Geek Mafia, Rick Dakan [books that read to you .TXT] 📗

anything for him (which didn’t stop him from loading up with the past week’s new comics). Becoming a criminal mastermind wasn’t turning out to be as easy as he’d thought it would be.

He found a seat in a coffee shop called Latitude 23.5 and plopped his sketchbook down on the table. Maybe his pen would provide some inspiration, since his brain seemed to be failing him just now. He started sketching the panoply of interesting people that walked by on the sidewalk. Everyone from homeless hippies to dotcom millionaires wandered up and down Pacific Ave. Across the street a man in a clown suit set up shop with a cart full of balloons. Paul sketched him as he started making inflated animals for passing children. 

The kids seemed happy with the clown’s creations, and the parents dutifully paid the man for his work. In the pages of his sketchbook however, the clown was a terrifying creature, his teeth ragged and broken, with tusks like a wild boar. His wild wig had insects crawling in and out of it, and his ragged costume had ominous stains on it. He had a barrel of toxic waste at his side, which he used to fill the balloons before twisting them into demonic forms and hurling them at terrified children. After an hour or so, Paul looked back at his dozen or so toxic clown sketches and shut the sketchbook in anger. They were good, very good even. But they weren’t a plan and they wouldn’t get him in the crew. He decided to head back to Chloe’s.

Back on Highway 17, Paul tried putting his iPod on shuffle. Maybe when he heard the right piece of music, inspiration would finally strike. Highway17 is a four lane highway that winds up and over the Santa Cruz Mountains and back down into Silicon Valley. It can be treacherous in fog or rain, but on a sunny day like today, between rush hours, it was kind of fun to drive. Hints of vertigo overtook him on some of the tighter turns; especially when the road dropped off precipitously to his right. A flat-land Florida boy by birth, he still wasn’t quite used to all this three-dimensional road stuff. 

Near the halfway point, at the highway’s summit, there’s a brief run of nearly flat road before it starts its descent towards Los Gatos and points north. A large, late-model Ford Taurus that Paul had been oblivious to chose that moment to stop following Paul and instead run him off the road. 

As always on this road, Paul was in the right-hand lane. The sedan sped up suddenly and then whipped around Paul’s left before pulling back into the right hand lane and slamming on the breaks. Paul had just enough time to notice the faded pro-Rush Limbaugh sticker (RUSH is RIGHT) on the car’s bumper before he slammed on his own breaks and involuntarily spun his wheel to the right then back to the left. Both cars skidded and screeched to a halt; Paul’s own vehicle showering sparks as it ground against the guardrail. 

When Paul finally stopped screaming he realized that he wasn’t careening off the cliff side and therefore was going to be ok. He rethought that assessment a moment later when he saw the driver of the offending Taurus fling open his car door and come running back towards him. It was the older, gaunt man who’d tackled him yesterday.

“Oh shit!” he said. The car had stalled out and Paul quickly restarted it. But before he could throw it in reverse the man was at the car door that, he only now realized, was not locked. With his left arm the attacker swung the door open. With his right he grabbed Paul by the hair and yanked him out of the car.

Two years of Tae Kwon Do in college had taught Paul one thing – he didn’t know how to fight worth a shit. He flailed at the surprisingly strong man, who still wore the same suit and shirt Paul had last seen him in. There were even grass stains on the left side. Somewhere in his mind Paul suspected that the man probably hadn’t slept nearly as well as he had last night. But most of his brain was working right along with his mouth and screaming “FUUUUUCK!” as he got slammed hard into the side of his own car. 

“Where is she, you little shitbrain? Where is she?” He didn’t give Paul a chance to answer before he slammed him into the car once more. “Where’s Erica?” That would have to be the CFO’s daughter, he assumed. 

“She’s fine!” Paul tried to shout, although he found shouting difficult between the man’s hand on his throat and the fact that he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “They never really kidnapped her! She’s in Hollywood! On vacation!”

“What?” said the attacker, his voice a mixture of anger and confusion. “Say that again.”

“They never kidnapped her!” croaked Paul. “They just sent her on a free vacation and gave her a new cell phone!”

The attacker looked, at best, confused. Still angry of course, but also confused. “Where? Where can we reach her?”

“I don’t know! I was just the pickup guy.”

Not happy with this answer, the attacker slammed Paul back against the car and ever so slightly tightened his grip on Paul’s throat. He really was in great shape for his age, and he had to be pushing sixty. For the first time in his life Paul thought that maybe he should’ve stuck with that whole martial arts thing. If he got out of this he’d look into taking lessons. Assuming he got out of this.

