The Devil's Code

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.
    J ohn said the package was in his car, and we could get it on the way out. “Bobby says that you shouldget 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 night—direction, 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 phony—he 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 do—they’re completelyobsolete—and 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.”
    T he 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.
    G ot 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.