The Big Exit (5 page)

She grows more focused and energized as she speaks. She clearly enjoys showing her knowledge and appears to have spent some
time thinking about the topic. Carolyn wonders whether she’s ever done any formal presentations for the company.

“Mark was working on something that made it more of a game,” she goes on. “You know, more incentive-based and social. He had
something called ‘deal docents.’ He was essentially bringing multilevel marketing to geo-location advertising. You know what
multilevel marketing is, right?”

“Yeah, Amway. Pyramid stuff.”

“Right. Well, what a lot of people don’t realize is that social networking is built on a multilevel marketing foundation.
For a lot of
people that’s a dirty word. But if you stop and think about it, that’s what a lot of this is about—the psychological underpinnings
anyway. There’s all this talk of building a network, then leveraging the network. Well, what do you think Amway is about?
Network marketing folks were talking like that before there was the Internet. The Internet just accelerated the concept.”

“And how far along was the company?”

“Well, they were in trials in the Bay Area. They had an app that was in private beta. It was taking longer than they’d hoped
to get to the public beta stage but they were planning on extending it to Seattle and LA.”

“What was it called?”

“The app was called Francis,” Beth explains. “The bigger platform had a code name but no real name yet. That was part of the
hype.”

“What was the code name?”

“Sinatra.”

“Like the singer?”

“Yeah. But they couldn’t use that name for commercial purposes.”

“Okay. So, whatever he was doing wasn’t going well, as far as you could tell?”

“My sense was that it was going well but it wasn’t, if that makes any sense. They had an issue with another company offering
a similar service. Mark had to buy the company out. But it burned a lot of their capital, so he had to go back to his investors.”

“And did they give it to him?”

“They gave him some but naturally it cost him a piece of the company. He used to say that the best time to raise money was
when you didn’t need to.”

“Did you talk about divorce?”

Beth starts to shake her head then changes her mind. “He would bring it up sometimes, but it would always be on me.
You want to divorce me, don’t you?
He’d always put it on me. And I’d say, no, I don’t want to get divorced. But he wouldn’t see a marriage counselor. He didn’t
like talking to anybody about his problems. He saw it as a weakness.”

Her face changes as a wave of emotion overcomes her. Her lips
start to quiver a little and she clasps her hands tightly together and puts them up to her mouth, as if to pray.

“Who would do this?” she murmurs, quietly beginning to sob.

Carolyn can’t help considering the answer. Mark McGregor, charismatic and wealthy, had always struck her as a very sharp guy
who wasn’t quite as brilliant as he thought was. He was someone who believed he could charm or bully his way through any predicament.
No matter how hairy things got, he thought he’d come through unscathed, maybe even better off. But not today.

“Beth,” she says. “I need to know something.”

She looks up.

“Beth, have you spoken to Richie Forman? Do you know where Richie is?”

R
ICHIE WAS STARING OUT THE WINDOW OF HIS APARTMENT
. H
E
couldn’t remember the exact moment the car really registered, but he looked out his blinds that morning, the Saturday before
McGregor was killed, and thought he’d seen it before. It was a boxy Ford SUV, the Flex, silver bottom, black top, parked on
the south side of Brannan. He might not have thought all that much about it except he saw a guy sitting in it. From his vantage
point on the second floor, he couldn’t get a clear view into the car, but the window was cracked enough to see a beefy arm
and shoulder and an occasional flash of the side of the guy’s face.

Before the guy could see him standing at his window, gazing down upon him, Richie retreated a few steps back and sat down
on the couch and turned on his TV. The studio apartment was only about five hundred square feet, with a counter separating
the kitchen from the living area and a bathroom and large walk-in closet off to the right of the kitchen. His furniture was
minimal: a futon couch, coffee table, two bar stools, and a 32-inch LCD TV that sat atop a simple black IKEA media stand with
a cable box and PlayStation 3 inside its two shelves. With the shades drawn, he could still catch enough of the street to
keep an eye on the car.

About ten minutes went by and he noticed a second guy came back to the car with a couple of coffees in a tray along with some
food. It was probably from Crossroads, a café around the corner, a neighborhood mainstay. Richie only caught a glimpse of
the second
guy, but it was enough to see that he wasn’t white or black but something in between. Hispanic or maybe Pacific Islander.
Not tall but thick, with a tree trunk for a neck.

They didn’t leave once the coffee arrived. Watching the car sitting there got Richie’s heart going a little faster. At one
point he was sure the guy in the passenger seat was looking up at his window. It was hard to say for sure, because as soon
as the guy looked, Richie turned his eyes back to the TV and pretended to watch.

Finally, he got up and went to the kitchen to make a bowl of cereal. He tried to convince himself he was being paranoid; there
were plenty of reasons two guys in a Ford Flex would be parked outside his apartment building. He decided to take a shower.
If the car was still there after he got dressed, he’d plot his next move.

