Simply Lies

Chapter 26

“Thank you for meeting me on a Sunday, Phillip,” Clarisse said, though that was not the name she was using today. She and Phillip Crandall were in the lobby of a building in North Carolina. She had just let him in and was escorting him to the elevators. They got on using her security card.

Crandall looked wealthy and was. But he was also too arrogant for his own good. He’d always wanted to be a player, a big-deal investor when he had neither the brains nor the discipline to be one. Which made him perfect for her.

She was not blond for this encounter. Her hair was a demure but professional-looking brown. She had on tinted specs and blue contact lenses. Her dress was businesslike, with a measure of underwire-bra-aided cleavage. It had always amazed her how little it took to completely gain dominance over a man. Their dicks were their Achilles’ heels. And Crandall was not only arrogant, he was also a pig.

She liked pigs. All they cared about was eating, rolling around in the mud, doing whatever they pleased, and feeling like the boss of all bosses.

And then they were killed and eaten by others.

“Well, I wanted to see your operation for myself. You know, kick the tires now that we’re going to be partners.”

“I think you’ll be impressed with what you see.”

“I already like what I see,” he replied, giving her the eye.

They laughed at his wit.

He was dressed in a dark blue blazer and khaki slacks with an Untuckit shirt to look hipper and younger than his fiftysomething age. A pocket square completed the package. She could tell he was so impressed with himself. Just like he had looked when he’d climbed out of the Aston Martin two-door after he’d pulled up in front of the building.

“Wow, you don’t see many Aston Martins around here,” she said, smiling adoringly from the other side of the elevator car.

He smiled right back. “One thing you’ll learn about me, I don’t like to have the same toys as all the other guys.”

She applauded him with her eyes. “I like your style.”

He ran his gaze over her again, his intentions as clear as the elevator buttons. “And I like yours.”

He was married, but unhappily, he had told her. Which meant, of course, that he wanted to screw her. She had let him think that was a real possibility because that’s just what you did with a guy you were trying to screw, but in a completely different way.

He had told her over drinks that he read people really well and trusted his instincts. “That’s how I made my fortune.”

“Brilliant,” she had said. She was actually referring to Crandall’s father, Richard, who had made a fortune in real estate.

This Crandall had taken a $250 million inheritance, and over twenty years managed to lose $50 million of it by investing in stupid deals that never rose above the scam level.

If he’d just put his inheritance in the stock market back then he’d probably be a billionaire by now.

They got to the fifth floor and she led him down the hall to a double office door with a sign proclaiming it to be the home of LASER FOCUS, Inc.

She opened the door with her key card and led him inside. The lobby was spacious; the firm’s name, on a much larger sign, was behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Nothing fancy but we’re not into that. All our money goes into product and people. And the branding push will come next. Of course no one is in today.”

“I’ve been to your website. Very impressive.”

“Thanks. It’s a very different world than the one I had at IBM.”

“Yes, IBM. A great company but maybe a little bit of a dinosaur now,” he said.

“Wow. You are so up-to-date on everything,” she said. “We’re lucky to have you as an early investor.”

“I keep my nose to the ground.” His gaze drifted over her legs. “Look, maybe we can have dinner and drinks later.”

“I can do it on Wednesday, if that works. I’m off on a business trip to Montreal early tomorrow. We’re trying to go full bore in Canada right now.”

“I’d like that. I know a place.”

“I knew you would. In fact, we can celebrate your investment in Laser Focus. But I have to warn you, I’m not much of a drinker.”

“Then I’ll order a case of red for our table.”

They both laughed.

“Now to business.” She led him into a conference room where she had set up a slide deck on a laptop. “We’ve already been over pretty much all of this but I wanted you to see it again, in a more comprehensive way.”

They sat down, inches apart.

He touched her arm. “I appreciate the private showing.”

Stranger danger, stranger danger.

“And let’s appreciate that this is strictly business, as I owe my partners a fiduciary duty.” She touched his hand. “But there’s always Wednesday.”

