The Big Exit (15 page)

M
ADDEN REMEMBERS THE DAYS WHEN DEALING WITH THE PRESS WAS
a lot easier. When he started as a cop, you had the
Chronicle, Examiner, San Jose Mercury
, and smaller papers like the
Peninsula Times Tribune
, since folded, which had different local sections geared to various towns along the Peninsula. The papers planned stories
to run in the morning edition or, in the case of the
Examiner
, the afternoon. It was all pretty straightforward. You granted an interview or did a press conference and the story would
appear in the paper the next day. If you wanted to draw some attention to a case, the department’s PR person would call reporters
and try to get them to bite on a feature. Sure, you got the occasional wrinkle or misquote and every now and then things went
south, but for the most part, the encounter was pretty predictable—and manageable.

Is he being too nostalgic? Probably. But that doesn’t stop him from lamenting the fact that the entity formerly known as the
press has become an ambiguous, slippery blob. It reminds him of a toy he’d bought for his daughter last Christmas, a concoction
called GobbledlyGoop that comes in a small bucket. You mix it with water, add a few drops of color, and soon you have a batch
of what the company accurately describes as the most “ooey, gooey slime imaginable.” Depending on how much water you mix in,
you could change its consistency, make it thicker or thinner. The kids love it. He finds it repulsive, but it does entertain
and even educate, kind of like guys like Tom Bender.

It’s around ten when he gets to Bender’s house. The Great One
opens his front door wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, and holding a piece of toast in one hand and a squirming and excited
pug puppy in the other. His short hair is gelled and spiked, he looks freshly showered and crisp yet tired and weary at the
same time, with dark bags under his eyes, and his white, pasty face has small clusters of spider veins high on both cheeks.
He looks thinner than the last time Madden saw him; he’s lost weight.

“Do you know who I am?” Madden asks.

Bender looks at Madden for a second—then looks past him, as if he’s expecting a larger contingent that has yet to materialize.

“Yeah,” Bender comes back disinterestedly. Then to his dog, “Say hello to Detective Madden, Beezo.” Next, he takes a bite
of his toast and keeps talking. “I was just writing about you,” he mumbles. “A sidebar really. How’s the case going? I hear
you may have got the guy.”

“Sorry for the unannounced visit,” Madden says.

“If you’re looking for me to reveal any sources, I’m not going to do that. And don’t bother with any of that police intimidation
crap. I’m unintimidatable.”

Madden isn’t sure that’s a real word.

“This is an off-the-record visit,” he says. “I just want to ask a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay, sure, come on in. Last time I think I saw you in person you were raiding one of my parties.”

Madden follows him inside. “Ancient history,” he says. “Different house.”

The new house actually reminds Madden of Bender’s old one—probably from the same era, designed during the 1960s with a simple
Frank Lloyd Wright flair, with large bay windows in the living room. It feels open and airy. But the big difference is Bender
is no longer a renter. He owns this place and has clearly put considerable thought and effort into making this a showcase
home, with expensive modern furniture, artwork, and sleek appliances. And while his new yard seems a bit smaller, not a twig
seems out of place.

Bender ushers him into the kitchen, which is connected to a deck. Madden peeks out to see a teak dining table, lounge chairs,
umbrellas, and planters with flowering plants. How mature. Madden marvels
how he’s gone from geek frat boy to nester. He’s come a long way in just a few years.

“I sold out,” Bender says, opening the sliding door to the porch. “And I don’t mind saying it. I’m a sellout. In case you
were wondering, this is what selling out buys you.”

He sets Beezo down outside and slides the door closed as the little dog tears off into the yard.

“You see this coffee machine here?” Bender points to a contraption that looks like it belongs in an upscale restaurant. “This
cost more than the car I used to drive. I have my assistant fill it up at the beginning of the week and then I just push a
button and bam, I get whatever fucking style coffee I want. That’s what selling out buys you. Latte?”

Madden shrugs. “Sure.”

Bender retrieves a glass mug from a cabinet, sets it the machine, and presses a button. The machine goes to work, grinding
beans.

