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

WHEN he was in high school, Paul’s favorite books of all time had been the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. He’d read the first three novels back to back and then turned around and read them again. He’d even carried around a towel in his car and worn a “Don’t Panic” button every day. Funny, sarcastic, inventive and never for a moment anything resembling serious, the sci-fi novels had provided him exactly the kind of smart but carefree escapism that he needed during his awkward teenage years.

Like many geeks of his generation, dozens of quotes, scenes and characters from the books still remained stuck in his brain now that he was in his early 30s (even one of his favorite political bloggers had picked the screen name Majikthise after one of the books’ more obscure minor characters). There was one small piece from the third book, Life, The Universe, and Everything, that had always intrigued him - a description of a never-ending party that moved from planet to planet on its spaceship, raiding alien worlds for fresh supplies of cocktails and canap�s. When he was an awkward young gamer kid who never got invited to the cool parties, the concept of a party that never ended seemed incredibly enticing. Much later, he’d read a description of a similar, more earthbound never-ending party in a William Gibson novel, and the idea took hold of his imagination once more.

Key West was as close to a real-world never-ending party as any city was likely to get. But upon arriving there with Chloe and Bee, he’d discovered that even this island of revelry had its limits. He’d also discovered his own limits as well. It had taken him a week to recover from the seventy-two hour orgy of indulgence he and Chloe had enjoyed as they broke the new town in. But those three days had awakened dormant dreams of the Hitchhiker’s Guide’s never-ending party.

The three of them had come here to set up a new Crew and make a new life for themselves. Not just a new life, but a whole new world, and Paul wanted to live in a world where there were fantastic parties that never ended. He’d explained his dream to Chloe and Bee, and while they both agreed that such a party would indeed be cool, they couldn’t see much of a practical use for actually doing such a thing. Paul had argued that the whole point of a party was that it didn’t have a practical purpose. Chloe had countered that it sounded like a fine hobby for him, but that they needed money, and unless he wanted to wait tables to finance his dream, they needed to come up with some scams.

The first such scam had been the Keys Condos and Estates racket, which had succeeded beyond their expectations. Then Chloe had found a broken-down dive guide who they’d cleaned up enough to be a front man for selling fake maps to lost gold from the Spanish galleon Atocha that famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher had somehow neglected to find. A few greedy, credulous tourists bought into that, adding to their working capital, but without any big scores looming on the horizon, they needed another regular source of income. So, as Paul had done most of his professional life, and now all of his criminal life, he turned his wild imaginings into a money-making enterprise. Just as his doodles had become comics which had become a videogame which had become a plot to extort his former partners, so did a sci-fi inspired daydream become a plan for an actual party that became the perfect tool for exploiting Key West’s party culture to the Crew’s advantage.

No party is successful unless the guests want to be there, and nothing breeds desire like forbidding someone from having something. People might or might not come to a 24-hour party that was open to all comers at all hours, but if they did, it would just be for a quick stop on their way to or from something else. But if the party was a secret - an invitation only, $100-or-more-at-the-door underground bacchanal - well then, people would beat a path to its door. On their way down to Key West, they’d stopped for a night in Miami Beach, and Paul had been both disgusted and impressed with the utter pretentious gall of the club owners there. Long lines of hopeful clubbers waited beyond velvet ropes to pay outrageous prices for the same drinks and techno-pop crap they could find anywhere else. All that mattered was the exclusivity.

Well, there was no hotspot in Miami as exclusive as the no-name party Paul and his Crew ran in Key West, although they had several regulars who flew or drove down from Miami to attend. It was only after they’d met and recruited Sandee that the plan had really come together. Sandee was an island native who knew everyone in the bar and club scene, and whose contacts allowed them to line up the entertainment, drinks, food and drugs necessary to make an underground party really take off and flow, along with the word-of-mouth network necessary to recruit just the right kind of party guests. Now, three months into the party’s planned endless run, everything was humming along just as Paul had dreamed it would. Like the spaceship that inspired it, the party moved from place to place, making a circuit around the island and out onto selected boats and outlying islands when the weather was right for it. Even as it moved, the party continued, never shutting down in one location until things were up and running in a new venue. Most were places they accessed through Keys Condos and Estates. Others were empty restaurants waiting to be refurbished or even vacant offices.

