Copyright 1995(c)

                       FRANKIE AND RITA WERE LOVERS
                            By Sandra Copeland

     A thief, she charged.
     "A smart thief," he corrected.
     "Okay, so you're a smart thief. So far. But nobody can be the
smartest gun in the west forever."
     She stood, hands on hips, the fold of auburn hair tilting;
brushing a shoulder, as she looked at him steadily from brown eyes. 
     "Relax, baby," he said, patting her cheek.
     "That's just what Pretty Boy Floyd said before he took it in
the gut, you know?"
     "Is it?" he was curious.
     "How the hell should I know," she said. "It could have been.
He wasn't the reputed to be the brightest of boys, you know," she
said.
     "Pretty Boy was slow?" he asked, surprised.
     "How the hell should I know," she said. "What? You're going to
listen to me about the motivation of a bunch of dead gangsters but
not about keeping your butt out of prison?" she asked.
     "Well, you know a lot of old stuff," he said. "You know, like
that Melancholy Baby and Moonlight Becomes You," he said. "Hell,
you remember when Amos 'N Andy were on the radio," he reminded her.
"My oldest recollection is doing the Freddie at 13."
     "Frankie, I'm telling you -- you're pushing your luck to the
maximum, here. You're comfortable. Why don't you try a new
direction?" She could remember when he'd intended to do only the
tiniest amount of illegal hacking to supplement his college fund.
Unfortunately, he was smart, and soon he was making more money than
he could have made with a degree. He dropped out of college and
bought a sports car. She'd been paranoid ever since.
     Frank was thinking the same thing, for different reasons. Rita
suspected he might be trolling in that car, and he admitted he'd
flirted a bit with that thought, but of course he admitted it only
to himself. "I can sell it if you're all that wired," he offered,
only to have her decline. Again. The car wasn't a big issue with
him and the new had worn off. Rita drove it as often as he did,
anymore, and he drove the Camry. When he pulled a job, he rented a
car, as nondescript as possible, and then changed the plates for
bogus ones. 
     What the devil was she worried about? Everything he did was
electronic. He left home only for Kinko Copy Center, and rented a
computer under a phoney I.D.  He tapped into certain sources,
deactivated their alarm systems, and facilitated acts by parties
unknown. Once a week, he received an envelope. Sometimes he found
it in an empty pie box; sometimes it was transmitted to him in a
restaurant and he just found it in his coat pocket. He had a small
inheritance from a great aunt, no one knew just how small but
everyone knew it existed, and he lived very well with no questions
asked.
     Sometimes, Frankie thought he just might not marry Rita after
all. The girl had no sense of adventure. He got away, pleading an
appointment, and went down to the video arcade. After two
resounding games of Doom, he meandered down to the nearby Kinko
Center and signed in as Gregory James, a new I.D. The girl accepted
his signature as readily as always, and he found a vacant system
and sat down to tap into the home secretary system of Mr. and Mrs.
Lester Burns. Burns was the former two-term Mayor who then skipped
two terms and was now running again from the same good-old-boy
platform he'd used before. He had waited until his party was
ideally situated. In between, there had been a Democratic Mayor who
bumbled a bit at the end and who was a fluke like Jimmy Carter,
followed by a no-harm/no-foul Mayor, who came out of the Burns' own
party. Jacksonville was once again proving its suitability for
Lester the Snake.
     Now was the best of times to hit Burns, Frankie thought. There
would certainly be illegal campaign contributions somewhere and if
there weren't, one could always plant some. Either way, Lester was
had. He couldn't afford the publicity and somebody always knew
something on him. Pay-up was his pattern. 
     Frankie had no political interests or affiliations. Every pol
was somebody's crook, he thought. He had no interest in the target
of the robbery either way, but it was interesting, he thought, that
they were going after someone so well known. Frankie hadn't known
any of the other victims, which had all been out of state. That the
first place they'd hit in his home town would be the repeat
candidate for mayor was astounding to him. He thought maybe they
didn't care if they got caught, and wondered if Rita might be right
and this might be the time to terminate his involvement.
     He signed onto the message area as Gregory James and
telenetted to an Internet Relay Chat conference where he could type
in real-time to Mustapha. The two established a host transfer of
messages, and signed off, and Frankie waited for the detailed
message to come to him. When it was deposited as a file to the
rental computer set-up, he called it up, read it, and deleted it,
sending back the one he had previously prepared at home.
     And Lester Burns was targeted as the next victim. 
     "Looka' here," he imagined Burns saying in that Southern good-
old-boy drawl, "I'm jus' reachin' for my wallet, real slow, okay?
How about I was to offer you everything that's in here?" He'd show
the cash-filled wallet.
     "Thanks," the thief holding the gun would say, or maybe there
was more than one of them. Frankie never knew, for sure, and he
studiously avoided reading newspaper accounts of the distant
robberies he facilitated by tapping a few keys. He had no idea for
whom he worked, and did not want to know.
     
          Are you sure this will be worthwhile? he typed
          to his contact, Mustapha, which was, he was
          sure, an assumed alias.

          Gain is no longer an issue, Mustapha replied.


 said the thief holding the gun, and shot The Snake between the
eyes.
     "GOD!" He said it out loud and then realized where he was.
     "You okay?" called the girl at the counter. 
     He gulped. The last thing he wanted to do was be noticed in
here. He thought to run and decided that would be more memorable.
Best to be very casual and fade into the background, he decided.
     "Just surprised by what I read, that's all," said he, quickly
flipped into the Internet Group searching for amusement.
     No one would ever know about the message that had just been
sent out over the electronic airwaves, so nobody would know about
him or his involvement in any murder, he told himself. The message
exchanges were automatically zapped at both ends, on send and
receipt. That was why they used the Internet flash account. The
flash account was the means by which monetary wire transfers
occurred instantaneously. No kiting in these waters. Frank was safe
so long as he kept his mouth shut.
     And that's how Frankie went straight.
   END
