Geek Mafia (12 page)

"I kept tabs on the lawyer as best I could, and I learned that about six months later he retired early at the tender age of forty-two. Said he wanted to get back in touch with his roots and that he was moving to Portugal of all places. I gotta think that had something to do with whatever con those guys were pulling, but of course I have no idea. They didn't leave a single trace that I could find."

"And so, just like that, conning people became my new obsession. Well, not just like that. I had a little guidance from an old friend, but that's another story," concluded Chloe.

Paul had listened with rapt attention as she spun this tale. It hadn't been what he expected.

"Is that really true?" he asked.

"Yep," she said. Then she winked at him. "As far as you know anyway."

"And how long ago was this? The early nineties right? How old are you anyway?"

"A lady never tells. Let's just say I look good for my age."

"I think you look good for any age."

"You charmer, you. I'm still not telling you how old I am." She started rooting through the camera bag she'd brought with her, and pulled out a very expensive looking digital camera. "Do you know how to use one of these?"

"Sure," said Paul. "I mean, I've never used one that nice before, but yeah, I know the gist of it. Why?"

"That's your job for the day - you're the photographer."

"And what are you?"

"I'm the reporter, silly! What else?" She pulled out a business card identifying her as Rachel Moore, a lifestyle reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. "We're on assignment."

The plan went delightfully well. Chloe and Paul went into every comic book store in the Bay Area over the next eight hours. She posed as a reporter doing a story about collecting comics. The new Spider-man movie was due out next month, and so the Chronicle was allegedly preparing to do a companion piece about comics.

In return for promising to mention the stores in the article, the owners were more than happy to let Paul snap away.

With the camera set at a resolution approaching that of 35mm film, Paul took careful pictures of every valuable comic he could find. Whenever possible he tried to convince the owners to let him take the books out of their plastic sleeves. This was impossible to do with those that had been graded and sealed, but he got some good shots of those as well. They'd all need some fairly substantial touching up in Photoshop before they'd be ready for "press" but the high-quality camera gave him a solid base from which to build their fakes.

Paul was constantly impressed by what a charmer Chloe could be. She had the owners eating out of her hand -

and not just because she was an attractive blonde (thanks to a wig) - but because she knew how to engage Chapter 10

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them on their level, whatever it was. For the guys who were real fans of the genre and comics in general she talked to them about their favorite characters and storylines. For the ones who were all about the bottom line she emphasized how the article could help bring in new business for them. And for those who just didn't care, she knew when to leave them alone.

By the day's end Paul had collected good shots of about a hundred likely suspects, both front and back covers.

He was already going over in his head what he'd have to do in Photoshop to make them picture perfect for their scam. It was going to be pretty simple, he thought, but he'd have to do some test runs to make sure it came out looking convincing enough. As long as they figured out how to fake the hard plastic case for the sealed and graded comics, he thought they had a pretty good chance of pulling this con off.

When they got back to Chloe's house, they found it crowded with about a half dozen Crew members. They'd set up the big bed sheet screen again and were all ready to run a little first person shooter tournament. Paul had played in plenty of such events while at the Fear and Loading, and in many ways coming home to something like this made it all seem a little more normal. Besides, he was eager to show off his skills while he wasn't drunk and high. He took a seat and dove right in, blasting away at his new friends for the next four or five hours until finally the Red Bull wore off and he crashed on the couch once again.

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Chapter 11

The next few days flew by for Paul. He enjoyed the hell out of his time in the house. It was not unlike being back in college - everyone around him was smart and ready to do something fun at a moment's notice. There was always plenty to drink and good pot to smoke if you wanted it. They all worked hard, Paul himself working more than he ever had at his own company, but computer game marathons and spontaneous parties frequently punctuated the work. Chloe was particularly fond of old school
Street Fighter
style fighting games, and she routinely challenged all comers to bouts on the Playstation. Paul took her on again and again, but never came close to beating her.

He spent most of the time in the Server Room, working in Photoshop on one of the computers. Kurt had finally shown up again, and he'd brought a professional quality color laser printer with him. Apparently he had a friend who had a friend in the printing business, or something like that. Kurt stayed only a single night, most of which he spent doing laundry and eating noodles in his room. Then he was gone again the next morning, leaving the printer still in its box for Paul to try and figure out how to set it up. Bee offered to help.

"What's the deal with Kurt?" asked Paul, as the two of them finagled the bulky printer from the Styrofoam padding.

"What do you mean?" she replied.

"He's not around much, huh?"

"No, not lately. Sometimes. It just depends."

"Depends on what?"

"What he's doing," said Bee. "This comic con isn't the only thing going on right now. Kurt's in charge of another whole deal that some of the guys are working on."

"I had no idea," said Paul. Except for the night of the first party he'd never seen the whole group together in one place. He'd just assumed they were off living their own lives or holding down jobs or something. There'd been no hint of another con going on.

"Well, why would you?" asked Bee with surprise. "You're not really involved in it. Well, come to think of, actually you are a little bit."

"Huh?" asked Paul, confused.

"Well not really involved, but you know, you saw the opening move," Bee said.

"When was this?"

"The day you met Chloe. In that Mexican restaurant where she was arranging for the little mariachi salt shakers to be put on the tables."

"Oh yeah..." Paul said. He'd forgotten about Chloe's original excuse for being in the restaurant. She'd claimed to be doing market research, but in retrospect that had to have been a lie. "What were those things anyway?"

"They were bugs," Bee said. "The target eats there all the time or something and Kurt wanted to listen in on his table talk. So we had to figure a way to bug every table. I made them myself."

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"Wow," said Paul, seeing new depths to this crew and the lengths to which they'd go. "Did you make the mariachi men too?"

Bee laughed, "No, Kurt found those. He's actually pretty amazing that way. It's kind of what he does."

