Geek Mafia (33 page)

"Something's fucked here. Rotten-in-the-State-of-Denmark style fucked. I need to see our list."

"What do you think happened?" asked Paul.

"I don't know. I need to check into it first," she got up from the couch and headed for the kitchen counter where her laptop was plugged into the phone line.

"But you have an idea, right?"

"Yeah," she said as she clicked on the connect icon and the modem started dialing. "Fucking dial-up," she said under her breath.

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"Well, what is it then? What do you think happened?"

"I think someone sold us out," she said. "I think there's a fucking traitor in our midst."

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CHAPTER 29

Chloe stayed online for the next few hours. It took her all of three minutes to get fed up with Paul looking over her shoulder, so he decided to retreat to the bedroom and change out of his costume. He stripped off the fat suit and took what he'd hoped would be a long, hot shower. Unfortunately the mildew stained bathroom seemed to have only a few gallons of hot water at its beck and call, and Paul had to rinse with cold water instead of hot. Shivering, he quickly toweled himself dry (towel courtesy of some Hampton Inn somewhere in the world) and started to get dressed. His sweat-stained suit lay crumpled on the floor, cold and clammy and stinking of fear. A little poking around the bedroom's sole chest of drawers yielded a pair of UC Santa Cruz sweat pants and a faded Batman t-shirt. They smelled a little musty, but not too bad, so he decided to go with them.

In the great room, Chloe hadn't moved. She still stood hunched over the computer and was now typing away with furious intent. Paul thought about asking if there'd been any progress, but from the look on her face, she had no interest in answering questions right now.

"Would it bother you if I turned on the TV?" he asked. "Maybe there's some news or something." No reply.

"Chloe? TV?"

"Sure, knock yourself out," she said, without looking up.

The TV looked to be one of the newer, or at least less used pieces of equipment in the room. He found the remote and switched it on, filling the room with annoying static. He quickly muted it and started flipping channels. Nothing. No reception. No satellite. No cable.

"Crud," said Paul. "No reception."

"Hmm," said Chloe.

"How 'bout you? Any news?" he asked. Her only reply was to keep typing. "Chloe? Any news?"

"Why don't you play a game? Put it on channel 3. There's cartridges in that basket over there."

Paul got up and went over towards the table the TV was sitting on. "Cartridges?" he asked.

"Mm hmm," she replied.

Paul couldn't believe his eyes. There, in a large basket next to the TV, was an Atari 2600, the original home video game system from the early '80's. In elementary school he'd spent hours upon hours playing these groundbreaking games. Digging through the haphazard pile of video-game cartridges he saw all his old favorites. It was third grade all over again - Space Invaders, Pac Man, Adventure, Missile Command, Wizard of Wor. And there it was, his all time favorite: Combat.

"Sweet," he said. It took him a few minutes to hook the ancient game system to the relatively modern TV, but everything he needed was right there. The short cord on the simple joystick controller forced him to pull a ratty beanbag out from the corner in order to have somewhere to sit. He plopped down and started blowing the shit out of things old school. Today these games would look primitive if you played them on a three year old cell phone, but the fundamentals were all there. Of course, the games all kind of sucked, but it didn't matter.

Right now, the third grade seemed like a much better time to be than the present.

After about an hour Paul heard Chloe shut down the laptop. As he maneuvered Pitfall Harry over yet another in an endless series of crocodiles, he heard her grunt and moan as she stretched her back out. She twisted and CHAPTER 29

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cracked her spine with a series of snaps he heard from across the room.

She pulled another beanbag from the corner and tossed it down next to Paul. Plopping down, she proclaimed,

"I got next."

"Are you even old enough to remember these games?" asked Paul.

"Of course I am," said Chloe. "I just played them six months ago."

"You know what I meant." Jump, grab the vine, swing over the crocodile. Repeat. "Did you have this when you were a kid?"

"Nope. But we never had any video games growing up. Or TV for that matter."

