Chasing the Dime

38

Cody Zeller looked around the lab, at the ceiling, at the desks, at the framed Dr. Seuss illustrations on the walls, anywhere but at Pierce. He caught an idea and abruptly started pacing through the lab with a renewed vigor, his head swiveling as he began a search for a specific target.

Pierce knew what he was doing.

"There is a fire alarm. But it's a direct system. You pull it and fire and police come. You want them coming? You want to explain it to them?"

"I don't care. You can explain it."

Zeller saw the red emergency pull on the wall next to the door to the wire lab. He walked over and without hesitation pulled it down. He turned back to Pierce with a clever smile on his face.

But then nothing happened. Zeller's smile broke. His eyes turned into question marks and Pierce nodded as if to say, Yes, I disconnected the system.

Dejected by the failure of his efforts, Zeller walked over to the probe station furthest from Pierce in the lab, pulled out the desk chair and dropped heavily into it. He closed his eyes, folded his arms and put his feet up on the table, just inches from a $250,000 scanning tunneling microscope.

Pierce waited. He had all night if he needed it. Zeller had masterfully played him. Now it was time to reverse the field. Pierce would play him. Fifteen years before, when the campus police had rounded up the Doomsters, they had separated them and waited them out. The cops had nothing. Zeller was the one who broke, who told everything. Not out of fear, not out of being worn down. Out of wanting to talk, out of a need to share his genius.

Pierce was counting on that need now.

Almost five minutes went by. When Zeller finally spoke, it was while in the same posture, his eyes still closed.

"It was when you came back after the funeral."

That was all he said and a long moment went by. Pierce waited, unsure how to dislodge the rest. Finally, he went with the direct approach.

"What are you talking about? Whose funeral?"

"Your sister's. When you came back up to Palo Alto you wouldn't talk about it. You kept it in. Then one night it all came out. We got drunk one night and I had some stuff left over from Christmas break in Maui. We smoked that up and, man, then you couldn't stop talking about it."

Pierce didn't remember this. He did, of course, remember drinking heavily and ingesting a variety of drugs in the days and months after Isabelle's death. He just didn't remember talking about it with Zeller or anyone else.

"You said that one time when you were out cruising around with your stepfather that you did actually find her. She was sleeping in this abandoned hotel where all the runaways had taken over the rooms. You found her and you were going to rescue her and bring her out, bring her back home. But she convinced you not to do it and not to tell your stepdad.

She told you he had done things to her, raped her or whatever, and that's why she ran away. You said she convinced you she was better off on the street than at home with him."

Now Pierce closed his eyes. Remembering the moment of the story, if not remembering the drunken confession of it to a college roommate.

"So you left her and you lied to the old man. You said she wasn't there. Then for a whole 'nother year you two kept going out at night, looking for her. Only you were really avoiding her and he didn't know it."

Pierce remembered his plan. To get older, get out and then come back for her, to find and rescue her then. But she was dead before he got the chance. And all his life since then he knew she would be alive if he had not listened and believed her.

"You never mentioned it again after that night," Zeller said. "But I remembered it."

Pierce was seeing the eventual confrontation with his stepfather. It was years later. He had been handcuffed, unable to tell his mother what he knew because to reveal it would be to reveal his own complicity in Isabelle's death, that one night he had found her but then let her go and lied about it.

But, finally, the burden grew until it outweighed the damage the revelation could cause him. The confrontation was in the kitchen, where the confrontations always were in that house. Denials, threats, recriminations. His mother didn't believe him, and in not believing him, she was denying her lost daughter as well. Pierce had not spoken to her since.

Pierce opened his eyes, relieved to leave the haunting memory for the present nightmare.

"You remembered," he said to Zeller. "You remembered and you held it tight and you kept it for the right time. This time."

"It wasn't like that. Something just came up and what I knew fit in. It helped."

"Nice penetration, Cody. You have a picture of me up on the wall with all the logos now?"

"It's not like that, Hank."

"Don't call me that. That's what my stepfather called me. Don't ever call me that again."

"Whatever you want, Henry."

Zeller pulled his folded arms tighter against his body.

"So what's the setup?" Pierce asked. "My guess is you have to deliver the formula to keep your end of the deal. Who gets it?"

Zeller turned his head and looked at him, challenge or defiance in his eyes. Pierce wasn't sure which way to read it.

