Geek Mafia (34 page)

"It's in a storage locker in Milpitas," he said. "It's under my cousin's name. Actually it's her storage locker. She used to live out here, but when she got transferred to Sydney, she put most of her stuff in storage. She gave CHAPTER 29

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me the key and password so I could look after it for her and use it if I needed to."

"So there's no electronic trail to lead back to you?"

"Nope. She's not even really my cousin. I mean, she's my aunt's niece. My aunt married my mom's brother. So there's no blood relation. No last name's the same or anything." He stopped for a moment, considering whether to tell her every last detail. Oh, what the hell, why not admit it? "I didn't really trust you that first couple days, you know? And after I saw what you did to my old partners, with the hacking and all, well I thought better safe than sorry. I even did a bunch of evasive driving to make sure I wasn't being followed. Just being paranoid I guess."

"You weren't," said Chloe. "Being followed I mean, or paranoid for that matter. You did the smart thing. You did what I would've done." Now Chloe stopped mid-thought, seeming to mull over a confession of her own.

"Of course, all the evasive driving wouldn't have helped if there was a tracking device on your car."

"Was there?"

"No." Another long moment. "We didn't have any working at the time. It all happened too fast and Bee had taken them apart to upgrade them."

"If they had been working, would you have bugged my car?"

"I don't know. It didn't come up because we didn't have the capability." Paul didn't need to ask why they would want to track him - they would have been after the cash. Chloe continued, "But right now the important thing is that the money's safe where it is for the time being. Have you ever been back to the storage locker since then?"

"No," said Paul. "I kept a ten grand in cash with me and I haven't really needed much money since I hooked up with you."

"Good, good. That gives us some maneuvering room."

"Ok, but what does this matter right now? I'm going to have to turn it over to the Crew anyway if I'm going to stay with you. With you guys I mean."

"When you said earlier that fucking us over for a measly six grand didn't make any sense, you were absolutely right. If someone did sell us out, then they're after a much bigger prize."

"What, me in jail?"

"That might be a nice bonus for them, but no. They want it all."

"Fuck," said Paul with sudden realization. "They're going after the whole $850,000 for themselves."

"Yep."

"Fuck!"

"Yep."

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CHAPTER 30

Paul had never been on TV before.

They used a picture of him that had, once upon a time, been on his old company Web site. They'd cropped out the Spider Jerusalem action figure that was on his desk in the original photo, showing just his smiling face in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Right next to the serious looking anchorwoman.

"Authorities are seeking this man, Paul Reynolds, in connection to a con-game that took place in Los Gatos last night. According to witnesses, Reynolds and several accomplices staged a fake fundraiser, exploiting community outrage over the controversial protest that took place last month." Now Paul's face was replaced with footage Raff had shot of their prank. "Police now suspect that Reynolds and his accomplices may have had a hand in organizing the protest itself, shown here, where local families were sprayed with fake blood that briefly caused a mad cow panic in the area."

Now Paul's face was back, taking up the whole screen this time. "Police ask that anyone who attended last night's fundraiser or who knows the whereabouts of this man, contact them immediately." At last the image left the screen. "In other news..." The clip abruptly ended here. Paul and Chloe both looked up from the laptop's screen and sighed.

"I always wanted to be famous," said Paul.

"I think the word is infamous," she said, shutting the media player window. Bee had e-mailed her the clip from this morning's local news. "At least it hasn't gone national yet."

"Jesus..." He didn't want to think about what his parents would do when they saw it. "Do you think it'll hit that big?"

"It could," she said. "You know better than most how quickly the right-wing talk radio and bloggers pick up on shit like this. Now that they've got the name of a semi-famous comic book artist and former computer game designer to attach to the park prank story, they're going to run with it."

All of a sudden Paul couldn't breathe. He sucked and sucked but no air seemed to be making it to his lungs.

His heart raced. "Fuuuuuu...." He managed to say.

