The Fool's Run

  “Look, Phil, I know all about your money problems. But don’t think about taking this away from me, okay? I’d just beat the shit out of you.”

  “Hey, man . . .”

  I handed him a thousand and he counted it, folded it, and put it in his front pants pocket and sat back.

  “Okay. So here’s what I know. And this was why I was so happy to hear from you. ’Cause all I can tell you is that you can’t get in. Even if you put a gun to my head, and marched me in there, and made me sign on, and we got in, it wouldn’t do you any good. Things are so tight that almost nothing moves anymore. It’s all voice-backup and it’s all one-way. We dump it into a computer on the other end that’s physically separated from the main data banks. Then they’ve got operators to put all of the data up on the screen from the dump bank, and they scan it for code. Only when they’re sure it’s clean, they call up the main bank on their own internal line and dump it. There’s no way in from the outside.”

  “What if you need to go interactive with something in the main banks?”

  “Well, they’re trying not to let that happen. If it’s really serious, then they’ll download the interactive program to the remote computer; you’ll interact there. They sterilize the input before they ship it back to the main banks. I mean, there’s one way to break it: you have to get to the systems programmers. And that won’t happen. I’ll tell you, man, this is a pretty good company, but they’ve got some rough customers roaming around. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Just in case you don’t, let me lay it out in a couple of sentences. Their top systems programmers are taking home maybe a hundred grand a year, plus options and benefits and bonuses. That’s good money. That’s the golden goose. If they get greedy and go for some small change from you, they’d be fired and blackballed and maybe, you know, hurt. The chances of those guys taking your money are slim and fat, and slim is out of town.” He took a gulp of Bud.

  “So why are you talking to me?” I asked.

  “Because you gave me a grand. And because about two seconds after you leave here, I’m going to call them up on the phone and tell them you came to see me. I won’t mention the grand, though. I’ll tell them I told you to take a hike.”

  I stood up to leave. “You ought to think about that for a while, Phil. Like you said, there are some hard guys with Anshiser. They might not believe you, and you’ll wind up in an oil barrel on the bottom of Biscayne Bay. Because if you call them, and they come after me before I can get out of Miami International, I’ll tell them you got ten grand and suggested a couple ways I might get in. And they just won’t want to take the chance with you, will they?” I slapped him lightly on the cheek. “Thanks for the information. It was worth a grand.”

  I LEFT HIM standing there with an empty beer can and two bites of pie. He scared me, though, and an hour later I took the first plane to anywhere out of Fort Lauderdale. As it happened, it was going to Tampa. From there I flew to Atlanta and then back to St. Louis.

  What?

  Talked to Anshiser guy about system, it’s no go for now, may have to find different route.

  Let us know.

  I spent three days at Lake of the Ozarks, fishing out of a rented boat, letting the problem cook. In the evenings, I’d sit on the porch of my rented cabin, look out at the lake, and drink beer. If I didn’t find anything, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I could go underground for a while, call Emily, arrange for her to take care of the cat, pay the bills. In a couple of years, three or four years, I might even be able to go back.

  But it was a sour solution and sent me to bed half drunk. I couldn’t sleep on it, but lay awake twisting the sheets around my legs, flopping around on the bed like a beached carp.

  On the third night, I got out the cards, and instead of game-playing the problem, I laid out a magic spread, the Celtic Cross. I did it three times, and three times the Tower of Destruction came up in association with the Magician. The Magician I’d always related to computer freaks—the power of thought in all its forms, including mechanical. The Tower of Destruction is usually interpreted as meaning disaster or crisis, although it can mean a sudden awakening or awareness.

  It was all hopeless bullshit. I dropped the cards on the table and went for another beer, walked back, and looked down at them. The Tower showed a medieval stone tower shattered by a bolt of lightning, with two men falling from the top. The woman who taught me to read the cards warned me not always to depend on book interpretations, or even on her interpretations.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “you just have to look at the cards.”

  I looked at the cards . . . the magician, the tower, the bolt of lightning . . .

  “Sonofabitch,” I said.

  What?

  I got it.

  You got it?

  The answer was typically tarot: outside what I’d considered the parameters of the problem, elegant, and slightly twisted. It took two days to confirm that it would work. It took three weeks—all four of us working twelve to fourteen hours a night—to get the code written, tested, and shipped out.

  For the first two weeks I wandered aimlessly up and down the Mississippi River valley, sleeping late, painting in the afternoons, writing code at night. Twice I sent tubes of paintings to Emily in St. Paul to hold for me. I always mailed them from places I was leaving. In the third week, I turned west, across Arkansas, Oklahoma, a piece of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, heading for Las Vegas.

  My rational tarot was talking, now that the possibilities were finite, and I spent a lot of time thinking about the cards. The time wasn’t too bad, except for the loneliness. I was fond of my life in St. Paul, the apartment, my friends, even the cat. I wanted to get back.

  We close now.

  You debug last batch?

  Stanford doing that. He close.

  We should run command tests.

  Yes. Start tonight.

