"Help me? You already helped me enough, Henry. They hurt me. I'm all black and blue and nobody can see me like this. I want you to stop calling me and wanting to help me.

I'm not talking to you again after this. Stop calling here, you understand?"

The message clicked off. Pierce continued to hold the phone to his ear, his mind repeating parts of the message like a scratched old record. They hurt me. I'm all black and blue. He felt himself getting light-headed and reached out to the wall for balance. He then turned his back into the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, the phone on his lap again.

He did not move for several seconds and then raised the receiver and started calling her number. Halfway through, he stopped and hung up.

"Okay," he said out loud.

He closed his eyes. He thought about calling Janis Langwiser to tell her that he had received a message from Lucy, that at the very least she was alive. He could then ask her if she had learned anything new since their meeting at the hospital that morning.

Before he could act on the idea, the phone rang while he was still holding it. He answered immediately. He thought it might be Lucy again -who else had the new number? -and his hello was tinged with a tone of hurried desperation.

But it wasn't Lucy. It was Monica.

"I forgot to tell you, between Monday and Tuesday your friend Cody Zeller left three messages for you on your private line. I guess he really wants you to call him."

"Thank you, Monica."

Pierce could not call Zeller back directly. His friend accepted no direct calls. To contact him, Pierce had to call his pager and put in a return number. If Zeller was familiar with the number, he would return the call. Because Pierce had a new number that Zeller would not recognize, he added a prefix of three sevens, which was a code that let Zeller know it was a friend or associate who was attempting to contact him from an unfamiliar number.

It was a sometimes cumbersome and always annoying way to conduct life and business but Zeller was a paranoid's paranoid and Pierce had to play it his way.

He settled in to wait for the callback but his page was promptly returned. Unusual for Zeller.

"Jesus, man, when are you going to get a cell phone? I've been trying to reach you for three days."

"I don't like cell phones. What's up?"

"You can get them with a scramble chip, you know."

"I know. What's up?"

"What's up is that on Saturday you sure wanted this stuff in a goddamn hurry. Then you don't call me back for three days. I was starting to think you -"

"Code, I've been in the hospital. I just got out."

"The hospital?"

"I had a little trouble with some guys."

"Not guys from Entrepreneurial Concepts?"

"I don't know. Did you find out about them?"

"Full scan as requested. These are bad dudes you're dancing with, Hank."

"I'm getting that idea. You want to tell me about them now?"

"Actually, I'm in the middle of something right now and don't like doing this by phone anyway. But I did drop it all in a FedEx yesterday -when I didn't hear from you.

Should've gotten there by this morning. You didn't get it?"

Pierce checked his watch. It was two o'clock. The FedEx run came at about ten every morning. He didn't like the idea of the envelope from Zeller sitting on his desk all this time.

"I haven't been to the office. But I'll go get it now. You have anything else for me?"

"Can't think of anything that's not in the package."

"Okay, man. I'll call you after I look at everything. Meantime, let me ask you something.

I need to track somebody to a location, an address, and all I have is her name and her cell number. But the bill for the cell doesn't go to where she lives and that's what I want."

"Then it's worthless."

"Anything else I can do?"

"That's a tough one but it can be done. Is she registered to vote?"

"I kind of doubt it."

"Well, there are utility hookups and credit cards. How common's her name?"

"Lucy LaPorte of Louisiana."

Pierce reminded himself that she had told him to stop calling her. She hadn't said anything about not finding her.

"Got that alliteration thing going, huh?" Zeller said. "Well, I can try some things, see what pops."

"Thanks, Code."

"And I suppose you want it yesterday."

"That's right."

"Of course."

"I gotta go."

Pierce went into the kitchen and looked through the bags he had dumped on the counter for the bread and peanut butter. He quickly made a sandwich and left the apartment, being sure to put on the Moles hat and pull the brim down low on his forehead. He ate the sandwich while waiting for the elevator. The bread tasted stale. It had been in the car trunk since Sunday.

On the ride down to the garage the elevator stopped on six and a woman got on. As was the custom with elevator riders, she avoided looking at Pierce. After they started descending she surreptitiously checked out his reflection in the polished chrome trim on the door. Pierce saw her do a frightened double take.

"Oh my God!" she cried out. "You're the one everybody's talking about."

"Excuse me?"

"You're the one who got hung off the balcony, right?"

Pierce looked at her for a long moment. And in that moment he knew that no matter what happened with Nicole, he wouldn't be able to stay in the apartment building. He was moving.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Are you all right? What did they do to you?"

"They didn't do anything. I don't know what you are talking about."

"You're not the guy who just moved in up on twelve?"

"No. I'm on eight. I'm staying with a friend on eight while I heal."

"Then what happened?"

"Deviated septum."

She looked at him suspiciously. The door finally opened on the garage level. Pierce didn't wait for her to get out first. He moved quickly out of the elevator and around the corner toward the door to the building's garage. He glanced back to see the woman staring at him as she came out of the elevator.

Just as he looked forward again he almost walked into the door to the storage area, which had come open as a man and woman were walking their bikes out. Pierce lowered his chin, pulled the brim of his hat down further and held the door and waited until they were out of the way. They both said thank you but didn't mention anything about his being the guy who was hung off the balcony.

The first thing Pierce did when he got inside his car was put on the pair of sunglasses he carried in the glove box.

The FedEx envelope was on his desk when Pierce walked into his office. It had been a battle to get there. Almost every step of the way he'd had to fend off looks and inquiries about his face. By the time he got to the office section of the third floor, he was giving one-word answers to all questions -"Accident."

"Lights," he said as he swung around behind his desk.

But the lights didn't come on and Pierce realized that his voice was different because of the swelling of his nasal passages. He got up and turned on the lights manually and then went back to the desk. He took off his sunglasses and put them on top of his computer monitor.

He picked up the envelope and checked the return address. Cody Zeller pulled a painful smile out of him. In the return address Zeller had put the name Eugene Briggs, the Stanford department head the Doomsters had targeted many years before. The prank that had changed their lives.

The smile dropped off his face when Pierce turned over the envelope to open it. The pull tab had already been torn -the envelope was open. He looked inside it and saw a white business envelope. He took this out and found that it had been opened as well. The outside of the envelope said Henry Pierce, personal and confidential. There was a folded sheaf of documents inside. He couldn't tell if they had been pulled out or not.