Double Trouble Read online

  Dear Aunt Mary -

  I’m in love! I’ve found my PURRfect soul mate in a chatroom!

  :-D

  Any advice on that 1st live meet? Or ::ulp:: on moving across the country?

  Smitten in St Paul

  They do say that curiosity killed the cat.

  This would have been the perfect opportunity for me to just shut up and get on with my life, such as it was. Certainly no one was asking for my help.

  But then, they also say that satisfaction brought that cat back, right? That’s one of the major scores of my life.

  That night, back in what passed for my cozy, safe haven (i.e. a drafty warehouse in a wicked bad neighborhood), I couldn’t let it go. Now, I’m not going to tell you exactly where in Boston this warehouse is, because I don’t want to be responsible for keeping you up nights, fretting yourself senseless over lil’ ol’ me.

  Trust me - I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for thirty-eight years.

  Maybe we should take a moment to set the scene, now that you think I’m living in a former pickle factory with broken windows and gangs members doing dastardly deeds in the dark streets hereabouts. It’s actually a 19th century candy factory, the windows aren’t broken because they’re made of glass bricks and the graffiti from the gangs has a certain artistic flair. If nothing else, it decorates the outside of what is otherwise a breathtakingly functional structure. As far as I know, they limit their expressions to calligraphy.

  That’s all I want to know.

  Okay, it may not be precisely legal in terms of the zoning for me to be living here, but that’s immaterial - I live in my office. Why not? I work a ton of hours, live, eat and breathe my sweet code.

  Besides, with two thousand square feet of brick walls, twenty foot ceilings and ancient hardwood factory floors, it’s not as if there isn’t room for me too. I have a lot of stainless shelving on wheels - an assembly of that in the vicinity of the sink passes for my kitchen. I sleep on a futon, which makes for a ‘reception area’ by day and offers no privacy whatsoever.

  Maybe there’s something paranoid deep in my psyche, some forgotten trauma which left an indelible scar, but I need to see all of my surroundings all the time. This place gives me that. I can see all the way to the walls in every direction from any position.

  What’s beyond the walls I can ignore. How’s that for a trick?

  There’s only one entrance - a big steel sucker that rolls up like a garage door. You don’t trot too fast over that threshold - the freight elevator shaft is on the other side and some illustrious soul once saw fit to remove the safety grate.

  There’s a fire escape too, but that door is bolted down hard and rusted too. So, yes, I need to duck not only the zoning inspector but the fire marshal. It adds a certain spice to life.

  The place is cheap, for how big it is. And the windows are amazing. Rows upon rows of glass bricks, stretching all the way to the ceiling. They have just a little ripple in the glass, not a pattern, so the world beyond looks like a reflection of itself. Or a Monet painting. The light is awesome - not that I’m often awake to see it.

  It’s a great space and one that took me half of forever to find. I have half of the second floor of the building - the first floor is more showy, but I had security concerns. I can lock down the door and disallow access to my space from the elevator - there’s another smaller elevator at the back of the building to service the other part of this floor.

  Perfect security.

  See, there’s nothing domestic about my veritable wall of old monitors and televisions hot-wired to play computer screen. Or on the mounds of computer cadavers, their hard drives and CD-ROMs plucked like the choice morsels of roadkill and the rest left to gather dust. People give me old boxes, I buy my share and I get some hot stuff in for beta testing. Beta testing doesn’t pay that well, but it gives me a revenue baseline and with everything powered up all the time, I log enough hours to find some bugs.

  It also gives me some fearsome juice bills.

  The tubes are particularly impressive, I think. On a slow day, I hooked them all up to one source and with a flick of the wrist, I can animate the wall that they’re stacked against. Only a geek would appreciate how cool it can look to have umpteen versions of your code dancing in unison - especially in the dead of the night.

  It’s also a mind-boggling way to play games.

  On this particular night, it didn’t do a thing for me. Even a pot of primo Jamaican dark roast did little to make me want to get to work. I swiveled in one of my borderline antique chairs - acquired for peanuts at the university property disposition department, like most of my decor - then slung my legs over its arm.

  I was thinking about James. Not a healthy preoccupation and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop. He’d looked so defeated, that must be it. And who knew the man had a killer grin? I was certain I’d never seen him smile like that. But worse, I was used to seeing him in total control, commander of the universe or something like that.

  Just how bad were the finances of the Coxwell household? How broke was broke, in my sister’s estimation? Even James seemed pretty stressed about the cash, but then, we were from different worlds, the Coxwells and the O’Reilly’s. He might be down to his last five million or so and feeling the pinch.

  And Marcia had a pretty high burn rate - coming from nothing teaches you zip about the language of money. I’d come by what fluency I had the hard way, and she’d never been to that part of town.

  I prowled around, like the proverbial feline on the hunt, unable to concentrate on any of the questions sent to dear opinionated Aunt Mary. I was trying, if you must know, to persuade myself to forget about it. My mother always said that my need to know other people’s business would get me into trouble - not so far, but there’s still time. And I had a feeling that once I started to dig into this, it would be tough to stop.

  Curiosity won.

