Final Victim

Chapter 10

Malavida's heart started to pound in his chest as they neared his mother's apartment. Elena Chacone had raised all seven of her children by scrubbing floors and washing windows in the big houses up in La Habra Heights. She had never asked for anything in return. Malavida used to be her favorite child. Now she looked at him with sadness. He hated the thought of going home in chains.

Elena had been born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and in the evenings, she used to tell her children stories of the beautiful tree-shaded public squares in that mountaintop city. She would close her eyes and remember the colorful flowers and the children riding ponies in the park. She described the magnificent churches with their huge stained-glass windows and ornate Spanish arches. "Dios mio, son bonitas," she would sigh. Her family had all worked in one of the pottery plants there, and she told her children about the blown glass and clay artifacts that had won the city international fame.

To Malavida, it seemed a crime that she had left such a beautiful place to live in a two-room apartment in graffiti-ridden Pico Rivera. She had been only sixteen when she left that Mexican paradise to come to "El Norte" to work on her hands and knees, scrubbing floors. In an even worse turn of fate, she had married Juan Chacone. He was also an illegal alien, but was ropy and mean. His hometown was Chubasco, which he remembered with seething hatred. Elena had seven children by Juan, and Malavida was the youngest. Juan was a brawler and a drunk, who often came home on Saturday nights and took swings at Malavida's beloved mother. Malavida hated Juan with every fiber of his existence. He prayed that his father would be hit by a car or killed in some Saturday night brawl. And then, one day, Juan had simply gone to the store and hadn't come back. Malavida prayed every night that he would never return. As the days passed, it seemed that Malavida's prayers had been answered, but his mother was paralyzed by her husband's disappearance. She had been abused by him, but couldn't seem to face the idea of living without him. His mother had been afraid to go to the police, because she was sure they would send her back to Mexico and she would be separated from her children.

When Malavida was twelve years old, he had been given a used Apple computer by one of the people whose houses his mother cleaned. He was fascinated by its bright screen and beautiful graphics. He worked at it endlessly, and in five years, at the age of seventeen, he was already so adept that he was a legend on the Internet. His username was Snoopy. Long before that, however, he realized that his computer gave him immense power over a system that had held him down and enslaved his family. One day, he decided to use this new power, and that was the day he started out on his career of crime. His initial goal had been simple. He would get enough money so that he could send his mother back to Guadalajara in style. She had finally become a U. S. citizen by virtue of the Amnesty Act of 1987, so now she could come and go across the border. He decided he would fulfill her dream of going back to the beautiful city where children played in the shaded town square and rode ponies and ate gelato in the huge green parks.

His first computer scam had grown out of something very innocent. He had been up in La Habra Heights, helping his mother clean one of her houses, and saw a country-club membership book on a marble table. On impulse, he slipped it into his pocket. The book gave the addresses and occupations of the members, as well as the ages of their children. He thought such personal information surely must have some value. He turned the problem over in his mind for two days, and slowly a plan formed. He started reading The Wall Street Journal to pick up the terms he would need. He asked his sister's boyfriend, who was an artist, to design a letterhead. Then he wrote a letter to ten of the club members, each one selected by occupation. If the man was an insurance executive, the letter would say that an executive headhunting firm called Executive Research Foundation had been hired by an international insurance firm with headquarters in California to find a chief executive officer. This insurance company, the letter said, preferred to remain anonymous at this point, but the position it was offering paid approximately five hundred thousand dollars a year. The letter continued by telling the mark that his name now appeared on the short list of potential candidates as a result of his outstanding work at his current company. Then Malavida wrote that it was ERF's pleasure to inquire if he would be interested in taking an in-person meeting with the insurance company's Chairman when he was in town, to discuss the employment opportunity. He signed the letters "Dexter Freemantel, Vice-President of Human Resources." He sent them off and waited.

