Chapter 1102: One at a Time
June 1997
Sloane changed the channel.
Forbes put out its list of the four hundred richest Americans every fall. A billion dollars put a man comfortably inside it, and a twenty-two-year-old from the South Side with a record label and a stake in a Silicon Valley chip company made much better television than the oil heirs.
The set was bracketed to the wall above his feet and got four channels worth having.
"Ha! Didn't I say it was a coincidence? APLUS gets shot, goes under, his fans go out of their minds and pack the theaters for She's the Man, and then in June, right before Blade opens — he wakes up! Come on! That timing's so beautiful it might as well have been on the studio's release calendar—"
She changed it again.
"APLUS bears the responsibility for the riots that went up across this whole country in January. Nine cities. Two weeks of it. Two hundred million dollars of damage in Chicago alone, and the mayor's own figures say most of it fell on neighborhoods that had nothing to do with any of it. Innocent, decent people died—"
Linda McCall was sorting signature pages on her knee and still had an opinion. "Hard to believe that's the same station that ran a memorial piece on you in March. Forty minutes of it. Archive footage, the works. Two of those anchors sat there on camera and called you the most important American musician of the decade."
"Ha. They'll say anything if the ratings are good." He was looking at the pen in his hand.
Sloane closed her hand around the outside of his and pinched his fingers shut on it. "Can you feel the pen?"
"Enough, I've got it." The fingers held the pen and nothing else about them moved.
Linda opened the folder on the tray table and turned it round to face him. He took a breath, held it, and dragged the signature across the foot of the page with his whole arm from the shoulder.
It didn't look like much. But until his name was at the bottom of that page, a company with three hundred people in it was being run by nobody at all.
"Okay, that's the old general manager of Metropolitan Records gone," Linda said. "And that one makes you the general manager of Metropolitan Records."
"Next one. Shit, my arm. How many of these are there, Linda?"
"Eleven. Don't whine, you've been lying down since January."
He held the pen up. Sloane pinched again. "Metropolitan hires an A&R man this month," Alex said. "Somebody young. Somebody who actually opens the unsolicited mail."
Linda had the next page ready. "With what budget? Metropolitan's A&R line is committed through September. I'd have to take it out of marketing."
"Forty thousand. Take it out of marketing. We've had nobody finding new acts for five months, and the demo tapes are piling up in a closet in Chicago. Somebody has to go through them."
"Marketing's going to scream at me."
"Let them scream at me. I've been asleep, I'm rested."
Linda laughed, and that was all she asked. Linda McCall had come to him in 1993 out of MC Hammer's organization, which was already going under, and she'd learned there not to ask the boss a second question about money.
She put the file away, bent and kissed him on the cheek and held his face in both hands for a second.
"You scared me to death, you know that?"
"I know. I'm sorry, Linda."
Linda had the rest of it from Cochran: the Chicago floor empty that morning, filing cabinets standing open, a smell of burnt paper, and nobody who'd seen either partner since Thursday.
"McGill and the rest of them have run, APLUS. We need new counsel on the Sony Columbia side this week. And we should demand last year's record income from them in writing, with a date on it."
"Do it." He was watching the box on the tray table, not her.
On the tray table beside the folder sat a three-disc box set. Forever Twenty-Two. His own face in profile on the sleeve, at Orchestra Hall, baton up, gold light coming down and everything else in the frame blurred out.
Rolling Stone had spent two of its three paragraphs on the sleeve: three discs, forty-four dollars, and a photograph of a man lying in a hospital bed on a record he'd been in no condition to approve.
"The masters have never sounded cleaner, and honestly, that's what makes it so uncomfortable to sit through."
Robert Christgau, in the Village Voice, gave it an A-minus for the songs and an F for the timing. He pointed out that the booklet essay called him the most important American musician of the decade, and that was a big thing to put in print while the musician couldn't lift a hand to argue.
Billboard counted nine hundred thousand sets in six weeks with the artist unavailable for a single word. Catalogue hadn't moved like that in years, it said.
The money worked like this. Sony Columbia owned the masters and sold the set to the stores for about twenty-eight dollars. APLUS got his artist royalty, sixteen percent of the forty-four-dollar list price less the standard twenty-five percent packaging deduction, which came to a little over five dollars a set. On nine hundred thousand sets that was about four and a half million dollars. None of it had been paid yet. Sony paid royalties twice a year, on its own statements, and Sony's accountants did the counting.
