Delirious (4 page)

After Joe was diagnosed, Charlie was understandably interested in the role genetics played in schizophrenia. Much that he found on that subject was unnervingly speculative. One disturbing fact Alison Giles shared was that Charlie’s father had stopped taking his medicine. It was probably the reason he’d abandoned the family without warning one rainy October so many years ago. No one had heard from him since.

Charlie sat back down after giving his desk a thorough wipe-down and tried to guess what Anne Pedersen had to say that could possibly jeopardize InVision. The thought that something threatened In-Vision was both troublesome and puzzling. It angered him that he couldn’t come up with an answer, and pride begged him to believe she was mistaken without even knowing what she had to say.

InVision, Charlie had been led to believe, was essential to Solu-Cent’s growth strategy and a key factor in sales forecasts and revenue projections. It was why the A-team from the strategic acquisition committee had been so relentless in their pursuit of Charlie’s startup,
and had paid handsomely for it, too. There was no possible explanation for why these senior executives would have misled him.

Charlie had made almost fifteen million in cash from the transaction and stood to make millions more in stock and incentive bonuses, based on performance and product success. The decision to sell his company had been a no-brainer. It had been the fastest way to go from good money to the big leagues. Yet here he was, wondering if his dream was now being second-guessed by the very people who had convinced him to sell. He silently berated himself. When would the fear that everything would vanish go away? he wondered. When women like Anne Pedersen stopped insinuating that it might.

Charlie reached for his BlackBerry to check his calendar, not waiting for Outlook to restart. There he saw the note again.

If not yourself, then who can you believe?

A mentor from his MIT days had warned him that when you reached the top, plenty of people were always waiting below to pull you back down. He’d brushed it off as a cliché. It now seemed prophetic.

People were always hungry to pull him down. He wasn’t there to win any popularity contests. He was there to make it happen, and that meant having a work ethic that few could stand. He had no patience or interest in anything that wasn’t going to advance his cause.

Since coming to SoluCent over two years ago, Charlie had never set foot in any of the five campus cafeterias. Lunchtime was reserved for Monte’s afternoon walk, not eating. With his fourteen-hour workday, he needed those walks to help keep the pounds off in an industry notorious for overweight, sedentary workers.

Today would be an exception. Today he would meet Anne Peder-sen at 12:00 p.m. in the Omni Way cafeteria. Only then would he find out what was so important that it had to be confided in person.

Charlie brought Monte over to Nancy, whose cubicle was just outside his office. She agreed, and would agree to do so every day if he asked, to take Monte for his afternoon walk. He couldn’t tell who was more excited to see the other.

“He’s still your dog, Charlie,” Nancy said as Monte rolled onto his back to expose her hands to his warm belly.

“But with you in the picture, I don’t think it would take long for him to get over me,” Charlie offered.

Charlie went back inside his office and locked his computer using the Task Manager. He changed his log-on password weekly, months before corporate IT demanded it be changed. It was his private defense against hackers and unauthorized access. Nobody ever touched his files. He made sure of it. He closed and locked his office door and kept his head down as he walked the carpeted corridor toward the stairwell. He wanted to seem preoccupied and unavailable for a quick sidebar chat on some problem that wasn’t his in the first place.

He said a brief hello to To m Connors, who was senior VP and division head for the electronic solutions consulting group, but ignored the rest of the rank and file. To m expected Charlie to address him. Charlie didn’t much care what the others thought.

C
harlie glanced at his watch just as he arrived at the cafeteria. It was 11:55 a.m., and the cafeteria was already nearly full. This wasn’t his campus building, so Charlie wasn’t surprised not to recognize a single person seated at the rows of cafeteria tables, nor did anyone in the lunch line recognize him.

He was a bit surprised that Anne Pedersen came right up to meet him, hand extended. Her badge was turned around, so he couldn’t see her photo ID. The IDs had employee numbers, which would have helped Charlie gauge how long she’d been working there. She was a slender, attractive woman in her early forties, with shoulder-length dark brown hair and playful dark eyes. She wore a formfitting blue blouse and a knee-length black skirt that accentuated what he assumed were runner’s legs.

