The Coaster (7 page)

“I still do it, too.” It got a little dusty on my side of the table too, but as a man I was obligated to block any actual drops of liquid from leaking from my tear ducts. “Maybe it will never stop. He was such a big presence in our lives, it will always feel like he's here.” I squeezed her hand.

“I hope so.” Joan squeezed back. “But in any event you and I will have a chance to spend more time together. So let's not make this a business lunch. For my first official disbursement request, I would like to order a bottle of Chardonnay.”

“Although clearly a conflict of interest because the trustee will benefit personally from the disbursement, request granted.”

Chapter Eight

On Monday morning, I walked right by the hot receptionist without so much as a glance. I wasn't going to give her a chance to snub me. I sat down in the conference room next to Madison.

“What's on for today?”

“As you would know if you read the detailed schedule I provided you on Friday, this week we're going to be meeting with people from the VC side of Sam's business.”

“Look, I don't care what Sam did during the Vietnam War, but I think it would be inappropriate to have any business dealings with the Viet Cong.”

Madison had stopped even favoring me with his fake smile. He sighed. “VC stands for venture capital. Sam invested money from Bennett Capital into various ventures he took an interest in. Hence the term ‘venture capital.'”

“I get it. It was a joke, Madison.”

“Sometimes it's hard to tell with you, Mr. Patterson.”

I guess I have what you might call a dry sense of humor and sometimes the message doesn't come across. A few months ago, Emily had a particularly good soccer game, meaning she actually tried to kick the ball instead of politely allowing the other girls to take it from her. After the game was over and we'd had post-game snacks and the kids had run through a human tunnel of cheering parents, we got in the car. “Great game, honey!”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Emily asked.

“No, of course, not. Why would you think that?”

“It sounded like you didn't really mean it.”

My own daughter thought I might be mocking her in a post-game pep talk.

I have the same problem with e-mail. I wish there were a sincerity font I could use for condolence letters and “congratulations on the new baby” e-mails and the like. I'd hate to have someone think I wasn't really sorry their mother died.

“So what's the purpose of these meetings?” I asked Madison.

“Well, each one is different. If we've already invested, it's more of a ‘meet and greet' so you can familiarize yourself with the players and learn about the business. If we haven't invested, it's a pitch. They'll be trying to convince us—well, you—that they have an opportunity too good to pass up.”

“So this is the for-profit version of last week.”

“I wouldn't say that,” Madison said. “If you make a philanthropic mistake, it may not be the optimal use of your funds, but the money is still theoretically going to a good cause. But if you make an investment mistake, it could cost the company millions of dollars. That's why I gave you that stack of prospectuses to review over the weekend.”

“Right. I've got them with me.” Still safely tucked away in my lawyer's briefcase, which prior to this trustee gig contained only magazines and snacks. I hadn't gotten around to reading the prospectuses.

Throughout the morning, we were treated to a bunch of presentations showing us what great investments we had made in the various ventures. If things were going well, we got PowerPoints with graphs showing spectacular sales increases. If things weren't going so well, we got PowerPoints with graphs showing spectacular
future
sales increases. In each case, I wasn't required to do anything. They were really saying, “Leave us alone. Everything's fine. You'll get your return on investment.”

And they were in luck. I was just the guy to leave them alone. I turned down Madison's obligatory invitation to go to lunch. We were spending too much time together as it was. I didn't want to eat with the man any more than he wanted to eat with me. Plus, it was the only time I had to myself anymore.

I grabbed some unhealthy food at a diner down the street. It was nothing special but delicious. Everything tasted sweeter when away from Madison, as if I were an ex-con appreciating everything more after getting out of prison. When I got back from lunch, Madison was already at the table going over one of the prospectuses I hadn't read.

“Who's next?”

“This one's a little different, Bob.” After all this time together, we'd moved on to Bob. I still refused to call him James. “The company is called Sanitol Solutions. As I'm sure you recall from the prospectus, they're looking for a major cash investment. It would represent by far the biggest outlay in our portfolio but the projections seem almost too good to be true.”

“Right,” I said. “And they…make, uh…build…sell…”

“They make a sanitizing system they claim can clean anything,” Madison said. “You
did
read the prospectuses.”

“I read them. I didn't memorize them. What's the difference? They're all the same. Every prospectus is ninety percent disclaimers about how you shouldn't believe anything they say.”

“The disclaimers are merely legal protection—”

“I don't care,” I interrupted. “Let's just bring them in. They're going to tell us everything again anyway.”

