After cleaning the beef-stew can, I went online to an antenna site with a calculator, did some figuring, and with the soldering iron put together a nice little wi-fi antenna. Wi-fi stands for “wireless fidelity” and works as a high-frequency wireless local network-it’s cheap, and it allows several people, in several different places around the house, office, or classroom to use the same Internet connection. It’ll probably be obsolete by tomorrow, but today, it was spreading around the country like a rash. Usually, the range is limited to just about the area of a big house. With an antenna, though…

Normally, I wouldn’t ride on somebody else’s Internet connection, simply because it wasn’t necessary. Connections are a dime a dozen, if you’re legal. Most Starbucks have a wi-fi connection. But the Carp problem made me nervous, and if I rode on somebody else’s network connection, there’d be no way to backtrack our inquiries. And it would be faster than doing it from the motel: working over a telephone hookup was like having water drip on your forehead.

The kid at the Radio Shack store had recommended the Tulane area as a happy hunting ground, but I had a different idea. I’d found that lots of warehouses use wi-fi because warehouses are constantly involved in inventory movements, and those movements are often uploaded via the Internet to central control offices. Few of them have any kind of protection.

LuEllen and I took I-10 out toward Kenner and New Orleans International, LuEllen driving while I watched the laptop, and eventually we found a truck stop parking lot next to what looked like a warehouse, where we got a strong signal from a wi-fi network.

And it was a fast one, maybe a T-1 line. In the next hour, I pulled every bit of information I could out of the National Crime Information Center, out of credit agencies and insurance companies, and from three different credit card companies. When I was done, I still didn’t have a photograph of Jimmy James Carp, but I had a different kind of picture, and it was one that scared us.

“THE guy might be working for the Senate Intelligence Committee,” LuEllen blurted to John, when we got back to the Baton Noir. John was stretched on his bed, watching CNN. “He might be a spy or something.”

He sat up, dropped his feet to the floor. “What?”

“The last job I can find for him, the last one that paid Social Security taxes, was the U.S. government, and the reference number traces back to the Senate Intelligence Committee,” I said.

“The government killed Bobby?”

“I don’t know-the Social Security payments stopped a month ago, but if he’s fucking around with the intelligence community, that might not mean anything,” I said. “On the other hand, that didn’t look like a government operation out at the trailer park. If the feds knew what was on that computer, they’d have it locked in a vault somewhere.”

“It feels bad, though,” LuEllen said.

“Tell you something,” John said, pointing at the TV. “He’s done it again. Bobby. Carp. There’s a story out there, coming out now, about how some Homeland Security department might have sprayed a virus into San Francisco to see how it would spread. It was supposed to be a test in case of a smallpox attack, they wanted to see what would happen, and they used a virus called, uh, Newport? That’s not right, but something like that. Anyway, a lot of people got sick and four people may have died… the shit is hitting the fan, and CNN says the leak involves a lot of classified government computer files and the sourcing resembles the Bobby releases of the past couple of days.”

“ Norwalk? Norwalk virus?” LuEllen asked.

He snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”

“Weren’t there a whole bunch of cruise ships a while back, where they had epidemics?”

“Exactly!” John said. “That’s the one. They’re saying-they say it’s only speculation-that those could have been a more controlled test, before they dumped it into San Francisco.”

“Ah, man. That means there must be a bunch of stuff that’s not encrypted-or he found a key.”

“We’ve gotta find the fucker,” John said.

LuEllen said, “He’s probably not twenty miles from here.”

“Might as well be in Chicago,” I said. “I got his credit card numbers, if he uses them…”

“Everybody’s gonna be looking for him,” John said.

“Everybody’s gonna be looking for Bobby, unless we tell them he’s dead. Or for one of Bobby’s friends, if we decide to tell them,” I said. “We’re the only ones looking for Jimmy James Carp.”

WE TALKED about it as we watched CNN, and then LuEllen said, “Hey, we found out about Melissa. Melissa Carp.”

“Yeah?” John said.

“She was his mother. She’s dead. She was killed in an automobile accident a month ago.”

“Maybe flipped him out,” John said.

And we talked about other trips we’d been on together, we talked about Longstreet, we talked a little more about Rachel Willowby, and what would happen to her. “If she thought Jimmy James Carp wanted to talk to her because he wanted to fuck her… then there are people who are talking to her because they want to fuck her,” John said. “She’s about ten-to-one for winding up on the corner.”

Something to mull over. Even later, after watching more about the Norwalk virus story, and more talk, we decided to tell the NSA that Bobby had been murdered.

LATE that night, I went back out-way back out-up I-10 into Baton Rouge. I found a pay phone in a bar parking lot and, using LuEllen’s anonymous calling card, called long distance to Glen Burnie, Maryland. The phone rang seven times before Rosalind Welsh picked it up. She sounded as though she’d been asleep, and I realized that it was after two in the morning, Eastern time. “Hello?”

“Rosalind. Bill Clinton here. Remember me? Hope I didn’t wake you up, but I guess I must have.” At that moment, honest to God, a rat walked past the pay phone on its way to the bar, as confident and casual as a cat heading home. “Jesus,” I said.

“Who?” Welsh was struggling up out of the sleep. “Jesus?” I heard a man’s voice say, “Who is it?”

“Did you get remarried?” I asked cheerfully.

“What do you want?” she snapped. “This is the man with the mask?”

“Who is it?” the man asked, and I heard her say, “Never mind; it’s for me.”

“You remember me, now,” I said. “You’re awake.”

“I’m awake.” But not happy.

“You remember that guy Bobby who caused you all the trouble? And you went looking for and got your ass kicked? And is causing all this trouble with these pictures and the Norwalk virus thing, and all of that?”

Long pause. “Yes. Where is he?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “He’s been dead for a couple of days.”

“What?”

“Did you see the news stories about the black man killed in Jackson, Mississippi, and the Fiery Cross that was burned on his front porch?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“That was Bobby. He was murdered. Somebody killed him for his laptop, which has all that stuff on it that you’re seeing on TV. We think maybe-maybe-it was you, that you’re running some kind of an operation against the government. Was it you guys, Rosalind?”

“You’re crazy,” she shrilled. “We don’t do that.”

“What is it?” the man shouted in the background. “Let me talk to him.”

“You’re talking to Bill Clinton, here, Rosy-I know what you do,” I said. “Now, I would suggest, for your own health, that you stop chasing us innocent computer folks around the country, and find out who killed Bobby. If you don’t, we’ll start fucking with you again. Remember the last time we did that? How your Keyhole satellites went nuts and all the GS-80s started pooping in their Italian pants? You don’t want that again.”

“Listen, Bill,” she said earnestly. “Do you have any proof…?”