About Face (6 page)

“That would explain my experiences in high school math class.”

Rod laughed. He was back in his element now. His face scrunched with squinting blinks every time he made a point, as if it came at the price of a small sting. “Actually, the root meaning is reduction. The word
algorithm
comes from the great Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, who wrote a treatise called
The Calculation of Reduction and Restoration
.”

“Code is a kind of magic, too,” I said. “Combine a string of bits in the right order and you've got a computer that can beat the best chess player in the world. String together three billion
nucleotides and you've got the instructions to build a human being. Put them in a different order and you've got a mouse.”

Rod squinted, then looked up at his private screen in the corner again. “The way I see it, Alissa was a master of her particular code. I was a beginner. I'd learned a different alphabet. My principal failure was in not recognizing that we were speaking her language, which I could learn if I chose to study it. Expertise is nothing but time: Ten thousand hours equals an expert.”

He gave an oddly triumphant smile. He'd succeeded in convincing himself that no inexplicable voodoo was involved in her spell. It was merely a matter of allocating resources. Any problem he could break down into its logical components was a problem he could solve.

I steered us back to the subject. “Who else could Alissa have been working for? I imagine Plush Biologics would like to have a look under the Algoplex hood.”

Rod shook his head. “I was quite open with Plush about what we could do. Even if they get their hands on some base code, they need me to make it work. Our patents are secure. I'm the key man.”

“What about the business side, then? You said Alissa introduced you to Plush.”

“True. But they did their due diligence. Alissa and I talked about the people involved in the deal, the companies, their potential. But I gave no confidential data to her. If anything, she gave
me
inside information. She knew a lot about Eternaderm.”

“I'm sure you got independent confirmation of what she said.”

“Naturally. I'm scouring my memory, Bill, to think what she could have done and for whom. Nothing adds up. Of course, you could be right about Plush in some way I haven't foreseen.”

“I guess we'll know for sure if they spring something on you Monday night at the signing dinner.”

“You'll be there, won't you?”

“Yes. I'd like to get a few shots for our final cut. I'll also bring the rough version of the film and make sure it's screened correctly.”

“Good. Speaking of which—I have a lot of preparation to do. Mike is waiting for my call. We'll be working all weekend.”

“All right, Rod. I'll keep searching for Alissa. Do you have a picture I can take?”

He went to the fridge and extracted a sheet of paper from under a bitmap magnet. It was a high-res printout of the photo of Alissa I'd seen before.

“Take it,” Rod said. “I can print another one. . . .”

His voice trailed off and his mouth sagged. We were silent for a moment, looking at that smile again. It did have a catlike quality of unreadable motives. And cats were not known for their loyalty.

“Maybe this will turn out okay, Rod. Maybe she's safe and she stole nothing. Maybe there's a simple explanation—Wendy got in trouble, Alissa went to help, and she was embarrassed to tell you.”

Rod made an effort to compose himself. “That would certainly be preferable to the alternatives.”

I waited for him to look at me. “What does your gut tell you?”

He paused, as if to get a reading. Again his mouth turned down. His voice wavered. “I miss her a great deal, Bill.”

It was a simple statement, spoken without drama. I said I'd do whatever it took to find her.

The magic of email
appeared to solve all of our problems by the next afternoon. It was a good thing, because the day—or rather, the people in it—had been getting on my nerves up to that point.

Normally I'd start a Sunday with a long cup of coffee and the newspaper at Scoby's, our neighborhood café, then get out of the city with some friends. Today had a different plan from the beginning because Rita and I had to map out our rough cut of the Algoplex film to be shown on Monday night. Wes made me late for that by showing up at Scoby's during the coffee.

Scoby's was a homey place with a well-supplied magazine rack, big windows, and very good coffee—a comforting constant as the neighborhood around me changed. Potrero Hill had been my home for eight years. Its industrial building stock made it a prime target for the loft-seeking peoples of the area. The city's determination to redevelop Mission Bay—landfill surrounding a now-buried tidal slough that cut through the Mission district to empty into the bay—succeeded with the completion of the Giants ball park in 2000. The rail and ship yards disappeared quickly after that. Glass-curtain structures sprouted like mushrooms: a UCSF research lab, Macromedia,
Sega. The old waterfront life had mostly disappeared, the long-shoremen's bars having been turned into restaurants and dance clubs for the leather-pants set.

