Chapter 15. Conversion
Once betrayed, Judith struggled every morning to find a reason.
Along with the stress of getting Talbot to enter into the contract, the new information about Lucas Perth overwhelmed her, and the money would soon be transferred into her Grams account, where she was expected to distribute amounts accordingly as construction began on the restaurants. The initial deposit would be thirty million dollars. One week later, she would receive another two hundred million.
The avenues she needed for expatriating and repatriating the money were already in place. The usual gambit, arranged by Lucas, had never failed before, but for such a large amount of money, the critical path for liquidation required an extra layer of complexity. The method she planned to use was a technique popular in real estate circles for avoiding taxes. For this she had dummy accounts in Dubai, Montevideo, Tokyo, and Geneva. She knew that the money would be tracked down, regardless of her movements, but the Broker would move the money to a final resting place. She only needed to get the bulk of the money into an account in Geneva. By the time it reached his account, her percentage would already be withdrawn and volleyed between the United States and Uruguay via falsified gambling winnings. Using temporary casino accounts, she could liquefy the money instantaneously by receiving the money in gambling chips. Once drawing the chips, she would spend one sleepless night at the hotel guarding the chips, and then in the morning, she would cash out. The money could then be repatriated into other accounts. That would be her jackpot and lucky day. The post 9-11 security measures tightened the loopholes, but still left a few needle-eyes through which to pass money. The original plan was to wash her hands of the life and retire to an unsoiled, island paradise in the Maldives.
The idea of a happy ending did not console Judith, not now that she knew that the son of Marcus Jovan had used her for personal revenge. She began reconsidering her role in the game. After listening to the sickening story told by Agent Pazzo about the kidnapped scientists, she lost her stomach for the cause. She did not believe that Talbot did the kidnappings, but she also did not know who to trust. Questions, like weeds, permeated her thinking on the cause. She underwent a deconstruction of priorities.
Other than Lucas, another catalyst for her waffling about the plan came from a senseless act of kindness. The morning after the signing of contracts, the owners of The Raclette delivered breakfast-in-bed to Judith's hotel room. They came in with red balloons and each one of the owners congratulated and thanked her for making their dreams come true. At six o'clock, before she had showered, these ten Yoopers filled her room with bright smiles. These good-hearted people made it difficult for her to take their dream away, although she knew that it wouldn't be their money she was robbing. Still, it was their credentials she would rob, their respect, and their trust in others. One at a time, she looked at their faces and absorbed the hope of their small company.
"We rushed the pancakes over. They get cold so fast."
Judith nodded, "Thank you. This is absolutely wonderful." She beamed at the owners, marveled at them. The act was not a small thing, it was nearly incredible, simply that someone still took the time, paused in their rush to surprise a friend and make a day memorable for something beyond the self.
The previous day's newspaper was still on the bed, next to Judith. The last thing she saw before falling asleep was the face of Lucas Perth. When she looked down at the mussed pages, she saw the Marketplace section once again, and felt like she stood in a doorway like a statue of Janus, between two worlds. In one direction, she could see a wealthy, solitary life on the run from the law. In the other direction, she saw the restaurant, hard work and earned rewards, backyards and conversation, Sunday gatherings, laughter, and golden years with friends to share all the joy and pain with until the end.
If she stole the money, she would be running until the end of her life - and then there was always the possibly of being arrested for previous crimes committed. Some of the past jobs she considered necessary crimes, but nevertheless, those acts would follow her long after she had gone mainstream, just like Sarah Jane Olson of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the infamous robber-bomber turned soccer-mom.
Later that day, Judith flew to Chicago and completed the first transfer of funds at the Chase Tower along with the Talbot bankers. Suddenly she had thirty million dollars - the amount allocated for the construction of the first restaurants. The backhoes and bulldozers had already started digging the foundations. The bricks and mortar rolled down the interstate highways on flatbed trucks. The networking and imaging wizards of Holographix International began building custom hologram-enabled tables for the Raclette. In five cities that first morning, signatures stained paper and were followed by invoices exchanging hands. Work orders were delivered to union laborers. Uniform orders processed at the warehouse. Deliveries of flatware options came in by FedEx. Many small businesses waited for the trickle to begin from the money dammed in Judith's procurement account.
She needed to talk to Isaac. Outside of the Chase Tower, she found a phone booth and dialed his cell.
