Geek Mafia: Mile Zero | Page 7

so excited! I want to hear what he's got up his sleeve. We need a little damn excitement around here. We've fallen into a rut. I thought you'd be excited too..."
"I am, I am," Paul assured her, although she suspected that he might be lying. "I'm excited and I'm nervous. You know what I mean."
"Like a teenager on his first date," said Chloe.
"Yeah, sort of."
"Well don't worry. I promise Winston won't try to cop a feel in the back seat." She kissed him then. "But I might, so you better watch yourself." Another kiss. "Come on, let's go. Bee's waiting." She disengaged, turned, and headed straight for the front door.
Chapter 03
BACK at their house by the cemetery, Paul and Chloe found Bee in her room, what Paul referred to as her sanctum sanctorum - although no one else ever got the joke, and he refused to explain the comic book reference. As always, lighting was minimal (as opposed to Bee's workshop out behind the house, which was flooded with fluorescents). A bank of TV sets and computer monitors covered one whole wall, arranged on a precarious system of metal shelves that Bee had installed herself. A low, flat coffee table squatted below the glowing displays, supporting three keyboards, a bank of video editing tools and four different phone carriages. Bee sat in her accustomed place - in the midst of a pile of cushions on the floor, fiddling with a mouse in one hand and typing on one of the keyboards while she talked quietly into her headset.
Paul and Chloe didn't bother to knock as they came in - Bee already knew they were there. Paul glanced at one of the screens mounted on the wall. Its display, divided into four quadrants, showed various images from inside the house, including the front door they'd just come through and the stairs they'd just climbed. The screen next to it - which Paul himself had salvaged from a bar on Duval that'd recently renovated into a finedining restaurant - showed images from four other cameras that covered the house's exterior. Nothing happened within fifty yards of their Crew's house that Bee didn't see, and if she had her way, that omniscience would soon extend to cover the entire island.
"So, Bee, how goes Project Big Brother?" Paul asked.
"I wish you wouldn't call it that," she replied.
"Sorry, but I have to call it something."
"You could call it something nice. Big Brother sounds so mean."
"What's mean about a reality show?" said Paul, joking.
"What isn't bad about a reality show?" countered Chloe, stepping in to defend her friend.
"Hmm, you got me there. Although there's an idea! Maybe that's how we can find more members for our Crew - have a reality-showstyle elimination contest. The winner gets a place in our outlaw life of crime."
"It's actually not the worst idea you've ever had," Chloe said. "I can think of worse, anyway."
"Are you talking about the turkeys? I thought turkeys could fly."
"Oh my God," said Bee. "Was that a WKRP in Cincinnati reference?"
"Guilty as charged," admitted Paul, chuckling.
"Fuck, you two watched too much TV as kids," said Chloe.
"What've you got for us, Bee-Bop?" Chloe asked, plopping down in the pile of cushions beside the short, stocky Asian engineer.
"Take a look," she said, eyes never leaving the screen, "at this."
Over the past six months, Bee had pressed the rest of the Crew into helping her plant hidden security cameras all over the most heavily trafficked areas of Key West. Paul had originally balked at the idea of so blatantly invading the populace's privacy. He didn't mind conning a select few of them out of their cash now and then, but the camera thing was so indiscriminate - it caught everybody. But Chloe had really liked the idea and pointed out that cops in other cities were putting surveillance cameras up and that she trusted herself a whole lot more than she trusted the police to use them responsibly. Sandee wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea, but Sandee loved being on camera and went along with Bee and Chloe in the end. Outvoted, Paul went along with the plan and had spent more than a few hours of late wearing a Verizon Telephone Services nametag and installing cameras hidden inside innocuous looking metal boxes on telephone poles all over old town. Actually, he'd spent far less time doing this than the others had, mostly because he wasn't very good with the electronics part and Bee had to keep fixing his mistakes.
Right now one of those cameras was showing the entrance to Artist's Alley, a row of small galleries and shops near the marina. The image was tinted green because of the night vision (in fact, there were two cameras in the boxes - one for day, one for night), and