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

a conversation he wanted to have right now, but he couldn’t see a way out of it. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” said Chloe. “It’s something we need to think about. We need to be ready to give Isaiah an answer.”

“Then shouldn’t we be talking to Sandee and Bee too?”

“We will,” said Chloe. “But right now it’s you and me I’m talking about.”

“What about you?” asked Paul. “What do you want to do?”

“I think we should join up if we get the chance.”

“Just like that?”

“Assuming everything checks out, then yeah. Just like that.”

“Why?” asked Paul. “Don’t we have everything we need here? The Keys Condos and Estates deal gives us stable housing and plenty of opportunities. The party is yielding more and more money and results every week. We’re building up a great network here. Bee says she’ll have the whole island covered within the year…”

“And that’s all great,” Chloe interrupted. “But then what? We’re still working our asses off to basically just keep our heads above water. If we’re going to grow, we’re going to make real money, then we need to look beyond this damn island. It’s too small. Everyone knows everyone else, and that’s not the best environment for con artists. And how many cameras did Bee lose in the last hurricane? Something like 50 percent? And the next storm could strip this whole island bare, and then where would we be? This fucking place is a dead end.”

“So you want to leave?” asked Paul. Chloe grumbled about the heat and the bugs and the storms, but she’d never been this explicitly negative about Key West before. Paul found that her anger didn’t really surprise him that much - he’d sensed her frustration but had chosen to ignore it.

“Not necessarily,” she said. “Not right away. But there’s no future here for us, Paul. There’s just more of the same. More of the endless party and more of the fleecing tourists and more watching everyone all the time from Bee’s little fortress of solitude. But then what?”

“What is it you want?” asked Paul. “What more do you need to do? What do you need or want that we don’t have here? We’ve got money, friends, fun. Each other. Plenty of free time to do other things…”

“What other things?”

“Well I do my art… some writing. And just planning the party is fun for me.”

“And of course your damn game,” she snapped.

Anger and frustration rose in his throat. “Let’s just leave out the game, ok?”

“Fine. We’ll forget the game. But those are all the things that make you happy. I need more. I need to move forward and accomplish things. I need…”

“You need a hobby,” he said.

“Fuck that,” she said, rolling out of bed and wheeling around on him with an accusing finger pointed at his face. “Maybe your art’s just a hobby for you now, but it used to be your passion. Well I don’t need a hobby, but I do need a fucking passion. And playing landlord and party pimp is not my fucking passion.”

“I thought I was your passion,” said Paul, hurt and confused by her onslaught. “I love you Chloe. I love you so much…”

“I love you too Paul. You know I love you so much. But that’s not enough. I need more. I need more for myself, for my own ambitions.”

Paul looked away from her. He knew she was right, of course. As far as he was concerned, life on Key West was (hurricanes and murders aside) idyllic. But he wanted Chloe to be happy too; he just didn’t know how to make that happen. She came around the bed to his side and sat back down beside him, stroking his hair.

“Remember when you suggested moving here,” she said quietly. “Remember how you said you wanted to do more socially conscious cons. More like Robin Hood or whatever?”

Paul did remember. That had been their goal at first, but playing Robin Hood was harder than it sounded (and it didn’t sound terribly easy). Like Chloe said, they spent a lot of time and energy just covering their own expenses, which were pretty high. Especially maintaining Bee’s camera network. The party only started paying for itself in the last month or so. Their free housing scam was as close as they came to being socially responsible.

“Yeah, sure” he finally said.

“Well don’t you see? Isaiah’s company thing might be a way for us to do that. Like Winston said. Secret secession or whatever. Go after the real bad guys.”

“I do see,” said Paul. “But I’m still not convinced it’s a good idea. There are too many unknowns.”

“But if we sorted all of them out…”

“I’ll have to see then,” said Paul. “I just can’t make any promises. The whole thing is too new. Too weird. I’m not going to commit to anything now.”

She took her hand from his hair and stared in silence. “Sure,” she eventually said. “That makes sense.”

She stood up and moved over to the closet. He watched her dress in silence, wanting to say something but not quite knowing the right words or even what it was he really wanted to say. She pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that said, “I Read Your E-mail.”

“Just remember, Paul,” Chloe said. “There’s going to have to be some sort of commitment to change at some point.”

“I know,” said Paul.

“Because things can’t keep going like this. It just won’t work.”

“Ok.”

Their eyes met across the room and he saw sadness there. “I’m going to go check on Bee,” she said, and left. P AUL snapped awake at the sound of Bee’s voice from the doorway.

“Paul?” she was saying. “Paul, are you awake?” He sat up in bed and looked in bleary-eyed confusion at her. It was bright outside. Past noon maybe? How long had he slept?

“Yeah… I’m up,” he stammered through a dry mouth. “Wassup?”

“We found something. Er, someone. The guy we think.”

