Chasing the Dime

9

Lights."

Pierce swung around behind his desk and sat down. From his backpack he pulled out the things he had taken from Lilly Quinlan's house. He had a Visa bill and a bank statement and the phone book.

He started paging through the phone book first. There were several listings for men by first name or first name with a following initial only. These numbers ran the gamut of area codes. Many local but still more from area codes outside of Los Angeles. There were also several listings for local hotels and restaurants, as well as a Lexus dealer in Hollywood. He saw a listing for Robin and another listing for ECU, which he knew was Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited.

Under the heading " Dallas " there were several numbers for hotels, restaurants and male first names listed. The same was true of a heading for Las Vegas.

He found a listing for Vivian Quinlan with an 813 area code phone number and an address in Tampa, Florida. That solved the mystery of the smeared postmark on the letter.

Near the end of the book he found an entry for someone listed as Wainwright that included a phone number and an address in Venice that Pierce knew was not far from the home on Altair.

He flipped back to the Q listings and used his desk phone to call the number for Vivian Quinlan. A woman answered the phone in two rings. Her voice sounded like a broom sweeping a sidewalk.

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Quinlan?"

"Yes?"

"Uh, hi, I'm calling from Los Angeles. My name's Henry Pierce and -"

"Is this about Lilly?"

Her voice had an immediate, desperate tone to it.

"Yes. I'm trying to locate her and I was wondering if you could help me."

"Oh, thank God! Are you police?"

"Uh, no, ma'am, I'm not."

"I don't care. Someone finally cares."

"Well, I'm just trying to find her, Mrs. Quinlan. Have you heard from her lately?"

"Not in more than seven weeks and that just isn't like her. She always checked in. I'm very worried."

"Have you contacted the police?"

"Yes, I called and talked to the Missing Persons people. They weren't interested because she's an adult and because of what she does for a living."

"What does she do for a living, Mrs. Quinlan?"

There was a hesitation.

"I thought you said you knew her."

"I'm just an acquaintance."

"She works as a gentleman's escort."

"I see."

"No sex or anything. She told me she goes to dinner with men in tuxedos mostly."

Pierce let that go by as a mother's denial of the obvious. It was something he had seen before in his own family.

"What did the police say to you about her?"

"Just that she probably went off with one of these fellows and that I'd probably hear from her soon."

"When was that?"

"A month ago. You see, Lilly calls me every Saturday afternoon. When two weeks went by with no phone calls I called the police. They didn't call me back. After the third week I called again and talked to Missing Persons. They didn't even take a report or anything, just told me to keep waiting. They don't care."

For some reason a vision bled into his mind and distracted him. It was the night he had come home from Stanford. His mother was waiting for him in the kitchen, the lights off.

Just waiting there in the dark to tell him the news about his sister, Isabelle.

When Lilly Quinlan's mother spoke, it was his own mother.

"I called in a private detective but he's been no help. He can't find her neither."

The content of what she was saying finally brought him out of it.

"Mrs. Quinlan, is Lilly's father there? Can I talk to him?"

"No, he's long gone. She never knew him. He hasn't been here in about twelve years – ever since the day I caught him with her."

"Is he in prison?"

"No, he's just gone."

Pierce didn't know what to say.

"When did Lilly come out to L.A.?"

"About three years ago. She first went to a flight attendant school out in Dallas but never did that job. Then she moved to L.A. I wish she'd become a flight attendant. I told her that in the escort business even if you don't have sex with those men, people will still think that you did."

Pierce nodded. He supposed that it was sound motherly advice. He pictured a heavyset woman with big hair and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Between that and her father, no wonder Lilly went about as far as she could get from Tampa. He was surprised it was only three years ago that she left.

"Where did you hire a private detective, there in Tampa or out here in L.A.?"

"Out there. Not much use to hire one here."

"How did you hire one out here?"

"The policeman in Missing Persons sent me a list. I picked from there."

"Did you come out here to look for her, Mrs. Quinlan?"

"I'm not in good health. Doctor says I've got emphysema and I've got my oxygen that I'm hooked up to. There wasn't much I could do comin' out there."

Pierce reconstructed his vision of her. The cigarette was gone and the oxygen tube replaced it. The big hair remained. He thought about what else he could ask or what information he might be able to get from the woman.

"Lilly told me she was sending you money."

It was a guess. It seemed to go with the whole mother-daughter relationship.

