Chasing the Dime

26

The FedEx envelope was on his desk when Pierce walked into his office. It had been a battle to get there. Almost every step of the way he'd had to fend off looks and inquiries about his face. By the time he got to the office section of the third floor, he was giving one-word answers to all questions -"Accident."

"Lights," he said as he swung around behind his desk.

But the lights didn't come on and Pierce realized that his voice was different because of the swelling of his nasal passages. He got up and turned on the lights manually and then went back to the desk. He took off his sunglasses and put them on top of his computer monitor.

He picked up the envelope and checked the return address. Cody Zeller pulled a painful smile out of him. In the return address Zeller had put the name Eugene Briggs, the Stanford department head the Doomsters had targeted many years before. The prank that had changed their lives.

The smile dropped off his face when Pierce turned over the envelope to open it. The pull tab had already been torn -the envelope was open. He looked inside it and saw a white business envelope. He took this out and found that it had been opened as well. The outside of the envelope said Henry Pierce, personal and confidential. There was a folded sheaf of documents inside. He couldn't tell if they had been pulled out or not.

He got up and went out his door to the corral where the assistants had their pods. He went to Monica's desk. He held up the FedEx envelope and the torn envelope that had been inside it.

"Monica, who opened this?"

She looked up at him.

"I did. Why?"

"How come you opened it?"

"I open all your mail. You don't like to deal with it. Remember? I open it so I can tell you what is important and what isn't. If you don't want me to do it that way anymore, just tell me. I won't mind, just less work."

Pierce calmed. She was right.

"No, that's all right. Did you read this stuff?"

"Not really. I saw the picture of the girl who had your phone number and decided I did not want to look at that stuff. Remember what we agreed to on Saturday?"

Pierce nodded.

"Yes, that's good. Thanks."

He turned to go back to his office.

"Do you want me to tell Charlie you are here?"

"No, I'm only staying a few minutes."

When he got to the door he looked back at Monica and saw her staring at him with that look of hers. Like she was judging him guilty of something, some crime he knew nothing about.

He closed the door and went behind the desk. He opened the envelope and pulled out the sheaf of printouts from Zeller.

The photo Monica mentioned was not the same photo of Lilly Quinlan from her web page. It was a mug shot taken in Las Vegas three years before, when she had been arrested in a prostitution sting. In the photo she did not look nearly as breathtaking as she did in the website photo. She looked tired and angry and a bit scared all at once.

Zeller's report on Lilly Quinlan was short. He had traced her from Tampa to Dallas to Vegas and then L.A. She was actually twenty-eight years old, not the twenty-three she promised in her web page ad copy. She had a record of two arrests for solicitation in Dallas and the one arrest in Vegas. After each arrest she had spent a few days in jail and was then released for time served. She had come to L.A. three years earlier, according to utilities records. She had avoided arrest and notice of the police until now.

That was it. Pierce looked at the photo again and felt depressed. The mug shot was the reality. The photo he had downloaded from the website and looked at so often over the weekend was the fantasy. Her trail from Tampa to Dallas to Las Vegas to Los Angeles had ended on that bed in the Venice townhouse. There was a killer out there somewhere.

And meantime, the cops were focusing on him.

He put the sheaf of printouts down on the desk and picked up the phone. After digging her card out of his wallet, he called Janis Langwiser to check in. He was on hold a good five minutes before she picked up.

"Sorry, I was on the phone with another client. What is happening with you?"

"Me? Nothing. I'm at work. I just wanted to check in and see if you've heard anything new from anybody."

Meaning, Is Renner still after me?

"No, nothing really new. I think we're playing a waiting game here. Renner knows he is on notice and that he's not going to be able to bully you. We have to just see what turns up and go from there."

Pierce looked at the mug shot on his desk. It could just as well have been a morgue shot for all the harsh lighting and shadows on her face.

"You mean like a body turning up?"

"Not necessarily."

"Well, I got a call from Lucy LaPorte today."

"Really? What did she say?"

"It was a message, actually. She said she'd been hurt and she didn't want me to ever contact her again."

"Well, at least we know she's around. We may need her."

"Why?"

"If this goes further we could possibly use her as a witness. To your motives and actions."

"Yeah, well, Renner thinks everything I did with her was part of my plan. You know, being the Good Samaritan and all."

"That's just his view of it. In a court of law there are always two sides."

"A court of law? This can't go to -"

"Relax, Henry. I'm just saying that Renner knows that for every piece of supposed evidence that he puts forward, we will have the same opportunity to put forward our side and our view of that evidence. The DA will know that, too."

