Geek Mafia: Mile Zero - Rick Dakan (acx book reading TXT) 📗
- Author: Rick Dakan
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“Ok,” she said, releasing him. “Let’s go.”
BY the time they arrived home, he’d outlined his plan. It was good. Nice and simple and not too insanely dangerous. Just a little dangerous. She parked the Vespa beside the front porch and got off after Paul. He was already up the steps and unlocking the front door when she heard the car slowing to a stop on the road behind her. She turned to see a tan Ford Taurus on the road by the cemetery, its window rolling down.
It was Eddie. They hadn’t covered their tracks as well as they might have, heading pretty much straight home from the restaurant. With all their attention focused on Winston - who already knew exactly where they lived - there seemed little point. She’d forgotten about Eddie, and now he or his Crew had followed them home.
He was looking right past her as he called out the window. “Hey, Paul!” he shouted. Paul turned from the door and looked back at Eddie. To his credit, his face didn’t show any surprise that he might have felt.
“Hey, Eddie,” Paul shouted back. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted you to know that you’re not the only one who…” his voice trailed off and he made no effort to hide his surprise as he recognized Chloe. Shit, she thought. “You!” he shouted, pointing at her.
“Moi?” said Chloe, looking at him like he was a complete stranger.
“From that fucked up party!” he shouted. The car door opened and he stepped out, angry. She could see that Marco was in the passenger seat and that he didn’t look happy. “You’re with him?”
Paul was at her side now, hands balled into fists. She slipped her own hand behind her back to where her spare stun gun (not the one that’d gotten wet) was tucked into the small of her back. “Get on out of here, Eddie,” Paul said.
“You were with him from the beginning?” Eddie said, now just a couple yards away, his finger pointing at her. “You two have been fucking with me from moment one!”
“Get out of here, Eddie!” Paul shouted. “I’m warning you…”
“Fuck you and your warnings,” said Eddie. “You and your little bitch here can fucking blow me. You set me up at that bar, coming onto me like a whore when you knew full well we were doing business together. And then snooping around my hotel, passing out wanted pictures of my friends and generally sticking your cock in my goddamned business. What right do you think you have to fuck with me like that?”
Chloe wanted to punch him then and there, but for all she knew, Marco had a gun in that car with him.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Paul, his voice mocking and dismissive. “We’ve been fucking with you since the beginning. And why not? It’s our town. You’re on our island, and if we want to check you out or spy on you or just fuck with you, well then, that’s our goddamned business isn’t it?”
“Is that what you think?” Eddie said, taking another step forward. Behind him Marco was getting out of the car and rushing forward, although Chloe couldn’t tell if he was coming to back his friend up or calm him down. At the same moment she heard the front door of the house open up behind her. Both Eddie and Marco stopped in their tracks at whatever they were seeing.
Chloe looked back over her shoulder to see Bee and Sandee standing on the front porch with really big fucking guns in their hands. Bee held what looked like a freaking bazooka that was as long as she was tall. She had on some sort of high-tech looking helmet that covered her left eye with some sort of digital heads up display. Beside her stood Sandee in boy form, an AK-47 slung at his hip, legs wide apart. He wore a skintight camo T-shirt and thong underwear.
Chloe had to stop herself from laughing as Sandee shouted, “Get off my property!” in a thick redneck accent.
Eddie started to say something, but Marco grabbed his arm and pulled him back toward the car. Eddie cursed under his breath as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. Just before Marco got back into the car, his eyes met Paul’s and he gave the slightest nod. Respect? Fear? Some sign that he approved? Chloe couldn’t tell.
After they’d driven out of sight, Sandee was the first one to start laughing, although Bee’s giggles came right behind.
“Jesus,” said Chloe. “You two look ridiculous.”
“It worked didn’t it?” Bee said.
“Good thing Eddie’s scared of water balloons,” Paul said, taking the “bazooka” from Bee and admiring it.
“What’s the point of having fake guns if you can’t fake people out once in a while?” Bee asked.
“And you!” said Chloe to Sandee. “You’re the sexiest damn guerilla I’ve ever seen.”
“You better believe it,” Sandee said, tossing Chloe the plastic gun. “Now come inside and tell us what that was all about.”
“I don’t exactly know what it was all about for sure,” said Paul as he led them inside. “But we don’t have time to worry about that just this moment. We’ve got a plan to execute.”
“A new plan?” asked Bee excited, still riding the adrenaline high from her showdown with Eddie. “Is it brilliant? Those are my favorite kind.”
“It’s not brilliant,” said Paul. “It’s abso-fucking-lutely brilliant.”
Chloe smiled as the Crew piled back into the house. This was it. This was how life was supposed to be.
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.
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