dirty secrets, it would let him force the bastards to fix up The Polaris.
He was calling it Blackmail Blitz, and he planned to hit the owners,
particularly the main dude, Frank Keller, with a barrage of problems
so fast and so thick that he’d be driven to his metaphorical knees and
left begging for some relief. But he needed help to pull it off in the
rapid-fire time needed, and he needed a lot of one-time assistance from
people who couldn’t be tied too closely to him. There was the off chance
(maybe better than off chance) that Keller had some mob connections,
and he didn’t want any of that OC bullshit coming back on him. So he
needed cash, and gear, and operatives. He had exactly none of that.
Sacco turned to his newfound fans online, sending out some vaguely
worded, innuendo laden calls for assistance. Contacting each one
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individually with separate, encrypted e-mail accounts and choosing
only those he felt he had some reason to believe had a decent head on
their shoulders, he told them that he needed donations and volunteers
for a “radical operation” that would “force some good” down some
people’s throats. He never mentioned anything illegal and never even
hinted at the target, but anyone who knew anything could guess he was
up to something that was, at least, outside the bounds of the law. More
people responded positively than he’d anticipated, at least at first, but
when he was cagey with the specifics and exacting with his tech and
cash needs, a lot of them stopped e-mailing him back and avoided him
on IRC. Then he heard from her, the HOPE girl.
He’d bought her a few beers the night he quit Hacks of Rebellion,
and she’d bought him a few more, all the while listening to him go on
and on about the group and what it had meant to him and how his
friends had failed him. She knew how to listen, that was for sure, and
she seemed like she was really interested. Her name was Anne, and she
kept asking him questions, wanting to know more, and he kept talking.
It was great to vent to a kind ear who didn’t have any ties to or interest
in all the other fucking bullshitters and haters in his world right now,
and as long as she let him go, he kept talking.
A few hours later, he was trying to figure out how to move things
back to his place or her room. She was staying in the Hotel Pennsylvania
where the con was being held, and that was a lot closer. She’d been flirty
all evening, although in a sort of cutting way that left him scrambling
to keep up with her. And then she got a call on her phone and took it
outside. Just because he was drunk and curious and feeling full of him-
self, he took out his own phone and tried to see if any of the tools he’d
loaded on there would let him pick up anything from her phone, but no
luck. When she came back she said she had to go, that she was meeting
some friends at the party over at Hacker Halfway House. She asked if
he wanted to come along, but he knew the other guys from Hacks of
Rebellion would be there and also he was pretty sure that the hostess,
B9 Punk, was pissed at him after that thing he’d said to her at Notacon
(which, in retrospect, had been pretty stupid). He tied to convince Anne
to stay with him, but she was having none of it, although she rejected
him with a smile and they exchanged e-mail and PGP keys.
Since then they’d sent some mail back and forth. She’d been trying
out Listnin and liked it a lot, but had some questions about particular
applications and he’d given her some friendly tech support. She was
based somewhere down south, otherwise he might have tried to help
her in person, but the conversations back and forth were cool, and she
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97
usually inquired as to how he was doing and what he was up to. He’d
included her on the list of people he sent out e-mails to asking for help,
but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t respond. But now, a few days later,
there was the e-mail from her, offering to help. Awesome. They set up
a time to chat over encrypted IRC for later that night.
Sacco: What’s shakin’ pinky
Ann3: Same as always, trying to take over the world
Sacco: Me too! What a coincidence
Ann3: So you need some monies
Sacco: yup
Ann3: Monies I got. Gear I got.
Sacco: rly?
Ann3: People you need to get.
Ann3: rly
Sacco: K
Ann3: There’s a catch
Sacco: always is
Ann3: I wanna watch
Sacco: you wanna help?
Ann3: probably not. But I wanna watch.
Ann3: Assuming its cool
Sacco: its cool with me, yeah
Ann3: no, i mean assuming what ur doing is cool
Sacco: oh, it’s fucking cool
Ann3: ?
Sacco: ? what?
Ann3: ? what is it. Tell me
Ann3: Do it.
Sacco: it’s a secret
Ann3: so’s the location of me cash and gear.
Sacco: it’s a slum lord here in NY. I’m gonna take em down
Ann3: oh yeah
Sacco: haven’t you heard? Property is theft. And property
owners? Biggest thieves around
Ann3: Nothing wrong with stealing from a thief.
Sacco: Nothing at all. Not that I’m stealing anything
Ann3: Of course not.
Sacco: Im really not.
Ann3: ok
Sacco: I’m not!
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Ann3: OK!
Sacco: I’m making him do good.
Ann3: ?
Sacco: Forcing him to be human. To do good.
Ann3: Will that work?
Sacco: of course it will. It’s my plan.
Ann3: We’ll see.
Sacco: So you’ll help
Ann3: How else will I see if I don’t help?
Ann3: Remember, I’m gonna be watching you
Sacco: I’ll show you anything you wanna see
Ann3: uh-huh, I’ll bet
Sacco: :)
Ann3: Show me what and how much you need.
Sacco: How much you got?
Ann3: I asked you first.
He ended up asking for $7500 plus some phones, three computers, and
a whole lot of bugs and hidden cameras, stuff Anne apparently just had
lying around because it arrived on his doorstop in a FedEx box two days
later. He was impressed. With the money he could hire on some guys
he could trust to do the work, and the rest was just a matter of digging
in and getting it done. Anne didn’t want to come up until the blessed
day itself, which was fine with him. He hadn’t been too thrilled about
the idea of her looking over his shoulder the whole time, and he was
still trying to figure out how to keep as much as possible from her when
she did show up. The money and gear were great, but the fact that she’d
been so free with it all kind of freaked him out. Freaked him out in the
way leather and whips did—both exciting and scary at the same time.
