Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs (26 page)

“I’d rather just kill Zack. Seriously. You sure we can’t do that?”

“I know it’s a lot to digest,” he says. “Think about it. Just don’t think too long.” He hands me a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it. “That’s someone you should see. He’s a plastic surgeon in Scottsdale. He’s the one that did Princess Diana.”

“But she’s . . .”

“No. Not dead.” He shakes his head. “Living with Dodi Al-Fayed in Qatar. This guy did Ken Lay too. Same thing. He’s in the South Pacific someplace, banging Polynesian girls. Living the

good life. The heart attack was staged.”

“No way.”

“Why do you think they cremated the body? You remember who went to his funeral? Bush Forty-One and James Baker.”

“You’re messing with my head.”

“It’ll cost you a fortune. But it will keep you from going to jail. And if everything blows over, who knows? Maybe you can come back.”

“I thought you told me the company was going to protect me. You said you had no choice. They couldn’t survive without me.”

“I did say that. It’s true. They can’t survive without you. But I don’t see any way around it. Either you go to jail, or you fake your death and flee the country. Either way the stock gets killed. In which case you might as well save your own ass, don’t you think? Right now my biggest concern is taking care of you.”

“I still can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“We’re not,” he says. “Remember? By the way, this guy in Scottsdale also did Sam Palmisano from IBM.”

“Sam’s not dead. He visited Apple six months ago. He thought the iMacs were flat-panel TVs.”

“That didn’t tip you off?”

“I figured, Hey, he’s from IBM. What does he know about computers?”

“The real Sam died a year ago. Heart attack, at home, in bed. They didn’t have a successor. So they created a Fake Sam. Gives them time to do a search for the next CEO. Soon as they find someone, Fake Sam gets the boot.”

He opens the car door. Nearby, on the front lawn, Bobby D. is talking to an incredibly attractive bag lady who I would guess is some kind of PR flack. Something about the vacant look in her eyes, the fake smile. They all look like this. I think they go to a school someplace to learn how to do that smile.

Tom whistles. Bobby looks over and holds up one finger, as if to say, Just a minute.

“Guy never stops chasing pussy,” Tom says. “It’s his one weakness.” He glances at my layers of pants and sweaters. “Nice outfit, by the way. First step toward your new identity. I like it.”

Back inside the party, Mrs. Jobs is looking worried.

“It’s nothing,” I tell her. “No big deal.”

She just looks at me. We’ve been married way too long for me to get away with whoppers like that.

“I’m not going to move,”
Mrs. Jobs says. “I’m not going to change my identity and have plastic surgery and get a new pass
port and go live in hiding. I’m sorry. I’m just not.”

We’re sitting in the kitchen, eating kiwi fruit for breakfast. I’ve been eating nothing but kiwi fruit for seven days and I feel amazing.

“We could go to Bali,” I say.

“I’ve been to Bali. There’s bugs.”

“There’s bugs everywhere.”

“Well I don’t need to live in Bali. I can go back to Bali anytime I want. I can go anywhere I want to go. But I’m not going to move. I love the Bay Area. It’s the most beautiful, perfect, holistic, organic, self-righteous place on the entire planet. And the weather is sooo amazing. No. I won’t move.”

“We could live on a boat. We could travel the world.”

“Why don’t
you
go live on a boat. Go live on the moon.”

Fair enough. She’s angry. She says I must be guilty because if I were innocent I would stay and fight the charges and clear my name. I’ve told her it’s not like that. The reality, I’ve told her, is that our government has been hijacked by fascists, and they’ve decided to target entrepreneurs and wealthy people.

“It’s the same thing the Russians did in Czechoslovakia,” I tell her.

“Honey,” she says, “what you don’t know about Czechoslovakia could fill volumes. Anyway, I talked to Nancy Johnson.

Zack told her what you guys did. You cooked the books.”

“We did not cook the books. That is an absolute lie.”

“Well that’s what Nancy says.”

“And you believe her? Did Nancy also tell you that she eats meat? Did she tell you that? It’s true. She sends away on the Internet for those Omaha steaks. She cooks them when she’s alone, when there’s no one around. Zack caught her doing it.”

“Look,” Mrs. Jobs says, “I’m not moving to Bali. I’m not going to live on a boat like some fugitive. If you want to go, go.”