From ten letters, Malavida got four replies, all of them affirmative. Then he wrote each one back, asking the candidates for a few more details before the meeting could be arranged. He politely requested that they supply him with a Social Security number so that ERF could complete its background check, and could they also supply him with their mother's maiden name and their banking affiliation for a routine credit check? To this query, he got one reply… Mr. Gregory Clayton Smith said that he was looking to make a change and enthusiastically sent back all the information requested.

Then Malavida simply sat down in front of his computer and cracked Mr. Smith's bank, which happened to be the Bank of America. He hacked into Gregory Smith's account and then requested a wire transfer of two thousand dollars to an account he had set up at a bank in Fullerton under a bogus name. He took only two thousand because that was all he needed to buy airfare to Guadalajara for both himself and his mother, with a little left over for new clothes for the trip. When the B of A computer asked for Mr. Smith's Social Security number and mother's maiden name for the wire transfer confirmation, he sent the information.

The next morning was Thursday, December 16. Malavida rode his old ten-speed bike three miles to Fullerton and checked his balance. On that day, Malavida got an early Christmas present and completed his first successful computer theft… Sitting in Charles Brown's bank account was a wire transfer for two thousand dollars. He couldn't believe it had worked! With adrenaline coursing through his teenaged heart, he cashed in the account and took off. He smiled all the way back to his ramshackle apartment building in Pico Rivera, the twenty crisp hundred-dollar bills in a pocket of his school backpack. He was just thirteen years old.

He had taken his mother to Guadalajara, first class, on Aeronaves. She was wearing a brand-new peach-colored dress and shoes, and had a new leather purse and matching luggage-all of it bought at Kmart. He had told her he'd saved money from odd jobs to give her the trip.

"Dios mio," she had said; then she hugged him while tears streamed down both of their cheeks.

As the airliner circled for its landing at Guadalajara's airport, Malavida had been so proud he could barely contain himself. Elena had muttered quiet prayers of thanks as the plane touched down.

The trip had been a disaster. The tree-lined parks were dirty and brown. There were no ponies. Elena's family was poor; her aunt and uncle were sick, but still dragging themselves to the pottery plant, which now employed less than a third of the people it once had. There were poverty and sadness everywhere.

All Malavida had accomplished with his great gift to his mother was to steal the memories that had been sustaining her. Within days, she wanted to go home, and on the trip back to L. A. they said almost nothing.

Her life had always been a struggle, so after the disappointment of Guadalajara, Malavida determined he would use his newfound powers to make things better. He would program a new life for her. For a while, he succeeded. But then, five years later, he was arrested by John Lockwood-busted and cuffed right in his mother's living room. Malavida knew Lockwood had made the arrest there on purpose, right in front of his mother, to humiliate him. It was then that Elena realized that the gifts he had been giving her were all stolen. She gave everything back. It broke his heart that he had caused her such pain. All he had wanted to do was ease her burden. She would never again accept another gift from him.

The street in Pico Rivera where Malavida had once lived was littered with rusted-out cars, broken bottles, and smoked-out ghetto stars. There was gang graffiti all over the side of the store at the corner. The bright signs in the shop windows were red or gold, but the businesses behind them were struggling to survive. The apartment building where Elena Chacone lived was called The Ritz. It was a two-story stucco fortress with barred windows that looked as ritzy as hand-me-down clothes. Lockwood thought the neighborhood was twice as depressing as it had been when he'd camped out across from Elena's apartment for four days, waiting to arrest Malavida.

They parked in front and got out. Malavida looked down at the chains on his hands and around his waist. "I don't want her to see me like this," he said softly.

Lockwood looked at his eyes and saw a tinge of panic, so he reached out and unlocked the handcuffs and waist chain. He threw the chain into the trunk, but draped the cuffs over the steering wheel, an age-old sign to car-jackers that this was a cop's car… Fuck with it at your own risk!

As all three climbed the metal staircase to the apartment, their footsteps rang in the concrete stairwell. When they got to the second floor, Malavida led them to his mother's front door and knocked.

