Final Venture

She drained her glass. 'Do you want another?' she asked. I nodded and she beckoned to the waiter. 'Why are you asking me all this?'

'I wonder who killed Frank,' I answered simply.

Diane drew in her breath. 'Isn't that for the police to decide?' she said carefully.

'They seem to have decided it was me.'

'That's ridiculous.'

'I'd love to be able to point them in another direction.'

'Toward Art, you mean?'

'He seems a likely candidate.'

Diane leaned forward. 'I can understand your concern. But be careful. Gil's right, if we start pointing fingers at each other over Frank's death, we'll tear the firm apart. He spoke to us about the police's suspicion of you, and said you had his total support. I don't think he meant we should support you and accuse someone else.'

'I can understand that,' I said. 'But what about you, Diane? Do you think I killed Frank?'

'Of course not,' she replied unhesitatingly.

I smiled back. 'Thank you.'

We sipped our drinks in silence. It had been a long day. The second whisky, a generous helping, was beginning to relax me.

'How's Lisa?' Diane asked.

I had not yet told anyone at Revere about Lisa and me. But the simple question seemed to beg a simple answer.

'She's left me,' I said.

'No!' Diane looked genuinely concerned. She didn't ask the question I would have had to lie to answer – Why? Instead she asked, 'When?'

'A couple of days ago.'

'How do you feel about it?'

I sighed. 'Lousy.' I drained my glass.

'I'm sorry,' Diane said.

I didn't want to talk about Lisa any more. And just for the moment I didn't want to think about her. It was good to be away from Boston and Lisa and the mess of Frank's death. The waiter hovered near by, and I grabbed his attention. 'Two more please.'

We talked of other things, of England, of New Jersey where Diane had grown up. I hadn't realized she was a classic example of poor girl made good. Her father was an electrician, yet she had managed to get herself into NYU and then Columbia Business School where she had graduated top of her class. She had done well. The poise, the sophisticated clothes and the accent must all have been learned. To my admittedly foreign eyes, she had learned well.

It was nearly one o'clock when we finally called it a night. As we rode up in the lift together, Diane stood close to me. She reached up and kissed me on the lips. I was too tired, too confused to respond, but I didn't pull away either. Then, as the lift stopped at her floor, she flashed me a quick smile. 'Good night,' she said, and was gone.

I had another terrible night's sleep brooding about Frank, Lisa and now Diane. Guilt piled on to my anger. Whisky, fatigue and semi-consciousness chased my brain into all kinds of strange corners. I woke up still tired, and with a headache.

Diane met me at breakfast. She looked great, and apart from drinking several glasses of orange juice, acted as though nothing had happened the previous night.

Perhaps it hadn't.

Back in the office, the stack of papers in my in-box had grown higher, and I had several minutes of voice-mails to return. My computer informed me I had forty-six e-mails.

Several of the phone calls and e-mails were from Craig, so deciding that I could get rid of a number of messages in one go, I dialled his number.

'How's it going Craig?'

'I don't know, Simon. Good news and bad.'

'What's the good news?'

'Your friend Jeff Lieberman came through with the hundred fifty thousand. And he talked about some kind of fund for the Managing Directors at Bloomfield Weiss that might want to invest.'

'That is good,' I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. The trouble was Net Cop needed more than a few private investors to build the prototype. It needed serious dollars from serious players. And that still left the bad news. 'How did it go with Ericsson?'

'Not so good,' said Craig. 'They like the idea, but they want to see working silicon.'

'And there's no way we can make a prototype any cheaper?'

'Not one that works.'

I sighed.

'It doesn't look good, does it?' Craig sounded unusually despondent.

'Hang on in there, Craig,' I said, trying to sound as confident as possible. 'We never said it would be easy'

'I guess not. Speak to you later.'

Damn! I was not prepared to let Net Cop die. I just wasn't.

John wasn't having a good day either. He was looking seriously worried.

'What's up?' I asked.

'National Quilt is screwed,' he said.

'What's the problem?'

'The bank's getting antsy. They don't like all this inventory buildup. They want the working capital line of credit cleaned up by the end of the month.'

'And you're not going to make that?'

'No way.'

'What about the "Go Naked" strategy?'

'The bankers are not great fans,' said John gloomily. 'In fact I think it makes them even more worried.'

'Oh.' That sounded like a problem. 'What's Art's advice?'

'I started talking to him about it, and then he suddenly had an urgent phone call. He said if things were looking tough I should raise it at next week's Monday morning meeting.'

'Sounds like he doesn't want to know.'

'That's exactly what it sounds like. How's Net Cop?'

'I'd say it's screwed.'

John sighed. 'I guess this is all part of becoming a grown-up venture capitalist.'

'I guess it is.'

John headed off to Lowell to visit the ill-fated quilt company, leaving me to spend the day at my desk. I gathered together some pretty good information on Tetracom's competitors that seemed to suggest their product really was special. And I started on the Investment Memorandum, which would be the document that would, I hoped, eventually persuade the partners to invest.

But it was difficult. I spent long periods of time staring into space, thinking of Lisa, and worrying about Sergeant Mahoney.

Daniel was involved in some heavy-duty number-crunching. Eventually he stopped and stretched.

'So how was Porkopolis?'

'Porkopolis?'

'It's what they used to call Cincinnati. Great town isn't it?'

'I didn't see a pig anywhere. But I did see a very impressive company.'

'So you think we might do Tetracom, huh?'

'I think so. Or else I'm wasting my time with all this.'

'And how was the lovely Diane?'

'Missing you badly, Daniel.' I kept my composure. Or I thought I did.

'Naturally.' He smiled. 'Hey, how about a drink after work?'

'Yeah, why not? But can you get away?' I nodded at the piles of figures surrounding his computer.

'Oh, a couple of random numbers inserted in the right place will sort those out,' Daniel said with a grin. 'Hey, don't worry, Simon. It can't possibly get worse.'

But of course it could.

We went to Pete's, a bar on Franklin Street, in the middle of the Financial District. By the time we got there, the crowd of big loud brokers had already downed a lot of alcohol. Daniel found us a table in the corner and a cold Sam Adams each.

Every now and then Daniel and I had a drink after work. Despite his tendency to be obnoxious, I found him good company. He was funny and intelligent, and a good source of gossip. Once, we'd even been to Las Vegas together, crawling from casino to casino following a set of obscure gambling rules that Daniel called his system. He was a great person with which to live the tackiness of Las Vegas for a night. I had lost two hundred bucks, but enjoyed myself immensely. Daniel claimed he had come out five hundred dollars ahead. My impression was he had lost thousands, but maybe I had missed something.

'So how come you were staring into space all afternoon? Net Cop getting to you?' Daniel asked.

I took a long draught of the cool beer. 'That tastes good,' I said. 'No, it's not that.' I glanced at Daniel. 'Lisa's left me.'

'Oh, no! I'm sorry. Why did she do that? Did she find a one-eyed leper who was better looking?'

'Thanks, Daniel.'