by Rick Dakan
"Aren't all of you in it for the money? That's what Chloe said."
"Sure, sure," he said, sipping his coffee. "We all want to make money from these jobs we pull, but for most of them that's only because without the money we couldn't afford all the stuff we need to pull more jobs. They do it so they can keep doing it, because it's fun. But me, I started scamming folks because it was the only way I had to make a buck when I didn't have two nickels to rub together."
"I think I got this lecture from Chloe already."
"Just hear me out for a second, ok? I got into it for the money but, you know, to be honest the money isn't all CHAPTER 19
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that great. Take this last job you helped us pull. I think I can work our guy for another 50k, maybe more. Let's say we bring in $160,000 total. We spent about seven grand on equipment and other expenses - and that's with having a certified mechanical genius like Bee recycle as much as possible. So that's 153k. Now, all told, the entire crew played a role in this scam. There was a lot of surveillance work, which takes a lot of man-hours.
You following me so far?"
"Sure," he said. The intricacies of the financing was a topic Chloe had avoided with him, so he was surprised that Raff was talking so openly about it.
"And we always divide up every con equally between everyone in the crew. And since I brought you in at the end you get a share, too."
"I don't need the money, don't worry about that."
"That's not the way it works. Everyone gets an equal share. Always. So, in this case each person's share works out to about eight thousand, five hundred bucks."
"That's not bad."
"No, it's not bad at all, but measured against the higher costs of living under the radar and the risk of getting caught and going to jail, it's not a whole lot either."
"Why not go for more then? Why stop at $160,000?"
"Because $160,000 is a lot of money. But not so much that our banker will balk at paying it. But that's not the point. Where I come from, $8500 tax free is a lot of money too. Certainly more than enough to live for three or four months."
"I guess," said Paul. "But you guys - like Bee or you hard core hacker guys - they could be making ten times that in the private sector."
"Hell, I could sell used cars and make more money. This is my point entirely. It's the same reason you want to join our band of merry mischief makers."
Paul understood. "It's not the money. It's the life."
"Exactly," said Raff. "It's The Life. Even I stay in it for the life. All I ever wanted was an easy buck and now it's the Crew itself that keeps me coming back for more."
"I think I know what you mean. It's hard to find a...I don't know the word. Fellowship? It's hard to find this kind of camaraderie outside of a family."
"It's impossible to find. I suppose in the Army maybe, but they don't have the kind of fun we have and nowhere near the kind of freedom. Nowhere near." Raff paused as the waiter delivered their food. "The freedom is really the key. We can do whatever we want and there's no one - no one, looking over our shoulders."
"Except the police of course."
"Yeah, yeah, and the IRS if you want to look at it that way. The FBI too, probably. But I don't think about that."
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"How do you not think about something like that?"
"It's easier than you think. I haven't seen hide nor hair of a law enforcement official since I was a punk ass skateboarder in my teens."
"From how serious Chloe handles security, it sounds like you all think about it a lot."
"Yeah, but for us it's this distant thing, like getting old or getting a heart disease or some shit like that. Sure, we take a ton of precautions just like you'd exercise and eat right to avoid getting fat and sick. We do it because doing it lets us not worry about the future. Because we're so safe, we're effectively invisible."
"How can you be invisible and do the things you do? That guy who tackled me saw me pretty clearly."
"But did he go and call the cops afterwards? I can tell you he didn't because we still had taps on his phone and had someone following him. When we do our job right - when we take all the right precautions, the authorities never know that anything happened. We never pop up on their radar."
"And I assume the same thing is true for taxes and that kind of shit," said Paul. "You don't have jobs on the books. You don't own property under your real names. The IRS can't audit you if they don't know about you."
"Exactly," said Raff as he shoveled food into his mouth. "Now, there's two ways to live off the grid - you can move to bumfuck Montana, build a little shack in the woods and grow or kill all your own food. Or, you can get a group together and live a civilized life with all the trimmings like we have. Personally I'd rather have fast food, comic books and video games and forgo the homegrown potatoes."
"Plus the company's good," said Paul. "The people, I mean."
"Yep," said Raff with his mouth full. "You can't buy that."
"Don't I know it," agreed Paul.
"Which is why you want to be a part of the Crew, but Chloe's never going to let you join. Not really. She thinks it would be a mistake for you. And if it were just about money she'd be right. You've got all you need now, right?"
"Not everything, no."
"No," said Raff. "Not everything."
"Like you said, there's some things money can't buy."
They ate in silence for a while. Paul knew that Raff had put his finger exactly on the how he was feeling.
There'd never been a moment when he'd felt entirely welcome at the very company he'd helped start. His lack of previous game experience had always argued against him with some of his partners and he'd never really gelled with them as a team. As they hired more and more employees it had only gotten harder to maintain that group esprit de corps. By the time everything started to fall apart, he was scarcely on speaking terms with some of his coworkers. And prior to his "dream job" he'd worked most of his professional life in private - an artist at his drawing board working from scripts or writing his own material. What he'd felt while working with Chloe and the Crew had no comparison in his life. Moreover, he'd never felt as strongly about anyone as a he felt about Chloe.