"Um..."
Linda laced her fingers together. She did that roughly once a year. "Look — the payroll was three hundred people and the tour was frozen, so I figured we needed continuing income no matter what happened to you, and I agreed to Sony Columbia's proposal. Three discs, their masters, our royalty. I signed it in February. I couldn't exactly ask you."
"It's fine. It isn't a bad thing."
"It's selling, at least," Linda said, with her fingers still laced. "And it's Sony's, which means it isn't Doug Morris's. He came up to my office in February with four men and a lawyer and told me to hand over everything you'd left unfinished or he'd fire me. Then he sent the men out and offered me a vice presidency at Universal."
"And?"
"And I called security. He got Fergie's track and Milla's anyway, and he had to cut them in Chicago, in our room, with me watching."
He turned his head on the pillow. "Leave it on the table. And stay a second, Linda, I want to ask you something."
He waited until Sloane had gone to the window, the nurse had gone out and the door had swung shut.
"Shakira."
Linda's face went completely blank.
Shakira was the Colombian singer he'd been seeing on and off for years, who'd spent last winter living in his house at Highland Park.
"I know she's pregnant," he said. "And I know it's mine. I heard you on the phone about it in here, back in the spring. You thought I couldn't hear anything."
"APLUS—"
His voice stayed very low. "I'm not angry with you. It was January, I was on a ventilator, you had to make a call, and you made it. Fine. Call Emilio Estefan this week. Tell him I already know."
Emilio Estefan produced Shakira's records for the American market and looked after her in Miami. In January, Linda and Estefan had agreed between them to keep the pregnancy out of the papers until the father could speak for himself. Shakira, her parents, Estefan and Linda knew. So did Sherilyn, who'd stood at the glass in February and watched Shakira press his hand to her stomach. Nobody else did.
"And say what?"
He took a breath. "Just that. Nothing else. If he thinks he's breaking the news to me, he'll act like he's doing me a big favor, and then he'll want one back."
"When do you want to go and see her? Estefan's people will want a month's notice, and with the bail order, everything has to be filed with the court first."
"Barranquilla. As soon as I can fly. Not before August, probably."
"August. Estefan will have a heart attack. He's been planning this like a state funeral."
"Let him plan. One thing at a time, Linda. Right now I can't even hold a spoon."
Yeremov had had his own few minutes alone with the bed the day before, and he'd used them to confess.
Titanic was James Cameron's picture for Fox and Paramount, and it had become the most expensive film anybody had ever made, somewhere north of two hundred million dollars. At the end of May, Paramount had pulled it off its July release date and pushed it to December because the effects weren't finished. The trade papers were already writing its obituary. Alex had sixty million dollars in it, signed in the Highland Park study in December. The first thirty had gone to Fox through CNA before New Year's. The last thirty had been sitting in A+ Film Studio's account under Yeremov's control, to go out ten million at a time ahead of the summer release.
At the end of February, with the picture over budget again, Bill Mechanic had come to A+ Film Studio's office and yelled for the first ten, and then for all thirty at once. Yeremov had told him Cameron had missed the terms they'd agreed and the summer date was gone, so Fox was the one in breach. Mechanic didn't care about breach. In March Yeremov sent the whole thirty million. What was he supposed to do — tell the president of Fox the man in Chicago was asleep and the answer was no?
"And then the three little gifts arrive from Fox. One in March, one in April, one in May. Twenty thousand dollars cash, every time. At my house! At the house, with my wife signing for it in her dressing gown, because the man came at seven in the morning every single time. They forced them on me, APLUS. I didn't spend a dollar. Look."
He'd brought all three envelopes in a duty-free bag from JFK and tipped them out on the blanket, still fat, the Fox mailroom stamp on each one. At Mosfilm he'd once watched a man get blamed for a decision nobody could prove he hadn't made, and at twenty-six he'd decided he was never going to be that man, in any country.
"Sixty thousand dollars," Yeremov said. "On your blanket. Please, take it away from me. My wife thinks I'm in the Mafia."
"You bet sixty million on a boat everybody says is going to sink, and now you're scared of a few envelopes?" Alex had said. "Go back to Los Angeles and have your nervous breakdown there."