Charlie made sure to look directly in Anne’s eyes as he gave her a firm handshake. It was one of the few lessons his father had taught him before he disappeared: never look away when you shake somebody’s hand. “It’s a sign of weakness,” he’d always say. Anne seemed tense, her gaze shifting and avoiding Charlie’s eyes.

“I’m glad you could come,” she said. Her voice was deeper than Charlie had expected. He liked it. It made her sound assertive, which he found attractive.

“How could I pass it up?” Charlie said. “You made it sound like it wasn’t really an option.”

“It wasn’t,” Anne said. “Let’s get our food before I fill you in.”

Anne ordered a Buffalo chicken wrap and got the chips instead of fries. Her fit figure was apparently the result of exercise and good
genes, not a rigid diet. Charlie went with a small salad, vinaigrette dressing, a whole wheat roll, and a bottle of Poland Spring lemon-flavored water. Since he seldom ate lunch, he wasn’t sure how a hearty meal in the middle of the day would impede progress on the list of things he still had to do.

They found a circular, raised table with three stools toward the back, away from the crowds at the long tables.

“Your product is in real trouble,” she began.

Charlie looked up from his food. “How do you know?”

“Listen, Charlie, I’ll be candid with you. I know you don’t know me, but I used to work here years ago and came back to SoluCent only because I had to. I just got divorced.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Charlie said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Anne said. “Anyway, I just got divorced, and I have two kids at home and an ex-husband who doesn’t understand that working means getting off your butt and doing something for money.”

Charlie leaned back on his stool, surprised by her hostility but attracted by her candor. “We all do what we have to do.” It was the only thing he could think to say, but it felt awkward.

“Well, if I’m here for the long haul, which it looks like I am, I don’t want to be stuck under Jerry Schmidt one day longer than I have to be.”

“Oh. Jerry mentioned there was some dissension in his ranks,” Charlie said. “I suppose he was referring to you.” Charlie grimaced inwardly at the white lie, but it accomplished two things. First, it made Anne believe Charlie was a person with insider knowledge. It also made a point of not corroborating her opinions of Jerry. It was common knowledge that Jerry Schmidt was an incompetent baboon, whose math and science prowess had stopped developing somewhere around the eighth grade. But he was still two levels higher than Charlie and in tight with Leon Yardley, the company’s CEO. Jerry Schmidt was not somebody he wanted to upset.

“Interesting that Jerry’s caught on,” Anne said with a smile. “To be honest, your product was my way out of Jerry’s group. Caroline Ramsey is positioned to be the head of InVision marketing. She loves me, and I want nothing more than to work for her. We know each other from a past life at TechTime. Anyway, I see InVision as being a major force for SoluCent in the coming years.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Charlie said. “SoluCent tracked my company for a while before they swooped in and made their offer. I know it’s a significant part of their growth strategy.”

“Well, Jerry thinks it’s garbage, and he’s preparing some presentation to the executive steering committee to try and convince them to back away from the GM deal. He’s certain we will lose our shirt on this one because of contingencies they’ve put in the contract specific to our InVision product.”

“GM is a terrific deal for everyone!” Charlie snapped. “What we have is light-years ahead of their current in-car entertainment and navigation system.”

“Well, I’m sure Jerry’s just concerned about what InVision will do to his Ultima digital music and DVD players.”

“Ultima is a fucking dinosaur!” Charlie reddened and looked around for anyone important who might have overheard. Assured of their privacy, he whispered it again, this time leaving out the expletive. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“Because,” Anne said, “I want out of Jerry’s group more than you know. He’s oppressive, arrogant, and most of the time flat-out wrong. But for some reason Yardley loves the guy. If Jerry gets his way, I’ll be working on Ultima until my kids go to college.”

“What’s his argument? Why is he so against InVision?” Charlie couldn’t help but think of the Magellan Team and what shutting down InVision would do to them. Many had uprooted their families to be part of Charlie’s executive management team at SoluCent. Losing InVision would be a crushing defeat for all involved.

“First of all, he doesn’t understand the technology. No matter how many times I’ve tried to explain it, he just doesn’t get it. I’m sure that his PowerPoint attacking InVision is riddled with flaws. He’s just playing the fear factor, capitalizing on all the unknowns to keep InVision stuck in R & D and to continue marketing and selling Ultima. That’s his bread and butter. It’s how he’s made his millions.”