“I take it you saw what I wrote last night?”

“The time stamp said four in the morning.”

“Morning, night, who gives a shit what time it is anymore?”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“What’d you think? Pretty good, huh? Beat the
Merc
, the
Chron
. I had it first and now it’s everywhere. I take it you dispute its central hypothesis?”

“I took a journalism class or two, and back then, at least, one anonymous source didn’t make something true.”

“Whoever said anything about true? I simply present the information that’s available to me at the time. If I don’t do it,
someone else will. That’s a fact, Detective. Do I think you contaminated the crime scene? I don’t know. Maybe. My source is
pretty good. Or at least I think it is. So now it’s up to you to prove me wrong.”

“I can’t.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s irresponsible.”

“Maybe. But the fact is I get things right more often than I get them wrong. In the old days you had to bat a thousand—or
very close to it. Nowdays you hit seven fifty, eight hundred, it’s good enough. ‘Beyond a reasonable doubt’ has become ‘more
likely than not,’ a preponderance of evidence. It’s—”

“Look,” Madden says, “I’m not here to have a philosophical discussion about how you do your job.”

Bender hands him his coffee.

“Sugar?”

“No, thanks.”

“Try it,” Bender encourages him.

Madden obediently takes a sip.

“Good, right? Fucking better than that Starbucks crap. That’s what selling out buys you, Detective. Kona. Premium. Organic.
Twenty-five dollars a pound. Or something like that. Who cares?”

“Mr. Bender—”

“Tom.”

“Okay, Tom. Here’s the deal. I’m here to make a deal.”

“Really?”

Now Bender seems intrigued.

“What are you looking for?”

“I’m looking to take advantage of your considerable knowledge.”

Bender nods. He seemed to be willing to concede that point—that he has considerable knowledge to offer.

“Honestly, you probably know a lot more about Mark McGregor than we do right now. I need to learn as quickly as possible about
this latest business he was tying to get off the ground, who I might talk to about it, and what your sources might know about
his business dealings.”

“I thought you had the guy. I’m hearing it was a straight revenge thing. His old pal Richie Forman, Mr. Bachelor Disaster.
You arrested him last night, didn’t you?”

Madden is impressed that he knows as much as he does. Whoever the source is, he or she is good.

“We did. But that doesn’t mean we shut down the investigation.”

“You didn’t get a confession then, I take it?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

Bender laughs. “You wouldn’t be here if you did. That’s a fact. So, in exchange for tapping my great knowledge base—and it
is great—what are you offering in return?”

“Exclusives.”

Bender leans a little closer.

“I like the sound of that, Detective. How ’bout a badge? You know, in the movies, the sheriff gives the guy the gold star,
you know, deputizes him.”

“You want a badge? I’ll give you any badge you want.”

“I’m just kidding. Truth is—and perhaps you guessed this—I never wanted to be on the side of the prosecution. I always wanted
to be a defense attorney. Criminal. But then my grades in law school weren’t quite as good as they should have been. I know
that’s hard to believe. But I had a little too much fun for my own good. My only regret really. Anyway, bouncing around the
bottom of the legal profession is sort of like being dragged behind a car. So I fell into all this tech stuff. Turned out
there wasn’t much competition. Ambitious, talented writers generally don’t gravitate toward tech. You can rise to the top
quicker than you think. The first Comdex I went to—you don’t know what that is, but it used to be a huge computer trade show
in Las Vegas. But anyway, the first Comdex I went to I weaseled my way into the hot party, the Spencer the Cat party. And
there I was, dancing next to Bill Gates and Michael Dell and some other billionaires I didn’t know. I’d been on the job two
months and there I am, boogeying with the big guys. It told me something. Height was easily attainable.”

Madden doesn’t really care what it told him. He wants information that’s pertinent to the here and now. “I know about Comdex,”
he says. “I used to build my own computers. What do you know about Mark McGregor?”

Bender takes another bite of toast, finishing what’s left of the remaining piece. But this time he chews and swallows before
he speaks.

