Geek Mafia: Mile Zero

by Dakan

"Because things can't keep going like this. It just won't work."

  "Ok."

  Their eyes met across the room and he saw sadness there. "I'm going to go check on Bee," she said, and left. P

  AUL snapped awake at the sound of Bee's voice from the doorway.

  "Paul?" she was saying. "Paul, are you awake?" He sat up in bed and looked in bleary-eyed confusion at her.

  It was bright outside. Past noon maybe? How long had he slept?

  "Yeah... I'm up," he stammered through a dry mouth. "Wassup?"

  "We found something. Er, someone. The guy we think."

  Chapter 18

  119

  That woke him up. "Really?" said Paul. "Where's Chloe?"

  "She took a printout to that girl from the guest house to make sure it's him. She should be back soon."

  Paul staggered out of bed, still bone tired despite the sleep. He pulled on his pants and dug a fresh T-shirt out of the dresser. "This is the bearded guy, right?"

  "Yep. He's bearded. Big guy too. Wrestler big. Not Hulk big, but you know, not little," said Bee. "Big."

  "Murderer big," Paul asked.

  "You don't have to be big to be a murderer," said Bee, her voice dropping in volume.

  Paul knew they'd suddenly strayed into sensitive territory for Bee, and he changed the subject as he pulled on his shoes. "So where is he?"

  "Don't know," said Bee. "But I know where he was. He was at the guest house. Or, well, two blocks away from the guest house. And then he was on Duval in front of Crabby Dicks. And then he was on Duval in front of Fat Tuesday. And then he was on Duval in front of Freddie's. And you know who else was there at Freddie's?"

  "I'm gonna guess Raquel."

  "Raquel," Bee confirmed. "And he followed her to Truman Annex."

  "Do you have cameras in there?" Paul asked.

  "Two. Floodlight cams," said Bee. "And they both went past them both, right on their way to Ft. Zachary Taylor Park."

  "And do you have cameras there?"

  "Nope, but they never came out again from the road down to the park. Or at least neither of them came back out the same way they went in."

  "Fucking A," said Paul. Ft. Zachary Taylor park featured a cool old Civil War era fort and one of the nicer beaches on the island. Paul thought back to Raquel's damp clothes and the sand in her room. "That could be it then," he said.

  "Chloe wants you to go with her to the park and have a look around. Assuming this is the guy from the guest house."

  "Even if it's not the same guy, anyone who was following Raquel has got to be a suspect."

  Bee gave him a quick nod. "I'm going to go back to the video records and try to find him again. I wanna try that facial recognition thing I downloaded."

  "I thought that wasn't working?"

  "I got a new patch that might help."

  "Ok," said Paul, as he finished pulling on his shoes. "I'm gonna get some coffee and get ready to go play Chapter 18

  120

  Columbo on the beach."

  "Good luck," said Bee. "And remember, Chloe said to remember someone's probably listening in on the phones.

  "I remember," said Paul. "No phones unless it's an emergency."

  HE and Chloe rode to the beach in silence on her scooter, zipping through afternoon tourist traffic and paying the $5 entrance fee to the park ranger so they could get into the park. They dismounted in the main parking lot, which was conveniently located between the fort and the beach. It was past noon now, and the lot was more than three-quarters full. It was not only a favorite spot for sunbathers and tourists seeing the fort, but for local fishermen as well.

  "So," said Paul, breaking the silence that still hung between them. "They must've both hopped the main fence last night."

  "Yep," Chloe agreed.

  "And aren't there park rangers on guard here all through the night?"

  "I think so," said Chloe.

  "So whatever happened, probably happened somewhere out of sight," said Paul, looking through the sprawl of pine trees that stood between the parking lot and the beach. "It's pretty wide open. Even at night a ranger would've seen something out there."

  "Maybe," said Chloe. "Although there's probably only the one, and he's got to cover the beach and the fort and the nature trail."

  "The fort doesn't seem too likely," said Paul. "It's got light all over it, and maybe cameras."

  "Which means the nature trail," said Chloe, walking back up the road toward the front entrance where the entrance to the trail was. "If he came over the fence after her, odds are that she heard him."

