Goddard would pull out and nobody would be willing to pull in. Not under the glare of a criminal investigation and possible trial. It would be over. He would be out of the race for good.

He looked back at Renner.

"I said I'm not talking to you anymore. I want you to leave. I want a lawyer."

Renner nodded.

"My advice to you is, make it a good one."

He reached over to a counter where medical supplies were displayed and picked up a hat Pierce hadn't seen before. It was a brown porkpie hat with the brim cocked down. Pierce thought nobody wore hats like that in L.A. anymore. Nobody. Renner left the room without another word.

Pierce sat still for a moment, thinking about his predicament. He wondered how much of what Renner had said about going to the DA had been threat and how much of it was reality. He shook free of the thoughts and looked around to see if the room had a phone.

There was nothing on the side table but the bed had side railings with all manner of electronic buttons for positioning the mattress and controlling the television mounted on the opposite wall. He found a phone that snapped out of the right railing. In a plastic pocket next to it he also found a small hand mirror. He held it up and looked at his face for the first time.

He was expecting worse. When he had felt the wound with his fingers in the moments after the assault, it had seemed to him that his face had been split open wide and that wide scarring would be unavoidable. At the time this didn't bother him, because he was happy just to be left alive. Now he was a little more concerned. Looking at his face, he saw the swelling was way down. He was a little puffy around the corners of his eyes and the lower part of his nose. Both nostrils were packed with cotton gauze. Both eyes had dark swatches of purple beneath them. The cornea of his left eye was flooded with blood on one side of the iris. And across his nose were the very fine trails of microstitching.

The stitching formed a K pattern with one line going up the bridge of his nose, and the arms of the K curving below his left eye and above it into his eyebrow. Half of his left eyebrow had been shaved to accommodate the surgery and Pierce thought that might be the oddest thing about the whole face he saw in the mirror.

He put the mirror down and he realized he was smiling. His face was almost destroyed.

He had an LAPD cop who was trying to put him in jail for a crime he had uncovered but did not commit. He had a digital pimp with a pet monster out there who was a live and real threat to him and others close to him. Yet he was sitting in bed, smiling.

He didn't understand it but knew it had something to do with what he had seen in the mirror. He had survived and his face showed how close he had come to not making it. In that there was relief and the inappropriate smile.

He picked up the phone and put in a call to Jacob Kaz, the company's patent attorney.

His call was put through to the lawyer immediately.

"Henry, are you okay? I heard you were attacked or something. What -"

"It's a long story, Jacob. I'll have to tell you later. What I need from you right now is a name. I need an attorney. A criminal defense attorney. Somebody good but who doesn't like getting his face on TV or his name in the papers."

Pierce knew that what he was asking for was a rarity in Los Angeles. But containing the situation was going to be as urgent as possibly defending himself against a bogus murder charge. It had to be handled quickly and discreetly, or the falling dominoes Pierce had imagined moments earlier would become the crushing blocks of reality that toppled both him and the company.

Kaz cleared his throat before responding. He gave no indication that Pierce's request was out of the ordinary or anything other than normal in their professional relationship.

"I think I have a name for you," he said. "You'll like her."

On Wednesday morning Pierce was on the phone with Charlie Condon when a woman in a gray suit walked into his hospital room. She handed him a card that said JANIS

LANGWISER, ATTORNEY AT LAW on it. He cupped his hand over the phone and told her he was wrapping up the call.

"Charlie, I've got to go. My doctor just came in. Just tell him we have to do it over the weekend or next week."

"Henry, I can't. He wants to see Proteus before we send in the patent. I don't want to delay that and you don't, either. Besides, you've met Maurice. He won't be put off."

"Just call him again and try to delay it."

"I will. I'll try. I'll call you back."

Charlie hung up and Pierce clipped the phone back into the bed's side guard. He tried to smile at Langwiser but his face was sorer than it had been the day before and it hurt to smile. She put out her hand and he shook it.

"Janis Langwiser. Pleased to meet you."

"Henry Pierce. I can't say the circumstances make it a pleasure to meet you."

"That's usually the way it is with criminal defense work."

He had already gotten her pedigree from Jacob Kaz. Langwiser handled the criminal defense work for the small but influential downtown firm of Smith, Levin, Colvin amp;

Enriquez. The firm was so exclusive, according to Kaz, that it wasn't listed in any phone book. Its clients were A-list, but even people on that list still needed criminal defense from time to time. That's where Langwiser came in. She'd been hired away from the district attorney's office a year earlier, after a career that included prosecuting some of Los Angeles 's higher-profile cases of recent years. Kaz told Pierce that the firm was taking him as a client as a means of establishing a relationship with him, a relationship that would be mutually beneficial as Amedeo Technologies moved toward going public in years to come. Pierce didn't tell Kaz that there would be no eventual public offering or even an Amedeo Technologies if this situation wasn't handled properly.

After polite inquiries about Pierce's injuries and prognosis, Langwiser asked him why he thought he needed a criminal defense attorney.

"Because there is a police detective out there who believes I'm a killer. He told me he was going to the DA's office to try to charge me with a number of crimes, including murder."

"An L.A. cop? What's his name?"

"Renner. I don't think he ever told me his first name. Or I don't remember it. I have his card but I never looked at -"

"Robert. I know him. He works out of Pacific Division. He's been around a long time."

"You know him from a case?"

"Early in my career at the DA I filed cases. I filed a few that he brought in. He seemed like a good cop. I think thorough is the word I would use."

"It's actually the word he uses."

"He's going to the DA for a murder charge?"

"I'm not sure. There's no body. But he said he was going to charge me with other stuff first. Breaking and entering, he says. Obstruction of justice. I guess he'll try to make a case for the murder after that. I don't know how much is bullshit threats and how much he can do. But I didn't kill anybody, so I need a lawyer."

She frowned and nodded thoughtfully. She gestured to his face.

"Is this thing with Renner in any way related to your injuries?"

Pierce nodded.

"Why don't we start at the beginning."

"Do we have an attorney-client relationship at this point?"

"Yes, we do. You can speak freely."

Pierce nodded. He spent the next thirty minutes telling her the story in as much detail as he could remember. He freely told her about everything he had done, including the crimes he had committed. He left nothing out.

As he talked Langwiser leaned against the equipment counter. She took notes with an expensive-looking pen on a yellow legal pad she took from a black leather bag that was either an oversized purse or an undersized briefcase. Her whole manner exuded expensive confidence. When Pierce was finished telling the story, she went back to the part about what Renner had called an admission from him. She asked several questions, first about the tone of the conversation at that point, what medications Pierce was on at the time and what ill effect from the attack and surgery he was feeling. She then asked specifically what he had meant by saying it was his fault.