Geek Mafia: Mile Zero

by Dakan

  "Like Chloe and Paul," said Bee.

  "Maybe, yeah," said Raff. "You'd know better than me about the two of them. But she was so... so shocked.

  That he'd been shot, you know? It's just not what anyone expected."

  "He had a gun!" protested Bee. "He had a gun pointed at Paul and Chloe and he'd shot their friend."

  Raff laughed, although there wasn't any humor in his voice.

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  "It's not funny!" Bee shouted, and now everyone was looking at them.

  Even Raff had to acknowledge they were drawing too much attention. He said something to Bee in a soft voice that Chloe couldn't make out over the microphone, calming her down. Then, in more normal tones, he said, "I was just laughing - and I shouldn't have been because no, it's not funny - but when Owen found out who he'd shot. That he'd shot Winston, he was devastated. Turns out they were old friends."

  Chloe's heart raced at Raff 's mention of Winston. Old friends? Could that be true? That her mentor and Raff

  's had known each other at some point? Maybe even worked together? It didn't seem likely. As a matter of fact, she knew that Raff was bullshitting at least a little bit. Winston had been wearing a mask when Owen shot him. And he was dead less than six hours later. There was no way he could've known it was Winston.

  She just hoped that Bee's bullshit detector was working as well as her own.

  "Really?" asked Bee.

  "It's true. Or that's what Jeanie told me anyway. Jeanie and Owen and Winston go way back she said."

  "That's... that's horrible."

  "Yeah," said Raff. "It kind of is, isn't it?"

  The two sat in awkward silence for a while. Chloe knew that Raff was letting Bee stew in her shame, hoping that she'd make some big mistake. Chloe hoped that she wouldn't, but this particular situation was beyond her experience, and she just couldn't predict what Bee would do next.

  "Is she very sad still?" Bee finally asked.

  Raff put his hand on Bee's shoulder as he said, "I think so, yeah. But she hides it well."

  Bee looked up into Raff 's eyes. "Can you tell her I'm sorry?" she asked.

  "I can..." said Raff before a dramatic pause. "Or better yet, you could tell her yourself."

  Oh shit, thought Chloe. This is it.

  "We could call her? If we called her I could..."

  "No, Bee. She's here. In Key West. You could tell her in person. You could tell her to her face. Don't you think you owe her that much?"

  "No!" said Chloe, across the street in her private room. "Jesus, no, it's a trap." This Jeanie person may or may not exist, but there was no way Raff was going to lead Bee to her - not when he had to assume that Chloe was still watching him.

  But Bee said, "Maybe... Maybe that would be good. To see her."

  "To give her some closure," Raff interjected. "And maybe give yourself some too."

  "I'd have to think about it," Bee said. "Chloe's going to be expecting me to be back at the house soon."

  "Chloe can wait," Raff said. "I can't. I can't risk being followed back. Not with Paul being so mad at me. Did he tell you they attacked me?"

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  Bee ignored this last question. "How would it work? Is she close?"

  "Well," said Raff. "I need to be careful, you know. I need to make sure you don't have any tracking devices on you. So I'd take you to a neutral place and sweep you for bugs and then take you to Jeanie. Blindfolded of course. Then, after you two have a chance to talk, I'll take you back here or wherever you want to be dropped off."

  "I don't know," said Bee. "That could take a long time. What if Paul or Chloe..."

  Raff reached down into his pile of clothes and pulled out a cell phone from his shorts' pocket. "I can call right now and set it up. It won't take an hour for the whole thing."

  Bee thought this over, before finally saying, "Ok."

  Raff smiled. "Great, Bee. This is the right decision." He stood up and turned his back to Bee as he dialed the phone. Chloe watched as Bee idly fingered Raff 's shorts, which were in a pile in front of her. It was hard to tell for sure with the camera's crappy resolution, but Chloe thought it looked like Bee was crying.

  With his back to Bee, Chloe couldn't hear what Raff was saying into the phone, but when he turned around he said, "All right, you ready?"