  "And I doubt she would've broken in here in the first place if she didn't know she was being followed," Paul added.

  "So, the first entrance to the nature trail is the most obvious place for her to duck in out of sight and either hide or set an ambush."

  "Makes sense," agreed Paul.

  They walked up the paved road for a couple minutes, the hot midday sun beating down on them even though it was November. Ahead on their left Paul saw the entrance to the trail, a shaded tunnel through the trees that looked inviting and cool at this time of day, but must've looked foreboding at night. He and Chloe entered and started to snoop around, their eyes combing back and forth over the ground in search of some clue or another.

  After fifteen minutes of searching, Chloe called out to him from a few yards off the sandy trail. "Hey, what do you make of this?" she said.

  Paul came over and looked at the clear patch of dirt and leaves that Chloe was pointing to. There in the loose, gray sand, Paul could clearly make out what looked like footprints and several other depressions that he Chapter 18

  121

  suspected might have come from someone's knees and shins as they knelt on the ground. Nearby he noticed that someone had scooped a handful of sand from the ground.

  "If we were cops, we could take plaster casts and compare them to the victim's footprints," said Paul.

  "Yeah, but then we'd be cops, and how much would that suck?" replied Chloe. "Besides, Winston's probably dumped the body in the Atlantic by now, so we've got nothing to compare them to."

  "Still, I think we can assume that she or the killer was crouched here last night," said Paul. "It won't hold up in court though," he joked.

  "Yeah, but you know the Lieutenant will have our badges if we don't make this case, so we gotta do whatever it takes," said Chloe.

  "Well then, I guess we'll just have to falsify evidence," said Paul. "Again."

  "It's what we do," Chloe agreed, which was kind of funny because it was actually true - they did a lot of falsifying of things, including evidence.

  "Still," said Paul. "Even assuming she was here, we don't know if she was killed here or not. They could've gone somewhere else - he could've chased her back out of the park."

  "Or she could've chased him and run into his friends," said Chloe. "But Bee didn't see them come back out the front."

  "If they hopped one fence, they could hop another."

  "True," said Chloe. "Let's keep looking here."

  And so they did, searching for half an hour among the trees for any other sign of violence, but neither of them really knew what to look for. There were so many footprints on the trail that they couldn't make any sense of them. There were broken branches here and there, but nothing they could say was caused by a fight. They eventually gave up.

  "Man," said Paul, wiping his brow. "This solving crime stuff is thirsty work."

  "If only we were actually solving it," said Chloe. "But yeah, let's go up to the beach and get some water."

  Back by the beach sat a wooden building on low stilts which housed both the public bathrooms and a snack bar run by the parks department. There was a line of six people waiting for service, and Chloe and Paul stepped in behind them.

  "I assume this place is all locked up at night?" asked Paul.

  "Yeah. The bathrooms too."

  "Hmmm," said Paul. "So probably not worth checking them."

  "Well, I
do need to pee," said Chloe. "Get me an iced tea, ok?"

  "Sure," he said, and watched as she walked around the side of the building to the women's room. He sighed.

  Maybe they should go on a trip when this bullshit was finished. Up to Miami or something, do some clubbing, Chapter 18

  122

  scam some yuppies.

  He felt a buzzing in his leg and pulled a disposable cell phone from his pocket. Bee had given them the burners before they left, just in case Isaiah really did have taps, traps or traces on their normal phones. There was no name on the caller ID, just a Miami area code and number.

  "Hello?" he said.

  "Hey," said Bee. "I thought I gave this phone to Chloe."

  "Nope, you gave it to me. Do you need to talk to Chloe?"

  "Yes! I mean no. You're fine. I can tell you." Bee was talking a mile a minute, her voice tense.

  "What is it?"

  "I found Eddie and..."

  "You mean you found where Eddie's staying?"

  "Yeah. No! I found where he is right now..."

  "What about the bearded guy?" Paul asked. "I thought you were looking for..."

  "No! I mean yes, I was looking for him and then I saw Eddie moving and I thought I'd check on him and then I did and when I did I saw who he was talking to." Paul only caught about half of what she said, she was talking so fast.

