NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

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New Year’s Eve dawned with good news.

I had just finished blogging my best wishes to the crowd (group?) at Mooreslore when the phone rang.

It was Jeff Vick.

I have known Jeff for about five years. He got in touch with me through my newsletter, near the height of the boom, and made me an advisor to a company that couldn’t get its product out the door before the crash.

But we had stayed in touch. He liked my honesty. He liked my attitude.

And, that spring, I had sort-of returned the favor. The CTIA show in Atlanta gave me the idea for a great little business. Why not show people how to get value from their mobile phones, something the carriers were neglecting, and then make money by bringing each phone the products it could use, while bringing the sellers only valid, educated prospects.

Jeff called it Egoscout, because he owned that URL. And he got to work on it. I was more than an advisor now, although less than a partner. I built some content, I wrote a newsletter, and I talked to him about trends whenever he called. Meanwhile, he did the work, built the site, the business plan, and the documents that would get angel capital interested.

Now, however, he was excited. “We got it,” he said without preamble. “We got the money.”

“How much?”

“We got $1 million based on a valuation of $10 million,” he said.

“That’s great. Where from?”

“John Yates.”

“I didn’t know he had that much.”

“Well, it’s actually a fund he controls, Softbank South. He’s been making deals these last two weeks. I’d presented to him, hired his law firm. The way he made it sound, I was small beer, but that’s great. Because he’ll be patient money.”

“So long as he still brings us the contacts and talent a start-up needs, yeah, I guess,” I said. “So what happens now?”

“Now we build a team. And I want you on my team. How does $50,000/year sound?”

“It sounds great next to nothing. What do I do for it?”

“For now, nothing beyond what you are doing. But as soon as I get the rest of the team together I’ll be in touch. Ciao.” And with that he rang off.

I had a job. A good job. A real job. For the first time in years, the first time since before the boom. Wow.

But, while I no longer needed Joey Ledford’s money, I did owe him some effort. And since I had the time, I figured on getting some work done.

My inbox held a note from him, and I had a Web address. I fired up my browser and got to work.

The site was a billboard recruitment, but vague. There was some stuff on it about “taking our country back,” but a lot more about the enemies we were taking it back from, namely the Chinese. They made it seem that even IBM was Chinese, although they’d just sold their PC business to a Chinese outfit, Lenovo, a few weeks before. There were pictures, of Chairman Mao, of the man and the tank in Tienanmien, of the statue of liberty there being destroyed.

Not a lot about what they were going to do about it.

I decided to use Better Whois to check out that Web registration, if I could. Many registrants these days hide their identies, so I wasn’t hopeful. But these guys were stupid. There was an address, 2400 Main St East in Snellville. I had done a story near there for Ledford just a month before, about a barbecue stand with a WiFi connection. I’d gotten lost and drove back-and-forth past a huge church several times. I Googled the address. It sure looked near the church, if not right on it.

I looked at the name on the registration again. Barney Fyfe? That’s got to be phony, I thought. But I saved all this to a file and opened Ledford’s e-mail.

Like I expected there wasn’t much here, either. The sheriff’s number, the address of several break-ins, some links to stories the paper had done on it. I had to register on the AJC site to look at the stories, but I gave them all my best effort. I was looking for names.

And there, on the third such story I read, about a smash-and-grab at a warehouse in Norcross, I found a name, quoted. “Barney Fyfe, 53, of Snellville, said the string of burglaries didn’t surprise him,” the story said. “’They’re taking money from our children with their dumping and their subsidies. Americans don’t take things lieing down.’”

Same name. But, nyaah. That’s a name from fiction, the gun-toting idiot deputy from ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’” I Googled the name to double-check. No, it was a rock-ska band too, a bunch of 20-somethings based in Las Vegas.

I looked at the list of band members. There was no Barney. A Doug, a Dave, a Winston, a Jeremy. Josh, Andrew, Spencer. Maybe a dry hole.

Barney Fyfe, it turned out, was also the name of an Oatmeal Stout a vegetarian show dog in Ontario, Canada, and the nickname of a fishing guide who had appeared on ESPN and whose real name was Dave.

And here was the name again, in a speech by Dr. James Dobson, the right-wing preacher. “I don't want to go back to the days of Ozzie and Harriet. That's simply not true. I want to go back to the days of Mayberry, with Sheriff Taylor and Opie and all of those good folks. (applause) Don't you just love it when Barney Fyfe says, ‘My whole body is a weapon?’”

I checked the last name on a site called Georgia White Pages. Sure enough, a B Fyfe, on Hugh Drive SW in Snellville. I looked at the phone number. Then I went back to the registration for the site. Same number.

I called it. I told the man who answered that I had seen his Web site and I was interested. He said, with a tone of suspicion, that a lot of people were interested and I would have to prove my interest. How, I asked? He gave me an address on Beaver Ruin Road in Norcross, adding “if a brick goes through that window I’ll know, and I’ll be back in touch.”

“Don’t call here,” I suddenly added, fearful he might trace both the call and me as I’d traced him. “This is a work number.” I gave him my cell. As soon as I got off the phone I looked up the address. It was a Buddhist Temple, I noted, something called Buddhabuddies.org.

A double play, I realized. Both Buddhist, therefore Chinese, and “for those with a non-traditional sexual orientation.”

I took a brick from my backyard. The things you do for the cause of journalism.

Once in my car I had an attack of sense. I took out my mobile phone and called the Temple. A woman answered. Nice lady. I explained what I was on about, and she said the most surprising thing.

“We’re getting kicked out of here today, but before we leave I’ll have my dad throw a brick through the window, and call it in. Will that help?”

You bet it would, I said. “Why would you do that?”

“The landlord is an ass-hole,” she said in a very non-Buddhist manner. “Asshole name of Barney Fyfe, from Snellville. Ever hear of him?”