"It's weird, you know?" said Paul after he'd finished his breakfast platter. "Chloe says she wants me around.
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Says she cares about me. But she doesn't want me in the group. She doesn't realize how hard that is. I mean, while you guys were busy on this last thing I felt like a ghost walking around the house."
"I know exactly what you mean. I saw what you were going through, but there wasn't much I could do." Raff paused and looked down at his plate. He looked as if there was more he wanted to say. Paul took a guess at what it was.
"That's why you called me in isn't it?" he said. "You didn't need me to make the pickup - but you wanted to include me in the job."
Raff didn't say anything for a long time. Paul pressed him. "Why do me a favor like that? Doesn't that go against the code of the Crew or whatever? Why cross Chloe like that?"
"Listen, Paul, I think you'd be good at this. You've got a great imagination. A great imagination. And that's a vital commodity in this business. The comic book thing you thought up was brilliant, mostly because it was so off the wall. Who would imagine counterfeiting comic books - especially without actually bothering to make real counterfeits! We've got great, great technical skills in the group. And I've only met one person in the world better than me at the fast-talking and that's Chloe. But we're getting stale; all our cons are kind of the same. Steal something from a computer. Blackmail someone into doing something for us. Lather, rinse, repeat. I think we need you for the very thing I've been talking about - to make this more fun."
"But Chloe doesn't agree."
"Chloe's not the captain of our pirate band, Paul. She's just the best at making us get our shit together. We don't have a leader. No gods, no masters, as the saying goe
s. If the rest of us want you in the crew, she'll let you in. The trick is convincing them when Chloe so obviously doesn't want it. She might not be their master but we all respect the hell out of her opinion."
"So what're my options then? Keeping in mind that I don't want to piss Chloe off or undermine her position or anything like that. I don't want to push her away."
"It's tricky. You have to prove to the rest that you're committed. That you really want to give up everything and join this group. Not only join this group, but join this life."
"What's the distinction?"
"Well, like we talked about earlier, in order to make this lifestyle work you have to pass without leaving any traces behind. No taxes, no credit cards or bank accounts in your own name. Nothing like that. You'll never lack for anything you need and more often than not you'll get everything you want, because we share what we take and take whatever we need. You need to prove that you're that generous."
"Huh," said Paul, "That's a tough one."
He had just realized where Raff was going with all this. The money. Raff wanted Paul to share the money they'd extorted from his old partners. If he offered everyone a split of that big payoff, then he would be welcomed into the fold. Or would he? Would just paying the others off really buy him any respect? Would it buy Chloe's? He didn't think so. Giving up his money didn't sit well with Paul, but he decided to let Raff believe he was really considering it.
"I hear what you're saying," Paul continued. "It's something to ponder."
"Well, take your time and think about it some," said Raff. "But I wouldn't push Chloe anymore until you have CHAPTER 19
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an idea of how you want to proceed. Take it from someone who's known her a long time. She doesn't like the hard sell and she's stubborn as hell. She won't change her mind once it's made up unless there's some new dynamic that wasn't there before."
"Thanks, Raff. I really will think about it. I appreciate you laying everything out for me like this; it really helps me understand how everything works with you guys."
"No problem, man, glad to help. If you're finished, we can get out of here. Maybe if you're lucky Chloe will have calmed down by the time we get home and you two can kiss and make up."
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CHAPTER 20
Paul didn't go back into the house when he and Raff returned from breakfast. Instead he went and found his own car (which one of the Crew had brought back from the park for him). It was parked three streets over from the house, so Paul just had Raff drop him off there, explaining that he needed to run a few errands and think some things through. He said that he'd be back around dinnertime and that he'd talk to him then. Raff seemed very understanding and, like any member of the Crew, knew better than to pry too deeply into a friend's private affairs.
He got on the highway and then made his way to 17 South, headed back towards Santa Cruz. He'd left his things in the motel room there and hadn't actually bothered to check out yet, so he figured he'd better do that before they charged him for another night's stay. He didn't want to run up unnecessary charges on the credit card Chloe had given him. It also gave him some time to think about what the fuck he was going to do next.
On the one hand he wanted to stay with the group and with Chloe. But he knew that unless they welcomed him into their inner circle fully, staying with them wasn't a tenable option. Either he'd get too frustrated with his position or they'd become so annoyed with him that he wouldn't be welcome anymore. He could get his own place of course and try to just date Chloe like a normal person, but that didn't sound very plausible either.
Chloe didn't lead the kind of lifestyle that lent itself to casual dating.
The only option left was to try and find a way to force/convince Chloe into letting him into the crew without alienating her in the process. He could take Raff's thinly veiled suggestion and try to buy his way in. But that money was his security blanket, and right now it was about all he had going for him. He had no intention of splitting it up with fifteen other people, no matter how much he envied their renegade lifestyle. Besides, he doubted Chloe would respect him if he did pay the others off. Nope. Buying his way in was out of the question.
