Chapter 46
Love Hackers
By Flora Willingham
Eddie, The Yahoo Boy
The Yahoo Boy says his real name is Eddie and he is twelve years old. He wears a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts. He tells me he is barefoot, although I can’t see his feet on WhatsApp. I found Eddie after responding to his WhatsApp message attempting to “pig butcher” me.
(The message said, Susie, is this your number? I responded, No but I will pay you $50 USD in Tether to chat right now for ten minutes. To my shock, he called me immediately. I was very happy to have a primary source #1.)
When Eddie calls me, he is in his brother’s hair salon. On his phone camera, he shows me around King Salon, a wooden building on stilts, situated, he says, “in the biggest floating slum in the world.” I ask him where exactly and he says, “Nigeria, man, what do you think?”
Eddie’s brother, who goes by “King,” has booted up his generator and Eddie and a dozen kids are charging their cellphones while we talk. They yell and wave in the background.
“If you have a phone, you have a chance,” Eddie says.
To be honest, I admire them. Eddie says they sit in King Salon and text all day. When I ask how many texts he sends daily, Eddie says, “At least five hundred or more, like one thousand.”
He notes, “If one person texts back, it is gold.”
I ask Eddie if he remembers any women from Savannah, Georgia; if he remembers anyone specifically; if he remembers anyone with my mom’s name, Regan Willingham. It’s possible, isn’t it, that little Eddie could be Francois?
Eddie says, “I remember nobody and nothing.”
If he gets a “customer,” he sends them up the chain.
He is just the Bomber, using the few English-language scripts he’s been able to buy.
If someone responds, Editors get involved, then Loaders, Pickers, Billers, and—in the worst-case scenarios—Yahoo Plus or Yahoo Plus Plus, but this is less common now that the murders in the city have come to light.
Eddie says he scams to get money for school tuition and the required uniform. He hopes to be a barber like his brother someday, and when that day comes, he and his brother will rename the building “Two Kings Salon.”