“Pretty good track record,” he says. “Had two start-ups with decent exits. Nothing anybody could really retire on, but his
investors were happy and he made out well himself.”

“What kind of money are we talking?”

“I believe he sold the first company for something like sixteen million. Nothing sexy. B to B stuff. The technology behind
the technology. He sold the second company for more, but he had more investors. But he knew the drill. You do that a few times,
raise money, you start to get the hang of it. You learn how to
waste less time, know who the players are, and who to go to and who not to.”

“What was his latest venture?”

“Sinatra?”

“Yeah, whatever it was called.”

“Ah, but what it is called is key.”

“That was the code name, though, right?”

“Sure. Code names are important, too. The company’s name was actually Crune. It was pretty interesting. His first real consumer
play. Had some buzz going. Basically was the gamification of geo-advertising. What I thought was interesting was the human
element. You took something that had traditionally been automated and you brought in what were essentially these guides—or
docents I think they were calling them. You’d essentially follow certain people who were experts in one particular zip code.
The idea was you have this warehouse of deals and these docents would comb through them and then select ones they liked to
broadcast out to their followers. Kind of like Twitter but on a more micro level. Anyway, he’d managed to combine a few hot
concepts, got a few of the right people on board, and he’d peddled it right. Was fairly low-key about it.”

“How much did he raise?”

“Something like fifteen. He put the seed money in himself, then did a first round of twelve, thirteen million that was followed
by some more, recently. Foreign guy. Cahill. An Aussie, I think.”

“Isn’t that a lot?”

“For a first round, yeah. That’s actually a shitload. People used to do a couple million. But you get somebody with a track
record and a seemingly hot concept and the numbers can get silly.”

“The wife said the company seemed to be in a little bit of trouble.”

“Most start-ups are,” Bender says. “They’re one catastrophe away from being a start goner.”

“Even well-capitalized ones?”

“Well, in the case of Crune the problem was someone had a similar idea and they had to go buy those guys out.”

“What was the name of that other company?”

“I forget. Wasn’t a great name. Which is why I forget.”

“You said McGregor had brought in the right people. What was right about them?”

“Well, you get one or two Google or Facebook engineers in the mix—or preferably both—you can raise a good chunk of change
right from a PowerPoint deck. McGregor had a couple of names. Not big names—but big enough. And then his partner, this guy
Don Gattner, is a take-no-prisoners kind of guy. In it to win it, if you know what I mean.”

Madden doesn’t know what he means.

“The guy started out as a recruiter,” Bender explains. “As you’ve probably heard, programmers and engineers are in high demand.
They’re the lifeblood. The biggies pick off the all-stars, throw all kinds of packages at them. Well, Gattner started out
as one of the guys who supplied a lot of the second- and third-tier companies with talent. He was at a headhunting firm. And
you know, he worked on commission, and pretty quickly worked his way up the ladder. You know what his secret was?”

Madden shakes his head.

“The wife, the girlfriend. A lot of these guys—and most of them were guys—are moving from somewhere else. And they may like
where they are or they may have a girlfriend or wife who likes where she is. Well, these nerdy dudes aren’t in the habit of
making rash decisions without some serious input from their significant other. So you gotta work on the woman. In the end,
she makes the call a lot of the time. And Gattner was particularly ruthless about getting the gals on board. He’d lie, he’d
offer them things he knew might not pan out, stuff like that.”

“And that didn’t come back to haunt him?”

“Nah. He got where he wanted to get, then bolted for a start-up. He became an operational guy. And look, sometimes things
turned out okay for some of these people. And if they didn’t, well, they could always go somewhere else if they were any good.”

“People still got hurt, though.”

“People got fucked. But people are always getting fucked. For there to be winners, you gotta have losers. Fact. But if you’re
looking to talk to someone inside his company, I’d go to Gattner first. He’d
have the dirt. He was really running the thing from an operational standpoint.”

“Okay. Thanks for the tip.”

“Now what do you have for me? Where’s my exclusive?”