  We ran the tests. There were a few final bugs to hunt down, and then the attack programs worked fine. I was in Phoenix, in a nondescript motel off Interstate 10. It was hot, and the air conditioner smelled like somebody had dropped an aging cheeseburger on the compressor unit. I sat in my underwear and sweated and ran the tarot.

  If you run the cards long enough, everything comes up; it’s all meaningless. But it seemed that I saw a lot of the battle cards, the Five of Wands, the Seven of Wands, the Seven of Swords. None showed defeat, but none projected a clear victory, either. I finally turned the deck around and tried to run a spread from Maggie’s point of view. That’s not supposed to work. I came up with an Eight of Swords as the outcome, a woman blindfolded with her arms bound, surrounded by swords stuck point-down in the earth. That was good enough, and I quit.

  The next day was a Wednesday, the last in October. It would be getting cold up north, but if I could back off the Anshiser crowd, I might be able to get my boat over to Vilas County, Wisconsin, for the November muskie rush. It’s not that there’s a rush of muskies; there’s a rush of muskie fishermen, crowding in before ice-up. I decided to call Maggie the next day.

  Chapter 20

  YEARS BEFORE, WHEN I first started doing unconventional computer work, I had taken the trouble to construct an alternate identity. It wasn’t particularly hard: a phony birth certificate acquired in Chicago, along with the Social Security number of a dead teenager who would never use it, got me a passport in the name of Harry Olson, of Eau Claire. A few customs stamps and stapled-in visas gave the passport a wearied look. Presented at a Wisconsin driver’s examination office, the passport and Social Security number were good for a driver’s license. The license and Social Security number produced a bank account. The bank didn’t ask too many questions, since the documents were accompanied by a fat cashier’s check.

  That summer I rented a place on Grindstone Lake, near Hayward, in the name of Harry Olson. I spent the summer writing code, painting, hunting muskie, and collecting my mail, which included credit cards from V
isa, Amoco and Exxon, and the local library.

  When I left Hayward, I changed the address for the credit cards to a post office in Hudson, Wisconsin, just across the St. Croix River from St. Paul. I carefully used the credit cards and promptly paid the bills. I renewed the driver’s license and over the years collected a variety of other forms of ID in Harry Olson’s name.

  Harry Olson checked into the Anshiser/Vegas at three o’clock in the afternoon. The desk clerk ran the Visa through the credit-checking machine, smiled, and handed me a room key.

  “Let the bellman know if you need anything. The movies are turned on for your room. The key to the refreshments cabinet is on the credenza,” he said. The bellman had a number of suggestions for the evening, including a private party with a couple of showgirls. I declined, but gave him ten dollars.

  “LET ME SPEAK to Maggie.”

  “Kidd?”

  “Yeah. I want to talk to Maggie.”

  “Just a minute.” Dillon sounded stressed, but controlled. I had been out of sight for a month, though they suspected I’d tested their computer security. If Denzer told them about my visit to Miami, they would have that. Nothing else.

  “Kidd.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah. How are you?”

  She ignored the question. “What do you want?”

  “Peace and quiet.”

  “That’s going to be hard, now.”

  “Yeah, I know. I thought we should talk. Face-to-face.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Flagstaff. I’ll be in Vegas tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the Anshiser/Vegas.”

  “What time?”

  “In the afternoon, about three-thirty or four o’clock. I’ll call your room.”

  THAT EVENING, I dropped seven hundred dollars at the blackjack tables.

  Blackjack can be beaten. There are several methods of shifting the odds in your favor by keeping track of certain cards as they’re dealt. You make your biggest bets when the deck is most in your favor; the rest of the time, you tread water. Casinos don’t like card-counters.

  With that in mind, a mathematician friend at the University of Chicago once spent some time refining a common card-counting routine. In essence, he built in a randomizing factor that disguised the bet-building. In my case, the disguise more than worked: I lost my shirt.

  In the process of losing it, I thoroughly confused the dealer. She spotted me for a card-counter, I think, but I was leaking money at a ferocious rate. When I finally walked away, her eyes followed me all the way across the casino floor, as though she expected me to come back, pull out a surprise bet, and recoup all the losses. No such luck.

  High-tech computer-assisted programs sometimes get out in the real world and get their ass kicked. Something to lie in bed and think about, as we made the torpedo run on Anshiser.

  THE CASINO WAS a bad idea. I’d picked one a few blocks from the Anshiser, just in case somebody was looking for my face. But on the way back, I almost bumped into Maggie.

  She went through the lobby with a thin, dark-complected man in an expensive banker’s pinstripe. His nose had been broken a long time ago, well before he acquired his current sheen, but he did not look at all like Mary’s Little Lamb.

  I was standing in the hotel gift shop, looking at magazines, and caught a flash of her in a mirrored pillar. I turned away and gave them time to get through. I bought a few magazines while I waited, plus two paperbacks. This time, I would stay in the room.

  What?

  Everything set?

  Set and checked. Hacks on line. We’ll trip you off exactly at 4. Then we’ll have a cascade on the other plants.