Sloane came back from the window with the reasons they needed a new firm, in order. "One, get the documents out of McGill and Hamlin. Two, substitute counsel on nine open matters. Three, keep settling with Sony Columbia. Whoever it is has to be on the ground in Chicago by Monday."
"Preston Gates and Ellis. Two lawyers, corporate only, flown in from Seattle. Have them at the house when the 3dfx board comes."
Preston Gates & Ellis was the Seattle firm Bill Gates's father had been a name partner in, and it did Microsoft's work. It didn't have a Chicago office, so it would have to hire local counsel to file in the Illinois courts, but nobody on the other side of a table took them lightly.
"They'll want a fat retainer. Seattle people think Chicago is a mining town."
"Pay it. Whatever they ask. McGill cost me fifty-nine million, I'm not going to haggle over a retainer." He didn't open his eyes for that one either.
"Look at you. Spending money like a man who's back from the dead." Sloane patted his shin through the blanket. Nine matters meant nine motions, and every judge on them getting told in writing that the other side had changed its lawyer.
"And Musical America? McGill and Hamlin have run, and right now nobody on earth knows what's going on over there except Dile."
Linda turned a page. "Cochran thinks McGill might have meant to leave his brother Jimmy behind to negotiate with you. His name's on the lease and on two of the accounts, and everything they didn't take with them has his initials on it somewhere. But—"
"But Jimmy's with Cochran right now, scared out of his mind. Bring him to Highland Park this weekend and give him a room." Alex closed his eyes. "And don't let Tony anywhere near him."
Sloane looked at him. "One at a time, huh?"
She sat down. "Are you still stuck on 3dfx? Look, nobody touched your shares through the listing, and the lockup came off in May. But the company's a mess. They've missed guidance two quarters running, the Sega business is gone, and Wall Street has shorted it so hard Icahn's people are lending stock into it."
The lockup was the stretch after a company went public when the insiders and early investors weren't allowed to sell, so they couldn't dump on the new buyers. Once it came off, all that stock could hit the market at once. And a short seller had to borrow the shares he sold from somebody who owned them and pay a fee for it, so a big holder lending stock to the shorts was getting paid to help them push the price down.
"That's not the point at all."
"Slowly. Speak slowly, okay? You sound like you're on the phone to O'Grady."
"Scott Sellers put the Sega partnership in the prospectus. It was under a confidentiality clause. So Sega walked."
Scott Sellers was one of the three 3dfx founders, along with Ross Smith and Gary Tarolli, the three men Alex had woken up wanting to fire.
Black Belt was Sega of America's code name for the console that was supposed to replace the Saturn. The Saturn was losing badly to Sony's PlayStation, and Sega had been quietly running two teams against each other for the next machine, one in America built around 3dfx's Voodoo chip and one in Japan built around NEC and VideoLogic's PowerVR. Nobody outside Sega was supposed to know either of them existed.
She'd read that prospectus four times on an airplane. It went out on the eleventh of February with Sega named in the risk section. Sega's counsel in Tokyo had a letter on Scott's desk inside a week, Black Belt got folded into another department in March, and the order was gone before the lockup even started running.
He got his breath back between sentences. "So somebody flies to Tokyo and apologizes. Three days of bowing to a bunch of guys in gray suits who hate our guts. Fuck it. I'll go."
"You can't even hold a pen!"
"They don't want my handwriting, Sloane."
"You're not confused at all, are you? Five months in a coma, and you wake up ordering everybody around. I missed that. God help me, I actually missed it."
He didn't open his eyes, but he was smiling. "Oh, I'm confused about plenty. Book the flight."
"Fine. And call Alicia."
"I'm still thinking about it."
"All right."
Linda had gone out with the folder. Now there were only the two of them in the dim room. Alex crooked his index finger at her. She didn't argue. A little stiffly, like she had no practice at it, she took his hand and held it gently. Her hand was cold and warm at the same time.
Sloane sat and studied his face. After all that talking Alex groaned and let his eyelids drop.
So they stopped talking, and just sat there holding hands in the quiet.
Sloane's thumb moved once across the back of his hand, and stopped, like she'd caught herself doing it.
"APLUS."
Dr. Chen was in the doorway with a raincoat over his arm. Sloane let go and stood up.