Wes had referred me to Rod. Now Wes wanted to hear how it had turned out. I gave him a quick rundown as I finished my coffee. He wanted the juicy details, but I was not in a chatty mood. Instead, I mentioned the role I had in mind for him. I wanted him to set up a date with Erika and another Silicon Glamour associate.

His first reaction was not to say it was a ridiculous idea, nor to say he didn't need to hire his dates. Instead, he asked if the associates were good-looking.

“They couldn't charge what they do if they weren't,” I said.

His sneaky smile told me he was into it. This was a side of Wes that amused me. I'd known him since college, when he was a skinny physics major with a hangdog look and a shyness about dating. We made a couple of goofy Super 8 films about existentially perplexed sci-fi insects. He'd also been the first person to show me the Internet, when it was used only by government agencies and science departments at something like 2400 kilobytes per second.

Wes was as loyal as a friend could be, but like all of us he had his fixations. I figured he felt compelled to make up for all the lost time he'd spent in the physics lab. Everyone has their own way of feeling off-beam. Wes was good-looking now, with sharp features and dark hair sweeping across his forehead. He was also CTO of a net company that had beat the startup odds. But in his own mind, he was still the nerdy boy endlessly trying to prove he could get a date.

The fact that he was a tech exec—a mind-boggling fact, to me—made him the best candidate I knew to apply to Silicon Glamour. I told him to play up his geek side and to be sure to ask
for a date with Erika, the name that had been scrawled on Alissa's message board.

Wes rubbed his hands together. “No problem. We'll show them a good time.”

“I believe that's
their
job. What we need to do is earn their trust so that they'll tell us about Silicon Glamour.”

“Trust. Right. You did say Rod was footing the bill?”

“It'll go on my expense report.”

Wes then insisted on coming with me to Rita's. I warned him it was not a social hour. We had work to do. He said he just wanted to see how Rod looked on screen.

Rita's place was in the Mission, a backyard bungalow almost a hundred years old. An editing suite was set up in her basement: an Avid system loaded on a G4, two nineteen-inch monitors on a shelf, a vector scope, and speakers spread in a semicircle in front of her chair. The hard drives were under the worktable. A Beta deck and an eight-track mixing board occupied the ends of the semicircle. Out in the garage, under a plastic cover, she kept a Steenbeck flatbed for old-style analog film editing. We didn't get to use it nearly enough for my taste.

Wes dragged a folding chair into the tiny carpeted room. Rita sat in a rolling desk chair in front of the screen. A poster of
The Third Man
hung on the wall.

I brought her up to speed on the Rod story. “Silicon Glamour,” she said. “Isn't that when you don't wear your pocket protector, Wes?”

“Nobody uses pens anymore,” he shot back.

Rita had to needle me, of course, about sticking her alone with the editing. It was already a big job for two of us. But she understood. The film business was all about last-minute changes. Besides, she was still raising money for her next documentary, and film work in San Francisco had gone quiet since the Internet
bubble burst. All those filmmakers who'd been sucked into Web producing suddenly needed jobs. The good stuff—documentaries and features—only came around so often, and TV commercials had moved to Vancouver. I was lucky the Rod gig had come along when it did.

Rita said, “So what's your take on this Rod and Alissa business, Wes? You're the one who introduced us to him.”

“Rod is the real thing when it comes to engineering genius,” Wes said. “He's a good guy, too. But I never said he was Romeo Montague.”

“I don't get why he's so desperate to have Alissa at this dinner tomorrow,” Rita said.

“Nerves,” Wes answered. “Everyone's alert for reasons to back out at a signing. Rod's the kind of guy who could get jittery and blurt out the wrong thing. It sounds like Alissa keeps him on an even keel.”

“It's also for his peace of mind,” I said. “He'll be upset if he finds out she stabbed him in the back. It'll be worse if he finds out she's hurt or dead. If I can at least tell him she's okay, he'll feel a lot better.”