"I don't know why we're playing this game. The walls are about to come down on you, man, and you don't even know it."

"What walls? Are you talking about Lilly Quinlan?"

"You know I am. There are people who will be contacting you. Soon. You make the deal with them and everything else goes away. You don't make the deal, then God help you.

Everything will come down on you like a ton of bricks. So my advice is, play it cool, make the deal and walk away alive, happy and rich."

"What is the deal?"

"Simple. You give up Proteus. You hand over the patent. You go back to building your molecular memory and computers and make lots of money that way. Stay away from the biologicals."

Pierce nodded. Now he understood. The pharmaceutical industry. One of Zeller's other clients was somehow threatened by Proteus.

"Are you serious?" he said. "A pharmaceutical is behind this? What did you tell them?

Don't you know that Proteus will help them? It's a delivery system. What will it deliver?

Drug therapy. This could be the biggest development in that industry since it began."

"Exactly. It will change everything and they're not ready for it."

"Doesn't matter. There's time. Proteus is just a start -we're a minimum ten years away from any kind of practical application."

"Yeah, ten years. That's still fifteen years closer than it was before Proteus. The formula will excite the research, to use a phrase from one of your own e-mails. It will kick start it.

Maybe you are ten years away and maybe you're five. Maybe you're four. Three.

Doesn't matter. You are a threat, man. To a major industrial complex."

Zeller shook his head in disgust.

"You scientists think the fucking world is your oyster and you can make your discoveries and change whatever you want and everybody will be happy about it. Well, there's a world order and if you think the giants of industry are going to let a little worker ant like you cut them down to size, then you are living in a goddamn dream."

He unfolded his arms and gestured toward one of the framed pages from Horton Hears a Who! Pierce's eyes followed and he saw it was the page that showed Horton being persecuted by the other jungle animals. He could recite the words in his head. Through the high jungle tree tops, the news quickly spread. He talks to a dust speck. He's out of his head!

"I am helping you by doing this, Einstein. You understand? This is your dose of reality.

Because don't expect the semiconductor people to sit around while you cut them down, either. Consider this a fucking heads up."

Pierce almost laughed but it was too pathetic.

"My heads up? Man, that's great. Thank you, Cody Zeller, for setting me straight in the world."

"Don't mention it."

"And what do you get for this great gesture?"

"Me? I get money. Lots of it."

Pierce nodded. Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.

"So what happens?" he asked quietly. "I make the deal and what happens?"

Zeller sat quietly for a moment while he fashioned an answer.

"Do you remember that urban legend about the garage workshop inventor who came up with a form of rubber that was so strong, it would never wear out? It was a fluke. He was trying to invent one thing but came up with this rubber instead."

"He sold it to a tire company so the world would have tires that would never wear out."

"Yeah, that's right. That's the story. The name of the tire company was different depending on who told the story. But the story and the end were always the same. The tire company took the formula and put it in a safe."

"They never made the tires."

"They never made the tires because if they did that, they wouldn't make very many tires anymore, would they? Planned obsolescence, Einstein. It's what makes the world go around. Let me ask you this: How do you know that story is urban legend? I mean, how do you really know it didn't happen?"

Pierce nodded before he spoke.

"They'll bury Proteus. They won't license it. It will never see the light of day."

"Do you know that the pharmaceutical industry invents and studies and tests several hundred different new drugs for every one that eventually comes to market after the FDA is through with it? Do you understand the costs involved? It's a big, huge machine, Henry, and it's got energy and momentum and you can't stop it. They won't let you."

Zeller raised a hand and made some kind of gesture and then dropped it to the armrest of the chair. They both sat silently for a long moment.

"They are going to come to me and take away Proteus."

"They're going to pay you for it. Pay you well. The offer's actually already on the table."

Pierce sprang forward in his seat, the pose of calm completely disappearing. He looked over at Zeller, who was not looking back.

"Are you telling me it's Goddard? Goddard is behind this?"

"Goddard is only the emissary. The front. He calls you tomorrow and you make the deal with him. You give him Proteus. You don't need to know who is behind him. You don't ever need to know that."

"He takes Proteus from me, then holds ten percent of the company and sits as chairman of my fucking board."

"I think they want to make sure you steer clear of internal medicine. They also know a good investment when they see it. They know you're the leader in the field."

