Chasing the Dime (2002)

by Michael Connelly

  Pierce wrote a congratulatory note to Jacob Kaz on a yellow Post-it and attached it to the cover sheet of the Proteus application package. He then locked it back in the safe. He'd have it sent by secure transport to Kaz's office in Century City in the morning. No faxes, no e-mails. Pierce might even drive it over himself.

  He leaned back, threw another Oreo into his mouth and checked his watch. It was two o'clock. An hour had gone by since he had been in the office but it had seemed like only ten minutes. It felt good to have the feeling again, the vibe. He decided to capitalize on it and move into the lab to do some real work. He grabbed the rest of the cookies and got up.

  "Lights."

  Pierce was in the hallway pulling the door closed on the darkened office when the phone rang. It was the distinctive double ring of his private line. Pierce pushed the door back open.

  "Lights."

  Few people had his direct office number but one of them was Nicole. Pierce quickly moved around the desk and looked down at the caller ID screen on the phone. It said private caller and he knew it wasn't Nicole, because her cell phone and the line from the house on Amalfi were uncloaked. Pierce hesitated but then remembered that Cody Zeller had the number. He picked up the phone.

  "Mr. Pierce?"

  It wasn't Cody Zeller.

  "Yes?"

  "It's Philip Glass. You called me yesterday?"

  The private investigator. Pierce had forgotten.

  "Oh. Yes, yes. Thanks for calling back."

  "I didn't get the message until today. What can I do for you?"

  "I want to talk to you about Lilly Quinlan. She's missing. Her mother hired you a few weeks ago. From Florida."

  "Yes, but I am no longer employed on that one."

  Pierce remained standing behind his desk. He put his hand on top of the computer monitor as he spoke.

  "I understand that. But I was wondering if I could talk to you about it. I have Vivian Quinlan's permission. You can check with her if you want. You still have her number?"

  It took a long while for Glass to respond, so long that Pierce thought he may have quietly hung up.

  "Mr. Glass?"

  "Yes, I'm here. I'm just thinking. Can you tell me what your interest is in all of this?"

  "Well, I want to find her."

  This was met with more silence and Pierce started to understand that he was dealing from a position of weakness. Something was going on with Glass, and Pierce was at a disadvantage for not knowing it. He decided to press his case. He wanted the meeting.

  "I'm a friend of the family," he lied. "Vivian asked me to see what I could find out."

  "Have you talked to the LAPD?"

  Pierce hesitated. Instinctively he knew that Glass's cooperation might be riding on his answer. He thought about the events of the night before and wondered if they could already be known by Glass. Renner had said he knew Glass and he most likely planned to call him. It was Sunday afternoon. Maybe the police detective was waiting until Monday, since Glass seemed to be on the periphery of the case.

  "No," he lied again. "My understanding from Vivian was that the LAPD wasn't interested in this."

  "Who are you, Mr. Pierce?"

  "What? I don't under —"

  "Who do you work for?"

  "No one. Myself, actually."

  "You're a PI?"

  "What's that?"

  "Come on."

  "I mean it. I don't under —oh, private investigator. No, I'm not a PI. Like I said, I'm a friend."

  "What do you do for a living?"

  "I'm a researcher. I'm a chemist. I don't see what this has to do with —"

  "I can see you today. But not at my office. I'm not going in today."

  "Okay, then where? When?"

  "One hour from now. Do you know a place in Santa Monica called Cathode Ray's?"

  "On Eighteenth, right? I'll be there. How will we know each other?"

  "Do you have a hat or something distinctive to wear?"

  Pierce leaned down and opened an unlocked desk drawer. He pulled out a baseball cap with blue stitched letters over the brim.

  "I'll be wearing a gray baseball cap. It says MOLES in blue stitching above the brim."

  "Moles? As in the small burrowing animal?"

  Pierce almost laughed.

  "As in molecules. The Fighting Moles was the name of our softball team. Back when we had one. My company sponsored it. It was a long time ago."

  "I'll see you at Cathode Ray's. Please come alone. If I feel you are not alone or it looks like a setup, you won't see me."

  "A setup? What are you —"

  Glass hung up and Pierce was listening to dead space.

  He put down the phone and put on the hat. He considered the strange questions the private detective had asked and thought about what he had said at the end of the conversation and how he had said it. Pierce realized it was almost as if he had been scared of something.

  18

  Cathode Ray's was a hangout for the tech generation —usually everybody in the place had a laptop or a PDA on the table next to their double latte. The place was open twentyfour hours a day and provided power and high-speed phone jacks at every table.

  Connections to local Internet service providers only. It was close to Santa Monica College and the film production and fledgling software districts of the Westside, and it had no corporate affiliations. These combined to make it a popular place with the plugged-in set.