Paul knew from experience he'd get no more out of her on this subject. He concentrated on the game at hand, but somehow managed to miss the next crucial jump - probably because Chloe had rammed him in the side with her shoulder.

"Ooops!" she said. "My turn!"

"No way, I've still got two lives left."

"We'll see how long those last," she said with mock menace.

"Or we could play Combat."

"Oooh, you challenging me, little boy? You challenging the master?"

"You bet your sweet ass I am," he said.

"We'll get to my sweet ass later," she said as she got up to change out Pitfall for Combat. "Tanks or biplanes?"

she asked.

"Ladies choice."

"Tanks it is!"

Combat offered a half dozen or so different tank duel variations, and they decided to play each of them in turn, best three out of five for each game. Chloe really must've been playing six months ago, because her tank commander skills far outstripped Paul's own in the first three rounds. By the end he was out of the competition and just playing for pride.

"You're mine, boy. Bow to my armor clad might!" shouted Chloe.

"We'll see." He moved his tank into an exposed position, taking a risk. As Chloe went to fire, he shoved his shoulder to the side, jostling her and causing her to miss the shot. He'd pushed harder than he intended, tipping Chloe over the side of her beanbag and sending her laughing onto the floor. He took the opportunity to fire a winning shot before turning to taunt her.

"Turnabout is fair..." he said, and then she was on top of him, wrestling him out of his own seat.

"Sore loser!" she cried with a grin as she pinned his shoulders to the ground.

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"You started it," he said. She straddled his torso now, her hands pressed down against his chest. He slipped his hands up along her legs until they lightly gripped her sides.

"That doesn't make you less of a sore loser." She bent so her face was inches from his and he slid his hands up along her back. "S-O-R-E-" she slowly spelled out, but when she was done she didn't withdraw from the closeness.

He slid his hands down past her belt and started to caress her ass. She just looked at him, smiling. Her smile said, "Go ahead," and Paul did, craning his neck up just far enough to lock lips. She kissed him back, hard, forcing his head back down to the floor. He grabbed onto her ass just as hard and she pressed herself against the length of his body. His instant erection pressed back through the thin material of the sweat pants.

"I told you we'd get back to my sweet ass," whispered Chloe as she broke the kiss and sat up, pulling off her blouse and exposing her breasts to Paul's hands, which found them instantly. She ground her crotch against his erection. "Now come with me tank commander. You've got a new mission."

They ended up in the bedroom. To his inestimable relief, Chloe revealed that this mountain safe house was indeed equipped for any emergency, including a box of condoms in the bedside table.

Afterwards, as they lay sprawled across the bed, Paul watched with utter joy as Chloe idly played with his momentarily flaccid penis. He casually caressed one of her breasts in response.

"Is he going to be up for another round here?" she said as she stroked him.

"You keep doing that, I'm sure he and I will be."

"Penises are so weird," she said, staring at his.

"If you say so."

"I do."

They lay there for a long while after that. Paul stared up the ceiling and looked around the dingy room. The house wasn't so bad really - quite charming in fact. All it needed was a little elbow grease and an airing out.

He could be happy here. If he were here for other reasons. And then the inevitable happened. The events of earlier that evening came crashing back on him in a flash. They were here because they'd fucked up. Or been betrayed.

"Hey, what happened?" said Chloe, holding his suddenly limp prick. "I thought I was getting somewhere."

"What's happening, Chloe?"

"I was hoping to have sex again in a few minutes. This time I get to be on top."

"No, I mean with the Crew. With the job."

"Oh, that." She sighed and gave up on arousing him for the moment. She sat up in the bed and looked down at him sympathetically. "Nothing right now. I chatted on IRC with Bee and she filled me in on what happened after we left."

"Well, what happened?"

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"Everything else went pretty much according to the plan. Popper ran the rest of the auction and tied things off.

They took in a total of $465,300 in bids."

"And Frank?"

"They cleared out and left him in the closet. If we're lucky no one will find him until morning, but I doubt we'll be that lucky. The cleaning crew was already bucking to get in there as our team was leaving."

