The Fool's Run (12 page)

"I knew something was going to happen," he said. "Sooner or later."

"What are you going to do about those freaks?" LuEllen asked.

"If the number codes get me into the system, I can make some changes that will give me the same status as the systems programmer," I said. "I'll be able to go anywhere in the system. After the operation is running, we'll write to the cops. Tell them the truth. That we broke in, what we found. I got a copy of their whole subscription list, we'll print it out and include that, say we found it with the magazines. Child pornography is not appreciated in the state of Virginia. They'll be looking at ten years in the joint."

"What if the burglary scares them so much that they dump all the stuff?" LuEllen asked.

"They'll freak out, but they won't dump it," I said. "There's too much money involved. Especially if they think they were hit by a crackhead who wouldn't be any further threat."

"What about the kids who get fucked between now and then?"

I shook my head. "It's not a perfect world. If you want to nail these people, put them out of business, this is the way to do it."

She wasn't happy. Dace, on the other hand, was pleased in a grim sort of way.

"This is a major story," he said. "Major-major! We'll drop this thing on Whitemark like an atomic bomb. We've got to do it right and wait until they're already in trouble, and then boom. This could sink them."

Dace took LuEllen to see his doctor while I sorted through the stuff we'd taken in the burglary. There wasn't much we could save, but I would keep the Schiele drawing-he was among the best draftsmen of the twentieth century, and his erotic pieces are stunning. This was a good one. It could tie me to a burglary, but I looked at it, and looked at it, and knew I'd keep it.

That night Dace and LuEllen dumped the rest of the loot, and I went into the Whitemark computer using the system programmer's codes. The word codes got me through the first line of protection. The number codes got me into the programming level. It was there that I found the complete list of passwords for every file in the computer, no matter how confidential.

When LuEllen and Dace returned, LuEllen was laughing. "We're going to get a crowd if we dump any more stuff in that alley," she said. Her shoulder had been bandaged, and the doctor gave her a small envelope of pain pills. She took them all and was looking very relaxed.

"I'm in, and I've got to stay with this," I told them, nodding at the terminal. "I'm going to build my own back door into the computer, so I won't have to use the operator's codes. I'll have my own."

I picked up the second telephone, looked Whitemark up in the phone book, and called. When the operator answered, I asked for the computer room.

"Systems."

"Hey, I heard a rumor that you're shutting down early tonight. Is that right?"

"Nope, I don't think so. Let me check." The receiver on the other end clattered onto a desk, and lay there for a minute. Then the voice returned. "Nope. Regular time."

"So how late can I stay on? If I push it?"

"All the way to four o'clock. If you want to stay for another hour, give us a ring and we'll leave it on. But we have to shut down by five for system maintenance."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

I worked through the night, setting up my own back door. The next day we started breaking into the key files, Dace looking over my shoulder as I worked. Letters, memos, plans, and budgets rolled up the screen and into oblivion. By six o'clock, we were getting tired. A long, white snake of computer paper twisted across the table. Two wastebaskets in the corner were crammed with more jumbled printouts and with empty Coke cans.

"What's next?" I asked. So far we had rifled the confidential, personal, and private files of a half dozen top Whitemark officials. There was some interesting paper, but nothing incriminating.

"Vice president for materials," Dace said. He yawned and shuffled through a Whitemark phone book we'd printed out early in the process. "His name is Bell, I think." Dace ran a finger through the Bs, and I started looking through the filing lists for a Bell.

"Hold it," Dace said suddenly. He was looking into the phone book with a frown wrinkle across his forehead. "Heywood Beltrami?"

"Say what?"

"They've got a guy here named Heywood Beltrami."

"So what? You know him?"

"Yeah. He's a hairball. I had no idea he was working for Whitemark."

"With that name, there sure as shit couldn't be two of them," I said. "What's he do?"

"It says here he's in corporate relations," Dace said.

It took two minutes to find Beltrami's files. It took another five minutes with the master list to figure out which code words were his, and another minute to run them. Beltrami wasn't a technical man, and there was nothing technical about his files. They were all letters and memos.

"Let me in there," Dace said. I gave up the seat at the computer and went to get a beer. LuEllen was watching television in the front room.

"Got anything yet?"

"Dace found somebody he knew. Says he's a sleaze," I said. I went into the kitchen, got a beer, and stopped to watch the game show for a minute.

"I couldn't do computers," LuEllen said after a while. "I mean, it sounds neat, but it's really just sitting in front of a TV tube and pushing buttons, isn't it?"

