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

and swept the living room with her bug detection equipment. If Winston had planted something, it couldn’t have been too well hidden - he hadn’t been alone in the house long enough.

On the second sweep, Bee found it. A small bug attached to the underside of a table lamp. She carefully pried it loose and then dropped it inside a ten year old lead-lined bag used to protect film from x-rays. She swept the rest of the rooms downstairs and then said, “It’s ok to talk in here now. I’m going to take this little monster upstairs and seal the room and check it out. And the rest of the network.”

“Sounds good, Bee,” said Chloe. “Smart thinking.”

“See, my paranoia isn’t just a cute personality trait,” Bee said. “It’s also pretty handy.”

“No one ever said it wasn’t,” Paul told her. “Let us know what you find out.”

“Always,” said Bee before she disappeared back upstairs.

“So, we assume he heard all that?” asked Sandee.

“Maybe,” said Chloe. “Maybe not. If he’s already got his man back safe on his boat, then he might not be listening in. And the bug has to be set to bursts of info. If it was constantly transmitting, Bee’s defenses in the house here would’ve found it. If we’re lucky, our privacy is still private.” Sandee’s face said he didn’t believe they were that lucky, but he held his tongue.

“Chloe,” said Paul. “This boat. You said it was at the bight marina, right?”

“Yep.”

“Then it’s not the same boat they came in on. At the other marina down by artist’s alley.”

“Well, we didn’t see that boat for sure,” said Chloe. “He and Lily could’ve just been dropped off there by this boat.”

“Or they could have two boats. Or three. We know that Winston’s crew is water-based, at least back on the West coast. They live in the things. At this point I don’t think that he’d give up what he’s used to. There could be a half dozen boats and three dozen members of his Crew in the waters around Key West and we’d have no idea. Between the boats out by the outer islands and the marinas and wherever else, this place provides all the cover a Crew like Win’s could ask for.”

“Which is probably why he suggested Isaiah hold his meeting here in the first place” said Chloe. “He had us here as a front line, but he could have plenty of backup ready if he needed it.”

“So, what?” asked Sandee. “You’re saying he’s got some kind of army out there?”

“They could’ve been coming to the island for weeks now, getting in place,” Paul said. “We know Isaiah had to come in early too in order to set up all his stuff. He’s probably got his own army here as well, ready to throw down if necessary. And we didn’t see any of it. For all our cameras and tracking tags and contacts, we had no idea.”

“We didn’t know what we were looking for,” Chloe pointed out. “Now we do. We still have the home turf advantage. We found the killer, didn’t we?”

“We did,” agreed Paul. “But now that we not only found him but found his boss, what are we going to do about it?”

“We’re not going to tell Isaiah, that’s for sure,” said Chloe.

“I agree with you there,” said Paul.

“Why not?” asked Sandee. “Won’t we need his help to take down Winston? I mean, if he’s really got an army…”

“Who said we’re taking down Winston?” asked Chloe, throwing Sandee a sharp look.

“Didn’t Paul just say he’s the one who killed Raquel? I thought we were looking to bring the killer down. You know, the guy who just pulped your boyfriend’s face and stabbed a woman in the back with a screwdriver.”

Paul could tell that Chloe was about to blow up at Sandee, so he put a hand on her thigh to calm her down and spoke to Sandee in quiet, even terms. “I know that’s how it looks, Sandee,” Paul said. “But right now we just don’t know enough about what’s going on. First of all, we don’t one hundred percent know that Winston told that guy to kill Raquel and Jeanie, although I think he probably did. Even taking that as a given, we don’t know why he gave that order. Maybe Raquel was up to no good. Maybe she was an undercover cop. Maybe the whole thing was an accident. And remember, according to Raff, Jeanie’s ‘partner’ did shoot Winston. There might be bad blood going back a long time with those two. We just don’t know.”

Sandee nodded, but clearly didn’t like it. Paul couldn’t blame him. He’d signed up with the Crew to run 24-hour parties and scam tourists out of their money and clothes. In their little recruitment speeches they’d never mentioned hunting down murderers or getting caught between to “armies” of gangsters fighting over old vendettas.

“There’s a chilling thought,” said Paul, realizing something unpleasant.

“What?” asked Chloe and Sandee at the same time.

