Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Rick Dakan (reading tree txt) 📖

paying about $300 a month for the entire place, about one-tenth of what it would have commanded on the rental market. Paul had at first figured that they should be able to get away with paying nothing, but Chloe had pointed out that sometimes it was much easier to pay just a little and so avoid the questions paying nothing invariably raised.

As for the other properties, some they ran as straightforward rental businesses, trying to fill them with renters as often as possible. Even those that were always booked got reported to the owners as only partially full so they could divert some of the funds to cover their activities with other properties. The house they’d gotten for Winston and Lilly was one example, but they seldom entertained out-of-town guests. Usually, they just made money. The other rentals were used for Paul’s attempt at doing a good deed.

When he and Chloe and Bee had decided to move to Key West after they were forced to flee San Jose last year, they’d planned on making their living on the con, just as Chloe had done for almost half her life. But Paul, less comfortable with stealing for a living, no matter how much fun it was while he was doing it, had insisted that their crimes have some sort of socially redeeming element to them. He was perfectly happy thinking of himself as a modern day Robin Hood, but he had no interest in becoming another Al Capone. At first Chloe and Bee had seemed as enthusiastic about the stealing from the rich and giving to the poor thing as he was.

As it turned out, being Robin Hood was harder than he’d imagined it would be - they were having enough trouble just keeping their heads above water and their asses out of trouble without being too terribly picky about where the money came from. Certainly they hadn’t taken over Key Condos and Estates with any charitable intentions. They’d made the play because real estate, restaurants and tourists were the only sources of money on the island, and they needed to get a piece of all three just to survive.

It was while they were cultivating contacts in the restaurant business that he’d had his Robin Hood-esque brainstorm. The thing restaurant workers complained about more than anything else on Key West was not the long hours or the stingy tourist tips (although they complained about these a lot). It was the sky high rents on the island, with monthly rates that rivaled those in Manhattan or London. Most lived three, four or five to a house, converting dining rooms and sun porches into bedrooms. All of them could use a break from the rent every once and a while, especially if they lost a job or in the summers when money was scarce.

Six months ago, Autumn Schekler, a bartender at Costa Verde and casual friend of Paul and Chloe’s, had lost her job. In tears and deep in debt, she’d laid out all her fears to Paul over drinks. They’d just gotten everything set up and were running smooth with Keys Condos and Estates, and Paul knew for a fact that they had a dozen beautiful vacation homes sitting empty all over the island. He offered Autumn and her roommate one of them. They’d stayed there a month, then moved to another when that rented out. Then they moved to a third, a fourth and were now in their fifth. They hadn’t paid a dime in rent - just chipping in for utilities.

At Paul’s insistence, Autumn had spread the word to other restaurant workers around town. People whom she trusted and who’d lived on the island for at least four or five years. There were now almost two dozen of them living off the books in various Crew-run properties. Stealing rental time from wealthy absentee landlords caused not even a hint of guilt in Paul. It was their propensity for buying up property at inflated prices that had driven the housing market so high that many service workers had to be bussed in from Miami because they couldn’t afford to live here. It was the one thing he’d managed to accomplish in Key West that wasn’t entirely selfish.

Chloe had been happy to help Autumn. She was a friend. But Chloe was much less thrilled with having twenty-three “freeloaders” living in their houses. They’d argued about it several times and might never have resolved the disagreement were it not for Sandee, who pointed out that having a corps of friendly bartenders and servers in this town was sometimes worth its weight in gold. The servers heard and saw everything, and likely as not, the people they were serving never gave them a second glance. Paul and Chloe had both been surprised at how right Sandee had been. Time and again their “tenants” proved useful, including earlier tonight when one of them had helped Paul find Raquel’s guest house.

From the living room of his own house, Paul called Isaiah and Winston to let them know that the police wouldn’t be a problem. In both cases he got voicemail, which made it easier for him to be vague about the details and his assurances that everything was going swell. Upstairs he found Chloe in Bee’s room at the top of the house, all of her monitors live and switching between various views of the city. The bars didn’t close until 4 a.m. in Key West, but the crowds had definitely thinned, leaving just the hardcore partiers.

