If you closed your eyes, though, you might have been fooled. Their voices were close and their speech patterns were very similar and they finished each other's sentences a lot.

They liked the idea of playing a role in a murder case- I hadn't gone into a great deal of detail- and they were amused at the response I'd received from various functionaries at the telephone company. "That's beautiful," Jimmy Hong said. "Saying it can't be done. Meaning most likely that he couldn't figure out how to do it."

"It's their system," David King said, "and you'd think they would at least understand it."

"But they don't."

"And they hate us, because we understand it better than they do."

"And they think we'd hurt the system-"

"- when actually we happen to love the system. Because if you're going to do any serious hacking, NYNEX is where it's at."

"It's a beautiful system."

"Unbelievably complex."

"Wheels within wheels."

"Labyrinths within labyrinths."

"The ultimate video game, and the ultimate Dungeons and Dragons, all rolled into one."

"Cosmic."

I said. "But it can be done?"

"What can? Oh, the numbers. Phone calls placed on a specific day to a specific number?"

"Right."

"Be a problem," David King said.

"An interesting problem, he means."

"Right, very interesting. A problem with a solution for sure, a solvable problem."

"But a tricky one."

"Because of the amount of data."

"Tons of data," Jimmy Hong said. "Millions and millions of pieces of data."

"By data he means phone calls."

"Billions of phone calls. Untold billions of phone calls."

"Which you have to process."

"But before you even start to do that-"

"You have to get in."

"Which used to be easy."

"Used to be a cinch."

"They would leave the door open."

"Now they close it."

"Nail it shut, you could say."

I said, "If you need to buy special equipment-"

"Oh, no. Not really."

"We already got everything we need."

"Doesn't take much. Halfway decent laptop, a modem, an acoustic coupler-"

"Whole package won't run more than twelve hundred dollars."

"Unless you went crazy and bought a high-priced laptop, but you don't have to."

"The one we use cost seven-fifty, and it's got everything you need."

"So you could do it?"

They exchanged glances, then looked at me. Jimmy Hong said, "Sure, we could do it."

"Be interesting, actually."

"Have to pull an all-nighter."

"Can't be tonight, either."

"No, tonight's out. How soon would it have to be?"

"Well-"

"Tomorrow's Sunday. Sunday night all right with you, Matt?"

"It's fine with me."

"You, Mr. King?"

"Works for me, Mr. Hong."

"TJ? You figuring to be there?"

"Tomorrow night?" It was the first he'd said anything since introducing me to the Kongs. "Lessee, tomorrow night. What did I have planned for tomorrow night? Was that the press reception at Gracie Mansion or was I supposed to have dinner with Henry Kissinger at Windows on the World?" He mimed paging through a date book, then looked up bright-eyed. "What do you know? I be free."

Jimmy Hong said, "There'll be some expenses, Matt. We'll need a hotel room."

"I have a room."

"You mean where you live?" They grinned at each other, amused at my naпvetй. "No, what you want is someplace anonymous. See, we're going to be deep inside NYNEX-"

"Crawling around inside the belly of the beast, you could say-"

"- and we might leave footprints."

"Or fingerprints, if you prefer."

"Even voiceprints, speaking metaphorically, of course."

"So you don't want to do this from a phone that could be traced to anybody. What you want to do is rent a hotel room under a false name and pay cash for it."

"A reasonably decent one."

"It doesn't have to be ritzy."

"Just so it has direct-dial phones."

"Which most of them do nowadays. And push-button, it should be push-button."

"Not the old rotary dial."

"Well, that's easy enough," I said. "Is that what you usually do? Rent a hotel room?"

They exchanged glances again.

"Because if there's a hotel you prefer-"

David said, "The thing is, Matt, when we want to hack we don't generally have a hundred or a hundred and fifty bucks to spend on a decent hotel room."

"Or even seventy-five dollars for a crummy hotel room."

"Or fifty for a disgusting hotel room. So what we'll do-"

"We find a bank of pay phones where there's not much traffic, like in the Grand Central waiting room over by the commuter lines-"

"- because there's not many commuter trains leaving in the middle of the night-"

"- or in an office building, anything like that."

"Or one time we sort of let ourselves into an office-"

"Which was stupid, man, and I never want to do that again."

"We just did it to use the phone."

"And can you feature telling that to the cops? 'It's not burglary, Officer, we just dropped in to use the phones.' "

"Well, it was exciting, but we wouldn't do it again. The thing is, see, we'll probably have to spend hours and hours on this-"

"And you wouldn't want anybody walking in, or having to switch phones when we're all hooked up."

