Terminal Value (15 page)

Dylan spent a frustrating two hours tracking down a phone number that was out of service before finally coming up with the address in Bayonne, New Jersey. He took the shuttle to New York, passed the time by working on the eulogy, and booked into the Avalon Hotel on the lower west side.

Technochondriacs was one of the many unlocked phone sales outfits that had sprung up like mushrooms in the past year. Dylan cruised through the back streets of south Bayonne at noon: second sunrise, as Tony had called it—the time when all geeks, having rolled out of bed an hour earlier, thought about breakfast but not much more. The varicolored two-story false fronts dated back to the 1940s. The GPS announced he had arrived at his destination, but he saw nothing that informed him of a technology business—only a grimy sign proclaiming the establishment as Crown Candy Shop: a place that sold newspapers, cigarettes, phone cards, and beer.

Dylan parked a couple of blocks away and emerged from the air-conditioned comfort of the car only to be greeted by the stench of garbage rotting in the warm May air. He locked the car and hoped it would be there when he returned.

The Crown Candy Shop turned out to be predictably cluttered but surprisingly cheery. The storekeeper, an elderly woman sporting an unexpected crew cut, was organizing a shelf of ramen noodles and canned soups. A couple of pre-pubescent girls browsed through a rack of teen magazines. Dylan idled by the counter until the woman finished her task and gave him a glance.

“What can I help you with today?” she asked.

“I think I'm a little lost,” he said to her with a self-effacing smile. “I'm looking for a business called Technochondriacs.”

The woman turned to the candy rack and pulled out an empty display box. “Hmm. Don't think I've ever heard of that one. Or are you talking about the walk-in clinic on Prospect Avenue? The AIDS test was last Wednesday.”

“No, this would be something to do with cell phones or electronics.”

The woman shook her head. “There's no store like that around here.”

“Gran,” said one of the girls, a sassy redhead in a Yankees cap. “He's talking about Darryl.”

“Oh!” The woman scratched her spiky hair. “Maybe he is.”

Dylan nodded encouragingly.

“I thought that idea was a bust,” the woman added. “He doesn't talk about it, and he never gets any mail.”

“It's all online now, Gran,” the girl said without looking up from her magazine. Her dark purple nails turned each page with care.

“Where do you think I could find Darryl?” asked Dylan.

“He lives upstairs. Just go around through the alley to the red door.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep ringing,” said the woman. “Sometimes he's a little, uh, preoccupied.”

“I understand,” said Dylan, with a wry grin.

He hurried out the door and around the corner, where he found the back door and rang the bell. Then he rang it again, and again. He had turned back toward the Candy Shop to ask Gran for Darryl's phone number when he heard the thud of feet on a wooden staircase behind the door.

The door opened and a narrow-faced youth in his early twenties appeared. The muffs of a headset bulged over his ears. He blinked his large eyes, furrowed his brow, and pursed his lips. “You're not pizza.”

“I'm Dylan Johnson, from Mantric.”

The kid gave him a blank look. Long enough for the star on the left earpiece of the headset to flash blue twice.

“We're a technology firm,” Dylan explained. “I head up the mobile computing division.” He handed the kid his business card.

“Oh Jeez,” said the kid. He eyeballed the card, then offered a hand. “Darryl Bachman. You're here about the letter Mulroney sent. About the funding.”

Dylan opened his mouth to deliver a polite denial then stopped. He had no idea what Darryl was talking about, but it didn't take much imagination to realize the kid had handed him an in, and he might be able to use it to get the information he wanted.

“Is there somewhere we could talk?”

“Yeah, sure. Come on up.” Darryl led Dylan up the dark staircase. The scent of stale pizza and dirty carpet wound its way through Dylan's nostrils. He scrunched his nose.

The apartment was not the cluster of unkempt little rooms that Dylan had expected. Instead, it was one high-ceilinged chamber, furnished with minimalist furniture and a scattering of stainless steel computers and flat-panel displays. It was clear the original structure had been modified; the attic was taken out and skylights were installed in the peaked roof. Another youth, built like an apple with legs and arms, barely glanced up from his computer when they entered. Darryl pointed Dylan to a comfortable vinyl chair and offered him a Coke.