“I thought I should go back through today’s tapes and see if I can find Raquel on any of them,” said Bee. “That new facial recognition software I downloaded last week might help us out. I haven’t had any results yet, but this is a relatively limited search.”

“Sounds good,” said Chloe. “Anything from the cameras we put in Raquel’s room?”

Bee clicked her mouse a few times and one of the monitors flashed a night-vision green view of the guest house room. “Nope,” she said. “Nothing but you guys getting the body out of there.”

“You should probably erase that,” suggested Paul, not liking being on record covering up a murder.

“Gotcha,” agreed Bee, mousing and clicking a few more times, deleting the fragment of video.

“Can you bring up the cameras Sandee put in the La Concha?” asked Chloe.

“Yeah, I should…” Click. Click. There it was, the hallway in the La Concha leading to the elevators. Also, shots of the front door and side door.

“Rewind?” asked Chloe.

Bee nodded and the image started playing backwards at 16X speed. Moving backward through time, they saw Amelia and Isaiah leave. Then their man at the bar. Then some other customers and workers Paul recognized from upstairs. Then he saw himself and Winston. Then Eddie and Marco. Paul identified them for Chloe and Bee.

“Can we follow them outside?” asked Chloe. “I’d love to see where they ended up.”

“Sure.”

They watched Eddie and Marco walk out the front door of the La Concha and turn left. Bee clicked and tabbed her way through her camera network. Along Duval Street she had cameras at every intersection and in the middle of each block. Most of them looked like small electrical junction boxes. Others were hidden in light fixtures. Some were set up inside shop windows, part of a security system. At Bee’s insistence, the Crew had bribed and cajoled and snuck their way into every place they could get a camera. The coverage was great, but now half of Bee’s week was spent maintaining the network she had, as the cameras were very finicky and went black all the time.

Eddie and Marco walked amiably down Duval, looking to all the world like two fraternity brothers on vacation. Paul watched as they found their way into the Oasis mega-bar. He wondered if they were going to see the girls at the Pirate’s Den. Bee had two cameras in the Oasis, both of them there thanks to help from one of their “tenants” who tended bar there. They watched as the two men went upstairs to the open air bar on the second level and took a table that was just out of view of the camera there. They watched the video at fast forward as occasionally one or the other of the two men would appear on camera as they went to the bar or the bathroom. Then, all of a sudden, the speeding video slammed into first gear. They’d reached real time.

“They’re still at the damned bar,” said Paul. “Jesus, those guys aren’t acting like they’re too concerned about Raquel or the conspiracy or anything else.”

“Would we look any different in public? We’ve got to assume they’re good at their jobs,” said Chloe. She watched the screen in silence for a moment. “I wish we could see who all they’re drinking with.”

“Yeah,” agreed Paul. He pointed to the bartender on the screen, who they could see. “That’s Eli.”

“He’s our tenant,” said Chloe.

“Used to be. He’s living with his girlfriend now. What’s her name? Ileana…”

“And he’s been there all night. He might know something.”

“He might,” Paul agreed. “Certainly who all they’ve been drinking with.”

“I’m going over there,” said Chloe.

“You want me to come?” asked Paul, nervous about Chloe mixing it up with Eddie and Marco and their Crew.

“No, they know you from tonight. I don’t want them making a connection between us yet. You guys watch from here. Do you remember where the camera is?”

Bee brought up a database of all her cameras. “It’s hidden in an oversized display bottle of Captain Morgan’s, up on the top shelf,” she said, reading off the screen.

“I’ll see if I can get it turned toward them better,” she said.

“You want me to call Sandee?” Paul asked.

“Why? I don’t think I need backup for this.”

“I wasn’t thinking backup. I was thinking that maybe you might like to invite them to a party.” He smiled, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“Ooooh, you’re a devious one, aren’t you.” Chloe grinned. “Yeah, call Sandee. Definitely. These guys look like they’re ready to party.”

Paul looked at the screen, where he could just make out the top of Marco’s head. Eddie and Marco had no idea what was about to happen to them.