A Walk Among the Tombstones (17 page)

"Or even seventy-five dollars for a crummy hotel room."

"Or fifty for a disgusting hotel room. So what we'll do--"

"We find a bank of pay phones where there's not much traffic, like in the Grand Central waiting room over by the commuter lines--"

"-- because there's not many commuter trains leaving in the middle of the night--"

"-- or in an office building, anything like that."

"Or one time we sort of let ourselves into an office--"

"Which was stupid, man, and I never want to do that again."

"We just did it to use the phone."

"And can you feature telling that to the cops? 'It's not burglary, Officer, we just dropped in to use the phones.' "

"Well, it was exciting, but we wouldn't do it again. The thing is, see, we'll probably have to spend hours and hours on this--"

"And you wouldn't want anybody walking in, or having to switch phones when we're all hooked up."

"No problem," I said. "We'll get a decent hotel room. What else?"

"Coke."

"Or Pepsi."

"Coke's better."

"Or Jolt. 'All the sugar and twice the caffeine.' "

"Maybe some junk food. Maybe some Doritos."

"Get the ranch flavor, not the barbecue."

"Potato chips, Cheez Doodles--"

"Oh, man, not Cheez Doodles!"

"I like Cheez Doodles."

"Man, that has got to be the lamest junk food there is. I challenge you to name anything edible that is stupider than Cheez Doodles."

"Pringles."

"No fair! Pringles aren't food. Matt, you got to judge this one.

What do you say? Are Pringles food?"

"Well--"

"They're not! Hong, you are so sick. Pringles are tiny Frisbees that warped, that's all they are. They're not food."

WHEN Kenan Khoury didn't answer I tried his brother. Peter's voice was thick with sleep and I apologized for waking him. "I keep doing that," I said. "Sorry."

"My own fault, nodding out in the middle of the afternoon. My sleep schedule got all turned around lately. What's up?"

"Not much. I was trying to reach Kenan."

"Still in Europe. He called me last night."

"Oh."

"Coming back Monday. Why, you got some good news to report?"

"Not yet. I've got some cabs I have to take."

"Huh?"

"Expenses," I said. "I'll have to shell out close to two thousand dollars tomorrow. I wanted to clear it with him."

"Hey, no problem. I'm sure he'll say yes. He said he'd cover your expenses, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"So lay it out. He'll pay you back."

"That's the problem," I said. "My money's in the bank and it's Saturday."

"Can't you use an ATM?"

"Not for a safe-deposit box. I can't get it all out of my checking account because I just paid the bills the other day."

"So write a check and cover it Monday."

"This isn't the kind of expense where the people will take a check."

"Oh, right." There was a pause. "I don't know what to tell you, Matt. I could come up with a couple of hundred, but I haven't got anything like two grand."

"Doesn't Kenan have it in the safe?"

"Probably a lot more than that, but I can't get in there. You don't give a junkie the combination to your safe, not even if he's your brother.

Not unless you're crazy."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm not bitter," he said. "I'm just stating a fact. No reason on earth for me to have the combination to the safe. I got to tell you, I'm glad I don't have it. I wouldn't trust myself with it."

"You're clean and sober now, Pete. What's it been, a year and a half?"

"I'm still a drunk and a junkie, man. You know the difference between the two? A drunk will steal your wallet."

"And a junkie?"

"Oh, a junkie'll steal your wallet, too. And then he'll help you look for it."

I ALMOST asked Pete if he wanted to go to that Chelsea meeting again, but something made me let the moment pass. Maybe I remembered that I wasn't his sponsor, and that it was not a position for which I wanted to volunteer.

I called Elaine and asked her how she was fixed for cash. "Come on over," she said. "I've got a house full of money."

She had fifteen hundred in fifties and hundreds and said she could get more from the ATM, but no more than $500 a day. I took twelve hundred so I wouldn't leave her broke. That, added to what I had in my wallet and what I could get from my own ATM, would be plenty.

