Cash Out Page 2

  Within a month, after all the dust settles, we’ll have bought a waterfront property with great views and beach access. It won’t be luxurious, just functional and well made. We’ll either have a tiny mortgage or none at all, and the profit from our cottage sale will be sitting in savings.

  Out will go the twelve-hour workdays, the endless chatter about the need for more server capacity, the continual asides about stock options and growing fortunes, the late-night slide-deck drills with a jittery VP three years out of college, the sheer exhaustion that makes you want to avoid eye contact with the world just so you can get home already. Out will go all those San Francisco dinner parties, those thinly disguised boasting contests where guests compete for top bragging rights on everything from whose house has the newest amenity, to who has the most “nanny help,” to whose kid is succeeding the most without trying. Out will go the Range Rovers and Mercedeses and BMW utility vehicles. Out will go Janice from Finance.

  Out. All of it.

  In will come Hondas and sandals and Fords and old VW buses with longboards tied to the roof. In will come locals riding on old beach cruisers, smiling back at us.

  In will come our new life.

  I want to do the things we’d stopped doing on the other side: making meals from scratch, enjoying lazy visits with friends, spending real time on the phone with loved ones, smiling at strangers, getting caught up in a good book. I want to work in the front yard and get my hands dirty, my body scraped up, my sweat mixed with dirt. Sure, it’ll stink, that mixture of sweat and dirt—until I run across the beach and dive into the ocean.

  We’ll leave our TV in a box, in the garage.

  Wi-Fi? We’ll never even unpack the router.

  I’ll spend real time with my wife and children, the kind of time I never quite manage to spend in my current life, that life on the other side where I just can’t stop to count my blessings.

  We’ll spend the whole summer on the beach. In the morning, Kate will run her three miles on the hard, wet sand as the boys and I prepare breakfast: melons, toast, and Raisin Bran, a coffee for Daddy. In the afternoon, I’ll sit on our old canvas beach chair, a kid on each side of my lap, my father’s forty-year-old Coleman sunk into the sand, icing apple juice, water, and a few cans of Tecate, as I read them another installment of Robinson Crusoe. When evening approaches, I’ll take a siesta in the sand, the pulsing of the waves sedating me, the Pacific breeze washing over me, as Kate brings the boys home and sparks up the barbecue. At night, the boys and I will build castles and car garages out of blocks, the sound of crashing waves easing through the windows and mixing with the saxophone-heavy ska echoing throughout the house.

  When the house is quiet, Kate and I will sit on the couch and hold hands and talk. We’ll actually hang out and talk. We need that, Kate and I. We’ve needed it for a long time.

  This is all doable, I think as I hobble to my Corolla. It’s not a dream. It’s a plan.

  My reverie is interrupted by the sound of footsteps.

  Then a bizarre sight: two little geeks, coming at me like a pair of bats out of hell, running awkwardly, each of them holding one end of a rope.

  “Hey!”

  Before I know what’s hit me, they’ve got the rope wrapped around me, circling me in opposite directions, pinning my wrists to my hips. In seconds I’m wrapped up, immobilized, toppling over. The asphalt comes in and out of view, gets closer and closer, until I twist just enough to land on my shoulder. Shards of pain shoot through my shoulder, my back, my privates. Especially my privates. I screw my eyes shut, tense my muscles, and fight the pain.

  And then, a high-pitched voice. “Stay cool, stud machine.”

  What is this? My mind is scrambling. A prank?

  I open my eyes. From my upside-down view, I see an unmarked white van skid to a stop. The side door rolls open, and I’m pulled off the ground and made to hop toward the van. When I try to resist, they poke me in the spine with something hard and threatening.

  My head floats. “What the hell is this?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” one voice says, shoving the barrel of something deeper into my back.

  “What do you guys want with me? I have a wife and kids at home.”

  “I’m sure they’re darling.” They push me. “Sit down.”

  What choice do I have? Grimacing, I hop to one of the bench seats.

