The Fool's Run

find anything, they may do a discreet black-bag job themselves, to check the place out. Then, depending on what they find, they’ll go to a pet judge and get a search warrant. They won’t have a real good case, but it should be enough for a warrant.”
    “What if they did report the break-in? For insurance?”
    Dace shrugged. “In that case, they probably moved the porn out, at least during the investigation. If they did report it, the cops would have corroboration in their own files that the burglary took place. They’ll still watch the place. Sooner or later, they’ll bust them.”
    “It better be sooner,” Maggie said. “If it happens two months from now, it won’t help.”
    “It’s not a sure thing,” Dace said. “But I’d be willing to bet it’ll happen in a week.”
    “How’ll we know if it happened?”
    “We’ll give the cops a couple of days to work. Then we tip off the papers and the TV stations that they’re about to bust the biggest kiddie-porn ring in the country. It’s hyperbole, but the TV people love that kind of thing. A new record for kiddie porn. They’ll get in touch with the cops, and that’ll goose the cops along. We’ll see it on the evening news.”
     
    THE NIGHT AFTER the first attack, Maggie lay on her back in bed, the lights out. The code was still running through my head.
    “It’s weird,” she said, reaching over to pat me on the stomach. “When Rudy and Dillon and I talked about hiring you, I had this picture of somebody climbing a barbwire fence with plastic explosive in his teeth. Instead, we sit in an air-conditioned apartment and eat donuts, and you type on a computer.”
    “You never carry plastic explosive in your teeth,” I said.
    “Have you ever seen the Whitemark building?”
    “Nope. Should I?”
    “I guess not. There’s not much to see. Just a big glass cube with a funny pyramid thing for the roof. I thought you might be curious.”
    “Nah. You can tell more sitting here than you can from looking at the outside of the building.”
    She shook her head. “That doesn’t seem right, somehow. It’s like . . .” She groped for an analogy. “It’s like dropping bombs on Vietnamese peasants. You know, you push a button and people die, but you go home to lunch. If you’re going to have a war, you should have the courtesy to kill your enemies in person. And maybe suffer a little bit.”
    “You’re rambling,” I said.
    “I know. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. But it seems . . . wrong . . . to be able to attack somebody you’ve never seen, don’t know, and probably won’t ever meet.”
    “You mean I should find the president of Whitemark and personally rip his heart out.”
    “Oh, bullshit, Kidd. You know what I’m getting at. This seems so . . . sterile. I mean, it’s scary. It’s little electronic lights ruining a huge company.”
    “Welcome to the big city,” I said.
    “That’s an ugly attitude,” she said.
    “Yeah, but that’s the way it is. You wanted this done, and I can do it. We’re both consenting adults. It’s the new reality. The little electronic lights are more real than that glass building with the pyramid on top.”
    She shivered.
     
    THE LETTER ABOUT the porn merchants went in the mail the first day. Over the next two days, as I jimmied the Whitemark computer system, Dace and Maggie worked and reworked the approaches to the media on the public attack.
    Dace suggested that the Whitemark letters to the generals be leaked first, anonymously, to a weekly defense newsletter called From the Turret.
    “A lot of people read it, a lot of reporters. Turret’s not too scrupulous about what they use or where they get it. If we drop them a note, say we have been unfairly demoted in the company, and send along the letters, they’ll use them,” he said.
    “It doesn’t sound public enough,” Maggie said with a frown. “I mean, frankly, every company in the defense industry hires retired generals to lobby for them. We do. You put that story in a defense newsletter, there might be a few raised eyebrows, but nothing much will happen.”
    “Ah. But this isn’t hiring a few generals. This involves a quid pro quo. They’re saying, ‘If our airplane is picked, there’ll be jobs in procurement for those who helped us.’ That’s not recruiting, that’s bribery. As soon as Turret publishes, we call the Post, The New York Times, and Knight-Ridder bureau, and so on, and tip them off. Just being in print