Chasing the Dime

by Michael Connelly

  The curtains behind the front windows were drawn. The light on the ceiling over the porch was on and he took this as a bad sign. It was too early for the light to be on and he guessed that it had to have been on since the night before. He began to worry, now that he had finally found the place that neither Detective Renner nor Cody Zeller had been able to find, that Lucy LaPorte would be gone.

  He continued his walk to where Breeze ended at Speedway and there was a beach parking lot. He thought about going back to his car and bringing it over to the lot, but then figured it wasn't worth the time. He loitered in the lot and watched the sun drop toward the horizon for another ten minutes. He then started back down Breeze.

  This time he walked even more slowly and his eyes scanned all the homes for signs of activity. It was a quiet night on Breeze. He saw no one. He heard no one, not even a television voice. He passed 909 again and saw no indication that the tiny house was currently inhabited.

  As he got to the end of Breeze a blue pickup truck pulled up and stopped at the mouth of the sidewalk. It had the familiar Domino's sign on the top. A small man of Mexican descent jumped out with a red insulated pizza carrier and quickly headed down the sidewalk. Pierce let him get a good lead and then followed. He could smell the pizza despite the insulation. It smelled good. He was hungry. When the man walked across the porch to the front door of 909, Pierce slowed to a stop and used a red bougainvillea tree in the next-door neighbor's yard as a blind.

  The pizza man knocked twice —louder the second time —and looked like he was about to give up when the door was opened. Pierce realized he had chosen a poor location to watch from because the angle of view prevented him from seeing into the house. But then he heard a voice and knew it was Lucy LaPorte who had answered the door.

  "I didn't order that."

  "Are you sure? I have Nine oh nine Breeze."

  The pizza man opened the side of his carrier and pulled out a flat box. He read something off the side.

  "LaPorte, regular with onion, pepper and mushroom."

  She giggled.

  "Well, that's me and that's what I usually get but I didn't order that one tonight. Maybe it was like a computer glitch or something and the order came in again."

  The man looked down at the pizza and sadly shook his head.

  "Well, okay then. I tell them."

  He shoved the box back into the carrier and turned from the door. As he came down off the porch the door to the house was closed behind him. Pierce was waiting for him by the bougainvillea tree with a twenty-dollar bill.

  "Hey, if she doesn't want it, I'll take it."

  The pizza man's face brightened.

  "Okay, fine with me."

  Pierce exchanged the twenty for the pizza.

  "Keep the change."

  The pizza man's face brightened further. He had turned a delivery disaster into a large tip.

  "Thank you! Have a good night."

  "I'll try."

  Without hesitation Pierce carried the pizza to 909, went through the front gate and up onto the porch. He knocked on the door and was thankful there was no peephole —at least that he could see. It took only a few seconds for her to answer the door this time.

  Her eyes were cast down —to the expected level of the small pizza man. When she raised them and saw Pierce and registered the damage to his face, the shock contorted her own unbruised, undamaged face.

  "Hey, Lucy. You said next time bring you a pizza. Remember?"

  "What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here. I told you not to bother me."

  "You told me not to call you. I didn't."

  She tried to close the door but he was expecting it. He shot his hand out and stiff-armed the door. He held it open while she tried to push it closed. But the pressure was weak.

  She either wasn't really trying or she just didn't have the juice. He was able to keep the door open with one hand and hold the pizza up like a waiter with the other.

  "We have to talk."

  "Not now. You have to go."

  "Now."

  She relented and stopped what little pressure she was putting on the door. He kept his hand on it just in case it was a trick.

  "Okay, what do you want?"

  "First of all, I want to come in. I don't like standing out here."

  She backed away from the door and he stepped in. The living room was small, with barely enough room for a couch, a stuffed chair and a coffee table. There was a TV on a stand and it was tuned to one of the Hollywood news and entertainment shows. There was a small fireplace but it didn't look like it had seen a fire in a few years.

  Pierce closed the door. He stepped further into the room and put the pizza box down on the coffee table and picked up the TV remote. He killed the tube and tossed the remote back onto the table, which was crowded with entertainment magazines and gossip rags and an ashtray overburdened with butts.

  "I was watching that," Lucy said.

  She stood near the fireplace.

  "I know," Pierce said. "Why don't you sit down, have a piece of pizza."

  "I don't want pizza. If I wanted it, I would have bought it from that guy. Is that how you found me?"

  She was wearing cutoff blue jeans and a green sleeveless T-shirt. No shoes. She looked very tired to Pierce and he thought maybe she had been wearing makeup after all on the night they had first met.