"I need to talk about something important. Are you in the lab?"
Isaac answered, "Yes sir, he is here. Would you like to speak to him?"
"Can you call me back?"
"Absolutely. I'll just take a message and give it to him."
Judith laughed. "It's good to hear your voice."
"Ok. Thank you."
While she waited for him to call back, she walked the streets of Chicago, passing under the shadows in the downtown canyons of steel and glass. A man walked by her so fast that his tie blew over his shoulder. A group of business people rushed down the sidewalk, downing coffee as they moved.
Her phone vibrated in her hand.
"Isaac. I need to know everything that you know."
"Over the phone?"
"You don't have to be vague, just tell me," Judith said.
"Since when?"
"Since now! I'm losing the objective."
"After all this work?" Isaac laughed. "You had better not. We are poised."
"We are poisoned!"
"What?"
"Did the Broker speak about Talbot?"
"It's all about Talbot. And after they fall-down go-boom, then Pelius does the same."
Judith said, "I don't think so."
"How in the hell would you know? The Broker knows what he's doing. I saw it in his face."
"So did I, Isaac. He's not Lucas Perth." She paused. "He's Marcus Jovan's son."
"What? You know what, I don't care who he is," Isaac said, "Listen to me, Judith. After all the years you wanted this, you want me to quit now? Have you lost your mind?" Isaac laughed. "No, I'm on board, right to the end. I didn't work this hard, attend a million meetings and smile like a mannequin for my entire career just to back out now and fall in line. You're getting sucked into the mainstream."
"But we were lied to!"
"For God's sake, Judith, you're the one that talked me into all of this. From the start. I'm ready for it all to come together. I'll go down in a blaze just to get the point across." He paused, "I am standing here like a freak, with a USB port hanging out of my arm. I'm destroying my mind for this Block. This lab is a Blocker's dream. Marshall Ploof and Spiro Ling have no compunction. They are practically doing the job for us..."
Judith listened with pursed lips. "I understand that you don't want to stop, Isaac. You're right. But we need to find a way out before Lucas ruins us. Think about it. He's used us for everything. Everything! We're like his...whores."
"Well who isn't a whore?" Isaac said and then paused. "This project will make us all whores. We are creating a memetic implant for the brain, Judith."
She was stunned. "What?"
"It's done and it works and I intend to
see it through to the end. But we can run a Block. Damn, I need more time to think," he said, sighing. "I'm fried. I'm fragged, Judith. Just watch for the press release. It should be coming out today or tomorrow. I'll leave a message for you on the IRC."
"Ok. Will the product affect Talbot?"
"Not really. It will make Pelius a lot of money. They are planning a public unveiling for this thing. The more I think about it, this could be the greatest Block we've ever done, but that's not the Broker's plan. Look, I gotta hang up. I can see Lucas at the end of the hall. Talk to you later."
"Isaac!"
"You just get the money."
"I already have it. Isaac, think about it. We've been betrayed. We need to act."
Isaac ignored her. "Your role is key, Judith. The way Lucas talks, what you are doing is the most important task of all."
"I don't care what he says. Listen..."
"Talk to you later."
"Think about it, Isaac!"
The conversation ended abruptly. Judith put her hand on her forehead and stood on the street without a plan for what to do next.
A vagrant approached Judith when she hung up the phone. He was a short man who looked like the product of years of malnutrition and bad decisions, with a loose jaw and hardly a tooth left in his mouth.
He asked, "Do you have any part of one dollar and thirty-five cents? I need to catch a bus."
She fished in her pocket for loose change but came up holding nothing but lint.
"Sorry."
As the vagrant moved on, she said quietly, "All I have is millions."
The week passed and Judith became the centerpiece in a busy office, making calls, settling issues between The Raclette owners and various vendors, and confirming payments to creditors. Some payments would have to be made, at least in the first week.
On the following Monday morning, she returned to Chicago to receive the bigger transfer - the two hundred million dollar lump. After the money transferred, she spent the remainder of the day at Talbot.
Marcus Jovan invited her into his office for a morning one-on-one. She walked past an array of executive assistants to get to his door, where she found him seated at a large desk that made him look small, as small as the vagrant on the street. His face looked whiter than when she met him at The Raclette.
"Julia," he said, opening his arms to grasp her hands, "so good to see you again."
"You too, Mr. Jovan."
"How did this morning go? Did the money get pushed over?"
