Chasing the Dime (2002) Page 8

  He leaned against the door frame. Charlie was a handsome man with what seemed like a perpetual tan. He had worked as a model in New York for a few years before getting bored and going back to school for a master's in finance. They had been introduced by an investment banker who knew Condon was skilled at taking underfinanced emergingtechnology firms and matching them with investors. Pierce had joined with him because he'd promised to do it with Amedeo Technologies without Pierce having to sacrifice his controlling interest to investors. In return, Charlie would hold 10 percent of the company, a stake that could ultimately be worth hundreds of millions —if they won the race and went public with a stock offering.

  "I missed your calls," Pierce said. "I just got here, actually. Stopped to get something to eat first."

  Charlie nodded.

  "I thought you'd be in the lab."

  Meaning, why aren't you in the lab? There is work to be done. We're in a race. We've got a presentation to a whale to make. You can't chase the dime from your office.

  "Yeah, don't worry, I'll get there. I just have some mail to go through. You came all the way in to check on me?"

  "Not really. But we only have until Thursday to get our shit together for Maurice. I wanted to make sure everything was all right."

  Pierce knew they were placing too much importance on Maurice Goddard. Even Charlie's e-mail reference to the investor as God was a subliminal indication of this. It was true that Thursday's dog and pony show would be the dog and pony show of all time, but Pierce had growing concern about Condon's reliance on this deal. They were seeking an investor willing to commit at least $6 million a year over three or four years, minimum. Goddard, according to the due diligence conducted by Nicole James and Cody Zeller, was worth $250 million, thanks to his getting in early on a few investments like Microsoft. It was clear that Goddard had the money. But if he didn't come across with a significant funding plan after Thursday's presentation, then there had to be another investor out there. It would be Condon's job to go out and find him.

  "Don't worry," Pierce said. "We'll be ready. Is Jacob coming in for it?"

  "He'll be here."

  Jacob Kaz was the company's patent attorney. They had fifty-eight patents already granted or applied for and Kaz was going to file nine more the Monday after the presentation to Goddard. Patents were the key to the race. Control the patents and you are in on the ground floor and will eventually control the market. The nine new patent applications were the first to come out of the Proteus project. They would send a shock wave through the nanoworld. Pierce almost smiled at the thought of it. And Condon seemed to read his thoughts.

  "Did you look at the patents yet?" he asked.

  Pierce reached down into the kneehole beneath his desk and knocked his fist on the top of the steel safe bolted there to the floor. The patent drafts were in there. Pierce had to sign off on them before they were filed but it was very dry reading, and he'd been distracted by other things even before Lilly Quinlan came up.

  "Right here. I'm planning to get to them today or come back in tomorrow."

  It would be against company policy for Pierce to take the applications home to review.

  Condon nodded his approval.

  "Great. So, everything else okay? You doin' all right?"

  "You mean with Nicki and everything?"

  Charlie nodded.

  "Yeah, I'm cool. I'm trying to keep my mind on other things."

  "Like the lab, I hope."

  Pierce leaned back in his chair, spread his hands and smiled. He wondered how much Monica had told him when he had called the apartment.

  "I'm here."

  "Well, good."

  "By the way, Nicole left a new clip in the Bronson file on the Tagawa deal. It's hit the media."

  "Anything?"

  "Nothing we didn't know already. Elliot said something about biologicals. Very general, but you never know. Maybe he's gotten wind of Proteus."

  As he said it Pierce looked past Condon at the framed one-sheet poster on his office wall next to the door. It was the poster from the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage. It showed the white submarine Proteus descending through a multicolor sea of bodily fluids. It was an original poster. He had gotten it from Cody Zeller, who had obtained it through an online Hollywood memorabilia auction.

  "Elliot just likes to talk," Condon said. "I don't know how he could know anything about Proteus. But after the patent is granted he'll know about it. And he'll be shitting bricks.

  And Tagawa will know they backed the wrong horse."

  "Yeah, I hope so."

  They had flirted with Tagawa earlier in the year. But the Japanese company wanted too large a piece of the company for the money, and negotiations broke down early. Though Proteus was mentioned in the early meetings, the Tagawa representatives were never fully briefed and never got near the lab. Now Pierce had concern himself with exactly how much about the project was mentioned, because it stood to reason that the information was passed on to Tagawa's new partner, Elliot Bronson.

  "Let me know if you need anything and I'll get it done," Condon said.

  It brought Pierce out of his thoughts.

  "Thanks, Charlie. You going back home now?"

  "Probably. Melissa and I are going to Jar tonight for dinner. You want to go? I could call and make it for three."

  "Nah, that's okay. But thanks. I've got the furniture coming in today and I'll probably work on getting my place set up."

  Charlie nodded and then hesitated for a moment before asking the next question.

