Geek Mafia: Mile Zero (45 page)

"I don't trust Win alone with Bee," she said.

"Neither do I."

"Can you go with them to the car while I get Sandee and the other guy?"

"Yeah," Paul said. "I'll pull around and meet you guys on Olivia Street."

"Great," she said and, wanting to give him a kiss for luck she realized they were both still wearing gasmasks.

She tore hers off and handed it to him. "Don't forget to take this off." He did, they kissed, and then went in opposite directions.

The fence screened the door to the shed from the street, which gave her a bit or privacy, at least for the moment. She knocked on the door and called out to Sandee, who let her in after quizzing her about the last tantric sex position he'd taught her and Paul. Inside, the killer was where she'd left him, sitting handcuffed to a chair in the middle of the room.

"We need to get out of here, the cops are coming," she told Sandee.

"What happened?" he asked even as he moved to unbind their captive from the chair and get him on his feet.

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"Eddie and his fucks broke down our door. Bee set off the tear-gas bomb in the living room. The neighbors are worried, but we shut down the phones."

"There was a tear-gas bomb in the living room?"

"You didn't know?"

"I thought she was joking when she told me," said Sandee, hauling the killer to his feet.

"She doesn't fuck around when it comes to security," said Chloe.

"I guess not."

"Paul's going to meet you with the car on Olivia Street. Go out the back way."

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I'm going to stay here and find some way to convince the cops not to search our house."

"No," said Sandee. "You should go with this creep. I'll talk to the cops."

"Are you sure?" Chloe asked, although she was glad Sandee had volunteered for the duty.

"I grew up here. Odds are I'll know at least one of them. Besides, it's my name on the lease." That last part was true. Although Keys Condos and Estates owned the house, Sandee, as the only person using a real identity, was the name on all the rental paperwork. "I'll meet up with you later."

"Thanks, hon," said Chloe, taking the killer by his good arm and leading him to the door. "We'll be at the safe house in New Town. And try not to let the firemen hose the place down. There's a lot of smoke but no fire."

"I'll think of something to distract them," he said with a wink. Chloe smiled and marched her prisoner toward the backyard. It was getting dark finally, and she was glad to have to have the cover of night for what was her umpteenth crime during the last few days. Was kidnapping a killer really a chargeable offense? She hoped she never found out.

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Chapter 37

PAUL thought about what a motley group they made, stuffed into the Honda Civic as it pulled into the apartment complex in New Town. They stank of tear gas, and their party included a scruffy looking man with his hand in a sling, a short Asian girl in her pajamas and an old guy wearing nothing but a bathrobe. The "safe house" was an apartment out on 11th Street, well beyond the quaint old houses and crowded streets of Old Town. It could've been an apartment building in any city in Florida or the whole country for that matter. Not close to the beach or tourist attractions, it was the kind of place locals lived (those who could still afford to live on the island).

The apartment, one of the Keys Condos' properties, was a one-bedroom on the first floor. It was stuffy and hot, but had a phone, Internet connection and a stash of emergency supplies hidden behind a false panel in the bedroom closet. It did not have any furniture. The group collapsed into separate heaps in the living room, with Winston choosing to sit right next to his murderous friend, Jacob. Paul and Chloe sat with their backs against the opposite wall, facing the two older men. Bee dumped a box of laptops and cell phones beside the pass-through counter that separated the small kitchen from the slightly less-small living/dining room area. She plugged in a laptop and started to fire it up.

"Does anyone need anything?" Paul asked. "A glass of water or something."

"I could still use that water," Jacob said.

Paul stared at him and then pointed toward the kitchen with his thumb.

"The kitchen's right there." The man looked over and seemed to consider whether it was worth the pain of getting back up and decided against it. He frowned and just looked down into his chest.

"May I use a phone?" Winston asked. "I'm going to check in with my people and let them know..."

"No one's calling anyone until we decide what the fuck we're going to do," Chloe said.

Winston started to say something, stopped himself, then started again. "I thought we'd settled on a plan. I gave you contacts. We all go our separate ways."

