Geek Mafia (25 page)

CHAPTER 19

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CHAPTER 19

When he woke up the next morning, Paul's mouth tasted like he'd swallowed a pound of raw cotton. He was in a bed. Chloe's bed. He tried to recall how he'd gotten there and couldn't quite put all the pieces together. It took another moment to realize that he was still wearing all his clothes, sans shoes. That meant it was unlikely anything had happened between him and Chloe last night, which was probably for the best since if something had happened he would want to remember it. He heard the unmistakable sound of someone peeing from behind the bathroom door, followed by a flush and then the shower being turned on. He assumed that was Chloe.

Paul wondered once again just what the hell he was doing here. Things with Chloe weren't proceeding the way he wanted. At least not at the speed he wanted. Although, as he remembered the pills he'd taken last night, Paul realized that there was a good chance that this most recent romantic setback might have had more to do with his inability to handle his drugs rather than any lack of interest on her part. Still, he needed to take some initiative here - push things forward or get out of Dodge.

A few minutes later the shower stopped and Chloe stepped out into the bedroom. An oversized green towel was wrapped around her torso and she rubbed her short hair vigorously with a smaller white towel that had once belonged to a Holiday Inn. She noticed Paul looking at her.

"Hey there, sport. Finally awake huh?"

"Yeah," Paul croaked, his mouth still dry. "I was really out of it, huh?"

"Fucking right you were. Anyone ever tell you that you snore like a mother fucker?"

"I do have that reputation."

"Fortunately you respond well to a sharp elbow and the occasional shove, so I didn't lose too much sleep." She sat down on the bed next to her, tossing the small hotel towel to the floor.

"What'd Bee give me that knocked me out like that?" Paul asked as he levered himself up into a sitting position, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and blinking to moisten his contacts.

"It was just some X. The same thing everyone else took. I dunno why it knocked you on your ass like that, although I'm guessing it was all the beer, not the drugs." She felt his forehead briefly. "You feeling ok?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just thirsty." He swallowed a few times, trying to work up a coating of saliva in his dry throat.

"Lemme get you a glass of water," said Chloe. She hopped up and went back into the bathroom to fill a glass from the sink. "Listen, Paul, again, I'm sorry Raff pulled you into that job like that. I chewed him a new asshole, last night, I tell you."

"I keep trying to tell you, it's ok, Chloe, really it is." The cool glass of water brought instant relief and he sounded much more awake now. "I actually enjoyed it."

"You enjoyed getting beat down by an old guy? I knew you were a kinky little fuck."

"Well no, not that part. And to be honest I'm kinda weirded out by the whole kidnapping thing, even if it was fake. It seemed sort of needlessly cruel. But I liked playing a role. I..."

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"Still," said Chloe, interrupting him. "If he wanted to get you involved, that wasn't the way. He used you, Paul. I know he thinks he was doing you a favor and I know you're happy now because everything came out ok, but that's not the way I do things. That's not the way we run this crew. We don't use people without fully briefing them."

"What do you mean?" asked Paul. "You use people all the time. I heard that whole debriefing last night you know. You used and abused that CFO. I mean, he obviously..."

"Stop right there, Paul. I know where you're going with that. Yes, we 'used' him. Sure we fucking used him, he was a Goddamned mark. Screwing around with guys like him is what we do. But you're a friend Paul.

You're my friend and I care about you and we don't fuck with people we care about."

"I appreciate that. I really do. But I don't want to be coddled or protected anymore. I want in. I want to be part of the crew."

Chloe looked at Paul hard for a long moment then turned away in disgust. She dropped he towel to the floor, exposing her naked backside to Paul. He stared openly as she bent down and pulled on a pair of shorts that were on the floor and put on a t-shirt before turning around and facing him.

"Why, Paul? Why would you want to do this? You've already gotten your payday. A bigger payday than any individual one of us is likely to see anytime soon. Why the fuck would you want to risk all that?"

"Because I need to do something. And I've never imagined anything like you people. Anyone like you, Chloe.

You're like some sort of..."

"We're not Peter Pan and the fucking Lost Boys, Paul. We're just not." She was almost yelling now. "This isn't for you. You should be drawing. You should be writing. You should be working on your next great game."

"But I thought that..."

"The answer is 'No,' Paul. I love having you here. You've become a good friend and I'm happy that I could help you make your score. But this life, it's not for you. It's a huge, life changing commitment to join a Crew, Paul. And frankly, you're not ready to make that decision. And you're sure as hell not making it for the right reasons. So just fucking drop it, ok?" She slammed the door open as she finished and strode out towards the front of the house.

"Well, fuck," said Paul, to no one in particular.

Fifteen minutes later Paul stepped out of the bathroom after his own quick shower and was surprised to find Raff lying on Chloe's bed, reading one of Paul's comic books. He was too tall for the bed, and his legs hung off one end. As always, he wore khakis and a polo-shirt from a tech company he'd never worked for. In this case, it was Sun Systems.

"Hey, Paul," he said, "Wanna go to Hobee's, get some breakfast?"

"Um..."

"Chloe left about five minutes ago. She looked pretty pissed."

Paul thought for a moment before answering. What the hell? He needed a break from this place anyway.

"Sure. Lemme just get dressed."

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"Great," said Raff as he went back to reading the comic. He showed no signs of letting Paul have any privacy.

Like Chloe, Paul dropped his towel after fishing some clean clothes out of his suitcase. Casual nudity seldom seemed to matter much with this crowd.

They rode to the restaurant without talking much, listening to two local politicians on KQED discuss a new bond issue that would be appearing on the ballot that fall. Neither of them cared a whit about it, but it gave Paul an excuse to try and collect his thoughts. He hadn't spent much time with Raff and wasn't sure how to act around him. Maybe this breakfast was his way of apologizing.

As they waited for the waiter, Paul finally broke the comfortable silence. "So it sounded like Chloe really laid into you last night."

"Oh yeah," said Raff. "She tore my head off, that's for sure. And she was right. Bringing you in was against the rules, but hell, we're freaking pirates right? We're supposed to break the rules."

"So what's going to happen to you?"

"Oh nothing. I agreed to give up some of my share as punishment and I have to clean the bathrooms in Chloe's house for a week."

"Is that how it works when someone breaks the rules?"

"If I'd wanted, I could've had a hearing before the whole Crew, and then they'd have decided together, but that would've been a real downer. I'd already kind of figured on facing some sort of punishment, so I suggested this one."

"And Chloe was cool with that?" asked Paul, intrigued to learn more about how the Crew worked.

"Sure, of course. I mean, she was still mad as hell at me, but she knows a fair punishment when she hears one, and she didn't want a big group hearing anymore than I did."

"Why not?"

Raff smiled and shook his head. "They're just total buzz-killers. Everyone gets all serious and depressed and then people start yelling at each other. We've only done it twice and, well, no one wants to repeat that unless we have to."

The waiter arrived and took their orders. Paul had the breakfast scramble with home fries, as always. Raff went for pancakes. It wasn't until after they'd ordered their food that Raff revealed his true purpose. "I got into this for the money." Raff said. "I'm actually kind of unique in that way. I mean, I'm here because I wanted to make money and not have to work for anyone else."

"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.