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

Eddie’s voice was drowned out by a wave of sound played over the speakers in the Blackbeard room that normally broadcast the sounds of a pirate battle. Eddie found himself drowned out by a recording of his own voice, played back at rock concert levels.

“The guy in charge is a real dick!” Eddie’s recorded voice boomed through the room. He’d been talking to Sandee at the party about Isaiah when he said it. Bee and Paul had pulled out a bunch of choice sound bites for this little light show.

“He sure is,” Paul said into the microphone. “You sure are.”

Eddie pointed at the screen and shouted back, “What the fuck is this horse shit?”

“I’m just letting you know what everyone else around you knows, Eddie. You are a real dick.” Paul hit another sound bite from the list.

“I’m so fucking smart you see…” Recorded Eddie said this time.

“Well,” said Paul. “Not so fucking smart. Not smart enough to keep your mouth shut when you should.” He clicked a third clip.

“Not like these other fucks like that black fuck and that old guy and the other fuck. All their crazy pie-in-the-sky bullshit,” The drunken voice of Recorded Eddie slurred through the speakers.

“I guess I’m the other fuck,” Paul said. “Which would make Isaiah the ‘Black Fuck’ who’s ‘a dick,’ right?”

Paul watched on the screen as Eddie spun around in fury, looking for someone to hit. “This is bullshit!” he shouted. “You can’t just take shit out of…”

But Paul wasn’t about to let Eddie argue his case. This wasn’t a trial, it was a sentencing. He clicked again and started another clip. “Always trouble. Always telling people what to do and shit,” Eddie’s voice said. Then Paul replayed the first clip, “The guy in charge is a real dick!”

“Sounds like you don’t get along with your new partners very well at all,” said Paul. “I’ll tell you, when we played this for Isaiah, he wasn’t too pleased.”

“Then fuck Isaiah!” Eddie shouted. “Fuck him for being that stupid. Fuck his liberal nigger ass! This is all bullshit! You obviously just cut some shitty out-of-context tape together. If you really ever did play this for him, he’d see right through it! He’s not that stupid.”

Paul glanced over at Bee, who was working off her own laptop. She nodded and he nodded back. Bee unplugged a FireWire connection from his machine and plugged into hers and then hit her play button.

Eddie’s voice rang out through the speaker system once again, replaying part of what he’d just said, “Fuck Isaiah! Fuck him for being that stupid. Fuck his liberal nigger ass!”

“He’s just gonna love hearing that,” Paul said into the microphone.

“Oh come on!” said Eddie. “This is such bullshit.” He started to walk back toward the way he’d come, but Paul wasn’t done yet.

“Wait,” said Paul, as Bee plugged his laptop back into the control system. “There’s more. Watch.” Eddie stopped and looked at the projection of himself on the wall. As soon as he did, Paul clicked to change the image. It was a shot of the interior of the empty store they’d just been in a few minutes earlier. Amelia and Jeanie stood there looking up at the camera (which was hidden in a smoke detector). Standing next to them was Marco. All three waved. In fact, neither Amelia nor Jeanie had known anything about the camera or Paul and Chloe’s set up in the Pirate Museum. Only Marco had any idea, but Eddie couldn’t possibly know that.

Paul thought he heard Eddie express some sort of horror or anger under his breath, but the microphones weren’t close enough for him to hear the actual words. Paul could imagine his surprise though. “We played our little tapes for Isaiah and your buddy Marco too. Everyone agreed that you’re a dick.” In truth Isaiah hadn’t seen anything at all, nor had Amelia. But her presence at the store actually worked in Paul’s favor. “So we’re cutting you out.”

Paul clicked and the image changed again. It was a shot of the interior of the hotel room where Eddie was staying. It showed Sandee, dressed much like he’d been the night he met Eddie at the party, sitting seductively on Eddie’s bed with a laptop Eddie would surely recognize as his own. “Your friends sold you out, Eddie,” Paul said. “Or rather, cut you loose.” This was actually a simple piece of Photoshop work - Sandee had never been in Eddie’s room.

Another image came on the screen. It was the Big Guy, whose name they now knew was actually Wally, even though he’d introduced himself to Chloe in the bar as Quentin. His friends called him The Whale. The picture, taken less than an hour earlier according to the time stamp, showed Wally and Marco talking. Wally’s face was all red and swollen from the tear gas and pepper-spray. It then morphed into a second picture of the two of them flipping the camera off.

“Even The Whale isn’t behind you anymore,” said Paul over the loudspeaker. “He too thinks you’re a dick. We talked for a while. He’s actually pretty cool.” They hadn’t talked at all, but Eddie didn’t know that. In fact, it was Marco who’d sent him the pics, taken while he was giving The Whale orders that would keep him busy tonight.

Eddie blew up into a rage, grabbing one of the baseball bats from his mook’s hands. He swung it wildly, breaking off a fake lantern from the side of the fake ship. “Come out here you fuck! Come out here and fight like a man! This is such BULLSHIT!” He swung again, slamming the bat down into the ship’s railing, but not causing any real damage. Paul was very glad that Eddie had dropped his gun on their living room floor when the gas grenade went off.

“No,” said Paul into the microphone. “It’s not bullshit. It’s us taking you down. It’s me cutting you out. It’s not what I wanted to have happen, but it is what you forced to happen. It’s plan B.”

He clicked another audio clip and Eddie’s recorded voice filled the room one more. “Don’t you know anything? You’ve gotta have a plan B in this business.”

Eddie took a wild swing at the air, barely missing one of his own guys then. He’d obviously totally lost it at this point. He was screaming in utter, wordless rage. The two flunkies tried to restrain him, shouting for him to calm down, but he shrugged them off. With someone physical to focus his anger on he swung again, this time connecting with his Crewmate’s shoulder and knocking him to the ground. The other one backed away, hands in the air.

“Come on, Eddie,” he said. “Calm…”

“FUCK ALL OF YOU!” Eddie shouted, and hurled his bat at the other man. He dodged the flying hunk of wood and scampered off back toward the exit. Eddie turned back toward the screen and shouted again, “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCKS! I’ll fucking kill all of you!”

That’s when Chloe came in and blasted him with the shotgun.