The Board is a crime thriller that brings Corporate America and the Irish Mob together in one fast-paced, darkly humorous, suspenseful romp. This story is raw and energetic and doesn't let up. We like to describe it as Wall Street meets The Departed.
Here are the first two chapters (still in beta draft) of The Board. Coming soon to a bestseller list near you - and to the theaters in a few years!
(RATED R!)
One
My name is Nate Charles and
I’m very good at what I do.
At least
most of the time. Right now I’m sitting in the public garden, my favorite
lunchtime retreat, struggling to come up with a metric that tells the story I
want to tell so we can close out this project and cut the final invoice.
Here’s the
deal.
The client
has no additional capital, works with unstructured data, and half their staff
is feeding me shit information because they want my company to fail. The other
half wants to hire us.
Welcome to
the world of consulting.
I block out
the noise of the city while the flora all around me knocks out the stink. In my
mind all I can picture is a simple PowerPoint graph, the same slide everybody’s
seen not quite a billion times before they reach the age of thirty. I close my
eyes and try to clear my mind of the noise, of the distractions, of that
infrequent sinking feeling I get about my fiancée, of that one thought I’ve had
ever since I joined McAuliffe Consulting a very short seven years ago:
I want to be a member of the Board.
Nobody as
young as me has ever been appointed to the Board. But I’m on track. If I can
close two or three more major deals I’m in and I’ll have something to show for
all the seventy-hour weeks I’ve been putting in.
I take a
deep breath and remember the words of my boss and mentor, Lawrence.
It’s all in
how you tell the story. We can talk about volume or we can talk about spend, or
we can actually tell the truth, which is, the most value is in getting it right
up front before we consultants come in and charge hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
The
PowerPoint slide in my mind morphs into a new, dynamic graph.
And I
realize: what they need is a ratio.
I’ve got
it.
The ratio
tells the story.
This is
where the action is, the million synapses firing at the speed of light in the
grey matter filling the six inches between my ears. That grey matter helps me work in the grey area between truth and fact. What Lawrence calls the narrative. We all do this, every
day, all day. We all make up the story of our lives in a way that makes us
happy, or at least comfortable.
I like to
talk to myself too. “All we have to do is show them—”
“There the
fuck you are!”
The
beautiful graph I’ve got pictured perfectly in my mind dissolves and the garden
comes back into focus. Enter my boss, Lawrence Heller, well-dressed as always.
Lawrence is a member of the Board and just beginning to show his age in his
late thirties. All at once the city’s chorus of car horns, people, electricity,
and sound hit me full force.
I get up. “Afternoon,
Lawrence.”
“I’ve been
trying to get a hold of you.” Lawrence waves quickly, signaling me to hurry.
“Are you ready for the Board?”
I’m about
to say, yes, I’m ready to join the Board. But before I say that, I realize
Lawrence means something else entirely.
“Come on,
kid. Don’t tell me you’re not ready for the meeting,” Lawrence says.
“I was born
ready.” I smile. “What meeting?”
“I sent you
the invite.”
I check my
phone. No invite. “I don’t see it.”
Lawrence
feigns surprise. I know he’s feigning because he always does this. He’s great
at many things but God-awful when it comes to keeping his people in the loop.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t—I know I sent it—IT was supposed to fix—everybody’s been
complaining about Outlook not working. They really need to get on top of it.”
I keep
smiling, but inside I’m thinking that my Friday night has just gotten shot to
shit. I’ve been working my ass off the last month, barely seeing my fiancée.
She’s great, but lately there’s been a noticeable distance between us. Jessica
and I have reservations at a swanky joint downtown where I hope we can talk and
spend some quality time together. But I know this is a long shot. Jessica has
some interesting sexual habits, including quasi-public expositions.
You might
think that’s pretty cool. And it is. The first hundred times. But anymore it
seems like Jessica only cares about having more sex and more money.
With all
this going on, I want to call bullshit on Lawrence sending me the invite but I
can’t. He’s championing me for the Board, a position that would triple my
salary and set me up for life. He has a bad habit of dumping work on me last
minute. Smaller minds would complain but I prefer to see these situations as
opportunities. The more he needs me, the more I’m worth.
