Chasing the Dime

27

Pierce never made it home Wednesday night. Despite the confidence he had portrayed in his office with Charlie Condon, he still felt his days in the hospital had left him behind the curve in the lab. He was also put off by the idea of returning to his apartment, where he knew a bloody mess and cleanup awaited him. Instead, he spent the night in the basement at Amedeo Tech, reviewing the work conducted in his absence by Larraby and Grooms and running his own Proteus experiments. The success of the experiments temporarily energized him, as they always did. But fatigue finally overcame him in the pre-dawn hours and he went into the laser lab to sleep.

The laser lab, where the most delicate measurements were taken, had one-foot-thick concrete walls and was sheathed in copper on the outside and thick foam padding on the inside to eliminate the intrusion of outside vibrations and radio waves that could skew nanoreadings. It was known among the lab rats as the earthquake room because it was probably the safest spot in the building, maybe in all of Santa Monica. The bed-sized pieces of padding were attached to the walls with Velcro straps. It was a common occurrence for an overworked lab rat to go to the laser lab, pull down a pad and sleep on the floor, as long as the lab wasn't being used. In fact, the higher-ranking members of the lab team had specific pads labeled with their names, and over time the pads had taken on the contours of their users' bodies. When in place on the walls, the dented, misshapen pads gave the lab the appearance of having been the site of a tremendous brawl or wrestling match in which bodies had been hurled from wall to wall.

Pierce slept for two hours and woke up refreshed and ready for Maurice Goddard. The second-floor men's locker room had shower facilities and Pierce always kept spare clothes in his locker. They weren't necessarily laundry-fresh but they were fresher than the clothes he had spent the night in. He showered and dressed in blue jeans and a beige shirt with small drawings of sailfish on it. He knew Goddard and Condon and everyone else would be dressed to impress at the presentation but he didn't care. It was the scientist's option to avoid the trappings of the world outside the lab.

In the mirror he noticed that the stitch trails on his face were redder and more pronounced than the day before. He had rubbed his face repeatedly through the night, as the wounds burned and itched. Dr. Hansen had told him this would happen, that the wounds would itch as the skin mended. Hansen had given him a tube of cream to rub on the wounds to help prevent the irritation. But Pierce had left it behind at the apartment.

He leaned closer to the mirror and checked his eyes. The blood had almost completely cleared from the cornea of his left eye. The purple hemorrhage markings beneath each eye were giving way to yellow. He combed his hair back with his fingers and smiled. He decided the zippers gave his face unique character. He then grew embarrassed by his vanity and decided he was happy no one else had been in the locker room to see his fixation at the mirror.

By 9 A.M. he was back in the lab. Larraby and Grooms were there and the other techs were trickling in. There was an electricity in the lab. Everyone was catching the vibe and was excited about the presentation.

Brandon Larraby was a tall and thin researcher who liked the convention of wearing a white lab coat. He was the only one at Amedeo who did. Pierce thought it was a confidence thing: look like a real scientist and you shall do real science. It didn't matter to Pierce what Larraby or anyone else wore as long as they performed. And with Larraby there was no doubt that the immunologist had done so. Larraby was a few years older than Pierce and had come over from the pharmaceutical industry eighteen months before.

Sterling Grooms had been with Pierce and Amedeo Technologies the longest of any fulltime employee. He had been Pierce's lab manager through three separate moves, starting at the old warehouse near the airport where Amedeo was born and Pierce had built the first lab completely by himself. Some nights after a long shift in the lab the two men would talk about those "old days" with a nostalgic reverence. It didn't matter that the old days were less than ten years before. Grooms was just a couple years younger than Pierce. He had signed on after completing his post-doc at UCLA. Twice Grooms was wooed by competitors but Pierce had kept him by giving him points in the company, a seat on the company's board of directors and a piece of the patents.

At 9:20 the word came from Charlie Condon's assistant: Maurice Goddard had arrived.

The dog and pony show was about to begin. Pierce hung up the lab phone and looked at Grooms and Larraby.

"Elvis is in the building," he said. "Are we ready?"

Both men nodded to him and he nodded back.

"Then let's smash that fly."

It was a line from a movie that Pierce had liked. He smiled. Cody Zeller would have gotten it but it drew blanks from Grooms and Larraby.

"Never mind. I'll go get them."

Pierce went through the mantrap and took the elevator up to the administration level.