"That won't work anymore," said Paul. He'd been thinking of nothing but the complications that Eddie's attack raised, and he was convinced that they couldn't just ignore Isaiah and the others or spin them some wild tale.

Not after Eddie told them what he knew. "Isaiah's going to know that we have your friend Jacob and that we've been hiding him from the others. And he's not going to just let that go."

"I don't see that as a problem," said Winston. "We can be on a boat and out of..."

"And what about us?" Paul asked. "We're supposed to get on a boat with you as well? Give up everything we've built here?"

"Yes," said Winston. "If you can find a way to forgive me, then..."

"We can't," said Chloe, cutting him off. "We're not getting on any boat with the two of you." Paul knew how hard it must be for Chloe to say that about her old friend. Hell, it was hard for him to hear such anger in her voice directed at someone she loved. Or maybe used to love. But she was right, there was no way they were getting on a boat with these two.

"We need a new plan," Paul said. "One that includes making Isaiah a happy man. Or at least a satisfied one."

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"The only thing that's going to make him happy at this point is if we turn Jacob over to him," Winston said.

"And I'm not prepared to do that."

"Why not?" asked Paul.

"What kind of question is that? He's my comrade. One of my people. We don't betray our own. I know you've learned at least that much in this life of yours."

"But he killed a woman. An innocent woman..."

"In self-defense," Winston protested.

"And he tried to kill that other woman, Jeanie. He stabbed her with a damned screwdriver, for God's sake.

And tried to get me as well."

"You were attacking him..."

"He stabbed her in the back!" Paul shouted. "Came up behind her like an assassin and stabbed her in the freaking back. That's not self-defense." 284 Geek Mafia: Mile Zero Winston looked over at Jacob, who was still staring down into his chest. "I'm sure there's more to the story than that. This Jeanie person might not have been attacking him at that moment, but she and Raff obviously had more planned. Jacob was just doing..."

"What?" asked Paul. "What was Jacob doing? Why did he meet her in that garden?"

Winston turned away from them all and looked out the window. "They were just supposed to talk," he said.

"Just to see if there was any way of buying them off. That's all."

"I'm real sorry about that, Win," Jacob said, speaking up for the first time. Everyone stared at him in surprise.

"I didn't mean for it to happen that way, you know. It's just, she was being so pig-headed and then she started calling me names and..."

"It doesn't matter," said Winston, putting an assuring hand on his friend's shoulder. "I'm not giving up on you."

"Maybe you should," Jacob replied. "You shoulda just let me be in my cabin. I'm not fit for anything but jail or the wilderness. Just like any other animal."

"That's them talking, Jake," Winston said. "The establishment. Twentyfive years of their brainwashing and it's no wonder you're a little shaken up. But I'll help you through this. We all will..."

"I don't know," said Jacob. "I think I'm just broke. All I wanna do is stab or hit anything that gets in my way.

That's just how I am now."

"That's how they made you," Winston insisted.

"Don't matter. It's still how I am."

Paul understood the two men and their relationship now, and understanding made him all the more worried about Jacob. "You were in prison for twenty-five years," he said. "What for?"

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Jacob focused his tired gaze on Paul. "Armed robbery. Murder. We was robbing a bank in Louisville. Stealing some money for the cause, you know? And this security guard decided to be the hero. And one of my friends shot him. Shot him down. But we all five went up for the murder."

"You were in the Weather Underground with Winston?" Chloe asked.

"Yeah, but this was after. It was another group. The People's Front for Social Justice. More radical."

"More radical than blowing things up?" asked Paul.

"There's a lot of ways of blowing things up. Who knows how we would've been? But we weren't around long enough. We got pinched."

Paul did some quick math in his head. The Weathermen were all gone by 1980. If this other group came after... "Jesus, you can't have been out of prison very long."

"Three months," Jacob said.

"Three months! Fuck," said Paul.

