FALSE PROFITS CHAPTER ONE I woke up with a twenty-pound dog wrapped around my head like an Easter bonnet. His name is Muldoon, my mother's West Highland white terrier. She bought him used from new parents with an allergic baby, so you can understand why the little guy has abandonment issues that only a shrink could sort out. Unfortunately, he'd decided that sharing my pillow was all the therapy he needed. And who could blame him? Sometimes it seems we spend half our lives finding that pillow, and the other half trying to recover after it's yanked out from under us. It was mid-November, on a Monday morning, golden with autumn sunlight. Muldoon and my mother were living with me in Zuma Beach, just north of Malibu, in one of the few beach cottages in the area that hadn't been replaced by a starter mansion. I inherited the place from my grandmother. It's not much, just a little brown shoebox on the sand, but I love it unconditionally. My mother's stay was temporary – just until the owner of her Los Angeles apartment building repaired some old earthquake damage. A week or two. She'd promised. But that was three months earlier, and despite the mother-daughter bonding opportunities, she and Muldoon were feeling less like visitors and more like squatters. It wasn't that I didn't like company in general, or my mother and Muldoon in particular, but I had my own psyche to worry about. I wasn't concerned just because, at age thirty, I'd already been divorced for two years. No, I'd managed to downplay the failure of my marriage, because my ex and I were still friendly. It was my career that concerned me more than anything else. For the past seven years, I'd been working in a downtown Los Angeles firm as a management consultant, a sort of business doctor handling everything from financial facelifts to red-ink bypasses. After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally being considered for a partnership in the firm, competing against two colleagues, both men. It was a make-or-break moment in my career: According to the law of the corporate jungle, the losers were expected to resign or fade into the wallpaper. Aames & Associates had been my first job out of business school, and the most stable thing in my life since my marriage had flatlined. I just wasn't prepared to flunk another of life's little tests. I wanted to stay with the firm as a partner, not as wallpaper. The problem was, I had less seniority than my two competitors, and I took more risks. That made people nervous. And for at least one voting partner with a festering Napoleon complex, I was, at five feet nine, simply too tall to be a partner. I wasn't a stranger to uncertainty, but the situation at work had left me feeling more vulnerable than at any time in my career. So when I heard Muldoon's stomach gurgling in my ear, it was another solemn reminder that I could still wake up on a warm bed every morning, or, if I wasn't careful, on a burlap sack in the garage. I was unsympathetic to the leg lifter's demands for more snooze time, because my hair smelled like the Green Room at the Westminster Kennel Club's dog show, and washing it would make me late for work. I rolled out of bed, showered, spritzed some lavender room deodorizer on my head, and put on a borderline prissy white blouse and a navy blue suit because looking corporate was important to my career right now. The skirt exposed a tad too much leg, but at least I'd never been criticized on that front. I completed the outfit with a pair of flat shoes, just for General Bonaparte. In less than two hours, I was scheduled to meet with my boss, Gordon Aames, founding partner of Aames & Associates, for one last interview before the promotions committee announced its final decision. My performance had to be flawless. I'd overcome a lot of obstacles to get to this crossroads, including a few flaky clients, a streak of stubborn independence, and a neurologist named Dr. Milton Polk. I'd first heard about a client named Polk in early August, after he sidestepped the customary chain of command at the firm. He'd called Gordon directly, dropped a couple of powerful names, and pushed his project to the head of the line. Polk was passionate about expanding his neurodiagnostic testing center. But expansion plans need more than passion. For starters, Polk needed money, and he wanted someone at Aames & Associates to give him the tools to raise it. He claimed that he'd already developed a group of potential investors through personal contacts and memberships in several medical organizations. Now he needed something in writing to convince them that his ideas were going to make them rich. Fortunately for him, our firm specializes in just that kind of writing. In reality, the business plan Polk wanted us to research and write wasn't difficult. It would have made a straightforward project for any ordinary consultant. However, when Polk whispered the names of those powerful people in Gordon Aames's ear, he got himself assigned not to an ordinary consultant but to a senior manager, and that senior manager turned out to be me, Tucker Sinclair. I don't care much for people like Polk, who throw their weight around, but I'd dealt with individuals like him before. The truth was, not all clients came to us with a clear understanding of business or a grasp of adult behavior. Anyway, I could hardly have said no to Gordon. With a partnership hanging in the balance, there was too much at stake. At the time, Polk seemed like the