Chasing the Dime

by Michael Connelly

  The question made him think of Detective Renner's statement about the Good Samaritan complex. If such a theory and complex were true, then Pierce felt sorry for all the true dogooders and volunteers out there in the world. The idea that their efforts might be viewed cynically by members of law enforcement depressed him.

  Pierce remembered that he still had several bags of groceries in the trunk of his BMW.

  He picked up the laundry basket and decided to go get them because he was hungry and the pretzels and sodas and other snacks he had bought were in the trunk.

  Still feeling weak from the assault and surgery, he did not overload the basket once he went down to the garage. He decided on two trips and after he got back into the apartment with the second basketful he checked the phone again and learned he had missed a call. He had a message.

  Pierce cursed himself for missing the call and then quickly went through the process of setting up a voice mail access code again. Soon he was listening to the message. It was from Lucy LaPorte.

  "Help me? You already helped me enough, Henry. They hurt me. I'm all black and blue and nobody can see me like this. I want you to stop calling me and wanting to help me.

  I'm not talking to you again after this. Stop calling here, you understand?"

  The message clicked off. Pierce continued to hold the phone to his ear, his mind repeating parts of the message like a scratched old record. They hurt me. I'm all black and blue. He felt himself getting light-headed and reached out to the wall for balance. He then turned his back into the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, the phone on his lap again.

  He did not move for several seconds and then raised the receiver and started calling her number. Halfway through, he stopped and hung up.

  "Okay," he said out loud.

  He closed his eyes. He thought about calling Janis Langwiser to tell her that he had received a message from Lucy, that at the very least she was alive. He could then ask her if she had learned anything new since their meeting at the hospital that morning.

  Before he could act on the idea, the phone rang while he was still holding it. He answered immediately. He thought it might be Lucy again —who else had the new number? —and his hello was tinged with a tone of hurried desperation.

  But it wasn't Lucy. It was Monica.

  "I forgot to tell you, between Monday and Tuesday your friend Cody Zeller left three messages for you on your private line. I guess he really wants you to call him."

  "Thank you, Monica."

  Pierce could not call Zeller back directly. His friend accepted no direct calls. To contact him, Pierce had to call his pager and put in a return number. If Zeller was familiar with the number, he would return the call. Because Pierce had a new number that Zeller would not recognize, he added a prefix of three sevens, which was a code that let Zeller know it was a friend or associate who was attempting to contact him from an unfamiliar number.

  It was a sometimes cumbersome and always annoying way to conduct life and business but Zeller was a paranoid's paranoid and Pierce had to play it his way.

  He settled in to wait for the callback but his page was promptly returned. Unusual for Zeller.

  "Jesus, man, when are you going to get a cell phone? I've been trying to reach you for three days."

  "I don't like cell phones. What's up?"

  "You can get them with a scramble chip, you know."

  "I know. What's up?"

  "What's up is that on Saturday you sure wanted this stuff in a goddamn hurry. Then you don't call me back for three days. I was starting to think you —"

  "Code, I've been in the hospital. I just got out."

  "The hospital?"

  "I had a little trouble with some guys."

  "Not guys from Entrepreneurial Concepts?"

  "I don't know. Did you find out about them?"

  "Full scan as requested. These are bad dudes you're dancing with, Hank."

  "I'm getting that idea. You want to tell me about them now?"

  "Actually, I'm in the middle of something right now and don't like doing this by phone anyway. But I did drop it all in a FedEx yesterday —when I didn't hear from you.

  Should've gotten there by this morning. You didn't get it?"

  Pierce checked his watch. It was two o'clock. The FedEx run came at about ten every morning. He didn't like the idea of the envelope from Zeller sitting on his desk all this time.

  "I haven't been to the office. But I'll go get it now. You have anything else for me?"

  "Can't think of anything that's not in the package."

  "Okay, man. I'll call you after I look at everything. Meantime, let me ask you something.

  I need to track somebody to a location, an address, and all I have is her name and her cell number. But the bill for the cell doesn't go to where she lives and that's what I want."

  "Then it's worthless."

  "Anything else I can do?"

  "That's a tough one but it can be done. Is she registered to vote?"

  "I kind of doubt it."

  "Well, there are utility hookups and credit cards. How common's her name?"

  "Lucy LaPorte of Louisiana."

  Pierce reminded himself that she had told him to stop calling her. She hadn't said anything about not finding her.

  "Got that alliteration thing going, huh?" Zeller said. "Well, I can try some things, see what pops."

  "Thanks, Code."

  "And I suppose you want it yesterday."

  "That's right."

  "Of course."

  "I gotta go."

  Pierce went into the kitchen and looked through the bags he had dumped on the counter for the bread and peanut butter. He quickly made a sandwich and left the apartment, being sure to put on the Moles hat and pull the brim down low on his forehead. He ate the sandwich while waiting for the elevator. The bread tasted stale. It had been in the car trunk since Sunday.

  On the ride down to the garage the elevator stopped on six and a woman got on. As was the custom with elevator riders, she avoided looking at Pierce. After they started descending she surreptitiously checked out his reflection in the polished chrome trim on the door. Pierce saw her do a frightened double take.

  "Oh my God!" she cried out. "You're the one everybody's talking about."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You're the one who got hung off the balcony, right?"

  Pierce looked at her for a long moment. And in that moment he knew that no matter what happened with Nicole, he wouldn't be able to stay in the apartment building. He was moving.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Are you all right? What did they do to you?"

  "They didn't do anything. I don't know what you are talking about."

  "You're not the guy who just moved in up on twelve?"

  "No. I'm on eight. I'm staying with a friend on eight while I heal."

  "Then what happened?"

  "Deviated septum."

  She looked at him suspiciously. The door finally opened on the garage level. Pierce didn't wait for her to get out first. He moved quickly out of the elevator and around the corner toward the door to the building's garage. He glanced back to see the woman staring at him as she came out of the elevator.

  Just as he looked forward again he almost walked into the door to the storage area, which had come open as a man and woman were walking their bikes out. Pierce lowered his chin, pulled the brim of his hat down further and held the door and waited until they were out of the way. They both said thank you but didn't mention anything about his being the guy who was hung off the balcony.

  The first thing Pierce did when he got inside his car was put on the pair of sunglasses he carried in the glove box.

  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 ad
mit I'm wrong. So let's just leave it alone for now."