The Fool's Run

why do we have a security problem? I’d never think that LuEllen was the problem. I trust her. But maybe LuEllen got caught in that apartment back in Cleveland, and maybe she has a federal indictment that I don’t know about, and when I got in touch with her and explained what I wanted to do, maybe she went to the U.S. Attorney and cut a deal.
    “Or could be Bobby’s got a legal problem and he cut a deal. The cards throw out random possibilities, and then you lay back and think about them.”
    “I didn’t cut a deal,” LuEllen said.
    “I know.”
    “How do you know?” Dace asked. “I mean, just as an example.”
    “I’ve seen LuEllen do her act. She wasn’t acting today. She was about to take on that gun.”
    We all thought about that for a minute.
    “That’s weird,” Dace said finally. “Do you ever do just an old-fashioned magic reading?”
    “I can. I don’t do it often.”
    “Doesn’t work?” he asked curiously.
    “No. Just the opposite. It does seem to work. And that worries me.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I don’t believe in that shit,” I said.
     
    MAGGIE CALLED JUST before midnight. “You said the man with the gun was short and rat-faced, with a brush cut?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What about the other man? Was he kind of tall and wimpy, kind of thin and nervous?”
    “Yeah. Where’d you get that from?”
    “They’re private detectives from Washington, at least the rat-faced one is. The blond guy works for him. They do divorce work.”
    “What do they want with us?”
    “Nothing. The landlord says he had another run-in with these guys a couple of months ago. They’re chasing after some general who used to meet a woman in the apartment you’re using.”
    “That’s a pretty pat answer,” I said after a minute.
    “That’s what the guy said, the landlord. You can go on over and meet him tomorrow. He’s pissed; he’ll talk to Ratface tomorrow. He says he’ll get them off your back. He’s going to tell them the apartment is leased to a private computer-security group working out of the Pentagon, and that you want to go after them with the FBI. He says that’ll take them out. This detective supposedly has a bad reputation with the feds, and he won’t mess with anything that smells like government security.”
    “I don’t know,” I said. But it sounded reasonable. It would account for the archaic bugging equipment and what LuEllen said was an old-fashioned lockpick. “I’ll have to talk to the other two. They’re pretty spooked.”
    “Look. Find another place if you want, but get on the job. This was just a bizarre coincidence. Talk to the landlord.”
    That night, with Dace’s suggestive questioning in the back of my head, I did a “magic” layout with the tarot. I got the Seven of Swords overlaying the Emperor in a crucial position. Later, I knew what it meant. But then it was too late.

    DACE AGREED TO talk to the landlord the next morning while I went out and bought a commercial bug detector. You can buy them across the counter—just another necessary appliance in Washington, like VCRs and compact-disc players.
    “I’m pretty shaky about this,” LuEllen said as we went back in the building.
    “No reason,” I said. “We haven’t done anything detectably criminal yet. If we see any problem at all up here, we walk away.”
    We didn’t find anything. I took the bugs out of the phones, checked the lines, then went over the rest of the place inch by inch with the scanner. Nothing.
    “We’re clean,” I said finally. “He wasn’t up here long enough to do more than the phone. Certainly nothing so sophisticated that it would be completely invisible and wouldn’t show up on this.” I waved the scanner at her.
    LuEllen was skeptical, but when Dace came back from meeting the landlord, he seemed convinced.
    “I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth. Ratface’s name is Frank Morelli. The other guy is a phone technician he brings in on some of his cases. They tried to get in once before, nine weeks ago, chasing this Pentagon guy. The Pentagon guy drops his mistress like a hot rock, but he was back here last week for a party. Morelli must have been watching him and figured it started up again.”
    “So he talked to them?”
    “Yeah. He says Morelli used to be a cop. That’s how he got around those cops we sicced on him. He pulled out his private eye card and mentioned a few names, and told them he was on a job. They said okay and took off.”
    “So what