Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life (18 page)

6. The End of an Era

“The Coup”—as John Praxis would later describe it—came at the third item on the agenda of the monthly Board of Directors meeting. Herb Longacre, the executive vice president for international marketing, introduced a measure requiring mandatory retirement at age sixty-five for all employees—not exempting senior executives, as in the current rules.

Praxis looked at his two sons, sitting on either side of the table next to him. Both had their heads down, studying the papers in front of them, while Longacre detailed his reasons for the measure, which had something to do with accelerated shedding of aging staff. Leonard’s own eyes shifted sideways and upward, to catch Praxis looking at him. Then Leonard lifted his head fractionally and glanced across at Richard.

Ah so, Jessica!
Praxis thought,
as the Japanese would say.
Longacre was a longtime friend and ally of Leonard’s. And this move was directed upward, at Praxis himself, as the “aging staff” in question. Well, he still had the votes to counter the measure. With his own thirty-five percent of shares, plus Callie’s ten percent held until her payout, and the ten percent held by other board members who were loyal to him, the motion was doomed.

When it came time to vote, however, the ayes and nays went as he expected—with both of his sons and their allies voting in favor—until the very end, when the issue of Callie’s shares arose.

“According to the corporation’s bylaws,” Richard said, “shares held in escrow are voted at the discretion of the chief financial officer.”

“Is that a fact?” Praxis asked.

“I didn’t know that,” Leonard said in mild wonder.

“Article One, Section Seven, Subsection Three,” said Burke as secretary.

“And I am voting those ten percent of shares in favor,” Richard concluded.

“The vote is fifty-five percent to forty-five,” Burke said. “The motion passes.”

The rest of the meeting proceeded, as far as Praxis was concerned, in a haze of meaningless activity. When it was over and everyone was standing, he gathered his sons by eye and said, “Would you gentlemen please come to my office?” If indeed it was still his office.

As soon as the doors were closed, he turned to his eldest son. “What did you two just do in there?”

Leonard was aghast. “Us? Do? Nothing! It was Herb’s motion, to handle some personnel problems he’s having in the international division.”

Praxis did not miss the fact that, of all the business transacted that afternoon, Leonard knew exactly which piece of it his father meant.

“But it never occurred to you that I’m now over sixty-five?” Praxis said. “This forces me out of the company. The two of you have been asking me to step down since the heart attack.”

“Only for your own good, Dad.” Richard said.

“It’s the direction you’ve been taking for a long time,” Leonard said.

“Well … hell!” Praxis said. “Things are different now. I’m
better
since the heart attack. My weight’s way down. My stamina’s up. I’m stronger than before. I run
foot races
for ten and fifteen miles at a time. And now the company’s in a rocky place. It needs me.”

“We can handle the company,” said Leonard. “Just like you taught us.”

“And, besides,” said Richard, “you’ll want to stay on in a non-voting role as ‘chairman emeritus,’ just like Grandfather Sebastian did.”

Praxis stared at him. That would keep his shares in the company, too. But because his employment status would officially become “inactive,” the shares would be held in trust—“in escrow,” in fact—which would give Richard a forty-five percent vote between his own and his father’s shares. Actually, fifty-five percent until Callie’s payout was finalized. That was too much control. On the other hand, if Praxis opted to leave and cash out his shares immediately—forcing the liquidation of more than a third of the company’s assets—that would spell the end of Praxis Engineering & Construction.

But wasn’t the company headed down that road anyway? With the falloff in contracts, the shrinkage of federal and state budgets, and looming economic uncertainties for a country that was cut in half by economics and politics and on the brink of war—what were the company’s prospects? Whatever was to come for the nation, the bloodier it was, the greater would be the need to rebuild one day. And that was some kind of future, if a distant one, for PE&C. But in the meantime the country had to negotiate the passage of a great, gray unknown, a nexus where all plans and expectations broke down. And the company would also have to pass through a fiscal sinkhole, wide as a lake, deep as the ocean, with bankruptcy lurking at the bottom.

