I hung up, got off at the next exit, wiped the cell phone and threw it into a ditch, and headed back to St. Paul.

And they quit.

The IRS announced that Interpol, in coordination with U.S. authorities, had issued warrants for the arrest of a half-dozen European hackers for their attack on the tax-return site, and said that the IRS site was now fully protected. The FBI declared victory over Firewall, said that we were seeing the fine results of eternal vigilance. Other hacker organizations, the FBI spokesman said, had better take warning, and not mess with the bulldog of federal law enforcement.

I was lying on the couch, reading the St. Paul paper, the Cat sitting next to my head, when somebody knocked at the door. I opened it, and LuEllen was standing there. She was wearing jeans and cowboy boots under a waist-length coat that looked suspiciously like mink.

"We cool?" she asked.

"We cool," I said. "Come in."

She came in, and we had a cup of coffee, sitting at my kitchen window looking out over the Mississippi. The river was locked in ice, and down on the streets, we could see people in heavy parkas puffing up and down the hill. Twelve below zero, the weather service said: a splendid day to stay inside and paint.

We had a lot to talk about. About the relative quality of our safety, about Jack and Lane. About whether the government might come creeping around. About the collapse of AmMath, and the disappearance of Corbeil.

"The government's out of it," I said. "At least for a good long while."

I told her how the Net would occasionally be saturated with the cryptic message, "Bobby, call your Uncle."

"Does he?"

"I don't know. I leave that to him," I said.

"You think he's going to die?"

"That's what he says. But not for a while."

We were silent for a moment, then she said, "The devil cardit was like the tarot said."

"In hindsight, I suppose."

"Don't be skeptical with me, Kidd. You're getting messages from somewhere, and I think maybe you oughta stop it."

"Right. Messages," I said. She was so serious about it, I had to laugh. Superstitious claptrap.

The Texas newspapers reported that a man carrying Corbeil's passport had crossed into Mexico shortly after his Waco ranch house burned downa ranch purchased under a phony name, the papers said, and which was now cordoned off by the FBI. Corbeil hadn't been found yet, but there were hints that he might be in Southeast Asia.

LuEllen was worried that he might somehow come back on us.

"Not to worry," I said. She didn't ask.

LuEllen stayed over. Clancy, the computer lady who had been designing the America's Cup boat, had found somebody else to design it with, and my feet, had, in fact, been cold all winter. So LuEllen was welcome.

But as I lay beside her that night, awake, listening to her easy breathing, I felt the finger of darkness pressing on me again. It had come any number of times in the past two months, usually just before sleep: the ghost of St. John Corbeil.

I was the only one who'd ever know, but the passport that crossed into Mexico was the same one that Green, Lane, LuEllen, and I had passed around a diner table after the raid on Corbeil's apartment. The man who'd carried it was a friend of Bobby's, reliable, and who, for a price, was willing to check the passport through Mexican passport control, without asking why. He'd burned it in a bathroom of the California Royal Motel in Matamoros; and that is the last, I hope, that we'd hear of St. John Corbeil.

Corbeil himself was buried under a foot of sandy Texas soil, in a hastily scratched-out grave, a few miles northwest of Waco, Texas.

At night, lying in bed, I sometimes felt his loneliness out there.

Maybe, I thought, as I turned over and touched the woman's back, LuEllen could make him go away.

Maybe.