Obviously things are not going well. Nevertheless I agree to meet with the CIA guy that Tom Bowditch recommended. We do this at the Garden Court, in the penthouse, which the guy has reserved under the name “Reinhardt.”

We set the meeting for midnight, and I park down the street, hoping to avoid being seen. I enter through a side door, wearing a bulky coat and a baseball cap—and I’m spotted right away, as soon as I walk into the lobby.

“Good evening, Mr. Jobs!” beams one of the well-scrubbed kids whose job, it seems, is simply to hang around in the lobby and find ways to be annoying. This one, whose badge declares that his name is brad, and that he hails from san francisco, ca, holds the elevator door open for me and even offers to push the buttons for me. I assure him I can do this myself.

The elevator opens into a small foyer, opposite a door. I ring the bell. My host is about sixty, lean and tall, with gray hair cut short and the kind of anonymous, generically handsome face you see on Lands’ End catalog models. Khakis, button down shirt, navy blazer. East Coast accent. Extremely formal. Offers me a drink. I take a bottle of water. He’s having Scotch.

He introduces himself as Matt. Matt the part-time spy and part-time male model, I think. I assume that Matt is not this guy’s real name. He doesn’t mention credentials, and to be sure, Tom hasn’t said explicitly that this guy is with the CIA, but I figure that must be where he’s from. There’s no small talk, no chit-chat, no discussion of my circumstances. The television is turned on and tuned to a Lakers game, with the volume turned up high—a precaution, I suppose.

“It’s good we’re talking now,” he says, as we sit down across from each other in leather chairs. “Because as you can probably imagine, the sort of arrangement you’re looking for can take a bit of time to set up. It’s also expensive.”

“How much?”

“If you have to ask, don’t bother. This is last resort kind of stuff.”

“Just give me a number.”

“Five hundred million at the low end. Triple that is more likely in your case. More depending on how many family members are involved. Before you complain, remember what you’re asking for. Remember what happens to anyone who gets caught helping you.”

I suggest to him that it really would be much easier and much less expensive simply to have certain key people, for example Zack Johnson, terminated.

“Terminated?” He acts as if he doesn’t understand.

“Terminated,” I say, “with extreme prejudice.”

He sits for a moment. “We don’t do stuff like that,” he says, and gives me this look that lets me know I’m lower than whale shit for even mentioning it. “Anyway, from what I understand about your situation, terminating people isn’t going to solve your problem. There are records. Paper documents. Material on hard drives and tape backup systems.”

I suggest that we could start a fire. We could burn down the Apple campus. “We’ve got insurance.”

He tells me he’s sorry but this is not the conversation he came here to have. The conversation he is here to have involves the ins and outs of how I disappear without leaving a trace. Easiest thing is to go on vacation and stage my own death. Heart attack works best. Accidental drowning isn’t bad either, he says. Taking the family is an option, but it will cost me.

He goes on for a while, like a travel agent pitching destinations and package deals, explaining things about passports and paperwork, transportation and housing, front companies and private jets.

“So,” he says, wrapping up, “lots to think about, right?”

“You might say that.”

“You know how to reach me,” he says, and shows me to the door.

The whole meeting takes less than half an hour.

“What’d I tell you?”
Larry says. “It’s a government shakedown, plain and simple. Either they make you pay a fine, or they charge you up the ass to get you out of the country. Either way, the fuckers in the government get paid. Bottom line is, you’ve got money, and the government wants it.”

Strictly speaking I’m not supposed to tell anyone about the meeting with Matt. But I need to talk to someone and Larry is the closest thing I’ve got to a friend. It’s two in the morning and I’m at his Zen palace. I knew he’d be awake. Larry’s like a vampire. He stays up all night and goes to bed at dawn. He sleeps in an oxygen-enriched room, which he claims gives him as much rest in four hours as a normal person gets in eight.

We’re sitting in his home theater. When I arrived he was watching
9
¹
⁄
2
Weeks
with his girlfriend. Now he’s sent her away but the movie is still playing, with the sound off. Kim Basinger is crawling around on her hands and knees.

Larry says he’s surprised that they won’t even consider killing Zack. He offers to make a few calls for me on this. I shake my head. He passes me the bong. He’s smoking this incredible red bud dipped in hash oil.

“Look,” he says, “before you go all weird and radical and start thinking about disappearing off the face of the earth, have you at least considered meeting with Doyle?”

“I’m having urinal cakes made up with Doyle’s face on them. Did I tell you that? I found a place in San Leandro that makes them.”

