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JERRY’S SPORTSMAN’S PARADISE, a bar in a New Jersey strip mall off Route 17, was a fifteen-minute drive from the expensive bedroom communities of Saddle River, Ho-Ho-Kus, and Wyckoff. Of the twelve patrons watching football reruns and horse races on the flat-screens midafternoon on a weekday, four were unemployed, three were retired, and five were engaged in the business of suburban housebreaking—three as thieves, one as a fence of stolen jewelry, and the fifth as a steerer who had an uncannily unerring ability to tell the thieves whose house was unoccupied.

The housebreakers knew him as Morton, an unassuming white guy with the beginnings of a potbelly, a pasty–always-indoors complexion, a very expensive leather jacket, and a gray porkpie hat. He was not often at Jerry’s, showing up once or twice a month, but his information was good as gold. He sat at the corner of the bar, where he could see the room, smiling faintly.

Morton was smiling because he liked what he was hearing through his iPod buds, which connected to a mini-dish amplifier. At the far end of the bar a thief he had dealt with before was putting a new dude hip to Morton’s talents.

“If Morton tells you the home owner has gone to St. Barts and the housekeeper takes Monday off, then the guy’s in St. Barts and the housekeeper ain’t there on Monday.”

“How does he know?”

“Fuck knows. But he knows.”

“Maybe he’s psychic.”

“Whatever, he’s good at it. Check him out.”

The new dude walked down to Morton’s end of the bar. Morton pretended to turn off his iPod. “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

“I hear sometimes you have information.”

“Sometimes,” said Morton, who had already satisfied himself that the thief wasn’t a cop by eavesdropping on a cell phone conversation the guy had earlier with his wife about picking up their kid from soccer practice.

“I hear it’s good.”

“It’s gold,” said Morton. “Gold is expensive. Twenty-five percent.”

“Can you give me an idea where you get it?”

Morton looked at him. Did this jerk really think he was going to explain that geotags embedded in the smart phones of rich fools who posted photos on Twitter gave away home addresses and vacation locations, not to mention a picture gallery of unattended swag worth stealing? Or did he think that Morton was going to confess that he, the best computer hacker in the world, was a “white-hat” do-gooder who protected corporations from criminal “black-hat” and “gray-hat” hackers—except when sometimes he came down to Jerry’s Sportsman’s Paradise to pick up a couple of extra bucks, stick it to some rich bastards, and get off on hanging with lowlifes good geeks weren’t supposed to know?

“No,” said Morton. “I cannot share such an idea with you.”

The guy wasn’t stupid enough to be surprised. He shifted gears and asked a different stupid question: “I hear that it won’t cost me anything until I put it to use.”

Morton looked him in the eye. “You don’t pay me until you’ve sold whatever you’ve got that my information enabled you to get.”

“Yeah?” he asked in a tone that said, What’s the scam?“What makes you so sure I’d pay you, ever?”

“Self-interest,” said Morton. “You will pay me because you will want another tip— Excuse me a sec.”

One of five cell and sat phones tucked in a row of custom-tailored pockets in the lining of his leather jacket was vibrating. He checked the screen. SITA SATELLITE AIRCOM. Someone calling from an airliner telephone. And that was all. Not who they were, what plane they were on, where they were going. Just somebody who flipped over their in-seat handset, ran their credit card through it, and punched in Morton’s number, which SITA’s OnAir service routed through a satellite to vibrate his phone. Not as much as he wanted to know, but they did have his number.

“Hang on a minute; I have to take this,” he said to the thief, hurried out to the parking lot, which contained the sort of recently detailed, certified preowned Audis and BMWs you could cruise a bedroom community in without drawing the attention of the police.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t hang up.”

“CatsPaw,” said a woman.

“Go ahead,” he said, trying not to sound too eager. CatsPaw meant money. A lot more money than walking the wild side with house thieves.

“Has my sat phone been compromised?”

“Give me the number.”

She did. He said, “Turn your phone on, ringer off. Call me back using the airplane phone in five minutes.”

The thief had stepped out the door to smoke a cigarette. “Hey, what about—”

“Later.”

Morton got into his unassuming Honda, locked the doors, Wi-Fied into a large computer under the backseat, and punched up her number. When she called in five minutes he said, “They scored you big-time, sweetheart.”

She muttered something that sounded like, “Fuck.”

He waited a second for the usual indignant How did they hack into my phone?At that point he would explain that since he hadn’t been there he could only guess that they got her by walking alongside her in the airport terminal with a powerful transmitter disguised as a laptop or sitting next to her in the lounge or even on the plane. Unless they simply “borrowed” her phone for a minute when she left it lying around, which, being CatsPaw, she probably hadn’t. Instead of asking a dumb question, she asked the only pertinent one: “When did it happen?”

“Twelve hours ago,” he answered, which would tell her where it had happened. “Do you remember how to upload your SIM card?”

“Yes,” she said in a pissed-off voice that made that single syllable sound like, Fuck, yes, who the hell do you think you’re talking to here?

“Upload immediately to this number.” He gave her a number. “Okay, turn your sat phone off. Turn it on again in ten minutes. Wait five minutes, then call me back on the AIRCOM phone.”

He got another yes. Hey, not his fault she got hacked.

He found the routing drone they had slipped onto the SIM card. It was a sophisticated East Europe jobbie that redirected her voice and text signals to some number in Bucharest. Oddly, it also blocked her communications; the usual way was to let the messages through; that way the target wouldn’t know she was hacked and would keep sending more messages to spy on. He wiped the drone and uploaded the contents of her SIM card back to her otherwise intact.

First thing she wanted to know when he told her the sat phone was now clean was, “What did it do to the guy’s phone I’ve been calling?”

“His is clean as a whistle.”

“How do you know it didn’t give his the virus?”

“I know because he called a half hour ahead of you with the same sort of problem and I checked it for him.”

“He called before I did?”Now she sounded pissed off she’d come in second.

“Yeah. He was hip to the issue.”

“Fuck! Did it give the hackers his number when I called him?”

“Well, yeah. If we’re talking about the same guy. About whom I can tell you nothing, just like I can’t tell nobody nothing about you, because I don’t know nothing.”

“Did you change his number?”

“Well, yeah. Like I’m going to change yours.”

“How do I know how to call him?”

“The old number will ring through. If he wants to answer you, he will.”

“Okay. I got that. What about these people who hacked me? Were they able to see where he is?”

“Only if he was dumb enough not to disable his GPS when he answered their call.”

“He’s not.”

“I didn’t think so,” said Morton, “but let me give you some advice.”

“What?”

Why am I doing this? he wondered. The answer was, he could not help himself. Deep down—way deep down—he was a white hat.

“What advice?”

“Don’t call him from where you’re at now. For all you know, whoever hacked you twelve hours ago could be on the same plane you’re on.”

“Thanks for the help.”