Michael Connelly - Chasing the Dime

"I want you to call this number and say you are Lilly Quinlan. Ask for Curt and tell him you got his message. Tell him his call was the first you'd heard about your payment being overdue and ask him why they didn't send you a notice in the mail. Okay?"

"Why -what is this for?"

"I can't explain it all to you but it's important."

"I don't know if I want to impersonate somebody. It's not -"

"What you are doing is totally harmless. It's what hackers call social engineering. What Curt is going to tell you is that he did send you a notice. Then you say, 'Oh, really? What address did you send it to?' When he gives you the address write it down. That's what I need. The address. As soon as you get it you can get off the call. Just tell him you'll come by as soon as you can to pay, and hang up. I just need that address."

She looked at him in a way she had never looked at him before during the six months she had worked directly for him.

"Come on, Monica, it's no big deal. It's not harming anyone. And it might actually be helping someone. In fact, I think it will."

He put the notebook and pen on her lap.

"Are you ready? I'll dial the number."

"Dr. Pierce, this doesn't seem -"

"Don't call me Dr. Pierce. You never call me Dr. Pierce."

"Then Henry. I don't want to do this. Not without knowing what I am doing."

"All right then, I'll tell you. You know the new phone number you got me?"

She nodded.

"Well, it belonged previously to a woman who has disappeared, or something has happened to her. I'm getting her calls and I'm trying to figure out what happened to her.

You see? And this call I want you to make might get me an address where she lives.

That's all I want. I want to go there and see if she's okay. Nothing else. Now, will you make the call?"

She shook her head as if warding off too much information. Her face looked as if Pierce had just told her he'd been taken aboard a spaceship and sodomized by an alien.

"This is crazy. How did you ever get caught up in this? Did you know this woman? How do you know she disappeared?"

"No, I don't know her. It was purely random. Because I got the wrong number. But now I know enough to know I have to find out what happened or make sure she's okay. Will you please do this for me, Monica?"

"Why don't you just change your number?"

"I will. First thing Monday I want you to change it."

"And meantime, just call the police."

"I don't have enough information yet to call the police. What would I tell them? They'll think I'm a nut."

"And they might be right."

"Look, will you do this or not?"

She nodded in resignation.

"If it will make you happy and it will keep my job."

"Whoa. Wait a minute. I'm not threatening you about your job. If you don't want to do it, fine, I'll get somebody else. It's got nothing to do with your job. Are we clear on that?"

"Yes, clear. But don't worry, I'll do it. Let's just get it over with."

He went over the call with her once more and then dialed the number of All American Mail and handed the phone to Monica. She asked for Curt and then pulled off the call as planned, with only a few moments of bad acting and confusion. Pierce watched as she wrote down an address on the notepad. He was ecstatic but didn't show it. When she hung up she handed him the pad and the phone.

Pierce checked the address -it was in Venice -then tore the page off the pad, folded it and put it in his pocket.

"Curt seemed like a nice guy," Monica said. "I feel bad about lying to him."

"You could always go visit him and ask him out for a date. I've seen him. Believe me, one date with you would make him happy the rest of his life."

"You've seen him? Were you the one he was talking about? He said a guy was in there and wanted my mailbox. I mean, Lilly Quinlan's mailbox."

"Yeah, that was me. That's how I -"

The phone rang and he answered it. But the caller hung up. Pierce looked at the caller ID directory. The call had come from the Ritz-Carlton in the Marina.

"Look," he said, "you need to leave the phone plugged in so when the furniture comes, security can call up here for approval to let them up. But meantime, you're probably going to get a lot of calls for Lilly. Since you're a woman, they're going to think you're her. So you might want to say something right off like 'This isn't Lilly, you've got the wrong number.' Something like that. Otherwise -"

"Well, maybe I should pretend I'm her so I can get more information for you."

"No, you don't want to do that."

He opened his backpack and pulled out the printout of the photo from Lilly's web page.

"That's Lilly. I don't think you want to pretend you're her with these callers."

"Oh my God!" Monica exclaimed as she looked at the photo. "Is she like a prostitute or something?"

"I think so."

"Then what are you doing trying to find this prostitute when you should be -"

She stopped abruptly. Pierce looked at her and waited for her to finish. She didn't.

"What?" he said. "I should be what?"

"Nothing. It's not my business."

"Did you talk with Nicki about her and me?"

"No. Look, it's nothing. I don't know what I was going to say. I just think it's strange that you're running around trying to find out if this prostitute is all right. It's weird."

Pierce sat back down on the couch. He knew she was lying about Nicole. They had gotten close and used to go to lunch together all the times Pierce couldn't get out of the lab – which was almost every day. Why would it end now that Nicki was gone? They were probably still talking every day, exchanging stories about him.

He also knew that she was right about what he was doing. But he was too far down the road and around the bend. His life and career had been built on following his curiosity. In his last year at Stanford he sat in on a lecture about the next generation of microchips.

The professor spoke of nanochips so small that the supercomputers of the day could and would be built to the size of a dime. Pierce became hooked and had been pursuing his curiosity -chasing the dime -ever since.

"I'm just going to go over to Venice," he told Monica. "I'm just going to check things out and leave it at that."

"You promise?"

"Yes. You can call me at the lab after the furniture gets here and you're leaving."

He stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

"If you talk to Nicki, don't mention anything about this, okay?"

"Sure, Henry. I won't."

He knew he couldn't count on that but it would have to do for the moment. He headed to the apartment door and left. As he went down the hall to the elevator he thought about what Monica had said and considered the difference between private investigation and private obsession. Somewhere there was a line between them. But he wasn't sure where it was.

There was something wrong about the address, something that didn't fit. But Pierce couldn't place it. He worried over it as he drove into Venice but it didn't open up to him.

It was like something hidden behind a shower curtain. It was blurred but it was there.

The address Lilly Quinlan had given as a contact address to All American Mail was a bungalow on Altair Place, a block off the stretch of stylish antiques stores and restaurants on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. It was a small white house with gray trim that somehow made Pierce think of a seagull. There was a fat royal palm squatting in the front yard.

Pierce parked across the street and for several minutes sat in his car, studying the house for signs of recent life.

The yard and ornamentation were neatly trimmed. But if it was a rental, that could have been taken care of by a landlord. There was no car in the driveway or in the open garage in back and no newspapers piling up near the curb. Nothing seemed outwardly amiss.