The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (2 page)

Once the scanner locks onto a call, the laptop displays the signal
strength and the number dialed. That's where the directional an-
tenna attached to the scanner comes into play. The tech sweeps the
antenna in a circle, searching for the strongest reading displayed on
the laptop. The signal strength increases as the Cellscope is moved
closer and closer to the individual making the call.

Shimomura's brought along his own hacker's scanning rig. It's
pretty basic, just an Oki 900 cellular phone and a hardware interface
to his tiny HP Palmtop. One of Shimomura's friends — who hap-
pens to be under federal indictment for illegal hacking — cooked up
the interface and helped write the software.

Shimomura likes his computer-controlled cellular phone, but its
use for tracking is limited. Its main purpose is to lock on a call and
eavesdrop. It is illegal to use it to eavesdrop on calls. That's why
Shimomura needed immunity from prosecution when he demon-
strated his Oki scanner before Congress a couple of years ago.

Around 1 a.m., Mitnick dials out on CellularOne's radio band.
Within seconds, the tech at the Sprint switch gets a call from Cellu-
larOne and relays the three-digit channel to Shimomura and the
tech.

They jump in the red Blazer. The tech punches in the frequency,
and modem static crackles, the sound of Mitnick's digital signals
coursing through the air as analog audio tones. The tech reaches into
the back to adjust the Cellscope's volume control. Shimomura taps
the number into his palmtop, but he's got his hands full. It's his job
to sweep the small aluminum directional antenna in a circle. The
laptop sits between them, the signal strength weak, only about -105
dBm (decibels per milliwatt). That's barely measurable, considering

-35 dBm is the maximum strength and -115 dBm is the minimum.
Within minutes, the call goes silent.

Fifteen minutes later, they pick it up again on Highway 70. The
signal's stronger now, -95 dBm to -90 dBm, but just after they turn
left at Duraleigh Road, it goes dead again. They park in front of a
little library in a small shopping center off of Duraleigh Road and
they wait.

Minutes later, Mitnick's familiar MIN pops up on the laptop win-
dow. This time the call doesn't die. The signal's strong, around -90
dBm. Mitnick's online again, and he's not far away.

They turn off Duraleigh onto Tournament Drive. To the right, a
sign reads "Player's Club," an upscale apartment complex. They
turn in and follow the loop around the buildings, the meter jumping
from -60 dBm to -40 dBm. Thirty minutes of active tracking, that's
all it takes the Japanese master. He's narrowed down the hacker's
location to an area not more than one hundred meters square.

Two days later, an FBI technical team from Quantico, Virginia,
picks up where Shimomura left off and zeroes in on the cellular
transmissions. A few minutes after 8:30 p.m. on Valentine's Day,
Special Agent LeVord Burns and Assistant U.S. Attorney John
Bowler stand in Federal Magistrate Judge Wallace W. Dixon's living
room and ask him to sign search warrants.

Early the next morning, FBI agents and U.S. Marshals knock on
apartment number 2.02. Ten minutes pass. Finally the most wanted
hacker in cyberspace cracks the door.

I.

Eric Heinz strolls down the
windy, illuminated Sunset
Strip, past the fantasy of pastel deco hotels, palm trees, and giant
billboard maidens spotlit in their Calvin Kleins.

RAINBOW.

He walks under the vertical neon sign and by the red awning,
opposite a dusty, sky blue wall plastered with rock posters. The crowd
is restless, waiting to get into the popular bar and restaurant. He
presses a little flesh and cuts to where he belongs, the front of the line.

Everybody knows Eric.

Those bedroom eyes, the sculpted nose, the tall, slender frame. He
looks like a rock star. He's got the Farrah Fawcett chest-length shag
with highlights. The smudged Maybelline shadow and liner with a
hint of blush. The long, manicured nails. The whole package poured
into skintight jeans and cowboy boots.

But to thousands of pimply, bug-eyed boys on the Internet, Eric's a
bad-ass computer hacker. Agent Steal's his handle, the information
superhighway his gravy train. He wiretaps for a slick Hollywood
detective at two grand a pop. He wins thousands of dollars in radio
contests by seizing stations' phone lines. He scams Porsches by setting
up phony credit under false identities. He lives on stolen ATM
and credit cards. And best of all, Eric knows that he never really hurts

the little guy. He's a friendly rogue, just working corporations and
nameless institutions, playing the System.

