Final Victim

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "How did it work?"

  "I had rudder failure. I looped back into the concrete dam and hit about one story from the bottom. I broke both legs and had a severe concussion. I was in the hospital for two months. Moral of the story, in case you missed it, is I don't mind risk if the reward seems worthwhile."

  Lockwood didn't doubt the story was true, but he wondered what it really said about Karen Dawson. Ten minutes later, they were led by another guard with a weight lifter's body out of the police lounge and through a sally port.

  They climbed some narrow wooden stairs at the end of the corridor and into the Attorneys' Wing. There were several small, windowless rooms with metal doors. In each room was a table and three or four chairs. The muscle-bound guard led them to the nearest one.

  "I'll bring him up."

  He left, and Lockwood made a quick search of the room and the furniture.

  "What're you doing?" Karen asked as he was crawling under the desk.

  "Hold on a minute." He stood and showed her a voice-activated tape recorder he'd removed from under the table. He opened the back and turned the batteries around, putting them back in backwards. "I don't need to face this conversation we're about to have at a trial board. This way they'll just think it didn't work because they misloaded the batteries." He clipped the now-defunct recorder back into the bracket under the table.

  "They bug these rooms?" she said, dismayed.

  "J. Edgar Hoover said knowledge is power."

  "No, he didn't. That was Sir Francis Bacon."

  "Well, Hoover shoulda said it… And, Karen, I know you can divide my IQ into yours and come out with Bill Clinton's hat size, but we'll do much better if you stop making me feel like an imbecile."

  "Then stop sounding like one," she deadpanned.

  He nodded and they sat down in the straight-backed wooden chairs and waited.

  Malavida Chacone worked in D Block, which was the old death row. That building had one of the best air-conditioning systems in the prn, the theory being that men who were waiting to die should not be subjected to the cruel and unusual punishment of summer heat in central California. The corridors were narrow and there were no windows, but frigid air flowed through the rooms, chilling skin and nerve endings like uncut heroin. The death row inmates had been transferred to the state prn when California stopped dispensing lethal doses of Edn-Medicine and began killing its condemned with the far more humane lethal injection. Because of the air conditioners, the prn's new computers were in D Block, and because Malavida Chacone could hack into anything for anybody, he had been offered a coveted job at the computer center. He ordered food, medical supplies, tires, and shotgun shells for the prn from 7:30 till 11 in the morning. After his coffee break from 11 to 12, he opened his store for the guards and inmates, scoring everything from Nike running shoes to lifetime subscriptions to Penthouse. His preferred customer was any hardcase who thought it might be fun to grab him and give him a hot beef injection in the "trick bunk" located in the back of C Block. He had made himself too valuable to rape.

  He'd also managed to computer-select his own cellmate. The lucky winner was a huge Native American named John HorseKiller, who had killed four Sheriff's Deputies, but no horses. The gargantuan, six-foot nine-inch Indian belonged to no gang, club, or ethnic Mafia organization. But he was fiercely loyal to Malavida because the twentytwo-year-old had arranged for HorseKiller's dying mother to be illegally added to the CIGNA insurance group medical plan. Her chemotherapy was being paid for by thousands of unsuspecting policy owners. As compensation, HorseKiller would "run the gears" on any inmate who gave Malavida a hard time.

  Malavida had it made in Lompoc. He was the Santa Claus of the joint, but he dreamed of catching tube rides at Huntington Beach on his yellow-and-orange surfboard. He missed lying on the sand, his long, black hair wet on his shoulders. He missed the girls, sunshine, and water… but most of all, he missed his mother.

  A guard came to tell him that he had visitors in the Attorneys' Wing. Malavida shut off the computer he was working on and, without saying anything, followed the muscle-bound screw out of D Block, across the yard, and into the Administration Building. He made his mind a blank, trying not to think about who or what had just hit on his wall.

