every available bit or byte about you, from your high school test scores to that speeding ticket you got in Reno that time, and even the name of the hooker in the car with you when you got popped.
The government, of course, didn’t call it the Hackmaster 6000. That was its street name, for no sooner had it gone into production than clones started turning up as curios in places like Value Town. It was a tough tool to use well, Chuck told me, because for all its advanced stealth technology, it left a detectable trail of electronic breadcrumbs. If you assumed that someone was watching (and it’s always healthy to assume that someone is), it was likely only a matter of time before the fact of your fact-finding mission would surface somewhere. For someone on the inside, like Hines, that wouldn’t matter, but for me it made the Hackmaster only a hit-and-run tool at best.
Still, a tool is a tool. “You don’t happen to have one?” I asked.
“I have!” said Chuck. “This Valu’ Town!”
She reached under the counter and pulled out a plastic bag containing a matte black cartridge similar to the one Hines had had—except that this one bore the logo of a smiling, dancing tiger.
“What’s with the cat?” I asked.
“Private brand,” she said. “Valu’ Town special. It do tricks!”
“What kind of tricks?”
“You read manual.” She opened the bag and took out a hand-Xeroxed, -folded, and -stapled instruction manual written in charmingly fractured English. I read the first sentence—“Hackmaster 6000 are first name on digital survalence, not for childrens”—and decided to save it for later. Chuck tapped the Hackmaster with her purple lacquered fingernail. “Last one,” she said brightly. “Bargain price.”
Chuck’s idea of a bargain price could have kept her extended family in boba tea for a year, but she bundled it together with the new computer, rounded the whole thing up to an extravagant number, then discounted it back down to a reasonable sum, and sold me the whole package for that. This was how Chuck did business. She haggled with herself, and seemed to enjoy both sides of the negotiation. “Thank you for shopping Valu’ Town,” she intoned in her delightful singsong as I left. “Tell your friends.” This, I thought, is what makes America great.
I didn’t go home. I needed to work awhile without interruption, and considering all the people who had lately made my joint their crossroads, I thought a Java Man would serve me better, so I selected the one closest to Value Town (a mere stone’s throw, like they all are) and set up shop there. It took me some time to get used to the new laptop. Though sleeker and faster than my old box, it lacked my familiar shortcuts, and I really didn’t feel comfortable until I had those all dialed in.
After that, I checked on how the Merlin Game was paying off, and was gratified to see returns running ahead of projection, both in absolute numbers and average handle. To tell the truth, not having run a Merlin Game in a few years, I wasn’t altogether sure how it would play out. The pick trick brings them in, of course, but in the end, it’s all about the bafflegab, and you like to think your pitch is still sharp, even after a long layoff. Seeing the mooks rise so avidly to the bait gave me some confidence as I looked ahead to the Penny Skim, because there the sell would be a good deal harder. It’s not that you have to convince people to be greedy. The greedy ones are greedy by nature and need no convincing, and the others never even notice you, so it’s kind of self-selecting. Nor was it the prospect of working in Mandarin (not my strongest language, but I muddle through, ni hao). The thing is, my targets would be newbies, virgins, innocent to the grift, for IT professionals high up in the Chinese central banking system had likely never been approached by a Western-style scam artist before. And while you might think this would make them soft targets, in fact the opposite was true. They wouldn’t naturally recognize the benefits being offered to them, and they’d need spoon-fed assurances that the yak was plausible, profitable, doable, and safe. They’d have to learn to believe in the magic of something for nothing.
I’d have to get my teaching chops on. In Mandarin, no less.
It occurred to me that Billy might have Mandarin (though this was