you claim.”

Morgan paused, and I waited, my heart rate climbing rapidly. After I’d left his house I’d been on a high, but my euphoria had gradually faded and left me feeling anxious more than anything else. I wasn’t quite able to convince myself that what was happening was real, that Morgan really would pay what I’d asked for the program. Attending Hoffman’s dismal funeral had added to my uncertainty.

“Thirty million.”

I heard the words, but it took a few moments to accept them.

“Ten in cash, the rest in stock,” Morgan added.

“Thirty-five. Twenty in cash, fifteen in stock,” I countered and held my breath.

Finally he answered. “All right. I’ll need a few days to make the arrangements. I’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead and slowly I replaced the receiver and sat down. My wildly beating heart gradually subsided. After a couple of minutes I got up and went into the conference room, and after I’d shut the door and drawn the blinds I opened the wall safe where we’d put the disc that held the program. I just needed to reassure myself that it was still there. Thirty-five million dollars. I could hardly believe it. I closed the safe again and went to look for Marcus. I passed Karen who threw me a quizzical look.