Cafe Underground Presents
PHACKER
Book 3 -- Chapter 2
The Detective Andi Wicksham Series, by RL Bell
Copyright © 1997 RL BELL
MENU
....back to WRITING
....author RL Bell
Andi Wicksham's INVESTIGATORY SERVICES
Chapter 2
Berg & Trafino’s third floor office took up the entire upper floor of the building; an open ceilinged expanse bridging a school of drafting tables segregated from a colony of blue cubicals by an open gallery set with displays and slick cardboard cutouts, splashed with Nike and Mitsubishi logos and hung with banners, a long-tailed silk kite, wheeling pterodactyls and assorted mobiles. Across that, nested the obvious desk of the receptionist.
"Andi Wicksham for Ms. Trafino." she told the brightly colored creature behind the desk. The woman's hair was a cotton candy pink, braided tight to her scalp in corn rows and hung with brightly colored beads and fetishes. She wore turquoise slacks with a yellow kinte cloth blouse--a fake-leopard skin coat hung on the chair behind her. Her ethnic coloring and exotic features were hard to pigeon-hole and her style was far from the corporate look one might expect from a firm courting Nike and Mitsubishi.
"Yes ma'am, Ms. Trafino is expecting you." There was nothing slacker in the woman's professional manner, sweeping from her chair with an easy smile and leading, in a provocative walk, to the open door of a corner office. Andi followed speechless and gawking.
"Andi Wicksham, Sandi." the exotic woman announced demurely.
Andi met the dark eyes of the woman rising to her feet beyond the desk and was only half conscious of the receptionist efficiently closing the door behind her. She was waved into a brocade upholstered chair. Sandi Trafino was medium build, maybe forty, with prematurely graying hair in a long pageboy. Her face was angular, a strong Italian nose set-off high cheek bones, a cream colored blouse and mid-calf brown skirt accessorized with reading glasses hanging and a splashy red scarf. The office had two walls of windows, looking over a rooftop and the building across the street.
"Thank you so much for making time Ms. Wicksham." the woman offered graciously. "Would you like anything? Water, coffee?" Trafino sat down as she offered.
"Quite a reception you offer." Andi waved to door behind her.
Trafino smiled. "It's one of the ways we stand out from our competition. Eileen has a masters in marketing and is one of our top account executives, but likes the drama of the front desk, sizing up clients before defenses are up. I think of them as being softened before I make my pitch."
Andi nodded.
“It's sales and it works." She turned a warm smile on Andi and leaned her elbows on the desk. Her lipstick was tasteful creamed-maroon.
"Your nephew?" Andi prompted.
"Exactly. He was arrested at seventeen for hacking into NATO facilities in Brussels and France and at thirteen for unauthorized telephone use. He's my brother's child, never violent or hostile, but he's always been hard to control. Both parents dead in an accident, no siblings."
Andi nodded quietly. She took notes. "Do you realize that, statistically, there isn't much chance of finding him? I don't want to extend false hopes.
Trafino waved her hands in the air. "I feel responsible. Whatever trouble he's in is related to his job here."
"His name?"
"Gene, Gene Trafino. Eugene really, but..."
"I'll need to get into his apartment."
"Eileen can give you his address. I've never been there."
Andi shrugged. "Know anyone who might have a key?"
"No." Trafino answered curtly.
It wasn't much of a starting point. "Tell me about him."
"Working here is part of his probation. He’s doing well, regular, polite, not a problem...maybe eccentric, but not a problem in our organization." Trafino waved that last away. "Anyway, he told me on June fourth...I looked it up in my work journal...somebody was hacking into our system. He wanted to put up fire walls to isolate sensitive files. It was his job after all. A week later he set traps in files the hacker might want and started spending nights here. It was all quite exciting for him--being on the other side of the coin, so to speak." Sandi Trafino paused to take a breath and Andi dropped her hands to her lap to flex her fingers. "A couple of weeks later he said he caught the intruders--traced them back through the phone lines.” Trafino looked proud. "You know how hackers work? Routing through a chain of phone number to avoid tracing?"
"I've read about it." Andi replied uneasily.
