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

PAUL seethed on the inside, but he did his best to hide it from Chloe as they drove on her scooter over to the house they’d gotten for Winston. He was still angry from his lunch with Chloe, of course. Angry that he had to commit himself to this insane plan of confronting Winston and blowing the whole thing open just to get on Isaiah’s good side. He’d been relieved when he realized that the end was in sight. Yes, it had been a kind of defeated, broken, and abused sense of relief, but it had been relief all the same. Winston had used them and killed someone and that hurt like swallowing barbed wire, but at least it was over. They could get back to life as normal.

But then Chloe had made it clear that life as normal was not an option for her and that therefore it was not an option for him either. He’d known she wasn’t happy. It was impossible not to know that. He should be happy actually - for months he’d been trying to find some way to improve her mood and had failed at every turn. No party was quite wild enough, no scam entirely satisfying. Now at least he knew what he had to do, even if it was going to be a royal pain in the fucking ass. He’d do what had to be done to keep them together, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

They arrived at ten minutes after 3:00 p.m. Winston greeted them at the door with a smile, ushered them into the living room and offered them drinks from the pitcher of margaritas that he had ready and waiting. Paul and Chloe both accepted and they listened for a while as Winston chattered about what a wonderful, fun place Key West was and how much he liked the people here. There was not a hint of urgency in his voice, not even when the conversation finally did roll back around to more serious matters.

“So,” he said, “Any luck on the search for the killer?”

“No,” Chloe replied, “There’s no sign of him anywhere. Not after last night.”

“What happened last night?” Winston asked.

“Paul and Sandee had a little run-in with him over by the library,” Chloe explained. “I thought he told you this morning.”

“I forgot,” Paul said. “With everything that happened at the meeting, I just somehow assumed you already knew.”

“That’s all right, Paul,” said Winston. “It’s a trying time for us all. Can you tell me what happened?”

“After you left last night, we found the woman Jeanie again. The one Raff says you know from way back.”

“But of course I don’t know her,” Winston reminded him.

“Of course,” said Paul. “Anyway, we found her on the cameras again and tracked her to this little garden by the library. Sandee and I went to catch up with her, and while we were watching her, the killer showed up.” Paul paused to see if Winston was going to react, but the old man just sat there, waiting for him to continue. “Well of course we thought we had our proof right then and there, but no, as it turned out they weren’t in it together.” He paused again, hoping Winston would jump in and say something stupid, but he didn’t. “Turned out, we were wrong. Instead the guy tried to kill her. Stabbed her with a screwdriver. Sandee and I stepped in and sort of saved the day. But the bad guy got away.”

“Which is how you got the nasty cut on your head?” Winston asked.

“Yeah.”

“Looks like it must have hurt quite a bit.”

“Oh yeah,” Paul said, gently touching the tender spot. Winston sat there, waiting for Paul to continue. “And that’s pretty much it. He got away and we’ve been looking for him, but haven’t had any luck.”

“He’s not showed up on any of your cameras?” asked Winston. “And what about your contact, Chloe? What did she have to say?”

“Oh, she led me right to the guy. He was out on an island chilling with some homeless people. But he gave me the slip and I wasn’t able to ever catch up with him after that.”

Winston sat and nodded, sipping his drink. “So what do we do now?” he asked them. “Do you have a plan?”

“We’re still trying to make some sense of the situation,” Paul answered. “In light of all we now know, things are kind of complicated.”

“How so?”

“For starters, there’s the fact that the killer attacked Jeanie. I take that as pretty strong evidence that they’re not working together and that Raff and his Crew aren’t behind Raquel’s murder.”

“Perhaps they had some sort of falling out,” Winston suggested. “Certainly you two know better than most what kind of betrayal Raff is capable of.”

“Possible, I guess,” said Paul, “But it seems unlikely.”

“Unlikely to be sure, but not out of the question. And that is the problem that faces us here, is it not? We just don’t have enough information about what is really going on. In particular, we don’t know anything about the various players and their motivations for doing what they do. Raff may have had a very good reason for betraying his partner. Or maybe she had a very good reason for betraying him. It’s impossible for us to say.

“With others - that is to say, with average people - it’s often a straightforward piece of analysis to determine their motives because their lives are so simple. They work for some monstrous, faceless corporation. They do their time in office or retail purgatory each day and collect their check at the end of the week and go home and watch TV. They have their families and their friends and their hobbies and their problems, all of which box their lives in. It’s easy to figure out why they do the things they do.

“But for us - those of us who truly live free in the world - it becomes infinitely more complicated. We need money and food, certainly.