***

The receptionist ushered in three men in expensive, well-tailored suits. They had cuff links and monogrammed shirts and their ties weren't clip-ons, all signs pointing to men of wealth and substance. I was glad I had suited up for the meeting.

A sandy-haired man in his fifties stepped forward. He was dressed well but was otherwise nondescript. He could easily have been a dentist or an insurance salesman, except he exuded a slimy quality. He was the kind of guy you might find with his arms around your wife, showing her how to swing a golf club or shoot pool. I stuck out my hand.

“Bob Patterson. Good to see you.” For all I knew, I could have met him somewhere before.

“Pleased to meet you, Bob. Tom Swanson, Sanitol Solutions. And these gentlemen are from the New York investment firm that's helping us raise financing.”

“And this is James Madison.” I waved my hand toward Madison like I was a model on
The Price is Right
and he was the world's worst showcase. “He loves jokes about his name.” Everyone chuckled except Madison, who never learned how to laugh as a child. We all shook hands and sat down around the conference table.

Swanson spoke first. “Before we start, I want to express my condolences for the loss of your father-in-law. He was a great man. We were really looking forward to working with him on this project.”

“Oh, did you already meet with Sam about this?”

Swanson smiled. “Yes, several times. He had a lot of ideas and was very excited about our process. We were going to finalize the deal after the first of the year, but then…you know.”

“Well, if Sam was interested, it must be good. Let's hear about this process.”

Swanson smiled at me and made too much eye contact for my tastes. Fortunately, he pushed a button on his laptop to start the PowerPoint presentation, which gave me somewhere else to look. “Sanitol
Solutions
provides an environmentally friendly, one hundred percent green, easy-to-use sanitation system that is more effective and affordable than traditional sanitation chemicals and products. Because our system doesn't use chemicals to clean up chemicals, there's no waste.”

I'd had to do my share of cleaning up messes on the farm, so I was on fairly firm ground. “If you don't use chemicals, how does it work?”

Swanson smiled again. He was a happy guy. Or more likely just a good salesman. “That's the billion-dollar question. And yes, that's billion with a B. We can't give away trade secrets in this meeting, but I can assure you it works and we are in the process of getting it patented. If you commit to invest, we'll give you the grand tour.”

“Why would I commit if I don't know how it works?”

“You could agree to invest, subject to independent verification of our cleaning claims or something similar. Don't worry. We'll work all that out. I can assure you it works.”

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me more about the effects. You said it was green. This is crucially important. I wouldn't want to invest in anything that would sully the Bennett name. If there's any chance this thing is a pollutant, we want nothing to do with it.” I'm no environmental activist, but Sarah would kill me if I turned her father into a posthumous polluter.

“Our process is the most environmentally safe cleaning system out there,” Swanson said. “Because there's no waste, it reduces pollution. It completely eliminates the environmental impact of producing, packaging, transporting, using, and disposing of harsh chemicals. And it's also been proven to destroy odors, salmonella, E. coli, MRSA, campylobacter, and many other harmful pathogens. Our process doesn't hurt people. On the contrary, it saves lives.”

“Wow,” I said. “Have you tried it on cancer yet?”

“Ha ha, not yet,” Swanson laughed. “But maybe we should. It can do everything else. And the best part is it's completely portable. This isn't just for huge factories. It could be used in schools, garages, basements, even your own kitchen. It's completely safe and it will literally clean up anything.”

“You haven't seen my wife's cooking.” Everyone laughed a little too hard at that, especially since if they knew who my wife was, and dollars to donuts they did, they knew she was a ball-busting executive who rarely cooked a meal. But they laughed just the same.

“I guarantee it could even handle that,” Swanson said with yet another grin. You normally have to go to a children's cancer ward to see so many phony smiles.

“So what do the projections look like?” I asked.

“I was lying when I said portability was the best part,” Swanson said. “The best part is it's cheap to make and easy to sell. We expect immediate and dramatic growth.” He punched another laptop key.

The numbers were staggering. Not only were they looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in sales within five years, but it was almost all profit. Being the expert poker player I am, my jaw dropped on the table. “Jesus Christ!”

Swanson couldn't stop smiling, just like I can't stop mentioning that he was smiling. He was a living ad for teeth whitener. “I know. Can you believe it?” he said.

“Not really, no. But I'm no expert. Maybe Sam could have made a call like this by himself, but I sure can't. We need to get all this stuff over to our financial analysts at Bennett Capital.”

Swanson nodded at his New York compatriots, who had done nothing during the meeting except sit there and try to look smart and rich. I recognized the strategy. It was my signature move. “My financial guys here can get your people whatever numbers they need,” Swanson said.

