Red Team Blues: An Anti-Finance Finance Thriller

My next novel, *Red Team Blues*, comes out on April 25. It's an "anti-finance finance thriller," a read-it-in-one-sitting thriller about a 67-year-old forensic accountant who gets embroiled in a deadly and violent cryptocurrency heist:https://t.co/fnfbGtfB60

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on https://t.co/iSBh8srvly, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:https://t.co/QrS7wUa05L

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

To whet your appetite for it, I'm serializing chapter one, where we meet Marty Hench, and get introduced to the one last job that he needs to do to finish his 40 year career as Silicon Valley's best high-tech forensic accountant.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Today, I'm publishing part two. Here's the previous installment:https://t.co/AFkT2nILC8

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Here's where US readers can pre-order the book:https://t.co/fnfbGtfB60

Here's pre-orders for Canadians:https://t.co/A6cF4qote2

And for readers in the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth:https://t.co/MqNXkxHcrW

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

And now, here's today's serial installment:

The Camino Real had excellent security, as well as all the amenities: pool, gym, and spring-­loaded seismic dampers deep in the bedrock, that turned the place into a bouncy castle when the San Andreas Fault got indigestion.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

It was steps to California Avenue and five Michelin-star restaurants—­one with three stars, two with two—­and it cost him eight million, plus furnishings, which Sethu oversaw..

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

...going all in on Danish woods for a midcentury modern feel that went great with the rooftop garden that came with the penthouse unit.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Sethu got him interested in trying all that Michelin star food, a far cry from ramen and slightly irregular breakfast cereals, and from there, it was the chefs’ tables...

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

...and then the private cooking classes, and then a major reno to the penthouse to fit it out with a kitchen that would have made Heston Blumenthal gasp and twirl.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

They spent the month that the renos took in an exclusive lodge near a slightly active Costa Rican volcano, checking out the bromeliads and howler monkeys.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

He came back bronzed and fit from all that volcano hiking and became one of the great chefs of the new aristocracy, even pulling out the old alt.gourmand posts from the prehistory of Usenet. I don’t know when they became a couple, but I imagine it was a natural thing.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Danny had a big heart, and he’d loved Galit with all of it, and with Galit gone and Danny still around, his heart wasn’t going to sit idly. Sethu is beautiful and brilliant and good at what she does...

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

...and those were all the traits that attracted Danny to Galit in the first place. The Camino Real’s security gave me the twice-­over and then emitted me.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

The elevator doors gave a sophisticated sigh and welcomed me in, and the buttonless panel lit up *PH*, and my blood pooled a little in my feet as I attained liftoff.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Danny looked at least ten years younger than the last time I’d seen him, craggy but handsome, and the pounds he’d put on had only filled him out so he wasn’t such an ectomorphic scarecrow.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

He’d definitely been hitting the kettlebells, too, and his tight Japanese tee clung just enough that I could see he’d gotten some definition in his pecs and biceps. That’s hard muscle to acquire once you hit your fifties. Someone had been making Danny put in his reps.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Danny’s an intense guy who believed so fiercely in the significance and beauty and urgency of cryptography that he could easily captivate a roomful of people with an impromptu lecture on the subject, and he would not relinquish that hold until they all had to leave.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

He wasn’t a bore, but he wasn’t exactly normal, and yet as far as I knew, everyone who’d ever become personally acquainted with him liked him. A lot.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“Well, you don’t look like a man who got through a prix fixe at the Palmier. Even with the flights, you shouldn’t be that bilious, Mart. What’d you do, stop for Oreos on the way back to your double-­wide?”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

I let this pour over me as he showed me into the foyer and I shucked my scuffed old loafers, the ones I saved for personal days when I didn’t have to impress a client.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“First of all, Lazer, the *Unsalted Hash* is a forty-­foot, state-­of-­the-­art touring bus with seven feet of internal clearance, an induction range, a deep freeze, and a sound system that can set off car alarms for a block. It is *not* a double-­wide.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“Secondly, the Palmier was great, and I didn’t get the prix fixe—­I got a taster at the chef’s table with a friend, and we stayed up later than we should have, and I still managed to drag myself here for a business conference at this unholy hour.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

"I’m running on three hours’ sleep and digesting a good three-­ thousand-­calorie dinner, is all.

“Finally, I don’t stop for Oreos, ever. I have a supply of 1995-­vintage Hydroxes in one of the deep freezes.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

"The original recipe contains all those great trans fats that make for excellent long-­term frozen flavor and texture retention. I would offer you a package, but I won’t, because they are mine, and I treasure them beyond all reason...

