Geek Mafia: Mile Zero

by Dakan

  "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.

  Chapter 24

  161

  "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 T-shirts. 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."

  Chapter 24

  162

  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 the cameras. They're not the important ones anyway. There's still one more in there."

  Chloe knew Paul meant the killer. "He might have slipped out the back with Raff," she suggested. "Could be hiding in the back yard or something."

  "We'll see," said Paul.

  They kept watching as, inevitably, the police showed up. By this point the smoke bombs had fizzled out, and while the air was a bit hazy around the house, it was clear that the place wasn't actually on fire. The cops waded into the crowd, ordering them to disperse and made their way inside. They
were inside long enough to search through the whole place. The cops spent another half hour there, mostly inside. It must have been a confusing scene, like the Marie Celeste, a house whose tenants had disappeared. The crowd gave up after only about ten minutes and made their way back toward Duval Street, where they knew for sure they could find more drinks. Eventually even the cops gave up, probably because they had more important things to do. They closed up the house, leaving a ticket or citation of some sort stuck to the front door.

  Once they'd gone, Sandee finally made his way down from the roof and back to the car. He'd stripped off his Captain Morgana costume and wore just spandex biker shorts and a tank top. He slipped into the back of the car, saying, "Right on! How cool was that, huh?"

  "Pretty fucking cool," said Paul, twisting around in his seat.

  "You might've mentioned the smoke bomb thing," Chloe chided.

  "That was just a bit of last minute improvisation," Sandee said with a smile. "One of the pirates had them with him for some reason. Some frat boy. I pinched his butt a couple times and he handed them right over."

  "Did you see the killer come out the back?" asked Paul. "Did you get a..."

  "No one but Raff came out the back," said Sandee. "I had a perfect perch up there on the roof. There were only the three of them in there. The cops searched the whole place. No killer on the premises."

  "Fuck," said Chloe. "They must've moved him."

  "They probably moved him as soon as Raff spotted us," said Paul. "Or as soon as we got him booted out of Eddie's hotel. We were stupid to think they'd keep him here."

  "I know," said Chloe, frustrated. "But where the hell else are they going to stash him? We should have picked him up on one of the cameras by now if they were moving him around town."

  Chapter 24

  163

  "Maybe, maybe not," said Paul. "But now that we have two more faces to search with, Bee should be able to track their movements as well. If we find any shot of either Raff or these two others with the killer at any point in the last few days, we'll have the proof we need to get Isaiah off his ass and involved."

  "Ok," said Chloe, still not entirely pleased with how things had gone. She'd wanted firm proof of Raff 's involvement with the killer. "Well, let's get rolling." She started the car. "Head back to the ranch and see if Bee needs any help."

  "And we should call Winston," Paul said. "Show him the pic of the person we think is Jeanie. If he really does know her..."

  "He doesn't," said Chloe. "That's just Raff fucking with us."

  "Then Winston denying it will help calm Bee's nerves," said Paul.

  "You're right. Besides, at this point, we could use the backup. And maybe the old man will actually have some idea of what we should do next."

  Chapter 25

  164

  Chapter 25

  IT was getting close to midnight, and down on Duval Street, Key West was jumping. Paul watched the night life unfold on Bee's wall of computer monitors and for a moment got lost in the flow of tourists across the screens, wishing he could join them and just forget about murders and conspiracies and everything else.

  "I think this is her, right?" asked Bee, clicking her control screen and putting up a single image on the main flat panel display that she usually used for the city map. It showed the older woman, "Jeanie," walking down Catherine Street, looking as calm and nonchalant as one could imagine. The time code at the bottom of the screen said the image was only ten minutes old.

  "That's her," agreed Paul.

  "Ok," Bee said. "I'll track her by hand now."

  The facial recognition software had found the woman within the records of all the footage the cameras had taken in over the last hour, but the search itself had taken over twenty minutes to process. If they had more advanced software, they could probably figure out a way to track her automatically, but they didn't. All they could do is run the search again, which would take another twenty minutes. Instead, Bee would have to go through the various camera feeds herself, guessing which ones might have picked up Jeanie on her route through the city. Just another reason they needed a hacker in the Crew. At least Chloe was downstairs and couldn't point it out to him for the hundredth time.

  "Can you print me out that screen grab?" asked Paul.

  "It'd be faster to e-mail it to your PDA or laptop," Bee replied. She hated paper.

  "That's fine," said Paul. "Go ahead and send it to Chloe's machine too."

  Bee swiveled in her chair to face a different keyboard and mouse, clicked and tapped for a few seconds and then swung back around to her camera controls. "Done," she said.

  "Thanks, Bee," said Paul. He started to head downstairs but stopped and turned back to her. She seemed intense, which was normal for Bee, but also terse, which really wasn't. "You doing ok?" he asked.