  Pierce had been there on many prior occasions, yet he thought it an odd choice by Glass for the meeting. Glass sounded like an older man over the phone, his voice gravelly and tired. If that was the case, then he would stand out in a place like Cathode Ray's.

  Considering the paranoia that had come over the phone line from him, it seemed strange for him to have picked the coffee shop for the meeting.

  At three o'clock Pierce entered Cathode Ray's and took a quick scan around the place for an older man. No one stood out. No one looked at him. He got in line for coffee.

  Before leaving the office, he had dumped what change remained in his desk mug into his pocket. He counted it out while waiting and concluded that he had just enough for a basic coffee, medium size, with a little left over for the tip jar.

  After hitting the cup with heavy doses of cream and sugar, he moved out to the patio area and selected an empty table in the corner. He sipped his coffee slowly but it was still twenty minutes before he was approached by a short man in black jeans and a black Tshirt. He had a clean-shaven face and dark, hard eyes that were deeply set. He was much younger than Pierce had guessed, maybe late thirties at the most. He had no coffee, he had come straight to the table.

  "Mr. Pierce?"

  Pierce offered his hand.

  "Mr. Glass?"

  Glass pulled out the other chair and sat down. He leaned across the table.

  "If you don't mind, I'd like to see your ID," he said.

  Pierce put his cup down and started digging in his pocket for his wallet.

  "Probably a good idea," he said. "Mind if I look at yours?"

  After both men had convinced themselves they were sitting with the right party, Pierce leaned back and studied Glass. He seemed to Pierce to be a large man stuck in a small man's body. He exuded intensity. It was as if his skin were stretched too tight over his whole body.

  "Do you want to get a coffee before we start to talk?"

  "No, I don't use caffeine."

  That seemed to figure.

  "Then I guess we should get to it. What's with all the spook stuff?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "You know, the 'make sure you're alone' and 'what do you do for a living' stuff. It all seems to be a little strange."

  Before speaking, Glass nodded as if he agreed.

  "What do you know about Lilly Quinlan?"

  "I know what she was doing for a living, if that's what you mean."

  "And what was that?"

  "She was an escort. She advertised through the Internet. I'm pre
tty sure she worked for a guy named Billy Wentz. He's sort of a digital pimp. He runs the website where she kept a page. I think he set her up in other things —porno sites, stuff like that. I think she was involved in the S and M scene as well."

  The mention of Wentz seemed to bring a new intensity to Glass's face. He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward.

  "Have you spoken to Mr. Wentz yourself?"

  Pierce shook his head.

  "No, but I tried to. I went to Entrepreneurial Concepts yesterday —that's his umbrella company. I asked to see him but he wasn't there. Why do I feel like I am telling you things you already know? Look, I want to ask questions here, not answer them."

  "There is little I can tell you. I specialize in missing-persons investigations. I was recommended to Vivian Quinlan by someone I know in the LAPD's Missing Persons Unit. It went from there. She paid me for a week's work. I didn't find Lilly or much else about her disappearance."

  Pierce considered this for a long moment. He was an amateur and he had found out quite a bit in less than forty-eight hours. He doubted that Glass was as inept as he was presenting himself to be.

  "You did know about the website, right? L.A. Darlings?"

  "Yes. I was told she was working as an escort and it was pretty easy to find her. L.A.

  Darlings is one of the more popular sites, you could say."

  "Did you find her house? Did you talk to her landlord?"

  "No and no."

  "What about Lucy LaPorte?"

  "Who?"

  "She uses the name Robin on the website. Her page is linked to Lilly's."

  "Oh, yes, Robin. Yes, I spoke to her on the phone. It was very brief. She was not cooperative."

  Pierce was suspicious of whether Glass had really called. It seemed to him Lucy would have mentioned that an investigator had already inquired about Lilly. He planned to check with her about the supposed call.

  "How long ago was that? The call to Robin."

  Glass shrugged.

  "Three weeks. It was at the beginning of my week of work. She was one of the first I called."

  "Did you go see her?"

  "No, other things came up. And at the end of the week Mrs. Quinlan was not willing to pay me for further work on the case. That was it for me."

  "What other things came up?"

  Glass didn't respond.

  "You talked to Wentz, didn't you?"

  Glass looked down at his folded arms but didn't reply.

  "What did he tell you?"

  Glass cleared his throat.

  "Listen to me very carefully, Mr. Pierce. You want to stay clear of Billy Wentz."

  "Why?"

  "Because he is a dangerous man. Because you are moving in an area that you know nothing about. You could get very seriously hurt if you are not careful."

  "Is that what happened to you. Did you get hurt?"

  "We are not talking about me. We are talking about you."

