Chasing the Dime (4 page)

The lab suite appeared empty, the computers off and the probe stations unmanned, but Pierce picked up the familiar smell of cooking carbon. He checked the sign-in log and saw that Grooms had signed in but had not yet signed out. He walked over to the wire lab and looked through the little glass door. He didn't see anyone. He opened the door and stepped in, immediately being hit with the heat and the smell. The vacuum oven was operating, a new batch of carbon wires being made. Pierce assumed Grooms had started the batch and then left the lab to take a break or get something to eat. It was understandable. The smell of cooking carbon was intolerable.

He left the wire lab and closed the door. He went to a computer next to one of the probe stations and typed in the passwords. He pulled up the data on the switch tests he knew Grooms had been planning to conduct after Pierce had gone home early to set up his phone. According to the computer log, Grooms had run two thousand tests on a new group of twenty switches. The chemically synthesized switches were basic on/off gates that one day could — or would — be used to build computer circuitry.

Pierce leaned back in the computer seat. He noticed a half full cup of coffee on the counter next to the monitor. He knew it was Larraby's because it was black. Everybody else in the lab used cream but the immunologist assigned to the Proteus project.

As Pierce thought about whether to continue with the gateway confirmation tests or to go into the imaging lab and pull up Larraby's latest work on Proteus, his eyes drifted up toward the wall behind the computers. Scotch-taped to the wall was a dime. Grooms had put it up a couple years earlier. A joke, yes, but a solid reminder of their goal. Sometimes it seemed to be mocking them. Roosevelt turning the side of his face, looking the other way, ignoring them.

It wasn't until that moment that Pierce realized he wasn't going to be able to work this night. He had spent so many nights working in the confines of the lab suite that it had cost him Nicole. That and other things. Now that she was gone, he was free to work without hesitation or guilt and he suddenly realized he couldn't do it. If he ever spoke to her again, he would tell her this. Maybe it would mean he was changing. Maybe it would mean something to her.

Behind him there was a sudden loud banging sound and Pierce jumped in his seat. Turning around and expecting to see Grooms returning, he saw Clyde Vernon come through the mantrap instead. Vernon was a wide and husky man with just a fringe of hair around the outer edges of his head. He had a naturally ruddy complexion that always gave him a look of consternation. In his mid-fifties, Vernon was by far the oldest person working at the company. After him Charlie Condon was probably the oldest at forty.

This time the look of consternation Vernon carried was real.

‘Hey, Clyde, you scared me,' Pierce said.

‘I didn't mean to.'

‘We do a lot of sensitive readings in here. Banging the door open like that could ruin an experiment. Luckily, I was just reviewing experiments, not conducting any.'

‘I'm sorry, Dr. Pierce.'

‘Don't call me that, Clyde. Call me Henry. So let me guess, you put out a “be on the look out for” on me, and Rudolpho called it in when I came through. And that made you come all the way in from home. I hope you don't live too far away, Clyde.'

Vernon ignored Pierce's fine deductive work.

‘We need to talk,' he said instead. ‘Did you get my message?'

They were in the early stages of getting to know each other. Vernon might be the oldest person working at Amedeo, but he was also the newest. Pierce had already noticed that Vernon had difficulty calling him by name. He thought maybe it was an age thing. Pierce was the president of the company but at least twenty years younger than Vernon, who had come to the company a few months earlier after putting in twenty-five years with the FBI. Vernon probably thought it would be improper to address Pierce by his first name, and the gulf in age and real-life experience made it difficult to call him Mr. Pierce. Dr. Pierce seemed a bit easier for him, even though it was based on academic degrees not medical ones. His real plan seemed to be to never address him by any name if possible. To the point it was noticeable, especially in e-mail and telephone conversations.

‘I just got your e-mail about fifteen minutes ago,' Pierce said. ‘I was out of the office. I was probably going to call you when I got finished here. You want to talk about Nicole?'

‘Yes. What happened?'

Pierce shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture.

‘What happened is that she left. She quit her job and she, uh, quit me. I guess you could say she quit me first.'

‘When did this happen?'

‘Hard to tell, Clyde. It was happening for a while. Like slow motion. But it all sort of hit the fan a couple weeks ago. She agreed to stay until today. Today was her last day. I know when we brought you in here you warned me about fishing off the company dock. I think that's what you called it. I guess you were right.'

Vernon took a step closer to Pierce.

‘Why wasn't I told about this?' he protested. ‘I should've been told.'

Pierce could see the color moving higher on Vernon's cheeks. He was angry and trying to control it. It wasn't about Nicole so much as his need to solidify his position in the company. After all, he didn't leave the bureau after so many years to be kept in the dark by some punk scientist boss who probably smoked pot on the weekends.

‘Look, I know you should have been told but because there were some personal issues involved I just ... I didn't really want to talk about it. And to tell you the truth, I probably wasn't going to call you tonight, because I still don't want to talk about it.'

‘Well, we need to talk about it. She was the intelligence officer of this company. She shouldn't have been allowed to just waltz out the door at the end of the day.'

‘All the files are still there. I checked, even though I didn't need to. Nicki would never do anything like you are suggesting.'

‘I am not suggesting any impropriety. I am just trying to be thorough and cautious about this. That's all. Did she take another job that you know of?'

‘Not as of the last time we spoke. But she signed a no-compete contract when we hired her. We don't have to worry about that, Clyde.'

‘So you think. What were the financial arrangements of the separation?'

‘Why is that your business?'

‘Because a person in need of finances is vulnerable. It's my business to know if a former or current employee with intimate knowledge of the project is vulnerable.'

Pierce was beginning to get annoyed with Vernon's rapid questioning and condescending demeanor, even though it was the same demeanor he treated the security man with on a daily basis.

