Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Rick Dakan (reading tree txt) 📖
- Author: Rick Dakan
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“Yeah, but you know the Lieutenant will have our badges if we don’t make this case, so we gotta do whatever it takes,” said Chloe.
“Well then, I guess we’ll just have to falsify evidence,” said Paul. “Again.”
“It’s what we do,” Chloe agreed, which was kind of funny because it was actually true - they did a lot of falsifying of things, including evidence.
“Still,” said Paul. “Even assuming she was here, we don’t know if she was killed here or not. They could’ve gone somewhere else - he could’ve chased her back out of the park.”
“Or she could’ve chased him and run into his friends,” said Chloe. “But Bee didn’t see them come back out the front.”
“If they hopped one fence, they could hop another.”
“True,” said Chloe. “Let’s keep looking here.”
And so they did, searching for half an hour among the trees for any other sign of violence, but neither of them really knew what to look for. There were so many footprints on the trail that they couldn’t make any sense of them. There were broken branches here and there, but nothing they could say was caused by a fight. They eventually gave up.
“Man,” said Paul, wiping his brow. “This solving crime stuff is thirsty work.”
“If only we were actually solving it,” said Chloe. “But yeah, let’s go up to the beach and get some water.”
Back by the beach sat a wooden building on low stilts which housed both the public bathrooms and a snack bar run by the parks department. There was a line of six people waiting for service, and Chloe and Paul stepped in behind them.
“I assume this place is all locked up at night?” asked Paul.
“Yeah. The bathrooms too.”
“Hmmm,” said Paul. “So probably not worth checking them.”
“Well, I do need to pee,” said Chloe. “Get me an iced tea, ok?”
“Sure,” he said, and watched as she walked around the side of the building to the women’s room. He sighed. Maybe they should go on a trip when this bullshit was finished. Up to Miami or something, do some clubbing, scam some yuppies.
He felt a buzzing in his leg and pulled a disposable cell phone from his pocket. Bee had given them the burners before they left, just in case Isaiah really did have taps, traps or traces on their normal phones. There was no name on the caller ID, just a Miami area code and number.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hey,” said Bee. “I thought I gave this phone to Chloe.”
“Nope, you gave it to me. Do you need to talk to Chloe?”
“Yes! I mean no. You’re fine. I can tell you.” Bee was talking a mile a minute, her voice tense.
“What is it?”
“I found Eddie and…”
“You mean you found where Eddie’s staying?”
“Yeah. No! I found where he is right now…”
“What about the bearded guy?” Paul asked. “I thought you were looking for…”
“No! I mean yes, I was looking for him and then I saw Eddie moving and I thought I’d check on him and then I did and when I did I saw who he was talking to.” Paul only caught about half of what she said, she was talking so fast.
“Was he talking to the bearded guy?” Paul asked. “Because that would…”
“No!” Bee shouted from the other end. “He’s with Raff!”
Paul didn’t register the full meaning of what she’d said. “What was that?” he asked.
“With Raff!” she shouted. “The Raff. Our Raff. The Raff. He’s standing on the corner of Duval and Roosevelt right now and he’s talking to Eddie.”
“Fuck me…” Paul whispered, suddenly very angry and more than a little scared.
“AND who is this guy again?” asked Sandee, staring down at the
picture on Chloe’s PDA.
“Bad fucking news,” said Paul, and Chloe couldn’t have agreed more.
“He doesn’t look it,” said Sandee. “He’s kinda dorky, isn’t he?”
“Don’t be fooled,” Chloe responded, although Raff did in fact look pretty dorky in his tennis shoes and tube socks, pink flamingo shirt, and baseball cap. “He wants people to underestimate him.”
“It’s working,” Sandee commented.
“I need you to follow him,” said Chloe.
“Dressed like this?” Sandee replied. “It’s not the most inconspicuous outfit I own.” Sandee still wore the mini-dress and heels from the night before, although they were now wrinkled and lint-covered, no doubt from having spent the night in a pile on the floor. “Plus, if he’s hanging with that boy Eddie, then I’ll surely be recognized. Assuming he remembers anything from last night - he was pretty blitzed.”
“Fuck,” said Chloe. Sandee had a point. She looked back down at her phone as Bee emailed her another picture from the street camera. Every thirty seconds she received a new one, and for the last half hour Eddie and Raff has been standing at the counter of a juice bar, sipping on smoothies and seemingly passing the time like any other pair of tourists.
Paul, who was looking over her shoulder, said, “That’s pretty ballsy of him, standing around on the busiest street in town like that.”
“Yeah,” said Chloe. “That’s not something he’d do if he was trying to hide from us. Maybe he doesn’t even realize we live here now. I’m not sure how he could’ve figured it out in the first place. It could be a coincidence.”
“Not fucking likely,” said Paul. “Turning up here? Now? No, he’s got to know we’re here. I might’ve mentioned wanting to move to Key West to him at some point. Or maybe you did.”
“I didn’t,” insisted Chloe, although she wasn’t one-hundred percent sure that was true.
“Still, he knows I’m from Florida. He must have found us somehow.”
“Then why is he here? And why is he with Eddie?” asked Chloe.
