four editions of his thin, wiry body. He wore a T-shirt that said: just do it.
They met in an alley in the dockside section of New Orleans. And why New Orleans? Because the origin of 'Sally M's' flight on the Post-It slip was that city.
The boy sashayed toward him with an abundance of style in his bopping walk that was astounding: he pulsed with rhythm and attitude, contrapuntal and primary, his eyes blank behind a pair of mirror-finish glasses.
'Yo, man, you got the change?'
'Yes,' said Solaratov.
'You can do this?'
'Like fly, Jack,' said the boy, taking the envelope, which contained $10,000. 'You come this way, my man.'
They walked down sweltering alleys, where the garbage, uncollected, stank. They passed sleeping men wrapped around bottles and now and then other crews of tough-looking youths dressed almost identically to Solaratov's host, but with this young gangster in command, nobody assaulted them. Then they turned into a backyard and made their way into a decrepit slum dwelling, went up dark, urine-soaked stairs and reached a door. It was locked, the boy's quick hands flew to his pockets and came out with a key. The lock was sprung, Solaratov followed him into a decrepit room, then through another door to an inner office where possibly a million dollars' worth of computer equipment blinked and hummed.
'Yo, Jimmy,' said another boy who was watching a bank of TV monitors that commanded all approaches to the computer room. He had a shorty CAR-15 with a thirty-round mag and a suppressor.
'Yo,' responded Jimmy, and the sentry moved aside, making room for the master.
Jimmy seated himself at a keyboard.
'Okay,' he said.
'M. You said M, from New Orleans, receiving phone calls from Idaho, is that it?'
'Yes, that's it.'
'Cool. Now what we do, see, we got to get into the phone company's billing computer. All that takes is a code.'
'I have no code.'
'Not a problem. Not a problem,' said Jimmy. He called up a directory, and learned the code.
'How do you know?'
'My peoples regularly be going Dumpster diving, man.
We hit the Dumpsters behind the phone company three times a week. A week don't go by we don't git their code memos. Yeah, here it is, a simple dial-in.'
The computer produced the mechanized tones of dialing, then announced LINKED and produced what Solaratov took to be the index of its billing system, with a blinking cursor requesting an order.
'This is the FAC,' said the boy, 'Southern Bell's facilities computer. Gitting into this one is easy. No problem.
Kiddie shit.'
He asked the computer to search for calls received in the greater New Orleans area from Idaho's 208 area code, and the machine obediently rifled its files and presented a list of several hundred possibilities over the past week.
'Memphis,' said Solaratov.
'Our information says the husband once had a friendship with a New Orleans-area federal agent named Memphis. My guess is 'Sally M.' is this agent's wife, come up to Idaho to take care of the woman. She would call home from wherever she's hiding.
That is my thinking. She--' 'Don't tell me too much, man. Don't want to know too much. Just want to find you your buddy. Okay, Memphis.'
'Memphis,' said Solaratov, but by that time the boy had it up. A Nicholas C. Memphis, 2132 Terry Drive, Metarie, Louisiana, telephone
5045552389.
'Now we cooking,' said the boy.
'I'll just ask Mr.
FACS to locate and--' He did so, a new set of numbers popped onto the screen.
'--there's your billing address and service records.
Now let's see.'
He looked.
'Yes, yes, yes. Your friend Mr. Memphis, he got calls from outside Boise beginning late afternoon May fourth--' Solaratov knew this as the date of the shooting.
'Three, four calls from--' 'That number is not important. That is the ranch house number.'
'Hey, man, I done told you, I don't want to know nothing.'
'Go on, go on.'
'Then nothing, then the last three days, one call a night from
