Mime

Mime is a skilled computer hacker and researcher based in the Cleveland, Ohio area. First seen in Mount Dragon, he has been on a special retainer with Special Agent Pendergast dating sometime prior to the events of Still Life with Crows. Mime is particularly skilled at breaking into electronic systems and records to find people or locate sensitive information.

Appearance and Mannerisms
Mime is confined to a wheelchair and physically deformed as a result of Thalidomide poisoning while in the womb. He rarely if ever leaves his home and prefers to dress comfortably in pajamas and bathrobe. He enjoys eating Twinkies.

Mime resides in the fictional Cleveland suburb of River Pointe, Ohio, inhabiting a white clapboard house full of computers and extensive networking equipment. A state-of-the-art security system (provided by Pendergast) protects the property, and a candle burns in perpetuity in an attic window.

In addition to his own sizeable collection of equipment, he has control over a botnet of infected computers that he can use to perform computationally-intensive tasks in a relatively short period of time.

He often refers to Pendergast as "Secret Agent Man," a reference to the song by Johnny Rivers.

Involvement
Mime was first introduced during the events of Mount Dragon, helping Dr. Charles Levine hack into the GeneDyne network and allowing him to communicate with Guy Carson.Mime made a brief appearance in Still Life with Crows, helping Pendergast procure a seismic exploration survey from the vault of the ABX Corporation by providing a Cayman Islands account number, which Pendergast used to blackmail the corporation's CEO.During Pendergast's investigation of the murder of Jeremy Grove, he utilized Mime's services to track down an associate of Grove's named Ranier Beckmann. Mime also helped run background checks on the attendees at a dinner party Grove held the evening before his death.Following Pendergast's request to go to ground in response to attacks on his close associates in Dance of Death, Mime was seen shutting down his banks of computer equipment and enabling his external security system for the first time.During the events of Cold Vengeance, Pendergast visited Mime at his home in River Pointe, Ohio. He managed to bypass the security system, confounding the hacker until Pendergast reminded him that he had the system installed (and presumably had access to some kind of "back door" or override mechanism).

Pendergast asked for Mime's help investigating the whereabouts of his wife, Helen Esterhazy Pendergast. but after almost two hours, a visibly frustrated Mime was unable to find anything about Helen following her supposed death in Africa twelve years before. The search did turn up one useful piece of information: a second grade report card that revealed that Helen immigrated to America at a young age and that her native language was Portuguese.

The agent also had Mime access the records system of the University of Texas to amend the record of General Frederick Galusha to show that he graduated with honors. Later, Pendergast contacted Mime again to track down an object called "Vergeltung." The object in question turned out to be a yacht, which Mime located at the 79th Street Marina in New York City.Mime again assisted Pendergast in locating Helen following her abduction by Der Bund, eventually tracking them to the small desert Mexican town of Cananea.After the events of Two Graves, Mime began monitoring internet traffic for any traces of Alban at Pendergast's request. He later helped Pendergast track down the reclusive descendant of a local man named Swinton, who according to legend had once told Oscar Wilde a story that had caused the author to go deathly pale and almost faint.Pendergast enlisted Mime's help early in Blue Labyrinth to remove DNA records related to the Hotel Killer from the NYPD database in an effort to keep the NYPD from connecting the Hotel Killer to Alban.When Pendergast found Proctor missing from the Riverside Drive mansion, he called upon Mime to locate him. The hacker managed to track Proctor's movements from New York across five countries and three continents before losing him. He was able to confirm to Pendergast that his factotum was almost certainly alive, as his death would have certainly shown up in Mime's wide-reaching net. He requested (and was promised) a federal-issue cellular duplexer as payment for his services, assuring Pendergast with a wink and a nod that it would only be used to assist law enforcement officials.A few months later, Pendergast contacted Mime from Florida during the events of Crooked River. when he suspected an associate's computer systems had been hacked. Mime ran a series of remote cybersecurity checks and confirmed that the system had been severely compromised.