  "Mmm hmm," she said, nodding without looking away from the screens in front of her.

  "Chloe said that things with Raff got pretty intense."

  "He's a liar," Bee said. "I know that. That's why we're going to nail him for helping to kill that woman." Paul wasn't convinced that she believed her own words, but he couldn't argue with her sentiment.

  "Damn straight," said Paul. "We'll get em all." Bee didn't respond, and Paul gave up trying to cheer her up and headed downstairs.

  There, to his surprise, he found Chloe and Winston, sitting on the couch, laughing. Paul found it hard to imagine what could be so funny, but was glad at least someone could keep a light heart at a time like this.

  "Hey, kids," said Paul, who was actually younger than either of them - Chloe by one year and Winston by at least twenty-five. "Got something for you." They both looked up at him, still smiling at whatever had set them chuckling in the first place.

  Chapter 25

  165

  "Hello again, Paul," Winston said, standing up and shaking his hand. "I hear you've had a busy day."

  "And night," Paul replied. "I'll bet yours hasn't been any less eventful."

  "No, no," Winston agreed. "It is a time for courage and resolve to be sure."

  Paul turned to Chloe, gesturing to her laptop, which was on the coffee table. "Bee just sent you something. We found Jeanie."

  "Oh, great," said Chloe, leaning forward and tapping the shift key to wake the computer from its sleep mode.

  "Ok, here it is." She clicked a few times then picked up the laptop and turned it around, showing the display to Paul and Winston. It had a full screen video-cap of the image of Jeanie Paul had just seen up in Bee's room.

  "Win, do you recognize this lady?"

  Winston took a pair of reading glasses out of his front shirt pocket, put them on and then peered close at the image. "No, I don't recognize her. You say her name's Jeanie?" he said.

  "Raff 's the one who said her name was Jeanie," Chloe said. "I think he was spinning bullshit for Bee and me, knowing I was listening in. But whoever she is, she's working with Raff."

  "Raff also said she was partnered with a man named Owen," said Paul, who'd listened to the recording of the conversation. "He claimed that you and Owen were old friends."

  "Do we have a picture of him too?" asked Winston. "The name doesn't ring any particular bells."

  "We don't anymore," said Chloe. "Raff says Owen is the man who shot you back in San Jose."

  "Really?" said Winston, "That's rather intriguing. I never did see that man's face. And you think he's here now?"

  Paul and Chloe looked at each other. They'd never told anyone about Bee shooting the man in the motel room in San Jose. They'd all agreed that the fewer people who knew they'd killed a man, the better. The only reason Sandee knew was because Bee had told him herself - he was very easy to talk to. But since Paul had told Isaiah, it only made sense to tell Winston too. Paul gave the slightest shrug, which Chloe responded to with something that was almost a nod. Through their own unspoken sign language, they'd just agree to let Winston in on the big secret.

  "No," said Chloe. "He's dead."

  "
Recently departed?" asked Winston.

  "No, he died about a year ago," Chloe responded.

  Winston just nodded. He could probably put together the rest of the story for himself without having to ask any awkward questions. "Well then, if what Raff has said is true and Jeanie really was this Owen person's partner, then she's probably quite upset with you. But Raff has already lied about Owen and I knowing each other, so of course there's no reason to believe that he's telling the truth about her either."

  "Agreed," said Chloe.

  "Maybe," countered Paul. "There was another, younger woman with Jeanie tonight. Someone I recognized from San Jose as being with Raff."

  Chapter 25

  166

  "Someone you think you might have recognized," Chloe pointed out.

  "Ok, fine," Paul said, annoyed but also knowing that she was right. "I'm not by any means one hundred percent sure. My point is that we know Raff 's lying, but we also know he's probably telling some truth with his lies. We can't make any assumptions about what's true and what's not."

  "Of course," said Winston. "The question is what to do now?"

  "Bee's trying to track her back through our records," said Paul. "Then she's going to search for any time where she and our killer, or Raff and our killer might have met. If we find that, we can bring it to Isaiah and then get his help."

  "That does seem the best course," Winston said. "Although you must be careful dealing with Isaiah."

  "We're trying to be careful dealing with everyone," Paul said.

  "Naturally, but with Isaiah you must take special care. He certainly has more than enough resources to resolve this situation one way or another, once he decides how to act. More than enough resources. You just need to be very certain he applies his power on your behalf."

  Paul already had his own fears about dealing with Isaiah. Now, hearing Winston talk about him in hushed, worrisome tones, his blood ran cold.

  "I don't see that we have much of a choice," said Chloe. "We don't have the strength to take on Raff and company straight on. Especially not if he's got Eddie supporting him. But everyone seems to respect and fear Isaiah, so we have to get him on our side."