“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.
Chapter 27
Clarisse looked over at the electronic marquee in the lobby where the name Laser Focus did not appear. But Crandall had never even looked. She knew he wouldn’t, especially with her gushing self in the lobby to distract him.
Life was a shell game. The winners could just hide the truth better than everybody else.
She walked upstairs and let herself back in using the duplicate key she’d had made. She had gotten the passcode to the firm’s security system by working as an office cleaner in the building for a week. And the security card she’d been given as a cleaner granted her access to the building at all times.
She walked behind the receptionist’s desk and curled her fingers around the sign there. The magnetized backing on the Styrofoam sign pulled free from the metal letters bolted into the wall.
Revealed was the name of the company that really called this place home.
Creative Engineering. A well-respected company with lots of projects worldwide.
She had come in earlier today and made sure nothing that said “Creative Engineering” was visible anywhere. She had led Crandall right to the conference room and then right out the front door. She felt like a stage director.
Enter and exit only when and where I say to.
It was a role she enjoyed.
She had learned that all the personnel from this office had been redeployed to Austin, Texas, for a special four-week project, which was why she had chosen this space for her “office.”
She broke her sign into two pieces and stuffed it into a large trash bag, then slipped her laptop into her briefcase. She next wiped her prints from every surface she had touched. She closed the door behind her and took the sign off the wall next to the exterior door. Underneath was, once more, revealed the name Creative Engineering.
But not as creative as me, I’d wager.
She added the small sign to the trash bag and left the building, but first took a moment to glance out the glass front door just to make sure Crandall had not doubled back.
Of course he hadn’t. Arrogance again. He was probably stopping off to get the pack of Trojans for their Wednesday dinner followed by a romp in a hotel room with her all drunk and helpless against his preening manliness.
She got into her rental car and drove off. She threw the trash bag away in a dumpster about two miles away.
By one o’clock the next day $2 million had been wired into the bank account of Laser Focus, which had been set up only two months earlier. Crandall’s banking people would have made certain he was really authorizing the wire because they needed to cover their asses. But it was not their job to make sure Crandall was not being scammed. That was all on him.
Thirty minutes later the money had been wired out, and the account was closed.
In the next five hours, the money would be divided up and sent to four different accounts around the world on preauthorized transfer instructions, until it disappeared into a sea of digital funds, never to be seen by its original owner again. But to be utilized fully by her.