"Yes and no. You could say that reading a newspaper is looking at long lists of letters, but it's obviously more than that. Same thing with computers."

I was about to go on, but Dace interrupted.

"Got 'em," he yelled from the office.

LuEllen got off the couch and followed me back. Dace was grinning at the computer screen.

"An old dirtbag never changes his grease spots," Dace said. "I knew we could count on Heywood."

He tapped the computer screen with a fingernail.

"This is a letter to a very heavy Air Force acquisitions guy at the Pentagon. Two stars. There's a whole series of letters in here. They talk in circles, but when you see them all at once, it's pretty clear. Some of them talk about employment, and some of them talk about problems with specs on the Hellwolf. You have to look at the dates, and what's going on, before you realize that Whitemark is promising to take care of this guy and his buddies when they retire. Consultant jobs. Big bucks. Big offices. Cars. Goddamn. All Whitemark wants is some help with spec changes. It restores your faith in mankind to know that people like Heywood are still out there oozing around after all these years."

Dace was happy. He looked, in fact, about ten years younger. LuEllen squeezed his shoulder, and I said, "Right. Let's get it printed out."

We dumped everything in Beltrami's files into our memory. As it came chugging out of the printer, we decided on the next step.

"We can work through the stuff tomorrow, decide the best way to leak it to the media," Dace said. "And we'll get a package together on our pornographer friends, so we can hand it to the cops."

"I'm going to Chicago," I said. "I'll be back the next day."

"We start the day after you get back?" asked LuEllen.

"Yes. The fuckin' Rubicon."

Maggie was waiting at the O'Hare arrival gate. She wore shades of blue this time, and low business heels. The outfit was subtly chic and must have set her back a thousand or more. She wore no makeup except a touch of pearl-pink lipstick. When she saw me, she smiled briefly and lifted a hand in greeting.

"Did you check any bags?" she asked, as I came through the gate.

"Nope. Just this." I held up the canvas carry-on.

"I've got a car." She led the way toward the exit, and I tagged along behind like a friendly basset. The first two times I'd seen her, her hair had been loose on her shoulders. Now it was swept up in a knot. Her bare neck made her seem more vulnerable. Her carriage had also changed. She seemed softer. Tired. Crumpled.

"You look down. Worn out," I said, struggling for the right words.

She glanced back. "It's Rudy," she said. "There's been a lot of pressure."

"How sick is he?"

"I don't know," she said. "He's been having headaches, pretty bad ones. He had migraines when he was young. He's afraid they've come back."

"You called in a doctor?"

She gave me the brief smile again. "Oh, sure. Billionaires aren't allowed to suffer. He's had all kinds of scans and probes. They can't find anything organic. They've given him tranquilizers. They seem to help."

I grabbed her arm and stopped her. She pivoted to face me.

"What are you telling me? That he's out of control?"

"No. He still has control, but sometimes the pain. affects him." We started walking again, and I held onto her arm. "He gets angry, out of all proportion to whatever set him off. And when it goes away, the relief is so strong that he gets almost maniacally happy. Overconfident. The swings are hard to deal with."

"How is he now?"

"He's in pretty good shape. He had a bad headache yesterday, but it was gone this morning."

"Are you still planning to come to Washington?"

"Yes. He insists on it. The worse the headaches get, the more determined he is to follow this through."

We passed all the usual exits to the parking ramps and approached an unmarked desk manned by an elderly guard. He saw us coming and nodded at Maggie. She walked past him to a door labeled fire and bumped it open with her hip. We were in a reserved section of the parking ramp, separated from the rest of it by a concrete wall. It was the kind of place whose existence I never would have suspected, though it made sense. The average car was probably worth sixty or seventy thousand. There were a half dozen Rolls-Royces and a few sleek Italian jobs that made Maggie's Porsche look Puritan-plain. She dropped neatly into the driver's seat, opened the passenger door, and I climbed inside.

During the ride to Anshiser's she was friendlier than she had been in the past. LuEllen fascinated her, and she asked a dozen questions about the burglaries as we loafed along. When I mentioned that LuEllen and Dace were sleeping together, she half turned toward me in the dark.

"Isn't that a major change?"

"Um."

"You're not distraught?"

"LuEllen and I like to roll around together. Our relationship is important, but not serious. If you know what I mean."

"This Dace. From what you've told me, he seems very. likeable."

"LuEllen says he's a nice guy. She says I'm not. She wants to try nice for a while."

She thought about that, and it occurred to me that I was feeling some electricity. I wrote it off as fantasy, a product of unrequited hormones. In any case, she stopped talking about LuEllen, and I brought her up-to-date on the Whitemark project.

