The Fool's Run

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