  Timing would be delicate. I debated calling her as early as 3:30, but we wouldn’t have that much to say to each other. On the other hand, she might have people scattered around the hotel. She’d want them together before she came into the room. So when to call? I rehearsed the probable moves and finally decided there would be at least ten minutes to talk. And I should be able to stretch it out, if need be.

  I would call at 3:40. At three o’clock, time started to slow down. I risked a trip to the Coke machine down the hall, got three, drank two, and looked at the clock. 3:15. I did a few desultory tarot spreads: not enough time now for the tarot to help. I watched television, paced. 3:30. More pacing. A pit stop in the bathroom, dumping the processed Coke. Last-minute thoughts. At 3:39 I dialed the operator and got her room number. She picked up the phone on the first ring.

  “THIS IS KIDD.”

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “I’m in Room 2406. It’s almost right straight below you. I’ll wait five minutes, then I’m gone. And Maggie—you may be tempted to send in some shooters to take care of the problem. That would be a major mistake. You would remember it for the rest of your life as the mistake that ruined you. I don’t have a gun, I just want to talk. Okay?”

  “I’ll be down.”

  I did have a gun, the MAC-10. I glued a fat strip of Velcro to the grip and stuck it on the side of the easy chair where I planned to sit. It was out of sight, in an unexpected place, all cocked and ready. It was too big and would be an awkward draw, but if they came in shooting, I would make it more than a simple execution. That was the idea, anyway.

  After Maggie hung up, I unlocked the door, pulled the drapes, turned on the TV set and adjusted the sound until it was barely audible, got the last Coke, and sat in the chair. At 3:44, there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  A short, tough-looking blond with a brush haircut pushed the door open with his finger while he stayed in the hall. He looked at me, nodded, took a slow step inside, glanced into the bathroom. The dark man with the broken nose was behind him, dressed in a different, but equally conservative, pinstriped suit. He waited in my line of sight, watching me, while the blond went into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. The blond came back out, opened the coat closet near the door, looked in, then came into the room. The beds were on pedestals, but he looked between them and behind the one next to the wall. Finally he turned to the dark man.

  “It’s okay,” he said. The dark man stayed where he was, and the blond went back to the hallway and came in with a briefcase. He opened it and took out a debugging loop and started working his way around the room.

  “Look, it’ll take an hour to find a bug if I put one in . . .”

  “We don’t think you did. Nothing heavy, anyway. We’re just making a quick sweep. We’d be embarrassed if you had something as crummy as a cheap tape recorder.”

  “I don’t.”

  He smiled and followed the loop around the room. When he was satisfied, he folded it and shoved it back in the briefcase.

  “I think it’s clean,” he said.

  The dark man stepped into the room. “Mr. Olson,” he said, nodding at me. Maggie was a step behind him.

  “Kidd,” she said. Her face was taut. Not frozen, but ready, like an athlete on the starting blocks.

  “How’s Anshiser?” I asked. The blond shut the door without locking it, and the dark man sat on a corner of the bed, looking at me. Maggie perched on the other chair.

  “He’s out of it,” she said. “They’re off the tumor theory. They think now it may have been a series of ministrokes over a period of time, killing his brain in such tiny increments it was impossible to find. They’re still not sure. One of the doctors said the only way they’ll ever be sure is with an autopsy. He’s now in what they call a vegetative state.”

  “Tough. It’s a bad way to go.” I nodded at the dark man. “Is this the new boss?”

  The dark man smiled, his even teeth glittering against his olive skin. With the broken nose and the good teeth, he would be devastating with women.

  “I’m afraid you’ve got that backward, Mr. Kidd,” he said mildly. “The board has chosen Ms. Kahn to run Anshiser. She’s asked me to work as her executive assistant. Essentially, I have her old job.”

  “What about Dillon?”

&n
bsp; Maggie shrugged. “Dillon is Dillon. He does the same thing. That’s all he wants to do.” When she first came in the room, her face was deathly pale. Now the color was coming back and the tension was seeping out. The situation was under control. The red numerals of the digital clock on the bedside table said 3:52.

  “How’s LuEllen?” Maggie asked.

  “She’s fine. She went back home.”

  “Was she the one who shot at me, back at the cabin?”

  “Yeah. She was pissed about Dace.”

  “I thought it was she. I knew you were in the Army, and when I heard that machine gun going, and I didn’t hear Frank’s shotgun, I had an idea what happened. When I saw you coming around the corner with LuEllen and those guns, in those camouflage suits, I thought, Dear God, he’s going to shoot me in the back.”

  “I thought about it,” I said. “I had the scope right on your shoulder blades.”

  She shuddered.

  “What happened to Frank and Leonard?” asked the dark man.

  “I’m afraid they’re, uh . . .”

  Maggie glanced at the dark man and then looked back to me.

  “Most of the people involved in the decision to shoot Dace now agree it was a mistake. But it’s a mistake that will be hard to walk away from. You and LuEllen could cause us an infinite amount of damage with a letter or a phone call, and you may have reason to do it. To get back for Dace,” she said. She was using her business voice. The small talk was over.

  I shook my head at her. “We won’t do it. We want to cut a deal. You don’t mess with us, ever, and we’ll never mess with you. We’ve got our money and it’s all over.”