Michael Ridpath - Final Venture

'All right,' she said, smiling. 'I'll marry you.'

I let out a whoop, and threw my arms around her. We held each other tight, laughing, too excited to say anything coherent.

Now, a year later, she stirred in my arms.

'I think I'll go to work tomorrow,' she said. 'I can't stand hanging around here any more. And they need me there.' She broke away. 'Oh, I got a couple of visitors today'

'Oh, yes?'

'Yeah. John Chalfont came round. He was very sweet. He didn't say much. Just that he was sorry about Dad.'

'Did he look ill?'

'Sick, you mean? No. He looked pretty sad, though.'

'He took the day off sick today. He and your father worked together a lot. I think he feels pretty bad.'

'He's a nice guy.'

'He is. Who else came?'

'Oh, the police.'

'Again?'

'They searched the place.' I glanced round the living room. It looked just as it had this morning when I had left. 'Don't worry, I put everything back.'

'Did they have a warrant?'

'They certainly did.'

'What were they looking for?'

'I don't know. They seemed awfully interested in some of your clothes. They had tweezers and little plastic bags.'

'Did they find anything?'

'I don't think so. Why, should they have found anything?'

'I don't know.'

'You look worried.'

'I am. I feel like I'm being surrounded. Like they're blocking all the exit routes before they attack.'

'They can't do anything to you. You're innocent.'

I looked down at Lisa's trusting face. She trusted me and she trusted the US justice system.

'Gil gave me the name of a good lawyer. If this gets any heavier, I'll give him a call.'

'It'll be OK, Simon. They'll find the real killer.'

'I hope so.'

'And when they do,' she said, anger flaring in her voice,'I hope they kill the bastard just like he killed Dad.'

I met Craig at the airport the next morning, very early, and we made our way by aeroplane and rental car to a high-tech business park amidst the woods and highways of suburban New Jersey. We were making a presentation to Luxtel, a massive telecommunications equipment company that was a possible reseller of Net Cop's switches, and therefore, in theory at least, a possible provider of finance. I was there to field the difficult questions about why Revere had pulled out.

And they were difficult. I said that changes in market conditions had made Revere wary of making an additional investment in the business, but that we still had confidence in the quality of the product. It didn't go down well, but there was no way round that, short of outright lying. Craig, of course, had suggested this, but wasn't surprised when I said no.

Luxtel really liked Net Cop's switch. Craig promised 99. 99 per cent reliability and this impressed them. They especially liked the encryption features, which they felt would be vital once more commercial traffic flowed through the Internet. Commerce meant money, and electronic money needed as much electronic security as possible.

But they felt it was too early to make a firm commitment to buy, let alone to invest. They needed to see working silicon first. It was the age-old mystery of venture capital. Which comes first, the prototype or the money?

Craig drove our rental car back towards Newark Airport in silence, his jaw set, meaty hands gripping the steering wheel.

I tried to sound optimistic. 'There's one definite customer, if we can get the money.'

'We'll get the money,' Craig said, more as an article of faith than as a forecast.

He drove on. 'I have to make this work, you know,' he said.

'I know.'

'No, you don't. This is just another deal for you,' he muttered. 'If it blows up, there will be others that come along. But I've put everything into Net Cop. I'll have to make it succeed. The alternative… there is no alternative.'

'You could get a job easily,' I said.

'Huh. I'm unemployable. I worked my ass off for Gary Olek. I'm not doing that again.'

Gary Olek had made tens of millions through the sale of his software company a year before. Craig had been the technical genius behind the firm. Olek, with his MBA, his charm, his financial acumen, had been CEO and major stockholder. Craig had made some money from the sale, all of which he had ploughed into Net Cop. Olek had made a fortune.

'Olek took my ideas and made millions out of them. That Net Cop switch is mine, and I'm gonna make the money this time. I'm not gonna let no banks or venture capitalists stop me. Of course Luxtel's going to buy our switches. So's every other motherfucker in the market. You hear what I'm sayin'?'

'I hear you.'

He relaxed a touch. 'I'm sorry, Simon. I know you're trying to help. But at the end of the day it's all down to me. I'll get the money. I'll sell the fuckin' switches. I'll make Cisco and 3Com and all those other fuckers sit up and take notice of Net Cop. Don't worry about it.'

I did worry about it. All the way back to Boston.

I didn't get back to the office until mid-afternoon. Daniel was out, something was hotting up at BioOne. I wasn't sure where John was. I surveyed the pile of papers screaming at me from my in-box. Tetracom. Net Cop. A former McDonald's executive who wanted to set up yet another chain of coffee shops. A proposal for a Swedish-goods-by-mail-order company. All needing urgent attention.

I pulled out the Tetracom pile. The deal was shaping up well. Diane was in Cincinnati, without me, visiting the company. I'd told her I didn't want to travel overnight because I ought to stay with Lisa, and she had understood.

I had been working for about a quarter of an hour when John burst in.

'Man, these quilt guys are something else!'

I looked up. 'Board meeting?'

'Yeah. Plus some kind of brainstorming session. It was wild.'

'What happened?'

The National Quilt Company was an ailing manufacturer of high-quality quilts that had been bought by a marketing man named Andy McArdle with the backing of Revere. His idea had been to turn the company round by realizing the potential of duvets, or 'comforters' as the Americans called them, for merchandising. Art had done the deal with John, and put John on the board.

'You know I told you about those merchandising deals they'd signed last spring for the fall season?'

'Yes.'

'It turns out some goon somewhere ordered a few hundred thousand Mutant Turtle comforters that no one wants to buy. Warehouse full. Lots of inventory. Big problem.'

'Sounds like it.'

'So, I suggest maybe they ought to go back to making comforters with cute patterns on them. Flowers and such like.'

'Radical.'

'Not as radical as McArdle. He's done a ton of research on the number of single-person homes, and the lack of comforters targeted at the under-thirties, and his conclusion is…' John looked at me enquiringly.

'I give up.'

'Go naked.'

'Go naked?'

'Yup. Go naked. Dump the turtles. We spread naked women all over these quilts. They get bought by the millions of young men out there who are sick of the choice of flowers or turtles on their comforters. National Quilt makes out like bandits.'

'Jesus. What did you say?'

'Why not naked men? I mean, single women buy comforters too.'

'Er. True. What did McArdle say to that?'

'He said that was an interesting idea, and he'd look into it.'

'Oh, dear.'

'Yes. Oh, dear.'

'Did you let him do it?' I asked.

'Yeah. On a small scale. The company's screwed anyway, and I'm curious to see what happens.'

'Have you told Art?'

'No point. He's lost all interest in this deal. He just doesn't want to know. It's my baby now. Tea?'

'Thanks,' I said, and John left the room to get it. A couple of minutes later he came back with tea for me and something brown under white foam for himself.