Better Than This (21 page)

“Carpe Diem,” he said eventually. “Seize The Day.” The irony as it applied to him seemed to amuse him. Though he was ill there was nothing wrong with his mind. His eyes, though pained, shone with a clear intelligence. “An interesting name for an advertising agency.”

“My partner’s idea. He’s the creative one. I’m just the mouthpiece.”

“More than that I think. I’ve heard that you’re astute.”

“Depends who you talk to,” I replied. My eye flicked to the office outside, and all the people out there who would no doubt think of different ways to describe me after I’d delivered the good news later that day.

Hoffman smiled. “I’ve talked to a lot of people.”

“Oh?”

“I know a lot about you.”

“Such as?”

“I know that your business is in some financial difficulty.”

Whether he was ill or not, I wasn’t about to discuss the state of our finances with a total stranger. “How can I help you, Mr. Hoffman?” I asked.

“I have a proposition for you,” he replied. “I would like to hire Carpe Diem.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure that he was serious. He didn’t look like the sort of person who had need of an advertising agency. He was wearing worn brown cord trousers that were at least a size too big for him, and the collar of his shirt was fraying a little at the neck line.

He gave me a wry smile. “I can imagine what you’re thinking.”

I was a little embarrassed that he had read me so easily so I sidestepped his observation by asking a question. “What is it you need an advertising agency for, Mr. Hoffman?”

“What else? I have something I wish to sell. That’s what you do isn’t it?” He paused, short of breath, air rattled in his throat and his chest heaved with a wheezing sound. “Lung cancer,” he explained. He took a bottle of pills from his pocket and shook several into the palm of his hand which he quickly swallowed. “For the pain.”

When he had recovered a little he began to explain himself. “How old do you think I am, Mr. Weston?”

It was impossible to say. He had the shrunken appearance of the elderly, but disease can ravage the human body. “Early sixties,” I guessed, knocking a good ten years off the age he looked.

“I’m forty-eight,” he stated matter of factly.

I tried not to react, but I was surprised. “I’ve never been good at that.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t tell you this because I want your sympathy, just so you might understand what I have to tell you. You’ve heard of a man called Nelson Morgan of course?”

“Yes,” I answered cautiously, my curiosity suddenly tweaked.

“Then you know he owns a company called Morgan Industries.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

He smiled. “Nelson Morgan and I were once partners,” he went on. “I see you’re surprised by that. Of course it was a long time ago. We knew each other at college. We began a company together when we were in our early twenties. Our plan was to design and sell software for the computer industry which was beginning to really take off then. The designing part was where I came in. Nelson was the business brains. The company failed as it turned out, partly because of timing. We were probably a year or two ahead of our time. I got a job and Nelson and I went our separate ways. We’d had some disagreements over certain things and we weren’t such good friends as we had been. Friendship and business often don’t mix well I think.”

Amen to that, I thought wryly. Hoffman went on to tell me how the next time he’d heard about Morgan was a couple of years later when he read an article in a trade magazine. Morgan had started another company and was making a lot of money.

“I wondered at the time how he’d managed to get so far so quickly,” Hoffman said. “When our company failed we were broke, and this was before the days when investors were falling over themselves to throw money at anything remotely to do with the technology industry. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I discovered how he’d done it.”

Apparently when their company had collapsed, Morgan had kept a business program that was designed and written by Hoffman. At the time they hadn’t been able to interest anyone in buying it, but it turned out that not long afterwards Morgan had managed to sell the program to another company who had used it as the basis for their own business application software package.

“He used that money to start Morgan Industries,” Hoffman said. “Money that was half mine. But I never saw a cent of it.”

I wasn’t sure that I believed a word of this, but I was interested enough to want to know more. “If you’re saying he cheated you, why didn’t you sue him when you found out?” I asked.

“I threatened to. By then he was already wealthy, but the money he got for the program amounted to only a few hundred thousand dollars. Nelson claimed it was his work and skill that had turned it into a fortune. I didn’t deny that. I only wanted what was rightly mine. He could have easily afforded to pay me, but he chose not to. He was adamant that once our partnership was dissolved he didn’t owe me anything. I spoke to a few lawyers but they advised me my chances of a successful suit were slim at best, and in the end I decided it really wasn’t worth it.”

He went on to tell me that his life since then had not run smoothly. He didn’t get into a lot of detail but he said he’d been married and divorced three times and that he’d lurched regularly from the brink of success to failure.

“I’m an alcoholic,” he confessed. “I haven’t had a drink for almost a year now, but before that drinking was always the single most important thing in my life. It was my life. I believed that without it there was nothing worth living for.” He paused reflectively for a moment. “Much of it I can’t even remember now. A waste.” He shook his head, then made a small weary gesture, as if there was no point in dwelling further on what was for ever lost. “But that isn’t what I came here to tell you. About two years ago I got a job with a company in the valley. I was working as a software design engineer. I was sober for the first time in years, doing what I do well, what I’ve always had a natural talent for, even though I squandered it. The company was Spectrum Software.”

He paused again, this time to allow me a moment to absorb what he’d told me, guessing correctly that my interest had suddenly deepened.

“Of course you’re familiar with Spectrum,” he said.

I didn’t reply, but made a vague gesture which could be interpreted anyway he liked, but mostly as an invitation to continue.

“While I was working for Spectrum I had an idea for a new product that I took to Sam Mendez. He liked it and put me in charge of developing it further. You’re familiar with Home Finance?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Then you know it was never particularly successful. The concept was outmoded and too narrow. But it did spark my idea, which was for a program designed specifically for the person working at home. Do you have any idea how many people no longer work from a centralized office, Mr. Weston?”

I shrugged. “A lot.”

