Hocus by Jan Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

anyone else. The electronic break-in was a great secret at BLP. In the beginning the bank was unwilling to let its depositors know that hackers had found their way into the bank’s computer system.
    “You can’t follow some sort of electronic trail?” I asked.
    “No,
mon amie,”
Guy said in his soft French Canadian accent. “It’s not as if they took money. It wasn’t transferred from the depositors’ accounts into some other place. The hackers just managed to cancel the command that levies the charges on the accounts. Our computer security people have figured out how they got in; they attached a line to one of our executives’ computers and listened in on his modem. They were able to record high-level access codes. They used the codes to break in on their own.”
    “You’re sure the executive’s not involved?” I asked.
    Guy nodded. “This man is not a computer whiz. He has a top level of access because of his position, not his abilities. He wouldn’t have known how to change the program.”
    “But still—”
    “He’s also a real outdoorsman,” Guy continued. “Likes to go rafting, hiking, do all of those things where a person can’t be reached by phone. I understand — he has a high-pressure job, and this allowed him to be free for a few days. He was rafting on the Green River in Utah on the days of the electronic break-in, and the calls were definitely local, not long distance.”
    “Hmm. Perfect timing.”
    “Yes. Someone was very good at homework, don’t you think?”
    “No chance that this fellow had a grudge? Maybe hired someone else to do the programming?”
    Guy shook his head. “He had nothing to gain. We think it was just a prank.”
    “A costly one.”
    “Yes. That is the shame, although few people would see that. No one has much sympathy for bankers.”
    I understood his point. Most people wouldn’t stop to think that the bank counted on those fees for its operations expenses. It wouldn’t go broke from this prank, but somewhere the bottom line would be affected; fees would go up, or there would be less money to lend.
    “It could have been worse,” Guy said. “Much worse. And our security is better now.” He paused and smiled. “Who knows? Perhaps we will gain something from the good publicity about waiving the fees.”
    The second prank was not hidden from the public eye. A few weeks after the bank incident, all street-sweeping ticket records were deleted from the municipal computers. When the city’s computer department reached for a separately stored backup file, it was found to be blank, with the exception of one text file: “All street-sweeping fines are forgiven. We are Hocus.”
    “That’s an odd name,” Lydia Ames observed when I came into the office with the story. She’s the assistant city editor at the
Express
and has been a friend of mine since childhood.
    “A perfect name,” said John Walters.
    “They think of themselves as magicians?” she asked.
    “You’re thinking of hocus-pocus,” I replied. “I made the same mistake, until I looked the word up in the dictionary. Hocus is a verb. It means to play a trick on, to dupe. It may be where the word ‘hoax’ comes from.”
    “The cheering will be heard citywide,” John said with a scowl. “No one likes parking tickets. But I like tricksters even less.”
    “I had the same reaction,” I said, “right after I decided what I was going to do with the money Hocus saved me on tickets.”
    The next action came about a week later. All outstanding library fines were eliminated from the city library’s computer system. The message “All fines are forgiven, courtesy of Hocus” appeared briefly on the screens one Monday morning. As the city investigated this new breach of security, the bank — given the promise that the information would remain confidential — let the Las Piernas Police Department know that Hocus had taken credit for the fee waiver at the bank.
    At first, citizens cheered the news