"All right. Did you find out from anybody over there what Lucy told him?"

"I know a supervisor in the squad. He told me they haven't found her. They've talked by phone but she hasn't come in. She won't come in."

Pierce was about to tell her that he had Cody Zeller looking for Lucy when there was a sharp knock on his door and it opened before he could react. Charlie Condon stuck his head in. He was smiling, until he saw Pierce's face.

"Jesus Christ!"

"Who is that?" Langwiser asked.

"My partner. I have to go. Let me know what you hear."

"When I hear it. Good-bye, Henry."

Pierce hung up and looked up at Condon's stricken face. He smiled.

"Actually, Jesus Christ is down the hall and to the left. I'm Henry Pierce."

Condon smiled uneasily and Pierce casually turned over the printouts from the Zeller package. Condon came in and closed the door.

"Man, how do you feel? Are you all right?"

"I'll live."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Henry, I am really sorry I didn't get over to the hospital. But it's been crazy around here getting ready for Maurice."

"Don't worry about it. So I take it we're still presenting tomorrow."

Condon nodded.

"He's already in town and waiting on us. No delays. We go tomorrow or he goes -and takes his money with him. I talked to Larraby and Grooms and they said we're -"

" -ready to go. I know. I called them from the hospital. It's not Proteus that's the problem. That's not why I wanted to delay. It's my face. I look like I'm Frankenstein's cousin. And I'm not going to look much better tomorrow."

"I told him you had a car accident. It's not going to matter what you look like. What matters is Proteus. He wants to see the project and we promised him a first look. Before we send in the patents. Look, Goddard's the type of guy who can write the check on the spot. We need to do this, Henry. Let's get it over with."

Pierce raised his hands in surrender. Money was always the trump card.

"He's still going to ask a lot of questions when he sees my face."

"Look," Condon said. "It's a dog and pony show. No big deal. You'll be done with him by lunch. If he asks questions, just tell him you went through the windshield and leave it at that. I mean, you haven't even told me what happened. Why should he be any different?"

Pierce saw the momentary look of hurt in his partner's eyes.

"Charlie, I'll tell you when the time is right. I just can't right now."

"Yes, that's what partners are for, to tell things at the right time."

"Look, I know I can't win this argument with you, all right? I admit I'm wrong. So let's just leave it alone for now."

"Sure, Henry, whatever you want. What are you working on now?"

"Nothing. Just some bullshit paperwork."

"Then you're ready for tomorrow?"

"I'm ready."

Condon nodded.

"Either way we win," he said. "Either we take his money or we put in the patents, go to the press with Proteus and come January there will be a line like fucking Star Wars at ETS to talk to us."

Pierce nodded. But he hated going to Las Vegas for the annual emerging-technologies symposium. It was the most crass clash between science and finance in the world. Full of charlatans and DARPA spies. But a necessary evil just the same. It was where they had first courted one of Maurice Goddard's front men ten months before.

"If we last until January," Pierce said. "We need money now."

"Don't worry about that. My job's finding the money. I think I can come up with a few intermediary fish to hold us until we land another whale."

Pierce nodded, feeling reassured by his partner. With the situation he was in, thinking forward even a month seemed ridiculous.

"Okay, Charlie."

"But, hey, it's not going to matter. We're going to land Maurice, right?"

"Right."

"Good. Then I'll let you get back to work. Tomorrow at nine?"

Pierce leaned back in his chair and groaned. His last protest on the timing.

"I'll be here."

"Our fearless leader."

"Yeah, right."

Charlie knocked sharply on the inside of the door, perhaps some sort of signal of solidarity, and left. Pierce waited a moment and then got up and locked the door. He wanted no more interruptions.

He went back to the printouts. After the short report on Lilly Quinlan came a voluminous report on William Wentz, owner-operator of Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited. The report stated that Wentz sat at the top of a burgeoning empire of Internet sleaze, from escort services to porno sites. These sites, though directed from Los Angeles, were operating in twenty cities in fourteen states, and of course reachable by the Internet from around the world.

While the Internet companies Wentz operated might be viewed as sleazy by most, they were still legal. The Internet was a world of largely regulation-free commerce. As long as Wentz did not provide photos of underage models engaged in sex and slapped the proper disclaimers on his escort sites, he operated largely in the clear. If one of his escorts happened to be taken down in a prostitution sting, he could easily distance himself. His site clearly said in a prominent disclaimer that it did not promote prostitution or any sort of trade of sex for money or property. If an escort agreed to take money for sex, then that was her decision and her web page would immediately be eliminated from the site.

