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."