  “Hit it.” The van peels out of the parking lot.

  I give my kidnappers a quick glance; they look dimly familiar. The tiny driver is a rail-thin, pasty-skinned nerd in his thirties; I swear he’s wearing a Star Trek shirt. The guy seated beside me is tiny, too, with jeans pulled up to his ribs—not floods, but high-riders. I can’t help but give them a very long double take.

  The third guy is small but muscular, with a giant head of wavy, flaming-red hair—he may be the alpha male in this pack of tinies. He sits on the bench seat ahead of me, turns, and squeaks, “You realize what you were about to do back at that doctor’s office?”

  I squirm in the rope. It’s getting looser.

  Little Red squints at me. “You were about to emasculate yourself.”

  And then I realize where I know them from: work. Maybe not Little Red, but the others. Nevertheless, the realization that they’re FlowBid guys comforts me a little. Maybe this is some kind of FlowBid prank, I think, a bizarre “abduction” for a wacky corporate offsite. But I know I’m fooling myself.

  “If this is about my vasectomy, you’re too late.” I shift my weight, trying to find relief from the hot pain shooting through my crotch. “I just had it.”

  The van skids to a halt, and I’m launched off my seat. Shots of agony surge up to my rib cage and down to my knees. I lower my lids and hiss.

  Star Trek says, “The Enterprise has landed.” Little Red snarls.

  High Rider says, “His Treo said noon. I have it printed right here.”

  He’s right. My vasectomy was scheduled for noon, but the doc’s office had called and asked me to come an hour earlier. I just hadn’t changed the time on my Treo.

  Star Trek asks, “Should we dock?”

  High Rider closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Proceed.”

  Star Trek hollers, “Prepare for warp speed.”

  We jerk forward.

  High Rider stares at me a moment. “We need to discuss Fitzroy.”

  Crap.

  Stephen Fitzroy is my CEO. That’s my job: I write his speeches. I travel on the company jet with him; I go to his compound to work on speaker notes and slide decks; I put words in his mouth. Stephen Fitzroy is worth nearly a billion dollars; he’s one of those visionaries who’s always in the right business at the right time.

  A lot of people don’t like Stephen Fitzroy.

  I look around the van for guns. Nothing.

  High Rider squints at me. “You may recognize us. Of course, hotshot pretty boys like yourself usually looked right through us at FlowBid. We were expendable, weren’t we, Dan? IT guys like us.”

  IT guys? Aw, man.

  I try to stay calm. “No, I remember you.”

  “Good, because we remembered you. Sure, we got outsourced. And him over here”—he nods to Little Red—“his job got offshored to Bangalore. But we remember you.” He glances at Star Trek, who snickers. “How could we forget the tall and charming speechwriter to the great Silicon Valley icon Stephen Fitzroy?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not like that, guys.”

  “You may not have known our names, but we knew yours. How could we not, Dan? All that interesting IT activity of yours? All that inappropriate use of FlowBid IT resources?”

  Wait, what?

  “You know, the kinds of activities I don’t think you want your CEO knowing about.”

  My heart sinks and my skin cools. IT guys. When it comes to the network, those guys can go anywhere and
see anything. Like the calendar on my Treo, for instance.

  The van makes a hard left. High Rider pulls out some kind of printout. “Here I have a high-level summary of the IT activity of one Dan Jordan at FlowBid. It’s quite interesting.” He glances at me. “So, in no particular order: approximately one hundred and fifty-six hours spent on personal e-mail accounts. Ninety-eight hours spent working on your personal Web pages. The photocopying of some twelve hundred pages of fliers for your son’s preschool, at a cost of six hundred dollars to the company. And the laser-printing of some three thousand Yahtzee score sheets for some stupid prank, at a company cost of nearly fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “Oh, come on. Find me one FlowBid staffer who doesn’t use the goddamn Xerox machine.”