Pierce had already gotten a general rundown on Wentz's operations from Philip Glass, the private detective. But Zeller's report was far more detailed and a testimonial to the power and reach of the Internet. Zeller had uncovered Wentz's criminal past in the states of Florida and New York. Contained in the printout package were several more mug shots, these depicting Wentz and another man named Grady Allison, who was listed in California corporate records as the comptroller of ECU. Pierce remembered that Lucy LaPorte had mentioned him. He skipped past the photos and read Zeller's opening summary.

Wentz and Allison appear to be a team. They arrived from Florida within a month of each other six years ago. This after multiple arrests in Orlando probably made things tough for them there. According to intelligence files with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), these men operated a chain of strip joints on the Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando. This was before the Internet made selling sex, real or imagined, so much easier than putting naked chicks on a stage and selling blow jobs on the side.

Allison was known as Grade A Allison in Florida because of his skill in recruiting top talent to the stages of the Orange Blossom Trail. Wentz and Allison's clubs were called

"No Strings Attached," as in full nudity.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The FDLE box connects these guys to one Dominic Silva, 71, Winter Park, FL, who in turn is connected to traditional organized crime in New York and northern New Jersey.

BE CAREFUL!

Their pedigree as mobsters didn't surprise Pierce. Not with the way Wentz had been so calculatingly cold and violent when he encountered him in person. What he did find to be an odd fit was the idea that Wentz, the man who could calmly wield a phone as a weapon and wore pointed boots for better bone crunching, could be the man behind a sophisticated Internet empire.

Pierce had seen Wentz in action. His first and lasting impression was that Wentz was muscle first and brains second. He seemed more the caretaker of the operation than the brains behind it.

Pierce thought of the aging mobster mentioned in Zeller's report. Dominic Silva of Winter Park, Florida. Was he the man? The intellect behind the muscle? Pierce intended to find out.

He went to the next page and found a summary listing Wentz's criminal record. Over a five-year period in Florida he had a variety of arrests for pandering and two arrests for something listed as felony GBI. There was also an arrest for manslaughter.

The summaries did not include final disposition of these cases. But reading them -arrest after arrest in five years -Pierce was puzzled as to why Wentz was not in prison.

More of the same questions came up when he went to the next page and reviewed the arrest summaries of Grady "Grade A" Allison. He, too, seemed to have a recurring pandering pattern. He also topped Wentz in the GBI category with four arrests. He also had an arrest labeled "sexbat-minor," which Pierce interpreted to be a charge of having sex with a minor.

Pierce looked at the mug shots of Allison. According to the attendant information, he was forty-six years old, though the photos showed a man who might be older. He had grayblack hair greased back on his head. His ghostly pale face was accented by a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once.

He picked up the phone and called Janis Langwiser again. This time he did not have to wait as long for her to take the call.

"Couple quick questions," he said. "Do you know what pandering is, in the legal sense of the word?"

"It's a pimp charge. It means providing a woman for sex in exchange for money or goods. Why?"

"Wait a minute. What about felony GBI? What is GBI?"

"That doesn't sound like anything from the California penal code but usually GBI means 'great bodily injury.' It would be part of an assault charge."

Pierce considered this. GBI, as in hitting someone in the face with a phone and then hanging him off a twelfth-story balcony.

"Why, Henry? Have you been talking to Renner?"

He hesitated. He realized he shouldn't have called her, because it might reveal that he was still pursuing the very thing she had told him to stay away from.

"No, nothing like that. I'm just looking at a background check on an employment application. Hard to figure out what all of this means sometimes."

"Well, it doesn't sound like anybody you would want to have working for you."

"I think you're right about that. Okay, thanks. Just go ahead and put this on my bill."

"Don't worry about it."

After hanging up, he looked at the last page in the report from Zeller. It listed all of the websites that he had been able to link Wentz and ECU to. The single-space listing took up the entire page. The sexual permutations and double entendres contained in the site names and addresses were almost laughable but somehow the sheer volume of it all made it more sickening. This was just one man's operations. It was staggering.

As his eyes scanned down the list they held on one entry -FetishCastle.net -and he realized he knew it. He had heard of it. It took him a few moments and then he remembered Lucy LaPorte telling him that she had first met Lilly Quinlan at a photo shoot for the FetishCastle site.

Swiveling his chair to face the computer, Pierce booted up and went online. In a few minutes he arrived at the FetishCastle home page. The primary image was of an Asian woman wearing black thigh-high boots and little else. She had her hands on her naked hips and had adopted a stern schoolteacher pose. The page promised subscribers that herein were thousands of downloadable fetish photos, streaming videos and links to other sites. All free -with a paid subscription, of course. The coded but easily decipherable list of subject matter contained within included dominants, submissives, switches, water sports, smothering and so on.

