License to Lie

by Terry Ambrose

  The longer he stared at the screen, though, the more patterns he began to recognize. He could make out words that were separated by some sort of code. Outside the apartment, he heard a man and a woman talking. Their voices grew louder. Skip went to the living room. The voices were right outside the front door. He waited and listened.

  If they came into this apartment, his only option would be to go out one of the windows, probably the slider to the patio. Skip positioned himself by the door and eased the latch open. His pulse shot up at the clacking of metal meeting metal. He watched the front door and waited for it to open. When he heard a door close, he realized that the couple had gone into the apartment next door and let out the breath he’d been holding.

  Skip locked the latch and returned to the computer. So what was he looking at? He was almost afraid to touch the keyboard for fear of disrupting something important. On the other hand, he had the sense that whatever he was looking at was important to finding the ransom. Skip pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

  On the second ring, a man answered. “Dude, speak to me.”

  “Hey, Baldorf, howzit dude’?”

  “Sweet, man. I’m into final testing on Baldorf’s Revenge.”

  While he didn’t understand even the basic details of the programming behind a virtual reality program such as Baldorf’s Revenge, Skip did know one thing. Baldorf was a computer genius. If anyone could become one with the machine, it would be Baldorf. He was a twenty-two-year-old geek who immersed himself in the computer world for eighteen hours a day, six days a week. On his off day, he meditated. All day—or so he said. Skip was willing to bet money that some of that meditation time was spent on a computer.

  “I have a technical problem,” Skip said.

  “You’ve come to the mountain, my friend. Speak and I shall cure your ills.”

  Skip chuckled. “You’re a maniac, you know that?”

  “Oh, I am so offended. And here I thought you sought knowledge.”

  “What I seek is someone to tell me what the hell I’m looking at.”

  “I have great powers, true, but I am unable to see through your eyes.”

  Skip gave himself a light tap on the forehead. “You are a genius man. Let me send you a photograph from my cell, maybe you can tell me if this is important or not.”

  “Beam it up, dude, I’m ready.”

  Skip laughed as he disconnected. Baldorf’s real name was Barry Finkledorf. He’d constructed the name Baldorf as a way to market his product while maintaining his identity. Skip had tried an early prototype of the game and gotten blown out on Level 2. Baldorf had promised Skip that, with practice, he could easily make it to Level 3 or 4. The game had ten levels. Skip figured it wasn’t for him.

  He snapped a picture of the screen and sent Baldorf a text message with the image attached. Two minutes later, his phone rang. “Cosgrove.”

  “Dude, it’s a base 64 encoded key logger output stream delivered via FTP.”

  Skip stammered, “A—a what?”

  “That computer you’re looking at is monitoring someone else’s computer. It’s logging key strokes.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You want me to, what, explain it?”

  Skip listened to his pulse echoing in his ear. He wet his lips and said, “Uh, not really.”

  “Didn’t think so. But you do want me to decode it for you.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Child’s play. It could be a cool diversion for oh, say, ten minutes or so.”

  Skip shook his head. Only Baldorf would consider something of this nature and complexity child’s play. Or a cool diversion. “Sure. Decode it.”

  “Well, I can’t, like, just look at it and decode it. I’ll need your help.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, Baldorf. And you want me to help?”

  “Think of it as a little male bonding and a bit of computer training. Use the mouse to scroll up on the screen.”

  Skip did as Baldorf instructed. He was stunned to realize that he was looking at pages of data. “How much of this stuff is there?”

  “Looks like someone was playing spy games. Very cool. Dude, there are two ways we can handle this. You can bring the computer to me, which could be problematic if you have to shut it down. If that thing has any security at all, it might take a little time to hack in.”

  “Can you crack a password?”

  “Dude, this is me. Of course I can. It just might take awhile.”

  “I don’t have lots of time. What’s the other option?”

  “We set up a remote monitoring session. Once I’m connected, I’ll have complete control over that machine.”

  “I think I like that option better.”

  “Awesome. I can expand my network.”

  “Huh? What’s that mean?”

  “I’m just going to tap into the brainpower of that machine for a little while. I’ll use the resource whenever the machine is in an idle state.”

  Skip’s mind raced with questions as he considered his predicament. Baldorf had also tried to explain the concept of virtual networking to Skip and he’d zoned out. How one computer could use another computer’s resources might as well be some galactic mystery. “Is this, um, legal?”

  “You’re giving me access to the machine, right?”

  “It’s, um, not really mine.”

  “Very cool, my friend. I take it you did not have the consent of the owner to access this machine.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Awesome. I’m proud of you. Welcome to the dark side.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Roxy

  Skip’s insurance company, of course, had a loophole that they interpreted to mean they didn’t have to provide Skip with a rental car. That meant getting rid of him wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as I’d hoped. For starters, I’d driven us to dinner. I couldn’t leave him at Keller’s without transportation and he didn’t have a second vehicle. It had already dawned on me that if I didn’t help him find something to drive, I’d be playing taxi for days—maybe weeks. Thank goodness he remembered that his hot-shot lawyer friend had a motorcycle he could borrow before I got to months or years.

