Chasing the Dime

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President Reagan had lapsed into a coma after the assassination attempt in the first year of his presidency and had been replaced by a double who was a puppet of the far right.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."

They moved across the beech flooring toward the view. In a house like this it was an automatic reflex. You gravitated to the view, to the blue-black water of the Pacific. Pierce saw a light misting out on the horizon but not a single boat. As they got close to the glass he could look down through the deck railing and see the swells rolling in. A small company of surfers in multicolor wets sat on their boards and waited for the right moment. Pierce felt an internal tug. It had been a long time since he'd been out there.

He'd always found the waiting on the swells, the camaraderie of the group, to be more fulfilling than the actual ride in on the wave.

"Those are my boys out there," Zeller said.

"They look like Malibu High teenagers."

"They are. And so am I."

Pierce nodded. Feel young, stay young -a common Malibu life ethic.

"I keep forgetting about how nice you got it out here, Code."

"For a college dropout, I can't complain. Beats selling one's purity of essence for twentyfive bucks a bag."

He was talking about plasma. Pierce turned away from the view. In the living area there were matching gray couches and a coffee table in front of a freestanding fireplace with an industrial, concrete finish. Behind this was the kitchen. To the left was the bedroom area.

"Beer, dude? I've got Pacifica and Saint Mike."

"Yeah, sure. Either one."

While Zeller went to the kitchen Pierce moved toward the work area. A large floor-toceiling rack of electronics acted to knock down the exterior light and partition off the area where Zeller made his living. There were two desks and another bank of shelves containing code books and software and system manuals. He stepped through the plastic curtain that used to be where the door to the garage was. He took a step down and was in a climate-controlled computer room. There were two complete computer bays on either side of the room, each equipped with multiple screens. Each system seemed to be at work. Slowly unspooling data trails moved across each screen. Digital inchworms crawling through whatever was Zeller's project at the moment. The walls of the room were covered in black foam padding to dampen exterior noise. The room was dimly lit by mini-spots. There was an unseen stereo playing an old Guns N' Roses disc that Pierce had not heard in more than ten years.

Affixed to the padding of the rear wall was a procession of stickers depicting company logos and trademark names. Most were household words, companies pervasive in daily life. There were many more stickers on the wall than the last time Pierce visited. He knew that Zeller put up a logo every time he conducted a successful intrusion into that company's computer services system. They were the notches on his belt.

Zeller earned $500 an hour as a white-hat hacker. He was the best of the best. He worked as an independent, usually hired by one of the Big Six accounting firms to conduct penetration tests on its clients. In a way it was a racket. The system that Zeller could not defeat was rare. And after each successful penetration his employer usually turned around and got a fat digital security contract from the client, with a nice bonus going to Zeller.

He had once told Pierce that digital security was the fastest growth area in the corporate accounting industry. He was constantly fielding high-price offers to come on board fulltime with one or another of the big firms, but he always demurred, saying he liked working for himself. Privately, he told Pierce that it was also because working for himself allowed him to eschew the random drug testing of the corporate world.

Zeller came into the clean room with two brown bottles of San Miguel. They doubleclicked bottles before drinking. Another tradition. It tasted good to Pierce, smooth and cold. Bottle in hand, he pointed to a red and white square affixed to the wall. It was the most recognized corporate symbol in the world.

"That one's new, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I just got that one. Took the job out of Atlanta. You know how they got some secret formula for making the drink? They were -"

"Yeah, cocaine."

"That's the urban myth. Anyway, they wanted to see how well the formula was protected.

I went in from total scratch. Took me about seven hours and then I e-mailed the formula to the CEO. He didn't know we were doing a penetration test -it was handled by people below him. I was told he almost had a goddamn coronary. He had visions of the formula going out across the net, falling into the hands of the Pepsi and Dr Pepper people, I guess."

Pierce smiled.

"Cool. You working on something right now? It looks busy."

