"i don't know."

"if they were all stock bimbettes from central casting it would be one thing, but his girls don't run to type. this one, kali- what do you figure she was on?"

"no idea."

"because she certainly seemed to be traveling in another realm. do people still use psychedelics? she was probably on magic mushrooms, or some hallucinogenic fungus that grows only on decaying leather. i'll tell you one thing, she could make good money as a dominatrix."

"not if her leather's decaying. and not unless she could keep her mind on her work."

"you know what i mean. she's got the looks for it, and the presence. can't you see yourself groveling at her feet and loving every minute of it?"

"no."

"well, you," she said. "the marquis de suave himself. remember the time i tied you up?"

the driver was working hard at hiding his amusement. "would you please shut up," i said.

"remember? you fell asleep."

"that shows how safe i felt in your presence," i said. "will you please shut up?"

"i will wrap myself in my teal-blue aura," she said, "and i will be very quiet."

before i left the following morning she told me she had a good feeling about the calls from rape victims. "today's the day," she said.

but she turned out to be wrong, teal-blue aura or not. there were no calls at all. when i talked to her that night she was glum about it. "i guess that's it," she said. "three wednesday, one yesterday, and now nothing. i thought i was going to be a hero, come up with something significant."

"ninety-eight percent of an investigation is insignificant," i said. "you do everything you can think of because you don't know what will be useful. you must have been sensational on the phone because you got a very big response, but it's pointless to feel like a failure because you didn't turn up a living victim of the three stooges. you were looking for a needle in a haystack, and it's probably a haystack that didn't have a needle in it in the first place."

"what do you mean?"

"i mean they probably didn't leave any witnesses. they probably killed every woman they victimized, so you were probably trying to find a woman who doesn't exist."

"well, if she doesn't exist," she said, "then i say to hell with her."

tj was calling in every day, sometimes more than once a day. i had given him fifty dollars to check out the two brooklyn phones, and he couldn't have come out very far ahead on the deal, because what he hadn't spent on subways and buses he was sinking into telephone calls. he got a better return on his time shilling for monte dealers or assisting a street peddler or doing any of the other street chores that combined to give him an income. but he still kept pestering me for work.

saturday i wrote out a check for my rent and paid the other monthly bills that had come in- the phone bill, my credit card. looking at the telephone bill made me think again of the calls made to kenan khoury's phone. i had made another attempt a few days before to find a phone-company employee who could figure out a way to supply that data, and had been told once again that it was unobtainable.

so that was on my mind when tj called around ten-thirty. "give me some more phones to check out," he pleaded. "the bronx, staten island, anywhere."

"i'll tell you what you can do for me," i said. "i'll give you a number and you tell me who called it."

"say what?"

"oh, nothing."

"no, you said somethin', man. tell me what it was."

"maybe you could do it at that," i said. "remember how you sweet-talked the operator out of the phone number on farragut road?"

"you mean with my brooks brothers voice?"

"that's it. maybe you could use the same voice to find some phone company vice president who can figure out how to come up with a listing of calls to a certain number in bay ridge." he asked a few more questions and i explained what i was looking for and why i was unable to find it.

"hang on," he said. "you sayin' they won't give it to you?"

"they don't have it to give. they've got all the calls logged but there's no way to sort them."

"shit," he said. "first operator i call up, she tell me ain't no way she can tell me my number. can't believe everything they tell you, man."

"no, i-"

"you somethin'," he said. "call you up every damn day, say what you got for tj, an' all the time you ain't got nothin'. how come you never tell me 'bout this before? you been silly, willie!"

"what do you mean?"

"i mean if you don't tell me what you want, how i gonna give it to you? told you that the first time i met you, walkin' around the deuce not sayin' nothin' to nobody. told you right then, said, tell me what you jonesin' on, i help you find it."

"i remember."

"so why you be dickin' around with the telephone company when you could be comin' to tj?"

"you mean you know how to get the numbers from the phone company?"

"no, man. but i know how to get the kongs."

"the kongs," he said. "jimmy and david."

"they're brothers?"

"ain't no family resemblance far as i can see. jimmy hong is chinese and david king is jewish. least his father is jewish. i think his mother might be rican."

"why are they the kongs?"

"jimmy hong and david king? hong kong and king kong?"

"oh."

"plus their favorite game used to be donkey kong."