  I got stuck driving him down to Del Mar to the lawyer’s house, but that was better than having to drive him all over for eternity while he sorted things out with his insurance company. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but the drive down Pacific Coast Highway, while pretty, was a pain in the ass. Basically, we had what seemed like half of Southern California on the road. There were all the surfers who had run out of daylight. And don’t forget the sunset seekers. Or the commuters who’d rather go slow on PCH than fight the weirdos on the 5. And then there was everyone else, those like me, who were just plain in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Once we got the drive out of the way, the next obstacle became the lawyer. Wally has the gift of gab and could talk chicken off the bone if he set his mind to it. He’s also hugely impressed with the money he’s made. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was Skip’s friend and a big-shot attorney who loved high-profile cases, I might have even considered him as a potential client. He had the bucks and the attitude I was looking for, but if I conned him, he’d probably set Skip on my trail. And if there was anything I’d learned in the last couple of days it was that Skip had a bad case of Mountie syndrome—he always got his man. Better for me to pass on Wally and go after someone who had less-persistent friends.

  I’d also learned another of Skip’s problems—he took things personally. That was good for his clients—my present role, but bad for his quarry—my role if I went after his friend’s money. No. It would be better to keep him on my side rather than on my trail.

  It was almost eight when I finally got away from Skip and Wally. I was relieved when Skip said he needed to compare notes with Wally about the Nordoff case. That meant he wouldn’t be following me and I’d get to my office to check out my hunch.

  My guess was tha
t Skip might be having Wally do some checking on my business. But unless Wally enlisted the help of some high-powered financial investigator, it was unlikely he’d turn up anything negative since I’d done everything in the shadows of legitimate companies. Even so, if Skip was checking my operations out, that meant there was another reason to get my money back quickly—the less people poking around my affairs, the better. I got to the office in the minimum standard San Diego commute time, thirty minutes. I was relieved when I slipped the door closed behind me and saw Stella’s phone sitting on the credenza charging. Good, right where I’d left it. And that meant no cops yet.

  My guess was that if Jimmy Dane was Stella’s boyfriend, he’d have sent her an e-mail with the password for the disk. He’d left the CD in her apartment, so why not send the password under separate cover?

  I started reviewing e-mails on her phone. The most recent were spam. At least, that’s what they looked like to me. She had emails for cosmetic surgery and beauty products along with the standard bedroom promotions of “make your man pant like a dog in heat.” With all the work Stella had done and the lingerie I’d found in her dresser drawer, I’d be surprised if a couple of quick poses in a candlelit room didn’t do the trick.

  The first e-mail that wasn’t spam was from Jimmy Dane, himself. “Where are you? Been calling for hours. Call me.”

  There was another from someone named Caroline. Her e-mail address was caroline@liketosurf.com. It turned out to be an invitation to meet this Saturday morning for a few hours. Sorry, Caroline, Stella won’t make it.

  Other not-so-innocent offers invited Stella to “hook up,” “catch up,” and “party around.” If they only knew what I knew about Stella. Further down the list, I saw Jimmy Dane’s next e-mail. It had no subject and had been sent yesterday afternoon within an hour of the time I’d been taken in by the cops. I opened the message.

  “P2xek30!$FQ.”

  That looked like a password to me. My fingers began to shake so much I nearly dropped Stella’s phone. I reached into my bag and pulled out the CD. In an effort to bolster my confidence, I said, “Who needs a hacker, anyway?”

  Finding out if this gibberish was really the password I needed would only take a few minutes. If I was correct, I could put this all behind me. That was a big if. I sat staring at the e-mail, unable to bring myself to actually try the password. The last thing I wanted was to be wrong and in this short moment, as far as I knew, I was right. I was rich again. I wanted to savor this moment and couldn’t bear the thought of being wrong.

  Finally, I gathered up my nerve and took Stella’s phone and the CD into my office. I booted up my machine and got the disk into the CD drive. A dark-blue screen with a password field filled my monitor’s display. Slowly, I tapped out the characters in the e-mail. I clicked the submit button. A little disc rotated on the screen, the CD in my drive clickety clacked. The machine went into thinking mode.

  I held my breath. The screen went dark and then filled with the contents of the disk. I’d expected to see some elaborate conglomeration of data. Instead, it had four little lines. The first line was a web site address. The second was labeled “Account” and was a twelve digit number. The third was labeled “User” and it was a series of characters. The fourth was labeled “Pass” and contained another series of characters.

  By now, my heart pounded in my chest so hard I thought it might explode. I was one step closer and almost free. I started up Internet Explorer and waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Finally, when it was ready, I typed in the web site address from the disk.

  The address came up as “Amalgamated Worldwide Bank.”

  I whispered to myself. “Oh my God, Roxy, you’re there.”

  I searched the page for some sort of login form. Nothing on the Home page for that, but I did find a page called “Client Accounts.” I clicked the menu item and landed on a page that had a field marked Account Number on the right side.

  I typed, “198724887743” and clicked the button labeled “Submit.”

  The box I’d typed the account number into slid down to reveal two new fields. One was labeled User Name, the other, Password. My palms felt sweaty as I rubbed my face with my hands. Tears welled in my eyes.