“Great,” I said. “Once they have a chance to go over everything, I'll meet with them next week and get back to you.”

Swanson stood up and once again gave me his politician's smile.
I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.
A guy like Swanson could piss on you and tell you it's raining and most people would say, “That's good news. We've had a really dry summer.” A guy like Swanson could sell girls' baby clothes in China or condoms in NBA locker rooms. He could, in fact, sell a product to people who have no need or desire for that product.

“Bob, it was truly a pleasure meeting you,” Swanson said. “I only wish the necessity of our meeting wasn't caused by such unfortunate circumstances.”

“Me, too, Tom. The best thing we can do to honor Sam is just try to run things the way he would have.”

We shook hands. Swanson's were soft and smooth. I'll bet he gets manicures. “That's exactly what I would do in your place. And it's very good news for this project. Sam was very excited about it.”

***

I sat there for the rest of the week listening to presentations. Most of them were for investments we were already involved in and all of them combined didn't amount to the possible windfall from the Sanitol deal. Once I determined that no action by me was necessary, I went into meeting-autopilot. I have to actually sit there at the table, but my mind can wander all over the place without affecting my performance at the meeting. If you asked the other participants, they would say I was engaged and knowledgeable, but my meaningful contributions and retention of the subject matter would be functionally zero.

I was settling into a rhythm and becoming confident enough to sail through this trustee gig like every other job I've had. But since my physical presence seemed to actually be required, it was still wearing me out. I don't think I could handle the job year after year, but I felt like I'd be able to get through these initial stages and then turn most of the actual work over to the law firm.

I do admit the Sanitol deal kept popping into my mind. I held no illusions that I was in Sam's league as a businessman—or a man or a husband or a community leader or a golfer or a card player or a friend—but I felt like if I made the call on this deal and it made a bunch of money for the company and the family, I'd finally be pulling my weight. I wouldn't only be a guy who married well, I'd be a guy who did well himself. At the country club, I'd still avert my gaze and pretend to be busy with my iPhone when I passed any of those arrogant pricks, but I could hold my head high.

Chapter Nine

I'm not one of those gung-ho guys who throws off the covers in the morning and leaps out of bed ready to carpe diem. But I was actually feeling energized on my way to meet with the financial guys at Bennett Capital.

Harriet was sitting at the desk outside Sam's office like she always had, even though the office itself was obviously unoccupied. She saw me coming and came around her desk and gave me a big hug.

“I see at least one thing hasn't changed,” I said. “You're still running the company.”

She smiled at me but she had tears in her eyes. “I miss the old bastard so much.”

“We all do.”

“I know,” Harriet said. “And I don't want to compare what I feel to the grief felt by Sarah and Joan. But I'm the one who spent nearly every hour of every day with him. They loved him more. He's not my father and not my husband. But I miss him more in the sense that he's
missing
from my life. He was here right next to me literally all the time. And now he's not.”

“I've been meaning to come by, but I've been over at the law firm every goddamn day for the past two weeks on this trustee bullshit. It's usually crap when someone says they've been really busy, especially someone like me. A guy's so busy he can't even return an e-mail and then you find out he played eighteen holes yesterday. But I've been in meetings nonstop since the funeral.”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “The busiest week of your life would have been a vacation for Sam.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm like a fat guy trying to run a marathon. But I'm not making the schedule.”

“Who is?”

“James Madison.”

“Oh, too bad,” Harriet said. “I hate that prick.”

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, it's obvious he's a prick, but do I have anything to be worried about?”

Harriet shook her head. “He's a good lawyer. In fact, to be a good lawyer, you almost have to be a prick. He's just got no sense of humor.”

“I noticed. Listen, Harriet. Once everything settles down, I want to talk to you about helping me out on this trustee stuff.”

“What do you mean by ‘helping you out'?”

“I mean ‘doing all the work.'”

“That's what I thought. I'm not sure what anyone else has in mind for me, but I'd say you're pretty much the boss now, so it's going to be your call.”

“I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do, so think about it and let me know.”

“I will. Did you come all the way over here to tell me that? Especially when you're
sooooo busy
?”

“I'm far too busy for the likes of you. I'm here to talk to a couple of your analysts about an investment possibility Sam was working on.”

“Which one?” Harriet asked.

“A company called Sanitol,” I said. “They've developed some kind of cleaning process.”

“I remember it. Sam spent a lot of time looking into that one. It was a huge investment, if I recall.”