He much preferred the other option: coming up with a scam of his own that would be so brilliant that the rest of the Crew couldn't resist it. Then, as Raff had explained, Chloe would have to come along. His problem was that he hadn't really liked much of what he'd heard about the last job they'd pulled. Sure, this programmer guy, Gondry, sounded like a real asshole and maybe even deserved to have his stuff stolen. But what really disturbed him was the way they'd treated the red tie guy, the CFO. Paul understood why they chose him as their entry into the company, but the business with pretending to kidnap his daughter left a really bad taste in his mouth. The poor old guy hadn't done anything wrong and they'd put him through a week of hell for it.
He blamed Raff for this streak of cruelty in the job. Although as a leader Chloe had claimed joint responsibility for everything that went down, he got the feeling that she never would have gone along with it if she'd been involved in the planning from day one. In a way, her cooperation in the con bolstered Paul's faith in his own strategy for getting into the Crew. If she had bowed to the group will on something as potentially cruel as blackmailing the CFO, then she'd surely go along with his brilliant plan. As soon as he figured out what that plan was.
Paul thought back to Chloe's deep admiration for Winston and his crew. She'd really connected with the way the aged hippie and his cohorts pulled off jobs that had some sort of larger political meaning. He also recalled that she'd wished that her crew had more of a social conscience with its cons. Maybe if he could think of something along those lines, he'd have a better chance of coming up with something he could live with but that will still impress everyone. He'd certainly have a better chance of sleeping at night if he could tell himself he was stealing for the greater good. Like Robin Hood or something. If he could come up with a target worth taking down, and maybe even divert some of the money to a worthy cause, then he would have the perfect plan. And he was pretty sure Chloe would think it was the perfect plan too.
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The motel management had never noticed Paul's absence and he found all his stuff where he'd left it in his room. Apparently, maid service was running behind today, as it was already well after noon. He'd missed checkout by an hour and a half, but they were cool about it and didn't charge him for the extra day. This was Santa Cruz after all - hippie central - and the locally owned businesses tended to be pretty easy going about stuff like that. After checking out he drove downtown to Pacific Avenue to look in the shops and bookstores and hopefully find some inspiration for this grand scheme he kept telling himself he had hidden away in his brain somewhere. Not even the comic shop had anything for him (which didn't stop him from loading up with the past week's new comics). Becoming a criminal mastermind wasn't turning out to be as easy as he'd thought it would be.
He found a seat in a coffee shop called Latitude 23.5 and plopped his sketchbook down on the table. Maybe his pen would provide some inspiration, since his brain seemed to be failing him just now. He started sketching the panoply of interesting people that walked by on the sidewalk. Everyone from homeless hippies to dotcom millionaires wandered up and down Pacific Ave. Across the street a man in a clown suit set up shop with a cart full of balloons. Paul sketched him as he started making inflated animals for passing children.
The kids seemed happy with the clown's creations, and the parents dutifully paid the man for his work. In the pages of his sketchbook however, the clown was a terrifying creature, his teeth ragged and broken, with tusks like a wild boar. His wild wig had insects crawling in and out of it, and his ragged costume had ominous stains on it. He had a barrel of toxic waste at his side, which he used to fill the balloons before twisting them into demonic forms and hurling them at terrified children. After an hour or so, Paul looked ba
ck at his dozen or so toxic clown sketches and shut the sketchbook in anger. They were good, very good even. But they weren't a plan and they wouldn't get him in the crew. He decided to head back to Chloe's.
Back on Highway 17, Paul tried putting his iPod on shuffle. Maybe when he heard the right piece of music, inspiration would finally strike. Highway17 is a four lane highway that winds up and over the Santa Cruz Mountains and back down into Silicon Valley. It can be treacherous in fog or rain, but on a sunny day like today, between rush hours, it was kind of fun to drive. Hints of vertigo overtook him on some of the tighter turns; especially when the road dropped off precipitously to his right. A flat-land Florida boy by birth, he still wasn't quite used to all this three-dimensional road stuff.
Near the halfway point, at the highway's summit, there's a brief run of nearly flat road before it starts its descent towards Los Gatos and points north. A large, late-model Ford Taurus that Paul had been oblivious to chose that moment to stop following Paul and instead run him off the road.
As always on this road, Paul was in the right-hand lane. The sedan sped up suddenly and then whipped around Paul's left before pulling back into the right hand lane and slamming on the breaks. Paul had just enough time to notice the faded pro-Rush Limbaugh sticker (RUSH is RIGHT) on the car's bumper before he slammed on his own breaks and involuntarily spun his wheel to the right then back to the left. Both cars skidded and screeched to a halt; Paul's own vehicle showering sparks as it ground against the guardrail.
When Paul finally stopped screaming he realized that he wasn't careening off the cliff side and therefore was going to be ok. He rethought that assessment a moment later when he saw the driver of the offending Taurus fling open his car door and come running back towards him. It was the older, gaunt man who'd tackled him yesterday.
"Oh shit!" he said. The car had stalled out and Paul quickly restarted it. But before he could throw it in reverse the man was at the car door that, he only now realized, was not locked. With his left arm the attacker swung the door open. With his right he grabbed Paul by the hair and yanked him out of the car.
