“Google …” Black sighed. “That comparison is getting so tired.”
“Why?” Catherine Bianchi demanded. “Because they’re not in the red?”
The two young men stayed silent.
“You’re buying yourselves Ferraris on dream dust,” she went on. “I talked to an analyst buddy. He told me you’re four, six quarters away from reporting anything close to a real profit. And even that’s just speculation.”
“Analysts …” Jonah mumbled, and scratched his head.
Black cleared his throat, like someone starting a lecture. “You can’t apply old-world economics to what we do. You can’t gauge our value on a spreadsheet. Those days are past. Those people are past.”
She wasn’t budging. “Even in the new world, you have shareholders, Tom. They’ll still want to recoup their investment at some point, and after the last crash, they know they can’t do that out of thin air.”
Peroni realised he was starting to like Catherine Bianchi a lot. She hadn’t mentioned a word of this before they went in.
“That’s your real fiduciary duty,” she persisted. “To the people who own your stock. That’s your legal duty. Unless you think the law’s just so …” She waved her hands, did a woozy hippie look. “… like twentieth century, man.”
“Your analyst buddy tell you anything else?” Jonah asked.
She walked up and stood very close to him. “He said there’s a bunch of shareholders looking at a class action right now. Seems they didn’t know about you investing their money in a movie. They claim it was unapproved and illegal to cut a deal like that from the funds you were raising to develop Lukatmi. When that lawsuit lands on your desk, your stock could go forty, sixty … maybe two hundred percent south. If that happens, anyone could stroll through the door and pick you up for a song. You’re walking a tightrope and I think you’re hoping Inferno will keep you upright. Maybe it will. Maybe not.”
Josh Jonah pointed to the exit. “You can walk there or I can get someone to walk you.”
With that he turned on his heel, and Tom Black, stuttering apologies, did the same. They watched the two men return to their gigantic executive fish tank overlooking the Bay.
The geek who’d been eating the pond weed sandwich showed them to the door without saying a single word. The day was a little warmer when they got outside.
“So that’s why you made captain,” Peroni declared, and shook Catherine’s hand.
Falcone was beaming like a teenager in love. “It’s nearly two. Time for a late lunch,” he announced. “Somewhere good. Fish, I think. Perhaps even a glass of wine. Then I have to call Nic.”
“That would be nice, Leo. But I have a police station to run.”
“Dinner then.”
She looked at him. Then she said, “You can be very importunate sometimes.”
Peroni watched in awe as the merest shadow of a blush rose on Falcone’s cheeks.
“It was just an idea. I’m on my own. You …”
“I have a million friends, some of whom think they’re more than that.” She wrinkled her nose. “OK—you’re on for dinner. But you behave. No wandering around SoMa. No getting near Martin Vogel. That’s the deal. Gerald Kelly is a good guy. He might do you a favour one day. If you don’t jerk his chain again. Agreed?”
“That’s the deal,” the inspector replied with a little too much enthusiasm, then glanced back at the Lukatmi building, with its vast multiarmed logo over the hall. “They’re desperate, aren’t they?”
“They’re a couple of naive kids drowning in so much money they can’t count it. They don’t know what’s around the corner. Of course they’re desperate. It doesn’t mean …”
She reached into her handbag and took out a band. Then she fastened back her hair. Catherine Bianchi looked more serious, more businesslike, that way. It was her office look, the signal that she was preparing to go back into the Greenwich Street Police Station and get on with the job.
“My dad worked in a repair shop. He taught me that mechanics matter. A lot sometimes. Arranging for Allan Prime to be abducted. Getting all that equipment into that little gallery where he died. Sure, these two geeks could point a camera in his face and put it on the web. But the physical part … finding that penniless actor and getting him to threaten Maggie in the park. Coming at her again here with a poisoned apple. I don’t see it, somehow.”
“Jonah could do it,” Peroni suggested.
“He’d like to think so. But then, he’d like to think he could run