S o show me how this works.”
Hubert Russell met me at the Starbucks on North and Wells, two blocks removed from the historical society. It was a little past noon. I had a black coffee and my laptop open. Hubert sipped at a vanilla skim latte and was at the wheel.
“Pretty simple,” Hubert said. “I’ve loaded my program onto your hard drive. Now I click on the icon and put it into active mode.”
Hubert moved the cursor over a skull and crossbones blinking on my screen.
“Nice icon, Hubert.”
The kid smiled. My Mac began to whir, then whine.
“Warming up,” Hubert said.
We got a soft beep. My screen went black for a moment and then re-formed with a single bar graph fluctuating on-screen.
“See that graph?”
“I do.”
“That represents signal strength. Means there is one person in range of us who is using a WiFi connection.”
I looked across the mostly empty coffee shop at Teen. She waved and continued to tap away at her laptop.
“Well, we know who that is.”
“That’s right,” Hubert said. “Now if I click on the graph, watch what happens.”
Hubert clicked. Bits of information began to fly across the screen.
“As we speak, your computer is sucking Teen’s dry. Copying all her files, programs, passwords, e-mails. Everything.”
“And she doesn’t even know it,” I said.
“Look at her.”
I did. Teen waved again and smiled. I motioned for her to come over. She shut down her laptop and the graph disappeared on my screen.
“How much of her hard drive did you get?” I said.
Hubert began to open up files taken off Teen’s computer.
“Actually, we got all of it. With this program the poach usually takes less than twenty seconds. See, what happens is there’s a flaw in the router that lets you go WiFi. I drop in a decoy and trick the computer into thinking it’s talking to itself. When really-”
I held up a hand.
“Enough, Hubert. I believe.”
I wanted to pat him on the head but thought better of it. Instead, I checked my watch as Teen drew up a chair.
“What time does he come in?” I said.
“He’s in here just about every day around one,” Teen said. “Says he likes to get some ‘alone time’ out of the office.”
“Always brings his laptop?”
Teen nodded.
“Okay. Teen, you and I are out of here. Hubert, you sit tight and wait for our boy. You got the picture I gave you?”
Hubert showed it to me.
“Good. When he fires up his laptop and jumps online, you take it all.”
“No problem.”
The kid from Land Records winked. Teen giggled. Then the volunteer and I walked out of the Starbucks and down Wells Street. I stopped at the Up Down Tobacco Shop and bought a couple of Montecristos. Then we moved over to Topo Gigio’s and had a beautiful lunch. Hubert joined us an hour later for tiramisu. As did the entire contents of Lawrence Randolph’s laptop.