“She helped you just like that?”
Jonathan blushed. “She had a problem with the zipper of her dress. It was stuck. I was the only one there and heard her cursing and then crying, so I asked if I could help her.”
“And?”
“She came into my stall and I freed the zipper.” He looked over at me, embarrassed, and seemed to feel the need to explain further. “It was a really tight dress and she was stuck with no way to free herself, with the zipper stuck halfway up and everything…”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Jonathan!” I was getting pissed off at him, trying to squeeze the information out of him. “You took her clothes off and then what happened?”
“We didn’t do anything in there.”
I asked myself if the answer intimated that they did do something somewhere else, maybe in her apartment, but then focused on the angle that interested me. “When you left the bathroom, did she have on her wig or did they see her real identity?”
“She put the wig on me and some sort of scarf that hid my bag as well. She walked out of the toilets naturally, I mean, as herself. Do you think she is in any danger?”
I didn’t want to tell him that if they did manage to track her down, she was doomed. Instead I answered, “Depends what you told her.”
He blushed like a kid caught lying. “Everything...she knows everything.”
“Everything?” I was insistent, despite his clear embarrassment. “Did you describe everything you found to her?”
“No.” He became serious. “Just about me, who I am. That I am a hacker and that I broke into their security system. She was rushing home anyway, because she had a meeting...with customers.”
“Why didn’t you drive home?” I asked. He didn’t answer, but the blush crawling up his cheeks told me everything, “So you just hid in the closet while the customers were with her in her room?”
“Yes, it’s a studio apartment…” He sounded dejected. “She was with two men.”
“The ones that left when I walked in?”
“Yes. She was with them both at the same time.” He sighed. He looked sad.
“You do realize that’s her job, right? She’s a prostitute.”
“Of course I realize that. I’m not a little boy. That’s not the problem.” There was a short pause. Then he snapped, “I think she really enjoyed herself with them.”
That really wasn’t his business. I hoped he hadn’t fallen in love with her. I said, “They pay her to act like she’s having fun with them…” I trailed off and then decided to change the subject. “So you also counted cards in the casino?”
Jonathan ignored my question. Even though he was irked, it seemed he couldn’t help himself. He asked, “But sometimes she really does enjoy herself, doesn’t she?”
I wanted to ask him to promise not to go to her for sex, to instead see her as a person in dire straits. I wanted to tell him that if he did give in to make sure to use a condom. But I decided to avoid the line of thought altogether. Instead I asked again, “Did you count cards or not?”
“My specialty is not mathematics. Counting cards bores me. That’s why I left them and sat on the side with my laptop. They had free WiFi… so I decided to have some fun.”
“So you went in to collect intelligence. What did you find?”
“I always start by checking what’s legal. For instance, the casino’s Facebook and Instagram pages. Afterwards, I enter their systems and check their employees. Like who is in charge of the security. He is always the one I am most interested in. Coincidentally, this time, he was especially interesting because he was also in charge of customer services or something like that. He had a lot of pictures in every possible network. But do you know what was even more interesting than those photos with him posing with tons of hot chicks and heavy gamblers in his casino?”
I played along. “What was so interesting?”
“What interested me more was the information he didn’t upload.”
So you checked his computer?”
“I started by scanning the casino’s computer. They have a few other businesses. While that was scanning, I searched their limousine rentals. I looked for their VIP customer list to find a name I might recognize, but all I found was a list of expenses and income, a list of permanent customers, and a few more boring lists. There was no one of interest anywhere. So from there I cross-referenced those who were tagged as permanent customers and checked their social networks. I compared them to the list of private computers which were connected to WiFi at the same time. If you have their kids’ names and birth dates it’s not hard to get into their private computers. Most people are careless enough to use that kind of data for their passwords, and it’s easy enough to find it all on social media.”
“What is so important that you need to infiltrate some stranger’s computer in whom you have no personal interest?”
“You would think that the most interesting thing is seeing the porn he saves on his computer, but it’s actually a lot more interesting to read the chats with the mistresses and see their hidden photo folders. Not photos with their families, but with personal naked pictures. It’s mainly women that send pictures of themselves in provocative poses. They’re much, much more interesting than the porn sites themselves.”
He stopped and glanced over at me as if he expected some sort of reproof. I wondered if, as the responsible adult here, I should say something on the matter. I preferred to keep my mouth shut. Jonathan continued. “If I wanted to extort them, I would just put all that data in the cloud, but I am not like that. I continued to surf, because I was trying to get to the