  I typed in the user name and password and clicked the “Login” button. The screen blurred.

  I clasped my hands together and mumbled, “Please make this right.”

  On my screen, the image of rotating gears superimposed itself over the page content. Below the gears was a two-word message. “Please wait . . .”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Skip

  The butterflies in Skip’s stomach danced in circles as he watched the blue lights to his right. The modem blinked some sort of coded message, one that he had no desire to understand. The first light was solid, the second blinked once every second. Another alternated between flashing and solid patterns. First it flashed rapidly, then glowed, then flashed again. On the nightstand, the red numbers of a digital clock cast the bed in an eerie glow. Green dots from a printer and a shredder added to the dimness. But the biggest single source was the computer screen in front of him.

  The half-light from the screen hurt Skip’s eyes when he looked directly at it and left glowing imprints that slowly dissolved when he glanced away into the dark shadows. He’d never learned to type accurately by touch, so he kept his little flashlight in his mouth and watched the keyboard as he followed Baldorf’s instructions.

  He had just clicked the mouse to make the connection with Baldorf’s computer when he heard a thud. He realized that he’d been so focused on getting the computer connection made that he’d lost track of what was going on anywhere other than on the computer before him. There it was again.

  Was someone in the apartment?

  Another thud. Skip turned off the flashlight and whispered into the cell phone, “Baldorf, hang on.”

  He slipped the phone into his jacket pocket and stood. His back felt stiff from having been hunched over the computer in the dark room. Thud. Thud.

  Skip glanced into the living room. Dark.

  He stood stock still in the shadows of the darkest part of the room. If someone else was here, would he have time to get to the slider and escape?

  Thud, thud, thud.

  Skip’s heart pounded as he forced himself to breathe. He willed his body’s mechanism to calm itself, to be more quiet. His efforts were to no avail. He closed his eyes and strained to listen for the slightest movement. Was there a rustling? A footstep?

  He now heard the ticking of a wall clock coming from the kitchen. A motorcycle in the distance. Now the room was silent except for the occasional banging noise. Another noise. There it was again. A moan. Voices. A man’s.

  He thought he could make out the muffled words. “Oh, baby.”

  A woman’s voice, “Yes. Yes!”

  Skip leaned against the wall. He breathed in slowly, then let the air out just as slowly. He focused on the noise. It was upstairs. It was a headboard banging against the wall.

  The voices grew louder.

  He pulled out his phone. “How’s it going, Baldorf?”

  “Fine on this end, dude. You sound tense.”

  “There was a noise. I thought I wasn’t alone, turns out I am, but someone else isn’t.”

  The thuds grew more insistent. The murmurs, emphatic.

  Skip rubbed the back of his neck. Here he was, forced to listen to this couple get it on while he tried to concentrate. It didn’t help that he was between girlfriends or that he couldn’t get Roxy out of his mind. He shook his head. Roxy was bad news and had no interest. He began to pace. He snapped, “Can I get out of here, now? Are you done?”

  Baldorf chuckled. “Dude, sounds like you need to relax. Yeah, I have what I need, come on over.”

  Skip double checked the apartment to make sure he’d left nothing behind. He realized that the banging had stopped. “Glad I don’t live here,” he muttered.

  He went to the front door and
peered out the peephole. The space was empty. He slipped out the door and pocketed his gloves while the damp coolness of night air welcomed him. With each step he took away from Dane’s apartment, he felt more relaxed. By the time he got to Wally’s motorcycle, he’d put the closeness, and the tension, of the apartment behind him. He donned his helmet and started up the bike, then took off for Baldorf’s condo in Oceanside.

  Baldorf rented a studio apartment just a few blocks from the beach, yet, to Skip’s knowledge, had never gone there. He could walk to the Oceanside pier easily, but preferred to spend his time staring at a monitor. Skip kept hoping that Baldorf would meet the right girl and develop other interests, but the kid seemed to get his enjoyment from tackling computer challenges.

  It took about fifteen minutes to reach Baldorf’s place. Traffic was light at this time of night, but not nonexistent. In Southern California, someone was always going somewhere. He found a spot between two cars that hadn’t wedged themselves into the street’s parallel-parking spaces and backed the bike in. This time, he took the helmet with him. He’d wanted nothing to carry when entering Dane’s place, but here, he could always go back to Baldorf’s should he leave something behind.

  Baldorf had rented the studio apartment for about three years. The unit was actually an illegal addition that had been built by an owner back in the ‘80s. The owner had never admitted that the unit didn’t meet building codes, but Baldorf had gotten suspicious when his equipment kept blowing fuses. Finally, out of frustration, he’d checked with the City. With that bit of leverage, he’d persuaded the owner to do some wiring upgrades that resulted in the power supply becoming reliable and Baldorf becoming a very satisfied tenant.

  At the door, Skip was about to knock when he heard Baldorf’s voice. “Come in, Skip. It’s open.”

  He opened the door and stepped inside. Baldorf sat at a bank of monitors. One of the monitors was split into four quadrants. He instantly recognized Baldorf’s new addition. “You’ve added security cameras.”