He wasn’t going to let a foreign whore mess him up. Not again. This time, he’d take care of things.
From his gear bag, he retrieved gaffer tape and sealed her mouth shut. Her blue eyes, partially open, made him feel like she could see him, was bearing witness. He taped her eyes closed.
The threadbare pillows were thin, so he grabbed two for the job. It took forever before the bitch’s chest stopped fighting for air and her pulse quieted to nothingness. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Eighty minutes left on the reservation.
He ducked out of the room, stopped at a discount luggage shop and bought a nylon duffel bag. At the love hotel, he folded her knees to her tits and bound her body with gaffer tape before stuffing her in the bag. Good thing she was small. Some of those gaijin bitches were big as men.
With his gear bag slung over one shoulder and his new parcel weighing down the other, he pushed the button in the love hotel room, signaling that he was checking out. At a nearby construction site, he gathered some broken-up pieces of concrete and added them to the duffel bag. An isolated stretch of the bay provided a perfect spot. Yokohama was a big, busy port town. They wouldn’t be finding her anytime soon.
She’d been his only Canadian. But the sound quality wasn’t any good and the recording was incomplete. He deleted her. Another Canadian would come along.
Anyway, he was working on his new prospect, a Black chick. Everyone knew Black chicks were loud and loved to fuck. Pussies so big your dick could get lost inside. A Black gaijin would make a perfect addition to his collection.
He created a new folder in his library of recordings: “African-Americans.” TokyoAli would be his first.
41
Alison pulled the pillow over her head to block out the persistent chirping of Charles’ computer. The head office was trying to reach Charles before he left for work. Why didn’t those idiots in New York cotton to the fact that there was a fourteen-hour time difference between Tokyo and The Center of the World?
The noise stopped. Peace and quiet. Alison turned over to get in a few more minutes of sleep when the computer began squawking again. She shot a mean glance at the bedside clock. It was already after eight. Charles had long been in the office.
“New York twits.” She stumbled out of bed and plodded over to Charles’ sacred computer shrine. His desktop computer, once forbidden to her, now looked massive and out of date compared to her sleek little laptop. With one eye still shut in sleep, Alison glared at the screen.
As she suspected. An instant chat message. Alison leaned forward to see the screen more clearly and was immediately wide awake. The chat request wasn’t from Charles’ office. It was from World NetLink. And it was addressed to her.
Damn that techno-freak. Not only had he woken her up, but he dared to contact her directly on the computer. On Charles’ computer. She’d forgotten to uninstall World NetLink from his Mac. Lucky thing for her that Charles wasn’t home to see the message.
Her stalker was back at his game, tormenting her from behind his mask of anonymity. But after her shopping spree in Hong Kong, she was no longer a helpless sitting duck. Digital defense systems shielded her and weapons stood ready in her arsenal.
If she could persuade the jerk to meet her online when she was at the controls of her fully loaded computer, she might be able to lure him into a little trap. Grateful that the gears of her coffee-denied morning brain were nevertheless turning over, she took the first step to exposing the identity of her cyberbully. Let the games begin, asshole. She accepted his chat invitation.
She groaned when she saw that the person paging her wasn’t the cyber freak. It was her brother.
“Rob, I was dead asleep. Can’t you call me on the phone and wake me up like everyone else does?”
“Sorry. But we need to talk.”
“Then let’s talk. I’m awake now. Thanks to you.”
“We need to talk offline.”
Why was Rob being so guarded?
“Call me collect. Or I’ll call you. Are you at home?”
“Can’t do it like that. We need to talk where no one can hear us.”
“Is this a joke?”
“Do you have a fax machine? Not a fax modem, just a fax machine?”
“Yeah, you faxed me once before, remember?”
“Right. I forgot. Make sure the machine is on. I’m going to be sending you a fax. It’ll explain everything.”
“What’s this about? Why are you being stranger than usual?”
