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Runoff, Chapter 1 - The Midnight Ride of John Deere
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Runoff
How much does it cost to fix an election? August Riordan\\u2014private investigator, jazz bass player, smart ass with a foolish heart\\u2014is going to find out. He\\u2019s been hired by Leonora Lee, the all-powerful \\u201cDragon Lady\\u201d of San Francisco\\u2019s Chinatown, to investigate the results of the city\\u2019s recent mayoral election. It seems the Dragon Lady\\u2019s candidate failed to even carry the Chinese precincts, and she\\u2019s convinced that someone must have rigged the outcome by hacking the city\\u2019s newly installed touch-screen voting machines.
A runoff between the two remaining candidates is days away, but it takes Riordan mere hours to find the Director of Elections dead in his office. A visit to the offices of Columbia Voting Systems\\u2014the suppliers of the city\\u2019s touch-screen machines\\u2014results in another corpse. A wide range of political interests share a stake in the election, so Riordan\\u2019s got plenty of suspects.
But when the Dragon Lady\\u2019s beautiful daughter is attacked after giving Riordan a goodnight kiss, it starts to get personal. Soon, Riordan is in a race not only against the runoff deadline, but against powerful political movers and shakers, Chinatown gang members, and crazed anarchists, with only his techno-savvy, cross-dressing friend Chris to help.
The cost of fixing an election runs to as many lives as it does dollars, and if Riordan isn\\u2019t careful, the price for un-fixing it may be more than he can afford\\u2026
"1930s Seedy Street Music" by AstroFreq.
\\xa0In Chapter 1,\\xa0 Riordan stakes out the Bank of Canton in San Francisco\\u2019s Chinatown in hopes of catching a thief using heavy equipment to steal bank ATMs.\\xa0
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