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

"...and plan to make my stash last until I can no longer consume solid food, whereupon I plan to consume the balance in smoothie form.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

He took my shoes and tossed them into a closet and slammed the door, making a face, then burst out laughing and grabbed me in a bear hug that reminded me of those new biceps of his. “Man, it’s good to see you, Marty. Come in, come in. We’ll go out onto the roof.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

I got a quick tour of a lot of teak and curves and angles, like a set dresser had been given an unlimited budget to decorate the boss’s office on a midcentury period drama.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Then he opened a sliding door out onto the roof-­deck, which had some very nice landscaping and potted shrubs, a meandering stream patrolled by fat koi and fed by a two-­foot waterfall, some comfortable-­ looking and elegant teak loungers, and Sethu.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

She had an easel set up and was painting in oils, an impressionistic landscape of Palo Alto’s nimbified one-­family houses and dinky main street.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

It was a couple of billion dollars’ worth of real estate dressed up as middle-­class houses from the same midcentury dreamland as the furnishings in the living room.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

She turned and saw us and narrowed her eyes, just a tiny amount, before cleaning her brushes and hanging up her smock on the easel’s corner.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“Hi, hon,” she said. “This must be your friend Mr. Hench.” Danny beamed at her, an expression I remembered from his most successful demos, that prideful look he got when his code performed some miracle. “Marty, I don’t know if you ever met Sethu, back in the old days.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“I don’t know that we were ever introduced properly,” I said. She’d let me in, once or twice, when I’d come by to see if I could pull Danny out of his tailspin. But she’d been his PA then.

“Well, in that case, Sethuramani Lazer, meet Martin Hench. Marty, meet Sethu.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

I’m pretty sure my facial expression didn’t change when he dropped that last name on me. I’d already noticed the rock on her finger, of course—­a bachelor of my age and experience takes note of these things automatically, without conscious intervention.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

I’m pretty sure what Danny said next was that same pride speaking, not a failure of my poker face.

“Married her last year. Or rather, she married me, despite being significantly out of my league.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“Lucky fella,” I said. “Congrats to both of you.”

He got us settled into loungers, and Sethu mentioned that she was going in for lemonade and offered us some.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

She brought it out in sweating tall glasses with silicone straws and then went back to her easel, far enough away that it wouldn’t seem odd not to include her in our conversation.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

I sipped as Danny scrolled his phone for a moment, double-­checked his notes, and took Sethu in. She was beautiful, of course, but I’d known that since I’d first met her at the door of that teardown that Danny had settled into as his final resting place.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Now, though, she had the kind of haircut that some very bright topiarist had charged her at least a thousand bucks for, and with it, the kind of poise I associate with very beautiful, very accomplished women who are also very, very rich.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Something in the posture, a kind of deep relaxation that you rarely see. Having a very deep cash buffer can give a woman the same tranquility as any middling specimen of manhood gets for free, the liberation from casual predation that men don’t even notice.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

Danny put his phone down at last. “So I hear you did some work recently? Bonwick. Rearden Factoring?”

I nodded. “Yeah, Brian and I did some business, but it’s not the kind of thing I can discuss. You know that. He lost something, I found it, and I made him whole.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

He snorted. “Marty, you don’t make people whole. Your commission still 25%?”

“It is,” I said. “And I still don’t charge anything to take a job, not even expenses or a retainer. I take the risk, I get the reward. That’s a proposition I think you probably relate to.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“I’m familiar with the general idea.” He looked around at his penthouse garden, his beautiful young wife, his view of the strivers of Palo Alto and their *Leave It to Beaver* houses...

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

...all a testament to his willingness to take all the risk and his unwillingness to share his rewards. “You ever take payment in crypto?”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“I prefer fiat”—­this being the cutesy word that crypto weirdos use for real money—­“I have smart accountants who keep my tax bite down to a manageable slice, and I’ve got no other reason to accept distributed sudoku puzzles in lieu of greenbacks.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“I prefer fiat”—­this being the cutesy word that crypto weirdos use for real money—­“I have smart accountants who keep my tax bite down to a manageable slice, and I’ve got no other reason to accept distributed sudoku puzzles in lieu of greenbacks.”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“Very funny,” he said. Cryptocurrency hustlers hate it when you point out that the whole blockchain emits billions of tons of CO2 to help repeatedly compute pointless mathematical puzzles. “You’re familiar with how crypto works, though, right?”

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

“Danny, I love you like a brother, but I hope I’m not about to get a sales pitch for Trustlesscoin.” The only sour note in the previous night’s dinner had been a couple of bros at the chef’s table who spent the first hour talking about smart contracts.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023

It was a hazard of any public space in SV, and I accepted it with good grace, but I wouldn’t tolerate it in private places. Life is too short.

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— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) April 18, 2023