final barrier in my quest for the Holy Grail. So naturally, I called him immediately to set up a meeting. Polk suggested we get together for lunch at the Auberge, a restaurant in the trendy section of Melrose Avenue. The place reminded me of the cottage in the Alps where little Heidi idled away the days, yodeling and braiding her hair. I arrived early to make sure we got a good table, and found a gas fire hissing in the fireplace and the air conditioner cranked up to snow. In L.A., faux ambiance is everything, but give me a break – it was August, and that fire-air conditioner combo felt a little too bipolar for me. I asked for, and got us, a table on the patio. That was a mistake. Midday August sun and a business suit turned out to be a bad combination. It must have been ninety degrees outside, with no trace of a breeze. Even under the table's umbrella, I felt the sun tattooing a new crop of freckles on my face and homing in on my dark hair like a heat-seeking missile. I waited forty-five minutes while an intermittent procession of Lexus convertibles, Range Rovers, and the odd Rolls Royce pulled up to the valet parking sign. Not one of the drivers was Polk. I was getting ready to leave when a dusty blue Mercedes eased up to the curb. You rarely see a dirty car in L.A., especially an expensive dirty car, so this one caught my eye. I half expected to see a bumper sticker that read, My Other Car Is a Minivan. The chassis lifted visibly as a barrel-chested man somewhere in his fifties rolled out of the driver's seat. He was of medium height, with black hair, graying at the temples, and an impertinent grin on his face. He was wearing a chocolate brown polyester suit, and as he walked up the patio steps past my table, I noticed an unidentified yellow crumb clinging precariously to his matching brown and beige tie. I'm only a rookie in the fashion police, but I suspected that beneath all that polyester lurked a short-sleeved shirt. After a brief conversation with the maitre d', the guy strolled over to my table and sat down. For a brief moment he looked at me as if I were a tall, cold mug of beer. "So," he said, drawing out the word. "You're Gordon's girl wonder." I focused on the small crescent-shaped scar on his chin to keep myself from telling him that I might have been Gordon's girl wonder forty-five minutes ago, but after sitting in ninety- degree heat for the better part of an hour, I felt more like a moist towelette. Instead, I smiled and extended my hand. "Good to meet you, Dr. Polk." "So, shall we get this show on the road?" Polk tried to get the waiter's attention by sweeping his arm back and forth like a windshield wiper, exposing a couple of snags on the arm of his jacket. I was actually enjoying the breeze he'd created until our waiter arrived with two menus and a stony smile. We ordered lunch. I had a salad, while Polk picked at but never finished an entree and several side dishes that looked like enough potluck for the entire nation of Namibia. From the moment Polk sat down until well after the dishes had been cleared away, he regaled me with ideas for his business. I gathered from what he said, but mostly from what he didn't say, that he was in the process of frittering away his Sherman Oaks neurology practice through neglect. His passion for day-to-day patient care had shifted to a passion for expanding NeuroMed Diagnostic Center, a testing facility he'd opened the year before, where noninvasive tests were administered to patients with disorders of the brain, such as tumors, epilepsy, and learning disabilities. Polk had a small administrative staff plus five technicians, but he wanted more. He loudly proclaimed high tech as the key to unlocking the secrets of neurological disorders. He seemed to feel he could conquer the world if only he had more floor space, more state-of-the-art equipment, and more centers all across the country, maybe across the world. It wouldn't have surprised me if he planned to go galactic. I'd done some PubMed research before our meeting, but I hadn't run across any articles about the ultrahigh-tech testing equipment he was talking about. That made me nervous. Still, his ideas seemed coherent. And one or two of his claims sounded interesting. Even after lunch, he continued drinking endless cups of coffee and droning on about brain stem auditory-evoked response and brain electrical activity mapping until I almost felt a tumor sprouting on my own frontal lobe. "That all sounds very exotic," I said. "I'm envisioning some guy with a personal computer in Lard Lake, North Dakota, running a wand over his head while Internet software reads his brain and beams the diagnosis back to your office in L.A." Polk stopped sipping his coffee and blankly stared at me. I wasn't sure if the sudden trickle of perspiration I felt running down my chest was from heat or panic. