Chasing the Dime (2002)

by Michael Connelly

  He turned it and looked at it from another angle. What would happen if the setup succeeded? In the long run he would be arrested, tried and possibly —likely —convicted.

  He would be imprisoned, possibly even put to death. In the short run there would be media focus and scandal, disgrace. Maurice Goddard and his money would go away.

  Amedeo Technologies would crash and burn.

  He turned it again and the question became one of means to an end. Why go to the trouble? Why the elaborate plot? Why kill Lilly Quinlan and set up a vast scheme that could fall apart at any step along the way? Why not simply target Pierce? Kill Pierce instead of Lilly and achieve the same end with much simpler means. He would be out of the picture again, Goddard still walks and Amedeo still crashes and burns.

  Conclusion 6: The target is different. It is not Pierce and it is not Amedeo. It is something else.

  As a scientist Pierce enjoyed most the moments of clarity in the vision field of a microscope, the moment things came together, when molecules combined in a natural order, in a way he knew they would. It was the magic he found in his daily life.

  A moment of similar clarity struck him then as he stared out at the ocean. It was a moment in which he glimpsed the big picture and knew the natural order of things.

  "Proteus," he whispered.

  They wanted Proteus.

  Conclusion 7: The setup was designed to push Pierce so hard into a corner that he would have no choice but to give up what they wanted. The Proteus project. He would trade Proteus for his freedom, for the return of his life.

  Pierce backed up. He had to be sure. He ran it all through his mind again and once more came up with Proteus. He leaned forward and ran his fingers through his hair. He felt sick to his stomach. Not because of his conclusion that Proteus was the ultimate target. But because he had jumped quickly ahead of that. He had ridden the wave of clarity all the way into shore. He had put it together. He finally had the big picture and in the middle of it stood the third party. She was smiling at him, her eyes bright and beautiful.

  Conclusion 8: Nicole.

  She was the link. She was the one who connected all the dots. She had secret knowledge of the Proteus project because he had given it to her —he had goddamn demonstrated it to her! And she knew his most secret history, the true and full story about Isabelle he had never told anyone but her.

  Pierce shook his head. He couldn't believe it, yet he did. He knew it worked. He figured she had gone to Elliot Bronson or maybe Gil Franks, head man at Midas Molecular.

  Maybe she had gone to DARPA. It didn't matter. What was clear was that she had sold him out, told of the project, agreed to steal it or maybe just delay it enough until it could be replicated and taken to the patent office by a competitor first.

  He folded his arms tightly across his chest and the moment of nausea passed.

  He knew he needed a plan. He needed to test his conclusions somehow and then react to the findings. It was time for some AE, time to experiment.

  There was only one way to do that, he decided. He would go see her, confront her, get the truth.

  He remembered his vow to fight. He decided to take his first shot. He picked up the phone and called Jacob Kaz's office. It was late in the day but the patent lawyer was still there and picked up the transfer quickly.

  "Henry, you were fantastic today," he said by way of greeting.

  "You were pretty good yourself, Jacob."

  "Thank you. What can I do for you?"

  "Is the package ready to go?"

  "Yep. It has been. I finished with it last night. Only thing left to do is file it. I'm going to fly out Saturday, visit my brother in southern Maryland, maybe some friends I have in Baileys Crossroads in Virginia, and then be there first thing Monday morning to file. Like I told Maurice today. That's still the plan."

  Pierce cleared his throat.

  "We have to change the plan."

  "Really? How so?"

  "Jacob, I want you to take a red-eye tonight. I want you to file it first thing tomorrow morning. As soon as they open."

  "Henry, I . . . that's going to be a bit expensive to get a flight tonight on such short notice.

  I usually fly business class and that's —"

  "I don't care what it costs. I don't care where you sit. I want you on a plane tonight. In the morning call me as soon as it's filed."

  "Is something wrong, Henry? You seem a bit —"

  "Yes, something's wrong, Jacob, that's why I'm sending you tonight."

  "Well, do you want to talk about it? Maybe I can help."

  "You can help by getting on that plane and getting it filed first thing tomorrow. Other than that, I can't talk about it yet. But just get over there and get the thing filed and then call me. I don't care how early it is out here. Call me."

  "Okay, Henry, I will. I'll make the arrangements right now."

  "When does the filing office open?"

  "Nine."

  "Okay, then I will talk to you shortly after six my time. And Jacob?"

  "Yes, Henry?"

  "Don't tell anyone other than your wife and kids that you're going tonight. Okay?"

  "Uh . . . what about Charlie? He said today that he might call me tonight to go over lastminute —"

  "If Charlie calls you, don't tell him you're going tonight. If he calls after you leave, tell your wife to tell him you had to go out with another client. An emergency or something."

  Kaz was silent for a long moment.