“Just make sure the fax is on and that it’s ready to receive. I’ll fax you in 30 minutes. OK?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
“Bye.”
“Rob, I’ll call you. Are you at home?”
She hit the return key but got a message that the chat connection was closed. What the hell was Rob talking about? She had to get some coffee.
A steaming mug of coffee and yoga stretches helped Alison get back on track. Rob had sounded so bizarre online. She could almost hear his desperation being transmitted down the modem line along with his electronic message. He’d pulled some elaborate pranks to get her, ribbing his big sister who he always said was too serious. But the tone of his online chat felt different. There was none of his usual smart-ass humor. Maybe the fax he was sending would be the punch line, and she would’ve fallen for yet another one of his practical jokes.
Unable to concentrate on her yoga breathing series, she got up and checked the fax machine. Fax turned on? Yes. Paper? Yes. There was nothing but the waiting. And waiting.
After sitting by an inert fax machine for nearly an hour first thing in the morning, waiting for some secretive message to be delivered, Alison realized that she’d been had. Again. It wasn’t one of his better pranks, but score yet another one for Rob.
Walking to the ofuro for her morning shower, Alison heard the fax line ring. She returned to the machine, now vibrating and spewing out its dispatch. The machine spat out a roll of fax paper, reminding her of Rob sticking out his tongue in his jokester’s victory lap.
The fax cover sheet showed that Rob had sent the message from some pay-as-you-fax copy shop on campus. Two pages to follow. Not waiting for the entire document, Alison snatched the first sheet.
Rob had written the fax by hand in that tight, meticulous scrawl he had developed in elementary school and which had stuck with him all these years.
A—
I’m sending this fax at a public machine because I don’t want any of this message traced. My fax modem is online so it’s detectable, and I didn’t want to send this over the usual email route because email can be intercepted as I know you know.
I got some bad news for you, kiddo. The feds shut down the SwampLand BBS. You said you got through and logged in as a user. That’s why I’m faxing. The BBS got busted because the SysOp for the board had some weird fuck kiddy porn GIFs and stuff on their servers. The SysOp copped and is now working with the feds. Word is he’s turning over the BBS user list to them. And a log of files each user uploaded and downloaded.
The feds really got it up their ass to bust boards these days, especially the ones with lots of bit-heads. I know you weren’t into any of that kiddy porn shit. Anyway, I’m sure a smart chick like you used an alias when you logged in, so they wouldn’t be able to track you down right away. But I wanted to let you know in case. They’re making arrests and talking about some kind of criminal conspiracy. I don’t understand it exactly, but you’re the lawyer.
So this might not be anything, but it might be something. And you’re all the fucking way on the other side of the fucking planet. I don’t even know if they could find you or would care.
Don’t worry. I’m in your corner. Lay low. Don’t call that BBS anymore. Stay in school. Don’t do drugs. Look both ways before you cross. Don’t talk to strangers. And have a good day.
—R.
Alison reread the fax. Rob must be overreacting. The Fed’s closure of SwampLand couldn’t possibly affect her. She wasn’t
a child pornography pervert.
Surely, a person couldn’t be in violation of the law for making a phone call with a computer and a modem. But why had Rob said he hoped she’d logged in under an alias?
“Oh, hell,” she moaned, remembering that when she joined SwampLand, not only had she supplied the BBS with her real name, but she’d given her phone number, as well. Or Charles’ phone number. Or more accurately, the firm’s phone number because the firm had rented the house and had leased the phone lines. Morgan Sachs wouldn’t appreciate being a party to a porn conspiracy. Still, the thought of those self-important Wall Street demigods being charged as pornographers made Alison smirk.
The kiddie porn crackdown was unlikely to affect her. But the Feds were involved, and the Feds were unpredictable. Alison began to appreciate the gravity of her situation. Taking things too lightly would be unwise.