"Yes, and if you find her, tell her I'm getting real short about now. I'm real low. I had to give a lot of what I had to Mr. Glass."

"Who is Mr. Glass?"

"He's the private detective I hired. But I don't hear from him anymore. Now that I can't pay him anymore."

"Can you give me his full name and a number for him?"

"I have to look it up."

She put down the phone and it was two minutes before she came back and gave him the number and address for the private investigator. His full name was Philip Glass. His office was in Culver City.

"Mrs. Quinlan, are there any other contacts you have for Lilly out here? Any friends or anything like that?"

"No, she never gave me any numbers or told me about any friends. Except she once mentioned this girl Robin who she worked with sometimes. Robin was from New Orleans and they had stuff in common, she told me."

"Did she say what?"

"I think they both had the same kind of trouble with men in their family when they were young. That's what I expect she meant."

"I understand."

Pierce was trying to think like a detective. Vivian Quinlan seemed like an important piece of the puzzle, yet he could not think of anything else to ask her. She was three thousand miles away and was obviously kept literally and figuratively distant from her daughter's world. He looked down at the phone book on the desk in front of him and finally came up with something to ask.

"Does the name Wainwright mean anything to you, Mrs. Quinlan? Did Lilly or Mr. Glass ever mention that name?"

"Um, no. Mr. Glass didn't mention any names. Who is it?"

"I don't know. It's just someone she knew, I guess."

That was it. He had nothing else.

"Okay, Mrs. Quinlan, I'm going to keep trying to find her and I'll tell her to call you when I do."

"I'd appreciate that and make sure you tell her about the money, that I'm getting real low."

"Right. I will."

He hung up and thought for a few moments about what he knew. Probably too much about Lilly. It made him feel depressed and sad. He hoped one of her clients did take her away with a promise of riches and luxury. Maybe she was in Hawaii somewhere or in a rich man's penthouse in Paris.

But he doubted it.

"Guys in tuxedos," he said out loud.

"What?"

He looked up. Charlie Condon was standing in the door. Pierce had left it open.

"Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself. What are you doing here?"

He realized that Lilly Quinlan's phone book and the mail were spread in front of him. He nonchalantly picked up the daily planner he kept on the desk, looked at it like he was checking a date and then put it down on top of the envelopes with her name on them.

"I called your new number and got Monica. She said you were supposed to be here while she waited for furniture to be delivered. But nobody answered in the lab or in your office, so I came by."

He leaned against the door frame. Charlie was a handsome man with what seemed like a perpetual tan. He had worked as a model in New York for a few years before getting bored and going back to school for a master's in finance. They had been introduced by an investment banker who knew Condon was skilled at taking underfinanced emergingtechnology firms and matching them with investors. Pierce had joined with him because he'd promised to do it with Amedeo Technologies without Pierce having to sacrifice his controlling interest to investors. In return, Charlie would hold 10 percent of the company, a stake that could ultimately be worth hundreds of millions -if they won the race and went public with a stock offering.

"I missed your calls," Pierce said. "I just got here, actually. Stopped to get something to eat first."

Charlie nodded.

"I thought you'd be in the lab."

Meaning, why aren't you in the lab? There is work to be done. We're in a race. We've got a presentation to a whale to make. You can't chase the dime from your office.

"Yeah, don't worry, I'll get there. I just have some mail to go through. You came all the way in to check on me?"

"Not really. But we only have until Thursday to get our shit together for Maurice. I wanted to make sure everything was all right."

Pierce knew they were placing too much importance on Maurice Goddard. Even Charlie's e-mail reference to the investor as God was a subliminal indication of this. It was true that Thursday's dog and pony show would be the dog and pony show of all time, but Pierce had growing concern about Condon's reliance on this deal. They were seeking an investor willing to commit at least $6 million a year over three or four years, minimum. Goddard, according to the due diligence conducted by Nicole James and Cody Zeller, was worth $250 million, thanks to his getting in early on a few investments like Microsoft. It was clear that Goddard had the money. But if he didn't come across with a significant funding plan after Thursday's presentation, then there had to be another investor out there. It would be Condon's job to go out and find him.

"Don't worry," Pierce said. "We'll be ready. Is Jacob coming in for it?"

"He'll be here."