"Of course...its a world unto itself. Anyway, Gene traced the signal, setting up alarms and waiting. Finally they took a file with a hidden program that send back a traceable message. Once he found them, he hacked them in return. I should have stepped in--it was certainly beyond the limits of his probation, but it seemed a good thing for him to fight against the sort of thing that got him in trouble.” She sort of ran out of steam.
Andi quietly answered, "I understand."
Ms. Trafino gave a grateful smile and continued. "It took him a while to make sense of things, then two weeks ago he told me he'd got them. He was very mysterious about it. It wasn't what he expected."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know. I was hoping you could find out, because last week he said he'd confronted them. I thought it might end it there. Last Thursday he stuck his head in--very excited, said he'd have answers Friday. I was involved in a presentation and couldn't make time."
"What happened?"
"I don't know...it was the last I saw him.” She retrieved a black plastic-bound binder from a desk drawer and set it in front of Andi. "This was his...notes he made." She shook her head ironically and glanced out the window before continuing in a melancholy voice. "They used his own notes as evidence when they convicted him before, but he still kept them." Trafino raised her open palms to heaven.
Andi glanced at a few random pages--all numbers and gibberish, not a single reference made sense to her. "I don't think I have the skills or time to retrace your nephew's tracks." She shrugged and pushed the binder back toward Trafino. No sense pretending different.
Trafino pursed her lips. “Any other investigator would have the same problem."
Andi stared back. "I can't promise anything and it can be costly without getting answers."
"I've been told how you work..."
"No promises and I'll have to retain somebody to guide me through the technical stuff. It might be costly."
"That will be fine." "Now about the terms of our agreement."
Trafino rose to shake Andi's hand and then settled back in her chair.
Back in her office, Andi could hear Lena half-way down the hall, arguing on the phone. She turned the knob and cautiously entered.
Lena nodded and waved off Andi's concern while saying, "Well you can take the matter up with Ms. Wicksham if you want, but you'll risk losing her services. Why don't you bring by a check for say..." she rolled her eyes, "...half of your balance and we'll start your background checks in the morning. Sure, I won't say anything to her about your balance being in arrears. Oh yeah, believe me, it's best. OK...sure, we'll start in the morning." She gingerly re-cradled the receiver and looked up with a satisfied smile.
"Wiener's Discounts. What a jerk. He pays minimum wage but demands background checks and a drug test." She shook her head in disgust.
"No loyalty oath and personal bond?" Andi dropped Eugene's binder on her desk and poured a cup of coffee.
Lena held up a sheet of paper. "They're stockers and checkers for God's sake. Their asshole boss spends more on this than on health insurance. No wonder his turnover’s high. It's like pumping money down a rat hole."
"You calling this office a rat hole?”
Lena glared disapprovingly.
"The free market inspires us to moral heights. I could wax poetic." Andi held up a finger as ready to begin an ode.
"Don't you freaking dare. He promised to drop by a check. Most of his applicants are special ed folk. They're a pretty clean crowd."
"Hiring, or targeting the handicapped?"
"Exploiting."
"Whatever." Andi sank into her chair and set the binder on her desk. "We got a contract with Sandi Trafino, standard retainer--daily for me, hours for you, plus expenses with a caveat about hiring a technical subcontractor. I told her we could have it by morning.
"No sweat."
"Standard missing person's plus we need to find somebody to decipher her nephew's notes. He was onto some computer intruder. I'm not sure if it's him or the intruder she's most concerned with so we'll do them parallel."
"Ya vol mine commandant."
Andi shot Lena the evil eye. "Sarcasm will bring this office ruin."
"Then we're in deep trouble, Sherlock. Got the names and numbers for your contract?"
Andi handed over her notebook, struggled to keep a straight face and leafed skeptically through Eugene's binder. Who could she find to help? She skimmed a mental list of contacts. Sandi Trafino had included two snapshots of Eugene--an overweight, pasty-faced youth with a straggly moustache and his shirt half-tucked in. She tried Eugene Trafino’s number. The phone rang and rang--Andi listened until bored and hung up to address her pending file. She’d dug to the bottom by five o'clock, declared it a sign from on high and offered to take Lena to dinner.
