'Trust me.'
'Oh, I don't doubt what you said. I just don't know how I feel about it. It's theft of services.'
Jimmy looked at me. 'We're talking about the phone company,' he said.
'I realize that.'
'You think they're gonna miss it?'
'No, but—'
'Matt, when you make a call from a pay phone and the call goes through but the quarter comes back anyway, what do you do? Keep it or put it back in the slot?'
'Or send it to them in stamps,' David suggested.
'I see your point,' I said.
'Because we all know what happens when the phone eats your quarter and doesn't put the call through.
Face it, none of us are way out in front of the game when we're dealing with Mother Bell.'
'I suppose.'
'So you've got free long distance and free Call Forwarding. There's a code you have to enter to forward your calls, but just ring them up and tell them you lost the slip and they'll explain it to you. Nothing to it.
TJ, what's your phone number?'
'Ain't got one.'
'Well, your favorite pay phone.'
'Favorite? I don't know. Don't know the number of any of 'em, anyhow.'
'Well, pick one out and give me the location.'
'There be a bank of three of 'em in Port Authority that I use some.'
'No good. Too many phones there, it's impossible to know if we're talking about the same one. How about one on a street corner?'
He shrugged. 'Say Eighth and Forty-third.'
'Uptown, downtown?'
'Uptown, east side of the street.'
'Okay, let's just… there, got it. You want to write down the number?'
'Just change it,' David suggested.
'Good idea. Make it an easy one to remember. How about TJ-5-4321?'
'Like it's my own phone number? Hey, I like that!'
'Let's just see if it's available. Nope, somebody's got it. So why don't we take the other direction?
TJ-5-6789. No problem, so let's make it all yours. So ordered.'
'You can just do that?' I wondered. 'Aren't different three-number prefixes specifically linked to different areas?'
'Used to be. And there's still exchanges, but that works for the particular line number, and that has nothing to do with what you dial.
See, the number you dial, like the one I just gave TJ, is the same as the PIN code you use to get money out of your ATM at the bank. It's just a recognition code, really.'
'Well, it's an access code,' David said. 'But it accesses the line, and that's what routes the call.'
'Let's fix the phone for you, TJ. It's a pay phone, right?'
'Right.'
'Wrong. It was a pay phone. Now it's a free phone.'
'Just like that?'
'Just like that. Some idiot'll probably report it in a week or two, but until then you can save yourself a few quarters. Remember when we played Robin Hood?'
'Oh, that was fun,' David said. 'We were down at the World Trade Center one night making calls from
a pay phone, and of course the first thing we did was convert it, make it free—'
'— or otherwise we'd be dropping quarters in all night long, which is pretty ridiculous—'
'— and Hong here says pay phones should be free for everybody, same as the subways ought to be free, they ought to eliminate the turnstiles—'
'— or make them turn with or without a token, which you could do if they were computerized, but they're mechanical—'
'— which is pretty primitive, when you stop and think about it—'
'— but with pay phones we're in a position to do something, so for I think it was two hours—'
