I was still in her bed when my phone rang. Matt. Unbelievable. The kid told me he'd got a new prime; but he was having second thoughts about the plan, the coward.

I left the floozy's apartment, slamming the door and getting dressed on the way to the car. I called for the girl and dressed her as fast as possible. When we arrived I asked Matt to display the number he'd got ("153 digits, man!") and settled the girl in front of the computer screen. She looked at it, then at me... and sobbed.

"What's wrong, princess?" I wiped the tear from her face and immediately got her to the car, Matt looking incredulous as we sped away.

En route I asked her why she was crying. She simply said, "It's so beautiful...". She found the number beautiful? Ha! She was gonna have a belter with us! I put the sunglasses on her, then called my contact to fix the meeting.

So I could introduce her when we arrived, I asked the girl her name. She didn't answer. Funny. I asked her what her favorite number was. She said, "Sixty-nine."

I couldn't help smiling just a little. "Sixty-nine? Why is that?"

She spoke in her flat voice: "Sixty-nine times sixty-nine is four-seven-six-one. Sixty-nine times sixty-nine times sixty-nine is three-two-eight-five-zero-nine. With sixty-nine you can obtain any digit from zero to nine. It's beautiful." Talk about a conversation-stopper.

I explained: "Well, if someone asks you about your favorite number, you don't say 'sixty-nine,' okay?" She nodded.

Poking out of an alley I spotted the SUV of those heavies that beat me up; they were standing in front of their car. I pulled alongside, coolly stepped out, and waited for them to confront me.

"Fuck's sake, man! You're disappointing us," one said, like he was in The Godfather, mouth open like a goldfish. "I thought we had a business arrangement." I told them there was no problem, that my friend and I were just out for a drive. They spotted the girl, and seemed to calm down. They don't like beating up girls, or even beating up a guy in front of a girl without reason. I know because I used to do their job.

"So you're telling us you're not on your way to offload a number?"

I shot them a look: "I've no key, no hard drive, no papers, and no number with me. There is no number with the girl, or in the car. I know you don't believe me – I used to do this job, you know – so come on, give us a going-over. But easy on the girl."

For a mafia confrontation it wasn't so bad – they frisked me thoroughly; they frisked the girl too, whose inanimate posture freaked them out. Next they took out a weird device; it looked like a metal detector but made no sound. They passed it over me and the car. And then they left.

The "metal detector," as Matt explained later, was a simple copper wire coil connected to a battery. It generates a magnetic field to destroy data on a storage device. So my phone was ruined, and worse, I couldn't start my car. I had to drag the Rain Girl along for five hundred meters before we could get a cab. But we'd bluffed our way out.