He indicated the screens with his bottle.

"No, not really. I'm just doing a little trolling. Looking for somebody I know is out there hiding."

"Who?"

Zeller looked at him and smiled.

"If I told you that, I'd have to kill you."

It was business. Zeller was saying that part of what he sold was discretion. They were friends who went back to good times and one seriously bad time -at least for Pierce -in college. But business was business.

"I understand," Pierce said. "And I don't want to intrude, so let me get to it. Are you too busy to take on something else?"

"When would I need to start?"

"Uh, yesterday would be nice."

"A quickie. I like quickies. And I like working for Amedeo Tech."

"Not for the company. For me. But I'll pay you."

"I like that better. What do you need?"

"I need to run some people and some businesses, see what comes up."

Zeller nodded thoughtfully.

"Heavy people?"

"I don't really know but I'd use all precautions. It involves the adult entertainment field, you could say."

Now Zeller smiled broadly, his burned skin crinkling around the eyes.

"Oh, baby, don't tell me you bumped your dick into something."

"No, nothing like that."

"Then what?"

"Let's sit down. And you'd better bring something to take notes with."

In the living room Pierce gave him all the information he had on Lilly Quinlan without explanation about where it was coming from. He also asked Zeller to find what he could on Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited and Wentz, the man who operated it.

"You got a first name?"

"No. Just Wentz. Can't be too many in the field, I would guess."

"Full scans?"

"Whatever you can get."

"Stay inside the lines?"

Pierce hesitated. Zeller kept his eyes level on him. He was asking if Pierce wanted him to stay within the bounds of the law. Pierce knew from experience that there was much more out there to be found if Zeller crossed the lines and went into systems he was not authorized to enter. And he knew Zeller was an expert at crossing them. The Doomsters were formed when they were college sophomores. Computer hacking was just coming into vogue for their generation and the members of the group, largely under the direction of Zeller, did more than hold their own. They mostly committed pranks, their best being the time they hacked into the local telephone company's 411 information bank and changed the number for the Domino's Pizza closest to campus to the home number of the dean of the Computer Sciences Department.

But their best moment was also their worst. All six of the Doomsters were busted by the police and later suspended. On the criminal side everybody got probation with the charges to be expunged after six months without further trouble. Each boy also had to complete 160 hours of community service. On the school side they were all suspended for one semester. Pierce went back after serving both the suspension and the probation.

Under the magnifying glass of police and school administrators, he switched from computer sciences to a chemistry curriculum and never looked back.

Zeller never looked back, either. He didn't go back to Stanford. He was scooped up by a computer security firm and given a nice salary. Like a gifted athlete who leaves school early for the pros, he could not go back to school once he sampled the joys of having money and doing what he loved for a living.

"Tell you what," Pierce finally answered. "Get whatever you can get. In fact, on Entrepreneurial Concepts, I think some variation of abra cadabra might help you get in.

Try it backwards first."

"Thanks for the head start. When do you need this?"

"Like I said, yesterday will be fine."

"Right, a quickie. You sure you didn't stick your dick into something nasty?"

"Not that I know of."

"Nicole know about this?"

"Nope, there's no reason. Nicole's gone, remember?"

"Right, right. This the reason why?"

"You don't give up, do you? No, it's got nothing to do with her."

Pierce finished his beer. He didn't want to hang around, because he wanted Zeller to get to work on the assignment he was giving him. But Zeller seemed in no hurry to start.

"Want another beer, commander?"

"Nah, I'm gonna pass. I've gotta get back to my apartment. I have my assistant babysitting the furniture movers. Besides, you're going to get on this thing, aren't you?"

"Oh, yeah, man. Right away."

He gestured toward his work area.

"Right now all my machines are booked. But I'll get on it tonight. I'll call you by tomorrow night."

"All right, Code. Thanks."

He got up. They pumped each other's hand. Blood brothers. Doomsters again.