  "Sure," said Bee. "I guess so."

  "Lemme just get dressed." Raff quickly slid his shorts, shirt and shoes back on and then offered Bee a hand up. "Come on, we'll get a cab downstairs."

  Chloe slammed her laptop shut, and shoved it into her shoulder bag as she raced down the stairs into the restaurant below. She came out onto the street just as Bee and Raff emerged from the front door of the Bull and Whistle. Raff saw her immediately, and a moment later so did Bee. Chloe dodged through the slow Duval Street traffic and came to a halt in front of them.

  "What the fuck kind of stupid shit are you doing?" Chloe said to Bee.

  "I was..." Bee stammered, as Chloe grabbed her arm.

  "What's wrong Chloe?" asked Raff. "We were just catching some sun."

  "Shut up, shitbag," Chloe spat at him. "Stay the fuck away from her."

  Raff didn't try to stop Chloe as she dragged Bee back across the street except to say, "She's not your mother, Bee. You can still do the right thing here."

  "Fuck off, Raff. Next time I see you, you're dead," Chloe shouted without looking over her shoulder. She heard him laughing as she flagged down a cab and stuffed Bee into it.

  "Are you ok, Bee?" Chloe asked.

  Bee nodded, wiping a tear from her eye. Chloe hugged her close. "It's ok, sweetie. It's ok. Don't worry about it. Everything's going to be ok." And maybe, thought Chloe, just maybe, it actually would be.

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  Chapter 23

  PAUL didn't even own a tie until he became a con man. As an artist and then videogame designer, there'd never been a need for much in the way of formal wear. And when occasion called for dressing up, a button-down shirt and maybe a sports coat were usually all he'd ever needed. But once he and Chloe had arrived in Key West, he'd soon found that a tie could be a necessary evil. In the ultra-casual Key West culture, wearing a tie was a sure sign that you were either a stuffy-ass businessman or some kind of government official, and any simple article of clothing that could make people jump to such immediate conclusions about you was a valuable tool.

  Wearing a crisp, white shirt, dark blue tie with deep red stripes, and navy slacks with loafers, Paul marched with officious determination into the lobby of the Hyatt and straight to the front desk, cutting in front of three people who were standing in line. He heaved his briefcase up onto the counter and popped it open saying, "I need to speak with a manager right away."

  "Excuse me?" said the handsome, tan young man behind the counter in a light Spanish accent.

  Paul flipped out a business card from inside the case, presenting it to the receptionist as if it were a badge.

  "Mike O'Conner, Verizon Wireless Security Services Department," Paul said, which was exactly what it read on the business card. He also had an ID to match it in his wallet, both made by Bee several months earlier as a cover for him to help set up the camera and RFID network. "I need to speak to your manager about a computer security issue," he said.

  "All right," the man said. "Please hold on a moment." He picked up his phone and dialed a number, turning his back to Paul as he spoke into the phone in a low whisper. Then, to Paul he said, "She'll be right out. If you could wait over there?" he asked, pointing to a nearby potted plant.

  "Thank you," he said, and moved over to his assigned location, which was too near the elevators for Paul's comfort. The worst thing that could happen right now would be for Eddie to come down that elevator, followed in close second by Raff walking in the front door. Two tense minutes passed before he saw an attractive, middle-aged woman with dyed blonde hair come out from the back room. The receptionist pointe
d her toward Paul, and she came over, a wary smile on her face.

  "Can I help you, sir?" the woman asked.

  Paul held out his hand and read her name off the tag on her blouse. "Mike O'Conner, Verizon Wireless Security Services Department. You're Ms. Jawolski?"

  "I am," she said as she shook his hand. "The assistant manager." She seemed surprised that Paul knew her name. People tended to forget they were wearing name tags, especially since few people actually paid much attention to them.

  "Great," said Paul, "Just the person I need to see."

  "What's this about?"

