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Chapter 44
CAMPING AND THE BALL
February 2013
I
can’t remember if I told you,” DPR wrote to Inigo. “But I’ll be gone until Sunday afternoon.”
Ross was relieved to be getting away. The past few weeks had been a complete disaster. He had
even wondered if there was something wrong with him. In his online world nothing was going right.
His employees were screwing up all over the place (including Variety Jones, who had failed to
deliver some new security code on time). And his off-line world wasn’t much better, given that he
was single and lonely and couldn’t seek advice from anyone he actually trusted.
On top of his melancholic state of mind, he had discovered that in addition to Curtis Green
stealing $350,000 a couple of weeks earlier, someone else had purloined another $800,000 in a
different heist.
Eight. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. Just gone. That was more than $1.15 million stolen in a
matter of days. Luckily for Ross, a million dollars was now just a small fraction of his savings, but it
still stung. There had been a reprisal, of course. And DPR had finally put a hit out on Green. The cost
wasn’t too insane, either: $40,000 up front and another $40,000 after he was dead.
The decision hadn’t been easy. That was for sure. But he was convinced that it was the right one;
illustrating to the world that society could be safer by legalizing drugs was more important than the
life of a man who might squeal to the Feds. Plus, Green had broken the rules of DPR’s world. There
had to be consequences. Without them there would be chaos.
Before leaving town, DPR sent Inigo one last message, instructing him to “hold down the fort for
me.” Then Ross closed his laptop, leaving DPR hidden within the encryption software he had
installed on his computer. There would be no need for him where Ross was going for the next few
days. He grabbed his bag and left his apartment.
San Francisco’s temperature had clung to the high forties most of the day, yet Ross was dressed
as if he were going to the beach, not up north for a two-day hike in the wilderness. His fellow
campers had planned appropriately. Selena, whose birthday they were celebrating, was bundled up
with woolly socks and a thick scarf. René was wrapped three layers thick, like a piece of precious
porcelain about to be shipped in the mail. And Kristal, Selena’s sister who was in town from