The Fool's Run

for the girls, but he let Dace have one. He’s a crook himself, so he won’t talk to anyone. There won’t be any records, there won’t be any receipts. He won’t be around, won’t see our faces; he stays out of sight himself.”
     
    PERSONAL CARS ARE invisible in America as long as you don’t buy gas on credit cards or get traffic tickets. And if you drive off the main interstate highways, down into the midsized towns when you’re looking for a motel, you can find one where all transactions are done in cash. They don’t want to see a Visa card, they don’t check your license plate to see if you wrote down the right number. Hand over forty dollars in advance, and they’re satisfied.
    There was a reason for our caution. Despite what Anshiser said about the powers of political protection, it was still possible that he didn’t understand the magnitude of what we were doing. A computer attack on a major corporation is a technological-age nightmare. If word of a corporate war got out to the computer community, the reaction could be violent. Some very unpleasant people could come looking for us. Given that possibility, the whole job was best done with as few personal traces as possible.
     
    WE TOOK OUR time getting to Washington, and talked about the attack.
    “So if things started to get hairy,” LuEllen said, “you might not even need me around at all? Especially toward the end?”
    “Right. You could take off. You could probably take off anyway. Your job will be right up front, before the attack starts. I’d like you to hang around for a while, but you won’t have to stay until the end.”
    “I’d like to know how it comes out.”
    “You’ll know, one way or the other,” I said. “Either I’ll call you and tell you or you’ll read all about it in the newspapers.”
    “You fill me with confidence,” she said.
    LuEllen was pleasant company; she didn’t feel pressure to talk all the time. In the evenings, after dinner, we would catch a movie on Home Box Office and afterward make love, a reasonably athletic event that made a nice transition into sleep. We were feeling almost domestic by the time we got to Washington.
    We arrived in the late afternoon on a hot, damp Thursday. Our new headquarters was in a pretty neighborhood of narrow, green lawns, neatly trimmed hedges, and tastefully shabby private homes interspersed with well-kept apartments. The apartment buildings were mostly of dark brown or wheat-colored brick. Tenant parking was tucked discreetly behind screens of bridal wreath or in reproduction carriage-house garages with weathered wood siding. At the address Dace had given us we parked the car in a guest slot. The building was a long, two-story rectangle, with the narrow end toward the street. There were four separate entrances, each with eight apartment numbers above the outer door. We went to the door nearest the front of the building. A call phone hung on the wall of the entry. I dialed the apartment and Dace buzzed us in.
    “Nice,” LuEllen said as we stepped inside. “This is the kind of place I might do a job.” A heavy, wine-red carpet covered the lobby floor, setting off the green-figured wallpaper. Four oak doors led off the hall. Between the two on the right was an elevator. Our apartment was on the second floor, on the right as we came out of the elevator. From the outside, it would be the second apartment in, on the back side of the building, away from the driveway. I rapped on the door and Dace answered.
    “Hey, Kidd,” he said. He was barefoot, in khaki shorts and a golf shirt. He stepped back and looked curiously at LuEllen as we shook hands. I’d told him other people were involved, but hadn’t mentioned who.
    “Dace, this is LuEllen, LuEllen, Dace.” They said pleased-to-meet-yous and I said, “LuEllen is, uh, a spacial intrusion engineer.”
    “What?”
    “A burglar,” said LuEllen.
    “Oh.” Dace wiggled his eyebrows and looked interested. “Well, come on in and look around.”
    From where I was standing I could see a kitchen with a dining area, and a comfortable living room with overstuffed couches facing a console television. The fabric wallpaper was done in a discreet gold figure over beige, and nineteenth-century British sporting prints hung on the walls. A hallway led back to the bathrooms and bedrooms.
    “Pretty nice,” I said. “A little classier than I expected.”
    Dace shrugged. “He’s got an upscale business. Can’t have the place