They were in the boardroom. Condon, Goddard and Goddard's second, a woman named Justine Bechy, whom Charlie privately referred to as Just Bitchy. She was a lawyer who ran interference for Goddard and protected the gates to his investment riches with a lumbering zeal not unlike a 350-pound football lineman protecting his quarterback. Jacob Kaz, the patent attorney, was also seated at the large, long table. Clyde Vernon stood off to the side, an apparent show of security at the ready if needed.

Goddard was saying something about the patent applications when Pierce walked in, announcing his presence with a loud hello which ended conversation and drew their eyes and then their reactions to his damaged face.

"Oh, my gosh," exclaimed Bechy. "Oh, Henry!"

Goddard said nothing. He just stared and had what Pierce thought was a small, bemused smile on his face.

"Henry Pierce," Condon said. "The man knows how to make an entrance."

Pierce shook hands with Bechy, Goddard and Kaz and pulled out a chair across the wide, polished table from the visitors. He touched Charlie on the expensively suited arm and looked over at Vernon and nodded. Vernon nodded back but it seemed to cost him something to do so. Pierce just didn't get the guy.

"Thank you so much for seeing us today, Henry," Bechy said in a tone that suggested he had volunteered to keep the meeting set as scheduled. "We had no idea your injuries were so serious."

"Well, it's no problem. And it looks worse than it is. I've been back in the lab and working since yesterday. Though I'm not sure this face and the lab go together too well."

No one seemed to get his awkward Frankenstein reference. Another swing and a miss for Pierce.

"Good," Bechy said.

"It was a car accident, we were told," Goddard said, his first words since Pierce's arrival.

Goddard was in his early fifties with all of his hair and the sharp eyes of a bird that had amassed a quarter billion worms in his day. He wore a crème-colored suit, white shirt and yellow tie and Pierce saw the matching hat on the table next to him. It had been remarked in the office after his first visit that Goddard had adopted the visual persona of the writer Tom Wolfe. The only thing missing was the cane.

"Yes," Pierce said. "I hit a wall."

"When did this happen? Where?"

"Sunday afternoon. Here in Santa Monica."

Pierce needed to change the subject. He was uncomfortable skirting the truth and he knew Goddard's questioning wasn't casual or concerned conversation. The bird was thinking about ponying up 18 million worms. His questions were part of the due diligence process. He was finding out what he was possibly getting into.

"Had you been drinking?" Goddard asked bluntly.

Pierce smiled and shook his head.

"No. I wasn't even driving. But I don't drink and drive anyway, Maurice, if that's what you mean."

"Well, I am glad you are okay. If you get a chance, could you get me a copy of the accident report? For our records, you understand."

There was a short silence.

"I'm not sure I do. It had nothing to do with Amedeo and what we do here."

"I understand that. But let's be frank here, Henry. You are Amedeo Technologies. It is your creative genius that drives this company. I've met a lot of creative geniuses in my time. Some I would put my last dollar behind. Some I wouldn't give a buck to if I had a hundred."

He stopped there. And Bechy took over. She was twenty years younger than Goddard, had short dark hair, fair skin and a manner that exuded confidence and one-upsmanship.

Even still, Pierce and Condon had agreed previously that she held the position because they believed she had a relationship with the married Goddard that went beyond business.

"What Maurice is saying is that he is considering a sizeable investment in Amedeo Technologies," she said. "To be comfortable doing that, he needs to be comfortable with you. He has to know you. He doesn't want to invest in someone who might be a risk taker, who might be reckless with his investment."

"I thought it was about the science. The project."

"It is, Henry," she said. "But they go hand in hand. The science is no good without the scientist. We want you to be dedicated and obsessed with the science and your projects.

But not reckless with your life outside the lab."

Pierce held her eyes for a long moment. He suddenly wondered if she knew the truth about what happened and about his obsessive investigation of Lilly Quinlan's disappearance.

Condon cleared his throat and cut in, trying to move the meeting forward.

"Justine, Maurice, I am sure that Henry would be happy to cooperate with any kind of personal investigation you would like to conduct. I've known him for a long time and I've worked in the ET field for even longer. He is one of the most levelheaded and focused researchers I've ever come across. That is why I am here. I like the science, I like the project and I'm very comfortable with the man."

Bechy broke away from Pierce to look at Condon and nod her approval.

"We may take you up on that offer," she said through a tight smile.

The exchange did little to erode the tension that had quickly enveloped the room. Pierce waited for somebody to say something but there was only silence.

"Um, there's something I should probably tell you then," he finally said. "Because you'll find out anyway."