Chloe grabbed his shoulders and shook him, "It's ok. It's ok. Just breathe." But he couldn't. Heart attack? All that pizza and pork rinds finally catching up? "It's ok!" Chloe shouted. "You're just panicking!" She put her hands on his back and pressed firmly but gently. "Just relax!"

"Uuuuuuuh..." said Paul. Chloe bent him forward, his head between his knees and started massaging his shoulders.

"It's ok, baby, it's ok," she said. "Just try and breathe ok? We'll figure it out." She rubbed the back of his neck.

His heart began to slow. His breathing reached deeper into his lungs. He calmed down slowly but surely, bent over with Chloe caressing his back. "It's ok, baby," she said. "It's ok. Just relax. I'll take care of everything.

Just relax." And he did relax, at least enough to keep from passing out then and there.

Paul lay on the couch, sipping water, while Chloe tapped away on the laptop behind him. Along with the news clip, Bee had also sent the list they'd used to invite potential marks to the fundraiser. They'd compiled it from various conservative donor lists that they'd either stolen or paid for. Bee had sent those original lists along too, so Chloe could check them for Frank's name. If Frank was on any of the lists then maybe, just maybe, this was CHAPTER 30

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all a coincidence. If Frank's name was on their invitee list but not on any of the source lists, then something fishy was going on. Same if he wasn't on any of the lists at all.

"Of course," said Paul, "If Bee's the traitor, then we're totally screwed."

"Bee's not the traitor," replied Chloe. "No way. I trust her totally."

"I thought you trusted everyone in the Crew."

"I do. Or I did."

"Then what makes Bee so reliable."

"She's not like the rest of us," said Chloe. "She's like you."

"Like me how?"

"She's not in it for the money. She's in it because it's fun, because she enjoys the engineering challenges. She enjoys the life. For her it's the only real, caring family she's ever known. She had a...she had a tough upbringing."

"How's that make her so different from the rest of you?"

"The rest of us are fucking thieves."

"I keep forgetting that," said Paul, and to a certain extent he did. It didn't always seem like thievery to him. It was a game, a revolution. A new way of living. It was easy to forget what was really going on.

"You shouldn't," she replied. "Especially not now." She studied the screen in front of her for a couple of long minutes before saying, "Ok, come take a look at this." Paul got up and came over to the kitchen counter. The screen showed an Excel spreadsheet listing names, addresses, and donations given over the past five years.

"This is the master list we complied from all the different databases we could get our hands on."

She hit Ctrl-F and typed in Frank's name as the search parameter. The program jumped to his entry immediately. "There he is," said Paul. "And look at that, no donations in the past five years."

"Well, at least we know how he got the invitation," she said. "We sent it to him. Let me check the source lists and we'll see if he shows up there.

"Hold on a second," said Paul. "I want to check something first. See if this list has Greg Driscol in it." Greg had not only been the CEO of Paul's old company, but a childhood friend. Paul knew him very well and had never known him to be politically active. And there he was, on the list of potential donors. "Fuck me," said Paul.

"Indeed," said Chloe.

"Check the rest of them," Paul said. They were all there, every single one of his former partners, including Evan.

"I know that's bullshit," he said. "No way Evan was ever on any goddamned Republican donors list. He's old school left wing. Union family, life long Democrat. Gives money to the DNC and the ACLU and the Green Party just for good measure. We used to call each other 'comrade' around the office sometimes because we CHAPTER 30

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were the most liberal guys in the building."

"Well, that answers that then," said Chloe. "I'll check the source lists to be sure, but I have to say this pretty much seals the deal. Somebody wanted you to get recognized and so they invited every one of the people who hate you most in the world. Only Frank took the bait, but whoever it was only needed one."

"Fucking A! Who could have done this? Who had access to this list?"

"Well theoretically," said Chloe, thinking out loud, "Only Bee, Kurt, Raff, Me, and you. But I mean fuck, it's a house full of hackers and there are people going in and out of that server room all the time. Anyone who was in there in the past two weeks could've added the names."