“Maybe he’s challenging us. If Isaiah could bug us or hack our system, so could Raff, right? He’s a kick-ass hacker. He could’ve been monitoring everything - all our video feeds. He might have even seen your and Sandee’s performance with Eddie last night, and now he’s making the guy an offer.”
Chloe didn’t like the sound of that, but she couldn’t rule out Paul’s scenario. It was as likely as anything. And as much as Raff had fucked her and Paul over back in California, they’d gotten back at him as well. No one had left their last encounter feeling good about things. Fuck, we need a fucking coder in our Crew, she thought. We’re running around with our asses in the wind. “All that matters now is that we know he’s here, and we need to find out why. We need to follow him.”
“Eddie never saw the real me. I left him alone once he started drooling on himself. I can run home and change real quick,” said Sandee. “Or just run down to Fast Buck Freddie’s and buy a few things.”
“Do that,” said Paul. “And you might want to switch genders while you’re at it. Eddie won’t be looking for a boy.”
“Only because you asked so nice,” said Sandee, kissing Paul on the cheek before turning to Chloe and saying. “I’ll be back in two shakes of a cat’s tail.”
“We’ll keep out of sight,” said Chloe. “As long as he’s on Bee’s cameras, we can watch him without him knowing we’re here.”
“Unless he knows about the cameras,” said Paul.
“If that’s the case, then we’ll jump him and beat him down until he tells the truth,” said Chloe.
“I like the sound of that plan. Let’s just skip ahead to that part.”
Chloe didn’t respond. She wanted to lay into Raff with a lead pipe just as much as Paul did, but she knew they needed to wait. Nevertheless, Paul’s obvious bloodlust surprised her a little. He tended to favor less direct, less confrontational approaches to problems. That was part of what made him good at living life underground - he saw weird angles most people didn’t. But now his fury was blinding him, and if she didn’t watch herself, it might blind her, too.
She used her disposable phone to call Bee again, even as another pic of Raff and Eddie downloaded onto her PDA. Bee answered on the second ring.
“I just sent you a new pic,” Bee said.
“I got it. I need to know if you have any idea where Eddie stayed last night. Might be Raff ‘s there, too.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bee. “I’ve been going back through the video trying to trace them. Eddie still has the RFID card on him - he’s wearing the same shorts, you see - and, well, he stayed somewhere near Mallory Square. Maybe at the Hyatt? Someplace like that. Raff first shows up on my cameras way down at the other end of Duval. Near, like, the Southernmost Point and all that. So I don’t think they’re, you know, together or whatever.”
“Ok,” said Chloe. “I thought it might be worth a shot. Sandee’s getting changed and he’s gonna trail Raff. Keep an eye on them and keep sending…”
“Chloe?” said Bee, her voice nervous.
“What is it, hon?” Chloe asked, although she was pretty sure what Bee was going to ask.
“Do you think he’s still mad…?”
“You mean Raff ?”
“Yeah. Do you think he’s still mad about… about what happened to his friend?”
Chloe paused for a moment, searching for words. Bee had killed Raff ‘s partner, a man whose name they didn’t even know, but who’d been working in secret with Raff to take down Paul and, by extension, Chloe. The death had shaken Bee deep down, changed her somehow. She didn’t talk about it much, but Chloe could tell that she thought about that dead man a lot. Too much in fact.
“I guess he probably is, Bee. But I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t even that close. Raff betrayed us, right? He probably planned to back stab that other guy too.”
“Do you think so?”
“It’s possible,” Chloe assured her. “Raff is certainly a rat-fuck bastard, isn’t he?”
Silence greeted her from the other end of the phone.
“Isn’t he?” Chloe asked again.
“Yeah,” said Bee. “Definitely.”
“Ok then. Let’s concentrate on finding out what the rat bastard fuck is up to, ok?”
“Ok,” said Bee. “He’s still talking with Eddie. I’ll send you another pic.”
“Great, keep ‘em coming,” Chloe said and then hung up.
“Bee freaked out about Raff ?” asked Paul.
“We all are.”
“Yeah,” said Paul, although Chloe thought he was talking to himself as much as to her. “Freaked out is one way of putting it.”
THE slim, good looking young Indian man in baggy jeans, T-shirt and sandals jogged up to their hiding place. The transformation from nightlife diva to male model surfer dude never ceased to amaze Chloe, even though she’d seen Sandee (short for Sandeep) change in person on multiple occasions.
“He still there?” asked Sandee, adjusting his shirt so it hung just so on his slim frame.
“Yep,” said Chloe. “But Eddie just left, so I’m guessing that he’s going to be on the move soon.”
“I’ll saunter on over there and start following him.”
“Just be careful,” Paul reminded him.
“I know, I know. He’s terribly dangerous. Shall I keep in touch on the headset?”
“At all times,” Chloe said, handing Sandee a disposable cell phone and a wireless earpiece.
“God I hate these things,” said Sandee as he slipped the earpiece in. “Will you at least play some music for me?”
“No,” said Chloe. “But Paul will sing for you if you like.”
“Heaven forbid!” he replied in mock horror and then, to Paul, “You know I think you’re divine honey,
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