  “All right, then.” High Rider takes a thick red folder from Little Red, and glances at me as he pulls out a page. “From one of the many personal e-mail accounts of Dan Jordan, employee number 452 at FlowBid, I read you correspondence from said employee’s private Yahoo! Mail account to Dave Hatch, reporter at BusinessWeek.”

  Shit.

  “ ‘Hi, Dave,’ ” he squeaks in a mocking tone. “ ‘This e-mail is not for attribution, but you are free to use it for your profile of Stephen Fitzroy. I am his speechwriter (you and I met after Evan’s keynote at CES last month), and now that I have spent nearly two and half years with him, I think it is only fair to FlowBid shareholders (and the public) that your story be as comprehensive as possible. Again, this is not for attribution; as a former journalist myself, I am trusting you will respect my wish to remain anonymous. My livelihood relies on it. So, with that, here are a few things you may want to look into.’ ”

  High Rider pauses, exchanges glances with Little Red. “ ‘Stephen Fitzroy has, shall we say, a pretty bad reputation around the office. He’s often reduced lower-level female employees to tears by making fun of their weight and questioning their intelligence. . . . He has three sexual-harassment claims and one paternity suit pending against himself and FlowBid; the company’s trying to settle them out of court. . . . Fitzroy had the company jet fly him and his wife to a Palm Springs vacation (on FlowBid’s dime) the same day FlowBid laid off sixty people in favor of less expensive employees in India. . . . Fitzroy believes in the value of ‘strategically sabotaging’ office rivals; he considers it one of the factors behind his early success in business. . . . Some of the brightest and most successful people at FlowBid have left the company because they refuse to work with him. . . . Oh, and did I mention he has hair plugs?’ ”

  My face is burning. How the hell did they get into that personal e-mail? Not once have I accessed that account from work.

  High Rider is smiling. “I’d hate to see your CEO read that one.”

  I stare at him.

  “Okay, shall I go on? All right, then. What about . . . sixty hours spent at MILFs in Heat dot-com? Forty-three hours spent at an assortment of websites specializing in the female posterior? Or . . .” He turns over to look me in the eye. “. . . seventeen minutes exchanging erotica with a married coworker?”

  I’m about to pass out.

  “Mr. Jordan,” he squeaks. “Would you like us to share this information, including transcripts of said erotica, with the entire workforce at FlowBid?”

  I can see where this is headed. I feel like I’m about to vomit.

  “No.”

  “Good.” He pauses. “Would you like us to send your correspondence with BusinessWeek to Stephen Fitzroy? Or, for that matter, to everyone in the company?”

  My head feels like it’s floating. “No.”

  “And would you like us to send details of your improper use of FlowBid IT resources to the business conduct office? Surely, any of these offenses would suffice to have your employment summarily terminated, making you ineligible for scheduled disbursement of noncash compensation and benefits?”

  In my line of work, leaking damaging rumors to the press is a capital offense. If the company found out, I’d lose everything: my job, my options, my ability to get rehired. I think of that $1.1 million in options, of these final three days before they vest, and I see stars.

  “I don’t believe you’d want us to do that.”

  A jolt of pain ripples through my crotch. Twenty minutes ago, a clamp hung out of it. Suddenly, it’s the least of my problems. I shake my head, hoping for clarity. “You guys are IT?”

  “No, we were IT. Now we’re just outsourced, offshored, and unemployed. We just had the foresight to back up some very interesting data before we packed our bags.”

  I try to steady myself. “So now you want something.”

  He leans forward and snaps, “We want your cooperation, pretty boy.”

  Little Red releases a noise, adds, “Pretty boy.”

  High Rider pauses, examines my reaction. “We want you to do as we say, when we’re ready.” Another pause. “Otherwise . . .”

  Little Red finishes, “ . . . no more fat hookers for you.”

  High Rider glares at Little Red. “Keep your fantasies out of this.” Then, to me: “Otherwise, we’ll release your information.”

