The Fool's Run by John Sandford Read Free Book Online Page B

Point just before the Civil War. West Pointers got quick promotions.”
    We looked at the picture some more, and then she went back to her apartment, and I went into the study to call Bobby.
    What?
     
    Need everything available on Whitemark Aerospace. Top execs with personal data. Access control to all internal computer systems. Any trouble with the law, political connections, business connections. Need soonest; will pay big bux.
     
    Hundreds or thousands?
     
    Stop for now at $5,000; could be much more later. May need major backup for big project. Also need information on Rudolph Anshiser, his secretary Maggie Kahn , assistant named Dillon, and other key Anshiser personnel. Also data on company.
     
    Leave terminal on receive.
    If I was going to do it, I’d need help.
    A few minutes after midnight I walked into town for a snack. When the American fries and eggs were on the grill, I stepped across the street to the Greyhound station and called long distance to the Wee Blue Inn, a beer joint down by the Superior docks in Duluth. A man answered.
    “Weenie?”
    “This is him.”
    “This is the art guy from St. Paul. I came in that time with your girlfriend?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I need to see her. I’m coming through town tomorrow at two o’clock. If you see her around, let her know?”
    “Yeah. I don’t know if I’ll see her . . .”
    “Sure. But if you do.”
    “Okay.”
     
    LUELLEN IS a thief. She steals only from the rich, for the excellent reason that they’re the only people worth stealing from. Jewelry, coin and stamp collections, bearer bonds, cash. She’s never ripped off a stereo in her life.
    I met her one hot summer night when she was breaking into a neighboring apartment. I was lying in a hammock on the roof outside my living room window, lights out, looking at the stars. I was almost asleep when I heard a clunk at the opposite end of the building. It was an odd sound—distinct, but furtive. I crawled across the tarpaper roof and peered over the edge. A slight, dark figure was climbing the wall opposite mine, a woman, moving like a professional gymnast. She’d thrown a muffled grappling hook over the balcony outside the third-floor apartment, and was swinging up the rope hand over hand.
    I watched her slip over the balcony rail, pause, apparently listening, then pull the rope up behind her. A second later she was at work on the sliding glass doors. They were open in less than a minute, and I heard a telephone ringing. The woman went inside, and the ringing stopped.
    The apartment belonged to a fat, unpleasant political hack with bad breath and size 15AAAA feet, who delighted in bragging about the strange things he does to hookers in Las Vegas, and sometimes to women who need his help in the City Hall turf wars. I didn’t think I’d feel too bad if he was hit by a burglar.
    In the next few seconds I went through a one-hand-other-hand sequence. On the one hand, I wouldn’t mind seeing him hit, but on the other hand, it was a bad precedent to let my own apartment house get burglarized. The word could get around the crack houses that it was an easy target, although the woman who had just gone in the window seemed too smooth to be the typical smash-and-grab doper.
    On occasion I had gone places uninvited, though not usually to steal so much as to look. I look at chips, plans, production schemes. The places I had gone were factories and offices, never homes or places where people might gather. And I always had inside help. Still, watching the thief go into the apartment, I felt a spark of collegiality. We weren’t in quite the same business, but there were similarities.
    A few seconds after she went through the sliding doors, I eased back across the roof and into my apartment. I found my auto-everything Nikon still loaded with a roll of Tri-X. I clipped on the strobe and went back out on the roof. Two minutes later she appeared. When she turned toward me, ready to go over the balcony rail, I hit her