CHAPTER 24
The drive to Little Rock took six hours, with time out for a cheeseburger and a couple of bathroom breaks. I was in the part of the country where, instead of getting french fries, you get home fries. Home fries are actually pure grease, soaked into grasslike strips of potato so you can get it to your mouth. A waitress in a uniform the exact color of two-day-old pumpkin pie dropped off the burger and fries, did a searching scan of my tabletop and said, "My goodness; somebody forgot to put out your catsup." She was back in a minute with a bottle of Heinz, and said, "Home fries just ain't right without catsup."
She was, and is, correct. They just ain't right.
I'd only been to Little Rock once before in my life. If you live in St Paul, Little Rock isn't on the way to anywhere except itself. I didn't get to see much of the place, either. The guy I was meeting was waiting at a Shoney's. I picked him out as soon as I walked in.
"How are you, John?" I asked, sliding into the booth. He reached across the tabletop and we shook hands
"Not too bad. I heard about Green and that lady you're in some shit." He looked at me sideways, his dark wraparound sunglasses glittering in the fluorescent light.
"I'm sorry about Green," I said.
"I'm sorry about your friend," he said.
John Smith was a black man, originally from Memphis, but now going back and forth between Memphis and a small town in the Delta, where his wife lived. He was both hard and intelligent, a political operator, a friend of Bobby's, and an artist, a sculptor. "I just got in," he said. "I'm having the open-face turkey sandwich, home fries, coconut cream pie, and Diet Coke."
"Then you check in somewhere for a heart scan," I said.
I got a Coke and a salad, when the waitress came to take our orders, I said, "Don't forget the catsup, for his home fries."
"How could I do that?" she asked, a look of puzzlement crossing her face.
John said the package was in his car, and we could get it on the way out. "Bobby says that you should get some duct tape, and tape the box onto the receiver at the focus of the dish. That should be good enough. Then, there are some tapes coiled around the box Those are pickups, like antenna. You should wrap those around the support lines on the receiver. That gives the receiver a little extra sensitivity. Okay?"
He was drawing a hasty diagram on a napkin, and it was all clear enough. "As soon as the dish begins to move, turn our receiver on," he said "There's only one switch, a toggle on the side. While the dish is moving, make the same kinds of notations you did the other nightdirection, times, and azimuths. The receiver will pick up both incoming and outgoing, and record them, and Bobby built in a timer function, but he didn't have time to do a level or compass function."
"All right"
"LuEllen with you?"
"I sent her away," I said
"You guys ought to have a couple of babies," he said. "You're gonna wind up old, with nobody to care for you."
"Thanks for the thought," I said, and flashed to Morris Kendall, dying in room 350. "Has Bobby heard any more about Firewall?"
"I'm not all together on this, this is not my line," John said "Bobby says Firewall is definitely phonyhe says you think so, too "
"I'm leaning that way."
"But he says the feds, the NSA, are blowing it up into a major danger to justify their budget. He says that they don't have anything to dothey're completely obsoleteand this whole Firewall thing has been like a gift from heaven. A reprieve."
"What about the IRS attack?"
"Bobby says ten kids in Germany and Switzerland. He's sent four names, specific names, to the feds, but they're not paying much attention. Bobby says they don't want to catch Firewall. Not yet."
The salad came, along with John's food, and we spent twenty minutes talking about his wife, Marvel, and kids, and the political situation in Longstreet, where Marvel lived with the kids He hadn't quite finished eating when he finished with the political situation, and I looked at my watch and said, "There's a phone booth out in the lobby. I'm gonna get online with Bobby; see if anything's happening."
"Be my guest," he said.
The phone had little business, and I got right on and dialed. I never got to dial the ten digits after the 800 number, because after seven, the phone rang once, and a woman picked up and said, "Montana Genetics, can I help you?"
"Uh. I'm sorry, I think I have the wrong number."
"Well, have a good day then," she said cheerfully, and hung up.
I dialed again, "Montana." and hung up.
"Got a problem," I told John, when I got back to the booth. "Bobby's not online."
He looked at me, a wrinkle between his eyes. Bobby was always online. His life was online. "He's not."
"When I dial the 800 number, I get something called Montana Genetics."
He sat back, hands on the table: "Ah, shit. He's pulled the plug."
"I need him, man," I said.
"So do we," John said. I never did know who we were, although I'd known for years that there was a we. He looked at his watch and added, "I gotta get back. I've got to be near a telephone."
The waitress came over, carrying the check. She looked at John and asked, "Are you Mr. Smith?"
"What?"
"Are you Mr."
"Smith. Yes."
"You've, uh, got a phone call. Normally we don't allow customers, but the gentleman said it was an emergency."
John was out of the booth, trailing her; she took him into the back. Two minutes later, he was back out. "Gotta go."
"Bobby?"
"Yeah. He knew we were gonna be here." He tossed five dollars at the tabletop and headed for the cashier. Outside, in the open, he said, "He says to tell you that Ladyfingers was busted and she gave them the 800 number and that the feds, the NSA, traced him all the way to the banana stand. He said there were only three more links between him and the feds before he was toast. He's shut down everything. He says you should recover the number just like you did beforehe didn't tell me what it was, he's crazy paranoidand said you will cut directly into him. It's the only link he's going to take coming in, until he reworks all his numbers."
"Bad time for this," I said. "Bad time."
At the car, John handed me a gym bag with the receiver in it. "As soon as you've recorded a full movement, mail it back to me, express mail, at the house in Memphis."
"All right."
"Good luck," he said. "Keep your ass down."
At Texarkana, I found a gas station phone booth and hooked up with the laptop. I went out to my two mailboxes, and found, just as Bobby had promised, two pieces of a phone number. I called, keyed a "k," and Bobby came up.
very close. never closer. scared the s out of me. i'm closed for business, except for you. did you get package?
yes.
can you mount tonight?
yes.
what else can we do?
I told him, and got back a long silence. Then,
take care. take care. take care.
The Interstate crosses some sparsely inhabited landscape between Texarkana and Dallas. After checking the map, I got off at one of the larger white spots, and picked out a long piece of quiet road. I parked on one side, got out my sketchbook, checked around, then paced off 200 yards down the road, and stood a plastic Coke bottle on the shoulder. I was willing to bet I wasn't more than a yard or two offone of the things you learn in the burglary business is how to estimate distances. My normal stride was thirty-four inches long, and I'd learned how to swing a leg just a split-second longer than I usually did, to come down right on thirty-six inches.
Back at the car, I looked around again, then got the AK out of the trunk, loaded it, rolled down the passenger-side window. When I was sure nothing was coming from either direction, I ripped up a couple of pieces of newspaper, made them into spitwads, put them in my ears, and aimed the gun out the window at the Coke bottle.
The scope was decent; I leaned back against the driver's-side door, my left hand cradling the fore-end, and braced against the inside of my knee, held on the bottle, squeezed.