"What do you mean?"

"Kurt's a scrounger, you know? His whole deal is he knows how to find stuff. But he keeps his methods to himself. It's always a friend of a friend or something like that, but we never know for certain. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if he's just stealing the stuff."

"Really?"

"It could be. I don't have any reason to believe it, but come on. A guy that quiet? He can't have THAT many friends! He can almost always find any piece of equipment we need and he rarely takes more than a few days to get it."

"Huh. Interesting." They started uncoiling wires and digging around behind one of the computers, trying to find the right port. "I'm surprised you didn't have a high quality printer like this before. Seems like it would come in handy."

"Not as much as you'd think," said Bee. "We don't do much that's on paper, you know? The more digital it is the better, as far as we're concerned. It's much easier to cover your tracks that way, assuming you know what you're doing. Paper can theoretically be traced, or you might leave a fingerprint on it or whatever."

"Fingerprints. I hadn't even thought of that. We should probably wear gloves whenever we're handling these fake comics, huh?"

"That's a good point," agreed Bee. "I'm sure Chloe thought of that - she always thinks of everything, which is part of why she rocks. But make sure you mention it to her. At the very least it'll make you look smart." She gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Chloe always falls for the smart guys."

"Thanks," said Paul, surprised but pleased with this piece of romantic advice. "I will."

After they spent a few hours trying to find the right drivers to install on the machine, they hooked the printer up and it worked like a dream. Paul made a few test runs and they came out great. It occurred to him then that they should have a burn bag for everything they didn't use or that was left over - shredded papers could still be reassembled. Not so much with ashes. He'd mention that to Chloe as well. He wanted to show her he could hold his own. After all, this whole thing was his idea.

All the Crewmembers working on this job met the next day, even the elusive Kurt, who was pulling double duty. Paul had his samples with him. They crammed into Chloe's living room once again, and she presided over the assembly wearing a tight-fitting Supergirl t-shirt in honor of the occasion.

"Ok, kids, the game's afoot. We're about to spring into action here and I want to make sure everyone knows what's what." She turned her attention to Paul for a moment. "Just so you know, Paul, we always try and keep everyone in the Crew in the loop as much as possible. While everyone might not have much of a role in this one, they're all part of the team so they all have a right to know." This insight drove home the fact for Paul that he wasn't really a part of the group, otherwise they'd have told him what Kurt was up to. At least for the moment, he was still an outsider.

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things we've got to decide. It's a little more complicated than I thought at first, but that's ok. Still nothing we can't handle."

"We've got three main teams working this. I'll give the bad news first. Most of you guys are going to be e-slaves for this one." There was a chorus of groans from the group. Chloe had already explained this term to Paul. "E-slaves" were the ones who would spend hours and hours selling all the forged comics on e-Bay. It was a thankless but definitely necessary job and since they wanted to pull their plan off quickly, they'd need as many people focused on selling as possible. "I know, I know, it sucks. But you get the same share as everyone else."

"Team two is going to be net-heads. There is, it turns out, a computer security aspect to this caper. I've been poking around on the Comics Rating Group's Web site and they have a database up there that lists every single comic book they've ever graded. So, every time they grade Punisher #1 or whatever, they add it to the database. That way, collectors know how many of every issue there are out there. It's a way to discourage, you know, people like us." This got a laugh.

"We're going to need to get into that database and be able to make some changes at will. Getting into it shouldn't be much problem. I know you guys could probably hack it clean right now if you wanted to, but we're going to get inside the door, so you might as well wait until that's set up. Once we're up and running in their system, Paul will let you know what books we're forging and you can eke up the database numbers gradually, so as not to tip anybody off. We're also going to need you to fiddle with some numbers in their inventory system as well, but I'll get to that later."

"And that leaves our main team. We get to go on a road trip. The company's offices are down in L.A. and we need to get a good look around at how they do things. We've taken apart a bunch of these sealed and graded books and it's a fairly specialized process. It'd cost more than it's worth for us to set up our own facility to seal these things up the right way, so I think we're going to have to use the machines in the actual company, which should be fun."

"The road team will be me, Raff, Bee, and Filo. Paul will be coming along as well. We're heading out tomorrow - as soon as these fakes get printed." She took Paul's samples from him and passed them out to the crowd. "Everyone take a look at these and see if you can find any faults or flaws. The more eyes on this, the better. They look great to me, but what the fuck do I know?" The group looked at the fake covers, most of them pretty carefully, some of them only cursorily.

"As of now, we're full sail ahead, so everyone needs to act accordingly. No leaks. No chit-chat with outsiders.

Everyone focus on your jobs and we can make a nice little score. Capisce?" Everyone nodded. "Ok, kiddies, break up into groups. Kurt, pick yourself four hackers. After we get inside their offices and plant the Trojan Horse you need to start poking around anything and everything related to this CRG - but keep a low profile!

Popper, babe, you get the e-slaves. Sorry girl, you had all the fun on that hotel job last month. Take everyone who's left, pour a round of shots, and start setting up those false fronts for the e-Bay accounts, mail forwarders, too, ok?"

"And Paul? Put your latex gloves on and get ready to have some fun. You and me are making sweet, sweet counterfeit comics for the rest of the night." She grabbed him by the hands and yanked him up off the couch and into her arms. "Come on, big boy, Bee's gonna give us a hand."

They spent the rest of the evening and most of the next day making their fakes, as promised. Paul had gotten the process down to a science while making his test runs, so the work went pretty fast. The resulting fake covers then got cut down to size and stapled onto the comics insides that Paul had selected from the boxes and boxes the Crew had brought him. They had particular fun mixing classic X-Men covers with worthless Archie interiors and plastering Batman's visage over Richie Rich. "They're both spoiled trust fund babies," Chloe had Chapter 11