Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan (beach read txt) 📖

a couple hundred bucks). I was like, ‘Fuck the money, I wanna help on the shoot.’ This didn’t go over real well at first, but I held my ground. I hinted that I knew they were up to something hinky here and I wanted to be in on it. That went over even less well.”

“Now Paul, here’s a little tip for you. What I did back then was wicked fucking stupid. I mean, just dumb, dumb, dumb. First of all, the golden rule – never let ‘em know what you know. Second, I didn’t know these guys. In retrospect they were pretty tight but kinda taking a risk bringing me in on the set-up. A good risk, as odds are I was gonna be some ditsy theater chick. Turned out they were wrong. If they’d been a different, harder core crew, they probably would’ve disappeared me right then and there. I could tell one of them was maybe thinking that very thought. But I was lucky. They let me stay and help with the shoot before sending me on my merry way. They even let me do the make-up. Although, for the record, I never did get my money, the fuckers.”

“This other guy came in. Someone I’d never met before. He didn’t seem at all curious to see me – treated me like a flunky on a film set. To this day I’m pretty sure he was some wanna-be actor that they’d conned into thinking he was playing a part in an indie movie. Hell, they might’ve even paid him. I did his make-up for him and then we lit the set and put him to work. He was wearing some kind of little domino mask and a suit. He looked like the Green Hornet or the Spirit or one of those old pulp heroes. It was kind of silly I thought.”

“They shot the thing on SVHS and had a boom mic on the guy to pick up every word. He gave this weird speech about how he’d obviously compromised their state of the art security system and could do so at any time. Then he said that whoever was going to see this tape should give in to his demands or face serious, serious consequences. Next time they wouldn’t be shooting a videotape. Next time they’d be planting a bomb. The actor guy actually sold it pretty well. I felt chills going up my spine. I knew then for sure that I’d been right, and that these fuckers were up to no good.”

“We did a few takes and then let the guy go. We broke down the whole set in less than an hour, piling everything into a couple of vans and combing the warehouse for any last piece of evidence that we’d ever been there. I was scared shitless by this point. I thought about making a run for it but I realized that one of the vans had blocked my car in. I’d never get away from them. As it turned out, once we’d finished cleaning up, they piled into their vehicles and took off. They said they’d call me in a week. I never heard from them again.”

“I had to know what the fuck these guys had been up to. In fact – that became my new hobby obsession. I needed to find out what I’d been a part of. I knew a few things – that the office was in LA and even generally what part of town it was in (based on the backdrop we’d created. It could still be one of a dozen different buildings at least, and then any of hundreds of different offices. I also knew it had been photographed professionally for some magazine since they had cut out pictures to use as a model. I blew off school and spent the next week at the public library in LA, going through every damned home and garden and local magazine they had on file and pouring over the daily papers for any signs of some kind of story related to any of the businesses in any of the buildings I’d identified as possibles.”

“Eventually, I did find the office. It had been featured in some local magazine like three years earlier. It was the offices of a pretty well known lawyer who specialized in medical malpractice cases. I looked him up and he actually had a pretty darn good record on such things – not the kind of guy who makes lots of baseless lawsuits or whatever. I couldn’t find anything about him in the news. I even went down to the Clerk of Court and read the files on all his recent cases, but I didn’t see any names I recognized or make any connections to any of the people I’d worked with. I eventually came back up here and somehow managed to pull out barely passing grades despite the three and a half weeks of school I’d missed. I used the old dead grandmother routine.”

“I kept tabs on the lawyer as best I could, and I learned that about six months later he retired early at the tender age of forty-two. Said he wanted to get back in touch with his roots and that he was moving to Portugal of all places. I gotta think that had something to do with whatever con those guys were pulling, but of course I have no idea. They didn’t leave a single trace that I could find.”

“And so, just like that, conning people became my new obsession. Well, not just like that. I had a little guidance from an old friend, but that’s another story,” concluded Chloe.

Paul had listened with rapt attention as she spun this tale. It hadn’t been what he expected.

“Is that really true?” he asked.

“Yep,” she said. Then she winked at him. “As far as you know anyway.”

“And how long ago was this? The early nineties right? How old are you anyway?”

