Geek Mafia, Rick Dakan [books that read to you .TXT] 📗

>By 6:30 in the morning he was dressed and ready, his squeaky leather dress shoes pinching his toes. Looking in the mirror, he decided that he had been right about dressing for the occasion. He wanted to face his accusers with dignity and professionalism, even if he did decide to call the plan off. Which was something he was now having second thoughts about. He’d go over it again with Chloe, let her convince him or not. Then he’d decide. But when he called her he only got voice mail. He left a message asking her to call him back, but somehow he didn’t expect to hear from her. Maybe she was the one who’d gotten cold feet.

Not wanting to sit still and not wanting to eat, Paul just got in his car and drove the freeways for an hour, listening to Air America, but not really paying any attention. The liberal radio network usually got him good and fired up with leftist indignation, brought on by the right wing’s latest outrages, but today it flowed right over him. It had a calming effect nonetheless, keeping his thoughts from obsessing on what he was apparently about to do. 

He arrived on the street where his office sat at 8:30, but pulled into a parking lot halfway up the block. From there he could see the office parking lot, and he could tell that Chloe wasn’t there yet. But Greg, his friend and CEO (Former friend? Former CEO?) was there, and so was Jerry, the game’s Producer. Frank, the lead programmer wasn’t there yet, but Paul would’ve been surprised if he was. Frank seldom came in before 11:00 on a normal day (and Paul knew he hadn’t left last night until close to midnight), so making a 9:00 AM meeting was always tough for him. Also M.I.A. was Evan, the Art Director. There was one other car in the lot, which Paul recognized as belonging to the company’s lawyer. 

He sat and watched and listened, waiting for the rest of them to arrive. Evan sped into the parking lot about five minutes later and Paul watched him go inside. Paul had ducked down when he saw Evan pull onto the street, though if Evan had bothered to glance over he might have recognized Paul’s car. Oh well, he thought, it won’t really make much difference. By 8:55 there was still no sign of Frank. More alarming, there was no sign of Chloe. He checked his voicemail, but no one had called.

Shit! He thought. What the hell is this about? He couldn’t believe she was late. For a fraction of a moment he wondered if maybe he’d imagined the whole thing. Maybe there was no Chloe. Maybe he was having a breakdown and had dreamed up the woman, the gang, the plan – everything. But no, that didn’t seem too plausible. Odds were she’d probably just chickened out. Or maybe she’d been playing him all along. Either of those would make more sense than her actually going through with the plan they’d come up with together. 

Paul started his car and drove the two hundred feet to his soon to be former office. Just as he was getting out, he heard screeching tires from the street behind him. Chloe? No, it was Frank’s red Miata. Oh well. Paul and the lead programmer saw each other, but both decided it would be more comfortable to pretend they hadn’t. He went on inside and avoided any awkward parking lot confrontations. 

The conference room was back and to the right, in a corner of the office hardly ever visited. Paul’s stomach fluttered and bile crept up into his throat. He felt sweat trickle down the small of his back even though the office was refrigerator cold. This was going to suck, he realized. At least Chloe had given him one thing – he’d spent the last twenty hours planning his revenge and flirting with a pretty girl instead of obsessing about his fate. He was somehow grateful that he’d only have a few minutes of feeling this shitty anticipation before the axe fell. 

Everyone but Frank and Paul already had seats at the makeshift conference table (really four smaller tables pushed together to form one big surface). The company’s mousy lawyer, Marie Woods, sat in the seat Paul usually took for himself at these meetings. That’s a sign if ever there was one, he thought. 

“Hey Paul,” said Greg. He’d also dressed up for the occasion, wearing a yellow tie and too-large blue blazer over his plump frame. 

“Hey,” said Paul. He realized he’d forgotten his notebook and wanted to go back into the car and get it. But it was too late; no turning back now. “Hey Evan, Jerry.” The two other men nodded to him. Evan said something inaudible into his thick beard that might have been hello. Paul thought that Frank should have been inside by now. The meeting should be getting started, but Paul guessed that the fucker had stopped to check his e-mail first, as always.

Jerry, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt with the company logo on it, tried to lighten the mood. “Your Buccaneers are shaping up pretty well, huh?” Paul’s hometown team had traded for a star running back over the weekend. “This could be their year.”

“Yep,” said Paul. What the hell was he talking about? The two of them had always talked sports – it was their only real common bond but really, was this the time? Just trying to kill the silence Paul supposed. Fuck that. He took a seat and stared down at his hands, wishing again for his notebook so he could at least pretend to be busy.

Finally, Frank came in, thin, short, and wiry with a shaven head and an unkempt goatee. He brushed past where Paul sat without saying a word and took his place at the table. “Hey,” he said to Greg, who just nodded at him.