“The biggest deal by far,” I said. “Could you see if Sam had a file or some notes on it? If I knew what he was thinking, it would be a hell of a lot easier for me to make the call. Sam has forgotten more about business than I'll ever know.”

“A kid with a lemonade stand has forgotten more about business than
you'll
ever know.”

“Tell me about it. When Nick and Emily had one, I paid for the supplies and did all the work, and they kept the money.”

“You're a good dad.” Harriet smiled. “I'll look around and see what I can find.”

“Thanks. You're the best.”

***

The Bennett Capital financial analysts were housed in a room divided up into half a dozen small cubicles. The analysts themselves were all young, nerdy types who wore ironic tee-shirts, jeans, and crocs. Sam ordinarily required his employees to wear suits, but he made an exception in this case because, one, these guys were brilliant and, two, they would never be allowed anywhere near a client. They weren't even supposed to use the front door.

In a movie, there would be at least one black kid and one woman. But here in real life, the true demographics held. They all appeared to be Asian, Indian, or Jewish young men, although they could have passed for boys. They looked like the student section at a Duke basketball game. I took this as a good sign. Unlike the permissive American society under which I was raised, these guys' cultures valued intelligence, education, and hard work. There's a reason they're all doctors and technological geniuses.

Investing in the modern era was effectively controlled by young computer jockeys like these. It wasn't a people business anymore; it was a numbers game. The sheer volume of information available was too immense to be processed by the human mind, at least in the time needed to make an informed decision. So the “experts” had to rely on these young kids who knew nothing about dividend yields and price-to-earnings ratio but everything about crunching numbers and analyzing data.

I like young computer geeks. They think nobody knows anything and I truly don't know anything, so we get along great. I walked into the room, which was riddled with empty cans of Mountain Dew and Red Bull, plastic cups full of discarded sunflower seed shells, and five-pound bags of gummy bears.

“Hi, guys. This place always reminds me of my fraternity days. Except there's no booze or drugs.”

“We keep the good stuff hidden,” answered a thin Asian-American man shooting a Nerf ball at a hoop hanging over the edge of his cubicle. “To find out the secret location, you'd have to survive a series of quests.” His tee-shirt read
There are only 10 types of people in the world—those who understand binary, and those who don't.
I didn't get it, but I think that was the point.

“That won't be necessary,” I said. “Since I got out of college, I've been able to obtain my own booze and drugs. The only difference is now I hide them from my wife instead of the house mom.”

I looked around the roomful of ironic messages in tee-shirt form.

She's dead so get over it
with a photo of Princess Diana.

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?

Strangers have the best candy.

I support single moms
with a silhouette of a stripper on a pole.

I bring nothing to the table.

Voted Most Likely to Travel Back in Time—Class of 2057

“What, do you guys have some kind of a hipster tee-shirt contest every day?” I asked.

“Nah, man,” said the Asian guy. “We just like to express ourselves.”

“Well, you're doing a better job than a guy in a suit would. Which one of you is working on the Sanitol financials?”

A pale young man with frizzy brown hair stood up and looked over the top of his cubicle. “That would be me. I'm Eric Jacobs.”

I walked around to the entrance to his cubicle. There was enough room for me to sit down across from his desk, but barely. It was like a kid's room, filled with toys and posters and games, anything that might waste time during the day. I figured if the higher-ups didn't hassle him about his unprofessional office space, he must be very good at what he did. I was surprised to see that he wore a plain white tee-shirt. “Yours is ironically blank, right?”

“Mine is just a tee-shirt.”

“Oh.”

He broke into a grin. “I'm kidding. Isn't it cool? I went to every tee-shirt shop in town trying to find one.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “Or you could have gone straight to Walmart and bought a six-pack of them for five bucks.”

“Eventually I figured that out,” Jacobs said. “So what do you want to know?”

“Give me your analysis on the Sanitol prospectus.”

“I looked it all over again to be sure, but I'll tell you the same thing I told Mr. Bennett. The numbers foot.”

“Foot?”

“They balance,” Jacobs said, “meaning that if their assumptions are correct, the numbers are computed correctly. It doesn't mean they'll come true, but the math is good. Those enormous profits aren't the result of somebody adding two and two and getting five.”

“But are they realistic?” I asked.

“Nobody ever comes in here with pessimistic projections. Nobody says, ‘Invest in our company because sales are going to suck over the next five years, as you can see on this graph I prepared.'” The kid was smart. If he was a bigger asshole, he could have been Mark Zuckerberg.

“Okay. So how likely are the projections?”