Fifteen minutes later he found himself on the phone to Howard Kantor, an unemployed programmer who looked just enough like
Dean Martin to impersonate him. Kantor’s Dino didn’t get nearly as many gigs as Richie’s Frank. For starters, he wasn’t good
(he couldn’t sing worth shit), but more often than not, to keep costs down, a company preferred to hire one person—Sinatra—not
the whole Rat Pack.

Even though he was unemployed, Kantor, who was originally from outside Boston, had cobbled together a living through a combination
of odd jobs that included focus groups in which he had no right to participate (“Dude, do you know where I can get my hands
on an owner’s manual for a BMW? Need to bring one Tuesday night”). He also managed a building in Pacific Heights, in return
for which he paid a reduced rent for a ground-floor apartment in the building. A disciple of the radio host Tom Leykis, who
was famous for preaching how to get laid as cheaply and effortlessly as possible, he’d been mourning the loss of the
Tom Leykis Show
, which had ended a few years ago. Lately, however, rumors that the show was being resurrected had Kantor’s spirits up.

“What’s up?” Kantor said when Richie called.

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I need you to drive over here and park over on Brannan and keep your engine running.”

His plan was pretty simple. Get a picture of the license plate, email
the photo to himself, then confront the guys. He wanted Kantor there in case he needed to make a quick getaway—or just be
a witness.

“Now?”

“Yeah, now. I’ll pay you to drive over.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m with this nice young lady here.”

She must have been right next to him because his voice became muffled as he either moved his mouth away from the phone or
covered it with his hand. “What’s your name?” Richie heard him say. Then a beat later: “I’m kidding. Here, talk to my friend
Frank Sinatra.”

A woman’s voice on the phone: “Hey, Frank.”

She sounded drunk but probably wasn’t.

“Hey. How ’bout you and the douche bag you’re in bed with take a quick ride for me.”

“I heard that,” Kantor said, grabbing the phone back.

“How many parties have I gotten you into?”

“How many rides have I given you to get to those parties?”

He had a point. Their relationship was somewhat symbiotic, as were most of his relationships these days. His small social
circle was comprised of friends, if they could even be defined as such, who tended to serve some sort of purpose.

“Howie, I need a favor.”

“Dude, you need to grasp the situation at hand. I’m with a woman. She’s seen my place in the light and hasn’t left yet. I’m
telling you, she’s at least an eight.” Richie heard a slapping sound with a little thud mixed in. It sounded like the eight
had hit him in the chest. “Sorry, I meant nine,” Kantor said.

He wasn’t budging. So Richie went to plan B. He texted Ashley. He knew she didn’t always answer her phone, but she responded
quickly to texts. He wrote, “Need some help. You around?”

A minute later he got a response: “What kind of help? You okay?”

“Car parked outside. Maybe being paranoid, maybe not. Need a little backup.”

A few seconds later his phone rang. It was Ashley wanting more details. Over the last two weeks of working together they hadn’t
exactly become friends, but they’d established enough of a rapport to grab something from the gourmet street taco truck downstairs
and eat lunch together a few times in a public outdoor space near the Moscone Center.

“Chances are it’s nothing,” he said, then explained to her what was going on and what he wanted her to do. She promptly replied
that she was on her way with her boyfriend, Jason, who had a Canon digital SLR camera that captured both video and still images.

“You think it’s someone from prison?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But one of them looks a little like Oddjob from
Goldfinger
, except he’s not wearing the bowler hat and a tux.”

“Who?”

He almost said ask your boyfriend, but then he remembered the one time he’d met Jason he didn’t seem like the Bond type. Pale,
with longish sideburns and thick-framed black glasses, he thought the guy looked like a slimmer, healthier version of Roy
Orbison. Apparently, he worked as a video editor for a production company that specialized in creating viral video campaigns
for companies, but he also did freelance projects on the side, including some work for the Exoneration Foundation.

“Never mind. Just call me when you’re close.”

Thirteen minutes later Ashley called him back. They lived in the Mission, which wasn’t too far away. She said they’d cabbed
it to within a safe distance and were now on foot.

“They still there?” she asked.

They were. The Ford SUV hadn’t moved and judging from the driver’s upward glances at his window, Richie was becoming increasingly
convinced they were there for him.

His father had a saying, “Go to trouble.” As a kid growing up in Bergen County, New Jersey, Richie remembered him always doling
out that advice to his clients and later to him. What he meant by that was that if something was bothering you, stressing
you out, you had to confront it, not shy away from it. His father, who’d been an estate attorney back in Jersey before his
death four years ago from a stroke, had a reputation as a straight shooter. People were drawn to his honesty as well as his
easy sense of humor and they went to him for advice much like they would a rabbi. “Go to trouble” was his father’s way
of saying “Deal with it,” only more macho. He made people feel like they had some control over their fate.

But was it, Richie often wondered, the best advice? Didn’t people sometimes bring trouble upon themselves—imagine or create
trouble —only to end up in a mess that could have been avoided if they’d done nothing? Still, he kept hearing his father’s
voice urging him on, telling him he didn’t need to be looking over his shoulder, worried a couple of bouncer-type assholes
were trailing him. Either they were, or they weren’t.