“A lady never tells. Let’s just say I look good for my age.”

“I think you look good for any age.”

“You charmer, you. I’m still not telling you how old I am.” She started rooting through the camera bag she’d brought with her, and pulled out a very expensive looking digital camera. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

“Sure,” said Paul. “I mean, I’ve never used one that nice before, but yeah, I know the gist of it. Why?”

“That’s your job for the day – you’re the photographer.”

“And what are you?”

“I’m the reporter, silly! What else?” She pulled out a business card identifying her as Rachel Moore, a lifestyle reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re on assignment.”

The plan went delightfully well. Chloe and Paul went into every comic book store in the Bay Area over the next eight hours. She posed as a reporter doing a story about collecting comics. The new Spider-man movie was due out next month, and so the Chronicle was allegedly preparing to do a companion piece about comics. In return for promising to mention the stores in the article, the owners were more than happy to let Paul snap away.

With the camera set at a resolution approaching that of 35mm film, Paul took careful pictures of every valuable comic he could find. Whenever possible he tried to convince the owners to let him take the books out of their plastic sleeves. This was impossible to do with those that had been graded and sealed, but he got some good shots of those as well. They’d all need some fairly substantial touching up in Photoshop before they’d be ready for “press” but the high-quality camera gave him a solid base from which to build their fakes. 

Paul was constantly impressed by what a charmer Chloe could be. She had the owners eating out of her hand – and not just because she was an attractive blonde (thanks to a wig) – but because she knew how to engage them on their level, whatever it was. For the guys who were real fans of the genre and comics in general she talked to them about their favorite characters and storylines. For the ones who were all about the bottom line she emphasized how the article could help bring in new business for them. And for those who just didn’t care, she knew when to leave them alone. 

By the day’s end Paul had collected good shots of about a hundred likely suspects, both front and back covers. He was already going over in his head what he’d have to do in Photoshop to make them picture perfect for their scam. It was going to be pretty simple, he thought, but he’d have to do some test runs to make sure it came out looking convincing enough. As long as they figured out how to fake the hard plastic case for the sealed and graded comics, he thought they had a pretty good chance of pulling this con off.

When they got back to Chloe’s house, they found it crowded with about a half dozen Crew members. They’d set up the big bed sheet screen again and were all ready to run a little first person shooter tournament. Paul had played in plenty of such events while at the Fear and Loading, and in many ways coming home to something like this made it all seem a little more normal. Besides, he was eager to show off his skills while he wasn’t drunk and high. He took a seat and dove right in, blasting away at his new friends for the next four or five hours until finally the Red Bull wore off and he crashed on the couch once again. 

Chapter 11

The next few days flew by for Paul. He enjoyed the hell out of his time in the house. It was not unlike being back in college – everyone around him was smart and ready to do something fun at a moment’s notice. There was always plenty to drink and good pot to smoke if you wanted it. They all worked hard, Paul himself working more than he ever had at his own company, but computer game marathons and spontaneous parties frequently punctuated the work. Chloe was particularly fond of old school Street Fighter style fighting games, and she routinely challenged all comers to bouts on the Playstation. Paul took her on again and again, but never came close to beating her. 

He spent most of the time in the Server Room, working in Photoshop on one of the computers. Kurt had finally shown up again, and he’d brought a professional quality color laser printer with him. Apparently he had a friend who had a friend in the printing business, or something like that. Kurt stayed only a single night, most of which he spent doing laundry and eating noodles in his room. Then he was gone again the next morning, leaving the printer still in its box for Paul to try and figure out how to set it up. Bee offered to help.

“What’s the deal with Kurt?” asked Paul, as the two of them finagled the bulky printer from the Styrofoam padding. 

“What do you mean?” she replied.

“He’s not around much, huh?”

“No, not lately. Sometimes. It just depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“What he’s doing,” said Bee. “This comic con isn’t the only thing going on right now. Kurt’s in charge of another whole deal that some of the guys are working on.”

“I had no idea,” said Paul. Except for the night of the first party he’d never seen the whole group together in one place. He’d just assumed they were off living their own lives or holding down jobs or something. There’d been no