' Malibu? What's in Malibu?'
Pierce regretted mentioning it. He had forgotten about her earlier interest and disapproval of what he was doing.
'Don't worry, nothing to do with Lilly Quinlan,' he lied. 'I'm going to see Cody Zeller about something.'
He knew it was weak but it would have to do for now. They hung up and Pierce started putting his notebook back in his backpack.
'Lights,' he said.
10
The drive north on the Pacific Coast Highway was slow but nice. The highway skirted the ocean, and the sun hung low in the sky over Pierce's left shoulder. It was warm but he had the windows down and the sunroof open. He couldn't remember the last time he had taken a drive like this. Maybe it was the time he and Nicole had ducked out of Amedeo for a long lunch and driven up to Geoffrey's, the restaurant overlooking the Pacific and favored by Malibu 's movie set.
When he got into the first stretch of the beach town and his view of the coast was stolen by the houses crowding the ocean's edge, he slowed down and watched for Zeller's house. He didn't have the address offhand and had to recognize the house, which he hadn't seen in more than a year. The houses on this stretch were jammed side to side and all looked the same. No lawns, built right to the curb, flat as shoe boxes.
He was saved by the sight of Zeller's black on black Jaguar XKR, which was parked out in front of his house's closed garage. Zeller had long ago illegally converted his garage into a workroom and had to pay garage rent to a neighbor to protect his $90,000 car. The car's being outside meant Zeller had either just gotten home or was about to head out.
Pierce was just in time. He pulled a U-turn and parked behind the Jag, careful not to bump the car Zeller treated like a baby sister.
The front door of the house was opened before he reached it -either Zeller had seen him on one of the cameras mounted under the roof's eave or Pierce had tripped a motion sensor. Zeller was the only person Pierce knew who rivaled him in paranoia. It was probably what had bonded them at Stanford. He remembered that when they were freshmen Zeller had an often spoken theory that President Reagan had lapsed into a coma after the assassination attempt in the first year of his presidency and had been replaced by a double who was a puppet of the far right. The theory was good for laughs but he was serious about it.
'Dr. Strangelove, I presume,' Zeller said.
'Mein fuhrer, 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. Sunbleached and unkempt, it was loosely tied at the back of his neck. He wore a Zuma Jay Tshirt, 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.
'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.
'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.
'Those are my boys out there,' Zeller said.
'They look like Malibu High teenagers.'
'They are. And so am I.'
Pierce nodded. Feel young, stay young -a common Malibu life ethic.
'I keep forgetting about how nice you got it out here, Code.'
'For a college dropout, I can't complain. Beats selling one's purity of essence for twentyfive 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.
'Beer, dude? I've got Pacifica and Saint Mike.'
'Yeah, sure. Either one.'
While Zeller went to the kitchen Pierce moved toward the work area. A large floor-toceiling 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 of the room, each equipped with multiple screens. Each system seemed to be at work. Slowly unspooling data trails moved across each screen. Digital inchworms crawling through whatever was Zeller's project at the moment. The walls of the room were covered in black foam padding to dampen exterior noise. The room was dimly lit by mini-spots. There was an unseen stereo playing an old Guns N' Roses disc that Pierce had not heard in more than ten years.
Affixed to the padding of the rear wall was a procession of stickers depicting company logos and trademark names. Most were household words, companies pervasive in daily life. There were many more stickers on the wall than the last time Pierce visited. He knew that Zeller put up a logo every time he conducted a successful intrusion into that company's computer services system. They were the notches on his belt.
Zeller earned $500 an hour as a white-hat hacker. He was the best of the best. He worked as an independent, usually hired by one of the Big Six accounting firms to conduct penetration tests on its clients. In a way it was a racket. The system that Zeller could not defeat was rare. And after each successful penetration his employer usually turned around and got a fat digital security contract from the client, with a nice bonus going to Zeller.
He had once told Pierce that digital security was the fastest growth area in the corporate accounting industry. He was constantly fielding high-price offers to come on board fulltime with one or another of the big firms, but he always demurred, saying he liked working for himself. Privately, he told Pierce that it was also because working for himself allowed him to eschew the random drug testing of the corporate world.
Zeller came into the clean room with two brown bottles of San Miguel. They doubleclicked bottles before drinking. Another tradition. It tasted good to Pierce, smooth and cold. Bottle in hand, he pointed to a red and white square affixed to the wall. It was the most recognized corporate symbol in the world.