"So you're ready," she said when I finished.

"Yeah. If Anshiser says go."

"He will," she said. She glanced at me. "Dillon was doing more research, you know, just because he's Dillon. Anyway, he found a reference to a paper you wrote about the tarot. He went out and bought a deck."

I grinned in the dark. "Where did he find it? The paper?"

"That was the strange thing. It was at the War College."

"Yeah. I knew they were using it."

She wanted more, but we were in the twisting streets, and a moment later she turned in at Anshiser's wrought-iron gate. It rolled smoothly out of the way and she gunned the car up to the house.

Anshiser was a shock. He'd been thin when I last saw him, and he'd lost another ten pounds. The lines in his face had deepened and his short hair seemed to stand on end. His nose appeared redder and larger.

"Mr. Kidd," he said hoarsely, as Maggie ushered me into the office. Dillon was nowhere to be seen. "I understand we're ready to go."

I gave him the report I'd given Maggie on the way in. He was pleased. When I told him what we planned to do with the child pornographers, he said, "Goddamned right," and laughed. "That ought to open up some sinuses over there." He whacked the top of his desk with sudden energy.

"You don't look so good," I said. "Maggie said you're having migraines."

"Something like it. Not quite, but close," he said somberly. "To tell you the truth, I think I'm dying."

"My God, Rudy," Maggie protested. "The doctors say it's tension. It could be Kidd's project doing this. Who knows? You're not dying."

Anshiser laughed again, the laugh trailing off to a cough. "The doctors are full of horseshit," he said. "I know what I feel like." He looked at me and held his hand to his head. "I can't explain it, but when I have one of these headaches, my whole body feels empty. I don't know what it is; I've never had it before. And it's bad."

"Look," I said, "you're making me nervous. If you're about to lose it, either mentally or physically, we could have serious problems. You're our backup, if anything goes wrong."

He hacked again, covering his mouth with his fist, his eyes never leaving mine. "I'll last," he said. "I'm too damn mean to die before that's done." He reached under his desk and produced a nylon handbag and pushed it toward me.

"Half of the remaining money," he said. "A half million dollars. I'm extremely pleased with your progress."

I looked at the bag for a minute and then back up at Anshiser.

"The real thing starts the day after tomorrow," I said. "Maggie and I will get out of here tomorrow, we'll show her where we're at, and then we do it. I need you to say right now to go ahead."

"Do it. I wish you luck, I do," Anshiser said. He pushed himself slowly out of the chair, and I picked up the bag and leaned forward to shake his hand.

"You take good care of Maggie," he said. "She's the daughter I should have had. Or the wife." He grinned, and for another instant, the vitality was back.

Maggie led the way to the door, and just outside, put a hand on my arm. "I wasn't expecting this," I said, holding up the money bag.

"That's Rudy's way of telling you he's happy," she said. "Do you have reservations in town?"

"No. I thought it would be better to show up somewhere and pay in cash. I sure as hell have enough of it."

"Why don't you stay at my place? I have an extra room, and you're welcome to it. It would be untraceable."

"That's nice of you. Thanks."

"I have to talk to Rudy privately for a moment. I'll be right back." I waited in the hallway, heard the sound of their voices, then Anshiser laughed again, and a moment later she came out.

"His sense of humor seems to be intact," I said as we headed down the stairs.

"You seem. not exactly to amuse him, but to make him laugh," she said. "It's good for him."

"What'd I say?"

She glanced back at me, the smile extending to her eyes this time.

"I told him I'd offered to let you stay at my place, in the spare bedroom. And how you said, 'That's nice of you.' And he said, 'God Almighty, Maggie, why don't you take that boy home and let him screw your brains loose?'"

"That's when he laughed?"

"No, he laughed on my line. He never laughs on his own." She was ahead of me going down the stairs, so all I could see was that tantalizing neck, and not her face.

"What was your line?"

She'd reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the short hall to the outside door. She turned at just the right moment, with one hand on the knob. "I said I planned to do exactly that."

I said "Oh" to an empty doorway.

As a top-level manager, and a large, athletic woman, she was surprisingly soft and yielding in the bedroom. While LuEllen went after sex with the enthusiasm of a beer-drinking cowgirl, Maggie was slower and looser and almost submissive. When we broke apart after making love the first time, she rolled onto her back. The skin of her stomach and breasts was shiny-damp in the dim bedside light, and she said, sounding satisfied with herself, "There."

"There, what?"