  "Are you all right with this, Jacob? I'm not saying anything about Charlie. It's just that at the moment I can't trust anybody. You understand?"

  "Yes, I understand."

  "Okay, I'll let you go so you can call the airline. Thank you, Jacob. Call me from D.C."

  Pierce clicked off. He felt bad about possibly impugning Charlie Condon in Kaz's eyes.

  But Pierce knew he could take no chances. He opened a fresh line and called Condon's direct line. He was still there.

  "It's Henry."

  "I just went down to your office to look for you."

  "I'm at home. What's up?"

  "I thought maybe you'd want to say good-bye to Maurice. But you missed him. He left.

  He heads back to New York tomorrow but said he wants to talk to you before he leaves.

  He'll call in the morning."

  "Fine. Did you make the deal?"

  "We came to an agreement in principle. We'll have contracts the end of next week."

  "How did it come out?"

  "I got the twenty, but over three years. The breakdown is a two-million bump on the front end and then one million bimonthly. He becomes the chairman of the board and gets his ten points. The points will vest on a schedule. He gets a point for the up-front payment and then a point every four months. If something happens and he bails early, he leaves with the points he's accumulated only. We retain the option to buy them back within one year at eighty percent."

  "Okay."

  "Just okay? Aren't you happy?"

  "It's a good deal, Charlie. For us and him."

  "I'm very happy. So is he."

  "When do we get the up-front money?"

  "The escrow period is thirty days. One month, then everybody gets a raise, right?"

  "Yeah, right."

  Pierce knew Condon was looking for excitement if not jocularity over the deal. But he couldn't give it. He wondered if he'd even be around at the end of a month.

  "So where did you disappear to?" Condon asked.

  "Uh, home."

  "Home? Why? I thought we'd —"

  "I had things to do. Listen, did Maurice or Justine ask you anything about me? Anything more about the accident?"

  There was a silence while Condon evidently thought about this. "No. In fact, I thought they might bring up that thing about wanting the accident report again but they didn't. I think they were so blown away by what they saw in the lab that they don't care anymore about what happened to your face."

  Pierce re
membered the blood red color of Goddard's face in the vision field of the heat resonance goggles.

  "I hope so."

  "You ever going to tell me what happened to you?"

  Pierce hesitated. He was feeling guilty over hiding things from Condon. But he had to remain cautious.

  "Not right now, Charlie. The time's not right."

  This put a pause in Condon's reply, and in the silence Pierce could feel the injury he was inflicting on their relationship. If there was only a way for him to be sure about Condon.

  If there was a question he could ask. His social engineering skills had deserted him and that left only silence.

  "Well," Condon said. "I'm going to go. Congratulations, Henry. Today was a good day."

  "Congratulations, Charlie."

  After hanging up, Pierce pulled out his key ring to check for something. Not the padlock keys. He had left them behind at the storage facility, hidden on the top of an exit sign on the third floor. He checked the ring once more to make sure he still had the key to the house on Amalfi Drive

  . If Nicole wasn't home, he was going to go in anyway. And he would wait for her.

  34

  Pierce took the California Incline down to the Coast Highway

  and then north to the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon. He turned right on Channel and parked at the first meter he found open. He then got out of the BMW and walked back toward the beach, looking over his shoulder and about him every ten yards for followers. When he got to the corner he looked around once more and then quickly went down the stairs into the pedestrian tunnel that went under the highway to the beach.

  The walls of the tunnel were a collage of graffiti, some of it recognized by Pierce even though it had been at least a year since he had walked through the tunnel. During happier times with Nicole it had been their routine to get the paper and coffee on Sunday mornings and take it all down to the beach. But over the last year Pierce had been working on Proteus most Sundays and didn't have time for the beach.

  On the other side the tunnel branched into two separate staircases leading up. He knew the further staircase came up on the sand right next to the drainage channel that emptied surface water runoff from the canyon into the ocean. He chose this stairway and came up into the sunlight to find the beach deserted. He saw the yellow lifeguard stand where he and Nicole would have their coffee and read the paper. It looked as abandoned as their Sunday ritual had become. He just wanted to see it, to remember it, before he went up the hill to her. After a while he turned back to the mouth of the tunnel and went back down the stairs.

  A quarter of the way back through the sixty-yard tunnel Pierce saw a man coming down the opposite staircase. Because of the light from above him, the man was in silhouette.

  Pierce was suddenly stricken with the thought of a confrontation with Renner in the tunnel. The cop had followed him and was here to arrest him.

  The man approached, moving swiftly and still unidentifiable. He now seemed big. Or at least bulky. Pierce slowed his step but knew that their meeting was inevitable. To turn and run would be a ridiculous show of guilt.

