If you have the proper tools-in this case, Fiona’s earring studs, a paper clip from my pocket and a credit card-you can build this device in about five minutes. It won’t last very long, since the batteries will cook the master phone in about thirty minutes, but if you need to jam a signal longer than thirty minutes, you’d have better tools and material from the get-go.
When we finished up, we walked back toward the house with the cameras, this time from the opposite side of the street. From this vantage point, I was able to get a better view of the rock camera. It was fixed in position and wasn’t motion activated, which told me there were probably another three or four cameras catching other angles from the illuminated windows.
I circled back on the street and came up along the side of the house again, so that I was diagonal to the first rock. It wouldn’t be able to catch me because it was fixed, so I simply removed the back of the rock-they come with a handsome tab latch and several arrows to indicate just how to disable the device, which is nice-and placed the wired phones directly atop the electrical pack. I would have just unplugged the entire device, which would have been simple enough, but I saw that there were cables running the length of the house and up into the roof, which meant that it was all circuited together. This would jam the entire transmission, not just one camera.
I walked back around and met Fiona on the sidewalk.
“Sophisticated?” she said.
“No,” I said. “A good idea. Bad execution. Someone has given him good advice, but there’s a serious lack of skill involved here.”
As we passed the driveway, I knelt down to scratch my foot, but also to get a look at the space beneath the Hondas I’d noticed earlier. There wasn’t a single spot of oil I could see, and the tires on both cars were only slightly worn. The cars also had dealer plates, which I suspected meant that they’d been stolen.
If you’re going to steal a car, steal a car with dealer plates. Dealers move their plates from automobile to automobile, so it’s impossible to track them down to a specific car. Police also don’t care about a car with dealer plates-it’s a car that no one owns yet, so there’s nothing of criminal note for them to pay attention to.
In this case, the cars were probably stolen and the plates were probably stolen, but not stolen together. It was a perfect (and easy) crime to pull off in a community like this, where you could set off a nuclear bomb at 11:00 P.M. and no one would realize there was a problem until the next morning, when they stepped outside to fetch the newspaper. It was unlikely that anyone paid any attention to anything unless it directly violated the HOA’s codes.
I stood up awkwardly, just in case anyone was watching, which I doubted. It was so quiet you could hear time.
“Is it your Achilles, darling?” Fiona asked.
“No,” I said, “just a slight irritation, my sweet.”
I didn’t think our voices were being recorded, but as we walked we kept up a running dialogue about the weather, the Johnsons’ new pool, Mr. Jones’ new goiter and our collective desire to spend the next Christmas in Spain. It was the kind of domestic conversation I imagined real people had all the time, but that was about as foreign to my domestic experience as I could possibly get. I tried to remember what my parents used to talk about when they were together, and then I remembered that they didn’t talk about anything. They screamed a lot, but there wasn’t much in the way of meaningless conversations about the life they were living. Not a great way to prepare young men to grow up into chatty adults, which neither I nor my brother, Nate, really were. Oh, we could talk… we just didn’t chat very well.
As we got closer to Junior’s house, I noticed yet another empty home, this one directly across the street from Junior’s. This one wasn’t lit up like it was on fire, as the house down the block was, but I could see a dipole sound antenna mounted above the storm drain. It wasn’t a complex system Junior had working-in fact, it was about as rudimentary as they come, and could be so easily hacked into that I could see the wheels in Fiona’s mind already turning-but if you’re in a safe area, surrounded by people who mean you no harm, you don’t exactly need satellites sending you the positions of Russian subs every morning.
“Follow my lead,” I said to Fiona, and then turned up Junior Gonzalez’ front walk. His house was modest-a one-story ranch style with a neatly trimmed lawn. A bed of roses was beneath the two picture windows that likely looked into the living room, though the drapes were closed, and there was a wicker basket with fake flowers sitting atop a distressed wood bench in the portico, just adjacent to the ten-foot-high front door.
When we reached the door, I attempted to open it. I could tell immediately from the complete lack of movement that it was secured by more than just a mere dead bolt. That the front door was actually metal overlaid with wood was also a pretty good clue.
If you have a metal front door, it’s because you expect that one day someone is going to try to break it down. If you’re smart enough to build a metal door into your house, you’re probably smart enough to have a camera on the door, too-Junior’s was buried in the fake flowers, another Target special-and maybe you’re even smart enough to not answer the door when a stranger starts kicking it and making a bunch of noise.
“Jeff? Jeff? It’s Marvin! You locked the door! Jeff!” I pounded on the door a few times, which didn’t make much noise on account of the dulling nature of the metal, so I started slapping at the wall. And then Fiona started shouting, too.
“Mary? Mary? I’m freezing out here! It must be seventy degrees out here!”
I stepped back from the portico and slapped at the living room windows. Double paned. Nice. I slapped them again and shouted for Jeff. Fiona stepped out onto the lawn, fished around for a rock and then threw it at the garage door, and screamed some more for Mary.
“More?” she mouthed.
I shrugged. Why the hell not? Fiona picked up another rock, but before she could throw it, the front door opened and an exceptionally large Latino man stepped out. He wore only a robe and shower shoes and a confused look on his face. “Why are you screaming and throwing things at my home?” he asked. It was a rather pleasant entreaty from a man who’d spent twenty-five years in prison and had either killed or ordered the deaths of probably dozens of men.
“Oh, crap,” I said. “All these houses look alike. I thought this was Jeff’s house. We’re visiting him, took a walk down to the gazebo and I guess we got lost. I’m really sorry. I thought this was Jeff and Mary’s place. Honey, do you know what street they live on? This isn’t the right house.”
Fiona, still with a rock clutched in her hand, sat down on Junior’s lawn. “How can you be so stupid?” she said.
“Honey,” I said, “this is not a big deal. We’ll find the house.” I turned to Junior, gave him one in my new series of looks meant to convey instant brotherhood-this one was my “Women, what can you do with them?” smile-and then took a step toward him so that I could give him a loud stage whisper. “There can’t be that many houses in the development, right? I think it was on one of those Indian streets. Apache, maybe?”
“Please, get off my lawn,” Junior said. “I just had it reseeded.”
“No problem,” I said, and then Fiona began to cry.
“Why is she crying?” Junior asked.
“We both had a little to drink tonight,” I said, and then I gave him the “We’re both in this together look” men often share in situations that involve crying females. “I hate to ask this, but would it be possible to come inside and use your phone? It’s awfully dark out, and I don’t feel like there’s a great chance my lady friend and I will ever find Jeff and Mary’s house.”
“No,” he said.
“What?” Fiona said. She was up now and storming toward Junior. “No? What? What kind of person are you? What kind of values do you have? We aren’t going to come inside and steal your plates, you asshole. We just want to use the telephone. And if I don’t get to a restroom in the next five minutes, I’ll be back on your lawn! And then what will you do?”
I caught Fiona in my arms before she could begin doing whatever crazy, drunk, Southern women are prone to do to hulking ex-convicts, which is probably whatever they damn well please. “Easy, honey,” I said. “He doesn’t want us in his home. That’s fine. It’s his right.”
Fiona crumpled down on Junior’s feet and began to sob even more. That probably would have been fine, really, but when she began to wail and lights started turning on down the street-or, well, more lights than our screaming and hurling of rocks had caused to turn on-Junior said, “Fine, fine. Come in.”
The inside of Junior’s house looked like a model home. The front door opened into a wide entry hall that fed