“It's impossible to say without knowing how well the process really works. If their environmental claims are true and if their cleaning effectiveness claims are true and if their cost estimates are accurate and if their patent holds up…”

“That's a lot of ifs.”

“Yes, it is. But if all those ifs come true, I'd say the projections are conservative. My analysis shows they would absolutely dominate the commercial sanitation market. They can sell this process to every business on the planet.”

I stopped by to see Harriet on my way out. She was gone, but there was a thick manila envelope on her desk with my name on it.

***

I returned to what was now becoming the normal domestic tranquility of my homelife. Martha Stewart was in the kitchen, the kids were studying quietly in their rooms, and the dogs were outside. It would almost be worth working hard all day if it meant coming home to this. Except I wasn't getting paid.

After dinner, I stuck my head into the family room. Sarah was sitting on the couch typing on her laptop in front of the TV. “I'll be in my office,” I said. “I've got a few things to go over before my meetings tomorrow.”

“What do you have to do?”

I didn't want to discuss the Sanitol deal with Sarah. If I told her about it, she would try to take over. She can't help it. She'd ask a bunch of questions and start calling contacts and having meetings and the next thing you know it would be her deal. I wanted it to be my deal. Plus I wanted to find out what Sam thought before I went any further. “Nothing interesting. Just speed-read some financial crap so I can pretend to know what I'm talking about.”

She didn't look up from her laptop. “You don't need to prepare to pretend you know what you're doing. You've been doing that for years.”

“Maybe this time I want to actually be prepared.”

***

I went into my office and shut the door. When I use my office in the evenings, it's generally to catch up on any Internet reading I didn't get to during the day and watch TV in peace. Sarah doesn't like the kids to be exposed to inappropriate material, which includes just about everything I like to watch.

I sat down at my desk and opened the envelope Harriet left me. It contained a single file folder. I could tell by the handwriting that Sam had personally written “Sanitol” on the tab. The bulk of the folder contained copies of Sanitol's financial projections and printouts of e-mails back and forth between Sam and Eric. Eric had told Sam essentially what he had told me. If the assumptions were correct, Sanitol was a gold mine.

There were also a number of sheets of yellow, lined paper torn from a legal pad. Sam's notes. I recognized his old-fashioned fountain pen scrawl. I'd seen it for years on birthday cards and thank-you notes. Sam still believed in the personal touch of a handwritten note. He could have handled that kind of thing easier with an e-mail, but he always said, “How can they tell it's really from me if I don't write it myself?” He was right, they couldn't, which is exactly why most people of his stature don't handwrite them. You can't farm the job out to an underling if it's ink on a piece of paper.

Seeing his handwriting sent a little pang of sadness, with a tinge of survivor guilt, into my heart. The penmanship was virtually indecipherable, but it was pure Sam. The more powerful the person, the worse the handwriting. I'd decoded enough of his missives to the family that I figured I could get the gist of it without asking Sarah.

I could tell from the notes that Sam was struggling with the numbers. There were a lot of columns of numbers added up by hand with question marks next to the results. It looked like he thought there must be some sort of math error. But even my rudimentary arithmetic skills could tell that everything added up. There were other notes to himself, like “Have E analyze competition” and “industry contacts.” Finally on the last page he had written “TOO GOOD?” in block letters.

According to his notes, it sure looked like Sam had reservations about Sanitol, despite the possible financial boon. Selfishly, of course, I wanted this deal to be solid as a rock. A lot of people might say I already got a seat on the gravy train when I married my wife, but I needed something that was mine. This could be my chance to show everybody that I'm not an empty suit riding my wife's family's coattails. Like when George W. Bush decided to run for President. Whatever you think of W, he was the
President of the United States
for eight fucking years.

I don't know what the hell I thought I'd find in those notes. I hoped somewhere in there it would say something definitive.
Green light special!
or
Well worth the risk!
or
You'd have to be an idiot not to jump on this deal!
Unfortunately, as a heterosexual man of nearly seventy, Sam wasn't much of an exclamation point guy. There were no bold declarations and what
was
there seemed to be negative.

So what to do? Throughout my life, I've been quick to give up at the slightest resistance. But I wanted to see this one through. If I was going to turn this deal down, I needed more evidence than the barely legible, enigmatic chicken-scratchings of my dead father-in-law.

***

I thought things through logically. Swanson had said Sam was excited about the deal. Of course Swanson is full of shit, but suppose Sam really did tell him that? If so, there could be an e-mail or a letter or something on Sam's computer. Therefore, I needed to go down to Sam's office and check it out.