"Es Malavida, mama."

The door opened and Elena Chacone was standing there. She rushed forward and hugged her son. She was stooped over and barely five feet tall, but Karen thought there was a nobility about her. Despite her size and posture, she had the look of somebody who carried the weight of all her family's problems without complaint. But disappointments, more than years or gravity, had aged her. Her face was lined and sagging, her gray-black hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head. Karen found it hard to imagine her as a young girl.

After the embrace was finished, Malavida and his mother started to rattle at each other in Spanish. Lockwood looked over at Karen. His Spanish, like his computer skill, was rudimentary, and he could pick up only a word or two-"Trabajo" was one, "Sus hijos" another, then "El coche no funciona Bien" all of this from Elena. Something about a job, and the car not working. From Malavida, all he got was "Mis amigos.. Donde esta Ricardo?… Mi computer y todas las cosas… Tekfono. "

The words hung in the air, a guttural flow of unrecognized vowels and consonants. Lockwood's cop paranoia screamed at him. He was afraid maybe Malavida was asking for help. Who was Ricardo? Would he show up with a car full of Esses?

"Can we do this in English?" he interrupted. "Not that I don't trust you, but I like to know what's being said."

Malavida turned and looked at Lockwood. "My mother doesn't speak much English." Then he made a very polite introduction: "Mama, to recuerdas el senor Juan Lockwood, y esta es la senorita Karen Dawson, mi madre Elena Chacone." They shook hands and Elena dropped her head in deference to the rich Americans. She remembered Lockwood with distress from when he had slammed her son against the wall, then thrown him on the floor and cuffed him.

"I don't want to do it here," Malavida said. "We gotta do it someplace else."

"Do what?" Lockwood replied.

"Crack the computer you're after. Let's just pick up my stuff and go."

"Where? We need a work station. All this stuff is here already. Why move it? I'll pay the phone bill if that's the problem…

"It hasn't been the same since you busted me here. Look at her. You scare her to death." Now the look in Malavida's eyes was closer to desperation. "I'm not gonna do a computer crime in front of her. That's all there is to it."

Karen thought that, despite his macho looks and size, Malavida was still just a little boy who didn't want to break his mother's heart. She grabbed Lockwood's arm, pulling him back slightly.

"Let's find someplace else," she said.

"He's conning us," Lockwood answered.

"We can rent a motel room."

"No, I got a better idea," he finally replied.

Lockwood turned to Elena and told her in his broken Spanish that he was honored to be in her home, and then asked if he could use the phone for a local call. Elena hurried into the kitchen and handed it to him. He thanked her and, after she left, dialed Claire's number again. He kept his eye on Malavida, who was in the living room talking to Karen.

"Hello," Claire said.

"Hi. It's John…"

"Oh… Where are you? You sound close," she said guardedly.

"I am. I'm in Pico Rivera. It's a short trip. Government work, but I don't have to be back to the airport till six tonight. I thought, if it was okay, I could come over. I'd like to see Heather."

There was a long pause on her end, then: "Well… gee, I don't know… We were planning something."

"Claire, I didn't make trouble for you when your job offer came and you moved three thousand miles away. I let you come here without filing an injunction. I'm giving up my weekends with Heather. Now you're saying I can't have two hours?"

"We both know why you didn't try to stop me. What were you going to do with Heather… take her on stakeouts?"

The shot hit him hard because there was truth in it. His job wasn't just nine to five, Monday though Friday. Criminals didn't take the weekends off, so neither did he.

"I want to see her, okay?" he pressed on. "It's noon now… I could be there in less than an hour."

"I guess," Claire finally answered, but her voice offered no enthusiasm.