“Here’s to always Wednesday.”

“And then we’ll bring you in for a full meet and greet. The rest of the team are dying to get to know you.”

“I really enjoyed meeting your partners, Joe and Bill. Rock solid, both of them.”

“Yes, they are.”

She went over the plans for Laser Focus, which she had written on her laptop, cobbling together bits and pieces from other such plans she had gained access to. It all had a professional appearance because she was really good at Excel and Photoshop and what she didn’t know she could always find out. She actually thought the business concept wasn’t bad, but she wasn’t going to be the one to see if it would work or not. All she needed to do was get the $2 million wire transferred tomorrow.

“Love the name by the way — Laser Focus,” said Crandall.

“I wish I could claim credit for it, but it was that before I came here. However, I wouldn’t leave a VP slot at IBM for nothing. You remember our main concept of pop-ups, of course. But leveraging them in a totally unique way. We refer to it as a latitude-based, instant market supply coordination factored, gross throughput decision-making process.” She glanced at him. “It’s all algorithm-centric, of course. No human can operate at the speeds we need to balance out supply and demand and also definitive location-focused stratagems. Pop-ups must literally ‘pop up’ right when and where the customer needs them to.”

He looked utterly bewildered by all of this but said bracingly, “Pop-ups, of course. Great idea. Always loved the concept.”

“Now, as we discussed before, postpandemic a great many people have or will be starting their own businesses or can work remotely. However, the future dynamic of work has been fundamentally altered, and they don’t want the office space and headaches that come with that. And many businesses have cut back on their office footprint and don’t have the requisite flexibility anymore. And workers don’t always want to sit at their kitchen table and do Zoom meetings while their kids are screaming in the background. That’s where we come in. And while there are temporary office space companies galore, like WeWork, Impact Hub, and Regus, we thought why not make the temp workspace also ‘temporary.’ That way we, as landlords, don’t have to bear the underlying brick-and-mortar property costs. And then we simply pass some but not all of those savings on to our clients. In essence, instead of their coming to us, we go to them.”

“Love it!”

She smiled and touched his arm. “It’s a hybrid system that I think will come to dominate the space in the very near term. Our physical structure has been engineered so that it can be put up and then disassembled in less than one hour, and that includes all equipment provided to the customer on a semi-customized basis. It’s trucked off and either sent to a new site where there is an algorithm-based demand, or warehoused until it’s needed again. But our goal is to have an eighty-five percent deployment at all times. Idle inventory does not make us money.”

She clicked some keys and a new screen appeared. “As you can see, our projections, while conservative, are quite eye-popping. We’re cash flow positive after only eleven months, and in two years’ time, with costs under control and a firm book of business, we’re forecasting net profit margins at over twenty-eight percent. That beats our benchmark by a good eight hundred basis points. We have painstakingly built solid relationships with all necessary vendors and space owners. I’ve had this business plan vetted by a dozen seasoned businesspeople whose opinion I really value, and they all deem it an unqualified home run.”

She glanced at him to see if his eyes were glazing over. They were.

Bingo.

“But I don’t have to tell an experienced investor like yourself anything. You either see it as a good deal or not.”

“And I do see it as a terrific deal.”

“And your investment gets you fifteen percent of the company on a post money basis.”

“An incredible opportunity at a very fair valuation.”

“We plan to align with a SPAC or other appropriate vehicle within two years, and take it public for at least a three-hundred-million-dollar valuation, making your ownership interest worth—” She pretended to be calculating in her head.

He said, “Forty-five million. A nice return on investment.”

She smiled. “No fair — you’re quicker on the draw than I am.”

“Hey, I’m not just a pretty face.”

She saw him out, letting him kiss her on the cheek.

Wednesday, Wednesday. But by then I’ll be a thousand miles away. Enjoy dinner and drinks and tears alone, or maybe try taking your wife out, you jerk.