'Out? What's that?'
'You want me to call you back? When you're more awake?'
'No, no. I'm fine. Gotta get up anyway and get back to work. What can I do for you?'
Randy Pelkington was a twenty-nine-year-old Australian who'd moved to New York when he was eleven years old but he'd never managed to lose his accent. Randy's parents were good, upstanding middle-class people – his mother was a book publisher who'd been hired by an American firm and relocated to New York and his father was an architect who, when he had trouble landing work in his new country, became a professor of architectural history at NYU. They were both extremely surprised when their son, at age fifteen, got into quite a bit of trouble with the local police. Randy, it seemed, had a skill. He was one of the earliest and best computer hackers and, just as a lark, he'd hacked into the NYPD system and did some, as he called it, rearranging. When he was caught, Randy had been prepared. He'd saved all the original information on disk and was easily able to re-rearrange things back to normal. Since Randy's actions seemed not to be malicious and purposeful but rather done out of curiosity, some clever person on the force decided that there was a better alternative than tossing the young genius into juvenile detention. His punishment was that he had to spend a year on probation helping the department with their computer programming. At the end of the year, Randy was promptly hired by the city as a consultant to continue his work. He also, at the same time he attended NYU, started his own business. Most of his computer work was fairly benign. He described it as 'helping rich people get over their terror of the unknown electronic universe.' What he mostly did was go to those people who tended to work out of their homes – writers, architects, artists, what have you – and set up computer systems for them. He taught them how to use Windows as well as non-Windows applications and came over to rescue them whenever they thought they'd lost something of value in the bowels of their computers or just generally got confused and screwed up. He also did several small office systems installations, which is how Jack happened to meet him. Caroline had hired Randy to set up the computer systems for Jack's restaurants nationwide.
'I need some help,' Jack now told Randy.
'No problem. At the restaurant?'
'No, no. This is personal.'
'Sounds intriguing. What is it you need?'
Jack told him and Randy said he'd call him back in fifteen minutes.
– '-'-'NO PROBLEM,' RANDY said when he called back. 'I don't even have to come there. We can do this over the phone.'
'Are you sure?'
'Piece o' cake. You still on the ThinkPad?'
Jack said that he was.
'This is gonna be easy,' Randy told him. 'Go to 'Search the Internet' and when you come to the search line, type in 'CylockHolmes.com.' and click on 'Search.''
Jack did as he was told, waited, and suddenly a line appeared that said: 1 of 1 Web Site Matches.
'Okay,' Randy told him, 'click on the Web site line. You want me to hang on while you start it up and download, Mr. K?'
'If you don't mind.'
'My pleasure,' the computer whiz said.
To Jack's amazement, cartoonish drawings of a Sherlock Holmes-like detective popped up on his computer screen, followed by hype for the site. According to that hype, he could use this program to find long-lost friends, license plate numbers, Social Security numbers, and unlisted phone numbers. He could also verify educational records, get dirt on his neighbors – in essence, according to the on-screen promises, discover anything about anyone. Once he typed in his credit card number and registered as a user, the following grid appeared:
CYLOCKHOLMES DETECTION KIT
[Background [Information [Internet
Information
Reference] Source] Source]
[Information
[ADDRESS RESULTS WILL DISPLAY
HERE] Sources]
[Current Search
[PHONE NUMBERS WILL DISPLAY HERE] Category]
[Business Records]
[Driver Records]
[Vehicle [ADDITIONAL INFORMATION WILL
Ownership] DISPLAY HERE]
[Vital Records]
[Voter
State: [Alabama] [Retrieve] Registration]
[County
[Return Address] [Print Envelopes] Courthouse]
[CD Interface Help] [Check for Update] [About] [EXIT] [Cylock Holmes [Report]
Notebook]
'Jesus,' Jack breathed. 'Anyone can just do this?'
'As long as you got a credit card,' Randy said. 'Feeling paranoid?'
'A little.'
'Wise man. No such thing as privacy anymore. You want me to lead you through this at the beginning?'
'Yes,' Jack said.
'Okay, tell me what you're looking for.'
'Something called Grave Enterprises.'
'What about it?'
Jack exhaled. 'Not sure,' he said. 'How about exactly what it is and who runs it.'
'Okay. I'm looking at the screen, too. Go to the icon that says 'Investigative Tools.''
Again, Jack clicked as per his instructions. He then typed in the information that Randy told him to type in at exactly the spots where Randy told him to type it. Within moments there was a long list of corporations and companies that had the word 'grave' in them.
'You're gonna have to narrow it down, Jack. Or else you're going to have to check out each one of these. Looks like there's about a hundred and fifty – and that's just in New York. A lot of 'em you can get rid of immediately, I'm sure. This doesn't look like it's the world's greatest search engine, so I think you'll find words like 'gravy' and companies that have names that are just close; stuff like that'll clog up the list.'
'Okay,' Jack said. 'You don't have to hang on while I do that. That could take a while.'
'What else do you need?'
Jack told him that he had a credit card number that he wanted traced back to the owner.
'You don't have the owner's name?'
'No,' Jack explained. 'Just the number.'
'That might take a little more time 'cause it's not the way the system's set up. I'll tell you what. Try finding what you want on this 'grave' list. Then, if you can narrow things down to a few names, we can track the credit cards for each person until you get what you're looking for. If that doesn't work, give me the number and I'll do a search. But I'll have to tap into a few things that might not be kosher.'
'All right. Let me try it the kosher way first,' Jack said. 'Although I don't understand how this can really be legal.'
'Trust me,' Randy said.