  "Yeah, they had your address."

  "I ought to sue them."

  "Forget them, Lucy, and talk to me. You lied to me. You said they hurt you, that you were too black and blue to be seen."

  "I didn't lie."

  "Well, you sure heal up fast then. I'd like to know the secret to —"

  She pulled her shirt up, exposing her stomach and chest. She had deep purple bruising on the left side along the line where her ribs crested beneath her skin. Her right breast was misshapen. There were small and distinctly separate bruises on it that Pierce knew came from fingers.

  "Jesus," he whispered.

  She dropped her shirt.

  "I wasn't lying. I'm hurt. He wrecked my implant, too. It might even be leaking but I can't get into the doctor until tomorrow."

  Pierce studied her face. It was clear that she was in pain and that she was scared and alone. He slowly sat down on the couch. Whatever designs he had on the pizza were now long gone. He felt like grabbing it, opening the door and flinging it out onto the sidewalk.

  His mind was clogged with images of Lucy being held by Six-Eight while Wentz hurt her. He clearly saw the joy on Wentz's face. He had seen it before.

  "Lucy, I'm sorry."

  "So am I. I am sorry I ever got involved with you. That's why you have to leave. If they know you came here, they'll come back and it will be a lot worse for me."

  "Yeah, okay. I'll leave."

  But he made no move to get up.

  "I don't know," he said. "I'm batting zero tonight. I came here because I thought you were part of it. I came to find out who was setting me up."

  "Setting you up for what?"

  "For Lilly Quinlan. Her murder."

  Lucy slowly lowered herself into the stuffed chair.

  "She's dead for sure?"

  He looked at her and then down at the pizza box. He thought of what he had seen in the freezer and nodded his head.

  "The police think I did it. They're trying to make a case."

  "The detective who I talked to?"

  "Yeah, Renner."

  "I'll tell him that you were just trying to find her, to make sure she was okay."

  "Thank you. But it won't matter. He says that was part of my plan. I used you and others, I called the cops, all to cover that I did it. He says the killer often disguises himself as the Good Samaritan."

  It was her turn but she didn't speak for a long while. Pierce studied the headlines of an old issue of the National Enquirer that was on the table. He realized he was far out of touch with the world. He didn't recognize a single name or photo of a celebrity on the front p
age.

  "I could tell him that I was told to lead you to her place," Lucy said quietly.

  Pierce looked up at her.

  "Is that true?"

  She nodded.

  "But I swear to God, I didn't know he was setting you up, Henry."

  "Who is 'he'?"

  "Billy."

  "What did he tell you to do?"

  "He just told me that I would be getting a call from you, Henry Pierce, and that I should set up a date and lead you to Lilly's place. He said to make it seem like it was your idea to go there. That was all I was to do and that's all I knew. I didn't know, Henry."

  He nodded.

  "That's okay. I understand. I am not mad at you, Lucy. You had to do what he told you to do."

  He thought about this, turning it and trying to see if this was significant information. It seemed to him that it was definitely evidence of the setup, though at the same time he had to acknowledge that the source of this evidence would not rate highly with cops, lawyers and juries. He then remembered the money he had paid Lucy on the night they had met.

  He knew little about criminal law but enough to know that the money would be a problem. It might taint or even disqualify Lucy as a witness.

  "I could tell the detective that," Lucy said. "Then he would know it was part of a plan."

  Pierce shook his head and all at once realized he had been thinking selfishly, contemplating solely how this woman could help or hurt him, not for once considering her situation.

  "No, Lucy. That would put you in danger from Wentz. Besides . . ."

  He almost said that a prostitute's word would not count for much with the police.

  "Besides what?"

  "I don't know. I just don't think it would be enough to change the way Renner's looking at this. Plus he knows I paid you money. He'd turn that into something it's not."

  He thought of something and changed tack.

  "Lucy, if that's all Wentz told you to do with me, and then you did it, why did they come here? Why did they hurt you?"

  "To scare me. They knew the cops would want to talk to me. They told me exactly what to say. It was a script I had to follow. Then they just wanted me to drop out of sight for a while. They said in a couple weeks everything will be normal again."

  A couple weeks, Pierce thought. By then the play will be over.

  "So I guess everything you told me about Lilly was part of the script."

  "No. There was no script for that. What stuff?"

  "Like about the day you went to her apartment but she didn't show up. That was just made up so I'd want to go there, right?"

