The Fool's Run

and talk to him, we might find out exactly where we stand. And he might not be in there at all.”
    “We better move if we’re gonna do it,” LuEllen said. “I’d be surprised if he’s in there for more than five minutes.”
    I shook my head. “That’s if he’s burglarizing the place. If he’s tossing it, looking for something specific about us, or if he’s putting in bugs, he’ll be a little longer . . . Any ideas about that lookout?”
    “Sure. I need a phone,” LuEllen said.
    There was a phone box on the side of a recreation center two blocks away. LuEllen called the cops and then came running back.
    “I told them that the guy in the green van picked up a little girl outside the rec center and took her down the street,” she said when she climbed back in the car. “They’ll have a car here in a minute. That’d be a top priority call.”
    The squad car actually arrived less than a minute later. We waited on a side street. When the squad went by, I pulled around the block and went up an alley into the back entrance of the apartment parking lot. The cops had the van driver in the street.
    “Dace, you wait here,” I said over my shoulder. “If LuEllen doesn’t come down in five minutes exactly, you get the cops up there.”
    “Why don’t I come up?” he asked anxiously.
    “I don’t have time to argue,” I said. LuEllen followed me into the building, and we took the steps to the second floor. At the door to the apartment, LuEllen put her finger to her lips, listened for a few seconds, then checked the door lock.
    “Scratches,” she said, pressing her lips close to my ear. “They weren’t there before. They could come from an old-style automated lockpick.”
    “Can we get inside?” I whispered back.
    “He’ll hear us coming. If he’s armed, we’re in trouble.”
    “Will he take the elevator or the stairway?”
    “Stairs.”
    “Let’s go back there.”
    We walked back to the stairs and shut the steel fire door.
    “You better go down and tell Dace we’re okay,” I said. “I’ll wait here and try to take him when he comes through the door.”
    There was a small, mechanical sound from beyond the fire door. “Too late,” LuEllen said.
    “He’s coming.”
    “Shit. Get down the stairs, out of sight.”
    LuEllen scrambled down the concrete steps and stopped below the next landing. I stood behind the fire door and waited. If the person coming down the hall was one of the alleged hookers who frequented the place, or a Pentagon general, this would be embarrassing.
    But it wasn’t. The guy who came through the door was slender, anemic, with thin blond hair and pale, watery eyes. He was wearing coveralls and carrying the toolbox. He pushed the door open with his right hand and his body was into the doorway before he saw me. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, and I pivoted and kicked the door as hard as I could, a good solid karate-style thrust kick that smashed the steel door into his body and the side of his head.
    His tool case fell. Its contents spilled over the landing as the door rebounded off him, and he half stumbled. I kicked a leg out from under him and rode him down to the concrete. He put out his hands to break his fall and I got a knee in his back and an arm around his throat.
    “Fight and I’ll break your fuckin’ neck,” I said. LuEllen had come back up the stairs, and I said, “Tell Dace.” She turned to go, and froze: a rat-faced guy was on the landing. He had eyes like ball bearings and was pointing a small, black pistol at my forehead.
    “Let him go, motherfucker,” Ratface said. He had a high-pitched, ragged-edged voice like a chalk squeak, but there was nothing ragged or shaky about the black hole at the end of the pistol’s barrel. It was cold and round and absolutely steady. I stood up and the guy beneath me got to his hands and knees, sobbing, saying, “Jesus Christ,” scooping his gear back into his toolbox. Except for a few pairs of pliers, screwdrivers, and some black plastic tape, the equipment was all electrical, and mostly illegal.
    “Who the fuck are you?” I asked Ratface. LuEllen looked like she was ready to make a move, but I put out a hand, and she relaxed.
    “Shut up.” The hole at the end of the barrel never wavered.
    When the tech’s box was packed, he stood up, shot me a fearful look, and scurried down the stairs past Ratface. The gunman backed down after him, the gun steady on my face.
    “We’re walking out,” he