by Jan Burke
The message appeared at the bottom of each statement, politely informing the BLP customers that all service charges for that month were waived.
Assuming themselves to be the beneficiaries of an advertising promotion of some sort, the depositors were pleased and looked upon the bank with new regard. “They really have a heart,” people were heard to say. Publicly the bank’s personnel nodded and accepted their customers’ gratitude. Privately there was a panic.
If I hadn’t known Guy St. Germain, a vice president at the bank, I wouldn’t have been aware that BLP had not sanctioned the fee waiver. He told me what had happened only after I swore six or seven times that I would never write anything about it for the newspaper or tell anyone else. The electronic break-in was a great secret at BLP. In the beginning the bank was unwilling to let its depositors know that hackers had found their way into the bank’s computer system.
“You can’t follow some sort of electronic trail?” I asked.
“No, mon amie,” Guy said in his soft French Canadian accent. “It’s not as if they took money. It wasn’t transferred from the depositors’ accounts into some other place. The hackers just managed to cancel the command that levies the charges on the accounts. Our computer security people have figured out how they got in; they attached a line to one of our executives’ computers and listened in on his modem. They were able to record high-level access codes. They used the codes to break in on their own.”
“You’re sure the executive’s not involved?” I asked.
Guy nodded. “This man is not a computer whiz. He has a top level of access because of his position, not his abilities. He wouldn’t have known how to change the program.”
“But still—”
“He’s also a real outdoorsman,” Guy continued. “Likes to go rafting, hiking, do all of those things where a person can’t be reached by phone. I understand — he has a high-pressure job, and this allowed him to be free for a few days. He was rafting on the Green River in Utah on the days of the electronic break-in, and the calls were definitely local, not long distance.”
“Hmm. Perfect timing.”
“Yes. Someone was very good at homework, don’t you think?”
“No chance that this fellow had a grudge? Maybe hired someone else to do the programming?”
Guy shook his head. “He had nothing to gain. We think it was just a prank.”
“A costly one.”
“Yes. That is the shame, although few people would see that. No one has much sympathy for bankers.”
I understood his point. Most people wouldn’t stop to think that the bank counted on those fees for its operations expenses. It wouldn’t go broke from this prank, but somewhere the bottom line would be affected; fees would go up, or there would be less money to lend.
“It could have been worse,” Guy said. “Much worse. And our security is better now.” He paused and smiled. “Who knows? Perhaps we will gain something from the good publicity about waiving the fees.”
The second prank was not hidden from the public eye. A few weeks after the bank incident, all street-sweeping ticket records were deleted from the municipal computers. When the city’s computer department reached for a separately stored backup file, it was found to be blank, with the exception of one text file: “All street-sweeping fines are forgiven. We are Hocus.”
“That’s an odd name,” Lydia Ames observed when I came into the office with the story. She’s the assistant city editor at the Express and has been a friend of mine since childhood.
“A perfect name,” said John Walters.
“They think of themselves as magicians?” she asked.
“You’re thinking of hocus-pocus,” I replied. “I made the same mistake, until I looked the word up in the dictionary. Hocus is a verb. It means to play a trick on, to dupe. It may be where the word ‘hoax’ comes from.”
“The cheering will be heard citywide,” John said with a scowl. “No one likes parking tickets. But I like tricksters even less.”
“I had the same reaction,” I said, “right after I decided what I was going to do with the money Hocus saved me on tickets.”
The next action came about a week later. All outstanding library fines were eliminated from the city library’s computer system. The message “All fines are forgiven, courtesy of Hocus” appeared briefly on the screens one Monday morning. As the city investigated this new breach of security, the bank — given the promise that the information would remain confidential — let the Las Piernas Police Department know that Hocus had taken credit for the fee waiver at the bank.
At first, citizens cheered the news about the library fines as heartily as they had cheered the earlier announcements. No one liked fines. But the library was more forthcoming than the bank or the municipal court — already strapped by budget cutbacks, it couldn’t afford the loss of revenue. Libraries would be closed on weekends until further notice.
Parents of kids with homework projects were the first to howl, and others quickly joined in. A fund-raiser was held, and the library reopened on Saturdays. Now the local citizenry seemed to understand that damage could be done.
The people of Las Piernas began to ask the same questions that computer security personnel had asked all along. Who were these people? How many of them were there? What was Hocus trying to prove? How had they managed to break into these computer systems? And perhaps most important, what would they do next?
In those days all the actions Hocus took had fit with its name. Pranks. No one was taking revenues, they were just preventing the collection of revenues.
Computer experts were called in, and any organization using computers did its best to heighten security. We waited for the next trick.
When it came, we were taken completely by surprise.
An animal rights group was blamed at first. In the immediate chaos that followed the release of every creature in the city animal shelter, the body of the night manager lay undiscovered for over three hours.
If you open a birdcage or two, even let out a couple of snakes, not much is going to happen. Set twenty or thirty cats loose and then release just over two hundred dogs not long afterward, and you’re going to see some action. Let a horse be the grand finale, and people will definitely notice.