  When Malavida walked into one of the attorneys' rooms and saw John Lockwood, his heart went cold. Malavida despised Lockwood. The Customs agent had done more than arrest him… He had lied, but more important, he had destroyed Malavida's family and Malavida's mother had not looked at him the same way since Lockwood had arrested him. Malavida's eyes flicked over to a very pretty, slender, auburn-haired young woman, also in the room. The guard closed the door and Malavida forced his anger away. He had learned that anger rarely served a purpose. It destroyed logic and made you vulnerable. Like a well-trained fighter, Malavida was determined to meet Lockwood with cold, surgical precision.

  "Make your pitch, Zanzo," Malavida said, without emotion. "You didn't come up here to bring me cookies."

  "Give it a rest, Mal. I was just doing my job."

  "Who's this?" Malavida said, glancing at Karen.

  "Karen Dawson. She works with me at Customs."

  Karen had been looking at Malavida with open surprise. She had been expecting some nerd, an X-over-Y computer geek. Malavida Chacone was handsome and muscular, with long, shiny black hair and even white teeth. He was intense and beautiful and very sexy. A lone teardrop tattoo hung in ethnic anger beneath his left eye. But despite his striking appearance, his eyes were hard as black glass and revealed nothing.

  "How'd you like to get out of here for a day?" Lockwood said. "I'm doing fine. I'm keeping my house neat. I get what I need." Lockwood looked down and saw the new Nike running shoes on his feet.

  "You on a track team, Mal?" Lockwood said, grinning.

  "No, I ain't on a fucking track team. Why would you wanna get me out, huh? I got nothing you want."

  "I gotta computer problem."

  "I ain't no buster, so go get your help someplace else. 'Sides, they ain't gonna let me outta here anyway."

  Lockwood pulled out the folded SCR that Harvey had made up and slid it across the table with his fingers. Malavida made no move to look at it.

  "Not gonna help you, Zanzo."

  "Why not?" Lockwood asked.

  " 'Cause you lied in court."

  "So did you."

  "It's okay to lie when you're trying to stay out of prn. It's not okay to lie when you're a cop."

  "I musta forgot that rule," Lockwood said in mock surprise. "What page is that on?"

  "It ain't funny."

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the room.

  "We want you to help us," Karen chipped in. "I've read your record. I think I can understand why you started doing what you did. You were trying to help your mother. We need to hack into a computer, but it's got very strict security on it. I think there are only one or two crackers in the country who could penetrate this machine." She watched him, hoping the flat-footed compliment would soften him. His eyes still showed nothing.

  Lockwood tapped the folded paper between them.

  "This is a Special Circumstances Release. What we're offering you here, Mal, is a field trip with burritos. We'll take you to Lompoc.

  You'll help us. Then we'll buy you some Cokes and grease. We'll let you watch the sex channel on the motel TV and we'll have you back here tonight."

  "Why would I help you, Lockwood? Gimme one reason."

  "One reason? Okay, how's this? I can't ever recall seeing an inmate wearing designer running shoes before. What would happen if I put a trace on the prn phone lines? Would I maybe find some brisk computer sales in the Nike catalog? If I shut down your deal, how long would it be till you were somebody's personal tidbit in here?"

  "How the fuck do I get you outta my life?" Malavida scowled.

  "Hey, you asked for a reason. How'd I do?"

  "Malavida, we need you," Karen pleaded. "Please help us. It would mean so much to us… Won't
you do this favor, please?" This time she was openly begging him. Lockwood thought it was arguably the worst version of good cop/bad cop he'd ever pulled.

  Malavida knew he'd get no slack from Lockwood. He'd had enough exposure to the tough agent to know they were on opposite sides of the ball. But Karen Dawson looked like bait that could be stolen. He smiled at her and, after a moment, picked up the SCR form and studied it.

  "How could I refuse such a pretty chica?" he said insincerely, going badly over the top himself.

  "Who's your counselor?" Lockwood asked.

  "His name's Stan Shannahan," Malavida was now talking only to Karen. "I can get him to walk this SCR right through. All it's gonna take is maybe a pair of size ten and a half, D, Lucchese cowboy boots in black or tan ostrich. They have 'em at the Ranch Store in Santa Barbara. He's been drooling over them, but I haven't been able to score 'em for him 'cause they got no computer catalog. Throw in the boots and I guarantee he'll stamp us through."