Charlie grimaced. “What are you suggesting?” he asked.

“I’m not technical enough to understand all the data in his presentation. I’m sure he doesn’t understand it, either, but if I were to give it to you without anybody’s knowledge—and if I were to forward you an invite to the meeting where Jerry is presenting his plan to Yardley—would you be interested?”

Charlie bit his lower lip. Going against Jerry meant risking everything the two-year-old acquisition had bought him. If he won, he’d advance the cause of InVision and the patents that SoluCent had paid a princely sum to acquire. If he lost, it would tarnish his credibility and potentially doom him to middle management.

“I want out of Jerry’s group,” Anne said. “The only way I see that happening is through InVision. I need your help and you need mine. We both know what’s at stake.”

“You want me to crash the meeting,” Charlie said. Anne nodded as he continued. “And you want me to bring data that counters the arguments Jerry’s concocted in his PowerPoint.”

Again Anne nodded.

“And you want me to risk my neck and career that what you’re telling me is true.”

At this Anne stayed motionless. “We all come to crossroads, Charlie.” She slid her hand across the table and lifted it to reveal a USB storage key.

Charlie assumed Jerry’s presentation was on it.

“You let me know what you want to do. The meeting with Yardley is this Tuesday,” Anne told him.

“Not much time to prepare for battle,” Charlie said.

“This isn’t a battle, Charlie,” Anne said. “This is a war.”

C
harlie wore a blue pin-striped Brooks Brothers suit with a solid red tie and carried his black leather Tumi briefcase in his right hand. His eyes were sunken and hollow from a stint of sleepless nights, but they showed no fear.

He moved confidently down the long carpeted hallway, passing the offices of several colleagues he knew without so much as a wave hello. Focus was everything. If it wasn’t related to the meeting—if it wasn’t reflecting on how he would enter, what he would say, every detail of his presentation—it wasn’t worth consideration. He needed complete and total control if he was to deliver what he believed would be a professional dismantling of Jerry Schmidt. It would be piece by piece. And it would be merciless.

The days leading up to the meeting had been a blur. They’d been a dim passage of what Charlie called blackout time, hours spent working so hard, he didn’t remember living them. He’d kept Monte at home and hired a service to come four times each day and into the night to take him for his walks. He had briefly thought about a kennel, but the idea of his dog being in lockdown had proved too unnerving.

During the exhausting days spent staring into the soft glow of his LCD monitor, sifting through mountains of raw data, Charlie had sunk his teeth deep into the problem, tearing it apart and rebuilding each argument until he was certain it was bulletproof, only to reassess every assertion at microscopic levels again. His appointments had been canceled, and he’d spoken to the Magellan Team only when absolutely critical.

Steady as a dull headache, persistent but not overpowering, Anne Pedersen had been the only distraction that seeped into his thoughts. The urge to seek her out and thank her for risking so much on his behalf had been compelling, but he’d managed to resist. E-mail and voice mail were risky, and he had good reason to be cautious about leaving an electronic paper trail. If everything played out the way he expected, Jerry Schmidt would be caught in a shit storm. Under no circumstances would Charlie supply ammunition that Jerry might use to take Anne Pedersen down with him. When InVision grew to greater prominence at SoluCent, Charlie would find a way to repay her kindness.

He arrived at the closed double doors, made from heavy, dark wood. He read the marble plaque on the adjacent wall: THE FALCON ROOM. He paused, let out a deep breath, reached forward, and grabbed the brass handle, pulling the door open and stepping inside.

Leon Yardley sat at the long conference table. He was hunched over, scanning through a shuffled mass of papers. He looked up and gave Charlie a queer, confused stare.

“Hi, Leon,” Charlie said. “Having a good day, I hope?”

Leon Yardley was a pale, thin man near seventy with a horseshoe head of silver hair. His forehead was sun-spotted from too many winters golfing in Boca. His neck was wiry with age and seemed physically incapable of holding up his head. Although Yardley lacked the physique to fill out his tailored suits, Charlie felt intimidated. He prickled at the notion of participating in one of Yardley’s meetings.