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

his laptop. He must feel the same way, she thought, focusing on the job at hand. Time enough for love later.

CHLOE had needed a breath of fresh air. Two hours of sitting in the Civic not talking to Paul had finally become too oppressive. There was this tension between them, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. It was like he blamed her somehow for Raff being here, as if it were all her fault. Not that he said that, of course. Or anything like that, really. But somehow every time he mentioned Winston or Isaiah or Raff, it was with this deep-seated venom, and she couldn’t help but think that he might be feeling the same way about her. The sad part was that he probably didn’t even know he was doing it. He was just scared. And so was she, so at least they had that in common.

On the plus side, she’d finally gotten a hold of Winston. He’d told her that he’d taken care of the body (although not in so many words over a cell phone), and that he was heading back into Key West. Chloe guessed that he’d taken the body up the road to dispose of it, maybe as far as the Everglades, over three hours away. He’d certainly been gone long enough to make it there and back. He’d promised to call again as soon as he and Lily got settled back in town.

It was 10:00 now. Bee and Sandee had both checked in and everything was going according to plan. Hubert had cost $6,500, not $5k, but he’d agreed to use their revised map. Sandee had called from Busted Bill’s, the bar where the Booty Hunt always began, to say that the “pirates” were heading out. Thanks to Key West’s liberal open container laws, she expected to see the crowd of pirate-hat wearing bar hoppers meandering down the street with plastic cups of rum punch and paper cutlasses in their hands any minute now.

She heard them before she saw them, an out of synch, boisterous chorus singing, “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest! Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum!” over and over again. Their vanguard rounded the corner, led by what looked like a woman with long, curly black hair tucked under a flamboyant pirate hat. The leader’s trim figure was packed into skintight black pants, knee high, spike-heeled boots and a tight fitting red corset modeled after an old-fashioned captain’s coat, with gold buttons and fringe. It was Sandee of course, who had apparently decided to personally take charge of the assault in his Captain Morgana costume. Chloe wished he hadn’t done that; it was too conspicuous by far, but Sandee was never good at being demure.

Chloe backed into the shadows of a nearby tree, out of sight from the advancing mob of booty seekers. She counted them as they walked by her position, headed for Raff ‘s house. There had to be fifty of them! Fuck, this could either go really right or really fucking wrong. The crowd was mostly middle aged and probably all tourists, an even mix of men and women. Several passing cars honked their appreciation, and the gang cheered “ARRRR!” in return, as they’d been taught.

Once they’d passed, she jogged back to the car to watch on the video and let Paul knew what was up.

“They’re coming,” she told him as she got inside.

“I heard,” said Paul, not looking up from his screen.

“There’s like, fifty of them,” Chloe said.

“Christ, really?”

“Yeah. It’s gonna be something.”

“We’re recording on all these and Bee’s using her facial recognition software back in her room. We’ve got the house covered, so if the killer so much as sticks his head out a window to see what all the fuss is about, we’ll get a match. Then we can go to Isaiah and bring the hammer down on Raff.”

Chloe just nodded. She knew all that already, but she knew Paul liked to go over things up until the last second, just to make sure everyone knew exactly what the play was - a habit she’d taught him.

“Here we go,” he said to the screen in front of him.

And there they were - four dozen would-be pirates, looking for the treasure of booze and gift certificates from local merchants that usually waited for them at the end of these Booty Hunts. Under Sandee’s direction they lined up in the street before Raff ‘s house and on the count of three shouted “ARRRRRRR!” with such volume that Chloe could hear it through the open car window three blocks away.

“That’ll wake ‘em up,” said Paul.

“Yeah,” agreed Chloe. Had this really been such a good idea? Too late to wonder now.

She watched on the screen as Sandee raised her paper sword in the air, shouted something to the assembled “pirates” and then brought the weapon down in an arcing chop. Everyone in the crowd tipped their cups back, finishing off whatever liquor they had left with them. Then Sandee raised the sword again, pointed it toward the house, swung the blade and set them loose. The gang charged the front door with another cry of “ARRRRR!”

A middle-aged woman Chloe didn’t recognize opened the door just as the first of the pirates reached the front porch. She might have intended to yell at them about all the noise or maybe just see what the fuck was going on. But her timing couldn’t have been worse. Not expecting the strangers who were obviously tourists to come in without asking, she opened the door wide and thus had just enough time to step back out of sight as the crowd came swarming in past her.

“Fuck,” said Paul, under his breath.

Chloe nodded as she leaned close to his screen (hers showed the back view, which was still quiet). She saw Sandee pulling something out from inside his jacket, but couldn’t make out what it was. The crowd of pirates had now bunched up at the door, pushing against those who’d made it through the bottleneck. Sandee, mystery item in hand, wormed his way up through the crowd, out of sight and into the house.