Chloe directed her anger at Winston once more. "You brought a convicted murderer with only three months straight time into a situation like this? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"He needed a family," Winston snapped back. "And I'm all he's got left. He wanted to play a role in the group, so I let him. He's one of us, and we have a lot of history together. I trust him, and that's all you should need to know."

"Yeah, that worked out real well," Chloe said, her voice dripping with acid. "He went in a radical bank robber and came out a woman killer. That's real great."

"I didn't mean to kill that first lady," Jacob protested. "Things just got out of hand. She jumped out at me, and I just went on autopilot, you know?"

"Not really," Chloe said. "I've never killed anyone on autopilot. Or at all." Out of the corner of his eye Paul saw Bee flinch and look down as Chloe spoke. Bee had killed someone and still carried around a lot of guilt.

Paul hoped she didn't think she was anything like this Jacob bastard.

"You've never been in prison for twenty-five years," said Winston.

"Which is kind of exactly my point."

Jacob kept talking as if he hadn't heard them bicker. "And the other woman. She was just talking circles around me and I got confused, and then when she turned her back on me, she gave me this look. This look of contempt. Like the guards might give. Or the younger cons. Like I was nothing. And..." his voice trailed off.

"And you stabbed her," said Paul. "With a screwdriver."

"I did," he admitted with an angry whisper.

"None of this matters," Winston insisted. "I'm not turning him over."

"You've got to," said Chloe. "Don't you see? He killed that lady. Killed her for no good reason. And almost Chapter 37

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killed another. It's not safe for him to be out doing this kind of thing. It's not the way..."

Paul jumped in as well. "And it's not like we're saying that we're going to turn him over to the cops. We're just going to go to Isaiah and tell him what happened. Tell him that this is the guy who killed Raquel but that he did it in self defense. We don't have to tell Isaiah about anything else. What's he going to do? Call the cops?

Arrest you?"

"He might decide to take his own justice," Winston said.

"Maybe I'm saying this the wrong way," said Paul. "I'm not talking about turning him over to Isaiah. I'm talking about the four of us going to Isaiah and laying it all out, just for the sake of clearing up the mystery.

Once he knows what really happened, he can be sure that there was not in fact a security leak in the group.

He's safe to proceed with his plan. That will placate him a little bit."

"What about Eddie?" Chloe asked. "He's not likely to be in anything resembling a forgiving mood."

"Eddie's how we placate Isaiah the rest of the way," said Paul, the plan starting to come together in his mind.

"Isaiah made it pretty clear to me last time we talked alone that he doesn't think very much of Eddie the man -

he just wants access to his Crew's contacts and resources. Well, you saw how Marco and Eddie were arguing in front of the house. And I saw tension between them back at the church meeting too."

"I noticed that as well," Winston added.

"So we've got an opening there. Something we can exploit. We just need some way to drive them apart."

"What about Raff and his friend?" suggested Bee. She'd been typing away on her laptop, and Paul hadn't thought she was really paying any attention, but he should've known better. All Bee did was pay attention.

"What about them?" Paul asked.

"We could maybe make a deal with them."

"I don't know about that," Winston said, his voice wary. "Our last meeting with them didn't go so well."

"That was your last meeting with them," Paul said. "We haven't tried to kill them lately. That was you guys.

Hell, I saved her life. Go on, Bee, what're you thinking?"

"Well, all that stuff Raff told me at the Garden of Eden. Mostly it was lies and stuff, I know that. But you know, we were wrong about them too. They had nothing to do with murdering Raquel. But it is Raff we're talking about. He's going to want what's best for him. If he wasn't loyal to Chloe and us, he's not going to stick up for a jerk like Eddie."

"So we get at Eddie and Marco through Raff," mused Paul. "It could work." And indeed it could. He'd have to swallow his pride some and play up to Raff 's ego. It would be slightly humiliating (or maybe more than slightly), but it would be worth it. He thought he could see a way through. The plan was beginning to gel in his head.

"One big problem," said Chloe. "We don't have any way to contact Raff or Jeanie."