  Malavida's attitude was picking up speed as he smiled at Karen. He was definitely in a hurry to get out of Lompoc for a day. He'd already started working on a way to turn a day into a lifetime.

  They met Stan Shannahan and gave him Harvey Knox's request. Stan glanced at it and took Malavida into another room. After a minute, they came back and both were smiling.

  "You ain't gonna take him outta Lompoc, are ya?" Stan asked, his Texas accent twanging like a bobby pin in a Dixie cup.

  "Of course not. We've got a government witness and a Federal prosecutor coming in by van. We're gonna be at the Ocean View motel back in town. We'll conduct the interview there and have him back by tonight."

  "Man, these Federal witness deals are really something. What's this Cholo got you need?"

  "I'm afraid that's classified, sir," Lockwood droned, "but it's a major case. This interview was approved by the big boss, the Attorney General herself."

  "Y'all gonna brung-um back chere tonight?" Stan asked, exposing both a horrible education and brown tobacco-stained teeth.

  "Absolutely," Lockwood said. "Checked in before ten so we won't have to get the admittance staff back to reprocess him.. No sweat, no hassle. By the way, where's that store where I get the boots? Is it off Front Street?"

  "I wrote down the address. The tan ones, in ten and a half." "Them's good-looking ones y'all got on right now," Lockwood said, putting a little twang under it for unity, while looking down in admiration at a pair of hand-stitched western boots on the fat guard's feet.

  "Yep, El Dorados. Handmade. Got the bulldogger heel on 'em, too… great for stompin' the chit outta pissed-off little yard bunnies. Ain't that right, Cholo?"

  Malavida smiled his sweet smile. "Yes, boss," he said.

  "Tell you what… we'll bring the Luccheses when we check him back in tonight."

  "Why don't y'all go get 'em now? Just fifty minutes away. An' in the meantime, I'll run this official request through the system… get the Assistant Warden's approval."

  "Good idea. See you in a bit." Lockwood turned to go, then stopped and turned back. "By the way, Stan, we don't need anybody diming us out. The A. G. wants this kept confidential."

  "I gonna be so busy lookin' at my new boots, throwin' a spit shine on 'em, I ain't gonna have no time to do nothin' else." He grinned.

  They left Malavida there and drove to Santa Barbara for the boots. Karen was quiet all the way to town. "Did you really lie in court?" she finally said, as they were headed back.

  "You give up a lot of yourself to do this job. You can give up your family, your life, pieces of your self-respect. You get damn little in return, 'cause all the rules are written against you."

  "But did you lie?" she asked again.

  "Why don't you ask him if he was guilty?" Lockwood looked over and saw something in her eyes he hadn't seen before. It looked strangely like pity.

  They got back to the prn an hour and a half later. Stan had Malavida waiting in the visitors' area, in handcuffs and a waist chain. He handed the keys over to Lockwood and watched while the agent signed the release in triplicate and promised to have the prner back that evening. Then they all walked out to the car with Malavida where Lockwood handed Stan the boots. Stan looked at them and whistled low.

  "Ain't them fuckers a sight to behold," he said.

  In ten minutes, they were down the road and out of sight. Lockwood had put the fifteen-hundred-dollar Lucchese boots on his Customs Service credit card. He didn't have a clue how he'd justify the expense. But he was already hanging so far out on this deal, it probably didn't matter. In the back of his head, a question buzzed around like a fly in a bottle: He was already in deep shit with Internal Affairs, so why was he out here in California busting a Federal prner loose with bad paper, just so he could help Karen Dawson break into a computer he didn't really care about? It made no sense. Then a new thought hit him. Was it for his own emotional survival? Was he subconsciously trying to get himself thrown off the job before it destroyed him?

  Chapter 9

  S*0*L*I*M*F*H*0.