For the past year Praxis had felt like the pilot of an airplane running out of gas and losing altitude. He had tried, or proposed for his sons to try, everything he could think of to keep the business going: new ways of financing projects, new customers and industries in more prosperous sectors, new work methods and practices. But since Leonard and Richard had taken control after his Thunderbolt, everything they touched had turned to ice cream. True, the troubles were not always of their own making. But they seemed blind to the tasks at hand. They lacked the capacity to adapt and learn.

And now the question came down to his own immediate course of action. On which side of the equation governing the future was he going to stand? Stay and take the emeritus position in order to preserve the family business and its slender, doubt-filled future? Or leave to preserve as much of his own fortune and financial future as possible? Take the money, and devil take the rest?
Wasn’t it a French king who said, “Après moi, le déluge”? Ah, but was that a cry of selfishness, or despair?

“I think not,” he quietly told his youngest son.

“Dad!” Richard said. “You can’t seriously mean to take—”

“If you want to precipitate a landslide in the middle of a hurricane,” Praxis told him, “then be prepared for the consequences.”

“Now, now, now,” Leonard quavered. “There’s no need for hasty action. There’s plenty of time for us to sit down and work through—”

“Work through
what?
” Praxis asked angrily. “How will these circumstances change if we delay until tomorrow? Or next week? Next month? You’ve forced me to a decision, and I’ve made it. What can change now, except your arguments and my mind?”

“Then we’ll survive without you.” Leonard said, suddenly cold.

“We’ve survived a lot worse than this,” Richard said.

“I hope you’re right,” Praxis replied.

* * *

“We’ve reached the tipping point,” Ted Bridger said quietly as they went over the practice’s books for another month. Antigone Wells could see what he meant.

Having let Carolyn Boggs go as well as Sully Mkubwa, and put her assistant Madeline on part time, they had nowhere else to cut in terms of staff—unless Wells wanted to open her own mail and type her own letters, as well as Ted’s, like a rookie just starting out from law school. Their income for the month barely covered office rent and utilities.

“Where did the huge fees of the last couple of years go?” she wondered, thinking of BB&W’s share of the recovery in the St. Brigid’s case—the last of her glory days.

“To keep us afloat through the thin times of the past year,” he said.

“I guess I haven’t been as productive as … before.”

“Neither have I, come to mention it.”

“Are we getting too old?”

“I am. You’re not,” he said. “I swear, Antigone, you look younger and more alive than you ever did … before.”

“Before my brain exploded, you mean.”

“Well, whatever it was.”

“I’m getting better. Soon I’ll be back up to my usual pace, you know.”

“You might, but I won’t. I’ve grown senile, my dear. Time for me to go.”

“What’s the—” She hesitated. “—the protocol for a situation like this?”

“You should offer to buy me out. But …” Now
he
hesitated. “Don’t.”

“I have resources of my own,” she said. “I can manage the cost.”

“I know. And the value of the practice has declined to the point where you could probably afford to buy it outright. But honestly, in these times? With this future?”

“Lots of work. Nobody able to pay.”

“If you bought my share, you’d still be bankrupt next month—and personally broke to boot.”

“Then …” she said, “I’ll draw up the liquidation papers and alert the landlord.” She ran her hand over the burled maple of her desktop. “The furniture ought to fetch a good price. And we can sell the computers on eBay.”

“Not much value in liquidations,” he said. “Anymore.”

“What will you do?” she asked.

“Tend to my garden. And you?”

“Oh …” She realized hadn’t ever considered a life beyond the law.
Best Damn Attorney in San Francisco, now bankrupt, seeks suitable employment …
“Live off my hump for a while,” she said. What could she get for a top-floor condominium apartment on Divisadero Street? “Maybe travel for a bit. I’ve got a sister Oklahoma I haven’t seen in a couple of years.”

“Isn’t that on the other side of the border?” he asked.

“What border? They’re not another country yet, are they?”

“Well, go then. But just take care of yourself.”