  "You going to change your phone number?"

  "Yeah, I think I have to. First thing Monday. Monica told you, huh?"

  "A little bit. She said you got some prostitute's old number and guys are calling all the time."

  "She's an escort, not a prostitute."

  "Oh, I didn't know there was a big difference."

  Pierce couldn't believe he had jumped to defend a woman he didn't even know. He felt his face getting red.

  "There probably isn't. Anyway, when I see you Monday I'll probably give you a new number, okay? I want to get done here so I can get in the lab and do something today."

  "Okay, man, I'll see you Monday."

  Condon left then, and after Pierce was sure he was down the hall he got up and closed his door. He wondered how much more Monica had told him, whether she was spreading alarm about his activities. He thought about calling her but decided to wait until later, to talk about it with her in person.

  He went back to Lilly's phone book, leafing through it once again. Almost to the end he came across a listing he hadn't noticed before. It simply said USC and had a number.

  Pierce thought about the envelope he had seen in her house. He picked up the phone and called the number. He got a recording for the admissions office of the University of Southern California. The office was closed on weekends.

  Pierce hung up. He wondered if Lilly had been in the process of applying to USC when she disappeared. Maybe she had been trying to get out of the escort business. Maybe it was the reason she had disappeared.

  He put the phone book aside and opened the Visa statement. It showed zero purchases on the card for the month of August and notice for an overdue payment on a $354.26 balance. The payment had been due by August 10.

  The bank statement from Washington Savings & Loan was next. It was a combined statement showing balances in checking and savings accounts. Lilly Quinlan had not made a deposit in the month of August but had not been short of funds. She had $9,240 in checking and $54,542 in savings. It wasn't enough for four years at USC but it would have been a start if Lilly was changing her direction.

  Pierce looked through the statement and the collection of posted checks the bank had returned to her. He noticed one to a Vivian Quinlan for $2,000 and assumed that was the monthly installment on maternal upkeep. Another check, this one for $4,000, was made out to James Wainwright and on the memo line Lilly had written, "Rent."

  He tapped the ch
eck lightly against his chin as he thought about what this meant. It seemed to him that $4,000 was an excessively high monthly rent for the bungalow on Altair. He wondered if she had paid for more than one month with the check.

  He put the check back in the stack and finished looking through the bank records.

  Nothing else hooked his interest and he put the checks and the statement back in the envelope.

  The third-floor copy room was a short walk down the hall from Pierce's office. Along with a copier and a fax machine, the small room contained a power shredder. Pierce entered the room, opened up his backpack and fed the pieces of Lilly Quinlan's opened mail into the shredder, the whine of the machine seemingly loud enough to draw the attention of security. But no one came. He felt a sense of guilt drop over him. He didn't know anything about federal mail theft laws but was sure he had probably just compounded the first offense of stealing the mail by now destroying it.

  When he was finished he stuck his head out into the hall and checked to make sure he was still alone on the floor. He then returned and opened one of the storage cabinets where stacks of packages containing copier paper were stored. From his backpack he removed Lilly Quinlan's phone book and then reached into the cabinet with it, dropping it behind one of the stacks of paper. He believed it could go as long as a month there without being discovered.

  Once finished with hiding and destroying the evidence of his crime, Pierce took the lab elevator down to the basement and passed through the mantrap into the suite. He checked the sign-in log and saw that Grooms had been in that morning as well as Larraby and a few of the lower-tier lab rats. They had all come and gone. He picked up the pen and was about to sign in when he thought better of it and put the pen back down.

  At the computer console Pierce entered the three passwords in correct order for a Saturday and logged in. He called up the testing protocols for the Proteus project. He started to read the summary of the most recent testing of cellular energy conversion rates, which had been conducted by Larraby that morning.

  But then he stopped. Once again he could not do it. He could not concentrate on the work. He was consumed by other thoughts, and he knew from past experience —the Proteus project being an example —that he must run out the clock on the thing that consumed him if he was to ever return to the work.

  He shut down the computer and left the lab. Back up in his office he took his notebook out of his backpack and called the number he had for the private investigator, Philip Glass. As he expected for a Saturday afternoon, he got a machine and left a message.

  "Mr. Glass, my name is Henry Pierce. I would like to talk to you as soon as possible about Lilly Quinlan. I got your name and number from her mother. I hope to talk to you soon. You can call me back at any time."

  He left both his apartment number and the direct line to his office and hung up. He realized that Glass might recognize the apartment number as having once belonged to Lilly Quinlan.

  He drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. He tried to figure out the next step. He decided he was going up the coast to see Cody Zeller. But first he called his apartment number and Monica answered in a gruff voice.

  "What?"

  "It's me, Henry. My stuff get there yet?"