  "We've been tracking a series of network security breaches over the last twenty-four hours. There's been a rash of virus and hacker attacks on area networks and local ISP's and we've been doing our darnedest to sort it all out." Paul looked around the lobby. "Is there somewhere we can sit for just a moment? How about over there?" He pointed to some chairs and a coffee table that were out of line of sight from the elevator.

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  "Of course," the manager said, playing the perfect hostess and ushering him to a seat. As soon as he sat down, Paul opened the briefcase again, producing a stack of papers covered in complicated graphs and spreadsheets with columns like "Transfer Rates" and "Unknown Server Contacts" and even more technical terms like

  "TCP/IP." They were meaningless of course, but he was betting she didn't know that. Hell, if Paul didn't know they were fake, he wouldn't have been able to tell himself.

  "As you see here," said Paul, "There's been a great deal of unusual activity in the area. And we've had several reports of unauthorized access to some very secure networks near here. You haven't had any problems with your wireless network here at the Hyatt have you?"

  "No," said the woman, scanning the papers as Paul handed them to her, trying to make some sense of them.

  "As far as I know, we've had no complaints."

  "That's what I was afraid of," Paul said. "We have reason to believe that the attacks are originating from your network here."

  "One of our guests?" she asked, real concern in her voice.

  "That's a possibility, of course," said Paul. "But we think it's an outside hacker who's hijacked your network for his own purposes. An all too common occurrence I'm afraid."

  "Do we need to shut it down? Are our computers ok?" she asked. "I should get our IT guy down here."

  "Your own internal network should be still secure. But we do have a list of room numbers where the hacker has used open access points for his own purposes, and any computer users in those rooms might have had their personal systems compromised, so you should probably warn them." Paul handed her a sheet of paper with twenty room numbers on it, including the one they'd identified as Eddie's.

  "Ok," she said, looking up and down the list. "You know security is Verizon's responsibility. We're only..."

  "Don't worry about liability," Paul interrupted. "You're absolutely right. This is Verizon's problem and our liability issue, but we'd like your help nipping this little bit of trouble in the bud."

  "Of course. What can I do to help?"

  "Using some pretty advanced tracing techniques, we've managed to develop a suspect." He reached into his briefcase one final time, and drew forth a stack of thirty pages, each with Raff 's picture on it. "He's a lone hacker and con man who's been spotted in the area by law enforcement. We believe he's responsible. If you could show these one-sheets to your employees and the guests in those rooms on the list, we might have a good shot at catching him."

  The manager took the sheaf of what could only be described as wanted posters. They had "SECURITY

  WARNING" printed in large bold letters across the top, right above the picture of Raff they'd captured from Bee's video. Below it said, "Wanted for questioning involving computer security fraud, bank fraud and trespassing." There was also a number (one of the Crew's burner phones) to call if he was spotted.

  "All right," the woman said, "I'll pass these around and post them in our security area."

  "Please make sure the guests I've indicated see them as well," said Paul. "This suspect is a known confidence man, and he's approached targets in person in the past."

  "Of course," the manager agreed.

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  Paul stuffed his fake evidence spreadsheets back in the briefcase and stood up. "On behalf of Verizon, thank you very much for your kind assistance," he said, shaking her hand again. "And remember, never give out your password or security codes to anyone over the phone or via e-mail."

  "I never do," said the woman.

  "Excellent," said Paul. "Well, I've got to head across the street. Lots of fires to put out today."

  "Good luck," said the woman as she walked Paul to the front door.

  "Thank you," he replied. "And we'll be sure to let you know when we've caught him." With that he was out the door, headed back to his rendezvous with Sandee at the observation post. A little luck and Eddie would now feel that Raff had too much heat on him to let him hide out in his hotel room any longer. Then Raff would have no choice but to rejoin his Crew.

  The observation post was two blocks away on Caroline Street in an empty timeshare they helped manage through Keys Condos and Estates. While Paul had been inside the hotel, Sandee had planted cameras covering all the entrances into the Hyatt, except the water side. But odds were Raff wouldn't be coming in by boat.