Dylan had the whole picture within fifteen minutes. Darryl and his friend Mulroney, the apple-shaped youth, had joined forces after both had graduated from Rutgers the previous year and started up a small, somewhat sketchy unlocked mobile phone business. They had very little overhead, as all orders were taken over the Internet and fulfilled from a warehouse in Elizabeth. This paid the bills and left the boys time to pursue their passion, which turned out to be interactive gaming.

“We do a good trade in selling and reselling unlocked phones. Amazing how many people want them. It's cool because we deal with a bunch of different wholesalers, and our fulfillment house ships the stuff.” He laughed and snorted. “Most of it we never even see.”

“He knows this, Darryl,” rasped Mulroney. “Talk to him about Inventure.”

“Sure.” Darryl said, oozing excitement. “It's a new technology we have for role-playing gamers. Imagine really fighting the dragons and killing those bastards in a truly 3-D virtual reality environment. This will make Wii seem like a hobby horse.”

Dylan nodded—not too encouraging, but listening.

Mulroney rolled over to join them, helping himself to a Coke. “We've got a lot of bugs to work out, which is why we're looking for sponsorship.”

“I see.” Of course they were. “Let me ask you—why don't you incorporate and manage it yourself?”

“We're not business types,” Darryl said with a shrug. “We just want to take a fat cut in perpetuity, which will be a hell of a lot more if an established company does the marketing for us. Right?”

“Could be.” Dylan marveled silently at their naiveté, but this wasn't the time for a lecture on the cold realities of the corporate world. “What's your competition doing while you're looking for corporate sponsorship?”

“The same as us, probably,” said Darryl with a smile.

His cheerfulness annoyed Dylan. “Well, that's not in your favor.”

“Hence the ‘sell-it-now' idea,” said Mulroney, wriggling his eyebrows.

Dylan took a swig of his Coke. “In my day, it was easier to keep ahead of the curve because everything was new. You could make a killing and then move on before the floor fell out.”

“You were there at the beginning, weren't you?” Darryl asked, in awe. “That must have been some fun.”

Dylan looked around the loft. Was it so different, after all, from how he and Tony and Rob and Heather had gotten their start five years earlier? Had they been smarter, or just lucky? In fact, wasn't Darryl a tiny bit like the Tony he had first met at MIT?

“Yeah. It was.” He drew a hand across his eyes. “But it's a lot different now. You've really got to come up with something different. You guys heard of Prometheus?”

Darryl and Mulroney exchanged glances. “Yeah.”

“He's the kind of guy who could make something like what you're talking about a reality, don't you think?”

Darryl shrugged, suddenly impatient. “I think we're the kind of people who can do this.”

“Maybe. If you're serious.”

“What's your point?” asked Mulroney, suddenly wary. “That it's all about the fame, not the fun? I guess you made it big, and you think everyone who didn't is a jerk—right? Big deal. We're not egomaniacs.”

“I'm not—” Dylan stopped, suddenly confused. “I'm not questioning your motives. I didn't bring up Prometheus to show you up. Actually, I wondered if there was any chance you could bring him on board your project. Do you know him?”

“Sort of,” said Darryl.

“Wait a minute,” said Mulroney, shoving back his chair. “Who are you with?”

Darryl handed the round young man the business card.

Mulroney scowled. “I didn't send the letter to Mantric.”

“I know. I heard about you through other channels.”

“From who?”

“I'd rather not say. But—”

“Man, I don't believe you guys!” said Mulroney, springing to his feet. “You're not interested in us! You just want Prometheus!”

“Sorry.” Dylan held up a hand. “Look, it's not like that—”

“I think you'd better leave,” Darryl said unapologetically.

Dylan rose and walked to the door, where he turned and gave it one more shot before leaving. “Listen, it's true I came here looking for Prometheus, but it's not like you think. In fact it has nothing to do with business at all.”

“Oh that's reassuring,” said Mulroney. He flipped open his phone and punched in three numbers with his thumb.