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I was poking fun at his ideas. It surprised me when he let out a wheezy chuckle that reached all the way to his eyes. For the first time, I noticed that they were brown, like mine. My grandpa Felder had always told me that my eyes were the color of Old Grand-Dad Kentucky bourbon. Polk's were darker, like Kahlua. "That's good," he said. "At least Aames didn't stick me with some putz, did he?" It was getting late, and I had to get back to the office, so I maneuvered the conversation around to the business plan. I told him it would basically be a sales pitch to investors, backed up by solid research and financial and statistical analyses aimed at convincing them to invest their money with him and not somebody else. The plan, I told him, was the key to raising the funds he needed, so it had to be convincing and it had to be credible, and for that I'd need his full cooperation. "I've done some preliminary demographic research on NeuroMed's current location," I said. "The good news is that the potential patient population has grown by twenty-seven percent in the past five years. The bad news is that in the next three to six months, two major employers in the area are moving operations out of the state, which means unemployment, loss of health insurance, and a likely decrease in population. That will hurt you, even if the trend doesn't continue. I'll do similar studies on Newport Beach as well as the other locations you plan to open." He frowned. "Hey, you're running up my tab with numbers that don't mean diddly-squat. You're guessing." "Maybe so, Dr. Polk, but it's educated guessing." Business plans aren't very sexy for most people, and talking about statistics frequently makes a client's eyes roll up into the back of his head. With Polk, that discussion seemed to irritate rather than confuse him. I could tell by his fidgeting that he preferred to dwell in the abstract rather than the concrete. In my experience, that was generally not a good sign. "I'll also need profiles of all your key management people," I told him. "What for?" What for? Either he was naive, or he hadn't listened very carefully to my pitch about cooperation. "Because investors want to know who they're dealing with," I said. "My investors already know who they're dealing with. Listen, I'll tell you what I told them: I'm going to make them millionaires, Tuck. Can I call you Tuck?" He didn't wait for an answer. "When I get this equipment, patients will be clawing at my door." As hard as it was to smile sweetly with my teeth clenched, I managed it. "I hope that's true, but we have to show them that your people have the depth of experience to handle everything, including rapid growth." He motioned impatiently to the busboy for more coffee. "Okay, okay. What else?" "As for your major competitors – " He interrupted, clearly upset. "Let me educate you about something. Neurology as a specialty is a dead end. Everybody is coming out of the woodwork, horning in on our patients – chiropractors, massage therapists, you name it. Diagnostic testing is where the future is. That's where the money is, too. Like I said before, I'm going to get rich from it, and I plan to take a lot of people there with me. As for competitors, I don't have any. That's why I want to move on this now." I barely kept the frustration from my voice. "Maybe you don't have competitors now, but you will. And as you well know, Dr. Polk, everyone in the health care industry is your rival for patient dollars." His eyes were hyperalert, juiced up by caffeine and nervous tension, and his breathing was getting louder and faster. Maybe I was hitting him with too much too soon. "Look," I went on, "why don't I outline a few issues for you to think about? Meanwhile, I'll do some further research, and then you and I can meet again in a week or so." "I don't need a damn thesis. I need a marketing tool. Forget the research. I'll tell you what to write." "It doesn't work that way, Dr. Polk." "It works the way I want it to work." My jaw muscles tensed. "You're not listening to me. Aames and Associates is respected in the industry because – " "Jesus, how long have you been in this business?" I had a creepy feeling that the question was rhetorical, but I answered anyway. "Seven years." "Then you should know what the hell you're doing. I don't want outlines and issues. I want results." "You'll get results, Dr. Polk, but I can't make this stuff up. I told you the research has to be credible. That takes time." His eyes narrowed. "I've got news for you: I own you and your time." I sat for a moment, staring at him, clenching and unclenching my fists. I took a deep breath and repeated to myself over and over, Partners bring in business; partners do not blow off business – but it didn't quiet my anger. The guy was a horse's patootie. And if I wanted to spend my afternoon looking at the wrong end of a pony, I'd have become a jockey. Polk had crossed a line. I couldn't let him get away with it. Slowly I pushed my chair away from the table and stood. "You know something, Dr. Polk? I think you might be better off working with somebody else. Somebody you can communicate with. I'll ask Gordon to reassign you to another consultant." Polk's mouth inched open wide enough to neigh if he'd wanted to. He studied me for a moment, as if calculating what to do next. A few tense seconds passed, while a little voice inside my head screamed, What were you thinking? Finally, a knowing smile appeared on his lips. "That's the only stupid thing you've said all day, and you don't look stupid. Your boss won't be impressed." He waited for that to sink in. So did I, and it didn't take long. He was right about one thing: Gordon wouldn't be impressed with my handling of the situation. For the past seven years, he'd pulled me aside – more than once, I admit – whenever I displayed what he called my "tendency to be too direct." And here it was again, practically smacking me in the face. It was time to fade into the backfield and punt or pass or something, but I didn't know what to do with the ball. Thankfully, Polk