If Tony was trying to bait me, he nearly succeeded. But I just managed to keep control. ‘And why is that?’ I asked through gritted teeth.
‘Because you give away everything to the first mug who’s willing to back you. Now that’s fine when I’m the mug. But not when it’s my equity stake you’re giving away.’
‘So what do you suggest?’ Guy asked.
‘Bootstrap it,’ Tony said. ‘Get some cash flow into the company. Then use the cash to expand. Better yet, borrow on the back of it.’
‘But that’ll be too slow!’ Guy protested. ‘If we’re going to dominate this space, we need cash now. And more in six months’ time.’
‘Not on these terms, you don’t.’
‘So where do you suggest we get this cash flow?’ I asked.
‘Skin.’
‘Skin?’
‘Yeah, skin. You know. Pics of women without clothes on. And men, for that matter.’
I flinched.
Tony ignored me. ‘Last week I bumped into an old friend from my property days. Joe Petrelli. Smart guy. He has a nose for cash flow, always has. He tells me the only money being made on the Internet at the moment is in skin.’
I had heard that too. But I didn’t like it.
‘People rack up a fortune on their credit cards downloading dirty pictures,’ Tony went on. ‘It’s a licence to print money.’
‘I can’t see what this has to do with us,’ said Guy. But I was sure he could.
‘It’s a perfect fit,’ said Tony. ‘Sign up the punters with football, and then reel them in with links to a porn site. Joe can put us in touch with the guys he deals with in LA.’
Guy and I sat stunned.
‘What do you think, Patrick?’ Tony asked.
‘Great idea, Tony,’ Hoyle said. ‘These losses worry me. We have to do something to turn them around. Footie and totty, a great combination.’ He gave a deep chuckle at his own skilful use of language, a low rumble that shook his broad shoulders. He was a huge fat man with several chins and a sweating brow. His merriment just seemed to underline the sleaziness of the whole proposition.
‘If we turn ourselves into a porn site we’ll never attract respectable investors,’ I protested.
‘We won’t need them,’ said Tony. ‘We’ll have our own cash to spend. Guy?’
We all turned to Guy. I prayed that he would be able to come up with an effective response. I had less than no desire to count the credit card payments of sad men downloading computer porn, however much money there was in it.
Guy stared hard at Tony. It was a cold stare, lacking the affection or even the respect of a son for his father. If Guy was angry, he was controlling it. It was the stare of someone assessing an enemy, thinking through his weaknesses, weighing options.
Eventually, he spoke, ‘Let’s stand back a bit here,’ he said. ‘My objective when I first dreamed up this company was to make it the foremost soccer website in Europe. If we can do that, the site will be worth hundreds of millions, given the valuations we’re seeing at the moment. That’s much more important than a few hundred thousand in the P and L. I can see a link to a pornography site would help our cash flow,’ he nodded towards his father. ‘But it would make it that much harder to reach our objective. It would take the whole site a long way downmarket. So I don’t think we should do it. We’re better off going for outside investment.’
‘From Orchestra?’
‘Yes.’
‘The bunch of crooks who want to steal my equity?’
‘Tony,’ I said, ‘you’ll end up with a smaller slice of a much larger pie—’
‘Don’t give me that apple-pie bullshit,’ Tony snapped. ‘I heard it dozens of times in my property days and I ignored it every time. You know what, Guy?’ He was speaking to his son now, his voice hard. I was out of the picture. ‘I always kept the pie. The whole pie. And I got rich as a result. That looks like a lesson you need to learn.’
‘So are you saying no to Orchestra?’ Guy said, struggling successfully to keep his tone reasonable.
‘I’m not just saying no. I’m saying I want you to get hold of Joe Petrelli and find out what he does and how he does it. We’ll discuss it at next month’s board meeting. Sooner if need be.’
This was worse than we had expected. We had known Tony would be unhappy with the dilution of his equity stake, but we hadn’t expected him to start dictating the strategy of the company. And in such a repulsive direction, too.
‘This is my company,’ Guy said in a low voice. ‘And I decide what we do with it.’
‘Wrong,’ said Tony. ‘I own eighty per cent of the shares. I decide what gets done. You do it.’
Guy glanced at me. The anger was burning in his eyes. ‘That’s not acceptable,’ he said.
Tony held his son’s stare. ‘That’s the way it’s going to be.’
There was silence for what seemed like an age. Hoyle and I watched the two men. We were no part of this. This was about much more than who controlled Ninetyminutes.
Then Guy closed his eyes, slowly, deliberately. He took a deep breath and opened them again.
‘In that case, I resign.’
‘What!’ I exclaimed before I had a chance to control myself.
‘Sorry, Davo. I have no choice. I’m determined Ninetyminutes is going to be the best site in Europe. If we don’t take on more equity we haven’t a chance of getting there. We’ll just be another also-ran site with a particularly sleazy image.’
‘But one which makes money,’ Tony said.
‘Frankly, I don’t care,’ said Guy.
Tony weighed that up. ‘That, Guy, is your problem,’ he said. ‘But I think you should reconsider.’
‘And I think you should,’ said Guy.
‘I’m in London until Thursday,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll give you until that morning to decide. Now, gentlemen, this meeting is closed.’
Ninetyminutes’ office was on the fourth floor of a converted metalworking shop in a quiet street in Clerkenwell. The Jerusalem Tavern was just over the road. Usually cramped and crowded in the evening, it was cool and empty at that time of the afternoon. Guy got in the beers, a pint of bitter for me, a bottle of Czech beer for him.
‘Bastard,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘He’ll back down,’ I said.
‘No, he won’t.’
‘He’ll have to. He can’t run Ninetyminutes without you.’
‘He’ll figure out how.’
‘There’s got to be a way through this,’ I said. ‘We can come to some kind of compromise.’
‘Maybe,’ said Guy. ‘Just maybe we could this month. But next month it’ll be more of the same. He’ll come up with ideas for how Ninetyminutes should be run that he knows I won’t like. He’ll dangle them there in front of me for a while, and then he’ll force them through. To show who’s smarter. Who’s the better businessman. Who has the power.’ He took a drink of his beer. ‘Did you ever play snakes and ladders with your father?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’
‘Who won?’
‘I can’t remember. I think I did. Perhaps he did. I don’t know.’
‘I played snakes and ladders with my father a lot and he always won. That made me really angry when I was four. And even angrier when I got older and realized that snakes and ladders is a game of chance. The only way you can win every time is by cheating. Pretty sad when a father has to cheat to beat his four-year-old son.’ Guy stared at the label on the bottle in front of him, as if an answer was written there. ‘I knew it was wrong to take his money.’
‘We had no choice.’
Guy sighed. ‘I suppose not.’
He was slumped over his beer, his eyes gloomy, almost desperate, the vitality that had been his constant companion over the previous few months nowhere to be seen. An aura of pessimism emanated from him, dragging down my own spirits. The change frightened me.