The Fool's Run

work in figurative art, you quickly become aware of the strange qualities of human perception. A mother can walk up to a playground and immediately spot her kid among dozens of others, all of whom are about the same size and color and wearing similar clothing. You can see a friend from a block away, too far to pick out details of face or color or dress, and recognize him instantly.
    I saw the flash of white, and thought, Maggie. But nobody got out of the car, and she wasn’t due for two hours. I let it go and followed LuEllen into the apartment and up the stairs.
    Dace was sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the Post. He looked up when we came in and said, “Haven’t touched a thing except this coffee cup!”
    “You ready?” LuEllen asked, kissing him on the forehead.
    “Anytime,” he said.
    “I want to go through this place literally on our hands and knees, to make sure we’re not leaving anything behind,” I said.
    “Let me finish the sports,” Dace said. “I don’t think they write about the ’Skins down in Mexico.”
    LuEllen and I pulled on the plastic gloves, and she followed me to the first bedroom. I got down on my knees and looked under the bed. She pulled open the drawers in the bureau.
    “There’s not going to be anything,” she said.
    “Look under the shelf paper, too,” I said. She rolled her eyes and started pulling the shelf paper out of the drawers. We were about finished with the first room when the doorbell rang. LuEllen looked at me, and I stood up.
    “Maggie,” I said. “I thought I saw her . . .”
    “Could be the landlord,” Dace said, coming out of the kitchen with the paper in one hand and the coffee cup in the other. “I told him we’d be pulling out.” He crossed to the door and opened it.
    Two men stood in the hallway. The one in back was mostly out of sight, but he was big. The one in front was wearing a neat red-and-white striped golf shirt, tan slacks, and tennis shoes. Ratface. He pulled a long, skinny gun from under his shirt and raised it toward Dace. Dace said “Wait” and held up the newspaper, and Ratface shot him three times in the head.
    The shots went phut-phut-phut. LuEllen, who had gone into the hallway before I did, spun and started toward me and we both surged back into the bedroom, and I slammed the door and flipped the lock. Since it was a whorehouse, the door was heavy wood and the locks were solid, but I picked up the rosewood dressing table and literally threw it against the door. LuEllen didn’t stop to look. She dashed across the bedroom to the old-fashioned, double-hung windows, frantically turned the crescent lock on the top of one and slid it up, and slapped at the hooks holding the screen outside.
    “Go—go—go,” she screamed; she had her feet out the window, and I ran across the room toward her. The guy in the hallway outside kicked the bedroom door at the lock, but it held, and he kicked it again, but by then I was at the window, watching LuEllen drop into the alley behind the apartment. She landed like a cat and turned to run toward the back of the building. I slid through, hung for a second, heard the door splinter, and dropped.
    LuEllen was thirty feet in front of me when I landed; I yelled, “Car, car,” and she cut behind the apartment. When I turned the corner she was squatting, gasping for breath, next to the passenger door. I unlocked the driver’s side, slid in, pulled the lock, and cranked the engine. We left the back end of the lot in a hurry, and LuEllen, looking back, said, “There he is!” Looking in the rearview mirror as we turned the corner, I saw Ratface limp around the building, stop, and then hobble back out of sight.
    “They killed Dace,” LuEllen moaned.
    “Yeah.” There was nothing else to say.
    I took a left at the next corner, drove a block, took another left, and headed west toward a big commercial street. There was no sign of a chase.
    “What the fuck happened?” LuEllen demanded. “Who were those guys?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “But they’ve got Maggie, too.”
    “What?” LuEllen was stricken, her face white and drawn, but she was functioning. “What makes you think that?”
    “When we were going into the building, I thought I saw her face in a car across the street. I didn’t think it could be her, because she’s not due for a couple hours. But I got a bad feeling. . . .”
    “They’re not coming after us,” LuEllen said. “Let’s get on