"But they had to know we were going to be suspicious. That we'd check the list."

"Which points to someone with more restricted access," she interjected. "Otherwise they would've taken off the names as soon as the invites went out."

"No," Paul said. "They'd have to wait. They invited all four but didn't know who would show up. They'd want to see who made an appearance and then leave their names on the list while deleting everyone else. We'd be even more suspicious if one of them had shown up without being on the list. So they'd have to wait until afterwards in order to make the list match what actually happened."

"Ok, that makes sense," she opened up an IRC window and started pinging Bee again. "So whoever did this shit is going to want to get into the database ASAP and take Greg and the others off. They have to assume we haven't seen it yet since we haven't been home and therefore can't have accessed the secure server."

"Why didn't they change it last night?" asked Paul. "Before Bee could e-mail it to us?"

"Things were chaos over there last night. It was all hands on deck trying to save as much money as possible before the cops and the banks shut everything down. Bee or maybe Kurt was probably sitting on that machine all night. It's got all the bank routing info on it too."

"Which means it probably wasn't Kurt," said Paul.

"Probably not," she agreed.

The computer chimed. Bee was online. The words WHAT'S UP?, appeared on the screen.

Need your help
, typed Chloe.

OK came the response. SHOOT

Covert monitor the secure server and let me know everyone that uses it. Then send me fresh copies of those files again every hour.

WHY?

Too complicated. I'll tell later.

OK. WILL DO.

Thx
, Chloe finished typing and turned to Paul. "That'll give us a record of everyone who logs onto the server
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and we'll get hourly updates of the list to see when the names have been deleted."

"And then we've got him."

"Or her," said Chloe.

"Then what?" asked Paul. "What do you guys do to traitors anyway?"

"Make them walk the fucking plank," she said with a humorless grin. "I don't know. It's never come up before.

We did get fucked over once by an associate - someone we were working with from another crew. We kicked
his ass and ruined his credit."

"A punishment spanning two centuries of jurisprudence," he said.

"We like to mix it up."

"How do you think the others will react when they find out?"

"They'll be pissed. I'll bet..."Just then the computer chimed again. There was another message from Bee on
the IRC window.

WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME? She asked.

I dunno. Soon
, Chloe typed in reply.
Why?

RAFF'S HERE. HE WANTS TO MEET WITH YOU RIGHT AWAY.

He's right there?
Chloe typed.

There was a longer than normal pause, then, HI CHLOE. IT'S RAFF. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU AND PAUL

RIGHT NOW. 911.

Paul looked at the IRC window, which showed everything that Chloe and Bee had typed to each other. "Do
you think he read all that," he asked.

"I hope not, but yeah, probably." She started typing again.
Ok. Where?

DER GROSSE MALL, came the reply. YOU KNOW WHERE.

Yep. Gimme two hours.

OK. CYA.

"Fuck me..." Chloe said under her breath as she concentrated very hard on the screen in front of her,
rereading the exchange.

Chloe clicked the window shut. "What's Der Grosse Mall?" Paul asked.

"You know, the Great Mall. In Milpitas. He wants to meet by the fountain in front of the movie theater."

"Why there? Why not back at the house?"

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"He wants somewhere public. Somewhere that's perceived as neutral ground. Somewhere where there are too
many people for us to easily pick out a tail, but out of sight from the rest of the Crew."

"What do you think he wants?" asked Paul, although he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

"What do you think?" she said. "He wants your fucking money."

"He's our guy?"

"Oh yeah," said Chloe. "Dollars to fucking donuts he's our guy. I don't want to believe it but it's the only thing
that makes sense. Fuck..."

Fury welled up in Paul's breast. His heart was racing but this wasn't another panic attack. This was
adrenaline and anger. He'd liked Raff. Raff had reached out to him when no one else in the Crew would.