Dragonfly Bones by David Cole Read Free Book Online

work?”
    â€œI’ve ordered. A few times. From some fake ID. Like, say, a credit card that’s untraceable.”
    â€œBut you’ve seen the catalog. You’ve seen the pajamas.”
    â€œAt the bottom of the catalog page, there’s an 800 number. I call it.”
    â€œUnless you ask the operator, you have no idea where they are.”
    â€œNorth Dakota,” I said, thinking about it. “Some state that’s mostly in the boonies. Not in a big city. Wages are good. Cubicles. Headsets.”
    â€œPrivate enterprise. Capitalism at its best.”
    â€œWhat makes our country great. We’re not talking North Dakota, are we?”
    He smiled. Gotcha, I thought. One of Don’s 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 couldn’t help smiling anyway.
    â€œIn the U.S.,” he said.
    â€œIn the continental U.S.”
    â€œOf course. The 800 numbers are cheapest to rent in the mainland.”
    â€œSo…where?”
    â€œYou’ve hacked into a few call centers, I know that.”
    â€œKansas city, one time. That’s all I remember.”
    â€œEver heard of them being in a prison?” he asked.
    I had to think about that one.
    â€œUpstate New York, maybe. Or…guess I don’t really know.”
    â€œHow about closer to home. In Florence?”
    â€œNorth of here? That Florence?”
    â€œArizona Department of Corrections,” he said. “Florence facility.”
    â€œBut that’s a maximum complex. Hard timers there. And the death house.”
    â€œYes, it’s 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 they’re on good behavior, they can be lower. Level three, say.”
    â€œDon, wait, wait. So I call Land’s End.”
    â€œThey don’t handle that company. But yeah. Somebody reputable.”
    â€œI really want those pajamas. Nobody else has the style I want.”
    â€œFrom the looks of you half an hour ago, you don’t even wear them.”
    I blushed. That’s really hard to do, make me blush.
    â€œOkay, Don. So you’ve seen my boobs.”
    â€œI’ve seen them before,” he said. “Remember that contract in Houston?”
    â€œOh. Yeah.”
    â€œI saw it all,” he said. “So have we got your boobs out of the way now?”
    â€œPick up the phone, call the 800 order number. No idea, really, who I’m talking to. But I assume…I assume, ’cause it’s the American way, that they’re company people. That I’m talking to a company rep. Paid with a company check.”
    â€œWages are going up. So. Some companies, some very big companies, contract out the call center.”
    â€œTo prisons like Florence.”
    â€œIt’s a test contract. A new contract. But far from the first in a prison.”
    â€œHow long have they been up and running?” I had no idea where he was going, but so far I couldn’t see what he needed me for.
    â€œHalf a year. Eight months, outside.”
    â€œDon, that’s…this is…you run one of the top legit security-penetration companies around. We are talking some kind of hacking, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œThis doesn’t compute,” I said. A stupid cliché. “This doesn’t 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€œWhen the operator enters data—”
    â€œThe inmate.”
    â€œWhen the con vict, I mean, when the in mate enters the data, first of all, he sees just asterisks.”
    â€œLike a log on password.”
    â€œJust like a password. You log into MSN, AOL, whatever, type your password