The Closers (11 page)

"Oh, baby, don't tell me you bumped your dick into something."

"No, nothing like that."

"Then what?"

"Let's sit down. And you'd better bring something to take notes with."

In the living room Pierce gave him all the information he had on Lilly Quinlan without explanation about where it was coming from. He also asked Zeller to find what he could on Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited and Wentz, the man who operated it.

"You got a first name?"

"No. Just Wentz. Can't be too many in the field, I would guess."

"Full scans?"

"Whatever you can get."

"Stay inside the lines?"

Pierce hesitated. Zeller kept his eyes level on him. He was asking if Pierce wanted him to stay within the bounds of the law. Pierce knew from experience that there was much more out there to be found if Zeller crossed the lines and went into systems he was not authorized to enter. And he knew Zeller was an expert at crossing them. The Doomsters were formed when they were college sophomores. Computer hacking was just coming into vogue for their generation and the members of the group, largely under the direction of Zeller, did more than hold their own. They mostly committed pranks, their best being the time they hacked into the local telephone company's 411 information bank and changed the number for the Domino's Pizza closest to campus to the home number of the dean of the Computer Sciences Department.

But their best moment was also their worst. All six of the Doomsters were busted by the police and later suspended. On the criminal side everybody got probation with the charges to be expunged after six months without further trouble. Each boy also had to complete 160 hours of community service. On the school side they were all suspended for one semester. Pierce went back after serving both the suspension and the probation. Under the magnifying glass of police and school administrators, he switched from computer sciences to a chemistry curriculum and never looked back.

Zeller never looked back, either. He didn't go back to Stanford. He was scooped up by a computer security firm and given a nice salary. Like a gifted athlete who leaves school early for the pros, he could not go back to school once he sampled the joys of having money and doing what he loved for a living.

Tell you what," Pierce finally answered. "Get whatever you can get. In fact, on Entrepreneurial Concepts, I think some variation of abracadabra might help you get in. Try it backwards first."

Thanks for the head start. When do you need this?"

Like I said, yesterday will be fine."

"Right, a quickie. You sure you didn't stick your dick into something nasty?"

"Not that I know of."

"Nicole know about this?"

"Nope, there's no reason. Nicole's gone, remember?"

"Right, right. This the reason why?"

"You don't give up, do you? No, it's got nothing to do with her."

Pierce finished his beer. He didn't want to hang around, because he wanted Zeller to get to work on the assignment he was giving him. But Zeller seemed in no hurry to start.

"Want another beer, commander?"

"Nah, I'm gonna pass. I've gotta get back to my apartment. I have my assistant baby-sitting the furniture movers. Besides, you're going to get on this thing, aren't you?"

"Oh, yeah, man. Right away."

He gestured toward his work area.

"Right now all my machines are booked. But I'll get on it tonight. I'll call you by tomorrow night."

"All right, Code. Thanks."

He got up. They pumped each other's hand. Blood brothers. Doomsters again.

By the time Pierce got to his apartment the movers were gone but Monica was still there. She'd had them arrange the furnishings in a way that was acceptable. It didn't really take advantage of the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran along one side of the living room and dining room, but Pierce didn't care all that much. He knew he'd be spending little time in the apartment anyway.

"It looks nice," he said. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. I hope you like everything. I was just about to leave."

"Why did you stay?"

She held up her stack of magazines in two hands.

"I wanted to finish a magazine I was reading."

Pierce wasn't sure why that necessitated her staying at the apartment but he let it go.

"Listen, there's one thing I want to ask you before you leave. Come sit down for a second."

Monica looked put out by the request. She probably envisioned another phone call impersonating Lilly Quinlan. Nevertheless, she sat down on one of the leather club chairs she'd ordered to go with his couch.

"Okay, what is it?"

Pierce sat on the couch.

What is your job title at Amedeo Technologies?" What do you mean? You know what it is." I want to see \Eyou know what it is." Personal assistant to the president. Why?"

Because I want to make sure you remember that it impersonal assistant, not just assistant."

^>he blinked and looked at his face for a long moment before responding.

"All right, Henry, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong is that I don't appreciate your telling Charlie Condon all about my phone number problems and what I'm trying to do about it."

She straightened her back and looked aghast but it was a bad act.

"The J" 1 "

I didn t.

"That's not what he said. And if you didn't tell him, how did he know everything after he talked to you?"

"Look, okay, all I told him was that you'd gotten this prostitute's old number and you were getting all kinds of calls. I had to tell him something because when he called I didn't recognize his voice and he didn't recognize mine and he said, "Who's this?" and I kind of snapped at him because I thought he was, you know, calling for Lilly."

"Uh-huh."

"And I couldn't make up a lie on the spot. I'm not that good, like some people. Lying, social engineering, whatever you call it. So I told him the truth."

Pierce almost mentioned that she was pretty good at lying about not telling Charlie at the start of the conversation but he decided not to inflame the situation.

"And that's all you told him, that I had gotten this woman's phone number? You left it at that? You didn't tell him about how you got her address for me and I went to her house?"

"No, I didn't. What's the big deal anyway? You guys are partners, I thought."

She stood up.

"Can I please go?"

"Monica, sit down here for one more second."

He pointed to the chair and she reluctantly sat back down.

"The big deal is that loose lips sink ships, you understand that?"

She shrugged her shoulders and wouldn't look at him. She looked down at the stack of magazines in her lap. On the cover of the top one was a photo of Clint Eastwood.