They watched for a couple of long minutes as the crowd outside just sort of milled around. Apparently the house was as full as it was going to get. It wasn’t a big place to begin with, and having seen the inside of more old Key West houses than she wanted to admit, Chloe knew the downstairs living space couldn’t be more than six or seven hundred square feet. They had to be shoulder to shoulder in there. She couldn’t even imagine what Raff and his Crew were thinking.

“I wonder if they’ll break down and call the cops,” Paul said.

“Maybe,” said Chloe. “At least they’ve got to be threatening to at this point. What else can they do?”

“Violence,” Paul suggested. “Although with that many drunks in their house, that’s more likely to backfire than not. Maybe they’ll… oh shit. What’s that?” Paul said, pointing to the screen.

Between the low-light vision and the crappy resolution, it was hard to tell what Paul was pointing at. Something near the front window. And then there was more of it. Smoke. “Oh shit,” said Chloe. “There’s a fire.”

“Or someone set off a smoke bomb,” Paul suggested. “Or maybe teargas? That would clear everyone out.”

Chloe thought about Sandee and hoped that her friend hadn’t been that crazy. The flow of pirates into the house, having stalled, now reversed itself in a flash, and they came pouring out the front door again. Chloe saw movement on her screen as well and looked down to see Sandee come sprinting through the side yard of the house behind Raff ‘s, a maniacal grin on his face. Sandee being Sandee, he leaped up into the branches of a tree, clambering up onto the roof of the house whose yard he’d just run through. A moment later, Chloe saw why. Raff burst from the shadows and ran into the street before skidding to a halt and looking both ways for some sign of the female pirate he’d been pursuing a second earlier. Chloe had to laugh as she saw Sandee peeking over the edge of the roof, looking down at the flustered Raff, who finally chose a direction and ran out of the camera’s field of vision.

On Paul’s screen, the chaos continued. The pirates had seemed to clear out, although they were laughing rather than screaming in panic. Chloe suspected that Sandee might well have warned them in advance about his plan to light off the smoke bomb, so they wouldn’t freak out. At least she hoped he’d been smart enough to do that. Smoke was coming out the door, both front windows and even from one of the upstairs ones. Everyone inside had no choice but to bug out. And while Raff had spotted Sandee and chased her out the back, at least two of the mystery Crew’s members had used the front door.

The woman who’d let the pirates in came out first, her face covered with a dishtowel as she emerged from the door, but as soon as she was clear, she revealed her face directly to the hidden camera. She looked to be in her mid-40s, with shoulder length dark hair. She was lean with harsh features, but still very striking. There wasn’t a hint of panic in her movements as she swept her gaze back and forth over the crowd of laughing pirates. When another, younger woman came out of the house, coughing and stumbling down the stairs, the older woman caught her hand and steadied the young one’s nerves. This second girl was in her 20s with Latin features and curly dark hair. Both women were dressed in casual shorts and Tshirts. No doubt they’d been lounging around the house, expecting a quiet night in when the attack began.

“That’s got to be them,” said Paul. “I wonder if that older woman is the Jeanie person that Raff was talking about. Owen’s wife or whatever.”

“I still think Raff made all that shit up just to fuck with Bee’s head,” said Chloe. “But I don’t doubt she’s the one who Raff was going to have play ‘Jeanie’ in whatever mindfuck he had planned for her.”

“The young one looks familiar,” said Paul. “Where have I seen her before?”

“Yeah?” asked Chloe, looking close. “I don’t recognize her. Where do you think…?”

“Not from Key West,” said Paul. “From California, I think. I think she was in the car when Raff and his crew were chasing us. Outside the storage place where my money was.”

“Really?” said Chloe, who hadn’t gotten a look at the woman back then. “Then this really must be Raff ‘s Crew from back then. Motherfucker.”

They watched as the two women whispered just a few words to one another, coming to a joint decision. The crowd around them was starting to grow restless, looking for some direction about where to find those drinks they’d been promised. With Sandee nowhere in sight, they had no one to lead them, and some of them were getting angry. Raff ‘s comrades might have sensed this, or maybe the attention itself was too much. Either way, they decided to bug out. They split up and both calmly walked away from the crowd in front of their house. The younger woman left first, with Jeanie following behind about a minute later, going the same direction.

“They’re going in tandem,” said Chloe. “They’ll probably keep a good separation between them as they walk, occasionally switching leads. It’ll make it damn hard to follow them without being spotted.” These were not amateurs they were dealing with.

“We have their faces now,” said Paul. “Bee can watch for them on