Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker

seasons—
something that my life in Southern California had
always denied me. Maybe I’d even try a little skiing.
I bought pagers for my mother and me—using a phony name for the
purchases, of course, and paying cash. I got a third one for Lewis. Yes,
Lewis: he would be a good source of information for me. I would be setting

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up a channel for secret communications, and I trusted him enough—both
because of and despite all our history—to feel sure that if he got wind the
Feds were up to something, he’d sound the alarm.
We established a code and a routine to be used in case of emergencies. If
my mom needed to get in touch, she would send me a pager message
identifying one of the big Vegas hotels. Our code for the Mirage, for
example, was “7917111”—the Mirage phone number less the area code. Of
course, the area code is the same for all the Vegas hotels, and leaving it off
might make the location a tiny bit more difficult to guess for anyone who
might be intercepting our pager communications. Another part of the code
indicated urgency: “1” meant “At your convenience, please call me”; “2”
was “Call me as soon as possible”; and “3” signaled “Call me immediately,
it’s an emergency.” When 
I
was the one trying to reach 
her
, I’d just page
her with a random number and priority code, and then she’d send back the
number for the hotel she was at.
Whoever initiated the exchange, the routine was the same. After
receiving the number for the casino she was at, I’d call and ask the operator
to page someone for me and would give the name of a friend from Mom’s
past. It was never the same one twice in a row; I always rotated them.
(“Mary Schultz” is one I remember.)
When she heard a page with a name she recognized, she’d pick up a
house phone and the operator would put my call through.
If the Feds wanted someone badly enough, I knew, they could find a
way to wiretap the pay phones that a close relative or associate regularly
used. So why take the chance? A casino hotel routinely handled dozens of
phone calls at a time, maybe hundreds. Even if McGuire and company were
determined enough to keep an eye on my mother in hopes I would call her
and reveal my location, they could not easily track a call passing through
the busy switchboard of a place like Caesars Palace.
Since I’d never been a fugitive before except for the few months in Oroville
as a juvenile, I had no way of knowing how I’d react. Stepping so far off the
grid was scary, but I could already tell I was going to enjoy it. It felt like the
start of an exciting adventure.

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