The thing he never admitted to anyone was that he got the idea for his
plan from an episode of
Veronica Mars
that he’d bit torrented. He didn’t
even watch much TV, but he’d appreciated both the tech-fetishism the
show expressed for gadgets and the fact that Kristen Bell was super cute
and smart. But, TV or no TV, the theory seemed sound to him. Find
some total jerk who relishes being a prick to other people and has no
interest in dealing with you in a reasonable manner (in this case, the
Polaris landlords). Then overwhelm them with so much bad shit from
so many different angles that he comes to realize that it was better to do
the right thing than keep being a jerk. Originally his plan had been to
hit KJL Properties directly, but that seemed beyond his abilities, even
with Anne’s helpful cash and gear. They were rich fucks who could
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99
hire their own private security and private eyes to come back on him.
It would take someone in law enforcement or some sort of class action
lawsuit thingy to take them on in any way that would really threaten
them. Instead Sacco decided to focus his attention on the KJL minions
who made day-to-day life at the Polaris basically unlivable. They were
poorly paid slobs and petty tyrants, used to taking orders and giving
in to threats from above.
So Sacco launched into an investigation of the three head security
guys (who basically ran the building, supplemented by occasional part-
timers they brought in to cover the odd shift), and the building superin-
tendent and his son, who were responsible for the upkeep. Dirtbags each
and every one of them, so digging up dirt on them was a breeze. Sacco
paid some of his local activist friends, mostly college kids or kids who
should’ve been in college, to follow them around with cameras, place
GPS enabled phones under their cars, and Listnin on their phone calls.
They got their drug deals and their hooker hook-ups and their gen-
eral ass-hattery all on video, and Sacco learned their patterns. Through
Monique, Sacco also got some of Anne’s hidden cameras inserted into
the public areas of The Polaris, where they could catch the bastards in
the act of hurling abusive language at residents and intimidating social
workers and housing rights advocates who attempted to gain entry,
while letting drug dealer friends and prostitutes in to use vacants for
their various business dealings.
On their own, the videos could probably have gotten the five fucks
fired, but that wasn’t Sacco’s goal. He wanted them right where they
were, but he wanted them to do what he told them, not what the own-
ers ordered. When he’d gotten all the video and info he needed and
had everything in place, he e-mailed Anne and told her it was time to
come up to NY. He offered to let her stay at his place, but she declined.
So instead she arranged to meet him at the squat he’d set up in as his
command center for the crucial couple of days when he planned on
putting the five fucks’ balls in a vice.
“Nice place,” she said as he let her in the door of the fifth floor walk-up.
It wasn’t a nice place at all, and the drafty, dusty, decrepit apartment
would be unlivable in any kind of serious inclement weather, mostly
because it was on the top floor and the roof was getting close to an
even split between ceiling and holes. He had friends squatting in the
apartment one floor down, and they’d made that much more livable,
including stealing power and internet from the building next door. He
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in turn was borrowing some of both from them. “And I’m not being
bitchy. I mean it. It’s a nice place to run your thing from.”
He looked her over, just to be sure she wasn’t fucking with him. She
looked good of course, like he remembered, although she seemed to
have let her hair grow out and dyed it black. She wore jeans and work
boots, a t-shirt and a dark, heavy sweater. No nonsense, plain Jane
clothes. He hardly recognized her. “It’s all I need and it’s close to the
Polaris. Let me show you around.” He gave her the free tour, pointing
out the sleeping bags piled in one corner, and the piss-bucket stashed
away in the non-functioning bathroom. In a corner by boarded up win-
dows and under one of the most hole-free sections of the ceiling sat his
command center: three laptops and seven cell phones, each labeled and
tied to one of his operatives out in the field. From here he could watch
everything unfold and give instructions before his final showdown with
the head fuck.
“None of the people on the other end of those cell phones know about
each other,” Sacco explained. “They each think they’re doing one act of
vandalism or whatever, and none of them know each other, at least not
well. I use them for one, maybe two things, and then I cut them loose.
It’s as simple as that.”
“So they’re hired help,” Anne said. “OK, nice, I can see that working.
No one but you has the big picture or knows what the real goal is?”
“No one. Some of the people in the Polaris know someone’s out
there trying to help them, but only Monique, my friend on the inside,
knows it’s me, and she doesn’t even really know who I am or where I’m
from.”
Anne nodded, pursing her lips in a way that Sacco interpreted as
thoughtful approval. “So, you ready to get things going?” he asked.
“I’m just along for the ride and here to collect any gear you don’t
manage to lose or ruin. It’s your dance, sport.”
It all started with tire slashing and window breaking. He’d have liked
to have been more subtle, like stealing the wheels and leaving the cars
up on blocks or filling them with cement, but he was working with
enthusiastic but untrained radical provocateurs. The simpler the task,
the better. So the two security guys who had cars, both of which they
parked in a secure garage nearby, had their tires slashed. Tiny little
explosive devices, engineered from firecrackers with a shaped charge,
were placed on all the windows and exploded on timers after Sacco’s
hirelings were safely out of the garage. Crack, crash, screech of alarms.
Sacco laughed as he listened in on the phone calls from the garage,
reporting the damage to the two cars.
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This got the guards pissed off and riled up and looking for trouble,