“Go talk to him. See what he’ll settle for.”

“The guy wants my head on a plate.”

“Correction. The guy wants to be governor. So give him what he wants. Let him win. Let him be the big hero who brought Steve Jobs to justice. Admit you’re a bad guy, take your punishment, pay your fine. Do some community service, pretend to be sorry. What do you care? If you’re smart you can turn it into a publicity stunt and end up coming out of it better than you went in. Plead guilty, pay a fine, go back to running your company. Fuckface can go run for governor and get his ass kicked by Arnold. I guarantee you the whole thing will cost a lot less than a billion dollars. I mean, what’s at stake here? How much are they saying you made on these options? Twenty million bucks? So pay triple damages, sixty million, and throw in forty more as a tip for Attorney Shithead, and you’re talking a hundred million. You can find that in the cushions of your couch.”

“Uh huh.” I’m kind of distracted by the weed. Or maybe by watching Kim Basinger with no clothes on. I’d forgotten how hot Kim Basinger used to be. I’m trying to remember if I dated her. I think I might have.

“One thing I do know,” Larry says, “is that no way could you go live on an island and not do any work. You’d go nuts. Hey.” He snaps his fingers in front of my face. “You there? Can you hear me?”

It takes me a long time to formulate a response.

“Dude,” I say, “this stuff is amazing.”

This time when we visit
the U.S. Attorney’s office we go straight to the conference room. This time it’s just Doyle and Poon versus Bobby and me. No assistants.

“So you wanted to talk,” Doyle says.

“No bagels this time?” I say. “No small talk?”

He gives me a tight smile. Bobby DiMarco has told me in advance to let him do all the talking, especially because last time I managed to antagonize Doyle and Poon so much that they almost refused to take this meeting. But then Bobby starts talking and he’s just blabbering on, going mwah mwah mwah about about certain inducements and opportunities and risk assessments and benefits versus costs, and then Doyle starts doing the same thing back, and it must be some kind of lawyer-speak because they both really seem to be getting off on it.

Finally I just can’t take it anymore and I go, “Look, can we please just speak English? This is very simple. All I want to do is work. It’s the only thing that makes me happy. I don’t care about money. This problem that I’m having with you idiots is a distraction. I just want to make it go away. I don’t want to have to see you again. Okay? Nothing personal. But I’m busy. All I want to know is how much it will cost to make that happen.”

Doyle says it’s really not as simple as just walking in here and buying my way out of trouble.

“It’s not like paying a traffic ticket,” Poon says.

“Sure it is, Poontang. And here’s an offer. Whatever profits you frigtards think I made that were inappropriate, I’ll give them back. Plus I’ll pay a fine of one hundred million dollars. I’ll admit wrongdoing. I’ll do community service.”

“Wait, wait!” Bobby’s in a panic. He turns to Doyle. “We’re off the record, right? That’s not an official offer.”

“It
is
official,” I say. “I’m sick of this shit.”

Doyle sits there smiling. I guess he’s amused to see DiMarco unable to control his client.

“So?” I say.

Doyle says he appreciates my candor, and he’s glad that I’ve admitted to doing something wrong, but as he said before, this isn’t a problem that I can make go away by paying a fine.

“We’ve been talking with Zack Johnson,” Poon says. “We believe there may be more to this case than we realized. We’re convening a grand jury.”

I ask them how much money they think I could have made that I shouldn’t have made. They both say they have no idea.

“If you have no idea,” I say, “then what are you hassling me for? It’s like arresting me for stealing a car, but saying you don’t know which car I stole. Like, you’ll figure that out later, after you’ve got me convicted.”

“We’re not going to get pushed into settling on a number,” Poon says.

“Well, let me help you. My team figures it’s about twenty million,” I say. “I’ve offered to pay a fine that’s five times that amount.”

“And as we told you,” Doyle says, “it’s not that simple.”

“So how about this. How about I pay a fine of one billion dollars?”

Bobby gasps.

“You can’t just buy your way out of trouble,” Doyle says.

“He’s right,” Bobby says. “And there’s no way you’re giving away a billion dollars.”

I don’t even look at Bobby. I’m staring at Doyle.

“A billion dollars. The offer is on the table. Biggest settlement ever made by any government agency. I’ll do it right now. We shake hands and we bury this thing.”

Doyle takes a deep breath, and shifts in his chair. He looks at Bobby.