The Fool's Run

and his businesses. I opened the closet and started sorting through the accumulation of paper. I found it six months down.
    Anshiser, according to Business Week, directly controlled Anshiser Holding Corporation, which in turn owned a dozen major companies. On the industrial side was Anshiser Aviation, where he got his start during World War II, building up a company bought by his father during the Depression. There was also an avionics company, a small aluminum specialties mill, and a string of scrap yards. The holdings on the service side, where Anshiser had been most active in the past twenty years, were even more impressive. They included a hotel chain, two franchise restaurant chains, one of the nation’s biggest garbage-hauling firms, and Kelmark Vending, a building and distributor of candy- and cigarette-machines, coin-op pool tables, and similar equipment.
    Anshiser was known for his willingness to take risks and to delegate authority. If he gave you a company to run, and you ran it well, he made you rich and kept his hands off. Executives who failed to measure up were ruthlessly weeded out.
    He was also a force in Republican politics, particularly in the upper Midwest. And that, I thought, was where he got my name. Most of my political money is Republican. That has nothing to do with personal preferences. The Republicans simply have more cash. As far as I’m concerned, the two parties are about as different as Curly and Moe.
    Before leaving the apartment, I stepped into the studio and sat down at the drawing table. I keep a tarot at hand, wrapped in silk in a wooden box from Poland. The deck is a common one, a popular variation of the Ryder design. I did five quick spreads, and the Fool showed up in critical positions in three of them. The Fool represents a major change that occurs as a natural and inexorable part of life, without your volition, because of the way you live. I wrapped the cards in the silk cloth, put them back in the box, and slipped the box into my overnight bag. Something to consider.
     
    THE MUNICIPAL AIRPORT from my apartment is across the Robert Street Bridge, down onto the flats along the river. Kahn was waiting for me in the terminal, smiled perfunctorily when she saw me coming with the bag and the portable, and headed out the door.
    “We’re right out here,” she said over her shoulder.
    It was a red-and-white Anshiser-built business jet with a charter logo. I hate traveling on small jets. You feel like you’re in a mailing tube. The pilot and copilot were already in the cockpit.
    “I’m surprised it’s a charter,” I said. “I’d have thought you’d fly it yourself, Margaret. Like you fly the Porsche.”
    She turned her head and looked at me. Her eyes unfocused a bit, and before we got to the waiting plane, she said, “The rental car. You got the license number.”
    “Very good,” I said. The data said she was smart. The data were right.
    “You’ve got a friend at the rental booth. The redhead?” she asked as we stopped at the steps to the plane.
    “No. Database. The redhead wouldn’t know about the Porsche.” I gave her my best smile.
    Her forehead wrinkled. “So you know who my employer is?”
    “Rudolph Anshiser.”
    “Hmph,” she said, and led the way to the jet. At the top of the stairs she turned and said, “It’s not Margaret. It’s Maggie.”

Chapter 3
    I N WHAT SEEMS like another century, I was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army. The unit was small, and eventually all but four of us were dead or in pieces. I lay in an Army hospital in San Francisco, tried to rationalize my part in the deaths, and failed. Since then, I’ve had an aversion to organization. For the most part, I simply want to be left alone. That’s not as simple as it should be.
    I paint during the days, and late at night I sit in front of a computer terminal and make statistical models. In the early evenings, there are workouts at the Shotokan dojo on East Seventh Street.
    I like my cat, a couple of women in town, fifteen or twenty Twins ball games a year, fishing out of Miami in the winter and on a Canadian lake in the summer, and the music and food in New Orleans. I go to New York and Chicago for gallery openings and to hustle my paintings.
    It all takes money. Only a small fraction of my earnings comes from painting, but the fraction is getting larger. A bigger chunk comes from the computer models. The models predict political behavior, using social statistics, a cynic’s