“Are you ready Paul?” asked Greg. “Yesterday you said something about getting a lawyer?”

“Um,” said Paul. “I guess I’m ready. Whatever.” He didn’t even look up from his hands as he talked. “Let’s just get on with it.”

“Ok,” said Greg, his voice sad, although Paul wasn’t sure why. If he was sad, he shouldn’t have fired him. “We all know why we’re here, but we have to do this the right way to make it official. I’m going to ask Marie to run the meeting so we can make sure we cover all the legal bases.” 

He stopped and looked up from his notes. There was a knocking sound coming from somewhere. It had to be the front door, which locked automatically. 

“All right, first, for the record we need to make a note of who’s here…” said the lawyer, but the knocking had become pounding and Paul interrupted her.

“I think there’s someone at the door,” said Paul.

“Whoever it is can wait,” Chimed in Evan, speaking for the first time. Paul knew Evan hated confrontation – all four of them did. They preferred to whisper and complain in private rather than actually telling someone they had a problem with them. Evan no doubt wanted this to be over as quickly as possible.

Marie was about to continue but Paul stopped her. “I should check. It might be…um…it might be my representative.” Part of the plan was that he wasn’t supposed to actually call her his lawyer. Was it Chloe? No FedEx guy would pound that long and hard. 

“I thought you said you didn’t have representation,” said Greg, looking both confused and a little worried. 

“Well, I wasn’t sure she’d…” the pounding grew even louder. They could hear the glass door shaking in its frame.

“I’ll let him in,” said Frank, springing up from his seat and heading out the conference room door. A few seconds later they heard muffled voices and then Frank came scurrying back into the room, a startled look on his face. 

Chloe came in a moment later, although Paul hardly recognized her.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, slamming her leather briefcase down on the table next to Paul. “You haven’t fired him yet have you?”

CHAPTER 4

For a moment, Paul wasn’t even sure who had walked into the room. Chloe had totally transformed herself since he’d last seen her. She wore a wig for starters, and a very good one. It was light brown and shoulder length. It looked so natural that if he didn’t know she had much shorter hair, he would have guessed that she had dyed it. But it was the outfit that made the change. She wore a well-tailored, very professional, gray woman’s skirt/blazer combo with a yellow silk blouse. Her wrist sported what looked to Paul’s uneducated eye like an expensive and fashionable gold lady’s watch from which he thought he detected a glint of diamond. In short, she looked just like the high priced lawyer she was supposed to be. She was certainly the best-dressed person in the room.

Chloe reached across the table to shake Greg’s hand, stretching forward as she did so. Paul watched Greg glance down at her cleavage while he shook her hand. “I’m Rachel Roth, here on behalf of Mr. Paul Reynolds.”

“Hi,” said Greg. “I’m Greg Driscol, and this is…”

“I know the rogues gallery here,” said Chloe cutting Greg off and looking around at the assembled board members. “I’ve learned all about you gentlemen.”

Marie stood up and shook Chloe’s hand. “Marie Cooper, from Johnson, Myers, and Wick,” she said. 

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Ok, we’ve got the intros down, shall we get on with the dirty business?”

“Um, sure,” Greg said as he sat back down. “I was just about to turn things over to Marie.”

The plan was now in action, and so far so good. But Paul knew that this was a crucial moment. Chloe didn’t really know the law – just a few points that her friend had helped her out with. She couldn’t let the real lawyer take over the meeting. Her dramatic, unexpected entrance had them off guard, and Paul hoped she seized the moment and pressed on. 

Chloe stepped up to the plate right on cue. “Yeah, you know what? Before I let Marie here get going, there are some things I need to go over with you. I think they might have a real bearing on how matters proceed from this point on.”

“Okaaaay…” said Greg. “I suppose that’s fine.” Paul had heard Greg say a hundred times that he never liked to go into a meeting he didn’t already know the outcome of. He was going to hate this one. The CEO looked to Marie for support and she just kind of shrugged, whatever that meant.

“First things first, I want to let you know that Paul here is more than willing to resign his seat on the board. We realize this situation just isn’t working out the way we’d hoped, and so it’s time for the two parties to go their separate ways.” That seemed to comfort them.

“So, all we have to do now is figure out what Paul gets out of the deal,” she continued. “I mean, this whole project was his idea and he does own a sizable chunk of stock. Hell, you guys wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for him, right?” No one said anything. “So we figure he’s owed something for his time and trouble.”

Greg didn’t seem to like where this was going. “We’ve offered Paul two months’ severance and, of course, he gets to keep all the stock he’s vested.”

“Huh,” scoffed Chloe. “Yeah, as you say, of course he gets to keep the stock he’s vested. He already owns that. Not much you can do there, so that’s not really a