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

backup, but she couldn’t get a hold of him or Lily. In an ideal world she’d have been back at the house, monitoring the cameras and directing traffic in support of Bee while other Crewmembers were stationed in the bar and nearby in case Bee ran into trouble. But Paul and Sandee were flushing out Eddie, and Chloe wasn’t about to be across town at the house while Bee met with Raff. She didn’t think he’d try anything violent in so exposed a location, but Chloe couldn’t risk it.

Even now she was farther away than she wanted to be, sitting in the upstairs dining area of the restaurant across the street. The assistant manager there was a regular at The Party (he also dealt a little pot now and then), so he’d set Chloe up in the room, which was not in use right now. This way she was out of sight from the street and the meeting location but less than a minute away if shit started to go wrong. To be extra safe, Chloe had come in through the service entrance and avoided the main dining area and outside bar, just in case Raff had a man watching his back.

Chloe watched on the screen, which was divided into four different views of the meeting locale - all taken off the live Web feeds from the owners’ own cameras. In her ear she heard audio from the microphone hidden in the necklace around Bee’s neck. Bee was sitting in the dressing room of a clothing store two blocks away, waiting for Chloe to signal her that Raff had arrived at the meeting place. Only then would Chloe give her the all-clear to proceed and meet him.

The Garden of Eden was a rooftop bar that occupied the third level of a popular multilevel bar complex. On the ground floor was The Bull, with its live music and dance floor, while on the second floor was The Whistle, with pool tables and a wraparound balcony that overlooked Duval Street. And up top was the Garden of Eden, an open-air, clothing optional bar that allowed nude sunbathing during the day and naked dancing with a nude DJ at night. Chloe and Paul had been a few times and it was kind of a fun, wacky place if you had enough drinks in you and didn’t mind the sight of overweight, middle-aged nudists shaking their prodigious booties and not so prodigious privates in your face.

Looking at the camera feeds on her screen, Chloe saw that the Garden was about half full, with several women and men laid out on deck chairs with frozen drinks in their hands. At the bar itself most of the guests were fully clothed, sipping beer and chatting as they admired the topless bartender or ogled their naked companions. Chloe watched as Raff arrived, stepping though the door beside the bar. She couldn’t hear him, but he was laughing, no doubt understanding in that moment what Bee had meant when she’d told him to “obey the dress code.”

Raff looked around and, not seeing Bee, ordered himself a drink. Although the resolution on the cameras was pretty poor, Chloe could tell that Raff was trying not to be too obvious as he scanned the bar for cameras. From the slight pauses in his head movements, Chloe guessed that he’d identified at least two of them, but that didn’t mean he knew she was watching. If anything it meant that he knew he was being recorded and was therefore all the less likely to pull anything too crazy once Bee got there.

It was only after Raff had stripped his clothes off and lain down on an empty deck chair that Chloe finally gave Bee the go ahead to move from her hiding place to the bar. Five minutes later she watched as Bee walked in. Over Bee’s hidden mic, Chloe could here her humming to herself with nervous energy. On the cameras she saw Raff glance toward the doorway as Bee arrived, but the tall, naked con man played it cool and reclined back in his chair, forcing Bee to come to him.

If Chloe had been in Bee’s place, she would have sat down at the bar and waited for Raff to develop a nice sunburn on his bare ass before sending him a drink, but Bee wasn’t Chloe. She spotted Raff and headed over to him, wiping her hands on her jeans as she did so. Chloe knew she had to be nervous. The small Asian woman stood over Raff, who lay there with his eyes closed, pretending to not notice her. She coughed once and then again, but Raff ‘s only response was to start snoring. Raff liked his games.

But Bee didn’t. She surprised Chloe almost as much as she must have surprised Raff when she “woke” him by spitting down on his face. He sat straight up at that, wiping the saliva from his nose and cheek and sputtering, “What the fuck?”

“Hi, Raff,” said Bee, her voice coming through loud and clear over the microphone.

“Oh, hi Bee,” he replied. Chloe could hear him pretty well, although she might have problems if he didn’t talk directly toward Bee’s hidden microphone.

“Hi,” Bee repeated.

“Nice place you picked here,” Raff said as he looked around. “Nice scenery. Aren’t you going to strip down and join the party?”

“Um… no, I’m ok.”

“Are you sure?” said Raff, leaning back in his seat with his arms behind his head and spreading his legs to expose his cock and balls to Bee, who glanced down at him and quickly looked away. “It’s very freeing.”

“No…”

“Ok, no pressure. It’s a lifestyle choice. Do you want a drink?”

“No… I’m fine,” Bee said, her voice so low Chloe could barely hear it over the mic. She was starting to wonder if this venue had actually been a good idea after all. Bee appeared strangely embarrassed by Raff ‘s nudity, even though it had been her idea to meet at The Garden where Raff couldn’t possibly hide any weapons or recording devices. Chloe hoped she was just faking it. If the plan had been to make Raff uncomfortable, it didn’t seem to be working.