"No problem," I said. "We'll get a decent hotel room. What else?"

"Coke."

"Or Pepsi."

"Coke's better."

"Or Jolt. 'All the sugar and twice the caffeine.' "

"Maybe some junk food. Maybe some Doritos."

"Get the ranch flavor, not the barbecue."

"Potato chips, Cheez Doodles-"

"Oh, man, not Cheez Doodles!"

"I like Cheez Doodles."

"Man, that has got to be the lamest junk food there is. I challenge you to name anything edible that is stupider than Cheez Doodles."

"Pringles."

"No fair! Pringles aren't food. Matt, you got to judge this one. What do you say? Are Pringles food?"

"Well-"

"They're not! Hong, you are so sick. Pringles are tiny Frisbees that warped, that's all they are. They're not food."

WHEN Kenan Khoury didn't answer I tried his brother. Peter's voice was thick with sleep and I apologized for waking him. "I keep doing that," I said. "Sorry."

"My own fault, nodding out in the middle of the afternoon. My sleep schedule got all turned around lately. What's up?"

"Not much. I was trying to reach Kenan."

"Still in Europe. He called me last night."

"Oh."

"Coming back Monday. Why, you got some good news to report?"

"Not yet. I've got some cabs I have to take."

"Huh?"

"Expenses," I said. "I'll have to shell out close to two thousand dollars tomorrow. I wanted to clear it with him."

"Hey, no problem. I'm sure he'll say yes. He said he'd cover your expenses, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"So lay it out. He'll pay you back."

"That's the problem," I said. "My money's in the bank and it's Saturday."

"Can't you use an ATM?"

"Not for a safe-deposit box. I can't get it all out of my checking account because I just paid the bills the other day."

"So write a check and cover it Monday."

"This isn't the kind of expense where the people will take a check."

"Oh, right." There was a pause. "I don't know what to tell you, Matt. I could come up with a couple of hundred, but I haven't got anything like two grand."

"Doesn't Kenan have it in the safe?"

"Probably a lot more than that, but I can't get in there. You don't give a junkie the combination to your safe, not even if he's your brother. Not unless you're crazy."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm not bitter," he said. "I'm just stating a fact. No reason on earth for me to have the combination to the safe. I got to tell you, I'm glad I don't have it. I wouldn't trust myself with it."

"You're clean and sober now, Pete. What's it been, a year and a half?"

"I'm still a drunk and a junkie, man. You know the difference between the two? A drunk will steal your wallet."

"And a junkie?"

"Oh, a junkie'll steal your wallet, too. And then he'll help you look for it."

I ALMOST asked Pete if he wanted to go to that Chelsea meeting again, but something made me let the moment pass. Maybe I remembered that I wasn't his sponsor, and that it was not a position for which I wanted to volunteer.

I called Elaine and asked her how she was fixed for cash. "Come on over," she said. "I've got a house full of money."

She had fifteen hundred in fifties and hundreds and said she could get more from the ATM, but no more than $500 a day. I took twelve hundred so I wouldn't leave her broke. That, added to what I had in my wallet and what I could get from my own ATM, would be plenty.

I told her what I needed the money for and she thought the whole thing was fascinating. "But is it safe?" she wanted to know. "It's obviously illegal, but how illegal is it?"

"It's worse than jaywalking. Computer trespass is a felony, and so is computer tampering, and I have a feeling the Kongs will be committing both of them tomorrow night. I'll be aiding and abetting them, and I've already committed criminal solicitation. I'll tell you, you can't turn around these days without trampling all over the penal law."

"But you think it's worth it?"

"I think so."

"Because they're just kids. You wouldn't want to get them in trouble."

"I wouldn't want to get myself in trouble, either. And they run this particular risk all the time. At least they're getting paid for it."

"How much are you going to give them?"

"Five hundred apiece."

She whistled. "That's not bad for a night's work."

"No, it's not, and if they'd come up with a figure it would probably have been a lot less. They went blank when I asked them how much they wanted, so I suggested five hundred each. That seemed fine to them. They're middle-class kids, I don't think they're hurting for money. I have a feeling I could have talked them into doing the job for free."

"By appealing to their better nature."

"And their desire to be in on something exciting. But I didn't want to do that. Why shouldn't they have the dough? I'd have been willing to pay more than that to some phone-company employee if I could have figured out who to bribe. But I couldn't find anybody who'd admit what I wanted was technologically possible. Why not give it to the Kongs? It's not my money, and Kenan Khoury says you can always afford to be generous."