I told her what I needed the money for and she thought the whole thing was fascinating. "But is it safe?"

she wanted to know. "It's obviously illegal, but how illegal is it?"

"It's worse than jaywalking. Computer trespass is a felony, and so is computer tampering, and I have a feeling the Kongs will be committing both of them tomorrow night. I'll be aiding and abetting them, and I've already committed criminal solicitation. I'll tell you, you can't turn around these days without trampling all over the penal law."

"But you think it's worth it?"

"I think so."

"Because they're just kids. You wouldn't want to get them in trouble."

"I wouldn't want to get myself in trouble, either. And they run this particular risk all the time. At least they're getting paid for it."

"How much are you going to give them?"

"Five hundred apiece."

She whistled. "That's not bad for a night's work."

"No, it's not, and if they'd come up with a figure it would probably have been a lot less. They went blank when I asked them how much they wanted, so I suggested five hundred each. That seemed fine to them.

They're middle-class kids, I don't think they're hurting for money. I have a feeling I could have talked them into doing the job for free."

"By appealing to their better nature."

"And their desire to be in on something exciting. But I didn't want to do that. Why shouldn't they have

the dough? I'd have been willing to pay more than that to some phone-company employee if I could have figured out who to bribe. But I couldn't find anybody who'd admit what I wanted was technologically possible. Why not give it to the Kongs? It's not my money, and Kenan Khoury says you can always afford to be generous."

"And if he decides to bail out?"

"That doesn't seem likely."

"Unless, of course, he gets arrested going through customs wearing a vest full of powder."

"I guess something like that could happen," I said, "but that would just mean I'd be out of pocket to the tune of a little under two grand, and I started out by taking ten thousand dollars from him a couple of weeks ago. That's almost how long it's been. It'll be two weeks Monday."

"What's the matter?"

"Well, I haven't accomplished very much in that amount of time. It seems as though-- well, the hell with it, I'm doing what I can. Anyway, the point is that I can afford to take the chance that I won't get reimbursed."

"I suppose so." She frowned. "How do you get two thousand dollars? Say one-fifty for a hotel room, and a thousand for the two Kongs. How much Coca-Cola can two kids drink?"

"I drink Coke, too. And don't forget TJ."

"He drinks a lot of Coke?"

"All he wants. And he gets five hundred dollars."

"For introducing you to the Kongs. I didn't even think of that."

"For introducing me to the Kongs, and for thinking of introducing me to the Kongs. They're the perfect way to spirit information out of the phone company, and I never would have thought of looking for someone like that."

"Well, you hear about computer hackers," she said, "but how would you find one? They don't list them in the Yellow Pages. Matt, how old is TJ?"

"I don't know."

"You never asked him?"

"I never got a straight answer. I'd say fifteen or sixteen, and I don't think I could be off by more than a year either way."

"And he lives on the street? Where does he sleep?"

"He says he's got a place. He's never said where or with whom.

One thing you learn on the street, you don't want to be too quick to tell your business to people."

"Or even your name. Does he know how much he's getting?"

I shook my head. "We haven't discussed it."

"He won't be expecting that much, will he?"

"No, but why shouldn't he have it?"

"I'm not disagreeing with you. I just wonder what he's going to do with five hundred dollars."

"Whatever he wants. At a quarter a shot, he could call me up two thousand times."

"I guess," she said. "God, when I think of the different people we know. Danny Boy, Kali. Mick. TJ, the Kongs. Matt? Let's not ever leave New York, okay?"

On Sundays Jim Faber and I usually have our weekly dinner at a Chinese restaurant, although we occasionally go somewhere else. I met him at six-thirty at our regular place, and a few minutes after seven he asked me if I had a train to catch. "Because that's the third time in the past fifteen minutes you looked at your watch."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't realize it."

"You anxious about something?"

"Well, there's something I have to do later," I said, "but there's plenty of time. I don't have to be anywhere until eight-thirty."

"I'll be going to a meeting myself at eight-thirty, but I don't suppose that's what you've got scheduled."