"what's that, a video game?"

he nodded. "pretty good one."

we were at a snack bar in the bus terminal, where he'd insisted i meet him. i was drinking a cup of bad coffee and he was eating a hot dog and drinking a pepsi. he said, "remember that dude socks, we was watchin' him at the arcade? he 'bout the best there is, but he ain't nothin' next to the kongs. you know how a player is always tryin' to keep up with the machine? kongs didn't have to keep up with it. they was always out ahead of it."

"you brought me down here to meet a couple of pinball wizards?"

"big difference between pinball and video games, man."

"well, i suppose there is, but-"

"but it ain't nothin' compared to the difference between video games an' where the kongs is at now. i told you what happens to guys hang around the arcade, how you can get so good an' then there ain't no better for you to get? so you lose interest."

"so you said."

"what some dudes get interested in is computers. what i heard, the kongs was into computers all along, fact they used a computer to stay ahead of the video games, know what the machine was gonna do before it could do it. you play chess?"

"i know the moves."

"you an' me'll play a game sometime, see if you any good. you know those stone tables they got down by washington square? people bring their time clocks, study chess books while they waitin' to play? i play there sometimes."

"you must be good."

he shook his head. "some of those dudes," he said, "you play against them, it's like you tryin' to run a footrace standin' in water up to your waist. you can't get nowhere, 'cause they always five, six moves ahead of you in their mind."

"sometimes it feels like that in my line of work."

"yeah? well, that's how video games got for the kongs, they was five or six moves out in front. so they into computers, they what you call hackers. you know what that is?"

"i've heard the term."

"man, you want something from the phone company, you don't call no operator. don't mess with no vice president, either. you call the kongs. they get in the phones and crawl around in there, like the phone company's a monster and they swimmin' in its bloodstream. you know that picture, whatchacallit, fantastic voyage? they take a voyage in the phones."

"i don't know," i said. "if an executive at the company can't figure out how to extract that data-"

"man, ain't you listenin'?" he sighed, then sucked hard on his straw and drained the last of his pepsi. "you want to know what's happenin' on the streets, what's goin' down on the deuce or in the barrio or in harlem, who do you go and ask? the fuckin' mayor?"

"oh," i said.

"you see what i sayin'? they hangin' out on the streets of the phone company. you know ma bell? the kongs be lookin' up her skirt."

"where are we going to find them? the arcade?"

"told you. they lost interest some time ago. they come by once in a while just to see what's shakin', but they don't hang out there no more. we ain't gonna find them. they gonna find us. i told 'em we'd be here."

"how did you reach them?"

"how you think? beeped 'em. kongs ain't never too far from a phone. you know, that hot dog was good. you wouldn't think you'd get anything decent, place like this, but they give you a good hot dog."

"does that mean you want another?"

"might as well. take 'em some time to get here, and then they want to look you over before they come an' meet you. want to satisfy themselves that you alone and that they can split in a hot second if they scared of you."

"why would they be scared of me?"

" 'cause you might be some kind of cop workin' for the phone company. man, the kongs is outlaws! ma bell ever gets her hands on them, she gone whip their ass."

"the thing is," jimmy hong said, "we have to be careful. people in suits are convinced that hackers are the biggest threat to corporate america since the yellow peril. the media is always running stories about what hackers could do to the system if we wanted to."

"destroying data," david king said. "altering records. wiping out circuitry."

"it makes a good story, but they lose sight of the fact that we never pull that shit. they think we're going to put dynamite on the railroad tracks when all we're doing is hitching a free ride."

"oh, every once in a while some nitwit introduces a virus-"

"but most of that isn't hackers, it's some jerk with a grudge against a company or somebody introducing a glitch into the system by using bootleg software."

"the point is," david said, "jimmy's too old to take chances."

"turned eighteen last month," jimmy hong said.

"so if they catch us he'll be tried as an adult. that's if they go by chronological age, but if they take emotional maturity into account-"

"then david would go scot-free," jimmy said, "because he hasn't reached the age of reason."

"which came between the stone age and the iron age."

once they decided they trusted you, you couldn't get them to shut up. jimmy hong was around six-two, long and lean, with straight black hair and a long, saturnine face. he wore aviator sunglasses with amber lenses, and after we'd been sitting together for ten or fifteen minutes he changed them for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with round untinted lenses, altering his appearance from hip to studious.

david king was no more than five-seven, with a round face and red hair and a lot of freckles. both of them wore mets warmup jackets and chinos and reeboks, but the similarity of dress wasn't enough to make them look like twins.