JC, Lena's boyfriend was out on tour with his rock band, a fact driving Lena to distraction. Andi didn't seem much hope for the pairing anyway, the guy was a rock and roll creep and it offered an opportunity to grease the skids of their relationship. It was a chummy evening, certainly nothing exciting. Andi dropped Lena in front of her apartment with a friendly squeeze of her hand, waited until she’d slipped through the door and drove home wishing she’d style and passion in her life.
At nine the next morning Andi brought Trafino the contract and collected her retainer, "Could you draft a letter of introduction? On company letterhead, the more formal the better?"
"Of course."
"And I'd like to see his work area."
"I'll as Eileen..." Trafino had her phone in her hand and made no move to get up from her desk. Trafino waved the receiver in dismissal. "I'm glad you're taking this, but I'm swamped." she was reaching for a pile of sketches as Andi bowed out.
Eileen met her just beyond the door in her hot pink petal-pushers, a few yards of gilt-spangled chain for a sash and an oversized blouse whose tail was gathered to a side and knotted. Andi vaguely wondered at the size of Eileen’s closet as she was led through the span where artists toiled and then through the warren of writer’s cubicals. Behind the elevator, around the side of the office-boy's shipping desk, Eileen turned two sharp corners and ducked through a gap between file cabinets piled high with cardboard cartons.
"He get gulaged here?"
Eileen raised her eyebrows, "No, he’s a techno-nerd...found the darkest corner and pulled over file cabinets to hide behind." She reached a graceful hand to switch on the desk lamp.
A cluttered, steel desk was piled with papers, a small black chalkboard, two computer screens and the grey towers of two computers. Keyboards and peripherals were linked by a web of wires. A bookcase held a half-dozen hand-held electronic games, an assortment of toys and a withering potted plant. Memos and colorful fliers for rock bands hung from all available surfaces with phone numbers scribbled in the margins like graffiti. A poster of Emma Goldman declared, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
Colored notes, yellow note pads and candy bar wrappers littered the desk top and floor and a grey sweater draped the back of the swivel chair as if its owner had just stepped out to refresh his coffee--a man's size large, button front with licorice candies, pencil stub, two pennies, a floppy disk, bus transfer and scrap of paper with phone numbers were stuffed casually in the pockets.
She began cataloging. The desk's lap drawer held more candy and the expected collection of pens. A dried-up half-sandwich peaked from a paper napkin in the back corner with a dozen crumpled telephone memo-notes. Andi picked one up; it was dated May 30th. She shuffled through them--the most recent was June; months ago, Eugene started his project six weeks ago. She secured them with a paper clip and tossed them aside.
The drawers held software manuals, books and a potpourri of junk mail. Andi riffled the books and looked through the mail and logged the scribbled numbers and names. There was nothing left but checking the computer. Eileen stood, hand on a hip, smiling with half-lidded eyes. "That one’s his personal beast." She lifted her wrist and lowered a finger to point.
Andi tilted her head and smiled an appreciative smile. She flicked the switch on the tower's face and listened to the clicks of diagnostics and booting. She'd been a computer virgin when she met Lena, now it was nothing at all to flick this strange box's power switch. The screen blinked and flipped automatically to a menu.
Password >>
PHONE LOG __
HARDWARE __
GRAPHICS __
BOOKKEEPING __
PERSONAL __
B&T SYSTEMWARE __
UTILITIES __
She clicked PERSONAL. Nothing. She tried BOOKKEEPING. The curser blinked after "Password.” She typed "eugene" and hit Return. The screen slowly faded then flared brightly.
WRONG!!! YOU DUMMY!!! flashed through a series of colors. Then, blanking to a neutral blue, the screen displayed a demure, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.
Andi pulled her hands from the keyboard and took a step backwards.
She extended a hesitant finger to turn off the computer, shut her notebook and took the floppies from the bookcase. At the last moment she picked up the floppy she'd found in his sweater.
"That's it for now..." She glanced up at Eileen who smiled a trifle indulgently and sashayed out before her.
Go on to Chapter 3
Go back to Chapter 1
Go back to Andi Wicksham Series page
Copyright © 1997 RL BELL.
For more information, contact Webmaven Lena Kovid, at:
geekgirl@cafeunderground.com