* * *

Callie Praxis was performing a bit of rudimentary bonsai on her mother’s purple African violet, trimming away dead leaves with a pair of kitchen shears. Yesterday Adele had looked at the plant, walked away, turned back, and touched the pale brown leaves with a frown. Working on the theory that, if her mother could still love anything in her confused state, it might be a living thing, Callie had taken the plant in hand and tried to coax it back to life. She had found some liquid fertilizer in the garage, and as soon as she’d cleared enough of the leaves to give the plant breathing space, she planned to apply it.

Her cell phone caught her in mid-snip. When she picked it up, she didn’t recognize the number. It was from somewhere in Texas. She answered it anyway, because her days were just not that busy anymore. “Hello?”

“Hello, Miz Praxis? My name is Kevin Lowe, and I’m a marketing vice president with Intelligeneering Systems Inc. I got your private number from the operators at Praxis Engineering—”

“Uh-huh? Right, Mr. Lowe. You need to know that I’m no longer with that company and not in a position to recommend your services.” She had her fingertip poised to press “end.”

“I understand that, ma’am,” he said quickly. “They told me you’d left. But I’m following up on a call you made two weeks ago to our technical support line. The subject matter was unusual enough that they referred it to my attention.”

“Oh? Yes … ‘Mr. Andy.’ ”

“Yes. I’ve listened to the recording. This is not something we reveal in a routine service call, you understand. But as you are—or were—an officer of the company, our legal staff has asked me to contact you and tell you the information he gave out was not entirely accurate. It’s in the fine print on your contract that, during installation and testing of any software package, we may from time to time interrupt the various databases for the purposes of seeding sample data. And then, of course, we delete it. Such additions and deletions are not recorded in the system access files, for obvious reasons.”

“Name one.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tell me an obvious reason for not recording a transaction,” she said.

“Well, during testing, we’re not making actual accounting entries, nothing that would show up on your company’s books. So we don’t want to clutter your system with meaningless data.”

“And when you’re finished with the installation, you—how do you say—remove that access? Close those back doors?”

“Yes, that would be customary.”

“ ‘Customary’?” she said. “Don’t you have a
rule
about it?”

“You must understand, Miz Praxis. Every installation is a major undertaking and a lot more complicated than you can imagine—”

“I can imagine quite a bit.”

“Sometimes, when our engineers know they may have to return for additional troubleshooting, they leave these access points in place. It’s a precaution we take for your benefit, actually.”

“Does anyone in Praxis Engineering know about this unsanctioned access?” she asked. A picture was beginning to form in her mind.

“We don’t make it widely known, for obvious reasons. But as I said, it’s noted in the contract. And we make a practice of informing the most senior executives in the financial end of the business.”

“But would anyone inside Praxis Engineering have that access?” she pressed. “Would they know how to
use
the back door?”

“Oh, I doubt it!” Lowe said, almost but not quite laughing. “The coding is very subtle and requires a piece of software with the right keys. Your average senior executive would be lost, really. And your information technology staff should know better than to try poking around.”

“I see,” Callie replied. She remembered that Richard had been a math wizard as a child. He had cried for his first computer, an old S-100 hobby system running CP/M, at age eleven, and a year later he was making it do tricks that weren’t even in the manuals by coding at what he called “binary level.” The rest of the family thought it was adorable that he thought he could actually make sense of all those paired zeroes and ones glowing in green on the monitor screen.

Of course, there was nothing she could do about his implied treachery now. The paperwork for her removal was all signed. The Coup—as her father called it—had already taken place. The company was effectively broken and launched on a glide path to destruction. And no amount of angry accusations, techno-babble, and hate-filled he-said-she-saids could ever put it back together.

“Thank you for your call, sir,” she told the man on the phone. “You’ve answered my original question.”

“I’m glad we could oblige, ma’am.”

And then she did press “end.”

* * *

Antigone Wells understood that John Praxis owned a house in Sea Cliff, but she had never seen it. When he asked her to come out one evening and gave her the address, she didn’t know what to expect.

He met her himself at the front door, took her through into the study, and sat her down at his eighteenth-century desk, taking one of the chairs in front for himself. On the green leather blotter was an envelope in heavy, cream-colored vellum.