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

of thirty pages, each with Raff ‘s picture on it. “He’s a lone hacker and con man who’s been spotted in the area by law enforcement. We believe he’s responsible. If you could show these one-sheets to your employees and the guests in those rooms on the list, we might have a good shot at catching him.”

The manager took the sheaf of what could only be described as wanted posters. They had “SECURITY WARNING” printed in large bold letters across the top, right above the picture of Raff they’d captured from Bee’s video. Below it said, “Wanted for questioning involving computer security fraud, bank fraud and trespassing.” There was also a number (one of the Crew’s burner phones) to call if he was spotted.

“All right,” the woman said, “I’ll pass these around and post them in our security area.”

“Please make sure the guests I’ve indicated see them as well,” said Paul. “This suspect is a known confidence man, and he’s approached targets in person in the past.”

“Of course,” the manager agreed.

Paul stuffed his fake evidence spreadsheets back in the briefcase and stood up. “On behalf of Verizon, thank you very much for your kind assistance,” he said, shaking her hand again. “And remember, never give out your password or security codes to anyone over the phone or via e-mail.”

“I never do,” said the woman.

“Excellent,” said Paul. “Well, I’ve got to head across the street. Lots of fires to put out today.”

“Good luck,” said the woman as she walked Paul to the front door.

“Thank you,” he replied. “And we’ll be sure to let you know when we’ve caught him.” With that he was out the door, headed back to his rendezvous with Sandee at the observation post. A little luck and Eddie would now feel that Raff had too much heat on him to let him hide out in his hotel room any longer. Then Raff would have no choice but to rejoin his Crew.

The observation post was two blocks away on Caroline Street in an empty timeshare they helped manage through Keys Condos and Estates. While Paul had been inside the hotel, Sandee had planted cameras covering all the entrances into the Hyatt, except the water side. But odds were Raff wouldn’t be coming in by boat. They’d set up two laptops in the apartment’s dining room, where Sandee sat with his feet propped up on the table, watching the screens. They could’ve monitored all of this from the house, of course, but if they needed to try and follow Raff, assuming Eddie did kick him out, then they’d need to be close at hand to track him. Paul had a wig, hat and sunglasses in a bag by the door for a disguise when he had to follow Raff. He knew he should put the costume on now to be ready, but he didn’t relish the idea of wearing the scratchy wig longer than he had to.

Sandee, always prepared, had brought a cooler with fruit and Tupperware containers full of his famous brown rice salad. He didn’t keep that figure of his without constant attention to diet and exercise. Paul, no lover of brown rice, had learned to actually kind of like the stuff, at least when there wasn’t anything else around.

“How’d it go?” Sandee asked.

“Great,” said Paul. “With every employee in the hotel looking for Raff, there’s no way that Eddie can let him stay there. And if they aren’t on real strong terms, he might well be pissed off enough to distrust Raff completely.”

“And now we wait?” said Sandee.

“Now we wait,” agreed Paul, opening a bowl of rice and digging in as he watched tourists stream by on the two laptop screens set up in front of them.

“I wanted to apologize,” said Sandee, his voice even and pleasant as always. “I must not be very good at the spy thing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Paul.

“I assume this Raff boy must have spotted me following him. I think I’m more cut out for the role of femme fatale than gumshoe.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Paul. “Raff ‘s been doing this a long time.”

“Oh, I’m not too terribly worried,” said Sandee. “I’ve nary a doubt that you and Chloe can handle him.”

“What on earth makes you think that?” Paul asked with a smile. “We haven’t been paragons of competence lately.”

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Sandee.

“No. I mean, yes. Yes I think we can handle Raff, but I also thing we’ve been running around like chickens with our heads cut off.”

“And here I was wondering how the pair of you got so good at this,” mused Sandee. “You’re saying I shouldn’t be impressed?”

“You’re saying you are?” asked Paul, although now he was smiling with a bit of pride at Sandee’s kind words.