"It required a cart to move it."
"I bet." He chuckled quietly. "More like a pallet-jack."
"Yes sir."
He got up from his chair and came around the desk. With a subtle grunt, he sat down on the front corner of his desk. He said, "I'm glad the money got to you in time. Another few days, and we might have had to keep it for ourselves."
Judith turned her head sideways. "I don't understand."
"Talbot is taking hits from everywhere. I don't want to scare you, or you might think you are doing business with a bunch of rats. But we just got slapped with nearly a dozen lawsuits."
"Over what?"
"Everything. You name it. Someone is trying to smear the Talbot logo. Unfortunately, it's working. And I'm too old for this racket, so I'm stepping down. This is my final year."
Judith cleared her throat. "Stepping down? Now? But so much is going on."
"So much is going out, too. My knees, my back, my mind."
"I doubt it."
"I'm going to gracefully exit before things get worse. My only regret is not knowing why some people hate us, hate Talbot so much. It's like we've done nothing for this city, for this country, for anyone. If the mood was different, I'd work for peanuts. It's never been about the money for me. Even in the beginning, it was about progress in science. Medicine. It was about improving lives - to me anyway, that's what it was about. Now you try to distribute a drug to Africa and they accuse you of finding guinea pigs. You don't distribute it, and they call you greedy."
Judith picked at the arm of the chair. "So what will you do now?"
"I'm going to work in hospice care as a volunteer."
"Hospice?"
Jovan smirked. "You act like it's a dirty word."
"No. It's just surprising."
"That way I can scout out different facilities before I need to check in myself." He smiled at Judith but she didn't return the gesture. "Ah, I never was a good joker." He adjusted his position on the desk. "It's challenging work, consoling the inconsolable, but that's been my plan all along, more or less. Well, almost. I also planned on handing the company over to my son, but...that's not likely to happen."
"What's his name?"
"Jude. Named after the Beatles' song." He sang a line. "Take a sad song, and make it better." His voice trailed off and his white face turned briefly pink.
Judith smiled. "Do you know where he is?"
"No. I don't think I'll ever find out. I ran him off."
"Ran him off?"
Jovan sighed. "I made a mistake, Julia." He turned his head away. "A big one." He paused. "I can't talk about that subject. I apologize for bringing it up."
"I'm sorry." She wanted to tell him where he could find his son, but couldn't open her mouth, not before she finished sifting through her own questions. They sat talking for thirty minutes and by the end she appreciated and admired Marcus Jovan's life and career. This man, she decided, did not deserve to be robbed. The hurt showed in his face. He'd had enough in this life and didn't deserve another cheap shot. The whiteness of his face, the wrinkles, the scraggly eyebrows, the divots and spots - all of his features reminded her of an old maple tree that grew in the park near her childhood home in Cincinnati, where a troupe of Boy Scouts sapped it for a month every spring, jabbing twenty spigots in the trunk and filling pails until it dried out. She wondered how many feeders drained Marcus Jovan, how many times he stood strong through highs and lows, recessions and bull markets, lean and roaring times, and what a treasure of knowledge he must have gained - and lost - in the process of living.
Judith took a late lunch break in the Talbot cafeteria, where she searched online for a press release containing the words "implant" and "memetic" but found nothing. Eventually she went to the Pelius website and discovered a headline that described what Isaac had mentioned.
A bold font shouted: "Pelius Maps the Brain: The New Network Revolution."
In the cafeteria, hunched over her bowl of soup and her laptop, she read the story carefully. The article hyped the new discovery, promising everything but utopia. She did another search for the press release and discovered that the major news outlets did not take long to start hyping it as well, meaning that Pelius meant to make this exhibition a major event. CNN quoted an insider who compared the find to the Manhattan Project, only more useful. Fox News lauded Pelius with praises for their ingenuity, calling them the saviors of the domestic economy. Stock analysts and tech gurus started discussing the product, but one thing was clear to Judith: no one knew what the product did, and no one knew what it was. Not one site mentioned an actual product, but it was clear who would get the glory. One name stood out in every article. The genius behind the design was not Spiro Ling, but Marshall Ploof.
Engrossed in the news, she didn't look up when a portly man sat down across from her. Even after he spoke, it took a moment for her to break away from the screen.
"Sorry to interrupt."
