Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [112]
Not long before, Money magazine had rated Denver as one of the best places in the country to live. That sounded good. It wasn’t too far away, it seemed to have a good job market for computer work, it was well rated for quality of life, and settling down there would give me my first chance to experience real seasons—something that my life in Southern California had always denied me. Maybe I’d even try a little skiing.
I bought pagers for my mother and me—using a phony name for the purchases, of course, and paying cash. I got a third one for Lewis. Yes, Lewis: he would be a good source of information for me. I would be setting up a channel for secret communications, and I trusted him enough—both because of and despite all our history—to feel sure that if he got wind the Feds were up to something, he’d sound the alarm.
We established a code and a routine to be used in case of emergencies. If my mom needed to get in touch, she would send me a pager message identifying one of the big Vegas hotels. Our code for the Mirage, for example, was “7917111”—the Mirage phone number less the area code. Of course, the area code is the same for all the Vegas hotels, and leaving it off might make the location a tiny bit more difficult to guess for anyone who might be intercepting our pager communications. Another part of the code indicated urgency: “1” meant “At your convenience, please call me”; “2” was “Call me as soon as possible”; and “3” signaled “Call me immediately, it’s an emergency.” When I was the one trying to reach her, I’d just page her with a random number and priority code, and then she’d send back the number for the hotel she was at.
Whoever initiated the exchange, the routine was the same. After receiving the number for the casino she was at, I’d call and ask the operator to page someone for me and would give the name of a friend from Mom’s past. It was never the same one twice in a row; I always rotated them. (“Mary Schultz” is one I remember.)
When she heard a page with a name she recognized, she’d pick up a house phone and the operator would put my call through.
If the Feds wanted someone badly enough, I knew, they could find a way to wiretap the pay phones that a close relative or associate regularly used. So why take the chance? A casino hotel routinely handled dozens of phone calls at a time, maybe hundreds. Even if McGuire and company were determined enough to keep an eye on my mother in hopes I would call her and reveal my location, they could not easily track a call passing through the busy switchboard of a place like Caesars Palace.
Since I’d never been a fugitive before except for the few months in Oroville as a juvenile, I had no way of knowing how I’d react. Stepping so far off the grid was scary, but I could already tell I was going to enjoy it. It felt like the start of an exciting adventure.
TWENTY-SIX
Private Investigator
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It would be the first time I’d ever been completely on my own. Going to live in Denver without my mom and Gram seemed strange but also exhilarating. When my plane took off from Vegas, I would literally disappear into the ether; once in my new hometown, I’d start hiding in plain sight.
Can you imagine the freedom of starting your life over again, taking on a new name and identity? Of course, you’d miss your family and friends, the comfort of familiar places, but if you could put that part aside for a moment, wouldn’t it feel like a great adventure?
During the flight to the “Mile High City,” I felt a growing sense of anticipation. When the United Airlines plane landed, it was a bit anticlimactic: Denver was overcast and gloomy that afternoon. I got into a cab and asked the driver to take me to a hotel in a good neighborhood where I could rent a room by the week. The place he picked out was in what he referred to as “hotel row.”
I would rate the hotel at about two-and-a-half