Dylan nodded. “Okay, I'm going.” He still stood with his back to the door. “Look, my best friend died this week. We were like you guys once. He was a friend of Prometheus. I'm just trying to get in touch with him.”

Darryl looked sympathetic, but Mulroney smirked. “Right. Are you going?”

“Just tell him I'm looking for him. Please.”

“I bet,” Darryl said. “Get out.”

“Just tell him it's about what happened to Tony.”

Dylan opened the door and rushed down the stairs, cursing himself. What good was he if he couldn't handle a couple of wet-behind-the-ears wannabes!

Chapter 16

May 6, 2:00 p.m. New York

Dylan arrived back in New York at two o'clock, depressed and disillusioned.

“Dylan?” Rachel, his New York secretary, looked up anxiously as he entered his outer office. “Matt Smith has been looking for you. He's frantic.”

Dylan gritted his teeth. Matt was the most competent, and composed, senior consultant at MobiCelus. He only called Dylan during a crisis.

“I'll call him right away.”

He went into his office and closed the door, then settled in at his desk and punched up Matt's number. Matt answered on the first ring.

“Dylan! Where've you been?”

“Chasing some ghosts.” No point in advertising his extracurricular activities. “What's up?”

“Haven't you checked your e-mail, for God's sake?”

“No, sorry, I didn't.”

“Well, we have a problem with Hyperfōn.”

Shit. He hadn't paid much attention to Hyperfōn since Tony's death. “What kind of problem?” he asked.

“LC is about to announce the launch of Gazi. My contact tells me their website is ready and they will be taking orders as soon as their national advertising campaign rolls out next week.” Matt paused for a moment. And then he added, “Dylan, Gazi is an exact replica of Hyperfōn, and they've beaten them to the punch. Hyperfōn's screwed.”

Dylan opened his browser and read the press release. LC was one of the largest technology conglomerates in the world. Dylan and his consultants knew LC's businesses backwards and forwards. There was no way LC could develop a competing business like Gazi this fast.

“Matt, how the hell can that be?”

“I don't know. I mean, once we launched Hyperfōn, it should have taken any competitor at least a year to launch a competing business from scratch. Nine months at a minimum. They'd have to reverse-engineer the technology, get around the patent protections, develop the software—”

“Exactly. And Hyperfōn's only been up and running for—what? A month?” Dylan's mind raced through the ad campaign and the launch over the past month, unable to determine how LC could have developed their product and gotten it rolled out so quickly.

“I know. It doesn't make any sense. It must be a coincidence. LC must have had this new business in development for the last year. We must have missed it when we did our research.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No, but what else could it be? We worked our asses off and studied every possible competitor. And we looked hard at LC. Things were crazy during the buyout, but we did our homework, Dylan.”

“I know you did.” This was bad, very bad. They had promised Joe that Hyperfōn was going to be one of a kind, with at least a year's head start on the competition.

“Dylan, I'm up here doing everything I can to try and hold this together. Ferrano is furious, and the venture capitalists are all over him.”

Dylan's concerns over Prom3th3u5, and Tony's death, so omnipresent for the past three days, were pushed back by this new disaster. “Listen, Matt, tell Joe right now that I'm taking the next shuttle up to see him in person.”

“Okay, I will. What are you going to do when you get here?”

“We'll think of something. Our work was solid; I know it was. I want Joe to know that we stand behind our work, and I am personally going to help his company through this. I should be there in less than two hours. In the meantime, do the best you can. And get the team to dig around. See what you can find out about LC and how they did this. Hang in there—okay?”

“Okay. Thanks. Call me when you get here.”

Dylan hung up the phone and ran out of his office and stopped at Rachel's desk.

“Listen, Rachel, something's come up. I have to go to Boston.”

“I know.”

Dylan was confused. “Did Matt tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“About Hyperfōn?”

“No. Michelle called,” she said, referring to Art's assistant. “Art's in Boston getting ready for the funeral. He wants to meet with you this evening for drinks at Radius. I told her I would check with you and get back to her.”