Geek Mafia: Mile Zero (43 page)

- the war on terror had brought the FBI and law enforcement in general a slew of new powers, new funding and new needs to justify their expenses. Winston's Crew wasn't the Mafia. They certainly weren't al Qaeda.

And as it stood, they weren't worth looking into. But if there was suddenly some new quasilegal corporate entity taking down major corporations and financing crimes and cons across the globe, well, that would indeed be something the FBI might be interested in. And Winston didn't want that. For all his talk of Chapter 35

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revolution and overthrowing The Man, the truth was that he was complacent in his comfortable little world he'd built for himself.

"You're scared," said Chloe, looking right into his eyes. "You did all this because you're scared."

Winston just looked away. For the first time in her memory, he couldn't meet her gaze. He said nothing, and she knew that she was right. He was a frightened old man, and in his terror he'd lashed out at what scared him.

And in lashing out, he'd killed Raquel.

"How's Jacob?" Winston asked, changing the subject. Chloe let him.

"Is that his name?" she asked.

"It's what I call him."

"He's in the shed with Sandee."

"Who doesn't really have a gun to his head I assume."

"He doesn't really need one," Paul pointed out. Chloe could tell from his voice that Paul was angry. Probably as angry as she was that all their recent troubles were the direct result of Winston's paranoia.

"I'm sure that's true," Winston said. "I'd like to see him."

"Nuh uh," said Chloe, shaking her head. "Not until we sort this all out."

"What is there to sort out?" asked Winston.

"What isn't there to sort out?" retorted Paul. "We haven't decided what to do with him or what to do with you for that matter. Or what to tell Isaiah."

"Why tell Isaiah anything?" Winston asked. "This is between just us, correct?"

"We told Isaiah we'd found the killer," Chloe said, wishing now that they hadn't, if only because it would give them more options.

"Tell him he escaped. Tell him you had the wrong man. Leave Isaiah and his Crew out of this. If you get him involved, everything becomes much more complicated."

"And then there's Eddie..." Paul started to say. "He..."

Chloe tugged on her right ear as if it was itching, a sign she and Paul had developed when they first arrived in Key West. It meant shut up. She didn't want Winston to know that Eddie knew about Jacob. Not until she'd gotten him to suggest a plan of his own for dealing with the situation. Once she knew what Winston wanted to have happen, it would be much easier for her to decide what she was going to actually let happen.

Paul got the signal, like he always did. "He's going to want someone to hang this murder on. And he knows it wasn't him or his crew that did it, no matter how much you try and shift the blame to him."

"So we shift the blame to your old friend Raff," Winston said. "He's as likely a candidate as any."

"And Raff will just go along with that I'm sure," said Paul. "Eddie's not going to believe anything we say Chapter 35

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about him if they're friends."

"Raff left town. My people saw him get on a plane to Ft. Myers. And with him on the lam, he looks very guilty indeed. Besides, isn't he the one you warned Isaiah about? Isaiah will accept that Raff and his Crew are the culprits. Even if he does not have full faith in your explanation, it will placate him for the moment and, as I'm sure you desire more than anything, get him out of your town and your lives."

"So you think we should just let your friend go and forget everything we know about what really happened,"

said Paul.

"I never advise anyone to forget anything," said Winston, smiling for the first time since Chloe had called him out for being scared. "I just recommend that you keep your own counsel and not tell Isaiah or Eddie anything they don't need to know."

"So you get what you want," Paul said. "Isaiah's plan goes down the drain, at least for the time being."

"And you get what you want, Paul. You get your life back, with all these pesky outsiders gone," replied Winston. "Isn't that what you two want?"

"What if we want more?" asked Chloe. "What about getting compensated for all the time and money we lost by getting dragged into this nonsense?"

"Name a figure that's fair and it's yours," said Winston too fast, showing just another hint of what looked like desperation to Chloe's trained eye. Winston never bought people off, certainly not friends. He seemed to realize his mistake and backpedaled at once, saying, "As long as it is actually fair, of course." But the damage was done. If he was willing to buy them off then she knew he was more than a little worried that she and Paul might not play along.

