“If we could get in and out, without her knowing, it would probably be worth it.”

“Would we need time inside?”

“Mmm… yeah,” I said. “Eight, ten, not more than fifteen minutes.”

“That’s half a lifetime… so tell me why, in twenty-five words or less.”

This was a joke with us-if you couldn’t explain why you were breaking into a place in twenty-five words or less, you hadn’t thought it through. I said, “Everybody takes work home, nowadays, even secret work. We can’t break into Strom’s office, we can’t get her online, so we hit her apartment. How many words was that?”

“Less than twenty-five,” she said. “If nowadays is one word.”

LuELLEN made a call and we ran up to Philly. We were going to see a guy named Drexel, gun dealer to the trade, so to speak. I’d met him twice, on other trips to the Washington area. On those trips, he’d been living in an accountant-looking suburban house. This time, he was way west of the city, in a truck-garden exurb, in a house a third smaller than his earlier one.

He met us at the door, smiled, and said, “Package got here fifteen minutes ago.”

“Nice house,” LuEllen said, looking around as he let us in. The place was furnished in Early Twenty-first Century Discount Scandinavian. “Why’d you move?”

“Soon as my daughter got out of school, she and my wife left,” he said. He was tall and thin, wore rimless glasses, and looked like the farmer in the Grant Wood painting American Gothic. He’d always been pleasant enough, though creepy, and too prissy for a man who dealt in illegal firearms. An underground gun dealer should, at a minimum, have an eye patch. He led us through the basement door, picking up a laptop as he went. “I guess they spent a few years not liking me.”

“Jeez,” LuEllen said, as though that were unthinkable. She glanced at me, the glance telling me don’t say it.

We followed him down the basement steps. His old house had had a basement workshop, too, and this one was much like the other: neatly kept, everything in rigid, soldierly order, and very dry. There were a lot of wires in the ceiling, and I suspected the place had excellent security. “Yes, well-I wish they’d told me earlier, so we wouldn’t have had to put up with each other all those years. I didn’t like them much, either.”

“So you sold the house,” LuEllen said.

“Had to. Wife got the money, but at least I’ve got no strings attached. No alimony. I’m happy.” He went to a workbench, flicked on an overhead light, pulled open a drawer, and took out a plastic carrying case. “These little babies are hard to find. I think they might have started out with the CIA-but wherever they started out, the police try to keep track of them.”

“This one’s clean?” LuEllen asked, as she popped open the case.

“Taken from a locksmith who died… natural causes, a heart attack.”

Inside the case was a box about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but painted flat black. A probe stuck out the top of the box, with a hair-like plastic bristle sticking out of that; on the bottom of the box was a USB port. The plastic carrying case also contained a USB data key and a short USB cable.

“There are five extra fibers,” Drexel told LuEllen. “If you mess them all up, I don’t know how you’d replace them. They’re supposed to be pretty sturdy, though.”

“They’re okay,” LuEllen said. “I’ve used one once, but I rented it. Always wanted one of my own. How much?”

“Seven thousand.”

She bobbed her head. “I’ve got the cash in the car. But let’s plug it in first.”

DREXEL turned on his laptop, explaining to me that the USB data key simply held the software for any Windows-based laptop, and that he’d loaded it into his laptop when he was buying the device from his supplier. He brought the program up, and with a USB cable, plugged the black box into the laptop.

“There’s a Yale lock on the storeroom door, if you want.”

“Thanks.” LuEllen carried the laptop and the black box over to the door and slipped the fiber optic into the lock.

The bristle, which was about the thickness of a broom straw, was a piece of fiber optic that acted like a tiny camera lens, and had been developed for heart and vascular surgery.

When you pushed the fiber-optic probe into a normal lock, you could actually see, on the laptop screen, the pins and the key cuts inside the lock. If you knew your locks-LuEllen wasn’t a specialist, but she knew enough-you could cut yourself a key. The software made it unnecessary to actually see the interior of the lock, as it would specify a key blank and spacing for almost any lock in use in the U.S. or Europe, but, Drexel said, most people liked to see the inside, too. “Gives them confidence that the numbers are right.”

We were watching as LuEllen probed the lock, and you could see the guts of the lock right on the laptop screen. She watched, grunted, and shut it all down. “I’ll get the cash,” she said. She handed Drexel the box and headed up the stairs.

AS SHE went, Drexel reached up to turn off the light over the workbench, but as he did it, I put a finger to my lips and he paused. When LuEllen was walking away from the top of the stairs, I asked, “Would you have a small gun? Something handy, not too noisy? But threatening-looking?”

“It’s best not to threaten people with a gun,” Drexel said solemnly. “If you get to the point of taking it out, it’s best to pull the trigger. And at that point, you probably shouldn’t worry too much about the noise. The difference in noise between a.380 and a.357 isn’t that critical, if you’re shooting it off in a motel with people all around. It’ll be noticeable either way, so you might as well have something that’ll do the job.”

“So what do you have?”

He looked pleased: guns had always been his first love, and he enjoyed dealing them. “That really depends on what you’re going to use it for.”

“Look, I really don’t want to get too deep into this, and I’d like to get it done before my friend gets back.”

“You’re not…” His eyebrows went up.

I didn’t understand the question for a second, then said, “Jesus Christ, no, I’m not gonna shoot her. We’re dealing with a guy who’s a little nuts, but if I take a gun, LuEllen might argue.”

He nodded. “Good. I’m glad it’s not her. She’s always been a good customer and I would hate to lose her. Okay, you’re not an enthusiast, you need it for close-up protection, nothing fancy. I have just the thing. Seven hundred dollars.”

WE WERE climbing the stairs when LuEllen came back, the pistol pulling down my pants pocket. It was a Smith & Wesson hammerless revolver-hammerless so it wouldn’t snag on your clothes when you pulled it out in a hurry-loaded with six rounds of.38 special. Guns are for killing. People can make a sport out of shooting, a pastime, a hobby, but all of those things are a perversion of a gun’s intention. Guns are for killing and handguns are for killing people; I wasn’t comforted by its presence.

And I told LuEllen about it as soon as we cleared Drexel’s.

“Didn’t ask me about it,” she said.

“I didn’t think about it until we were down there in the basement,” I said. I took the gun out of my pocket and pushed it under the seat. “I didn’t want you to veto it.”

“At this point, I wouldn’t have,” she said. “Not after we saw the execution. But it bums me out… but why’d you tell me now?”

“If we get caught inside, and we have a gun…”

“Yeah.”

In most states, armed illegal entry will get you a few additional years. Not that we’d get caught.