Eric cruises the red Naugahyde booths, pecking the cheeks of the
Rainbow's silicone-enhanced, lingerie ladies, actresses, models, off-
duty call girls, and strippers. He takes his spot up front by the stone
fireplace that burns year round, cigarette smoke wafting, rock tunes
blaring. White Christmas lights drape the oak paneling. Guitars and
drums from Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, and Poison hang from the wall,
their autographed, poster-size images peering down like Mexican
roadside shrines.

Eric is in his element. The Rainbow Bar and Grill is a Hollywood
legend. Decades ago Errol Flynn frequented the joint, and Marilyn
Monroe kept Joe DiMaggio waiting here two hours for their blind
date. John Belushi had his last supper at the Rainbow with De Niro
and Robin Williams. Who will join Eric tonight at his table? A
rocker? A star?

Eric's here for the sex. He plucks his kittens not only from the
Rainbow, but from Hollywood strip clubs like the Seventh Veil,
Crazy Girls, and the mud-wrestling venue, the Tropicana. Strippers
can't resist his cool indifference.

But it's a numbers game. Quantity is Eric's ultimate goal. Some-
times the night's first catch is too drunk to last or a bit low on silicone,
not worthy of a feature performance back home. A marginal oppor-
tunity like this calls for the Rainbow employees' bathroom. Not the
upstairs bathroom next to the dance floor, but the one through the
kitchen. The one where someone's puked. The cubicle with a single
toilet and a peephole in the wall perfect for passing drugs or taking a
peek. No time for foreplay. Someone's pounding on the door.

Up with the jeans, flash that winning grin, out to the parking lot
post-party for a little mingling, and then on down a few blocks to
Rock N' Roll Denny's. When the Rainbow exhales at two a.m., the
all-night diner becomes an after-hours club, swelling with rockers
and lounge lizards. Eric's got his choice of strippers, models, and off-
night hookers who've washed in from the Rainbow. Or maybe he'll
order up something fresh from the Hollywood menu, one of the new
runaways looking for a free meal, a bed, and a little fun.

What will it be tonight?

Her name won't be important, or the color of her hair or her skin.
She could be white, black, Asian, blond, brunette, or a redhead. She
could be in her teens or over thirty. But she won't be forgotten. Every
girl gets a number, a three-digit entry in Eric's black book. Soon, he'll
break a thousand.

Once Eric believed in love. Her name was Frecia Diane and she had
rich brown hair, a pretty face, a great figure, and a regular office job.
All in all, a nice girl from New Mexico. When Eric hacked his first
five-thousand-dollar radio contest, he cared for Frecia so deeply that
he put his winnings up for her breast implants. Sure, she was great in
bed, but it was more than that. She was Eric's friend and partner.
That's why Eric had to wiretap her, because he loved her.

One day, it was bound to happen. She found the bondage photos
Eric left carelessly in a desk drawer. But Frecia soon found that
leaving Eric wasn't so easy. Eric would pop in on Frecia's phone line
at work to freak her out, or just listen in the background. Eric knew
everything about Frecia Diane: when she started stripping at Nudes,
Nudes, Nudes on Century near the airport. When she took a woman
as a lover. And when she began to star in lesbian bondage porn flicks.

■ « a

Tonight's catch will be impressed by Oakwood Apartments at 3636
South Sepulveda. She'll walk by the tennis courts and the clubhouse,
the palm tree-lined swimming pool and the spacious Jacuzzi. The
thirteen-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment is furnished: a white-
washed oak dining table with chairs in rose and gray floral, nearly
everything in conservative teal and rose. She won't see much in the
way of hacker gear, maybe a telephone lineman's butt set, a com-
puter and modem, and perhaps a few three-ringed binders crammed
with notes.