Malavida passed Lockwood as he hung up the phone. He saw a strange, sad look on the Customs agent's face. He knew he had played the Fed just right by getting Karen to convince him to keep moving. Malavida was looking for a chance to take off, but he couldn't do it here. Not in front of his mother. Malavida went into the bedroom where he and his seven brothers and sisters had all slept as children. All of them had moved out now, except for his sister Madalena, who had just broken up with her husband and was living there. Madalena's things were strewn all over the place. She had always been the messy one. It was hard living in one room with seven brothers and sisters if everybody didn't keep their belongings picked up. As a result, Malavida was scrupulously neat.

He found his computers in boxes on the top shelf of the closet, then lifted them down carefully. His prize was the now somewhat outdated Texas Instruments Travelmate 4000M notebook with 20 megs of RAM. Before his incarceration, the 4000M had been the fastest unit on the market and he ran Linux on it, a free UNIX operating system favored by many hackers. He pulled down another box containing an external 14.4 modem and his cellphone, then the plastic filecase full of his disks. This was his cracking kit. Inside, he had tools to mask and change his identity and location on the Internet, as well as many other disks that helped him penetrate a variety of systems and situations. He next pulled down his "Interesting Things and Locations" three-ring notebook, then his outdials. Last was his Sony monitor. By the time he had it all down, it made a sizable pile in the center of the room. He had stolen almost all of the hardware, buying it with jacked credit card numbers. Now he was going to use it to help the police… an irony that he found no humor in. The last thing he did was take his Snoopy poster off the wall. Snoopy was his icon, his good-luck charm. He rolled it up carefully.

They loaded the equipment into the trunk of the LeBaron, which was beginning to draw a crowd. The little yellow convertible stood out like a debutante among the rusted, primer-painted muscle cars. This became Lockwood's first tactical problem. They had drawn a crowd of teenaged street bravos. The G-sters were standing on the brown lawn next door, gold Turkish ropes around their necks, looking down innocently at their spit-shined Santa Rosa hightops. Their gang flags were hanging from pockets bulging with foreign automatics. They looked on hungrily as the computer equipment was loaded into the trunk, licking their lips like coyotes watching a French poodle.

Lockwood knew that if he accompanied Malavida back up into the apartment, the trunk would be pried open with a crowbar, and in ten seconds they would lose it all. He pulled Karen aside.

"I gotta stay down here and protect this stuff. You go with Mal. If he takes off, yell."

"What are you talking about? He's not gonna take off." Malavida was just finishing packing the first load into the trunk.

He turned and looked at Lockwood. "One more trip. You coming?" "Go ahead," Karen said, catching Lockwood by surprise. Malavida immediately turned and jogged back to the stairs. Lockwood started after him, but as he did, the street bravos surged toward the LeBaron. He had to stop or Karen would be left protecting the car alone. He knew instantly he'd made a bad field decision and had let the play get away from him.

"This is fucked. He's going to go out the window up there and across the roof. We'll never see him again."

"Nonsense, he'll be right back," she said confidently.

A minute later, Malavida came back down with the last load of computer equipment and placed it in the trunk. Then he went up and kissed his mother good-bye. Karen and Lockwood could see them on the landing. They could see Elena put her hand up to her youngest son's handsome face. They watched in silence as he hugged her… mother and son rocking back and forth with their arms around each other in their own special cadence. Karen could feel the love all the way from where she was standing. Her heart went out to Malavida. She began to suspect he was nothing at all like the bitter young man who was so angry at Lockwood.

"How did you know?" Lockwood finally asked as Malavida headed back toward them.

"You're a prize" was all she said.

He got behind the wheel, slightly pissed, and threw the handcuffs into the glove compartment. Malavida got into the back; Karen sat up front.

They pulled past the street gang, headed back to 605, and got on, going west. They rode in silence. Karen knew, Malavida wouldn't run. She had seen it in his eyes when he pleaded with them to take off the cuffs, and again when he first hugged his mother. He would never run with Elena watching. He worshiped her. It startled Karen that John Lockwood didn't know that. And then she remembered what she'd read in Lockwood's file: He'd never known his mother. His mother had been the system. For Karen, it explained everything about him.