  I look away and shake my head. Of course there is the $1.1 million, but I’m thinking about Kate and the boys. What will happen to our family if the other stuff gets out—the stuff where I tell another woman I’d like to burrow my face into her hindquarters? With my long hours, Kate’s already feeling abandoned at home—hence the couples counseling sessions. She jokes about the notion of me cheating—“You’re always getting home too late for dinner. You have some hot admin there willing to take your order?”—but lately the joke part has sounded a little halfhearted. I just roll my eyes, wave her off, because in truth I’ve never been tempted—well, almost never.

  The van skids to a stop, and I realize we’re back in the parking lot, in front of my car. “Would you like some good news, Dan?” says High Rider.

  I stare at him.

  “The good news is, we don’t want any of your precious stock-option money.”

  “Your fat-hooker money,” Little Red adds.

  High Rider turns to him. “That’s your thing, and you know it.”

  Little Red snaps, “Maybe he likes big girls, too.”

  “Stop it.”

  I keep staring at High Rider.

  “But we do want your collusion. We’re going after that bowl of loose stool you call a CEO. When we come calling—and it will be soon—you will assist us. Shouldn’t be hard for a sellout like you.”

  Sellout? Damn. These guys did their homework.

  “Otherwise, you will lose everything: the chance to cash out your options, the comfy little life with your hard-body wife, the ability to support your sweet little family.”

  I look at High Rider’s left hand. No ring.

  “Get out, Dan. Get out of the van.”

  Still tied up, I hop out of the van, stumble, and crash to the asphalt. I roll and groan.

  “And one more thing.”

  I glance up at him.

  His eyes twinkle. “Have fun with the sex counselor.” He rolls the door shut, and a loud burst of laughter erupts inside the minivan.

  Damn, my crotch hurts.

  Sellout.

  Yeah, that’s me. Fucking sellout.

  Twelve years ago, back when I was a reporter, it was the last thing I thought I’d become. Then life got harder and I got tired. I got tired of driving around in a ’92 Dodge. I got tired of barely having enough money to buy new 501s or pay rent. I got tired of watching the suits sucking dollars out of the newsroom, forcing us all to do more with less and fail badly, destroying editorial quality, leaving us all to crank at a frenzied pace each day, eliminating the chance for any kind of enterprising investigative work. I got tired of watching my beloved newspaper industry lose more and more readers to the Internet.

  When Harry was born, things got more t
ense, and I knew we couldn’t live in an apartment forever. I was a daddy now, and I was gonna do whatever it took to make my family safe.

  So I sold out.

  The way I tell it to my newspaper friends, at least I sold out well. I landed a ghostwriter’s job at a promising start-up. While I sometimes felt like a rare bird, being one of the few folks there with any Mexican blood, the work was good, and soon I was promoted to speechwriter to the CEO. As luck would have it, FlowBid’s e-commerce software was the right solution at the right time, and when we went public on NASDAQ in ’06, we raised $1.7 billion in a day. Fitzroy made it to the cover of BusinessWeek that year. And just like that my options were worth something.

  That was 362 days ago.

  The closer I get to 365, the more I find myself spending time with my old-time California friends, the natives—people like Rod Stone.

  Rod and I have been friends since we were eighth graders in the East Bay. The older we get, the more our lives head in opposite directions. But we still share a connection, this bond that won’t break. Maybe it’s because we’ve both dealt with some nasty moments and got through them together. But more than anything I think it’s because we can cross over into each other’s very different worlds without breaking stride.

  I love my family, and he gets it.

  He fights in a cage, and I get it.

  Rod is shaven nearly bald, with just a rind of stubble on his scalp. His body is rock-hard, but not giant. No fat under those loose cotton, solid-gray fatigues and flimsy, worn-in T-shirts. He’s got a natural squint and a thuglike underbite that gives people pause.

  Rod thinks I was wrong to sell out. A few weeks back, over a few pints, he told me, “Elgin says it best. I think it was in The Triumph: ‘Those who chase riches lose before the chase even begins.’ ”

  I rolled my eyes. “Elgin never had a mortgage in the Bay Area.”