  "They just got here. Finally. They're bringing in the bed first. Look, you can't blame me if you don't like where I tell them to put stuff."

  "Tell me something. Are you having them put the bed in the bedroom?"

  "Of course."

  "Then I'm sure I'll like it just fine. What are you so short about?"

  "It's just this goddamn phone. Every fifteen minutes some creep calls for Lilly. I'll tell you one thing: wherever she is, she must be rich."

  Pierce had a growing feeling that wherever she was, money didn't matter. But he didn't say that.

  "The calls are still coming in? They told me they'd get her page off the website by three o'clock."

  "Well, I got a call about five minutes ago. Before I could say I wasn't Lilly the guy asked if I'd do a prostate massage, whatever that is. I hung up on him. It's totally gross."

  Pierce smiled. He didn't know what it was, either. But he tried to keep the humor out of his voice.

  "I'm sorry. Hopefully they won't take long getting it all up there and you can leave as soon as they are finished."

  "Thank God."

  "I need to go to Malibu, or else I'd come back now."

  "Malibu? What's in Malibu?"

  Pierce regretted mentioning it. He had forgotten about her earlier interest and disapproval of what he was doing.

  "Don't worry, nothing to do with Lilly Quinlan," he lied. "I'm going to see Cody Zeller about something."

  He knew it was weak but it would have to do for now. They hung up and Pierce started putting his notebook back in his backpack.

  "Lights," he said.

  10

  The drive north on the Pacific Coast Highway

  was slow but nice. The highway skirted the ocean, and the sun hung low in the sky over Pierce's left shoulder. It was warm but he had the windows down and the sunroof open. He couldn't remember the last time he had taken a drive like this. Maybe it was the time he and Nicole had ducked out of Amedeo for a long lunch and driven up to Geoffrey's, the restaurant overlooking the Pacific and favored by Malibu's movie set.

  When he got into the first stretch of the beach town and his view of the coast was stolen by the houses crowding the ocean's edge, he slowed down and watched for Zeller's house. He didn't have the address offhand and had to recognize the house, which he hadn't seen in more than a year. The houses on this stretch were jammed side to side and all looked the same. No lawns, built right to the curb, flat as shoe boxes.

  He was saved by the sight of Zeller's black on black Jaguar XKR, which was parked out in front of his house's closed garage. Zeller had long ago illegally converted his garage into a workroom and had to pay garage rent to a neighbor to protect his $90,000 car. The car's being outside meant Zeller had either just gotten home or was about to head out.

  Pierce was just in time. He pulled a U-turn and parked behind the Jag, careful not to bump the car Zeller treated like a baby sister.

  The front door of the house was opened before he reached it —either Zeller had seen him on one of the cameras mounted under the roof's eave or Pierce had tripped a motion sensor. Zeller was the only person Pierce knew who rivaled him in paranoia. It was probably what had bonded them at Stanford. He remembered that when they were freshmen Zeller had an often spoken theory that President Reagan had lapsed into a coma after the assassination attempt in the first year of his presidency and had been replaced by a double who was a puppet of the far right. The theory was good for laughs but he was serious about it.

  "Dr. Strangelove, I presume," Zeller said.

  "Mein führer, I can walk," Pierce replied.

  It had been their standard greeting since Stanford when they saw the movie together at a Kubrick retrospective in San Francisco.

  They gave each other a handshake invented by the loose group of friends they belonged to in college. They called themselves the Doomsters, after the Ross MacDonald novel.

  The handshake consisted of fingers hooked together like train car couplings and then three quick squeezes like gripping a rubber ball at a blood bank —the Doomsters had sold plasma on a regular basis while in college in order to buy beer, marijuana and computer software.

  Pierce hadn't seen Zeller in a few months and his hair hadn't been cut since then. Sunbleached and unkempt, it was loosely tied at the back of his neck. He wore a Zuma Jay Tshirt, baggies and leather sandals. His skin was the copper color of smoggy sunsets. Of all the Doomsters he always had the look the others had aspired to. Now it was wearing a little long in the tooth. At thirty-five he was beginning to look like an aging surfer who couldn't let it go, which made him all the more endearing to Pierce. In many ways Pierce felt like a sellout. He admired Zeller for the path he had cut through life.

  "Check him out, Dr.
Strange himself out in the Big Bad 'Bu. Man, you don't have your wets with you and I don't see any board, so to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"

  He beckoned Pierce inside and they walked into a large loft-style home that was divided in half, with living quarters to the right and working quarters to the left. Beyond these distinct areas was a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass that opened to the deck and the ocean just beyond. The steady pounding of the ocean's waves was the heartbeat of the house.

  Zeller had once informed Pierce that it was impossible to sleep in the house without earplugs and a pillow over one's head.

  "Just thought I'd take a ride out and check on things here."