“Who are these people Rod's signing the deal with?” Wes asked.

“Plush Biologics has a genetic skin treatment called Eternaderm,” I said. “It rejuvenates your elastin fibers by regulating the enzymes that break them down and promoting the synthesis of new fibers. Your skin gets looser and more brittle as you age. Healthier elastin proteins restore suppleness and resilience.”

Wes's eyes widened. “That's going to
score
. If it works.”

“It's being tested. They're still ‘ironing out the wrinkles' before it goes commercial,” Rita said, repeating Rod's favorite phrase to describe Eternaderm's progress. Wes rolled his eyes.

“Rod did some work for them that fast-forwarded Eternaderm,” I said. “That led to the strategic alliance. Plush is working on genes to regulate melanin, too. You'll be able to change your skin color at will.”

Wes peered at his reflection in a blank video screen. “I think I'm going to need Eternaderm. I've been out in the sun too much lately.”

Rita peered with him. “Yeah, you're losing that pale engineer tone. But keep the wrinkles, Wes. They give you character.” She liked to give him a hard time. Wes got nervous around her because she was so forthright in her opinions. “Anyway,” Rita went on, “you can't afford Eternaderm until your company's IPO. This is a high-end market. Silicon Valley has lots of wealthy people who are terrified of getting old.”

“Rod needs to retool and extend his technology,” I said. “That takes money, which Algoplex doesn't have. So the third leg of the triangle is new capital coming from Plush's big backer. Sylvain Partners will fund Algoplex's next stage.”

Wes ceased his self-inspection. “I hope Rod isn't giving away too much equity.”

“You know how it works. Bargain your soul to the VC's. But Rod seems satisfied with the deal.”

“What is Alissa going to do, hold the pen for him?” Rita said.

“You don't understand business, Rita.” Wes had found a way to get a little revenge. “You've got to make all the right moves at an event like this or you'll spook your partners. Especially if Alissa's been spying.”

“Wouldn't Alissa being there make him even more shaky?”

“Not if he's sure she's on his side,” I said. “And if she's still missing, he's got Silicon Glamour to worry about. I need to throw Rupert off the trail for a few days. String him along with progress
reports. Tell him Alissa is on her way back. As a matter of fact— can I check my email down here, Rita?”

“Sure,” she said, swiveling to bring up a browser on her G4.

“I got an email back from foxylady77 late yesterday,” I said. “They forwarded my message to Alissa's mother, Wendy. I'm waiting to hear from her.”

“Rod's such a nervous nelly,” Rita said as the throat-clearing sounds of connection came over the wire. “He's got to take charge. He owns the company, for heaven's sake.”

“Where were you when the sympathy genes were handed out, Rita?” Wes said. “Rod was in love with this girl. She's vanished, and she might have double-crossed him.”

Rita smiled at Wes. She was talking tougher than she really felt. Because of her Botticelli face and long, wavy hair, people expected only sweet words from her. She enjoyed surprising them.

I scooted forward and logged on to my account. “Nothing yet,” I reported. “Let's get to work, Rita.”

Rita brought the Avid to life. I took the camera originals from a cabinet behind me and stacked them on the table. Rita cued the first tape. There was Rod, pacing and squinting as he talked about the intricacies of code writing. I'd take notes on a yellow pad while she selected shots on the Avid.

Wes watched for a little while, then got bored with our stops, starts, and fast-forwards. He clapped me on the shoulder. “Later, Billy-boy. I'll let you know how it goes with Silicon Glamour.”

“Thanks, Wes.” I waited until the door closed, then explained to Rita that he was setting up a date with one of Alissa's coworkers.

Rita laughed. “He's the right man for the job.”

We moved on through the raw footage from the past three days. I already had a structure for the picture in my mind. The
limits on what you could do in a piece like this were always a little frustrating. Not that I hated it, but on the other hand I'd seen a documentary about the Russian army recently. It was full of very long takes, during which, through some magic, you began to feel drawn inside the subject's interior life even though you saw only silent exterior. When we kept the camera on Rod too long, he'd start fidgeting and offer to show us a card trick.