It was Robert Lopez, in front of a full plate of roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy. She hadn't contacted him for some time, and therefore she quickly reeled through the rolodex in her head to recall their last contact.
She pointed at his
plate. "No carrots? No peas?"
"None." He took a bite.
"Not even a strawberry or a grape?"
"My vegetable is the potato."
"Ah. And to drink?"
"Chocolate milk."
She shrugged and put her chin on her shoulder. "What the hell - why not?" She reached across the table and touched his arm. "How have you been, Robert?"
"Better. I've been better."
Judith pushed aside her soup. "What's wrong?"
"Any reason you stopped calling and emailing?"
"Oh, I've been so busy, Robert."
He wiped his mouth. "That's what I hear. You're into restaurants now. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone what you're really up to."
She flexed her toes against the soles of her shoes. "What do you mean by that?"
Sawing with his knife and fork, he cut the roast beef, and smiled at her.
She scoffed in disbelief and laughed. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm not a complete idiot, Julia."
"I never said you were." She looked around. "Are you ok, Robert?" She laughed again. "Or are you losing it?"
"Bingo."
"Ok." She paused and leaned forward on the table. "Is there something you want to ask me?"
He pointed his knife at her laptop. "Reading anything interesting?"
"Yeah, actually. Something about Pelius and a new invention. Your old partner, too. Marshall Ploof..."
"Miscreant." Robert took a bite of meat and inhaled loudly while he chewed. "His paws are all over this."
Judith suddenly felt afraid of Robert and listened in stillness. His hatred for Marshall Ploof had clearly worsened. Now fully inflamed with ire, unkempt, and bloated, Robert looked like a ripe boil ready to explode.
"The whole thing was Spiro Ling's idea, and now Ploof is going to win a Nobel Prize for it. You watch. I know he will. His name is splattered across every news channel right now. Something needs to be done to stop it. Something."
"Like what?"
He spoke with his mouth full. "Like your little book. You and Isaac preached to me a hundred times about ethics, told me about the Blocker book. That's why you are here, isn't it? By the way, Julia, I found out that you never even worked at Talbot."
"What? Of course I did."
Robert slapped his fork at his plate and then pointed it at Judith. "Don't you lie to me. I've been here long enough to know people in HR and payroll. You never worked here."
"I'm sorry if you don't think so."
While he was worked up, he breathed hard and sweat formed on his forehead. His angry expression turned into a wry smile. He continued eating. Judith looked at him and saw a monster, one that she had created.
"Don't worry," he said, "I've got this one. I'll fix it." His tone became sarcastic. "For the cause."
"The cause?"
Robert looked down at his plate and continued eating.
She said, "Robert, what cause? What are you going to do?"
He looked at her. "Something. It's what you want anyway. You're the one that recruited me." He got up to leave.
When he was turned halfway, Judith reached across the table and grabbed a pocket on his jeans. "Robert, stay. Please!"
He stopped and looked down at Judith.
"Rachel left me," he said. "She took the kids to her mother's house."
Judith said, "I'm sorry."
"No you're not."
"Still, I'm sorry about everything."
"I'm not sorry," Robert said. "I'm angry. Angry about everything."
"You don't have to be..."
"Shut up, Julia. Without my family, I have nothing to lose, physically or spiritually. I no longer belong to anything. My work means nothing to me, and I was a pawn even to you. I rejected my father's religion a long time ago, and I don't want to find it now. I believed that through science I would come to possess freedom, but I now know that it is an impossible possession."
"Robert. Let's talk."
"No, Julia. No. I have exiled myself from everything I once loved, and I have nothing to lose. All I have to be is close."
He looked down at Judith one last time and then walked away, toward the tray return counter. She yelled after him, "Robert, you call me if you need help. For anything." She sat quietly at the table, trying to make sense of his last statement.
Once Robert was gone, she looked at the updated headlines on her laptop. The top story regarded Pelius. A second press release came out.
Pelius to demo new product this Friday.
Her appetite disappeared and she pushed the bowl of soup away. She picked up her cell phone and dialed one of the owners of The Raclette at the office in Sault Sainte Marie.
"Sorry to bother you," Judith said, "but I want to take a look at one of the construction sites. In San Francisco."
"You could just go to the site in Chicago."
"No. The San Francisco one has different specs and I want to meet with the contractor. I'll need Thursday and Friday to get a good look."
"That sounds great, Julia. Do you need any company?"
"Not this time."