Tonight the party had made its way back to one of Paul’s favorite venues - the Crawford House on Eaton. Once upon a time it had been the stately home of a successful wrecker and salvage family (salvaging wrecks had been Key West’s main source of income in the 19th century, at one point making it the wealthiest city per capita in the country). In the 1980s, a hotel chain had bought it from the Crawford family and turned it into an ultra-expensive guest house. After a decade of trendiness and full bookings, its popularity had declined, and by 2000 so had its standards. The parent company had spun off a boutique hotels division, which promptly declared bankruptcy six months later. The building had stood empty and unused for the last year while lawyers fought over ownership.

A month ago they’d managed to get their hands on a key and moved the party there for several days before the neighbors grew suspicious. Since then, Paul knew that Sandee had been working hard at setting things up there once again. With its many private rooms and large central dining space, it made the perfect venue. He and Chloe had spent a particularly memorable night there the first time they’d used the house.

“Let’s dial up the party,” Paul said to Bee as he hung up the phone. Chloe had just told him that she’d reeled Eddie in and was bringing him there. They’d watched Eddie “pick up” Chloe at the bar, and seen Marco and another man leave a short while later. Now one of the monitors showed Chloe and Eddie as they walked out of the Oasis and headed toward Eaton. Paul knew that Bee’s spy-cams didn’t cover much of the route to the Crawford house, so they’d have to wait until Eddie and Chloe arrived at the party before they could pick up their trail again.

“You want wall-to-wall coverage?” Bee asked as she clicked through her camera options.

“Pictures and sound,” said Paul.

“You got it.” She brought up a window on her desktop and selected a group of twenty icons, dragging them over into her control interface on the adjacent screen. The entire wall of monitors flickered and flashed for a moment as the feeds switched over. Then they were looking at two dozen different angles on the interior of Crawford House, where there was one hell of a party under way.

The party took a number of things with it wherever it went. These included a portable sound system, three digital projectors, seven wireless speakers, two collapsible projection screens, a half dozen lava lamps, three laptops, a collapsible bar and seven digital picture frames capable of displaying any images downloaded into them. Bee had mounted hidden cameras in every single one of these items, and there were microphones in about half of them. Sandee had become expert at setting them up just right so that they provided total coverage.

Sandee was nowhere to be seen. Probably waiting outside for Chloe to arrive, Paul thought. But lots of the other regulars were there, including both his stripper friend Erica and her dealer Bernie. Even though it had been less than eight hours since Paul had spoken to Bernie earlier that evening, it seemed like days. So much had happened since then. The Crew itself stayed out of dealing drugs. There were too many ways that could go bad and too many unsavory and dangerous people to deal with. At the same time, you couldn’t have a successful underground party without some pot and ecstasy for your guests, especially if you wanted to loosen tongues and wallets in the course of the evening.

Most of the action was centered in the Crawford House’s spacious common room, where Paul counted twenty-one guests and locals drinking, smoking and dancing to the music. The room had once been where the guest house served its continental breakfast and held early evening cocktail hours. There were still some tables and chairs and a couple of stained couches along one wall - furniture that none of the lawyers fighting over ownership had deemed worth taking the trouble to remove. They also brought in some oriental rugs and bean bags with them when they set up the party at larger locations like this one. In the center of the room was Jesse, a friend of Sandee who served as both DJ and bartender. He had a laptop hooked up to the sound system, playing his selections straight off the hard drive and into the surrounding speakers. Next to him was the portable bar, festooned with liquor bottles, mixers, and a cooler full of beer on the floor adjacent.

Also adjacent to the bar, as he preferred, sat Bernie. Paul was glad to see the funny old dealer there. He grew his own pot in his house and in those of a few friends. It was always high