“Excuse me, guys. Can you give me a hand here?” asked a female voice from far, far away. Paul thought he recognized it, but the lack of oxygen in his brain was starting to make everything seem kind of dim. “I’m so glad I found someone stopped here!” the voice continued, getting closer. “My car broke down and I can’t get any reception on my cell up here. Can you guys give me a lift?”

Didn’t she see that they’d had an accident and that this guy was choking him? The attacker seemed to be asking himself the same question as he began to loosen his grip on Paul’s throat. At last! He could breathe again! On the down side, the slackened grip also released a fierce coughing bout that made his throat ache even more, only this time from the inside out.

When he looked up, the woman was just a few yards away. More importantly, the woman was a black-haired, bespeckled clone of Chloe wearing an oversized green sweater. As more oxygen finally made its way to his brain, Paul realized that this was probably not a clone at all, but the actual Chloe in a wig.

 

“What was that,” said the old man. “I didn’t hear you.” He was stalling for time. Suspicious. 

“I need help with my car,” she said, pointing to a car Paul had never seen before that was pulled over to the side of the road about fifty yards ahead. “Can you give me a lift to the next exit?” She continued walking towards them and was now just a foot away.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we just had a little fender bender of our own,” the man said. “We need to exchange some insurance information and what not.”

“Oh my!” said Chloe. “Is everyone OK? I’m a nurse. Maybe I should check you two out to make sure there’s no neck injuries or anything.” She took another step forward, almost inserting herself between the man and Paul.

“No, no, we’re both fine,” he insisted. “Just a little shook up is all…”

“Wow, he looks really hurt,” she said, peering closely at the red marks around Paul’s neck. She gingerly touched the side of his face with her left hand and applied just enough pressure to turn his head to one side. “Look at this here,” she said as she leaned close. “That’s really something.”

The old man hesitated a moment and then, just to be polite, leaned forward to look. It was all Chloe needed. Unseen by either of the two men, a stun gun slipped down the sleeve of her sweater and into her right hand. In one smooth motion she activated it and jammed the two prods into the back of the old man’s exposed neck, dropping him to his knees in an instant.

She grabbed Paul’s wrist and pulled him behind her, racing for her car. They were in and on their way before the man could even lift his head to watch them escape. Paul looked back through the rearview mirror and saw the attacker struggle to his feet and curse as they drove out of sight.

“So,” said Chloe as she maneuvered the car down the winding road towards home. “What’ve you been up to today?”

As his heart ever so gradually began to slow down, Paul thought back to the last sight he’d seen before the fucker had run him off the road. The Goddamned “RUSH is RIGHT” sticker. Of course the bastard was a right-wing talk radio fan. He always knew the Republicans were out to get him.

“I’ve been looking for inspiration,” Paul said. “What about you?”

“Just following you around.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“No problem, sport,” She said, turning up the stereo. “You know I’ve always got my eye on your backside.”

CHAPTER 21

“He must’ve staked out Paul’s car at the park,” said Chloe. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“I guess that has to be it,” agreed Raff. “Chloe, I’m really sorry I let this happen. I mean…”

“It’s Paul you should be fucking apologizing to. And me. And the whole Crew. What if he’d found us here, huh? What if he’d shown up at the house – we’d be well and truly fucked then wouldn’t we? It would be fucking Fremont all over again.”

“I know. I know! I feel just super shitty about the whole thing.”

“Let’s just move on to the damage control. I need you to take care of Paul’s car. It’s stuck on the side of 17 and has to have attracted police by now. If we’re lucky it hasn’t been towed yet, but I wouldn’t count on it staying that way very long. Paul left his keys in the ignition, so you might have to hotwire it if our mysterious new friend took them.” 

From the hallway where he stood eavesdropping, Paul heard Raff open the front door. “I’m on my way.”

“Fuck me,” sighed Chloe after the door closed. “What a clusterfuck.”

Paul moved from his hiding place and into the living room. “Am I ever going to see that car again?”

She looked up at him with a wan smile. “Sorry, but probably not. We’ll turn it into some cash for you, though. And we might be able to get into the DMV records and muss things up with the registration, but if this guy was a real PI he probably already knows who you are.”

“That can’t be good.”

“No, not really. On the plus side, by running you off the road and choking you he’s now broken more laws than we have, so he’s not likely to go to the cops. Plus Bee heard on the phone taps that the daughter has called in to her dad, so their main motivation for coming after you is gone.” 

“Huh,” snorted Paul. “Cold comfort.” He plopped down on the couch next to Chloe, who swung her legs up so that they rested on his lap. He started to idly rub her bare feet. “So here’s a question for you, Chloe…” 

“Why