  When they were twenty feet apart the approaching man cleared his throat. A few feet later he came into view and Pierce saw that it wasn't Renner. It was no one that he knew.

  The man was in his early twenties and looked like a burned-out surfer. He incongruously wore a heavy ski jacket that was unzipped and open to reveal he had no shirt on underneath. His chest was smooth and tan and hairless.

  "Hey, you looking for some —what happened to your face, man?"

  Pierce kept moving past him, picking up his stride, not answering. On prior occasions he had been solicited in the tunnel. There were two gay bars on Channel and it came with the territory.

  Pulling away from the curb a few minutes later, Pierce checked the mirrors of the BMW and saw no followers. The tightness in his chest began to relax. Just a little. He knew he still had Nicole to confront.

  At the intersection where the canyon elementary school was located, he turned left on Entrada and took it down to Amalfi Drive

  . He turned left and Amalfi climbed up the north bank of the canyon, winding in a hairpin pattern. As he went by his old home he glanced down the driveway and saw Nicole's old Speedster in the carport. It appeared she was home. He yanked the wheel and came to a stop next to the curb. He sat still for a moment, pulling his thoughts and courage together. Ahead of him he saw a beat-up old Volkswagen idling in a driveway, blue smoke pumping out of the twin exhaust pipes, a Domino's Pizza sign on the roof. It reminded him that he was hungry. He had only picked at his catered lunch because he had been too keyed up from the presentation and the anticipation of making a deal with Goddard.

  But food right now had to wait. He got out of the car.

  Pierce stepped into the entry alcove and knocked on the door. It was a single-light French door, so Nicole would know it was him the moment she stepped into the hallway. But the glass worked both ways. He saw her the moment she saw him. She hesitated but knew she couldn't get away with acting like she wasn't home. She stepped forward and unlocked and opened the door.

  But then she stood in the opening, not giving him passage. She was wearing washed-out jeans and a lightweight navy blue sweater. The sweater was cut to show off her flat and tanned stomach and the gold ring that pierced her navel. She was barefoot and Pierce imagined that her favorite clogs were somewhere nearby.

  "Henry. What are you doing here?"

  "I need to talk to you. Can I come in?"

  "Well, I'm expecting some calls. Can you —"

  "From who, Billy Wentz?"

  This gave her pause. A puzzled look entered her eyes.

  "Who?"

  "You know who. How about Elliot Bronson or Gil Franks?"

  She shook her head like she felt sorry for him.

  "Look, Henry, if this is some kind of jealous ex-boyfriend scene, you can save it. I don't know any Billy Wentz and I am not trying to get a job with Elliot Bronson or with Gil Franks. I signed a no-compete clause, remember?"

  That put a chink in his armor. She had deftly deflected his first attack so smoothly and naturally that Pierce felt a tremor in his resolve. All his turning and grinding and looking of an hour before was suddenly becoming suspect.

  "Look, can I come in or not? I don't want to do this out here."

  She hesitated again but then moved back and motioned him in. They walked into the living room, which was to the right off the hallway. It was a large dark room with cherrywood floors and sixteen-foot ceilings. There was an empty spot where his leather couch had been —the only piece of furniture he had taken. Otherwise, the room was still the same. One wall was a vast floor-to-ceiling bookcase with double-depth shelves. Most of the shelves were filled with her books, two layers on each. She put only books she had read on these shelves, and she had read a lot. One of the things Pierce had loved most about her was that she would rather spend an evening on the couch reading a book and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches than go to a movie and Chinois for dinner. It was also one of the things he knew he had taken advantage of. She didn't need him to read a book, which made it easier to stay in the lab that extra hour. Or those extra hours, as it more often was.

  "Are you feeling all right?" she said, trying for a level of cordiality. "You look a lot better."

  "I'm fine."

  "How did it go with Maurice Goddard today?"

  "It went fine. How did you know about it?"

  Her face adopted a put-out expression.

  "Because I was working there until Friday and the presentation was already scheduled.

  Remember?"

  He nodded. She was right. Nothing suspicious there.

  "I forgot."

  "Is he coming on board?"

  "It looks like it."

  She didn't sit down. She stood in the middle of the living room and faced him. The shelves of books rose fortress-like behind her, dwarfing her, all of them silent condemnations of him, each
one a night he didn't come home to her. They intimidated him and yet he knew he had to keep his anger sharp for this confrontation.

  "Okay, Henry, you're here. I'm here. What is it?"

  He nodded. Now was the time. It dawned on him that he really had no plan at this point.

  He was improvising.

  "Well, what it is, is that it probably doesn't matter anymore in the scheme of things but I want to know for myself so maybe I can live with it a little easier. Just tell me, Nicki, did somebody get to you, did they pressure you, threaten you? Or did you just flat-out sell me out?"