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shivering and dreaming because I know that something will go most deeply wrong but I still
don't know what and I still don't know why. I keep telling myself, You're only afraid because
nothing could ever go so right for you, you can't believe that anything could ever make you
rich and safe. I say this stuff so much that I believe that I believe it, but I don't really, not down
deep, and so I shiver again and finally I cry, because after all my body still believes I'm nine,
and nine-year-olds have tear ducts very easy of access, no password required.
Well he comes in late that night, and I'm asleep he thinks. And so he walks quiet instead of
dancing, but I can hear the dancing in his little sounds, I know he has the money all safely in
the bank, and so when he leans over to make sure if I'm asleep, I say, "Could I borrow a
hundred thou?"
So he slaps me and he laughs and dances and sings, and I try to go along you bet I do, I
know I should be happy, but then at the end he says, "You just can't take it, can you? You just
can't handle it," and then I cry all over again, and he just puts his arm around me like a movie
dad and gives me play punhes on the head and says, "I'm gonna marry me a wife, I am,
maybe even Mama Pimple herself, and we'll adopt you and have a little Spielberg family in
Summerfield, with a riding mower on a real grass lawn."
"I'm older than you or Mama Pimple," says I, but he just laughs. Laughs and hugs me until
he thinks that I'm all right. Don't go home, he says to me that night, but home I got to go,
because I know I'll cry again, from fear or something anyway, and I don't want him to think his
cure wasn't permanent. "No thanks," says I, but he just laughs at me. "Stay here and cry all
you want to, Goo Boy, but don't go home tonight. I don't want to be alone tonight, and sure as
hell you don't either." And so I slept between his sheets, like with a brother, him punching
and tickling and pinching and telling dirty jokes about his whores, the most good and natural
night I spent in all my life, with a true friend, which I know you don't believe, snickering and
nickering and ickering your filthy little thoughts, there was no holes plugged that night
because nobody was out to take pleasure from nobody else, just Dogwalker being happy
and wanting me not to be so sad.
And after he was asleep, I wanted so bad to know who it was he sold them to, so I could
call them up and say, "Don't use those greens, cause they aren't clean. I don't know how, I
don't know why, but the feds are onto this, I know they are, and if you use those cards they'll
nail your fingers to your face."
But if I called would they believe me? They were careful too. Why else did it take a week?
They had one of their nothing goons use a card to make sure it had no squeaks or leaks,
and it came up clean. Only then did they give the cards to seven big boys, with two held in
reserve. Even Organic Crime, the All-seeing Eye, passed those cards same as we did.
I think maybe Dogwalker was a little bit vertical too. I think he knew same as me that
something was wrong with this. That's why he kept checking back with the inside man,
cause he didn't trust how good it was. That's why he didn't spend any of his share. We'd sit
there eating the same old schlock, out of his cut from some leg job or my piece from a data
wipe, and every now and then held say, "Rich man's food sure tastes good." Or maybe even
though he wasn't vertical he still thought maybe I was right when I thought something was
wrong. Whatever he thought, though, it just kept getting worse and worse for me, until the
morning when we went to see the inside man and the inside man was gone.
Gone clean. Gone like he never existed. His apartment for rent, cleaned out floor to ceiling.
A phone call to the fed, and he was on vacation, which meant they had him, he wasn't just
moved to another house with his newfound wealth. We stood there in his empty place, his
shabby empty hovel that was ten times better than anywhere we ever lived, and Doggy says
to me, real quiet, he says, "What was it? What did I do wrong? I thought I was like Hunt, I
thought I never made a single mistake in this job, in this one job."
And that was it, right then I knew. Not a week before, not when it would do any good. Right
then I finally knew it all, knew what Hunt had done. Jesse Hunt never made mistakes. But he
was also so paranoid that he haired his bureau to see if the babysitter stole from him. So
even though he would never arcidentally enter the wrong P-word, he was just the kind who
would do it on purpose. "He double-fingered every time," I says to Dog. "He's so danm
careful he does his password wrong the first time every time, and then comes in on his
second finger."
"So one time he comes in on the first try, so what?" He says this because he doesn't know
computers like I do, being half-glass myself.
"The system knew the pattern, that's what. Jesse H. is so precise he never changed a bit,
so when we came in on the first try, that set off alarms. It's my fault, Dog, I knew how crazy
paranoidical he is, I knew that something was wrong, but not till this minute I didn't know what
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