  "No, that part was the truth. Actually, all of it was true. I didn't lie to you, Henry. I just led you. I used the truth to lead you where he wanted you to go. And you wanted to go.

  The client, the car, all that trouble, it was all true."

  "What do you mean, the car?"

  "I told you before. The parking space was taken and that was supposed to be left open for the client. My client. It was a pain in the ass because we had to go park and then walk back and he was getting sweaty. I hate sweaty guys. Then we get there and there's no answer. It was fucked up."

  It came back to Pierce. He had missed it in the first go-round because he didn't know what to ask. He didn't know what was important. Lilly Quinlan didn't answer the door that day because she was dead inside the apartment. But she might not have been alone.

  There was a car.

  "Was it her car in the space?"

  "No, like I said, she always left it for the client."

  "Do you remember the car that was there?"

  "Yeah, I remember because they left the top down and I wouldn't leave a car like that with the top down in that neighborhood. Too close to all the dregs that hang out at the beach."

  "What kind of car was it?"

  "It was a black Jag."

  "With the top down."

  "Yeah. That's what I said."

  "A two-seater?"

  "Yeah, the sports car."

  Pierce stared at her without speaking for a long time. For a moment he felt light-headed and thought he might fall over on the couch, go face first into the pizza box. Everything came rushing into his mind at once. He saw it all, lit up and shining, and everything seemed to fit.

  "Aurora borealis."

  He whispered it just under his breath.

  "What?" Lucy asked.

  Pierce pulled himself up from the couch.

  "I have to go now."

  "Are you all right?"

  "I am now."

  He walked toward the door but stopped suddenly and turned back to look at Lucy.

  "Grady Allison."

  "What about him?"

  "Could it have been his car?"

  "I don't know. I've never seen his car."

  "What does he look like?"

  Pierce envisioned the mug shot photo of Allison that Zeller had sent him. A pale, brokennose thug with greased-back hair.

  "Um, sort of young, kind of leathery from too much sun."

  "Like a surfer?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "He has a ponytail, right?"

  "Sometimes."

  Pierce nodded and turned back to the door.

  "Do you want to take your pizza?"

  Pierce shook his head.

  "I don't think I could eat it."

  37

  It was two hours before Cody Zeller finally showed up at Amedeo Technologies. Because Pierce needed his own time to prepare things, he hadn't even made the call to his friend until midnight. He then told Zeller that he had to come in, that there had been a breach in the computer system. Zeller had protested that he was with someone and couldn't get away until morning. Pierce said that the morning would be too late. He said that he would accept no excuse, that he needed him, that it was an emergency. Pierce made it clear without saying so that attendance was required if Zeller wanted to keep the Amedeo account and their friendship intact. It was hard to keep his voice under control because at that moment the friendship was beyond sundered.

  Two hours after that call Pierce was in the lab, waiting and watching the security cameras on the computer station monitor. It was a multiplex system that allowed him to track Zeller as he parked his black Jaguar in the garage and came through the main entrance doors to the security dais, where the lone security man on duty gave him a scramble card and instructions to meet Pierce in the lab. Pierce watched Zeller ride the elevator down and move into the mantrap. At that point he switched off the security cams and started the computer's dictation program. He adjusted the microphone on the top of the monitor and then killed the screen.

  "All right," he said. "Here we go. Time to smash that fly."

  Zeller could only get into the mantrap with the scramble card. The second door had a keypad lock. Of course, Pierce had no doubt that Zeller knew the entry combination, as it was changed every month and the new number sent to the lab staff by e-mail. But when Zeller came through the trap to the interior stop he simply pounded on the coppersheathed door.

  Pierce got up and let him in. Zeller entered the lab throwing off the demeanor of a man who was seriously put out by the circumstances he was in.

  "All right, Hank, I'm here. What's the big crisis? You know, I was right in the middle of knocking off a piece when you called."

  Pierce went back to his seat at the computer station and sat down. He swiveled the seat around so he was looking at Zeller.

  "Well, it took you long enough to get here. So don't tell me you stopped because of me."

  "How wrong you are, my friend. I took so long only because being the perfect gentleman that I am, I had to get her back to the Valley and goddamn if there wasn't a frigging slide again in Malibu Canyon. So then I had to go turn around and go all the way down to Topanga. I still got here as fast as I could. What's that smell anyway?"

  Zeller was speaking very fast. Pierce thought he might be drunk or high or both. He didn't know how this would affect the experiment.
It was adding a new element to the settings.