“Another department altogether. I don’t know a whole lot about it, to tell you the truth.”
“How about helping me find out, then? Let’s say some mysterious combination of microbes from the lab killed Sheila. Okay, maybe we can’t get all the details, but at least we can find out where it came from.”
Marion tapped the side of her glass. Her nails were short and unlacquered. The right thumb had been chewed. “Sheila’s death is kind of beside the point. I’m sorry for it, but she is, after all, dead. The question is, can we make it count for something?”
I regarded Marion’s pale Nordic face. She was Dutch, Wes had said. At this particular moment she seemed bloodless as a stone. Maybe she was already part of the future. “Don’t you think her family deserves to know what killed her? Don’t you think Sheila herself deserves it? She was on to something at LifeScience.”
“She was into something, Bill. She may have stolen some company secrets, or sold inside information, I’m not sure. I’d let it go, if I were you. Whatever you find will only muddy her name. Is that what you want?”
“What is it that you want, Marion?”
She shook the ice in her glass. “Something bigger, Bill. Something necessary. It’s not personal to Sheila or you or Jenny.”
“And you expect me to let you see the diary based on this?”
“What were you talking about so intensely with Sheila that night at Jenny’s?”
“Nothing sinister, Marion. Just life. Allergies. Genetics. Not her work, but general stuff. That’s all.”
Marion folded her arms and regarded me. “Well, I could be wrong. Maybe I should trust you. I just don’t know.”
I folded my arms back at her. “Why am I even talking to you?”
“You tell me. You’re not the only one with the diary.”
“Yeah. There’s Dugan.” This got a good wince from her. She leaned forward. I went ahead and told her about the interrogation this afternoon. Actually, I wasn’t certain that Dugan had read the journal, but I was willing to bet Harros would let him. “It’s them or us,” I said. “Who are you going to let take control?”
She frowned. “I’m sorry, Bill. It’s just too risky for me to tell you more.”
“I know that Frederick McKinnon is feuding with Dugan. I know that he’s planning to start human trials soon. I know that MC124 will be very big for LifeScience if it pans out.” The idea was to make her feel that she’d be adding only a small scrap of information to a large pile.
“Good for you.” Marion loosened the scarf and re-draped it on her shoulders. I could see the down on her arms. She looked more human now. Her voice was softer. “You’ll understand one day.”
I ate my second cherry, red dye and all, and signalled the waitress for the check. Marion opened her wallet, but I stopped her. “So where’s Jenny?” she asked.
I wasn’t quite fast enough. “Um—”
“She was never coming to begin with. You really are a creep, aren’t you?”
Marion stood and put her arm into a long cable-knit sweater. I couldn’t resist a little smile. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way.”
The corners of her mouth folded down, which I took to be an effort not to smile back. She took a couple of steps, then turned. “Does Wes really have some kind of — should I see a doctor?”
I wondered if she had strong feelings for him. I hoped not. I wasn’t sure he could handle her.
“Nah,” I said. “He just wanted to see you.”
19
“So what did she say about me?”
Wes handed me a beer. We were at a party in a loft in the South of Market area of San Francisco. Much of the neighborhood was landfill, an area of mixed industry that slowly became more of a skid row after the 1906 quake. In the eighties artists started moving in and it became known as SOMA, then in the nineties, with the rise of digital media, Multimedia Gulch. Magazines like Wired and The Industry Standard had started here. Many had ended here, too.
People in flared hip huggers and platform shoes clustered near outposts of bean bags and neobrutalist sofas. This was more the city Web crowd, what remained of it, than the Silicon Valley chip crowd. The latter tended to be true geeks, or else suburbanites in polo shirts who felt cool because they worked in high tech. The dot-commers were the ones with the sideburns and soul patches, nose posts and Buddy Holly glasses, the weekends on E and techno.
This party hosted the hip middle between the original idealists — the ones who were deep online before the run-up and had remained so after it evaporated — and the legions of well-scrubbed graduates who’d roved the city in packs in the late nineties, sucking up real estate and bar stools.
Wes reclined in a hammock hung between two pillars of iron. A sculpted car crash, painted remains of mangled metal, was affixed to the concrete wall above. I kept out from under it.
“Marion didn’t really mention you,” I replied. “Except she did want to make sure you didn’t have any diseases.”
Wes shook his head slowly. “The bonds of friendship run deep here, Damen. You owe me.”
“And here I am, drinking beer with you, as promised.” I gave him a toast. “Thanks again. I’ll definitely cast you in the next script.”
“Just as long as you rewrite my scene with Marion.”
“Is it over between you two?”
Wes had himself a long gulp of beer, then scanned the room. “I don’t know. Her arms were too long. I felt like I was being grabbed by a tree.” He was a connoisseur of faults, particularly if he sensed a woman was losing interest. “You find out what you needed?”
“I’m starting to think that whatever killed Sheila came out of LifeScience Molecules.”
“Like maybe Sheila brewed up something that came back to bite her?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, Marion says it will make Sheila look very bad.”
“Maybe you should just drop this thing, Bill.”
“You and Marion agree on that. But I can’t, not as long as Dugan and the Harroses are still all over Jenny. And me.” I put my beer down. “I need to call her. Can I use your phone?”
Wes handed me his cell. I got only Jenny’s machine. Either she’d gone out or she was refusing to pick up.
I sipped my beer, and suddenly realized it was the last thing I wanted right now. “Wes,” I said, “I’m sorry, but I got to go.”
“No way. A belly dancer is coming out.”
“Sorry, no bangles for me tonight. I got tapes I gotta view.” I clapped Wes on the shoulder. “Thanks again. You’re an excellent guy.”
Wes shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Leaving just when the fun is about to start. You’re obsessed, Billy.”
I stumbled into the dark warehouse streets. As I had been doing since Sunday, I approached the Scout warily. The only activity came from a couple of street people down the block, having a smoke beside a shopping cart. Maybe Dugan thought he was in control enough now not to bother with me. Either that or the PIs were still following me and I was too tired to realize it.
At home, I went straight to the answering machine. Gregory had called, of course, to remind me about our meeting tomorrow. Rita had checked in to ask how I was doing. A couple of other people I was supposed to see this week had called to ask where the hell I was. But no message from Jenny.
I found a couple pieces of stale pizza from last weekend in my refrigerator, popped them in the microwave, and took the soggy results down the hall to my video player. I put in the tape I had retrieved today, rewound it, and settled back.
There was Gregory in the parking lot, mugging for the camera and talking about buying an island in the Caribbean. What made him say something like that when his company was so desperate? The same bravado, I suppose, that got BioVerge funded in the first place. The bravado that had fueled the Internet binge, driven by youngsters like Gregory who hadn’t been around long enough to know their conjurings were only vapor, and by investors who’d been around long enough to know better than to be bewitched by the vapor. The two got together to produce dreams of a new alchemy, one that transmuted money into silicon and back into exponentially multiplied money via arcane coding rites known only to the young magicians of bits.