Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [20]
I told the guys, “Let’s take the manuals to a copy shop, run off a copy for each of us, and then return the manuals before people start coming back to work in the morning.”
The guard didn’t even comment that we had come in empty-handed and were leaving with several manuals, including several stuffed into a briefcase that Lewis had spotted in one of the offices.
It was the most stupid decision of my early life.
We drove around looking for a copy shop but couldn’t find one. And of course the ordinary copy shops weren’t open at 2:00 a.m. And then we decided it was too risky anyway to go back into the building a second time to return the manuals, even after the shift change—my ever-reliable plausible-story-on-the-spot mechanism wasn’t coming up with a single believable explanation to offer.
So I took the manuals home with me. But I had a bad feeling about them. Into several Hefty trash bags they went, and Lewis took possession for me and hid them somewhere. I didn’t want to know.
Even though Lewis wasn’t hooked up with Susan Thunder anymore, he was still associating with her, and he still had that big mouth of his. Somehow incapable of keeping quiet even about things that could get him or his friends in deep trouble, he told her about the manuals.
She ratted us out to the phone company. On a hot summer evening several days later, as I pull out of the parking lot to drive home from my job, as a telephone receptionist at the Steven S. Wise Temple, I pass a Ford Crown Victoria with three men inside. (Why do law enforcement guys always drive the same model of car? Did nobody ever figure out that it makes them as obvious as if they had “UNDERCOVER COPS” painted on the side?)
I speed up to see if they’ll U-turn and follow.
Yes. Shit. But maybe it’s just a coincidence.
I pick up speed, rolling onto the ramp for the I-405 headed for San Fernando Valley.
The Crown Vic is catching up.
As I watch in my rearview mirror, an arm reaches out and places a set of cop-car flashers on the roof, and the lights start blinking. Oh shit! Why are they pulling me over? The thought of gunning it races through my mind. A high-speed chase? Insane.
No way am I going to try to run. I pull over.
The car pulls up behind me. The three guys leap out. They start running toward me.
They’re drawing their guns!!!
They’re shouting, “Get out of the car!”
In an instant, I’m in handcuffs. Once again they’re closed painfully tight.
One of the guys shouts in my ear, “You’re gonna stop fucking around with the phone company! We’re gonna teach you a lesson!” I’m so scared I start crying.
Another car pulls up. The driver hops out and runs toward us. He’s shouting at the cops, “Search his car for the bomb! He’s got a logic bomb!!”
Now I’m practically laughing through my tears. A logic bomb is a piece of software, but these guys don’t seem to know that. They think I’m carrying something that can blow everybody up!
They start grilling me. “Where are the manuals?”
I tell them, “I’m a juvenile, I want to call my lawyer.”
Instead they treated me like a terrorist, taking me to a police station in Pasadena, about a forty-five-minute drive away, and parading me to a holding cell. No bars, just a small room like a cement coffin, with a huge steel door that no sounds could penetrate. I tried to get my one phone call, but the cops refused. Apparently juveniles didn’t have any constitutional rights.
Finally a Probation Officer showed up to interview me. Although he had the power to release me to my parents, the cops convinced him that I was what today might be described as the Hannibal Lecter of computer hacking. I was transferred in handcuffs to Juvenile Hall