"Now can you do the same thing with your password for COSMOS?
Don't tell me what it is, just enter it. Uh-huh."
"Beautiful," Jimmy said softly as the number came up on our screen. He punched it in.
"That ought to do it," David told whoever he was talking to. "I don't think you should have any problems from here on in." He broke the connection and let out a huge sigh. "I don't think we should have any problems, either. 'Don't tell me the number, just enter it. Don't tell me, darling, just tell my computer.' "
"Hot damn," Jimmy said.
"We're in?"
"We're in."
"Yay!"
"Matt, what's your phone number?"
"Don't call me," I said. "I'm not home."
"I don't want to call you. I want to check your line. What's the number? Never mind, don't tell me, see if I care. 'Scudder, Matthew.'
West Fifty-seventh Street, right? That look familiar?"
I looked at the screen. "That's my phone number," I said.
"Uh-huh. You happy with it? You want me to change it, give you something easier to remember?"
"If you call the phone company to get your number changed,"
David said, "it takes them a week or so to run it through channels. But we can do it on the spot."
"I think I'll keep the number I've got," I said.
"Suit yourself. Uh-huh. You've got pretty basic service, haven't you? No Call Forwarding, no Call Waiting. You're at a hotel, you've got the switchboard backing you up, so maybe you don't need Call Waiting, but you ought to have Call Forwarding anyhow. Suppose you stay over at somebody's house?
You could get your calls routed there automatically."
"I don't know if I'd use it enough to make it worthwhile."
"Doesn't cost anything."
"I thought there was a monthly charge for it."
He grinned and his fingers were busy on the keypad. "No charge for you," he said, "because you have influential friends. As of this moment you've got Call Forwarding, compliments of the Kongs. We're in COSMOS now, that's the particular system we invaded, so that's where I'm entering changes in your account. The system that figures your billing won't know about the change, so it won't cost you anything."
"Whatever you say."
"I see you use AT&T for your long-distance calls. You didn't select Sprint or MCI."
"No, I didn't figure I would save that much."
"Well, I'm giving you Sprint," he said. "It's going to save you a fortune."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh, because NYNEX is going to route your long-distance calls to Sprint, but Sprint's not going to know about it."
"So you won't get billed," David said.
"I don't know," I said.
"Trust me."
"Oh, I don't doubt what you said. I just don't know how I feel about it. It's theft of services."
Jimmy looked at me. "We're talking about the phone company," he said.
"I realize that."
"You think they're gonna miss it?"
"No, but—"
"Matt, when you make a call from a pay phone and the call goes through but the quarter comes back anyway, what do you do? Keep it or put it back in the slot?"
"Or send it to them in stamps," David suggested.
"I see your point," I said.
"Because we all know what happens when the phone eats your quarter and doesn't put the call through.
Face it, none of us are way out in front of the game when we're dealing with Mother Bell."
"I suppose."
"So you've got free long distance and free Call Forwarding. There's a code you have to enter to forward your calls, but just ring them up and tell them you lost the slip and they'll explain it to you. Nothing to it.
TJ, what's your phone number?"
"Ain't got one."
"Well, your favorite pay phone."
"Favorite? I don't know. Don't know the number of any of 'em, anyhow."
"Well, pick one out and give me the location."
"There be a bank of three of 'em in Port Authority that I use some."
"No good. Too many phones there, it's impossible to know if we're talking about the same one. How about one on a street corner?"
He shrugged. "Say Eighth and Forty-third."
"Uptown, downtown?"
"Uptown, east side of the street."
"Okay, let's just… there, got it. You want to write down the number?"
"Just change it," David suggested.
"Good idea. Make it an easy one to remember. How about TJ-5-4321?"
"Like it's my own phone number? Hey, I like that!"
"Let's just see if it's available. Nope, somebody's got it. So why don't we take the other direction?
TJ-5-6789. No problem, so let's make it all yours. So ordered."
"You can just do that?" I wondered. "Aren't different three-number prefixes specifically linked to different areas?"
"Used to be. And there's still exchanges, but that works for the particular line number, and that has nothing to do with what you dial.
See, the number you dial, like the one I just gave TJ, is the same as the PIN code you use to get money out of your ATM at the bank. It's just a recognition code, really."
"Well, it's an access code," David said. "But it accesses the line, and that's what routes the call."
"Let's fix the phone for you, TJ. It's a pay phone, right?"
"Right."
"Wrong. It was a pay phone. Now it's a free phone."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Some idiot'll probably report it in a week or two, but until then you can save yourself a few quarters. Remember when we played Robin Hood?"
"Oh, that was fun," David said. "We were down at the World Trade Center one night making calls from
a pay phone, and of course the first thing we did was convert it, make it free—"
"— or otherwise we'd be dropping quarters in all night long, which is pretty ridiculous—"
"— and Hong here says pay phones should be free for everybody, same as the subways ought to be free, they ought to eliminate the turnstiles—"
"— or make them turn with or without a token, which you could do if they were computerized, but they're mechanical—"
"— which is pretty primitive, when you stop and think about it—"
"— but with pay phones we're in a position to do something, so for I think it was two hours—"
"— more like an hour and a half—"
"— we're hopping through COSMOS, or maybe it was MIZAR—"
"— no, it was COSMOS—"
"— and we're changing one pay phone after another, liberating it, setting it free—"
"— and Hong's really getting into it, like 'Power to the People' and everything—"
"— and I don't know how many phones we switched by the time we were done." He looked up. "You know something? Sometimes I can see why NYNEX wants to nail our hides to the wall. If you look at it in a certain way, we're sort of a major pain in the ass to them."
"So?"
"So you've got to see their point of view, that's all."
"No you don't," David King said. "The last thing you have to do is see their point of view. That's about as smart as playing PacMan and feeling sorry for the blue meanies."
Jimmy Hong argued the point, and while they kicked it back and forth I cracked a fresh Coke. When I got back where the action was Jimmy said, "All right, we're in the Brooklyn circuits. Give me that number again."
I looked it up and read it off and he fed it to the computer. More letters and numbers, meaningless to me, appeared on the screen. His fingers danced on the keys, and my client's name and address showed up.
"That your friend?" Jimmy wanted to know. I said it was. "He's not talking on the phone," he said.
"You can tell that?"
"Sure. We could listen in if he was. You can just drop in and listen to anybody."
"Except it's so boring."
"Yeah, we used to do it sometimes. You think maybe you'll hear something hot, or people talking about a crime or spy stuff. But all you really get to hear is this remarkably tedious crap. 'Pick up a quart of milk on your way home, darling.' Really boring."