“Do you want to sit down then? I can get you a chair?”

“I’m fine. We should just start… start talking.”

“Ok, Bee. What do you want to talk about?”

“You said you were going to leave us alone. In San Jose. You promised,” said Bee.

“I swear, Bee. I had no idea you guys were going to be here. How could I?”

“Paul talked about Key West sometimes. You might have…”

“I never much listened to what Paul was babbling on and on about. I didn’t know, ok?”

“But now you’re going to leave?” asked Bee.

“Is that why Chloe sent you to talk to me? Did she think you could guilt me into leaving?”

“Chloe doesn’t know…”

“Oh, come on,” Raff interrupted. “No way you move without Chloe knowing. You don’t squeak without her permission.”

“That’s not true…”

“Fine,” said Raff. “Let’s say it’s not true. I’ll believe you when you tell me that you’re here on your own.”

“I am,” Bee insisted.

“Ok, you are. So what? So why should I leave?”

“Because you promised you would. Because you promised you’d stay out of our business forever.”

“Is that what I said?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“When was this again?” Raff asked.

“In San Jose. In that motel room…”

“Where you had me tied up? Where you threatened to give me to the cops? The room where you shot my friend in the head with your remote controlled rifle, Bee? That room?”

Bee said nothing, just nodding. Chloe was holding her breath as she watched and listened. The shooting. That was what this conversation would all come down to. It had been eating at Bee’s heart for over a year and if she could hold it together now she might actually get some closure, or whatever the fuck it is that people need in situations like this.

“That’s right,” Bee said. “That’s when you…”

“First of all, I need to reiterate that I did not know you guys were here, so it’s not like I knowingly broke my promise. It was Paul and Chloe who attacked me in the street. And second of all, in my world, promises made under threat of arrest or death just don’t count for much.”

“Promises don’t count for much at all with you, do they?” countered Bee.

“Sometimes not, no,” he admitted. “But at least I never killed anyone.”

“I…” Bee started to say, but then words seem to fail her.

“You what?”

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“That I… I didn’t mean to. I thought…”

“You didn’t mean to shoot him? Then why was the gun there in the first place? Who did you mean to shoot? Me? Chloe? Paul? I can see shooting Paul actually, but why…?”

“I didn’t know!” Bee said, loud enough for nearby sunbathers to hear them over the stereo system. “I just was being safe. Planning for every contingency, like you’re supposed to.”

“A radio controlled rifle doesn’t sound too safe to me,” said Raff. “It sounds a little crazy. We never used guns.”

“Your friend had a gun,” said Bee. “He had a gun and it was pointed right at Paul. And he shot Chloe’s friend! You brought the guns into it…”

“But you didn’t know that, Bee,” said Raff, his voice calm and logical. “You didn’t know he’d have a gun. And yes, he shot Chloe and Paul’s friend. But did they tell you the whole story? That their friend was beating me to death with a baseball bat. Owen was just saving my life, that’s all.”

“Owen?” Bee asked. “His name was…”

“Owen,” Raff finished. “Owen Jarvis. That was his name.”

Bee didn’t say anything but kind of slumped to the floor, not quite fainting but apparently not entirely conscious of her own actions as she sat down in a heap next to the pile of Raff ‘s clothing. “I wondered what his name was,” she said.

“His name was Owen Jarvis,” Raff intoned in all seriousness, making Chloe wonder if he was consciously mimicking Fight Club. She knew Raff loved that movie.

“Tell me about him,” said Bee, looking down at her hands in her lap. Chloe could’ve sworn that Raff was starting to get a hard-on at the discomfort he was so obviously causing Bee.

“He was like you or me. He was smart and lived by his wits. Had done that for a long time - since before you or I were even born I think. Owen never talked a lot of specifics about his past - just lots of stories dating back to the ’70s and his crazy adventures. You know how it goes.”

Bee nodded that she did. Chloe noticed that Raff hadn’t actually come out and said that Owen was a thief and a con artist - no doubt he was trying to make him as sympathetic sounding as possible in order to inflame Bee’s guilty conscience.

“Did he have a family?”

“A teenage daughter from his first marriage. A wife who’s in the life. A cousin…”

“Daughter?” asked Bee, and her voice was cracking.

“Yeah,” said Raff. “They weren’t close I don’t think. He sent her money for college I know, but maybe not much more than that. Or maybe a lot more. You never know with people in our world, do you?”

“No, you don’t,” agreed Bee.

“It’s too bad about his wife too. Jeanie. She was pretty upset. They were kinda perfect for each other, you know? Both in this together.”

“Like Chloe and Paul,” said Bee.

“Maybe, yeah,” said Raff. “You’d know better than me about the two of them. But she was so… so shocked. That he’d been shot, you know? It’s just