  "Was he talking to the bearded guy?" Paul asked. "Because that would..."

  "No!" Bee shouted from the other end. "He's with Raff!"

  Paul didn't register the full meaning of what she'd said. "What was that?" he asked.

  "With Raff!" she shouted. "The Raff. Our Raff. The Raff. He's standing on the corner of Duval and Roosevelt right now and he's talking to Eddie."

  "Fuck me..." Paul whispered, suddenly very angry and more than a little scared.

  Chapter 19

  123

  Chapter 19

  "AND who is this guy again?" asked Sandee, staring down at the picture on Chloe's PDA.

  "Bad fucking news," said Paul, and Chloe couldn't have agreed more.

  "He doesn't look it," said Sandee. "He's kinda dorky, isn't he?"

  "Don't be fooled," Chloe responded, although Raff did in fact look pretty dorky in his tennis shoes and tube socks, pink flamingo shirt, and baseball cap. "He wants people to underestimate him."

  "It's working," Sandee commented.

  "I need you to follow him," said Chloe.

  "Dressed like this?" Sandee replied. "It's not the most inconspicuous outfit I own." Sandee still wore the mini-dress and heels from the night before, although they were now wrinkled and lint-covered, no doubt from having spent the night in a pile on the floor. "Plus, if he's hanging with that boy Eddie, then I'll surely be recognized. Assuming he remembers anything from last night - he was pretty blitzed."

  "Fuck," said Chloe. Sandee had a point. She looked back down at her phone as Bee e-mailed her another picture from the street camera. Every thirty seconds she received a new one, and for the last half hour Eddie and Raff has been standing at the counter of a juice bar, sipping on smoothies and seemingly passing the time like any other pair of tourists.

  Paul, who was looking over her shoulder, said, "That's pretty ballsy of him, standing around on the busiest street in town like that."

  "Yeah," said Chloe. "That's not something he'd do if he was trying to hide from us. Maybe he doesn't even realize we live here now. I'm not sure how he could've figured it out in the first place. It could be a coincidence."

  "Not fucking likely," said Paul. "Turning up here? Now? No, he's got to know we're here. I might've mentioned wanting to move to Key West to him at some point. Or maybe you did."

  "I didn't," insisted Chloe, although she wasn't one-hundred percent sure that was true.

  "Still, he knows I'm from Florida. He must have found us somehow."

  "Then why is he here? And why is he with Eddie?" asked Chloe.

  "Maybe he's challenging us. If Isaiah could bug us or hack our system, so could Raff, right? He's a kick-ass hacker. He could've been monitoring everything - all our video feeds. He might have even seen your and Sandee's performance with Eddie last night, and now he's making the guy an offer."

  Chloe didn't like the sound of that, but she couldn't rule out Paul's scenario. It was as likely as anything. And as much as Raff had fucked her and Paul over back in California, they'd gotten back at him as well. No one had left their last encounter feeling good about things. Fuck, we need a fucking coder in our Crew, she thought. We're running around with our asses in the wind. "All that matters now is that we know he's here, and we need to find out why. We need to follow him."

  Chapter 19

  124

  "Eddie never saw the real me. I left him alone once he started drooling on himself. I can run home and change real quick," said Sandee. "Or just run down to Fast Buck Freddie's and buy a few things."

  "Do that," said Paul. "And you might want to switch genders while you're at it. Eddie won't be looking for a boy."

  "Only because you asked so nice," said Sandee, kissing Paul on the cheek before turning to Chloe and saying.

  "I'll be back in two shakes of a cat's tail."

  "We'll keep out of sight," said Chloe. "As long as he's on Bee's cameras, we can watch him without him knowing we're here."

  "Unless he knows about the cameras," said Paul.

  "If that's the case, then we'll jump him and beat him down until he tells the truth," said Chloe.

  "I like the sound of that plan. Let's just skip ahead to that part."

  Chloe didn't respond. She wanted to lay into Raff with a lead pipe just as much as Paul did, but she knew they needed to wait. Nevertheless, Paul's obvious bloodlust surprised her a little. He tended to favor less direct, less confrontational approaches to problems. That was part of what made him good at living life underground - he saw weird angles most people didn't. But now his fury was blinding him, and if she didn't watch herself, it might blind her, too.