"The 3dfx board members are already on their way to Chicago. And Cochran has the ruling back on the Barn bail — the restriction on your jet stands until the case closes. Anything out of state has to be commercial or chartered, and the charter has to be filed with the court the day before you fly."
The court wanted to know where he was. A charter left a piece of paper with a clerk. His own jet didn't.
"Still 3dfx," Sloane said.
He turned his head on the pillow. "One thing at a time. All right? Dr. Chen — how are Dr. Mei and his wife doing?"
Chen came in and shut the door. "Oh, not good. McGill tried to get his hands into 3dfx as well — put his own people on the board list, sent the auditors in twice. Dr. Mei's spent six months getting shouted at from both ends, and his wife's had reporters at her door. He hasn't been in the building since April."
"And?" His eyes were shut and one hand lay flat on the blanket.
Chen put the raincoat over the back of a chair. "Now he wants to go back to China, and he's asking for venture money to take with him."
"How much? And don't round up for him, Chen, I know you like him."
"I do like him. He returns my calls. The other three make me leave messages." Chen did the sum in his head anyway. "He hasn't said. A fab partner in Shanghai and forty engineers — eight million, I'd guess. Ten if he takes people with him. And I'll be the one on the phone to Shanghai at midnight, so, you know. Thank you for that."
"Give it to him. After Tokyo, not before." A pause. "Oh, and Dr. Chen."
He waited until the man looked at him properly. "There's a company in Sunnyvale that makes graphics chips. Nvidia."
Chen's eyebrows went up about a millimeter. "I've heard of them. Two of the 3dfx engineers came from there. They've got a part called Riva going through a Taiwanese fab, and Sequoia's already in."
"Next time they raise money, I want in. Four million, through A+ Ventures, quietly, and nobody tells the 3dfx board."
He'd sat on 3dfx's board for a year. 3dfx built one kind of card for one kind of game and was bleeding everywhere else. Nvidia was trying to build the whole chip. If it worked, 3dfx had a problem. If it didn't, he was out four million dollars.
"Four million into the competition." Dr. Chen rubbed his nose. "Ross Smith will have a stroke."
"Ross Smith isn't going to know."
"A shame about Dr. Mei. Ha — Mimi!"
She'd arrived with a bag of new clothes over one arm. He picked a long dark trench coat out of it and waited while she and the nurse worked him into it one sleeve at a time. "Give me the sunglasses."
"You look like a drug dealer," Mariah said, and put them on his face herself.
They moved him into the wheelchair. Linda took the handles, Old Mike and the two South Africans took the sides, and Mariah and Sloane went on ahead to the cars.
Foreman, the intern who'd grabbed House's hand and the syringe the first night, was walking toward the doors half a pace behind the dean, with his head down.
"Ha! Thanks, Foreman."
Alex caught his sleeve as the chair went past and held on, which stopped the whole procession. "Are they firing you?"
"I— uh, probably, yes."
"There'll be a research fund at the medical school by Friday. Four hundred thousand dollars, with your name on it."
"Four hundred— sir, I don't know what to say."
"Say thank you and do your research. Don't go back to work for that guy." He let go of the sleeve. "Go on."
The dean, who'd been about to fire the man in the parking lot, suddenly had a four-hundred-thousand-dollar fund to administer and a very different face on.
Trench coat over a hospital gown, sunglasses on, head tipped back against the chair, he went out into the flashbulbs. The reporters shouted over each other and didn't get a single answer.
"AAAAHHH— APLUS! APLUS!"
The fans were up on the high ground behind the barrier with signs. He had them leave the ambulance doors open while he waved, and blew a kiss off the flat of his hand in the general direction of the noise. "APLUS, WE LOVE YOU!" the girls screamed.
"All right," he mouthed at them. "All right."
The doors shut. The convoy pulled out toward the airport with a New Jersey cruiser clearing the road in front and a South African at the tail on an Aprilia.
On the hospital steps, House watched the motorcycle get smaller. "What was the last drug we gave him?"
"Uh... dexamethasone," Foreman said.
House looked at the road a while longer. "Is that so?"
The steroid was four days old and had nothing to do with anything. House kept chewing on it anyway.
"By the way, you've been fired, Foreman," he said.
"I'm not surprised," Foreman said, and went back inside.