You’re certain that’s the last call?

Manning shows him the record sheet. The boss takes the phone from the factory woman. He inserts the memory-component end into a slot on one of her consoles. A screen lights up, displaying the phone’s record of calls.

Only two.

The first one matches, to the thousandths of a second, the time when the “lamed vav” text came in to Manning’s phone.

The second is spot-on to the follow-up text.

MANNING

Where did the other texts or calls go?

The ones made before these final two.

SWEATSHOP BOSS

Scrubbed.

The boss scrolls down the record sheet for Manning to see.

Blank.

MANNING

How could someone do that?

Two items, the boss explains, make these burners different from legal phones—a password randomizer and a trace mimic. “The phones ‘pretend’ to be real,” he says. “They piggyback digitally onto existing numbers.”

SWEATSHOP BOSS

Scrub the number and you delete all record of the call. But to do that, you’d need tech gear that even we don’t have.

MANNING

But whoever erased the main body of the outgoing texts left a record of the final two—the last ones made before they threw the phone away. Why would they do that?

The question is rhetorical. Manning is asking himself.

Because they were lazy?

Because they screwed up?

Or because they wanted us to know about the final two texts—and that this was the phone that made them?

SWEATSHOP BOSS

I have no idea. But I’ll tell you one thing. Whoever tricked out this burner knows their shit.

Manning walks the boss outside into the hall. He signs to the uniforms that they can release the shotgun sentry and return to their regular duty. They do.

From his wallet Manning tugs a twenty. He hands it to the boss. “For the woman inside,” he says. He pulls out a hundred and slips it into the chief’s shirt pocket.

Manning indicates the skullcap atop the boss’s head.

MANNING

“Lamed” and “vav” are Hebrew letters, right?

SWEATSHOP BOSS

Thirty-six. The Thirty-Six Righteous Men.

Manning’s look says, What’s that?

SWEATSHOP BOSS

It’s a legend. God protects the world for the sake of the Thirty-Six. When they’re gone, all bets are off.

MANNING

Meaning what?

SWEATSHOP BOSS

God destroys everything.

This stops Manning.

MANNING

Righteous Men? What does the legend mean by that? What makes someone “righteous”?

SWEATSHOP BOSS

You’re asking me?

Ten minutes later Manning has the address of the kiosk that sold the phone and we’re on our way.

8

LITTLE HONG KONG

MANNING PUNCHES THE DEALER SO hard in the chest that his (the dealer’s) lower denture pops out and goes sailing across the display case.

CONTRABAND DEALER

What the fuck!