Lawrence Block - A Walk Among the Tombstones

”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. “Now can you do the same thing with your password for COSMOS? Don’t tell me what it is, just enter it. Uh-huh.”

“Beautiful,” Jimmy said softly as the number came up on our screen. He punched it in.

“That ought to do it,” David told whoever he was talking to. “I don’t think you should have any problems from here on in.” He broke the connection and let out a huge sigh. “I don’t think we should have any problems, either. ‘Don’t tell me the number, just enter it. Don’t tell me, darling, just tell my computer.’ ”

“Hot damn,” Jimmy said.

“We’re in?”

“We’re in.”

“Yay!”

“Matt, what’s your phone number?”

“Don’t call me,” I said. “I’m not home.”

“I don’t want to call you. I want to check your line. What’s the number? Never mind, don’t tell me, see if I care. ‘Scudder, Matthew.’ West Fifty-seventh Street, right? That look familiar?”

I looked at the screen. “That’s my phone number,” I said.

“Uh-huh. You happy with it? You want me to change it, give you something easier to remember?”

“If you call the phone company to get your number changed,” David said, “it takes them a week or so to run it through channels. But we can do it on the spot.”

“I think I’ll keep the number I’ve got,” I said.

“Suit yourself. Uh-huh. You’ve got pretty basic service, haven’t you? No Call Forwarding, no Call Waiting. You’re at a hotel, you’ve got the switchboard backing you up, so maybe you don’t need Call Waiting, but you ought to have Call Forwarding anyhow. Suppose you stay over at somebody’s house? You could get your calls routed there automatically.”

“I don’t know if I’d use it enough to make it worthwhile.”

“Doesn’t cost anything.”

“I thought there was a monthly charge for it.”

He grinned and his fingers were busy on the keypad. “No charge for you,” he said, “because you have influential friends. As of this moment you’ve got Call Forwarding, compliments of the Kongs. We’re in COSMOS now, that’s the particular system we invaded, so that’s where I’m entering changes in your account. The system that figures your billing won’t know about the change, so it won’t cost you anything.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I see you use AT&T for your long-distance calls. You didn’t select Sprint or MCI.”

“No, I didn’t figure I would save that much.”

“Well, I’m giving you Sprint,” he said. “It’s going to save you a fortune.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh, because NYNEX is going to route your long-distance calls to Sprint, but Sprint’s not going to know about it.”

“So you won’t get billed,” David said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Trust me.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt what you said. I just don’t know how I feel about it. It’s theft of services.”

Jimmy looked at me. “We’re talking about the phone company,” he said.

“I realize that.”

“You think they’re gonna miss it?”

“No, but—”

“Matt, when you make a call from a pay phone and the call goes through but the quarter comes back anyway, what do you do? Keep it or put it back in the slot?”

“Or send it to them in stamps,” David suggested.

“I see your point,” I said.

“Because we all know what happens when the phone eats your quarter and doesn’t put the call through. Face it, none of us are way out in front of the game when we’re dealing with Mother Bell.”

“I suppose.”

“So you’ve got free long distance and free Call Forwarding. There’s a code you have to enter to forward your calls, but just ring them up and tell them you lost the slip and they’ll explain it to you. Nothing to it. TJ, what’s your phone number?”