  A man with an iced latte sat down at the table nearest them. Glass looked over and studied him with paranoid eyes. The man took a PalmPilot out of his pocket and opened it. He slid out the stylus and went to work on the device. He paid no mind to Glass or Pierce.

  "I want to know what happened when you went to see Wentz," Pierce said.

  Glass unfolded his arms and rubbed his hands together.

  "Do you know . . ."

  He stopped and didn't go on. Pierce had to prompt him.

  "Know what?"

  "Do you know that so far the only place in which the Internet is significantly profitable is in the adult entertainment sectors?"

  "I've heard that. What does —"

  "Ten billion dollars a year is made off the electronic sex trade in this country. A lot of it is over the net. It's big business, with ties to top-flight corporate America. It's everywhere, available on every computer, on every TV. Turn on the TV and order hardcore porn courtesy of AT&T. Go online and order a woman like Lilly Quinlan to your door."

  Glass's voice took on a fervor that reminded Pierce of a priest in a pulpit.

  "Do you know that Wentz sells franchises across the country? I inquired. Fifty thousand dollars a city. There is now a New York Darlings and a Vegas Darlings. Miami, Seattle, Denver and on and on. Linked to these sites he has porn sites for every imaginable sexual persuasion and fetish. He —"

  "I know all of that," Pierce broke in. "But what I am interested in is Lilly Quinlan. What does all of that have to do with what happened to her?"

  "I don't know," Glass said. "But what I am trying to tell you is that there is too much money at stake here. Stay away from Billy Wentz."

  Pierce leaned back and looked at Glass.

  "He got to you, didn't he? What did he do, threaten you?"

  Glass shook his head. He wasn't going to go there.

  "Forget about me. I came here today to try to help you. To warn you about how close you are to the fire. Stay away from Wentz. I can't stress that enough. Stay away."

  Pierce could see in his eyes the sincerity of the warning. And the fear. Pierce had no doubt that Wentz had in some way gotten to Glass and scared him off the Quinlan case.

  "Okay," he said. "I'll keep clear."

  19

  Pierce toyed with the idea of going back to the lab after his coffee with Philip Glass but ultimately admitted to himself that the conversation with the private detective had stunted the motivation he had felt only an hour before. Instead, he went to the Lucky Market on Ocean Park Boulevard

  and filled a shopping cart with food and other basics he would need in the new apartment. He paid with a credit card and loaded the numerous bags into the trunk of his BMW. It wasn't until he was in his parking space in the garage at the Sands that he realized that he would have to make at least three trips up and down the elevator to get all of his purchases into the apartment. He had seen other tenants with small pushcarts, ferrying laundry or groceries up or down the elevator. Now he realized they had the right idea.

  On the first trip he took the new plastic laundry basket he had bought and filled it with six bags of groceries, including all of the perishables he wanted to get up and into the apartment refrigerator first.

  As he came into the elevator alcove two men were standing by the door that led to the individual storage rooms that came with each apartment. Pierce was reminded that he needed to get a padlock for his storage room and to get the boxes of old records and keepsakes Nicole was still holding for him in the garage at the house on Amalfi. His surfboard, too.

  At the elevator one of the men pushed the call button. Pierce exchanged nods with them and guessed that they might be a gay couple. One man was in his forties with a small build and a spreading waist. He wore pointed-toe boots that gave him two extra inches in the heel. The other man was much younger, taller and harder, yet he seemed to defer in body language to his older partner.

  When the elevator door opened they allowed Pierce to step on first and then the smaller man asked him what floor he wanted. After the door closed he noticed that the man did not push another button after pressing twelve for him.

  "You guys live on twelve?" he asked. "I just moved in a few days ago."

  "Visitors," said the smaller one.

  Pierce nodded. He turned his attention to the flashing numbers above the door. Maybe it was being so soon after the warning from Glass or the way the smaller man kept stealing glances at the reflection of Pierce in the chrome trim on the door, but as the elevator rose and the numbers got higher, so did his anxiety. He remembered how they had been standing near the storage room door and approached the elevator only when he did. As if they had been waiting there for some reason.

  Or for some person.

  The elevator finally reached twelve and the door slid open. The men stepped to the side to allow Pierce to step out first. With both hands holding the laundry basket, Pierce nodded forward.

  "You guys go ahead," he said. "Can you punch the first floor for me? I forgot to get the mail."
r />   "There is no mail on Sundays," the smaller man said.

  "No, I mean yesterday's. I forgot to get it."

  Nobody moved. The three of them stood there looking at one another until the door started to close and the big man reached out and hit the bumper with a hard forearm. The door shuddered and slowly reopened, as if recovering from a sucker punch. And finally the smaller one spoke.