"Then just tell us," Bechy said. "And save us all the time."

Pierce could almost feel Charlie Condon's muscles seize up under his thousand-dollar suit as he waited for the revelation he knew nothing about.

"Well, the thing is… I used to have a ponytail. Is that going to be a problem?"

At first the silence prevailed again but then Goddard's stone face cracked into a smile and then laughter came from his mouth. It was followed by Bechy's smile and then everybody was laughing, including Pierce, even though it hurt to do so. The tension was broken. Charlie balled a fist and knocked on the table in an apparent attempt to accentuate the mirth. The response far exceeded the humor in the comment.

"Okay, then," Condon said. "You people came to see a show. How about we go down to the lab and see the project that is going to win this comedian here a Nobel Prize?"

He put his hands on the front and back of Pierce's neck and acted as though he were strangling him. Pierce lost his smile and felt his face getting red. Not because of Condon's mock strangulation, but because of the quip about the Nobel. Pierce thought it was uncool to trivialize so serious an honor. Besides, he knew it would never happen. It would never be awarded to the operator of a private lab. The politics were against it.

"One thing before we go downstairs," Pierce said. "Jacob, did you bring the nondisclosure forms?"

"Oh, yes, right here," the lawyer said. "I almost forgot."

He pulled his briefcase up from the floor and opened it on the table.

"Is this really necessary?" Condon asked.

It was all part of the choreography. Pierce had insisted that Goddard and Bechy sign nondisclosure forms before entering the lab and viewing the presentation. Condon had disagreed, concerned that it might be insulting to an investor of Goddard's caliber. But Pierce didn't care and would not step back. His lab, his rules. So they settled on a plan in which it would appear to be an annoying routine.

"It's lab policy," Pierce said. "I don't think we should deviate. Justine was just talking about how important it is to avoid risks. If we don't -"

"I think it is a perfectly good idea," Goddard said, interrupting. "In fact, I would have been concerned if you had not taken such a step."

Kaz slid two copies of the two-page document across the table to Goddard and Bechy. He took a pen out of his inside suit pocket, twisted it and placed it on the table in front of them.

"It's a pretty standard form," he said. "Basically, any and all proprietary processes, procedures and formulas in the lab are protected. Anything you see and hear during your visit must be held in strict confidence."

Goddard didn't bother reading the document. He left that to Bechy, who took a good five minutes to read it twice. They watched in silence and at the end of her review she silently picked up the pen and signed it. She then gave the pen to Goddard, who signed the form in front of him.

Kaz collected the documents and put them in his briefcase. They all got up from the table then and headed toward the door. Pierce let the others go first. In the hallway as they approached the elevator, Jacob Kaz tapped him on the arm and they delayed for a moment behind the others.

"Everything go okay with Janis?" Kaz whispered.

"Who?"

"Janis Langwiser. Did she call you?"

"Oh. Yeah, she called. Everything's fine. Thank you, Jacob, for the introduction. She seems very capable."

"Anything else I can do?"

"No. Everything is fine. Thank you."

The lab elevator opened and they moved toward it.

"Down the rabbit hole, eh, Henry?" Goddard said.

"You got that right," Pierce replied.

Pierce looked back and saw that Vernon had also held back in the hallway and had apparently been standing right behind Pierce and Kaz as they had spoken privately. This annoyed Pierce but he said nothing about it. Vernon was the last one into the elevator. He put his scramble card into the slot on the control panel and pushed the B button.

"B is for basement," Condon told the visitors once the door closed. "If we put L in there for lab, people might think it meant lobby."

He laughed but no one joined him. It was a nice piece of worthless information he had imparted. But it told Pierce how nervous Condon was about the presentation. For some reason this made Henry smile ever so slightly, not enough to hurt. Condon might lack confidence in the presentation but Pierce certainly didn't. As the elevator descended he felt his energy diametrically rise. He felt his posture straighten and even his vision brighten. The lab was his domain. His stage. The outside world might be dark and in shambles. War and waste. A Hieronymus Bosch painting of chaos. Women selling their bodies to strangers who would take them and hide them, hurt and even kill them. But not in the lab. In the lab there was peace. There was order. And Pierce set that order. It was his world.

He had no doubts about the science or himself in the lab. He knew that in the next hour he would change Maurice Goddard's view of the world. And he would make him a believer. He would believe that his money was not going to be invested so much as it was going to be used to change the world. And he would give it gladly. He would take out his pen and say, Where do I sign, please tell me where to sign.