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Ever since the dinner Lewis and I had with Eric, I’d been thinking about that key he claimed to have that would let him into any Pacific Bell central office. I decided to ask him if I could borrow the key. I wasn’t going to tell him what I wanted it for, but my plan was to get into the Calabasas central office, gain access to the COSMOS computer, and try to find out when the wiretaps had been installed on my father’s lines. And whether there was a notation in COSMOS not to give out any information, or to call Security, if anyone inquired about the lines.
Once we were inside the CO, I’d be able to see what boxes were connected to my dad’s lines and verify the numbers the wiretappers were using to dial in to them. When I had those numbers, I could look them up in COSMOS and find the date the numbers were activated, which would tell me when the wiretaps went in.
About 10:00 one night in February, Lewis and I drove over to Eric’s apartment building at the address I had gotten from Pacific Bell after I obtained Eric’s number using the caller ID ploy. The building was impressive, a pretty upscale and buttoned-down apartment complex for a guy like him—a spread-out, two-story stucco building with a locked entrance and a remote-controlled garage gate. We waited until someone drove out of the garage, and walked in. I could have described the place before seeing it. Carpeted lobby, tennis courts, swimming pool with Jacuzzi, palm trees, recreation room with a large TV.
What was this hacker from the nightclub crowd doing at a complex intended for corporate stiffs, people being put up at company expense while in LA on short-term assignments?
Apartment 107B was partway down a long hall. Lewis and I took turns pressing our ears to the door hoping voices from inside might give us some clues about who was in there. But we couldn’t hear anything.
We found our way to the recreational center and rang Eric’s apartment from the pay phone. I smiled as Lewis dialed his number, amused because any good hacker would know the pay phone numbers in his own apartment complex. If he was as good as he claimed, Eric would have added caller ID on his line and would recognize that Lewis and I were calling from his building.
Poor guy. He was angry that I had found out his phone number and way angrier that we were calling from only a few yards away. We told him we wanted to talk. He said, “I never have hackers up.” He finally told us to give him five minutes and then he would come down and meet us in the rec room.
I was struck once more by how much he looked like a rock musician, with his lanky build and blond shoulder-length hair, his boots and jeans, his dress shirt. He stared at us in disbelief. “You need to respect my privacy,” he hissed. “How did you find me?” He sounded nervous, as if he thought we might have come with guns.
My answer was a taunt. “I’m very good at what I do.” I said it with a big in-your-face grin.
He kept returning to his theme of the day about our not respecting his privacy.
I said, “We didn’t come to violate your privacy, we came to get your help. We think a friend’s lines are being wiretapped by Pacific Bell. You said you had keys to the central offices. I’d like your help finding out.”
The “friend,” of course, was me, and there wasn’t any “think” about it.
“Which CO?” he asked.
I didn’t want to give him details. “It’s a satellite ESS office,” I said, identifying it by the type of switch. “Unmanned at night.”
“The key isn’t here now,” he said. “I don’t want to get busted with it.”
“Can you let me borrow it?”
No, he didn’t feel comfortable with that.
At that point, I confided in him. “Hey, it’s not really a friend. I’ve found out they have intercepts on all my dad’s lines, and I’m scared because I don’t know how much they know. I don’t know who it is or when it started.”
He asked how I knew, and I told him how I’d social-engineered the Calabasas frame tech into telling me. I tried to tell him he could trust me. I was pleading with him and trying to convey a sense of urgency because I needed to do it now. I really wanted to get him to go get the key for me while I waited.
“Eric,” I said, “if I find out they have enough evidence to send me back to jail, I’m going to disappear.” The three of us talked for a while about what countries had no extradition treaties with the United States.
I pressed him again about the break-in, but Eric wouldn’t commit himself, saying he’d let me know. We spent a long time discussing how the phone company wiretapped people. He even told me that he went into the central office himself every week to make sure there was no dial number recorder (DNR) attached to his own line.
He still wasn’t willing to give me the key, but he said he would be happy to take me to the central office and go in with me. Since I didn’t completely trust him, I gave him only one of the three monitor numbers I had and didn’t let him know I had the other ones. It was a kind of a test, to see if he was trustworthy or not.
Finally Lewis and I said good night and walked away.
Whoever had put Pacific Bell up to installing those intercepts could by now have had enough evidence to send me back to prison, so not knowing what the wiretappers had overheard, I was really freaking out, my gut continually nagging at me. Sometimes, afraid to sleep at home, I’d check into a budget motel to relieve my anxiety.
We were going to go in together, but over the next several days, Eric kept giving me excuses about why he couldn’t go tonight, why he couldn’t tomorrow, how he had to work over the weekend. Meanwhile I grew more cautious. His behavior seemed suspicious; I was growing anxious about the risk. I told him, “I won’t go inside, but I’ll act as a lookout.” Finally we picked a date; it was all settled that we would go in the following night.
But the next morning, he called, saying, “I went in last night,” and gave me the monitor numbers—and I could tell he was giving me the correct ones. He told me he’d looked up the numbers in COSMOS. The numbers had been established on January 27, so the boxes had been hooked up sometime after that.
I asked him how he’d gotten past the padlock on the outside gate. He said there wasn’t any when he got there. But every day, as I drove from my dad’s apartment, I passed that CO, and every day I saw that padlock. This was a huge red flag. Now I was really nervous. Why would he bullshit me about a thing like this, something he knew was so important to me?
I’d have to be even more on my guard with this guy. I just couldn’t trust him.
But the secret of where he lived wasn’t a secret anymore, and he was shaken. The whole episode had only added to the mystery… but I was on the verge of unraveling the puzzle.