did. "Look," he said. "I'm in a hurry. I don't have time to break in somebody new. Sit down. Let's get this meeting over with." For reasons I didn't want to think about and couldn't have explained, but for which I thanked Glinda the Good Witch, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the patron saint of lucky breaks, whoever that was, Polk seemed to be offering me a temporary cease-fire. It would have been career suicide not to accept it. I sat and immediately pulled out our standard Aames & Associates contract as well as our Terms & Conditions Agreement, a document that basically says: We'll give you the best advice we can, but don't blame us if things don't pan out. I wanted to get Polk's signature on the papers before I did anything else to blow this situation. Polk skimmed through the pages, and then signed both documents. Afterward, he put my pen in his pocket and pushed back his chair. "I have to go. I have a one-thirty patient." I glanced at my watch. "Gosh, it's two-fifteen." "Don't worry. He'll wait." He grabbed the check and studied it for a moment. Before I had a chance to tell him that Aames & Associates never allows clients to pay for lunch, he patted his back pants pocket. "I must have left my wallet somewhere," he said. "Do you mind? I'll catch the next one." He handed me the bill. "I love spending Gordon Aames's money. Let's do it again, and soon." He winked and headed toward the street. While I waited for the waiter to return my credit card, I watched Polk arguing with the valet. I presumed he was testing his missing-wallet theory again. Whatever the doctor was complaining about, his forcefulness proved too much for the poor valet, who eventually threw up his arms and relinquished the keys to Polk's Mercedes. The doctor sidled into the car, which shortly thereafter slipped into the vortex of Los Angeles traffic. Polk's valet caper confirmed my worst fears: The doctor was going to be a nightmare to work with. I could deal with his take-no-prisoners attitude and his entrepreneur's oversize ego, I thought, but if he ever called me Tuck again, he was going to end up with prosthetic kneecaps. The following morning, I'd cleared my calendar so I could put all my efforts into the NeuroMed project. Like Polk, I wanted the plan finished quickly. I was on the computer, researching a bill before Congress that threatened to ax Medicare reimbursements – and cut into NeuroMed's profit potential – when I received a telephone call from the doctor. "I was out of line yesterday," he told me, "with some of what I said. The stuff about owning you. The thesis bit. What can I say? I get intense. No offense meant. From now on, I promise to be good." His apology left me feeling bewildered and somewhat suspicious. Was his act of contrition sincere, or was he manipulating me? Finally, I decided that his motivation didn't matter all that much, because at the time, maintaining a good relationship with Polk was good for the firm and good for my career. "Maybe I overreacted," I said. "I'm sorry." Those had been our first apologies, but they certainly weren't our last. Despite our good intentions, over the next two months we continued to butt heads over everything from whose ideas were more strategic to whose turn it was to buy coffee. He was gruff, bullheaded, impulsive, and sometimes fun to be with. As insistent as Polk was that I finish the plan quickly, he wasn't always focused on that goal. He frequently interrupted our meetings to rant about his pet peeves, like when he claimed the New England Journal of Medicine had gotten it all wrong in an article on balance testing protocols. I quickly learned that if I wanted to get any work done, it was better to indulge his tangents for an hour or so than waste a day denying that I was closed-minded or – what was worse – boring. That "boring" accusation always hit too close to home, because not counting my marriage, I hadn't had a date since the Spice Girls' last hit record. My ex-husband, Eric, and I continued to see each other after the divorce, but those weren't actually dates. They were more like supervised visits to see who got the salad spinner. I hadn't always liked Milton Polk, but eventually I found things to admire about him, and I knew he felt the same way about me. The guy was an original. He was tireless, like an oversize hummingbird fueling up in a field of wildflowers. Not only that, but he could hold my attention with an idea. So over time, we formed a curious kind of bond. I won't say that completing the NeuroMed business plan was all fun and games, but by early October I had completed it. After that, Polk and I didn't see much of each other. At first we kept in touch by telephone, but even those phone calls tapered off as the days rolled by. I went on to other projects for other clients, and Polk presumably went on to sell his expansion ideas to investors. On that November morning when I dressed for what I thought was imminent success, it had been about a month since I last heard from Polk. I was still high-fiving myself for surviving the experience, glad that the NeuroMed project was behind me. Before heading for work, I made sure that Muldoon's water bowl was full and checked my outfit one last time in the bathroom mirror. Of course, if I'd had any idea what was in store for me when I arrived at the office that day, I would have chucked that prissy blouse and the flat shoes for combat boots and a flak jacket. Copyright © 2005 Patricia Smiley