"What about tonight? I'll come down. We'll hit the town like the old days. Put on your black jeans, baby."
Zeller laughed in encouragement. Pierce didn't. There had never been old days like that.
Pierce had never been a player. He was blue jeans, not black jeans. He'd always preferred to spend the night in the lab looking into a scanning tunneling microscope than pursuing sex in a club with an engine fueled by alcohol.
"I think I'm going to pass, man. I've got a lot of stuff to do and I need to go back to the lab tonight."
"Hank, man, you've got to give the molecules a rest. One night out. Come on, it will straighten you out, shake up your own molecules for once. You can tell me all about what happened with you and Nicki, and I'll pretend to feel sorry for you. I promise."
Zeller was the only one on the planet who called him Hank, a name Pierce hated. But Pierce was smart enough to know that telling Zeller to stop was out of the question, because it would prompt his friend to use the name at all times.
"Call me next time, all right?"
Zeller reluctantly backed off and Pierce promised to keep the next weekend open for a night out. He made no promises about surfing. They hung up and Pierce put the phone in its cradle. He picked up his backpack and headed for the apartment door.
2
Pierce used his scramble card to enter the garage attached to Amedeo Technologies and parked his 540 in his assigned space. The entrance to the building came open as he approached, the approval coming from the night man at the dais behind the double glass doors.
"Thanks, Rudolpho," Pierce said as he went by.
He used his electronic key to take the elevator to the third floor, where the administrative offices were located. He looked up at the camera in the corner and nodded, though he doubted Rudolpho was watching him. It was all being digitized and recorded for later. If ever needed.
In the third-floor hallway he worked the combo lock on his office door and went in.
"Lights," he said as he went behind his desk.
The overhead lights came on. He turned on his computer and entered the passwords after it booted up. He plugged in the phone line so he could quickly check his e-mail messages before going to work. It was 8 P.M. He liked working at night, having the lab to himself.
For security reasons he never left the computer on or attached to a phone line when he wasn't working on it. For the same reason he carried no cell phone, pager or personal digital assistant. Though he had one, he rarely carried a laptop computer, either. Pierce was paranoid by nature-just a gene splice away from schizophrenia, according to Nicole-but also a cautious and practical researcher. He knew that every time he plugged an outside line into his computer or opened a cellular transmission, it was as dangerous as sticking a needle into his arm or having sex with a stranger. You never knew what you might be bringing into the pipeline. For some people, that was probably part of the thrill of sex. But it wasn't part of the thrill of chasing the dime.
He had several messages but only three that he decided to read this night. The first was from Nicole and he opened it immediately, again with a hope in his heart that made him uncomfortable because it verged on being maudlin.
But the message was not what he was looking for. It was short, to the point and so professional that it was devoid of any reference to their ill-fated romance. Just a former employee's last sign-off before moving on to bigger and better things-in career and romance.
Hewlett, I'm out of here.
Everything's in the files. (by the way, the Bronson deal finally hit the media-SJMN got it first. nothing new but you might want to check it out.)
Thanks for everything and good luck.
Nic Pierce stared at the message for a long time. He noted that it had been sent at 4:55 P.M., just a few hours earlier. There was no sense in replying, because her e-mail address would have been wiped from the system at 5 P.M. when she turned in her scramble card.
She was gone and there seemed to be nothing so permanent as being wiped from the system.