Pierce clicked on the JOIN button and jumped to a page with a menu offering several different subscription plans and the promise of immediate approval and access. The going rate was $29.95 a month, chargeable each month to a credit card of your choice. The menu was careful to note in large letters that the billing record would appear on all credit card statements as ECU Enterprises, which would of course be easier than FetishCastle to run by the wife or boss when the bill came in.

There was an introductory offer for $5.95, which allowed access to the site for five days.

At the end of that period your credit card would not be charged further if you did not sign up for one of the monthly or yearly plans. This was a one-time offer per credit card.

Pierce pulled out his wallet and used his American Express card to sign up for the introductory offer. Within minutes he had a pass code and user name and he entered the site, coming to a subject tab page with a search window. He went to the window and typed in "Robin" and hit ENTER. His search returned no hits. He got the same result with a search for "Lilly" but then had success with "girl-girl" after remembering that it was how Lucy had described the modeling session with Lilly.

He was connected to a page of thumbnail photos, six rows of six. At the bottom of the page was a prompt that would allow him to go to the next page of thirty-six photos or to skip ahead to any one of forty-eight other pages of girl-girl photos.

Pierce scanned the thumbnails on the first page. They were all photos containing two or more women, no men. The models were engaged in various sex acts and bondage scenes, always a dominant female and her subservient subject. Though the photos were small, he did not want to take the time to click on each and enlarge it. He opened a desk drawer and took out a magnifying glass. He leaned close to the monitor screen and looked for Lucy and Lilly, able to work his way quickly across the grid of photos.

On the fourth screen of thirty-six he came across a series of more than a dozen photos of Lucy and Lilly. In each photo Lilly played the dominant and Lucy the submissive, even though Lucy towered over the diminutive Lilly. Pierce enlarged one of the thumbnails and the photo took over the whole computer screen.

The set had an obviously painted backdrop of a stone castle wall. A dungeon wall, Pierce guessed. There was straw on the floor and candles burning on a nearby table. Lucy was naked and chained to the wall with handcuffs that looked shiny and new rather than medieval. Lilly, dressed in the apparently requisite black leather of a dominatrix, stood in front of her holding a candle, her wrist cocked just enough for the hot wax to drip onto Lucy's breasts. On Lucy's face was a look that Pierce thought was meant to convey agony and ecstasy at the same time. Rapture. On Lilly's face was a look of stern approval and pride.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were gone."

Pierce turned to see Monica coming through the door. As his assistant she had the combination to his office door lock because Pierce was often in the lab and she might need access. She started to put a stack of mail down on his desk.

"You told me you were only going to be -"

She stopped when she saw the computer screen. Her mouth opened into a perfect circle.

He reached to the screen and killed the monitor. He felt lucky that his face was discolored and scarred. It helped hide his embarrassment.

"Monica, look, I -"

"Is that her? The woman you had me impersonate?"

He nodded.

"I'm just trying to…"

He didn't know how to explain what he was doing. He wasn't sure what he was doing.

He felt even more stupid holding the magnifying glass.

"Dr. Pierce, I like my job here but I'm not sure I want to work directly for you anymore."

"Monica, don't call me that. And don't start with the job stuff again."

"Can I please transfer back to the pool?"

Pierce reached up to the monitor for his sunglasses and put them on. A few days ago he wanted to get rid of her, now he couldn't bring himself to look at her disapproving eyes.

"Monica, you can do whatever you want to do," he said while staring at the blank computer screen. "But I think you have the wrong idea about me."

"Thank you. I'll talk to Charlie. And there's your mail."

And she left, pulling the door closed behind her.

Pierce continued to turn slowly back and forth in his chair, staring at the empty screen through dark glasses. Soon the burn of humiliation dissipated and he started to feel anger.

Anger at Monica for not understanding. At his predicament. And mostly at himself.

He reached over and pushed the button and the screen came alive. And there was the photo, Lucy and Lilly together. He studied the wax hardening on Lucy's skin, a frozen drip hanging off one pointed nipple. It had been a job for them, an appointment. They had never met before this captured moment.

He studied the look on each woman's face, the eye contact they shared, and he saw no hint of the act he knew it to be. It looked real in their faces and that was what stirred his own arousal. The castle and everything else was easily fake but not the faces. No, the faces told the viewer a different story. They told who was in control and who was manipulated, who was on top and who was on the bottom.

Pierce looked at the photo for a long time and then looked at every one of the photos in the series before shutting down the computer.