Jacob Kaz was the company's patent attorney. They had fifty-eight patents already granted or applied for and Kaz was going to file nine more the Monday after the presentation to Goddard. Patents were the key to the race. Control the patents and you are in on the ground floor and will eventually control the market. The nine new patent applications were the first to come out of the Proteus project. They would send a shock wave through the nanoworld. Pierce almost smiled at the thought of it. And Condon seemed to read his thoughts.

"Did you look at the patents yet?" he asked.

Pierce reached down into the kneehole beneath his desk and knocked his fist on the top of the steel safe bolted there to the floor. The patent drafts were in there. Pierce had to sign off on them before they were filed but it was very dry reading, and he'd been distracted by other things even before Lilly Quinlan came up.

"Right here. I'm planning to get to them today or come back in tomorrow."

It would be against company policy for Pierce to take the applications home to review.

Condon nodded his approval.

"Great. So, everything else okay? You doin' all right?"

"You mean with Nicki and everything?"

Charlie nodded.

"Yeah, I'm cool. I'm trying to keep my mind on other things."

"Like the lab, I hope."

Pierce leaned back in his chair, spread his hands and smiled. He wondered how much Monica had told him when he had called the apartment.

"I'm here."

"Well, good."

"By the way, Nicole left a new clip in the Bronson file on the Tagawa deal. It's hit the media."

"Anything?"

"Nothing we didn't know already. Elliot said something about biologicals. Very general, but you never know. Maybe he's gotten wind of Proteus."

As he said it Pierce looked past Condon at the framed one-sheet poster on his office wall next to the door. It was the poster from the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage. It showed the white submarine Proteus descending through a multicolor sea of bodily fluids. It was an original poster. He had gotten it from Cody Zeller, who had obtained it through an online Hollywood memorabilia auction.

"Elliot just likes to talk," Condon said. "I don't know how he could know anything about Proteus. But after the patent is granted he'll know about it. And he'll be shitting bricks.

And Tagawa will know they backed the wrong horse."

"Yeah, I hope so."

They had flirted with Tagawa earlier in the year. But the Japanese company wanted too large a piece of the company for the money, and negotiations broke down early. Though Proteus was mentioned in the early meetings, the Tagawa representatives were never fully briefed and never got near the lab. Now Pierce had concern himself with exactly how much about the project was mentioned, because it stood to reason that the information was passed on to Tagawa's new partner, Elliot Bronson.

"Let me know if you need anything and I'll get it done," Condon said.

It brought Pierce out of his thoughts.

"Thanks, Charlie. You going back home now?"

"Probably. Melissa and I are going to Jar tonight for dinner. You want to go? I could call and make it for three."

"Nah, that's okay. But thanks. I've got the furniture coming in today and I'll probably work on getting my place set up."

Charlie nodded and then hesitated for a moment before asking the next question.

"You going to change your phone number?"

"Yeah, I think I have to. First thing Monday. Monica told you, huh?"

"A little bit. She said you got some prostitute's old number and guys are calling all the time."

"She's an escort, not a prostitute."

"Oh, I didn't know there was a big difference."

Pierce couldn't believe he had jumped to defend a woman he didn't even know. He felt his face getting red.

"There probably isn't. Anyway, when I see you Monday I'll probably give you a new number, okay? I want to get done here so I can get in the lab and do something today."

"Okay, man, I'll see you Monday."

Condon left then, and after Pierce was sure he was down the hall he got up and closed his door. He wondered how much more Monica had told him, whether she was spreading alarm about his activities. He thought about calling her but decided to wait until later, to talk about it with her in person.

He went back to Lilly's phone book, leafing through it once again. Almost to the end he came across a listing he hadn't noticed before. It simply said USC and had a number.

Pierce thought about the envelope he had seen in her house. He picked up the phone and called the number. He got a recording for the admissions office of the University of Southern California. The office was closed on weekends.

Pierce hung up. He wondered if Lilly had been in the process of applying to USC when she disappeared. Maybe she had been trying to get out of the escort business. Maybe it was the reason she had disappeared.

He put the phone book aside and opened the Visa statement. It showed zero purchases on the card for the month of August and notice for an overdue payment on a $354.26 balance. The payment had been due by August 10.

The bank statement from Washington Savings amp; Loan was next. It was a combined statement showing balances in checking and savings accounts. Lilly Quinlan had not made a deposit in the month of August but had not been short of funds. She had $9,240 in checking and $54,542 in savings. It wasn't enough for four years at USC but it would have been a start if Lilly was changing her direction.

