Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly Page A

führer, I can walk,’ Pierce replied.
    It had been their standard greeting since Stanford when they saw the movie together at a Kubrick retrospective in San Francisco.
    They gave each other a handshake invented by the loose group of friends they belonged to in college. They called themselves the Doomsters, after the Ross MacDonald novel. The handshake consisted of fingers hooked together like train car couplings and then three quick squeezes like gripping a rubber ball at a blood bank — the Doomsters had sold plasma on a regular basis while in college in order to buy beer, marijuana and computer software.
    Pierce hadn’t seen Zeller in a few months and his hair hadn’t been cut since then. Sun-bleached and unkempt, it was loosely tied at the back of his neck. He wore a Zuma Jay T-shirt, baggies and leather sandals. His skin was the copper color of smoggy sunsets. Of all the Doomsters he always had the look the others had aspired to. Now it was wearing a little long in the tooth. At thirty-five he was beginning to look like an aging surfer who couldn’t let it go, which made him all the more endearing to Pierce. In many ways Pierce felt like a sellout. He admired Zeller for the path he had cut through life.
    â€˜Check him out, Dr. Strange himself out in the Big Bad ’Bu. Man, you don’t have your wets with you and I don’t see any board, so to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’
    He beckoned Pierce inside and they walked into a large loft-style home that was divided in half, with living quarters to the right and working quarters to the left. Beyond these distinct areas was a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass that opened to the deck and the ocean just beyond. The steady pounding of the ocean’s waves was the heartbeat of the house. Zeller had once informed Pierce that it was impossible to sleep in the house without earplugs and a pillow over one’s head.
    â€˜Just thought I’d take a ride out and check on things here.’
    They moved across the beech flooring toward the view. In a house like this it was an automatic reflex. You gravitated to the view, to the blue-black water of the Pacific. Pierce saw a light misting out on the horizon but not a single boat. As they got close to the glass he could look down through the deck railing and see the swells rolling in. A small company of surfers in multicolor wets sat on their boards and waited for the right moment. Pierce felt an internal tug. It had been a long time since he’d been out there. He’d always found the waiting on the swells, the camaraderie of the group, to be more fulfilling than the actual ride in on the wave.
    â€˜Those are my boys out there,’ Zeller said.
    â€˜They look like Malibu High teenagers.’
    â€˜They are. And so am I.’
    Pierce nodded. Feel young, stay young — a common Malibu life ethic.
    â€˜I keep forgetting about how nice you got it out here, Code.’
    â€˜For a college dropout, I can’t complain. Beats selling one’s purity of essence for twenty-five bucks a bag.’
    He was talking about plasma. Pierce turned away from the view. In the living area there were matching gray couches and a coffee table in front of a freestanding fireplace with an industrial, concrete finish. Behind this was the kitchen. To the left was the bedroom area.
    â€˜Beer, dude? I’ve got Pacifica and Saint Mike.’
    â€˜Yeah, sure. Either one.’
    While Zeller went to the kitchen Pierce moved toward the work area. A large floor-to-ceiling rack of electronics acted to knock down the exterior light and partition off the area where Zeller made his living. There were two desks and another bank of shelves containing code books and software and system manuals. He stepped through the plastic curtain that used to be where the door to the garage was. He took a step down and was in a climate-controlled computer room. There were two complete computer bays on either side