The birds flew off, and the snakes were never found again. The horse was old and skinny and didn’t go much farther than the first open field he came across. The cats apparently had enough lead time to climb trees or make themselves scarce. The dogs were another story.
Social beings that they are, the dogs must have decided these adventures were more fun when shared, and most of them gathered into packs as they set off through the streets. Some packs announced their freedom as they ran.
Most of the police activity in those early hours centered on rounding up animals, especially those dogs that had been quarantined for viciousness.
Two men were on duty that night: the night shift manager and an animal control officer. The animal control officer had gone out on an emergency call that turned out to be bogus. Before he could return, the police were contacting him by radio about the calls they were getting.
For all the pandemonium on the streets nearest the shelter, the shelter itself was eerily quiet. The night manager didn’t seem to be on the premises, and a second truck was gone. At first, everyone thought he was out catching dogs. The truck was found much later, abandoned under a freeway overpass.
The shelter actually ended up with more dogs than it started out with — if not necessarily the same dogs — since the previous inmates had picked up some sympathizers along the way. It was only after the dogs had been caught that anyone could spend much time at the shelter itself, trying to figure out what had happened.
A woman LPPD officer saw drops of blood on the ground and followed the trail they made to a building at the back of the shelter. They led to the area where the dogs were put to sleep. The door to one of the chambers used for large dogs was open, but as she stepped closer she
saw that the chamber had been recently used. The body of the night manager was inside, along with a note:
HOCUS SET THE CAPTIVES FREE.
Hocus’s first murder.
6
THE DREAM HAD BEEN PLEASANT. He could still see her face, feel the whiskey warmth of her skin, her softness. He had already forgotten what had happened in the dream, was not sure if they had made love, but drowsily he thought perhaps they had, as his awakening was the slow, reluctant awakening of the sated.
Moments passed, and still sleep beckoned. He was not without pain, nor was he immune to disturbing thoughts. His head hurt. He was bruised. She was not with him. He didn’t know where he was, or with whom, or why he had been taken. He recalled, in fleeting images, a struggle, shots fired.
But in each case — from the aching where the first blow had been struck to the sensation of being lost — no sooner was any discomfort a part of his awareness than a billowing tide of lassitude swept over him, languor robbed him of his ability to react as anything more than a distant observer. Too tired, he thought, closing his eyes — too tired. He smiled to himself. Easier to dream….
Some long-practiced ability to sense trouble urged him awake again, and for a brief moment he opened his eyes. The room caromed wildly above him. He closed them again.
“God, I hate the smell of blood,” a voice was saying.
Other words drifted by.
“Pale.”
“Not yet….”
“…make it?”
“Nothing to worry about,” someone said.
He thought perhaps there were things to worry about, but they slipped the grasp of his mind and swam away from him.
The conversation between the others went on, but he couldn’t concentrate on it long enough to understand what they were saying.
The dreaming began again.
He was standing on the gravel drive, looking at the house.
He remembered coming out this way with his father, back in the late 1950s, in the old blue Buick sedan they had owned then — the one with a metal dash and fierce, toothy grille. From the passenger seat he watched the blur of dark green leaves and smooth, gray trunks of orange and lemon and grapefruit trees go by.
He had been in the area many times since then, of course, but today, standing on the drive, he was remembering a time when his father had needed to bring some papers to Riverside. The girls had had to stay home. “Just boys, this time,” his father had said.
It was a long drive from Bakersfield and a hot one. Frank didn’t care. His dad was a cop, and they didn’t often get this kind of time together.
With the windows down, he could smell the heady fragrance of the groves. They passed dirt driveways that began at the road, marked by tin mailboxes with red flags announcing who had mail, who didn’t. And down at the other end of each drive, there was almost always a modest white wood frame house.
The memory came back to him in the dream more vividly than it had in real life. In real life he had stood watching the house, wondering why he was feeling so spooky all of a sudden. Hell, the house looked haunted. The paint was peeling off the trim in large, curling flakes. The house was surrounded by a porch; the porch railing had supports broken out of it, leaving it gap toothed and sagging. Dead vines formed a thick and thorny gray lace that shielded the front door from view. Screens were torn or missing.
The ramshackle house sat on a large lot. Tall, dry grass grew in straw-colored clumps. A gnarled, leafless orange tree held two barren branches up to the cloudless sky as if in a gesture of despair.
He thought of the place as it might have looked thirty years before, of a bright red bougainvillea adding color to a white house surrounded by fruit trees.
He shook his head. He supposed a generation or two of heirs had carved up the original owner’s citrus grove and sold it off piecemeal. Nothing else could explain the odd mixture of lots and buildings that made up this street. A handful of trees remained here and there, but the groves were gone. The development that followed had been random. Train tracks ran along the far side of the street, parallel to the back fence of the industrial park that stood on the opposite side of the tracks. All that could be seen of the buildings beyond were windowless concrete walls and loading docks. He wondered if the industrial park had replaced a packing house.