I leave the
garden and meet Lawrence on the sidewalk. It’s one o’clock and everybody is
hustling. Taxis redefine traffic lanes, and the air feels dirty and stale.
Lawrence
says, “You remember the St. John’s Healthcare presentation you put together?”
“We showed
them how to account for claims with micro-adjustments. It was a good one.”
“I fucking
loved it. But I had to completely change it.”
“Okay … so
what are we presenting to the Board?”
“Are you
listening? St. John’s Healthcare! I tweaked the slides and figured since you
were closer to the material, you’re in the best position to speak to it. And
it’s a great opportunity for you to get face-time with the Powers-That-Be.”
I motion
for Lawrence to follow. “I’m across the street.”
Lawrence
doesn’t follow. “Wait, are you still driving the convertible?”
Here we go.
“You’re not going to bust my balls with your theory about convertibles again,
are you?”
Lawrence
points at me. “Two guys should never be seen together in a convertible. It’s eh
… you know.”
“You mean
gay, right?”
Lawrence
pretends to be offended. “Did I say gay? I did not say gay.”
I smile
because we both know that’s what he meant.
Lawrence
raises a hand. “Taxi!”
Two
Lawrence has his phone to
his ear. “Tell Melanie and the Board we’ll be ready.”
So we’re in
the back of a taxi because Lawrence thinks two guys riding in a convertible is
a threat to his heterosexuality. But that’s not as annoying as the fact that
I’ll have to swing by here after work to get my car.
But you
know what? Lawrence Heller gave me my shot in consulting. Where I am at my best
and where I am meant to be. I remind myself of that every time he does
something that’s kind of dick. The guy could have picked a blue-blooded bastard
with familial or country club ties to the Board members, but he saw me and
decided to go with the diamond in the rough.
“Yes, have
the St. John’s deck ready.” Lawrence shoots me a look. “We’ll be putting on a show.”
Most of our
consultants went to Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford, you get the idea. Despite
my 1400 on the SATs, the Ivys wouldn’t touch me. Two things going against me: I
wasn’t from the right side of the tracks and I wasn’t a minority. Screwed
because I wasn’t the right kind of underprivileged.
Senior year
I decided to crash an entrepreneurial fair at another university. Lawrence was
there to recruit some four-point-oh, silver-spoon, stuck-up douchebag but
Lawrence was running late—classic Lawrence—and he missed the captain of the prep
squad’s presentation. Lawrence happened upon mine instead, a slide deck I put
together ten minutes before I left my dorm on innovations at start-ups.
He was
impressed.
I later
found out Lawrence had followed some co-ed into my presentation. If I could find
that girl today, I’d thank her a million times over. Courtesy of her bubble ass,
Lawrence stumbled into the right room at the right time and here I am, seven
years later.
Lawrence
demanded I take him to the local watering hole that night where he complimented
me on my gift for making shit up and sounding convincing, two important skills
that are all too often mutually exclusive, and he went on to wow me with
stories of consulting, bragging about all the money and women he’d scored as a
result.
A week
after I graduated (and sobered up), I was working for Lawrence. In seven years,
I’ve accumulated seventeen years’ worth of experience. My first project was
with an Internet start-up. Like most start-ups, the idea behind the company
sucked balls but we managed to bilk these geeks out of half a mill of their VC
seed money.
I picked up
database encryption on that gig and Lawrence turned right around and sold me as
a database encryption expert to his next client, another Internet start-up.
This company was going nowhere until I figured out how to tie data tables
together from totally different data warehouse systems.
From there
Lawrence sold me to an old school, brick and mortar, manure manufacturer that
was merging with a waste-water treatment company. I ran two teams of IT
programmers, 6 interns, and a bunch of lovely (and cheap) Indians that worked
on programming while the rest of us slept.
I quickly
learned that “yes” in Hydrabad English actually translated to: “I don’t have a
fucking clue.”