  Wondering was getting me nowhere, and nothing done, after all. James wasn’t the only one who needed billable hours to make the math work.

  The cost-effective solution was to ferret out the truth, then get back to my diligent labor. Enquiring minds want to know and all that. Of course, it had nothing at all to do with James, or even with Marcia. I couldn’t have cared less whether I ever saw her again or not.

  I just like to know stuff. What makes people tick. What triggers them. What it takes to get something done. My sister had crossed a little threshold of no return. I wondered - quite naturally - just what it took to push her that far.

  After all, if she ever came back, I might need to give her a nudge myself.

  I got on the phone and you know how it is. You know someone who knows someone who knows someone and sooner or later, you’ve got the number of the secured line for some guy somewhere who can negotiate a black market one-time-use fee for a password to a big credit bureau.

  Is this legal? Don’t be ridiculous. But it’s there, and hurts no one other that the mega-corporation that keeps the database.

  This is incidentally the same mega-corporation which has tried to ruin my life on several occasions, through absolutely no fault of my own. It’s not as if I have a vendetta against them, but defrauding them of a hundred bucks here and now wasn’t even going to make a bleep on my moral radar screen.

  See, I made a bad marital choice, but am hardly the only one who ever did that. Why should it cost me for the rest of my blessed life? Okay, the guy was a loser - I should have insisted in the divorce papers that he have an “L” tattooed on his forehead, as a warning to all my unsuspecting single sisters - but enough is enough. The last drop of blood I had to pay to be rid of him forever was coming up due in a few weeks and I had the cash coming in, right on time.

  Amnesty from the IRS would be mine shortly. Finally. Monkey off my back and all that. It’s been my holy grail for what seems like most of my life, but has really only been about six years.

  Only. Ha.

  I tell you, I should plan a major cele
bration. It’s got to be worth a bottle of the good stuff to get your life back from them. It’s not as if anyone’s going to reclaim my grey hairs.

  Anyhoo, defrauding this corporate entity who blew the whistle and got this steamroller going in the first place is a zero guilt decision - in fact, it’s a matter of principle.

  I like bucking the system, after all, AND backing the underdog. Conveniently, in this case, I happened to be the underdog, so it was a double-bonus plan.

  Once I had the magic number, I knew I couldn’t wait. In for a penny, in for a pound. I snagged my leather jacket and one of those prepaid phone cards, then headed out to a donut place with a reasonably private public phone.

  Do I worry about heading into the evil city in the middle of the night all alone? You bet. But I don’t let fear stop me. You can’t when you’re single. You’d end up living in a box with three deadbolts on the door, eating cat food and waiting to die.

  Stay home and the crooks win. They get the night, by default and concession, the night which should rightly belong to all of us.

  That doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Keep your head down, walk purposefully, and stay where the lights are. Doesn’t always work, but there you go. It’s not as if the world hasn’t always had its crop of bad types who prey on others.

  And oh yes, I have a set of brass knuckles that I always slip on under my gloves, a little insurance just in case. Surprise is one helluvan advantage.

  You will, of course, have the good sense to not ask where I got them.

  The donut shop has terrible coffee, but such is the price of no one minding your business. Double-double-dreadful in hand, I snagged the booth by the phone, poked the phone card in the slot and dialed. Jeez, forgot my secret decoder ring and everything.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m looking for Dennis.”

  “You got him.”

  I could just imagine this guy. He had a slight wheeze, which reminded me of every geek I’d every known who lived on Doritos and never came out of his cave. Full beard because shaving takes time away from writing code.

  Or worse - a soul patch. I shuddered. Next time I go to a computer conference, I’m taking a bucketful of razors and will volunteer to shave those miserable things off. Dennis - if that was his name - probably had skin the color of milk, wicked fast fingers and was dangerously clever.

  “I need a credit report. I heard this was the place to call.”

  He chuckled. “You live at Donut Paradise in Boston?”

  I let scorn drip from my tone. He had call display, just as I had suspected. “Yeah, well, their chocolate crullers aren’t all bad. And I don’t have to go out to get them.”

  “What’s your name?”

  Fat chance I’d confess to that. You learn a lot about what can be tracked from a phone call in my business - let alone what can be divined from surfing around - and no one was getting me that easily. I love prepaid phone cards, keep a drawer full of them, all bought at different convenience stores and kept for at least six months before use.

  I cut to the chase. “You selling or not?”

  “Sure, but I want to know what you’ve got to exchange first.” Before I could try to interpret that, he continued. “You know that microbrewery down by the harbor?”

  “I know it. Westphalian Lagers.”

  “That’s the one. How about a twelve of their wheat beer?”

  “Are you nuts?” I was outraged. “This area code is for Utah! Do you know what it will cost me to ship a twelve pack of beer there? They use glass bottles! They’re PINTS!”

  “Overnight,” he added mildly.

  I fumed. “That’s unbelievable. That’s extortion!”

  “That’s the price.”

  “Beer. You want beer. What kind of wacko are you?”

  Now, did I really want to know that? Probably not, but the damage was done.

  “I like beer.” I could almost hear him shrug. “They don’t ship out of Massachusetts and I need the bottle for my collection.”