She brewed a second cup of coffee, grabbed a notebook and pen, and took a seat at the kitchen table. With professional detachment, as if she were interviewing a client, she assessed her legal position.
A threshold question was jurisdiction. When she’d joined the SwampLand BBS, she’d been in Japan, not the U.S. Could U.S. federal law reach her in Tokyo? Would U.S. law even apply to someone who wasn’t in the States?
She’d accessed a BBS located in the U.S. through telephone lines regulated by the federal government. It could be argued that she had a virtual, if not physical, presence in the States. What’s the relevant jurisdiction when you’re in cyberspace? She wrote “Jurisdiction?” in her notebook.
Maybe she could rely on a First Amendment defense. The BBS was a repository of speech. BBS users had a fundamental right to say what they wanted to say, send messages, share files. It was their protected, Constitutional right. She added “1st Amdmt — Free Speech?” to her notes.
The government couldn’t abridge First Amendment rights without a compelling interest. But Alison was pretty sure that kiddy porn fell outside of the realm of protected speech contemplated by the Founding Fathers. Way outside.
Rob’s fax had mentioned the Feds bringing conspiracy charges. Alison vaguely remembered conspiracy theory from Crim Law in her first year of law school, how the laws made it easier for prosecutors to bring in all kinds of bad guys and their associates. It didn’t matter if a person performed a specific illegal act or even knew that another co-conspirator was up to no good. Designed to be expedient, the conspiracy laws were swift, harsh, and a prosecutor’s best friend.
She could argue that she didn’t even know about the illegal kiddy porn on the BBS. She didn’t have the conspirator’s requisite “corrupt motive.” And without the necessary mens rea state of mind, she couldn’t be deemed part of the conspiracy. She jotted down “Conspiracy — no mens rea” in her notebook.
And the First Amendment gave her a Constitutional right to associate freely with whomever she pleased, including the other members of the BBS, whatever they were up to. She drew a star next to First Amendment and wrote “Freedom/Association.”
On the other hand — one thing she’d learned in law school was to always consider the other hand — she’d agreed to the Terms of Service of the SwampLand BBS. She’d even affirmed that she wasn’t affiliated with law enforcement. That click of her mouse could be considered an agreement between conspirators. And after seeing the wealth of bootlegged commercial software available for free downloading, it’d be hard to argue that she had no constructive knowledge of the BBS’s questionable practices.
Face buried in her hands, Alison slumped at the table. The unthinkable threat of disbarment loomed. Disbarred and in prison all because of some damn computer network she knew nothing about.
Her heart fluttered and hammered in her chest. The second cup of coffee hadn’t been such a good idea. Inhaling deep cleansing breaths to slow herself down, talk herself back from the edge of the precipice, Alison recalled a legal maxim: A lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client. The smart thing for her to do would be to find an attorney.
But she wasn’t convinced she’d done anything wrong, certainly nothing like committing a federal crime. Another legal adage came to mind: Ignorance of the law is no defense.
42
Alison gathered her wallet, pencil and paper, deposited her purse and coat at the front desk of the American Center, and entered the library. A practiced pro, she sat down at the computer terminal, hands poised over the keyboard. The screen blinked, waiting for her to enter a command.
Where should she begin? What should she search for? Where would she find the answers to the question that weighed on her mind: How deep was the shit she was in?
She’d start her search with a broad subject term. According to Rob’s fax, the SwampLand bulletin board service had gotten busted for maintaining kiddy porn on its computers. Alison typed: “Subject = Computers and Pornography.”
The computer returned hundreds of cites, too many for her to examine. Apparently, computer porn was a hot topic. Tightening her search parameters would narrow down the results. She added “and Crime.”
Just typing in the word “crime” made her feel guilty for investigating the matter. She looked around the research library to see if anyone was watching her. Was she paranoid? Or embarrassed? Maybe a little of both.
As if sensing Alison’s floundering, the computer prompted her to search for “Computers: Crimes and Criminal Activity.”
