The Fool's Run

is a MAC-10. A great favorite with drug smugglers, I understand.” He handed it to me. “It’s simple to operate, and this model is fully automatic. A submachine gun, if you will.” He turned to LuEllen. “You pull the trigger, and a stream of bullets comes out for as long as you hold down the trigger, or until you run out of ammo. I have sixteen- and thirty-shot custom clips for it.”
    The gun felt big and awkward in my hand. I held it up and sighted down the length of the shop. The front sight wavered in front of me.
    “You really wouldn’t want to shoot it like that,” he said. “Hold it closer to the body, so you can brace your elbow.” He showed me.
    “What else do you have?”
    “Ah. This one. You may be more familiar with it.” He unwrapped the second bundle and showed me a .45 Colt, identical to the one I’d qualified with in the Army.
    “What do you think?” I asked LuEllen.
    She shook her head. “I don’t know about guns.”
    “If I might recommend . . .” Drexel sounded like a wine waiter dealing with a couple of first-time drinkers. “If you need something for immediate self-protection, and don’t have time for practice—I got the impression from Mr. Weenie that this was the case—then I’d recommend the MAC-10. Even the rankest amateur can do amazing damage with it, though it is a bit more expensive.”
    I took it, and he ran me through its operation. He also sold me one thirty- and two sixteen-round clips for the gun, already loaded.
    “And for the lady?” he asked.
    “Uh, I don’t think I want anything,” LuEllen said, looking at me anxiously.
    “Let me show you this one,” he said. He reached back into one of his drawers and pulled out a hand-sized, double-barreled derringer.
    “A .32 H&R magnum. Very safe, and very simple to operate. You should use it only in the most extreme circumstances, of course. In this caliber, at five yards, you could actually miss your target. At two yards, or two feet, it’s quite effective.”
    LuEllen looked at the tiny gun for a moment, glanced at me, looked back at Drexel, and nodded. “I’ll take it,” she said.
    “Make sure you pull the trigger with your index finger. It’s so small that there’s a temptation to use your middle finger and lay your index finger along the barrel. But if your finger overlaps, it’s going to catch a lot of muzzle blast. Okay?”
    LuEllen nodded uncertainly.
    “Just pull the trigger with your trigger finger,” he said, smiling.
    The two guns cost us twenty-five hundred dollars. We rewrapped them in the oiled paper and went back out to the car, the wife nodding pleasantly as we tramped through the living room again.
    “If you need anything else,” Drexel said as we got in the car, “don’t hesitate to call.”
     
    THE NEXT STOP was the airport. I left the car in the long-term parking lot, rented a nondescript Dodge, and transferred the luggage. We were an hour north of Philadelphia before I spotted the right kind of hotel—a long, low, L-shaped place, inexpensive, with two dozen cars distributed up and down its length. I told the desk clerk that my secretary and I wanted adjoining rooms, but without connecting doors.
    “I’ve got divorce proceedings going,” I said, trying out a sheepish grin. “I don’t want people to think, you know.”
    He knew, and he wasn’t interested.
    LuEllen was dazed and heavy-eyed from the stress. “We have to keep going another half hour or so, and then we can get some sleep,” I said.
    We unloaded the box of electronics supplies in my room. The first item was a compact motion detector—a burglar alarm. I mounted it behind the door, at ankle level. Then I made a few simple changes in the telephone wall outlet. Next, using the power drill I’d bought, I drilled a neat hole through the wall into LuEllen’s room, and ran two lines through.
    The first line was hooked into the motion detector. If my door opened, the detector would buzz us in LuEllen’s room. The second line would allow me to make and take calls in LuEllen’s room from my phone. The stapler made the job neat. All the wiring ran under the edge of the carpet, along the baseboards. Even a maid shouldn’t notice the changes.
    “If it’s the CIA or NSA, they could be monitoring everything Anshiser’s got. If they trace us, it’ll give us a break,” I said.
    We left the car one space down from LuEllen’s room, in front of another room where the lights were on, and carried our suitcases,