“This might be old hat to you and Chloe and Bee, but I’ll tell you cowboy, this is way beyond my life experience - and I’ve experienced me some life.”

“You’ve been with us for nine months now,” Paul said. “You’ve done all kinds of cons with us. The party of course. The real estate stuff. That s�ance thing. The scavenger hunt.”

“Oh, those little things?” Sandee said with a wise smile. “That was just theater. Putting on a show. Everything was planned down to a tee, and all I had to do was get into girl form and play my part. I never thought of those as anything other than a game.”

“That’s supposed to be the point. We do this because it’s supposed to be fun. This crap,” Paul said as he waved a hand toward the laptops, “this is the scary bullshit part. The part where people get hurt or end up in jail or worse. And where you can’t plan every step down to a tee because you’ve only got five minutes to come up with what you’re going to do next. I hate it.”

“It’s amazing then that you’re so good at it,” said Sandee, giving him a reassuring pat on the knee. “You managed to find Eddie and put together the hacker alert story in just a couple hours. And then all the stuff with that dead body… I don’t know how you keep your cool.”

“I had a good teacher,” said Paul.

“Chloe? She is pretty amazing, isn’t she? And I’ve never seen her as driven and focused as she has been since we got the word Winston was coming to town. She’s been a bit of a madwoman in an endearing, obsessive compulsive kind of way.”

“You noticed that too?”

“It was hard to miss; we do all live in the same house.”

“Yeah, she’s definitely got her game face on for this whole clusterfuck. I think she secretly thrives on this seat-of-your-pants shit. And I’ll admit, the adrenaline rush of pulling off an improvised con like in the hotel back there gave me a pretty great high. Almost as good as sex.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Sandee with a wink.

“I said almost,” Paul pointed out.

“Speaking of which, how is the sex with you two?” Sandee asked. From anyone else it would’ve been an odd or presumptuous question. But Sandee was not only a dear friend and Crewmember, he’d also been teaching them some tantric sex basic positions and exercises.

“When we have time, it’s amazing,” said Paul. “But the sex has never been the problem. It’s everything else.”

“I have heard some shouting,”

“We’re having a hard time…” Paul started, then stopped as he searched for the right words. “It’s hard, you know. Living together. It’s hard work. And it’s not like our chosen lifestyle lends itself to a low stress environment, despite all the parties. This living a life of crime thing can be hard work too.”

“Maybe you should talk more,” Sandee said. “Air out your differences.”

“Talking more isn’t the solution,” said Paul. “We talk plenty and air out pretty much everything. The problem’s a little more unsolvable than that. Fact is, we want different things out of life and, well, those things are kind of incompatible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I love it here,” said Paul. “Current events aside, for me this is all just about perfect. Warm weather and parties and fun-filled scams, good drugs and great friends and free Internet access. Total freedom to do as we please.”

“Amen, brother,” Sandee said. “Sounds like paradise to me. So what’s the problem?”

“Well, for you and me it’s paradise - or it would be if there was a decent comic book store - but for Chloe, not so much. She’s starting to feel penned-in here. It’s too small for her.”

“See, I love that it’s so small but so alive and fun at the same time,” said Sandee. “I mean, I’ve visited Miami and New York, but I keep coming back here.”

“And I keep hoping Chloe will come to see it that way too,” said Paul. “But I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.”

“It’ll happen,” said Sandee. “Key West gets to you. You just need to give it some time. And just because I love you kids, we could skip ahead in our lessons straight to the hour long orgasms. If that doesn’t make her want to stay, nothing will.”

Paul laughed. “Finally! That’s why we signed up with you in the first place, you know.”

“We’ve all got to crawl before we walk,” Sandee chided with a smile.

They settled into a comfortable silence then, eating brown rice salad and watching the tourists waddle around on the laptop screens. Paul closed his eyes for a moment just to rest them. Just for a few seconds…