“Okay, whatever you say.” Alison rephrased her search request.
The “Crimes and Criminal Activity’ area offered scads of possible subtopics she could explore, ranging from “Criminal Cases” to “Hackers” to “Legislation.” Scanning further down, she came upon the heading “Pornography.” Bingo. She printed out the cites and pulled the relevant disks before heading over to the CD-ROM readers she’d nicknamed the Big Guns.
One cite on the pornography list sounded exactly on point: “Bulletin Board System Clearinghouse for Pornography.” Excited that her legal research was off to a good start, she loaded the CD and skimmed the article, eager to glean information that would shed light on her legal problem. Her possible legal problem. No need to jump to conclusions.
The piece talked about an internet provider’s liability for maintaining pornographic images uploaded by users. Not relevant. She hadn’t uploaded any file to the BBS. Certainly not porn. She carried on. The next article discussed balancing users’ rights of free speech against a network’s right to screen email and delete offensive materials.
Close, but no cigar. Maybe she should hire a lawyer. For a quick consultation. But those free initial chats often snowballed into hefty legal fees, fees which could easily wipe out her stash of yen.
She could call a friend from law school, ask them to do her a favor. Not for herself, of course, but for her cousin’s brother-in-law’s next door neighbor’s kid who had joined a BBS that was being rated by the Feds.
She was probably overreacting to Rob’s melodramatic fax. He could always get to her with his smartass sense of humor. Researching the law was what she did. Maybe she’d reach a point where she wanted to contact a lawyer. But for now, she’d keep things to herself, gather more information, then figure out her next steps.
If she could get her hands on Lexis, her legal research would be a breeze. Alison remembered from her law school days the wealth of legal-related information a person could summon up with a few pithy key words in a Lexis search. Save-A-Tree couldn’t afford the pricey online legal database service, and neither could she.
Alison returned to her list and slogged through the citations. More free speech stuff. More service provider responsibility stuff. Alison was yawning when she came upon a cite that jolted her wide awake faster than the first rumblings of an earthquake. “Federal Liability for Maintaining Illegal Computer Software.” Hello! Just what she was looking for.
Alison pounded in the commands to see the entire article. The computer screen flashed: “Material not available at present location. Available locations: T
LRC.”
What was TLRC? Alison shrugged and continued laboring through her list. More law suits about privacy rights. Another promising cite referred her to TLRC.
She copied down the acronym and carried it to a reference librarian.
“May I help you?” the librarian asked.
“I was on the machine over there,” Alison gestured to the Big Guns, “and this came up in response to my inquiry. ‘Available locations: TLRC.’ Can you tell me what that means?”
“Of course. That’s the library of the Tokyo Law Research Center. TLRC.”
“Can I get a copy of their material here? Like an interlibrary loan.” If she couldn’t get the information she needed — and fast — maybe it was time to call a lawyer.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have trading privileges. It’s a private library. For attorneys.”
“Can I use it as a visiting foreign lawyer?”
The librarian’s eyes widened for a moment. Alison was familiar with the look of incredulity. It wasn’t the first time someone found it hard to believe she was an attorney. Maybe she should ditch the jeans and the North Face hoodie. Or maybe they should open their minds.
“I’m not sure of their policy,” the librarian said.
If what Rob wrote in his fax was true — and not an ill-timed April Fool’s joke — at this very moment the Feds were trying to track Alison down as a criminal conspirator in an internet kiddy porn ring. The TLRC legal research center might have restricted entrance rules, but she’d find a way to get in. Even in her jeans and hoodie. Having the FBI on her butt was a great motivator.
“Do you know where the library is?” Alison asked.
The librarian drew a quick map and handed it across the desk. Alison looked at the sketch, surprisingly detailed with bilingual street names. She didn’t know the area, but she would find the TLRC. Hopefully, before the FBI found her.
Tokyo Firewall: a novel of international suspense Page 22