His eyes widened. Not with fear, nor anger, but with puzzlement. This had been Gregory’s shortcoming all along: he was too easy to read. It was written like a headline across his face. He didn’t have Jenny. She hadn’t been there when he trashed her apartment, either.
My eyes fell to a familiar shape on the counter. I had a weird flash of Jenny’s bathroom, and didn’t understand why — until I focused on the small bottle of expensive hand lotion next to the soap. It was Jenny’s.
“You idiot,” I said.
I was saved from having to decide what to do with him by three guys who burst through the door. Gregory screamed for help. They were on me fast. They weren’t exactly athletic, but there were three of them. I had to let Gregory go to fend them off. The room was all elbows and knees for about thirty seconds. Then they got control of my limbs. Gregory slapped me in the head, someone else kicked me in the shins, and a knee to the groin left me gasping. They pinned me hard against the wall next to the towel rack. I couldn’t even bend over. All I could do was suck in big howling gulps of air. The knee had not been a direct hit, but close enough.
Gregory quivered before me, bent at the waist. His fists closed into tight knots. When my vision cleared enough to make out his face, I saw that it was red, all the way down to the roots of his bleached hair.
“You shithead, you double-crossed me!” His eyes bulged at me until he was sure my attention was back with him. “The tapes you gave me are worthless.”
“It’s not like you came through on your end of the bargain.” My words were punctuated by small gasps. “Anyway, I can’t help it if you don’t know how to interpret the data.”
“The audio level is too low to hear anything, and the video is nothing but a bunch of test shots at Kumar’s.”
“Plus you in the parking lot. Telling me how great your penny-ante company is. That’s a bonus.”
My breath was returning to normal — as normal as it could be with three guys bolting me to wall. Gregory’s face was fading from red back to bright pink, but his eyes still burned. He shook his right fist.
“Hold him good.” He zeroed in on me. “I just want one shot. This is going to feel so good, buddy.”
He cocked the fist. He didn’t really know what he was doing. The idiot went for my face. I watched his eyes carefully and jerked my head away at the last moment. His fist smashed into drywall.
Gregory howled in pain again and hopped to the other side of the bathroom, hand clutched in his armpit. The guys pinning me were startled enough to loosen their grip. I broke free, though not before one of them stomped on my foot. I got to the door, threw it open, and found a crowd waiting in Gregory’s office. They retreated a few feet as I stumbled out.
Rikki stared at me with an incredulous face. “Like—?”
Two of the guys spilled out after me. They slowed at the sight of the crowd and their wide eyes. I hobbled to the edge of Gregory’s desk. He appeared a moment later, leaning on the third guy. Gregory’s face was wet. His right fingers hung in front of him like gnarled clothespins. “Jesus, I think they’re broken.”
“Likely,” I agreed.
He snarled in my direction. “Has someone called the cops?”
“Um, I can?” Rikki said in a small voice.
“You’re finished, Bill. You’re finished!”
I was too busy deciding which part of my body hurt the most to reply. My ear, my foot, my shin, and my ribs all throbbed. My white shirt was streaked with dirt and wine, and I could feel something wet on my face. I must have looked like I’d just come in from an especially exciting hunting trip.
Rikki had gone behind the desk. “Put down the phone, Rikki,” I said over my shoulder. “Unless your boss is ready to be arrested for breaking and entering. Twice. You left prints all over my flat, Gregory. The police have them, plus you’re stupid enough to keep Jenny’s lotion in your bathroom. There’s plenty of evidence you broke into her apartment today.”
I watched him closely. If we’d been alone, he might have given in. But not in front of all these people. “You’re full of it,” he said. “Make the call, Rikki.”
“Let’s see the bottom of your boot, Gregory. Let’s see the red wine on it. If it’s not there, you’ve got a whole room of people to back you up.”
“You’re finished,” Gregory repeated. But his voice lacked conviction. His face had turned a sort of moldy yellow, and he was forcing down swallows. He’d be rushing to the toilet any minute.
I pushed up from the desk, wobbled, and got my feet under me. “I’m sorry about your hand,” I said. I moved slowly toward the door. Gregory retreated to the bathroom. “You’ll have to learn how to sign checks with the other one. The bill for Jenny’s apartment will come next week.”
No one moved to stop me as I reached the open door. The receiver in Rikki’s hand started to honk its off-hook signal. I caught sight of Ron — Karen’s friend who was also Gregory’s partner. His expression was suspended somewhere between disbelief and understanding. “Give Karen Harper a call at home,” I suggested. “She’ll tell you what this is all about.”
23
In Silicon Valley, when the nucleus of a new company was being formed, when it was abuzz with the infinite potential of dense code, sticky interface, and parturient markets, only a glimmer of which could be allowed to escape into the light of day, the company was said to be in stealth mode. That meant the startup was assembling resources, gathering capital, developing technology. No one outside the nucleus knew yet what it did: concepts were too easily lifted. Outsiders saw a spiffy logo, a history-making yet vague promise, and a lot of feverish activity, cloaked in darkness. The unveiling would occur the day the site went online, at which point the idea was to break on the world like a new virus, the kind that sucked money out of bank accounts.
It was time for me to come out of stealth mode and go public. I was tired of doing all the work on my own. Some other people needed to contribute now.
I returned to Jenny’s place and cleaned up the best I could, pouring a whole box of salt over the wine stains in the living room. The look on Gregory’s face before I left had told me I didn’t need to get the police involved. He wasn’t going to bother me anymore. I didn’t need the headache of filing charges, and besides, there were too many things for which I could still get nailed. I didn’t want to call the police just yet.
When I called to check my answering machine in San Francisco, I found out that I could have saved myself a few bruises. Jenny had left a message around noon saying she was going to her mother’s in Sacramento and taking the cat with her. I didn’t mind, though. My accounts with Gregory would have needed to be settled sooner or later.
My next steps were to tell Kumar about Gregory’s scheme and to control the damage at LifeScience. Gregory no doubt had defamed my character to Dugan, but zero from zero left zero. It was the others at LifeScience who counted. The people handling the bioinformatics bid, for instance, ought to hear about Gregory. But that was a small point. I wanted to get to Marion Roos, Frederick McKinnon, Doug Englehart, and Carl Steiner, the peculiar man at the funeral. I wanted answers from them about MC124 and the knockout mouse. I also wanted them to know that Dugan and his hired hands were stalking me, threatening me, and generally lurking with intent to loom. So far they hadn’t actually laid a hand on me — either to keep their record clean or because I hadn’t given them a clear shot — but if the worst happened, I wanted people to know who to blame.
And then there was the Harros family. Every innocent move Jenny and I had made had been turned against us. I’d dug a hole for myself with them and there was nothing to do but keep digging. They’d want to hear about the knockout mouse, too. Perhaps it would force them to ask Dugan some questions.