Zeller smiled, as if he were throwing in a bonus. Pierce thought about Goddard and the things he had said -confided -during the celebration. About his daughter. About the future. He wondered if it was all sham. If it had all been part of the play.

"What if I don't do it?" Pierce asked. "What if I go ahead and file the patent and say fuck you to them?"

"Then you won't get the chance to file it. And you won't get the chance to work another day in this lab."

"What are they going to do, kill me?"

"If they have to, but they don't have to. Come on, man, you know what's going on. The cops are this close behind you."

Zeller held up his right hand, his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

"Lilly Quinlan," Pierce said.

Zeller nodded.

"Darling Lilly. They're missing only one thing. They find it and you're history. You do as you're told here and that will all go away. I guarantee it will be taken care of."

"I didn't do it and you know it."

"Doesn't matter. They find the body and it points to you, then it doesn't matter."

"So Lilly is dead."

Zeller nodded.

"Oh, yeah. She's dead."

There was a smile in his voice, if not on his face, when he said it. Pierce looked down. He put his elbows on his knees and put his face in his hands.

"All because of me. Because of Proteus."

He didn't move for a long moment. He knew if Zeller were to make the ultimate mistake, he would do it now.

"Actually…"

Nothing. That was it. Pierce looked up from his hands.

"Actually what?"

"I was going to say, Don't beat yourself up too badly about that. Lilly… you could say circumstances dictated she be folded into the plan."

"I don't -what do you mean?"

"I mean, look at it this way. Lilly would be dead whether you were involved in this or not. But she's dead. And we used all available resources to make this deal happen."

Pierce stood up and walked to the back of the lab where Zeller sat, his legs still up on the probe station table.

"You son of a bitch. You know all about it. You killed her, didn't you? You killed her and set the frame around me."

Zeller didn't move an inch. But his eyes rose to Pierce's and then a strange look came over his face. The change was subtle but Pierce could see it. It was the incongruous mixture of pride and embarrassment and self-loathing.

"I had known Lilly since she first came to L.A. You could say she was part of my compensation package for L.A. Darlings. And by the way, don't insult me with that thing about me doing the work for Wentz. Wentz works for me, you understand? They all do."

Pierce nodded to himself. He should have expected as much. Zeller continued unbidden.

"Man, she was a choice piece. Darling Lilly. But she got to know too much about me.

You don't want anyone to know all your secrets. At least not those kinds of secrets. So I worked her into the assignment I had. The Proteus Plan, I called it."

His eyes were far off now. He was watching a movie inside and liking it. He and Lilly, maybe the final meeting in the townhouse off Speedway. It prompted Pierce to draw another line from Miller's Crossing.

"Nobody knows nobody, not that well."

"Miller's Crossing," Zeller said, smiling and nodding. "I guess that means you got my 'what's the rumpus' coming in."

"Yeah, I got it, Cody."

After a pause he continued quietly.

"You killed her, didn't you? You did it and then you were ready, if necessary, to put it on me."

Zeller didn't answer at first. Pierce studied his face and could tell he wanted to talk, wanted to tell him every detail of his ingenious plan. It was in his nature to tell it. But common sense told him not to, told him to be safe.

"Put it this way. Lilly served her purpose for me. And then she served her purpose for me again. I'll never admit more than that."

"It's all right. You just did."

Pierce hadn't said it. It was a new voice. Both men turned at the sound and saw Detective Robert Renner standing in the open doorway of the wire lab. He held a gun loosely down at his side.

"Who the fuck are you?" Zeller asked as he dropped his feet to the floor and came up out of the chair.

"LAPD," Renner said.

He moved from the lab doorway toward Zeller, reaching behind his back as he came.

"You're under arrest for murder. That's for starters. We'll worry about the rest later."

His hand came back around his body, holding a pair of handcuffs. He moved in on Zeller, twirled him around and bent him over the probe station. He holstered his weapon and then pulled Zeller's arms behind his back and started cuffing them. He worked with the professionalism and practice of a man who had done it a thousand times or more. In the process he pushed Zeller's face into the hard steel cowling of the microscope.

"Careful," Pierce said. "That microscope is very sensitive -and expensive. You might damage it."

"Wouldn't want to do that," Renner said. "Not with all these important discoveries you're making in here."

He then glanced over at Pierce with what probably passed for him as a full-fledged smile.