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FIFTEEN
“How the Fuck Did You Get That?”
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S
urprisingly enough, Eric was more than willing to meet us for dinner. We
settled on a few days later at a Hamburger Hamlet near West Los Angeles.
Lewis and I were both antsy enough about the meeting that he said he
would bring along some special equipment designed to ease our paranoia.
We met in the parking lot about half an hour early. When I joined him in
his car, he was intently listening to a radio scanner. I didn’t have to ask what
he was listening to: the scanner was programmed to pick up all of the
frequencies used by the FBI, Secret Service, and U.S. Marshals. And more
besides, because when the Feds were dealing with somebody they thought
might be wise about technology, they often got tricky and decided to use the
frequency of some other agency, like the Bureau of Prisons, or the Drug
Enforcement Agency, or even the Postal Inspection Service, among others.
So Lewis had those frequencies programmed as well.
The scanner wouldn’t pick up distant signals, only those strong enough
to be coming from someplace close. In that era, almost all Federal law
enforcement agencies were already sophisticated enough to encrypt their
traffic. But we wouldn’t need to know what they were saying, just whether
they were saying it nearby. If the law enforcement frequencies started
buzzing, we’d get the hell out of there in a hurry.
For now, all was quiet, but just in case, Lewis slipped a couple of
interesting electronic devices into his pocket as we got out of the car.
We had agreed on this restaurant because the location was convenient.
The Hamburger Hamlet turned out to have a passé decor of mirrors, brass,
and tile, which had the side effect of turning conversations in the
supercrowded place into a noisy buzz. Perfect, since we wanted to be sure
we wouldn’t be overheard by anyone at a neighboring table.
Eric had told us to look for a guy with shoulder-length blond hair and a
laptop. Even among all the Hollywood types chomping into thick burgers,
we had no trouble spotting him. Thin, wearing a silk shirt left open to show
his chest, he looked like a rock musician—or maybe more like a guy
decked out to get the standard reaction of “I know that face, but I can’t
remember which band he’s with.”
We said hello, introduced ourselves, sat down, and let him know clearly,
right up front, that we had no reason to think we could trust him. Lewis and
I had each brought along a RadioShack Pro-43 handheld scanner, and we
put them on the table in plain sight. Lewis had also brought an
Optoelectronics RF Detector—a device designed to detect signals
transmitted from a body mike—which he openly waved around over Eric’s
body. It picked up nothing.
The whole time we were there, Eric seemed to be intensely preoccupied
with scouting the horizon for female companionship, while he told nonstop
stories about the fullness of his dating calendar and the details of his sexual
escapades. Lewis seemed inclined to put up with and even encourage this
braggart litany, but I never have trusted guys who feel the need to paint
themselves to other men as ultimate Romeos. It made me wonder if any of
the information Eric might give us about the phone companies—our
mission’s sole purpose—could be believed, even if we
could
draw it out of
him.
Still, at one point—at last—he dropped a tidbit into the conversation that
truly got my attention. He claimed he had a master key that gave him access
to every phone company central office, left over from the days when he and
Kevin Poulsen were making nighttime visits to COs all over Los Angeles.
I was mostly just listening. Because I wasn’t supposed to have any
interaction with other hackers, I had told Lewis to do most of the talking for
us. Eric bragged about having been a sound engineer on the road, but he
didn’t name any of the bands he’d worked for, which I guessed meant they
were ones nobody had ever heard of. Then he tried to impress us with
things he had that he was sure we didn’t: besides the master keys or door
codes for all the central offices, he claimed he also had a master key for all
the “B-boxes”—the phone company boxes scattered along the streets of
every city, which field techs go to when they need to wire up phone lines to
houses and businesses. It sounded as if he was hoping to tempt us, trying to
get us to plead with him, “Could we come along on one of your break-ins?”
Then he started talking about those nighttime break-ins into phone
company offices with Kevin Poulsen and another hacker, Ron Austin, to
collect information and gain access to internal Pacific Bell systems. And
about how he had taken part in that radio-contest phone hack, when Poulsen
scored his jackpot win of the two Porsches. And, Eric said, two Hawaii
vacations.
Eric said he had gotten a Porsche from that hack as well.
One thing did seem to have the ring of truth: he told us how the Feds
had caught Poulsen. They found out he did his grocery shopping at a
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