The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(12)

puts himself in a position like that."

"A position like what?"

"The family wants to put this behind them, move on as quickly as possible, you see."

"And you agree?"

Ninety miles of silence over the phone line. "Jimmy was a sweet boy. I'll miss him terribly."

"Will I see you at the memorial service, then?"

The softest sound I ever heard was Faye DoeblerIngram laying the receiver of her phone in the cradle.

I sat at my desk, staring out the Venetian blinds at the traffic on Blanco.

I turned to the computer, logged on to a news database, and started digging for dirt on the banker Garrett had mentioned— Matthew Pena.

According to Silicon News, Pena was a Texan by birth, Californian by choice. BS in computer science from UT Austin. MBA from Stanford. He'd spent the past few years as an investment banker, orchestrating buyouts and providing venture capital for hightech startups. His clientele read like a who's who list of Silicon Valley. Pena's only noted hobby was scuba diving, which he was so zealous about that his business adversaries had started calling him the Terror of the Deep.

He was, by all accounts, the most vicious set of freelance teeth a company could hire.

August 1998. Pena's first major conquest—a promising startup company in San Jose.

In the course of one month, Pena sabotaged their prospective deals with venture capitalists, hired their best talent away, and set the principals of the company at each other's throats. One of the principals filed a complaint with the San Jose police. She claimed Matthew Pena was harassing her with phone calls, visits, email. When asked for specifics, the woman backed away from her allegations. The complaint fizzled. A month later, the startup agreed to sell. Once Pena bought them out at a firesale price, their product became the backbone of Pena's client's virus protection software—a cash cow.

February 1999 Similar story. Pena strongarmed a Menlo Park startup into selling to a major tech company for six million in stock—little more than glass beads and trinkets compared to what other computer businesses were trading for then. Opposition to the sale collapsed when the most vocal of the principals was found dead in his garage—apparently a suicide, shotgun to the mouth. The other principals turned the police investigation toward Matthew Pena—claimed Pena had been calling them up, emailing them, threatening their lives. Police investigated Pena, but he came away clean. Pena's quote on the matter to the press: "If the guy killed himself because I was about to make him a millionaire, he's so stupid he deserves to die." Mr. Pena: big warm fuzzy.

January of this year. A glimpse into Pena's private life. His girlfriend of six months, Adrienne Selak, disappeared off a privately chartered dinner cruise boat in San Francisco Bay. Selak had been seen arguing with Pena earlier in the evening. The couple had gone off alone toward the back of the ship. Thirty minutes later, Pena called for help, claiming that Ms. Selak had fallen into the Bay. A search was launched, but her body was never recovered. Selak had been a competent swimmer. In fact, she and Pena had met because of their shared interest in scuba. After her disappearance, one of Selak's girlfriends informed the police that Selak had complained about Matthew "getting creepy" on several occasions, threatening to kill her.

One of Pena's employees, Dwight Hayes, gave a witness statement supporting Pena's assertion that the fall had been accidental.

Pena hired the best legal counsel money could buy. As near as I could tell from followup articles, the investigation was still open, but no formal charges had been filed against Pena.

In March of this year, Matthew Pena's services had been contracted by AccuShield, Inc., a Cupertinobased company that made security software—virus protection, encryption, network firewalls. Pena had apparently sold AccuShield on the idea of expanding into the Austin market, and one of Pena's first buyout targets was Tech

san Security Software: Garrett, Ruby, and Jimmy's startup.

The AmericanStatesman chronicled Techsan's betatest problems, which began shortly after Techsan rejected Pena's first buyout offer of twenty million. I tried to get my mind around the kind of optimism, hubris, stubbornness, whatever, that had made my brother and his two partners turn down twenty million dollars. What were they thinking?

Then I thought about the guy from Menlo Park who had been offered millions by Matthew Pena, then went into his garage and ate his shotgun.

The latest article I could find, dated last week, talked about Pena's second offer—a rescue buyout proposal to the nowbeleaguered Techsan for four million in stock of the client company, AccuShield. Techsan had been wavering on whether or not to accept it.

And now Jimmy Doebler was dead.

There were no available pictures of Matthew Pena. I had no luck finding solid information on his background except for what the business articles told me secondhand—nothing that made Matthew Pena human for me. I liked that just fine. It made it all the easier for me to hate the bastard.

That evening, I wanted to go out to the ranch. I wanted to honour Garrett's wishes to butt out of his problems. Instead, I packed and unpacked my bags for Austin three times.

Sunday morning, after fortyfive minutes on the road, I was still reconsidering. I pulled over on the side of 135 at the Onion Creek rise, just inside the Travis county line.

I looked down the valley, up the opposite hill from which I'd first be able to see the silhouette of downtown. Last chance. Once up that hill, the gravity of Austin would pull me in. There was no avoiding it.