She propped herself on one elbow and looked down at me. "There are some men. getting them in bed is a challenge, you know? You were such an arrogant asshole the first time we met, out on the sandbar, with your brushes and your paintings and your torn shirt and your tan. I was sweating like a pig, my nylons were full of holes, my hair was a mess, and when I try to make conversation about the hole you cut in your painting, you cut me off at the knees. What a jerk."

"Jesus," I muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing. I'd just. heard something similar."

"Well, you're the type who would."

"Not about me. About someone else," I said. Time to change the subject. "Are you worried about the raid? We could call it off right now, and nobody would ever know."

She dropped flat on her back again. "Sure I'm worried. I'm paid to worry. I'm worried about Rudy, too. The way he talks about dying."

"Don't ignore that," I said. "Sometimes people know what the doctors don't."

"That's what worries me. That he might somehow talk himself right into the grave." She looked sideways at me. "Tell me why this attack is going to work."

I thought for a moment. "Because it's set up right," I said. "We took some time, and we know what we're doing. There's a possibility that we'll be nailed right away, that there's some kind of invisible monitoring system in Whitemark's software, but I've been careful and I haven't seen it; and I've been deep enough into their system to know that they depend on it. When we corrupt that system, they'll be effectively frozen."

"People will be hurt."

"Not physically. Like Anshiser said the first time I saw him, it's either his company or Whitemark. Somebody's got to lose. Whitemark cheated. That makes it a little more okay."

"But not completely okay."

"Nothing is completely okay."

"What about this problem with what's-his-name, Ratface?" she asked. She knew about the incident with the woman from down the hall, and that we thought the landlord had been lying about Ratface.

"I still don't know what that was about," I said. "Bobby's watching him, but nothing's happened. I have it in the back of my head that maybe it wasn't a divorce thing, that maybe Ratface and the landlord were involved in some kind of blackmail business. You know, we're not even sure that the technician was putting those bugs on the phones. Maybe he was taking them off. Maybe the landlord called them and said, 'Hey, these guys are some kind of computer freaks, maybe you better get those bugs out of there.' I don't know. That doesn't feel right either."

Maggie laughed softly. "It all sounds nuts. You know, whacky. Like something one of those right-wing fascist weirdo groups would fantasize about."

"Yeah, but they'd do it in tree-bark camo," I said. "The main thing is, nothing has happened. Ratface is still off in Jersey."

Maggie snuggled up on my shoulder and I looked at the ceiling, feeling her there, and neither one of us said anything for a few minutes. Then her hand crept down my stomach and she said, "Hmm."

"It's going to work," she said a half hour later. I was a little confused and wondered for a second if that was a personal comment. I thought it did work. "Dillon did a risk evaluation on this job. We had a hard time evaluating the first phase, the burglaries, because we didn't know what kind of personnel you'd have. That's why Rudy kept me out of it until now."

I'd caught up with her. "How about the second phase, going into the company?"

"That was easier to evaluate. We know you and your work, and there have been studies of this kind of attack by the National Security Agency and the FBI. Dillon thinks this will be the least risky phase. But after we hit, and the news reports start coming out, the risks escalate. The key is picking the time to get out. If you wait too long. zut." She drew a finger across my throat.

"And if we get caught? What happens then?"

"That depends. It's absolutely critical to keep your name and face, everybody's name and face, out of the media. The biggest danger is that you would be arrested, and processed, before we could interfere. Once something is on paper, it gets much harder," she said. "If you can keep things private and give Rudy time to operate, we should be okay."

"So we keep things informal."

"Absolutely."

"Jesus, I wish I still smoked."

"Why?"

"I could use a cigarette."

The next day, while Maggie took care of last-minute business at Anshiser's, I went into Chicago and stashed my share of the extra money in a second safety-deposit box. I mailed the key to Emily in St. Paul, along with a note telling her that everything was fine.

We flew out of Chicago in the early afternoon and got to Washington in time to catch the evening crush on I-395. When we arrived at the apartment, I unlocked the door and pushed through, carrying my own overnight case and Maggie's three-suiter. Dace and LuEllen were working in the office. LuEllen was wearing jeans and her white, tassled cowboy boots; Maggie was in one of her blue power suits.

"Dace and LuEllen, this is Maggie Kahn, and Maggie. " I gestured at the other two.

"Pleased to meet you," LuEllen said cheerfully, sticking out a hand. Maggie shook it, smiling, and said, "My pleasure. I've heard something about your work from Kidd. I'd like to hear more."

LuEllen glanced sideways at me, then back at Maggie. "What did he say?" Her tone was light, but her eyes were dark and serious.