  They'd set up two laptops in the apartment's dining room, where Sandee sat with his feet propped up on the table, watching the screens. They could've monitored all of this from the house, of course, but if they needed to try and follow Raff, assuming Eddie did kick him out, then they'd need to be close at hand to track him.

  Paul had a wig, hat and sunglasses in a bag by the door for a disguise when he had to follow Raff. He knew he should put the costume on now to be ready, but he didn't relish the idea of wearing the scratchy wig longer than he had to.

  Sandee, always prepared, had brought a cooler with fruit and Tupperware containers full of his famous brown rice salad. He didn't keep that figure of his without constant attention to diet and exercise. Paul, no lover of brown rice, had learned to actually kind of like the stuff, at least when there wasn't anything else around.

  "How'd it go?" Sandee asked.

  "Great," said Paul. "With every employee in the hotel looking for Raff, there's no way that Eddie can let him stay there. And if they aren't on real strong terms, he might well be pissed off enough to distrust Raff completely."

  "And now we wait?" said Sandee.

  "Now we wait," agreed Paul, opening a bowl of rice and digging in as he watched tourists stream by on the two laptop screens set up in front of them.

  "I wanted to apologize," said Sandee, his voice even and pleasant as always. "I must not be very good at the spy thing."

  "What do you mean?" asked Paul.

  "I assume this Raff boy must have spotted me following him. I think I'm more cut out for the role of femme fatale than gumshoe."

  "Don't worry about it," said Paul. "Raff 's been doing this a long time."

  "Oh, I'm not too terribly worried," said Sandee. "I've nary a doubt that you and Chloe can handle him."

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  "What on earth makes you think that?" Paul asked with a smile. "We haven't been paragons of competence lately."

  "You're kidding, right?" asked Sandee.

  "No. I mean, yes. Yes I think we can handle Raff, but I also thing we've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off."

  "And here I was wondering how the pair of you got so good at this," mused Sandee. "You're saying I shouldn't be impressed?"

  "You're saying you are?" asked Paul, although now he was smiling with a bit of pride at Sandee's kind words.

  "This might be old hat to you and Chloe and Bee, but I'll tell you cowboy, this is way beyond my life experience - and I've experienced me some life."

  "You've been with us for nine mon
ths now," Paul said. "You've done all kinds of cons with us. The party of course. The real estate stuff. That séance thing. The scavenger hunt."

  "Oh, those little things?" Sandee said with a wise smile. "That was just theater. Putting on a show. Everything was planned down to a tee, and all I had to do was get into girl form and play my part. I never thought of those as anything other than a game."

  "That's supposed to be the point. We do this because it's supposed to be fun. This crap," Paul said as he waved a hand toward the laptops, "this is the scary bullshit part. The part where people get hurt or end up in jail or worse. And where you can't plan every step down to a tee because you've only got five minutes to come up with what you're going to do next. I hate it."

  "It's amazing then that you're so good at it," said Sandee, giving him a reassuring pat on the knee. "You managed to find Eddie and put together the hacker alert story in just a couple hours. And then all the stuff with that dead body... I don't know how you keep your cool."

  "I had a good teacher," said Paul.

  "Chloe? She is pretty amazing, isn't she? And I've never seen her as driven and focused as she has been since we got the word Winston was coming to town. She's been a bit of a madwoman in an endearing, obsessive compulsive kind of way."

  "You noticed that too?"

  "It was hard to miss; we do all live in the same house."

  "Yeah, she's definitely got her game face on for this whole clusterfuck. I think she secretly thrives on this seat-of-your-pants shit. And I'll admit, the adrenaline rush of pulling off an improvised con like in the hotel back there gave me a pretty great high. Almost as good as sex."

  "Oh, I don't know about that," said Sandee with a wink.

  "I said almost," Paul pointed out.

  "Speaking of which, how is the sex with you two?" Sandee asked. From anyone else it would've been an odd or presumptuous question. But Sandee was not only a dear friend and Crewmember, he'd also been teaching Chapter 23

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  them some tantric sex basic positions and exercises.