  She used her disposable phone to call Bee again, even as another pic of Raff and Eddie downloaded onto her PDA. Bee answered on the second ring.

  "I just sent you a new pic," Bee said.

  "I got it. I need to know if you have any idea where Eddie stayed last night. Might be Raff 's there, too."

  "I don't think so," said Bee. "I've been going back through the video trying to trace them. Eddie still has the RFID card on him - he's wearing the same shorts, you see - and, well, he stayed somewhere near Mallory Square. Maybe at the Hyatt? Someplace like that. Raff first shows up on my cameras way down at the other end of Duval. Near, like, the Southernmost Point and all that. So I don't think they're, you know, together or whatever."

  "Ok," said Chloe. "I thought it might be worth a shot. Sandee's getting changed and he's gonna trail Raff.

  Keep an eye on them and keep sending..."

  "Chloe?" said Bee, her voice nervous.

  "What is it, hon?" Chloe asked, although she was pretty sure what Bee was going to ask.

  "Do you think he's still mad...?"

  "You mean Raff ?"

  "Yeah. Do you think he's still mad about... about what happened to his friend?"

  Chloe paused for a moment, searching for words. Bee had killed Raff 's partner, a man whose name they didn't even know, but who'd been working in secret with Raff to take down Paul and, by extension, Chloe.

  Chapter 19

  125

  The death had shaken Bee deep down, changed her somehow. She didn't talk about it much, but Chloe could tell that she thought about that dead man a lot. Too much in fact.

  "I guess he probably is, Bee. But I don't know. Maybe they weren't even that close. Raff betrayed us, right?

  He probably planned to back stab that other guy too."

  "Do you think so?"

  "It's possible," Chloe assured her. "Raff is certainly a rat-fuck bastard, isn't he?"

  Silence greeted her from the other end of the phone.

  "I
sn't he?" Chloe asked again.

  "Yeah," said Bee. "Definitely."

  "Ok then. Let's concentrate on finding out what the rat bastard fuck is up to, ok?"

  "Ok," said Bee. "He's still talking with Eddie. I'll send you another pic."

  "Great, keep 'em coming," Chloe said and then hung up.

  "Bee freaked out about Raff ?" asked Paul.

  "We all are."

  "Yeah," said Paul, although Chloe thought he was talking to himself as much as to her. "Freaked out is one way of putting it."

  THE slim, good looking young Indian man in baggy jeans, T-shirt and sandals jogged up to their hiding place.

  The transformation from nightlife diva to male model surfer dude never ceased to amaze Chloe, even though she'd seen Sandee (short for Sandeep) change in person on multiple occasions.

  "He still there?" asked Sandee, adjusting his shirt so it hung just so on his slim frame.

  "Yep," said Chloe. "But Eddie just left, so I'm guessing that he's going to be on the move soon."

  "I'll saunter on over there and start following him."

  "Just be careful," Paul reminded him.

  "I know, I know. He's terribly dangerous. Shall I keep in touch on the headset?"

  "At all times," Chloe said, handing Sandee a disposable cell phone and a wireless earpiece.

  "God I hate these things," said Sandee as he slipped the earpiece in. "Will you at least play some music for me?"

  "No," said Chloe. "But Paul will sing for you if you like."

  "Heaven forbid!" he replied in mock horror and then, to Paul, "You know I think you're divine honey, but you cannot sing a note."

  Chapter 19

  126

  "Never claimed I could," said Paul. "But please, remember to be careful."

  "As long as you stop telling me to, I will," Sandee insisted.

  Chloe's phone buzzed in her hand, and she looked down to see another pic from Bee. "Raff is on the move.

  Headed toward Mallory Square, it looks."

  "That's my cue," said Sandee, blowing Chloe a kiss as he strode off toward Duval Street.

  "I hope he's careful," said Paul.

  "He will be. And even if he's not, there's no way Raff can take him in a fight."

  "Not in a fair fight, no," said Paul. "But Raff doesn't fight fair."