"Which means trouble."

"A shit load."

"Still," said Paul thoughtfully. "$465,000 isn't bad at all. I'm pretty sure I could've talked that up another 100k though. Still, it's pretty good."

"Well, it would be pretty good if we were going to get to keep it."

"What?" said Paul. Now it was his turn to sit up in bed, confused and angry. "Why wouldn't we keep it?"

"Well, Kurt, Bee and Raff are working on trying to clear as much money through as possible, but that usually takes 24 hours. We were counting on moving the money to untraceable accounts before any of the bidders realized they'd been had. But right now those charges are, for the most part, still sitting with the credit card companies. If Frank goes to the police and the police inform all the bidders about what happened and they call the banks, well, we might not get anything. Actually, we probably won't get anything."

"Fuck!" said Paul. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fucking Frank."

"Yep," replied Chloe. "I couldn't have said it better myself."

"So we get nothing?"

"Well, we used seven different bank accounts and a few other tricks, so we might get something out of it.

Depends on what happens with Frank. Luckily no one but us actually has the full list of everyone who was there, so it's not like there's any easy way for the cops to figure out who got hit. They'll have to go to the papers and the local news to really get the word out, so that might buy us some time. And the direct deposits to the charities you set up will probably stand - we weren't lying about those - so that might stand. Maybe."

"Fuck," said Paul. He thought for a while more before saying, "Fuck me."

"Yep."

"So do you still think there's a traitor in our midst?" asked Paul, looking for someone to blame for this miserable turn of events.

"I'm working on that. I asked Bee to e-mail me the guest list, but it's on one of the secure servers at home so it'll be a few hours. After she's done helping everyone save as much cash as they can. We have to see if Frank was really on the list or not."

"And if he wasn't on it," said Paul. "Then we know someone went out of their way to invite him."

"Which means someone was sabotaging this whole event," concluded Chloe.

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"But why?"

"I assume for the money."

"I thought we weren't going to make any money."

"Well, according to your stupid fucking promise, we'll all be fine. You're the only one who's out of pocket here." She patted him on the knee. "Assuming you keep your stupid fucking promise."

"Christ..." said Paul, flopping down on his back and covering his eyes with an arm. He'd forgotten about his promise to pay the Crew off if they didn't make good money on the con. That was it then, his whole nest egg, gone as easily as it had come. "Easy come, easy go..."

"I've always hated that expression. Besides, you're not gonna 'easy-go' anywhere with that money until we figure out what happened here." She lay back down beside him.

"It still doesn't make sense."

"No, it doesn't."

"We should've made six or seven hundred grand tonight if everything went right. Why fuck it all up and risk bringing the cops into it for just $100,000 more? That's what," Paul paused for a few seconds to do the math in his head. "Another six thousand dollars for the person who invited Frank. Doesn't seem worth the risk.

"No, it doesn't."

"So what gives then? Someone who didn't want me in the Crew? Does someone have it out for me personally?" Paul asked.

"It's about the money. It's always about the money," said Chloe.

"But risk the cops and everything else for just six grand? Does someone have a really bad gambling debt or something?"

"If they did, they'd know the Crew would cover it for them. Especially for a small amount like that." Now it was Chloe's turn to think in silence. They lay there for a long while, naked in bed. Under any other circumstances it would be a dream come true for Paul. But these circumstances? Not so dream-like.

Finally Chloe broke the quiet. "Paul, I wouldn't ask you this unless I had to. But I need you to trust me."

"I do," said Paul, and he did, without a second thought.

"I need to know where your money is."

This was the one big secret between them. Or rather, it was his one big secret from her. He didn't even know for sure if Chloe was her real name, much less where she kept her money or where she came from or even what she wanted from life. But still, he trusted her. Besides, it looked like he was going to have to give up the cash soon anyway if he wanted to stay in the Crew. And now, more than ever, with Chloe naked beside him, that's exactly what he wanted.