"No. I went to one this afternoon because I knew I wouldn't be able to fit one in tonight."

"This appointment of yours," he said. "You're not nervous because you're gonna be around booze, are

you?"

"God, no. There won't be anything stronger than Coca-Cola.

Unless somebody picks up some Jolt."

"Is that a new drug I don't know about?"

"It's a cola drink. Like Coke, but twice as much caffeine."

"I don't know if you can handle it."

"I don't know that I'm going to try. You want to know where I'm going after I leave here? I'm going to check into a hotel under a phony name and then I'm going to have three teenage boys up to my room."

"Don't tell me any more."

"I won't, because I wouldn't want you to have foreknowledge of a felony."

"You're planning on committing a felony with these kids?"

"They're the ones who'll be committing a felony. I'm just going to watch."

"Have some more of the sea bass," he said. "It's especially good tonight."

BY nine o'clock all four of us were assembled in a $160-a-night corner room in the Frontenac, a 1,200-room hotel built a few years ago with Japanese money and since sold to a Dutch conglomerate.

The hotel was on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street, and from our room on the twenty-eighth floor you could get a glimpse of the Hudson. Or you could have, if we hadn't drawn the shades.

There was a spread of snack food laid out on the top of the dresser, including Cheez Doodles but not including Pringles. The little refrigerator held three varieties of cola, a six-pack of each. The telephone had been relocated from the bedside table to the desk, with something called an acoustic coupler attached to its earpiece and something else called a modem plugged into its rear. It shared the desk with the Kongs' laptop computer.

I had signed the register as John J. Gunderman and gave an address on Hillcrest Avenue, in Skokie, Illinois. I paid cash, along with the fifty-dollar deposit required of cash customers who wanted access to the telephone and mini-bar. I didn't care about the mini-bar, but we damn well needed the phone. That was why we were in the room.

Jimmy Hong was seated at the desk, his fingers flashing on the computer's keyboard, then punching numbers on the phone. David King had drawn up another chair but was standing, looking over Jimmy's shoulder at the computer screen. Earlier he had tried to explain to me how the modem allowed the computer to hook into other computers through the telephone lines, but it was a little like trying to explain the fundamentals of non-Euclidean geometry to a field mouse. Even when I understood the words he used, I still didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

The Kongs had worn suits and ties, but only to get through the hotel lobby; their ties and jackets were on the bed now, and they had their sleeves rolled up. TJ was in his usual costume, but they hadn't hassled him at the desk. He'd come lugging two sacks of groceries, disguised as a delivery boy.

Jimmy said, "We're in."

"All right!"

"Well, we're into NYNEX but that's like being inside the hotel lobby when you need to be in a room on the fortieth floor. Okay, let's try something."

His fingers danced and combinations of numbers and letters popped up on the screen. After a while he said, "Bastards keep changing the password. You know the amount of effort they spend just trying to keep people like us out?"

"As if they could."

"If they put the same energy into improving the system--"

"Stupid."

More letters, more numbers. "Damn," Jimmy said, and reached for his can of Coke. "You know what?"

"Time for our people-to-people program," David said.

"That's what I was thinking. You feel like refining your human-contact skills?"

David nodded and took the phone. "Some people call this 'social engineering,' " he told me. "It's hardest with NYNEX because they warn their people about us. Good thing for us that most of the people who work there are morons." He dialed a telephone number, and after a moment he said, "Hi, this is Ralph Wilkes, I'm trouble-shooting your line. You've been having trouble getting into COSMOS, right?"

"They always do," Jimmy Hong murmured. "So it's a safe question."

"Yeah, right," David was saying. There was a lot of jargon I couldn't follow, and then he said, "Now how do you log in? What's your access code? No, right, don't tell me, you're not supposed to tell me, it's security." He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know, they give us grief about the same thing. Look, don't tell me the code, just punch it in on your keyboard." Numbers and letters appeared on our screen and Jimmy's fingers were quick to enter them on our keyboard. "Fine," David said.