‘First of all, her knowledge of the project was limited. She gathered intelligence on the competitors, not on us. To do that, she had to have a sense of what we're doing in here. But I don't think she was in a position to know exactly what we're doing or where we are in any of the projects. Just like you don't, Clyde. It is safer that way.

‘And second, I'll answer your next question before you ask it. No, I never told her on a personal level the details of what we are doing. It never came up. In fact, I don't even think she cared. She treated the job like a job, and that probably was the main problem with us. I didn't treat it as a job. I treated it like it was my life. Now, anything else, Clyde? I want to get some work done.'

He hoped camouflaging the one lie in verbiage and indignation would get it by Vernon.

‘When did Charlie Condon know about this?' Vernon asked.

Condon was the company's chief financial officer, but more important, he was the man who had hired Vernon.

‘We told him yesterday,' Pierce said. ‘Together. I heard she'd made an appointment to talk to him last before she left today. If Charlie didn't tell you, there is nothing I can do about that. I guess he didn't see it as necessary, either.'

That was a shot, reminding Vernon that he had been left out of the loop by his own sponsor. But the former FBI man shook it off with a quick frown and moved on.

‘You didn't answer before. Did she receive a severance?'

‘Of course. Yes. Six months' pay, two years' medical and life insurance. She's also selling the house and keeping all proceeds. Satisfied? I hardly think she's vulnerable. She should clear more than a hundred grand on that house alone.'

Vernon seemed to calm a bit. Knowing that Charlie Condon had been in the loop eased things for him. Pierce knew Vernon viewed Charlie as being the practical business side of the company while Pierce was the more ephemeral talent side. And somehow Pierce's being on the talent side lowered Vernon's respect for him. Charlie was different. He was all business. If he had signed off on Nicole James's departure, then it was going to be okay.

But then again, if Vernon was satisfied, he wasn't going to say so to Pierce.

‘I am sorry if you don't like the questions,' he said. ‘But it's my job and my duty to maintain the security of this firm and its projects. There are many people and companies whose investment must be safeguarded.'

He was alluding to the reason he was there. Charlie Condon had hired him as a showpiece. Vernon was there to placate potential investors who needed to know that the company's projects were safe and secure and, therefore, that their investments would be safe and secure. Vernon's pedigree was impressive and more vitally important to the company than the actual security work he performed.

When Maurice Goddard had made his first trip out from New York to be shown around the place and receive the initial presentation, he had also been introduced to Vernon and had spent twenty minutes talking about plant security and personnel with him.

Pierce now looked at Clyde Vernon and felt like screaming at him, letting him know how close they were to running out of significant funding and how inconsequential he was in the scheme of things.

But he held his tongue.

‘I understand your concerns perfectly, Clyde. But I don't think you have to worry about Nicole. Everything is cool.'

Vernon nodded and finally conceded, perhaps sensing the growing tension behind Pierce's eyes.

‘I think you're probably right.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Now, you said you were selling the house.'

‘I said she's selling it.'

‘Yes. Have you moved yet? Do you have a number where you can be reached?'

Pierce hesitated. Vernon had not been on the A-list of people who had gotten his new number and address. Respect was a two-way street. While Pierce viewed Vernon as capable, he also knew what had gotten the man the job was his FBI pedigree. Of his twenty-five years in the bureau, Vernon had spent half in the L.A. field office on white collar crime and corporate espionage investigations.

But Pierce viewed Vernon largely as a poseur. He was always on the move, charging down hallways and banging through doors like a man on a mission. But the bottom line was that there wasn't a whole lot to the mission of providing project security to a firm that employed thirty-three people, only ten of which could get through the mantrap and inside the lab, where all the secrets were kept.

‘I've got a new phone number but I don't remember it,' Pierce said. ‘I'll get it to you as soon as I can.'

‘What about the address?'

‘It's over in the Sands on the beach. Apartment twelve oh one.'

Vernon took out a little notebook and wrote down the information. He looked just like a cop from an old movie, his big hands crowding the small notebook as he scribbled.
Why do they always have such small notebooks?
It was a question Cody Zeller had once posited after they'd seen a cop flick together.

‘I'm going to get back to work now, Clyde. After all, all those investors are counting on us, right?'

Vernon looked up from his notebook, one eyebrow raised as he tried to gauge whether Pierce was being sarcastic.

‘Right,' he said. ‘Then I'll let you get back to it.'

But after the security man had retreated through the mantrap, Pierce again realized he could not get back to it. An inertia had set in. For the first time in three years he was unencumbered by interests outside the lab and free to do the work. But for the first time in three years he didn't want to.

He shut down the computer and got up. He followed Vernon's wake through the mantrap.

When he got back to his office Pierce turned the lights on by hand. The voice-recognition switch was bullshit and he knew it. Something installed simply to impress the potential investors Charlie Condon walked through the place every few weeks. It was a gimmick. Just like all the cameras and Vernon. But Charlie said it was all necessary. It symbolized the cutting-edge nature of what they did. He said it helped investors envision the company's projects and importance. It made them feel good about writing a check.

But the result was that the offices sometimes seemed to Pierce to be as soulless as they were high-tech. He had started the company in a low-rent warehouse in West-chester, having to take readings on experiments in between takeoffs and landings at LAX. He had no employees. Now he had so many he needed an employee relations officer. He drove a fender-dented Volkswagen Beetle then — the old kind. And now he drove a BMW. There was no doubt, he and Amedeo had certainly come a long way. But with increasing frequency he would drift off to memories of that warehouse lab beneath the flight pattern of runway I7. His friend Cody Zeller, always looking for a movie reference, had once told him that ‘runway 17' would be his ‘Rosebud,' the last words whispered from his dying lips. Other similarities to
Citizen Kane
notwithstanding, Pierce thought there was a possibility Zeller might be right about that.