She may see the city lights from Eric's balcony, but this is a room
with another view. It will start innocently. A little kissing, a little
caressing, and then before she'll understand, her hands will be tied.
Eric will slap duct tape over her lips, and she'll watch him drag a
large black duffel bag from his closet across the carpet. She won't see
the video camera, and she won't see his skin-toned prosthetic leg.

He'll start with one leg at the toes, wrapping the cellophane round
and round her naked skin to her crotch. Then the other leg. Next her
stomach, her breasts, pinching her with his alligator clips. He'll wrap
her neck and face, leaving only a slit for her to breathe through her
nose. Tight but not too tight, so she won't suffocate like the painted
girl in
Goldfinger.

Bathed in the smoky red
lights, one palm wrapped
around her metal pole, Erica dances above the crowd, the sweat
streaming past her bikini. She's got the look: spiked blond hair,
freshly siliconed breasts, high, laced boots from Trashy Lingerie. She
smiles at Eric as he works the crowd, brushing cheeks Hollywood
style, giving high fives. They're friends now. Erica got over the things
he did to her that night.

This is the Red Light District, Henry Spiegel's hot new Sunset
club. Live bands jam in one room, while strippers bump and grind
in another. Then there's the VIP room, where the celebrities lounge
in sixties beanbags and get high without being hassled for auto-
graphs.

Eric wants a favor. How can she refuse? She's forgiven him for the
manacles, the handcuffs, the gag, and the alligator clips. And she
remembers the night Eric warned her about the phone tap on
Spiegel's telemarketing boiler room operation. Erica and Henry's ex-
con bank robber buddies worked his phone lines selling suckers on
fictitious gold mines and phony office products. If not for Eric, she
and Spiegel would surely have been busted for the three dozen phone
lines running into Spiegel's house and the $150,000 in unpaid long
distance bills. Sure, the Secret Service agents roughed them up a bit,

even threatened to beat Spiegel if she wouldn't spill the beans, but
Erica knew they didn't have any evidence.

Eric wants an introduction to a legendary hacker.

■ ■ a

"Hi, this is Kevin Mitnick," cracks the voice on Spiegel's answering
machine in December of 1991.

Spiegel never answers the phone. Why pick up before he knows
who's calling? Spiegel's a veteran Hollywood pimp who shot and
dealt junk for a decade. He's an institution to LAPD vice. Spiegel
knows all the angles.

"My brother, Adam, said some gal Erica said I should phone
you," begins Mitnick. "Said somebody called Eric wants to talk —"

"Hi-----"

It's Spiegel, picking up.

He's sitting at his paper-strewn desk in his bungalow on Martel
off Sunset Boulevard. The rat Erica gave him is scurrying about a
few feet away in its cage. The floor is unfinished plywood, the couch
in the corner, stained and sagging. Computer magazines are piled
around the PC. A girl with a silver nose ring and a parrot perched on
her shoulder taps the names of clubgoers into Spiegel's computer.

"So who's this Eric dude?" Mitnick asks.

"He's a hacker," Spiegel says in his tired voice, lounging in his
sandals, black sweatpants, muscle-man T-shirt, and gold necklace.
Spiegel's been pumping iron with his personal trainer. He's fifty, still
muscular, his salt-and-peppery mane tied back in a ponytail.

Spiegel can only imagine what Mitnick looks like, though he feels
like he knows him. Susie Thunder, a hacker and one of Spiegel's
former girls, told him all about Mitnick. The two had a falling out in
the early 1980s when Mitnick exposed Thunder's double life as a
hooker. Thunder sliced the phone cables to Mitnick's apartment
building. Phone service was suddenly disconnected or forwarded.
Threatening calls were made to friends and family on both sides. It
raged into a full-scale hacker war.

Spiegel's got a stack of Mitnick's press clippings, arrests dating
back to the early 1980s, nearly all of them bearing the same menac-
ing photograph. Mitnick was seventeen when he first cracked Pacific

Bell's computers, according to a December 1988
Los Angeles Times article, altering telephone bills, penetrating other computers, and
stealing $200,000 worth of data from a San Francisco corporation.
He was released on probation after serving six months at a youth
facility. "Suddenly, his probation officer found that her phone had
been disconnected and the phone company had no record of it."