Pierce looked through the statement and the collection of posted checks the bank had returned to her. He noticed one to a Vivian Quinlan for $2,000 and assumed that was the monthly installment on maternal upkeep. Another check, this one for $4,000, was made out to James Wainwright and on the memo line Lilly had written, "Rent."

He tapped the check lightly against his chin as he thought about what this meant. It seemed to him that $4,000 was an excessively high monthly rent for the bungalow on Altair. He wondered if she had paid for more than one month with the check.

He put the check back in the stack and finished looking through the bank records.

Nothing else hooked his interest and he put the checks and the statement back in the envelope.

The third-floor copy room was a short walk down the hall from Pierce's office. Along with a copier and a fax machine, the small room contained a power shredder. Pierce entered the room, opened up his backpack and fed the pieces of Lilly Quinlan's opened mail into the shredder, the whine of the machine seemingly loud enough to draw the attention of security. But no one came. He felt a sense of guilt drop over him. He didn't know anything about federal mail theft laws but was sure he had probably just compounded the first offense of stealing the mail by now destroying it.

When he was finished he stuck his head out into the hall and checked to make sure he was still alone on the floor. He then returned and opened one of the storage cabinets where stacks of packages containing copier paper were stored. From his backpack he removed Lilly Quinlan's phone book and then reached into the cabinet with it, dropping it behind one of the stacks of paper. He believed it could go as long as a month there without being discovered.

Once finished with hiding and destroying the evidence of his crime, Pierce took the lab elevator down to the basement and passed through the mantrap into the suite. He checked the sign-in log and saw that Grooms had been in that morning as well as Larraby and a few of the lower-tier lab rats. They had all come and gone. He picked up the pen and was about to sign in when he thought better of it and put the pen back down.

At the computer console Pierce entered the three passwords in correct order for a Saturday and logged in. He called up the testing protocols for the Proteus project. He started to read the summary of the most recent testing of cellular energy conversion rates, which had been conducted by Larraby that morning.

But then he stopped. Once again he could not do it. He could not concentrate on the work. He was consumed by other thoughts, and he knew from past experience -the Proteus project being an example -that he must run out the clock on the thing that consumed him if he was to ever return to the work.

He shut down the computer and left the lab. Back up in his office he took his notebook out of his backpack and called the number he had for the private investigator, Philip Glass. As he expected for a Saturday afternoon, he got a machine and left a message.

"Mr. Glass, my name is Henry Pierce. I would like to talk to you as soon as possible about Lilly Quinlan. I got your name and number from her mother. I hope to talk to you soon. You can call me back at any time."

He left both his apartment number and the direct line to his office and hung up. He realized that Glass might recognize the apartment number as having once belonged to Lilly Quinlan.

He drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. He tried to figure out the next step. He decided he was going up the coast to see Cody Zeller. But first he called his apartment number and Monica answered in a gruff voice.

"What?"

"It's me, Henry. My stuff get there yet?"

"They just got here. Finally. They're bringing in the bed first. Look, you can't blame me if you don't like where I tell them to put stuff."

"Tell me something. Are you having them put the bed in the bedroom?"

"Of course."

"Then I'm sure I'll like it just fine. What are you so short about?"

"It's just this goddamn phone. Every fifteen minutes some creep calls for Lilly. I'll tell you one thing: wherever she is, she must be rich."

Pierce had a growing feeling that wherever she was, money didn't matter. But he didn't say that.

"The calls are still coming in? They told me they'd get her page off the website by three o'clock."

"Well, I got a call about five minutes ago. Before I could say I wasn't Lilly the guy asked if I'd do a prostate massage, whatever that is. I hung up on him. It's totally gross."

Pierce smiled. He didn't know what it was, either. But he tried to keep the humor out of his voice.

"I'm sorry. Hopefully they won't take long getting it all up there and you can leave as soon as they are finished."

"Thank God."

"I need to go to Malibu, or else I'd come back now."

" Malibu? What's in Malibu?"

Pierce regretted mentioning it. He had forgotten about her earlier interest and disapproval of what he was doing.

"Don't worry, nothing to do with Lilly Quinlan," he lied. "I'm going to see Cody Zeller about something."

He knew it was weak but it would have to do for now. They hung up and Pierce started putting his notebook back in his backpack.

"Lights," he said.