"My actions reflect on the company," Pierce said. "Especially right now. Even what I do in private. If what I do is misrepresented or blown out of proportion, it could seriously hurt the company. Right now our company makes zero money, Monica, and we rely on investors to support the research, to pay the rent and the salaries, everything. If investors think we're shaky, then we've got a big problem. If things about me- true or false- get to the wrong people, we could have trouble."

"I didn't know Charlie was the wrong people," she said in a sulking voice.

"He's not. He's the right people. That's why I don't mind what you said to him. But what I will mind is if you tell anybody else about what I am doing or what's going on with me. Anyone, Monica. Inside or outside the company."

He hoped she understood he was talking about Nicole and anybody else she encountered in her daily life.

"I won't. I won't tell a soul. And please don't ask me to get involved in your personal life again. I don't want to baby-sit deliveries or do anything outside of the company again."

"Fine. I won't ask you to. It was my mistake because I didn't think this would be a problem and you told me you could use the overtime."

"I can use the overtime but I don't like all of these complications."

Pierce waited a moment, watching her the whole time.

"Monica, do you even know what we do at Amedeo? I mean, do you know what the project is all about?"

She shrugged.

"Sort of. I know it's about molecular computing. I've read some of the stories on the wall of fame. But the stories are very .. . scientific and everything's so secret that I never wanted to ask questions. I just try to do my job."

The project isn't secret. The processes we're inventing are. There's a difference."

He leaned forward and tried to think of the best way to explain it o her without making it confusing or treading into protected areas. He decided to use a tack that Charlie Condon often used with potential investors who might be confused by the science. It was an explanation Charlie had come up with after talking about the project in general once with Cody Zeller. Cody loved movies. And so 1(J 1 lerce, though he rarely had time to see them in theaters anymore.

"Did you ever see the movie Pulp Fiction?"

Monica narrowed her eyes and nodded suspiciously.

"Yes, but what does it-"

"Remember, it's a movie about all these gangsters crossing paths and shooting people and shooting drugs, but at the heart of everything is this briefcase. And they never show what's in the briefcase but everybody sure wants it. And when somebody opens it you can't see what's in it but whatever it is glows like gold. You see that glow. And it's mesmerizing for whoever looks into the briefcase."

"I remember."

"Well, that's what we're after at Amedeo. We're after this thing that glows like gold but nobody can see it. We're after it- and a whole bunch of other people are after it- because we all believe it will change the world."

He waited a moment and she just looked at him, uncomprehending.

"Right now, everywhere in the world, microprocessing chips are made of silicon. It's the standard, right?"

She shrugged again.

"Whatever."

"What we are trying to do at Amedeo, and what they are trying to do at Bronson Tech and Midas Molecular and the dozens of other companies and universities and governments around the world we are competing with, is create a new generation of computer chips made of molecules. Build an entire computer's circuitry with only organic molecules. A computer that will one day come out of a vat of chemicals, that will assemble itself from the right recipe being put in that vat. We're talking about a computer without silicon or magnetic particles. Tremendously less expensive to build and astronomically more powerful- in which just a teaspoon of molecules could hold more memory than the biggest computer going today.

She waited to make sure he was done.

"Wow," she said in an unconvincing tone.

Pierce smiled at her stubbornness. He knew he had probably sounded too much like a salesman. Like Charlie Condon, to be precise. He decided to try again.

"Do you know what computer memory actually is, Monica?"

"Well, yeah, I guess."

He could tell by her face that she was just covering. Most people in this day and age took things like computers for granted and without explanation.

"I mean how it works," he said to her. "It's just ones and zeros in sequence. Every piece of data, every number, every letter, has a specific sequence of ones and zeros. You string the sequences together and you have a word or a number and so on. Forty, fifty years ago it took a computer the size of this room to store basic arithmetic. And now we're down to a silicon chip."

He held his thumb and finger up, just a half inch apart. Then he squeezed them together.

"But we can go smaller," he said. "A lot smaller."

She nodded but he couldn't tell if she saw the light or was just nodding.

"Molecules," she said.

He nodded.

"That's right, Monica. And believe me, whoever gets there first is going to change this world. It is conceivable that we could build a whole computer that is smaller than a silicon chip. Take a computer that fills a room now and make it the size of a dime. That's our goal. That's why in the lab we call it 'chasing the dime." I'm sure you've heard the saying around the office."

She shook her head.

But why would someone want a computer the size of a dime? They couldn't even read it."

Pierce started laughing but then cut it off. He knew he had to keep this woman quiet and on his side. He shouldn't insult her.

That's just an example. It's a possibility. The point is, the computing and memory power of this type of technology are limitless. You re right, nobody needs or wants a computer the size of a dime. But think what this advancement would mean for a Palm Pilot or a laptop computer. What if you didn't need to carry any of those? What if your computer was in the button of your shirt or the frame of your eyeglasses? What if in your office your desktop wasn't on Your desk but in the paint on the walls of your office? What if you talked to the walls and they talked back?"

She shook her head and he could tell she still could not comprehend the possibilities and their applications. She could not break

"?

free of the world she currently knew and understood and accepted. He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He removed his American Express card and held it up to her.

"What if this card was a computer? What if it contained a memory chip so powerful that it could record every purchase ever made on this account along with the date, time and location of the purchase? I'm talking about for the lifetime of its user, Monica. A bottomless well of memory in this thin piece of plastic."

Monica shrugged.

"That would be cool, I guess."

"We're less than five years away. We have molecular RAM right now. Random access memory. And we're perfecting logic gates. Working circuits. We put them together- logic and memory- and you have integrated circuitry, Monica."

It still excited him to speak of the possibilities. He slid the credit card back into his wallet and pocketed it. He never took his eyes off her and could tell he still wasn't making a dent. He decided to stop trying to impress her and get to the point.