  Malavida Chacone sat in the backseat beside Lockwood while Karen drove the yellow LeBaron. They had put the top up. Malavida was dressed in prn blue jeans and still wearing the cuffs and waist chain. They pulled into the sleepy town of Lompoc. Small, architecturally bland buildings housed 7-Elevens and chicken franchises. Malavida was straining forward, looking out the window, his senses quivering at the smell of freedom.

  They rode in silence until they hit a stoplight and Lockwood said, "Whatta you need t'crack a computer?"

  "A ten-dollar hammer and five swings oughta do it," Malavida said without humor.

  "Don't be an asshole."

  The light changed and the cars behind them started honking, so Karen accelerated.

  "There's a computer store here in Lompoc," Lockwood continued.

  "We can pick up a laptop and whatever else you need, then we'll check into a motel and have a go at it."

  "Hey, why don't you start by telling me what program you want me to crack into? It might make a difference," Malavida said.

  "It's a remailer in Oslo, Norway, called Pennet," Karen said. "It's set up to deny access to invalid logins. I get three tries and then it locks me out."

  "You using Crack?"

  "Yeah, I got it off the Internet."

  "Why didn't you just call the System Mangler on the phone and tell him you were trying to break into his jukebox?"

  "Look, I'm not a cracker. I use my computer for research," she said.

  "I didn't mean to upset you, Miss Dawson," he said, smiling at her pleasantly. "I was just saying that the Crack program is a primer program for newbies. If this Pennet computer is a remailer, then they got high-grade security on it. You're not gonna get in with software like Crack. They probably have the telnet daemon listening for multiple logins. And Crack is slow. It could take you six months with Crack before you randomly hit the right password. You can't use Crack on a system like that, anyway. So, what happened? The SysAdmin came on and started screaming at you, right?"

  "Yeah, he locked me out for ninety days. He also knew I was working on a government computer at Customs," Karen said, surprised by the change in his language and demeanor.

  "That was telnet that did that. It has to know the IP, the 'Internet Protocol' address of the packets coming in, so it can send its data back to you. It knows your host address. So, what you are is, you're basically fucked."

  "You better figure out how to get us unfucked or you're basically back in jail," Lockwood said. Then Karen pulled over and parked the car in front of the computer store.

  "Whatta you need?" Karen asked.

  "I need my own laptop. I got a 14.4 external modem at my mom's house in East L. A."

  "Nice try," Lockwood said. "But let's save that trip for Mother's Day."

  "Can't we get you a laptop with a high-speed modem in there?" Karen asked, pointing at the store.

  "I also need my cracking tool kit…" Malavida said, playing out a little more li
ne.

  "What the hell is that?" Lockwood asked.

  "It's all the cracking programs I've designed. It's a buncha disks. And I need my ITL notebook."

  "Your what?" Lockwood was starting to get a headache.

  "ITL… 'Interesting Things and Locations.' It's Internet locations of stuff I might need but haven't retrieved yet." He was again ignoring Lockwood and talking only to Karen, trying to look earnest and helpful.

  "So, I'll send somebody over to your mom's house and he can get this stuff and modem it up here," Lockwood said. He wondered where in town he could buy aspirin.

  "Nada."

  "Whatta you mean, nada?"

  "Won't work. I'm the only one who can access the disks. We need this stuff. I can't help you without it. I got a list of outdials and a copy of the C-programming language for several flavors of UNIX. I got a complete list of Internet locations and all kinds of software utilities. No offense, Miss Dawson, but you got the Pennet Systems Administrator on point with that Crack program. The way I go in, nobody sees me."

  He started grinning. "I'm fast and invisible. And don't think you can send some clubfoot Customs nerd over there to deuce it out and open my files, 'cause all the disks are encrypted. If anybody tries to open them, it'll automatically erase the whole kit. And then we're S. O. L. I. M. F. H. O."

  "What?" Karen and Lockwood said simultaneously.

  "S. O. L. means Shit Outta Luck."

  "I got that much," Karen said. "What's I. M. F. H.0.?"

  "In My Fucking Humble Opinion. Let's go, the Mexican ghetto's that way." He pointed. "Either that, or you should take me back to prn." He closed his eyes. "I'm just gonna bone out back here till you two geniuses make up yer minds."