That woke him up. “Really?” said Paul. “Where’s Chloe?”

“She took a printout to that girl from the guest house to make sure it’s him. She should be back soon.”

Paul staggered out of bed, still bone tired despite the sleep. He pulled on his pants and dug a fresh T-shirt out of the dresser. “This is the bearded guy, right?”

“Yep. He’s bearded. Big guy too. Wrestler big. Not Hulk big, but you know, not little,” said Bee. “Big.”

“Murderer big,” Paul asked.

“You don’t have to be big to be a murderer,” said Bee, her voice dropping in volume.

Paul knew they’d suddenly strayed into sensitive territory for Bee, and he changed the subject as he pulled on his shoes. “So where is he?”

“Don’t know,” said Bee. “But I know where he was. He was at the guest house. Or, well, two blocks away from the guest house. And then he was on Duval in front of Crabby Dicks. And then he was on Duval in front of Fat Tuesday. And then he was on Duval in front of Freddie’s. And you know who else was there at Freddie’s?”

“I’m gonna guess Raquel.”

“Raquel,” Bee confirmed. “And he followed her to Truman Annex.”

“Do you have cameras in there?” Paul asked.

“Two. Floodlight cams,” said Bee. “And they both went past them both, right on their way to Ft. Zachary Taylor Park.”

“And do you have cameras there?”

“Nope, but they never came out again from the road down to the park. Or at least neither of them came back out the same way they went in.”

“Fucking A,” said Paul. Ft. Zachary Taylor park featured a cool old Civil War era fort and one of the nicer beaches on the island. Paul thought back to Raquel’s damp clothes and the sand in her room. “That could be it then,” he said.

“Chloe wants you to go with her to the park and have a look around. Assuming this is the guy from the guest house.”

“Even if it’s not the same guy, anyone who was following Raquel has got to be a suspect.”

Bee gave him a quick nod. “I’m going to go back to the video records and try to find him again. I wanna try that facial recognition thing I downloaded.”

“I thought that wasn’t working?”

“I got a new patch that might help.”

“Ok,” said Paul, as he finished pulling on his shoes. “I’m gonna get some coffee and get ready to go play Columbo on the beach.”

“Good luck,” said Bee. “And remember, Chloe said to remember someone’s probably listening in on the phones.

“I remember,” said Paul. “No phones unless it’s an emergency.”

HE and Chloe rode to the beach in silence on her scooter, zipping through afternoon tourist traffic and paying the $5 entrance fee to the park ranger so they could get into the park. They dismounted in the main parking lot, which was conveniently located between the fort and the beach. It was past noon now, and the lot was more than three-quarters full. It was not only a favorite spot for sunbathers and tourists seeing the fort, but for local fishermen as well.

“So,” said Paul, breaking the silence that still hung between them. “They must’ve both hopped the main fence last night.”

“Yep,” Chloe agreed.

“And aren’t there park rangers on guard here all through the night?”

“I think so,” said Chloe.

“So whatever happened, probably happened somewhere out of sight,” said Paul, looking through the sprawl of pine trees that stood between the parking lot and the beach. “It’s pretty wide open. Even at night a ranger would’ve seen something out there.”

“Maybe,” said Chloe. “Although there’s probably only the one, and he’s got to cover the beach and the fort and the nature trail.”

“The fort doesn’t seem too likely,” said Paul. “It’s got light all over it, and maybe cameras.”

“Which means the nature trail,” said Chloe, walking back up the road toward the front entrance where the entrance to the trail was. “If he came over the fence after her, odds are that she heard him.”

“And I doubt she would’ve broken in here in the first place if she didn’t know she was being followed,” Paul added.

“So, the first entrance to the nature trail is the most obvious place for her to duck in out of sight and either hide or set an ambush.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Paul.

They walked up the paved road for a couple minutes, the hot midday sun beating down on them even though it was November. Ahead on their left Paul saw the entrance to the trail, a shaded tunnel through the trees that looked inviting and cool at this time of day, but must’ve looked foreboding at night. He and Chloe entered and started to snoop around, their eyes combing back and forth over the ground in search of some clue or another.

After fifteen minutes of searching, Chloe called out to him from a few yards off the sandy trail. “Hey, what do you make of this?” she said.

Paul came over and looked at the clear patch of dirt and leaves that Chloe was pointing to. There in the loose, gray sand, Paul could clearly make out what looked like footprints and several other depressions that he suspected might have come from someone’s knees and shins as they knelt on the ground. Nearby he noticed that someone had scooped a handful of sand from the ground.

“If we were cops, we could take plaster casts and compare them to the victim’s footprints,” said Paul.

“Yeah, but then we’d be cops, and how much would that suck?” replied Chloe. “Besides, Winston’s probably dumped the body in the Atlantic by now, so we’ve got nothing to compare them to.”

“Still, I