work?â
âIâve ordered. A few times. From some fake ID. Like, say, a credit card thatâs untraceable.â
âBut youâve seen the catalog. Youâve seen the pajamas.â
âAt the bottom of the catalog page, thereâs an 800 number. I call it.â
âUnless you ask the operator, you have no idea where they are.â
âNorth Dakota,â I said, thinking about it. âSome state thatâs mostly in the boonies. Not in a big city. Wages are good. Cubicles. Headsets.â
âPrivate enterprise. Capitalism at its best.â
âWhat makes our country great. Weâre not talking North Dakota, are we?â
He smiled. Gotcha, I thought. One of Donâs very few tells. When you had that ace in the hole, when you knew he only had a ten or a three, and you called him on it, he smiled. He knew it was a tell, he couldnât help smiling anyway.
âIn the U.S.,â he said.
âIn the continental U.S.â
âOf course. The 800 numbers are cheapest to rent in the mainland.â
âSoâ¦where?â
âYouâve hacked into a few call centers, I know that.â
âKansas city, one time. Thatâs all I remember.â
âEver heard of them being in a prison?â he asked.
I had to think about that one.
âUpstate New York, maybe. Orâ¦guess I donât really know.â
âHow about closer to home. In Florence?â
âNorth of here? That Florence?â
âArizona Department of Corrections,â he said. âFlorence facility.â
âBut thatâs a maximum complex. Hard timers there. And the death house.â
âYes, itâs a big complex, with several different facilities. Much of it is for level five inmates. The nasties. Thugs, rapists, murderers, they can be level five or, if theyâre on good behavior, they can be lower. Level three, say.â
âDon, wait, wait. So I call Landâs End.â
âThey donât handle that company. But yeah. Somebody reputable.â
âI really want those pajamas. Nobody else has the style I want.â
âFrom the looks of you half an hour ago, you donât even wear them.â
I blushed. Thatâs really hard to do, make me blush.
âOkay, Don. So youâve seen my boobs.â
âIâve seen them before,â he said. âRemember that contract in Houston?â
âOh. Yeah.â
âI saw it all,â he said. âSo have we got your boobs out of the way now?â
âPick up the phone, call the 800 order number. No idea, really, who Iâm talking to. But I assumeâ¦I assume, âcause itâs the American way, that theyâre company people. That Iâm talking to a company rep. Paid with a company check.â
âWages are going up. So. Some companies, some very big companies, contract out the call center.â
âTo prisons like Florence.â
âItâs a test contract. A new contract. But far from the first in a prison.â
âHow long have they been up and running?â I had no idea where he was going, but so far I couldnât see what he needed me for.
âHalf a year. Eight months, outside.â
âDon, thatâsâ¦this isâ¦you run one of the top legit security-penetration companies around. We are talking some kind of hacking, right?â
âRight.â
âThis doesnât compute,â I said. A stupid cliché. âThis doesnât make sense. If a credit card call center is running inside a prison, no legit company is going to allow convicts to take down personal information. Credit card numbers.â
âWhen the operator enters dataââ
âThe inmate.â
âWhen the con vict, I mean, when the in mate enters the data, first of all, he sees just asterisks.â
âLike a log on password.â
âJust like a password. You log into MSN, AOL, whatever, type your password