  I swore and didn’t care what he thought of that. I did a little math and swore again. The overnight charge could make legal ways and means look good. “Six,” I countered, ever hopeful.

  “Twelve. Take it or leave it.”

  “I could just call the company. Do this legit.”

  “Ah, the forms.” I heard his chair squeal as he leaned back to expound on his theme. I rolled my eyes, which fortunately makes no sound. Wouldn’t it be a drag to have the rattly eyeballs of cartoon characters? There’d be no privacy left in the world at all.

  And there already isn’t nearly enough.

  “Have you seen the forms?” ol’ Dennis asked. “They need to know who you are and why you want to know and what purpose you have for the information in question. You fill them out in triplicate and sign them in blood. Yeah, why don’t you call them?”

  “Twelve it is,” I agreed, growly and disgruntled. “I hope you choke on them.”

  He laughed, then gave me an URL - which is a website address, in case you don’t know - and a password, along with the warning that it would only work for a single unauthorized access to the database. Then the charming, if inevitable warning. “I’d better get those brews on time. If you screw with me, Ms. Donut Paradise, I’ll find out where you live.”

  “Oh, I’m scared,” I whispered, then gave my best maniacal laugh and hung up the phone.

  I’d send him his brews - another matter of principle - but he’d never find me. Once you understand how this stuff works, it’s relatively easy to thwart.

  Like the phone cards - no one gets my name and address on their call display when I do this. They get the address of the donut shop. Big deal. The phone is used here so much that it’s pretty unlikely that anyone could hook me up with any specific call. I left the booth and someone else slid in to use the phone, proof positive of that.

  Because you see, once someone has your name and city of residence, then can get your address very easily. Phonebooks are great resources and readily available. You can get them at the library for all kinds of places and, even easier, snag them online.

  And speaking of the Internet, every time you log on and surf, my little pumpkins, you leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Those little snippets of code prove where you went from where, and tell interested souls a great deal about your particular habits. Marketing types feast upon this information, the better to deluge normal people with spam and direct mail.

  But I’m not normal people. I duck spam and dodge direct mail.

  Worse, your email address gets logged everywhere you go. Equipped with that email address, any junior league hacker can bust into the internet service provider and get a name, home address, telephone number. If that’s not bad enough, oh goody, he or she can snag that credit card number to which your account is billed every month.

  Are we having fun yet? See, you don’t even have to shop online to be vulnerable. We won’t even talk about the so-called cookies that various sites slide on to your drive when you aren’t looking, little spies inserted into your own hierarchy where they flourish away, undetected. Just being online puts you in the sights of all kinds of bounty hunters.

  On the other hand, so does walking down a city street at night. You choose your risks, we all do, and you live with them.

  In my business, I deal with a lot of people who could be professional class hackers. They’re good. They know how things work, they know how to find a weakness. There’s a big screwball factor out there in the wide wacky world of the World Wide Web. You never know what’s going to set someone off.

  Maybe it’s the role-playing games to which we’re all addicted. Maybe it’s spending too much time solo, maybe it’s the lack of a sexually integrated culture or maybe it’s just too many people who were labeled too smart too soon, so never learned their social p’s and q’s. Doesn’t matter. As more-or-less a female lone wolf in a den of horny men, I cover my own butt, thanks just the same.

  It’s not that I’m doing anything ou
t of line - you’re probably thinking I run drugs out of this place or something - but it’s a point of pride that I learn from experience. I was stalked once and lived to tell about it. It’s never going to happen again.

  So, I have one computer which is not hooked into my office LAN. It’s a little island of its own, isolated and breathtakingly stupid, a laughably antique box. It chokes on most sites these days, its meager memory just incapable of dealing with all the data. Suits my needs well. It has nothing on its hard drive except applications as pure as the driven snow. Any poke from a remote site gets nada. I programmed it to wipe the cache constantly, so they can’t get that either.

  It has an e-mail account which is prepaid. I change the account name and mailing address - always a P.O. box somewhere that isn’t really mine. Who cares? All the mail that will result is promo junk from some direct mailer who bought their mailing list - whenever the prepay runs out. I change the ISP at intervals too, sometimes a big one, sometimes a little one. They never see me, and no one knows that all those prepaid people are the same person.

  So, let ol’ Dennis hack away. He’s welcome to that so-called information.

  Back in the cave, I used the dinosaur PC, logged in with the magic password and searched for the illustrious Coxwells.

  I choked on my java when the report came up. The screen scrolled and scrolled, listing debt after debt after debt.

  Oh, baby, this was major credit card meltdown. Someone had had some huge fun. Those cards had to be so hot that they imprinted their little numbers on everything within a two inch radius. I imagined James with his Amex number burned right into his tight butt and took a hot swig of joe.

  To distract myself, I tried to imagine even having that much credit - this made my historic financial woes look like nothing - then went back and looked again.

  The initial cards - the usual platinum assortment, one from each company - were jointly held. My sister had a companion card, or whatever the company called it, and James clearly paid the bill. The credit report showed that he was the only one making a dime. He made a lot of dimes, but not nearly enough of them to support this, and if his billings were lower this year than last, well, any idiot could do the math.