"What about your promise earlier?" asked Chloe. "About you and us forming a group like Isaiah's. About our Crews working together."

"To be honest, I didn't think you'd trust me enough after all this to want to work with me that close," said Winston. He was testing her, calling her bluff. He was right of course - she didn't trust him at all, and if she pretended otherwise he'd know she was lying.

"I don't trust you," said Chloe. "But I might be able to work something out with some of the other Crews that you're in contact with. Isaiah wanted you because of your contacts, right? Well now that's what I want. I want a rundown on all the Crews you know about. Nothing too specific - just general areas of expertise, what city or cities they run in and how many members they have. And their general character. You give me the whole catalog and I'll pick three. You give me the contact info for those three and promise to leave us all alone from now on."

"And this brings you what benefit?" asked Winston.

"The benefit is our business. You can figure it out yourself." The benefit would be that she and Paul could start to put together their own alliance, modeled along what Isaiah had laid out. It wouldn't be as big or powerful, but it would be a start. And it would extend their reach and their lives beyond this damn island.

Assuming Paul would go for it of course, but that was an argument for another time.

"I think we could work something out along those lines," Winston agreed. "Now if you'll let me talk to Jacob..."

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"No way," said Paul. Chloe could tell that he was still angry, although she wasn't sure if it was at Winston or at her or at both of them. But he'd never contradict her in front of a mark and so he kept whatever was bothering him to himself and pushed for a better deal. "You give us the rundown on your contacts now. Right here and right now. We go over them, we pick our three and then we make sure they're legit."

"That will take hours," Winston pointed out. "And I need to consult my notes..."

"Oh, I call bullshit on that," Paul said. "You told me it's all in your head. The only place thieves and hackers can't get at it." He stood up and went to get a pad of paper and pen from the kitchen counter by the phone.

"Well, I'll meet you halfway. I won't use any computers. But I'm going to have to write this shit down."

Winston sighed and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with his hands. He looked very, very tired all of a sudden, although Chloe suspected this was just another mask he was adopting. The world-weary veteran who might not remember all the right details. "Just make sure you burn that paper when we're done."

"Of course," said Paul, tossing the pen and paper to Chloe. "You two get started. I'll brew you some coffee.

Don't want you falling asleep on us, old man."

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Chapter 36

THEY'D been at it an hour when the phone rang. They had no way of knowing if Winston was just making all these people up or if they were actually real Crews out there in the wide world, but he'd gone through about half of his list already, and Chloe's head was beginning to swim with the possibilities. It would be hard to choose just three. It might prove actually harder to choose three that weren't really traps.

The truth was, this whole exercise was a stalling tactic to allow her some more time to decide what exactly she wanted to do about Winston. Turning him over to Isaiah along with the killer went against her every instinct. Well, every instinct except her desire for revenge, which loomed large in her brain, like a storm cloud ready to burst at any moment. She wanted to believe that Winston's info would actually be useful in some way

- useful enough to justify letting him and his friend go.

It was Bee calling on the phone from upstairs. Chloe answered her cell and heard Bee say, "Eddie's outside.

And he's got his friends with him. And they've got guns."

Chloe's heart jumped into her throat. "Ok, lock the place down."

"Cops or no cops?" Bee asked.

"No cops!" Chloe said, her voice too loud. Paul and Winston both looked at her in surprise. "And call Sandee." She clipped the phone back onto her pants and put the wireless earpiece on so she could remain in contact with Bee.

"What's going on?" Paul asked. He'd taken over note-taking duties after fifteen minutes of Chloe's painfully slow stenography. "What cops?"

"Eddie's back," she said. "Bee says he's got guns."

"Fuck," said Paul, standing up and stuffing the notes he'd taken into his back pocket.

"They're coming to the door," Bee said in her ear. "Three of them that I can see."