“There are millions, and the trend will continue. And it isn’t only people who work for companies, there are many more who run small business from their homes. The big corporations have their own in-house software designed for communicating and networking, performing all the specialized tasks they require, but individuals and small companies who make up the bulk of home workers can’t afford that. I saw an opportunity for a package that was easily adaptable but was much more than simply a spreadsheet and word processing package with various add-ons, which is primarily what’s available now. My idea was for something that would combine the best elements of available business software, including accountancy and forecasting tools, but would also incorporate home management and entertainment programs, and above all would be simple to use and configure to individual situations. The potential is huge.”

He paused. As he’d talked about this idea of his, the light in his eyes had seemed to grow brighter, and for a few moments he’d transcended the illness that ravaged his body, but now he slumped in his seat, as if drained. His eyes were still bright, but the light seemed to burn with an altogether different intensity. I was fascinated by his story, even though I had never seen him at Spectrum, or heard of this idea of his.

“Mendez liked my idea,” Hoffman said eventually. “The problem was that Spectrum didn’t have the finance to develop it properly. Something like this costs a lot of money to develop and market effectively, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

That much was true. If the potential for such a program was as big as Hoffman claimed, and from what he’d told me I didn’t have any reason to doubt it, then it could cost a great deal of money to launch it properly.

“So Mendez started looking for an investor,” Hoffman said and I began to see where this was leading.

“Which was Morgan Industries?”

“Yes. Nelson recognized the potential, though of course he didn’t know I had anything to do with it, and instead of investing he did what he specializes in. He started negotiating to buy Spectrum. As soon as I realized what was happening I quit,” Hoffman said. He became subdued for a moment.

“For a while I started drinking again. Drinking a lot. That’s always been my answer and my weakness whenever things didn’t go the way I expected. All I could think of was the fact that Nelson Morgan was going to make a lot of money from something that had begun as my idea.”

I began to wonder again how much of this was true. With the kind of money Hoffman would have been paid, plus stock options which were the norm for a design engineer as good as he seemed to be claiming he was, he would have made millions himself if the value of the company increased because of his idea. He saw my doubt.

“You think I should have stayed,” he said.

“It isn’t for me to say.”

“But you think it,” he insisted. ‘1 can see it in your face. You see me sitting here looking as if I probably haven’t got a dime to my name and you think if it had been you, you would have stayed.” He sounded deeply bitter all of a sudden. “You don’t know what it feels like to have been cheated by somebody who was once your friend. He could have paid me what he rightfully owed me years ago. He wouldn’t even have noticed it. But Nelson was always a cold hearted sonofabitch. Maybe it wasn’t a hell of a lot of money, but it could have made a difference to me. My whole life might have been different.”

He stared at me with a slightly wild, unreasoning gleam in his eye and I understood how much this had eaten away at him over the years. Perhaps he believed it was this early disappointment that had started him drinking, and because of that all the accumulated failures and humiliations in his life were at least partly Morgan’s fault.

“Besides,” he said after a few moments, in a more reasonable tone. “What use is money to me now?”

He told me that after he left Spectrum and Morgan had completed the buy out, Mendez hired a whole team of designers to work on the project that Hoffman had begun.

“I still have friends at Spectrum and when I realized what was happening I decided to do something about it. I decided I didn’t have to sit by and let Morgan cheat me again. So I stopped drinking and I started working on my own version of the program. It was through the people I know that I heard about you and your company.”

We were coming to the point of all this, I saw, though I couldn’t guess what it was. “What is it exactly that you heard?” I asked.

“I know that you were in contention to be appointed as Spectrum’s advertising agency. People thought highly of you. You learned how Spectrum works. You understand the markets the company operates in. From what I understand Carpe Diem came up with some very innovative and creative ideas.”

“If you know all that, you must also be aware that the account went to KCM,” I pointed out.

“Of course. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“So why are you here exactly?” I asked.

“As I said, I want to hire you. I need your talents, Mr. Weston. And I have something which you need. Your company is in financial difficulty. I can help you.”

“This has something to do with the program you’ve been working on?” I guessed.

“Of course. Spectrum are planning to launch their program in three months’ time. But this was my idea, Mr. Weston, and my version is far superior to the one Morgan now owns. I want you to manage its marketing and distribution.”

Every time he breathed his chest sounded like an old bellows, and occasionally he’d break into a paroxysm of coughing that creased his face in pain. Now he slumped in his seat. He looked drained. As he’d talked I had begun to experience a sinking feeling in my gut as I saw that Spectrum Software had been a far bigger opportunity than I had ever imagined. If all of this was true, Morgan intended to invest millions of dollars advertising this new program. Tens of millions. Even as I absorbed this Hoffman was watching me, waiting for a response. I hardly knew how to begin to tell him the commercial realities of life.

“Mr. Hoffman, let’s assume for the moment that your program is superior to the one that Spectrum is planning to launch.”

“Morgan,” he corrected. “Morgan Industries owns the company. Nelson Morgan is putting up the money. And it isn’t just superior, my program makes his out of date before it even goes on sale. I may be sick, and I may have wasted my talent, but I do have talent, Mr. Weston. If Morgan hadn’t cheated me, if I hadn’t begun drinking, I could have done great things with my life. Even he would agree that I am very, very good at what I do.”

“Okay,” I agreed to placate him. “I have no reason to doubt that what you’re saying is true. But the point is that having the better product isn’t always what it’s about. Letting people know about it, and persuading them to buy it costs a lot of money. There’s packaging, distribution, administration sales, billing. You’re talking about a company infrastructure, which Morgan has with Spectrum, and which you don’t, unless I’m mistaken. That costs millions of dollars. And that’s before you even consider marketing.”

I broke off with my crash course in business, because it was clear from his expression of bemused impatience that it wasn’t needed. “But then you know all this already don’t you.”