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

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 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 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?”

“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. Fucking Raff. He’d been playing Paul all along. 

“What’s the plan?” he asked, ready to do whatever it took.

“I don’t know yet, but whatever we come up with, it better be absolutely fucking brilliant.”

CHAPTER 31

The Great Mall used to be a car factory, and is the biggest attraction in Milpitas, which abuts San Jose just to the north. Unlike most malls, it doesn’t do a very good job of hiding its massive nature from those who approach, because, of course, they used to manufacture cars there. They’ve since spent a fair amount of cash on paint and décor, but the sheer monolithic nature of the place refuses to be hidden. And so, they’d embraced their bulkiness and run with it, self-appointing themselves The Great Mall. This name naturally led to oft-repeated variations by local wits to the effect of “It’s not really all that great a mall.” And Paul agreed; it really wasn’t that great.

However, great or not, for a Wednesday afternoon, it was very crowded. The twenty-screen movie theater had been a later addition – a separate building adjacent to the main structure and connected via a sprawling concrete courtyard with a fountain in its center. Hundreds of people of every size, age, and ethnicity imaginable milled about. Silicon Valley really was the proverbial melting pot, and Milpitas in particular was home to a large population of Asian and Latino immigrants. One of the things Paul liked most about the area was the diversity of cultures and the fact that you were as likely to hear Chinese, Hindi, or Spanish, as you were English. 

One of the things that Paul liked least about Silicon Valley was now standing twenty feet away from him. There was Raff, his thin, lanky body hunched over the fountain, idly flipping pennies into the water jets and watching them fly up into the air and plop back down in the fountain. Showing off his past success, Raff’s trademark polo-shirt bore the Bendix Software logo. He appeared not to have noticed them yet, but Paul was certain this was just a planned pose of nonchalance on his part. Chloe and Paul both glanced around as surreptitiously as possible, searching for other Crew members who might be watching them. Chloe had told him to assume that Raff was working with at least one partner maybe two. Maybe more. Maybe he’d turned the whole Crew against them.

As they closed to within ten feet, Raff finally looked up and smiled at them. One of Raff’s many gifts was his infectious grin, and Paul felt his own mouth turning upwards in response. He went with it and smiled back, holding out his hand to shake Raff’s. 

“Hey there,” said Raff. “How’re you doing? You guys settled in ok up in the mountains?” This was Raff’s way of letting them know that he knew where they’d been, but they’d already expected that he’d figured out at least that much.

“We’re good,” said Paul. “As good as can be expected anyway.”

“You saw the news then,” Raff said, his look turning serious. “That’s a tough break, man. I’m really sorry.”

Chloe interjected at this point. “The question of the hour is; what are we going to fucking do about it?”

“You’re right, that is the question. I’ve been up all night with the rest of the crew trying to save what we could from this scheme of Paul’s, but…” He turned and looked directly into Paul’s eyes. “I’m afraid it’s a bust man. We managed to move out 16k before the banks cracked down.”

“Sixteen thousand?” exclaimed Paul. “That’s all?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry dude, but that’s all we could get safely. There’s a ton of heat on this thing. A freaking ton of heat. With the congressman having been there and all, the feds are coming in on it, too. Treasury, FBI, I don’t know who else. We couldn’t pull down any more without exposing our asses.”

“Ok, it’s a total cock-up,” said Chloe. “That sucks, but now it’s damage control time. We need to figure out a way to deflect this off Paul. Set him up with an alibi for last night. Something.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Raff agreeably. “Maybe find a hotel down in LA and hack their security tape. We should look into that, totally. But right now there’s kind of a more immediate problem.”

“Oh yeah?” said Chloe. “What’s