"They're at the door," Chloe reported as she stepped to the front door and threw the deadbolt.

"Can we get out the back?" Winston asked.

"Bee? Back?" Chloe asked.

"I don't know. The camera back there's on the fritz..."

"Did you disable our rear cameras?" Chloe asked Winston.

"I suppose I did," he admitted.

"Well then, no telling how many guns are back there." Someone pounded on the door, Eddie no doubt. "Who is it?" she asked in a singsong voice.

"It's Edd-ieeeee!" he shouted back in a matching tone.

"We're not decent," Chloe said, motioning for Paul and Winston to head upstairs. Paul grabbed Winston by the arm and dragged him toward the stairs. "Can you come back later?"

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"We don't have to come in," Eddie shouted. "Just send the guy who murdered Raquel out, and we'll take off and let you and your trannie friend be indecent together."

Chloe whispered to Bee, "Where are they? What's up with Sandee?"

"They're all by the front door," Bee said. "Sandee's locked up tight in the shed, and they don't seem to have thought about looking in there."

"Not yet anyway," whispered Chloe. "Tell Sandee to stay put; we'll come to him."

To Eddie she shouted, "I don't know what the fuck you're babbling about, but would you please just get the fuck lost!"

Eddie resumed pounding, but the reinforced door shrugged off his blows with ease. "No I will not! We saw you with him! Now either give him to us or we'll tell Isaiah."

"Yeah, you go run to daddy and tell him all about it," Chloe shouted back as she retreated to the kitchen to lock that door as well. She took a peek out the back window through the porch but didn't see anyone, which didn't come close to meaning that there wasn't anyone out there.

"Let us the fuck in!" she heard Eddie shout from the front. No way the neighbors were not going to notice that. She hoped they didn't call the cops. As a matter of fact, she should probably be proactive and stop them from doing just that.

"Bee," she said, "Shut down everything. Lock her up and say goodnight."

"Really?" Bee asked. "What if we need to call...?"

"There's no one to call. We're all here."

"Ok," Bee said. "Here goes."

"I'm coming upstairs," Chloe said, and she ran back into the front room. As she did, she heard the motors of the automated storm shutters kicking into action. Tough aluminum screens descended from rollers above every window, a common enough safety feature in the hurricane prone keys. Outside the front door she heard Eddie or one of his friends express surprise with a muffled "What the fuck?"

She ran up the stairs as the house around her turned dark. Eddie and company could probably tear off the shutters if they had something to pry them out of their tracks, but it's not the kind of thing that would go unnoticed, and it would take a lot of time. She was betting they would continue to concentrate on the front door. She wanted to ask Bee for an update but she knew that wasn't possible. There wasn't a phone within five blocks of them that worked now unless someone had a satellite phone.

Bee had gotten her hooks right into Verizon's switching box for the neighborhood and installed a kill switch for just these kinds of occasions. It was controlled by a wireless receiver that Bee could activate with a call from anywhere. More importantly, Bee had similar kill switches in three of the local cell phone towers that provided coverage for this part of the island. No one was going to be talking to anyone for the next hour at least - probably more depending on how long it took the phone techs to figure out what was wrong.

The door to Bee's room was open, and Paul was standing there, waiting for her. She rushed in, and he slammed it behind her and started throwing deadbolts. Chloe looked at the wall of screens and saw that Bee had them all showing different views from around the house. She saw the interiors of every room from Chapter 36

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multiple angles along with three different views of the front of the house, two of the side and two of the interior of the shed. Eddie, Marco and the big guy Quentin were all on the front porch, huddled together and trying to decide what to do.

"I thought you said they had guns," Chloe said.

"They do," Bee insisted. "Tucked into the back of Eddie's pants. And the fat one has one too." She clicked at her screens, and one of them showed a piece of video from a few minutes earlier. It was Eddie getting out of a car that was parked across the street and tucking a pistol into his shorts.

"Ok, I believe you."

"If you give me a phone, I can call for help," Winston said.