“The car’s parked in the middle of the block,” he told Ashley. “Silver Ford Flex with a black top. I just need you to text
me when you think you’re at a good vantage point. I need you to get a shot of the plate and then stand by. You don’t need
to get that close.”

He debated whether or not to take a weapon. When he had insomnia and went for a walk late at night, he wore a scuba diver’s
knife strapped to his ankle under his pants. He’d go out to the Embarcadero and walk the path that ran along the water. In
some strange way, part of him missed the tension of prison. When he was in high school, he ran track, the four hundred meters.
He’d throw up before almost every race, he was so nervous. Even though he was good, he hated racing, but after he’d stopped
for a few years he missed it; he actually missed throwing up.

Now that he was out, he sometimes got the same sort of empty feeling. At one or two in the morning, he’d go over to little
Rincon Park, a small grassy area near the water where a giant, somewhat gaudy bow-and-arrow sculpture called Cupid’s Span
was stuck in the ground at an angle. He’d talk to the homeless people who’d stop in there. Some of them were shockingly regular
people and others were total mental cases. So far, no one had bothered him. Maybe because even the wackos sensed you weren’t
quite right if you were standing around in a parka looking up at the Bay Bridge in the middle of the night.

“Can’t jump off that one,” he remembered one guy saying to him, in all seriousness. “The one you want is further down the
road.”

His cell phone dinged. Text from Ashley: “K. We’re good.”

The scuba knife was on the kitchen counter tucked away in its hard black plastic sheath, looking harmless enough. He picked
it up and quickly strapped it to his ankle and headed out, the door automatically
swinging shut behind him. It took a little less than a minute to take the elevator down one flight and make his way out of
the building. He saw Ashley and her boyfriend as he came out. They were standing on the other side of Brannan (the same side
the car was parked on) but back toward the corner.

Without acknowledging them he crossed the street and turned left toward the car. The driver saw him coming through his side-view
mirror but Richie didn’t go up to the car on the driver’s side. Instead, he passed behind the car and onto the sidewalk. As
he walked past the car, he heard both doors open almost at the same time. He took a few more steps, then pulled up abruptly
and turned around. The two guys stopped in their tracks, a little startled.

“Hey,” he said, “you guys heading out anytime soon? My friend’s coming in a minute and looking for a space.”

“We’re not going anywhere, bro,” said the driver. He had a longish, straggly soul patch protruding from a spot under his lower
lip. He was the smaller of the two, but he made up for his lack of stature with a menacing stare.
Definitely Pacific Islander
, Richie thought.
Probably Tongan
. “Where are you going?”

“Why would you care?”

“We have a message for you,” Soul Patch said.

“From whom?”

“From someone who cares about your well-being.”

Richie smiled.

“You two don’t seem like the caring types.”

Soul Patch: “Oh, we are, bro.”

“What’s the message?”

“Go fuck yourself. No one’s paying you shit.”

He looked at them incredulously.

“Excuse me.”

“Not a dime.”

“Who says so?”

“Who do you think says so?”

“I’m not a fucking mind reader.”

“You know who,” the big one said, making his first contribution to the conversation. His voice wasn’t as intimidating as his
stature, which was probably why he didn’t speak.

“Sure, I do.”

“And stay away from the bitch,” Soul Patch came back. “We know she’s in on this.”

“
The bitch?
”

“Yeah, if you go near her again, if you contact her in any way, the next message we deliver won’t be so friendly.”

Richie started laughing.

The thicker one took a step closer. “What’s so funny?” He was a real beast. Not big enough to play pro football but maybe
college, D2. Could have played linebacker or fullback. Big as he was, though, he didn’t look like gang material. The guy was
wearing a black short-sleeve T-shirt and didn’t have any visible tattoos on his forearms or neck.

“You assholes,” he said. “That’s what’s funny. Who the hell are you?
Stay away from the bitch
,” he said, mocking their menacing tone. “What’s up with that?”

The guy took another step forward and was now really in his face. He was literally breathing down on him, coffee breath and
all, his nose at forehead level, ripe as hell for a head butt. But the smaller guy, Mr. Soul Patch, pulled his partner away.
The guy budged, not much, but enough to put some distance between them.

“Perhaps we should refresh your memory,” Soul Patch said, suddenly sounding almost British.

He motioned for his buddy to get something from the car.
Funny how the little ones always seem to order the big oafs around
, Richie thought. The big guy went back to the Flex and returned with a manila envelope and handed it to Richie, who opened
it and took out three eight by ten photos. They were shots of a woman with short blond hair walking out of his building. His
eyes opened wide. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. The “bitch” was Beth. Or rather Beth with short blond hair.

“That was taken two afternoons ago,” the smaller guy said.

He stared at the photo, then compared the front of the building in the image to the real one he could see from where he was
standing. The photos looked like they were taken from just a few feet closer to the corner, but it was basically the same
vantage point. It was hard to argue, they looked authentic, but he still didn’t think they were real.