“Talking with Jeanie, however briefly, I got the impression that she knew about Winston. Or someone that she referred to as ‘the old man,’ who pretty much has to be Win. And now that we know Winston has been lying to us about more than a few important facts and has placed a bug here in the house, well, as much as it pains me to say it, I think we have to look again at some of the things Raff told Bee.”

Chloe chewed on her lower lip and just nodded for Paul to continue. “I think it strains all credulity to believe that Winston and Raff were both working with the killer. Whatever his reasons, Win was behind the attacks on Raquel and Jeanie. I mean, Raff ‘s not going to set up his own Crewmember for… Ok, scratch that. Raff might set up a Crewmember for a fall, but it’s not really likely in this situation.”

Chloe jumped in at this point, “Which means that Raff really is just here as backup to Eddie and probably didn’t know we’d be here. Then he didn’t kill Raquel just so he could take over her place in Isaiah’s organization. And while we were concentrating on him, the real killers were free to do whatever they wanted behind our backs.”

“Like dispose of the body,” Paul pointed out. “And shift blame to other suspects. And undermine the whole foundation of Isaiah’s plan by sowing dissension and doubt amongst the founders.”

“I thought Winston was in favor of Isaiah’s plan?” asked Chloe. “Why come to the meeting at all if he was against it?”

“Well, his support has been super cautious,” Paul explained. “Like he thinks it’s a great idea but is worried because so much could go wrong. Which makes sense. If he just comes out against it, Isaiah would cut him out of the loop, simple as that. Isaiah wants Win’s contacts - he probably has to have them to make this thing as big as he wants it to be. And Winston knows that, so he’s stringing us all along so that he can destroy the plan from the inside out. Convince Isaiah that it’s impossible and doomed to failure.”

“Why would he be so against it?” asked Sandee. “So against it that he’d kill people?”

“Winston doesn’t like change,” said Chloe, who knew Winston far better than any of them. “I know that sounds crazy. He’s a revolutionary right? But he’s old school in his ways. He thinks we should all be living in squats and on boats and on collectives somewhere in the boonies, pulling shit over on The Man. He’s very much an ideologue, and I can just imagine how much he hates this idea of buying into the corporate culture as a model for revolutionary action. I was surprised that he was willing to even talk about giving over his list of contacts to Isaiah, so I can’t say I’m really shocked at the idea that he might’ve been playing us all from the beginning.”

“What I can’t figure out,” said Paul. “is why he felt he needed to kill Raquel.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me either,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “Winston doesn’t like violence and, as far as I know, he’s never killed anyone before.”

“As far as you know,” said Sandee with scorn in his voice. “His friend certainly didn’t seem to have much of a problem with it. He sure as…”

“Like I said,” Paul interrupted, “We just don’t know enough about what’s going on. We need more information before we do anything else.”

“So what do we do now then?” Sandee asked.

“We pretend we don’t know anything,” said Paul. Chloe nodded her agreement. “They have no way of knowing we saw the killer and Winston together. Well, unless they heard it over the bug. But even then, they don’t know we know they know, if you follow me.”

“I think so,” Sandee said.

“So we play dumb,” Chloe said. “Paul goes to the meeting tomorrow morning with Isaiah and Winston and Eddie, and reports what he can. The killer attacked Jeanie last night, and no one knows why. You gotta assume she’ll tell Raff who will tell Eddie, so there’s no sense in hiding it.”

“Then we just see how everyone reacts,” said Paul. “Maybe Winston will use it as an excuse to shut down the meetings and maybe Isaiah will agree and everyone will just go home. Then we don’t have to worry about it.”

Chloe stood up from her seat, “And while Paul’s doing that, the rest of us try and track down any other members of Winston’s crew. I want to have a few words with Lily. Maybe she can shed some light on this.”

“Sounds fun,” said Sandee, who clearly though it was nothing of the sort.

Chloe held out a hand to Paul, offering him a lift up. “I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep,” she said. “Care to join me?”

Although the shower sounded pretty pleasant, it was the sleep part that really caught Paul’s imagination. “Absolutely.” He looked at his watch. 4 a.m.. He could get six hours of sleep, which seemed an impossible luxury. “We’ll save the world tomorrow.”

“Not the world,” said Chloe. “Just our own asses.”

“Same difference,” said Paul. “Just as long as I get to sleep first.”