Soon enough
I was waking up at three in the morning to tear Patel, Patel, Patel, and Jeff
(don’t ask) a new one over Skype, then catching the mandatory quickie with
Jessica, then sleeping, then hitting the gym at five AM, then shit-shower-shave
and lickedy-split back to the client site by seven in the morning. I’m no IT
expert but I got their data merge done three weeks ahead of schedule and
McAuliffe reaped a nice little bonus.
In twenty-four
months I went from analyst, to consultant, to manager. I kept up the insane
pace and worked my ass off and here I am. Now a senior director.
A fucking
senior director.
“The St.
John deck!” Lawrence is yelling into his phone. “You know the one!”
I shoot
Jessica a quick text to give her a heads-up that I’ll be running late. Her
response comes through a minute later:
Tonight I want you to dress like the
FedEx guy.
The FedEx guy? Not a
FedEx guy? I’m instantly on alert at her choice of words. Is it normal to
wonder if your fiancée orders from QVC so she can bang the FedEx guy? Last
fucking thing I need right now is to worry about Jessica’s fidelity.
“Hey.”
Lawrence nudges me. “You got your thumb up your ass in your head in Idaho. Did
you hear a word of what I said?”
“I got it
all Lawrence.” I wink. “The Board wants to shop my St. John’s success story to
every hospital chain.”
“Whoa
there. St. John’s is my client and our job is not finished there yet. Not by a
fucking long shot.”
“Not finished?”
The cab stops
in front of our building. McAuliffe occupies the twentieth and twenty-first
floors of the skyrise. Lawrence hands the cabbie a fifty and tells him to keep
it. To Lawrence, money is as disposable as toilet paper.
“You got
shit in your ears?” Lawrence is walking so fast, other people have to dive out
of his way. He pulls open the door. “It’s not over.”
“But we
fixed that place.” I’m really confused. There’s nothing left to do. I
even got my genius but major fuck-up brother, John, a nice little gig there
where he earns but doesn’t have too much responsibility and isn’t required to
manage anybody.
“Whole new
ballgame, Nate. James and Vaughn want to push the software for seat fees and
licensing to St. John’s.”
“By
software, you mean that piece of shit, untested Parallax?”
From no
less than twenty yards from the bank of elevators, Lawrence in typical fashion
shouts, “Hold up!” We can’t even see if an elevator is open, but this is one of
Lawrence’s many endearing habits and describes him to a T. The world waits for
Lawrence.
We find a
pretty blonde-from-the-box holding the doors for us with pixie glasses and a
sharp suit. I’m expecting the stink-eye for Lawrence’s yelling to hold the
doors from such a great distance, but he flips her his sly grin and she kind of
bats her eyelashes and I know with certainty three things in this life: death,
taxes, and the fact that Lawrence will make a pass at this woman fifteen years
his junior.
“Thanks so
much,” he says, laying on the charm, invading her personal space so he can push
the button for the twenty-first floor. With his eyes still on her, he says,
“Nate, we need to hire more bright, pretty ladies, don’t we?”
“Wouldn’t
hurt.”
Even though
I’m a pretty good-looking guy and keep in great shape, she completely ignores
me. Lawrence is busy holding that lascivious grin and basically eye-fucking her
as the elevator climbs to twenty-one. We’ve got a meeting with the Board in a
few minutes but he acts like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Me, on the
other hand, I’m shitting kittens. Parallax, our latest software offering is a
complete and utter piece of shit. I can sell fleas to dogs, but even I can’t
sell this program.
We reach
twenty-one and Lawrence says his goodbyes to the blonde, slipping her his
business card and promising an interview if only she’ll call.
You’d think
the fact that the software is shit would be my biggest problem in trying to
sell it.
But it’s
not.
Nope.
The bigger
problem is, nobody can come out and say it’s shit.
If it were
possible to have an honest conversation about the merits (very few) and the
issues (very many) with Parallax, we could try to come up with a real solution
or, more likely, kill it and move on to something else.
But nothing in the
corporate world is that simple.