As he stood on the gravel drive, a freight train came slowly rumbling by, horns sounding, echoing loudly off the concrete buildings. He watched it, read the names on the boxcars. AT&SF… Southern Pacific… Cotton Belt. Where was it going? Where had it been? Conrail… Golden West… GATX…. It slowed, stopped, began backing up, apparently switching or adding cars. As the head end passed him again, an engineer saw him and waved. Surprised, Frank waved back.
When he could no longer see the engineer’s face, he straightened his suit and turned back to the house. A mockingbird sang half a dozen verses of a borrowed two-note song, then fell silent.
He paused, listened. Nothing. Gravel crunched and grated as he walked up the drive.
He had never known any trouble from Ross, he told himself. And if Ross had information on the Novak case, he wanted to hear it. The Novak case had been a real pain. Absolutely no breaks in it so far. Probably all kinds of witnesses, but everybody too scared to talk. Nobody knew anything. It angered him. Novak had been a small-time dealer with all the wrong kinds of ambition; whoever executed him had probably saved the state a lot of money by ending his miserable life. But a murder was a murder, and as much as he hated the Novaks of this world, it bothered him more that people would aid a killer with their silence.
The porch steps creaked. When he came to the front door he halted, stepped to the side. It was open. Just a crack, but open.
“Ross?” he called.
“Come on in, Frank,” he heard Ross call. “It ain’t locked. I seen you comin’.”
He thought of every other time he had met with the junkie: the nervousness, the triple-locked doors.
He pulled out his gun.
“Come out here, Ross,” he called.
Silence.
“Come out here, or I’m going back to Las Piernas. We’ll talk another time.”
He heard the porch creak behind him and whirled.
A man in a gold lamé cape and a full set of purple-sequined tails stood on the other end of the porch. He took off his glimmering top hat and bowed.
“Want to see me pull a rabbit out of my hat?” he asked.
“No. Drop the hat and hold your hands—” He sensed a movement behind him but did not quite turn in time to ward off the blow to the back of his head.
He blacked out for a moment, not feeling the fall to the porch until he hit it with his face. His gun clattered away from him, but he could smell powder. Had he fired it? Hit the magician? No, one of the men pinning him to the porch was wearing purple and gold. Dizzy, half-stunned, he struggled beneath them, but they held him down. Soon his hands were tied behind his back.
“You didn’t hit him hard enough!” the magician said.
“It won’t matter.”
He felt fear, cold and real, clearing his head.
“He almost shot me!” the magician complained. “What if someone heard it?”
“Get his gun, goddammit,” the other said. The cape lifted.
He struggled again, felt the jab of a needle in his neck.
“Keep wiggling around,” the voice said, “and it will only work faster.”
He was hauled roughly to his feet and shoved into the house.
Ross was inside, cowering in a corner.
“Oh, God!” he wailed when he saw Frank. “You two are fuckin’ nuts! He’s a cop!”
“Shut up,” the magician said.
Ross started crying but said nothing more.
The pain from his head was not so bad now, but he could feel his own blood, warm and wet on his neck and back, could taste it in his mouth. He was dizzy, but it wasn’t so bad to be dizzy, he thought.
“How much time?” the
voice behind him asked.
The magician pulled out a pocket watch. “Any minute now,” he said, and looked toward the tracks.
A train. Even through the fog that was settling on his mind, he thought of the train. He started to move toward the door. He was yanked back, hard.
He heard the train. These sons of bitches were going to kill him, he thought hazily. Well, screw them. They weren’t going to put him down without a fight.
He stumbled forward, pulling his captor off balance, then rolled the young man over his back. A surprised young man, he noted, grinning at him as he lay on the floor.
“Stop it!” the magician yelled, waving the gun.
Frank kicked at the man on the floor but missed him completely. He tried again and lost his own balance, crashing into a lamp and coffee table and God knew what else before the man who had been on the floor was grabbing him again. Frank struggled, but he was growing clumsier now.
“Follow the plan!” the captor yelled. “Kill him!”
Frank fell to his knees, too dizzy, too sleepy, to stand. The magician looked lost.
The captor let him fall to the floor. He marched over to the magician and took the gun.
Frank heard the shot — loud, louder than the train.
Just like falling asleep, he thought. He felt cold. He allowed himself to wish she were holding him. He imagined her arms around him and wondered if she would ever forgive him for getting himself killed.
7
MARK BAKER DIDN’T SEE ME at my desk when he came into the newsroom. He made a beeline into John’s office. I’m not sure if it was my chickeny side or my rebellious nature at work, but in either case I wasn’t willing to contribute to the story on my husband’s disappearance — so I staged one of my own. I slipped out of the newsroom and made my way downstairs.
Cassidy wasn’t in the lobby, and I didn’t see him among the cops who were still huddled around Frank’s car. I looked across the lot and saw him leaning against my Karmann Ghia.
