Ch. 44 – Tailgating

There were a few men loitering near the entrance to the apartment building as Bettie, her son, Derrick, and Xavier approached.

One of them was wearing a suit, and had applied a lot of glossy—almost reflective—hair gel. He looked out of place, talking to the men in t-shirts, shorts, or unbuttoned plaid. The men stopped talking as the front door to the lobby came into view, and they stared at Derrick and Xavier.

“Hello, boys,” Bettie said. “Don’t mind us, we’re just taking a look through the building.”

“Who’re those two?” a man wearing a bandana and camouflage pants asked.

“A couple of new paying customers,” Bettie replied. “Been a while since I had some of those.”

The man and his friends sniggered, the one in the suit laughing along awkwardly a step later than the rest of them. “Well congratulations, Bettie.”

Bettie flipped her hair and started rummaging through her purse. “Laugh all you want, boys. I’ll have the whole town eating out of my palm, soon.” She nudged her son Tommie. “Go ahead and call your friend on the intercom, Tommie.”

The large boy pressed a small button near the Beacon reader, then a series of digits on the number pad—presumably his friend’s apartment number—and shouted into the intercom. “Zach, I’m here!”

A few seconds later, the door unlocked with a click, and Bettie pulled the handle open, tugging Tommie along with the other hand. “In we go now.”

The group of them stepped over the threshold into the apartment, with Derrick bringing up the rear.

Maxine’s voice crackled through the earpiece. “Derrick, did you find a way to infiltrate? I see you moving inside the building.”

Derrick replied as silently as he could with an ‘mmhm’, and then faked clearing his throat afterwards. He closed the door shut behind him, finally cutting off the stares from the men outside, and was immediately hit with the scent of cleaning chemicals. “Does anyone else smell that?”

Bettie paused, and turned around, her nose up to the air. “Hm? What’s that? I don’t smell anything.”

The apartment itself was clean, except for an abandoned soft drink cup sitting on the floor by the elevators. There wasn’t an open container of chlorine, so the chemical smell wasn’t coming from anywhere obvious.

Xavier wrinkled his nose, and started fanning the air with his hand. “Whewwww, I smell that shit. It is unpleasant.”

The scent wasn’t that strong, but it was pervasive, clinging to the back of Derrick’s throat.

“Ohh, now that you mention it, I did notice that the first time we came over,” Bettie said, pressing the up button for the elevator. “My friend told me they do a lot of cleaning here.” She shrugged. “Since then, I haven’t paid it much mind.”

Tommie bounced on his toes, swinging his mother’s arm. “This elevator is so slowwwww. Can we push the other button?” He pointed towards the call button for the other elevator.

“No, Tommie. That is not polite. Other people need to use the elevators too! We don’t even live here, so we need to respect the people who do.”

Ding. The doors to the elevator that Tommie was pointing to opened up, and a group of sweaty men came out, carrying a heavy-duty plastic box. They shuffled toward the side of the building, instead of the main entrance.

Not long after, their elevator arrived as well. Bettie got in first, and the rest of them squeezed in around her.

“Which floor are you all stopping at?” Derrick asked.

“The fifth floor,” Bettie said. “Tommie’s friend lives there, so I’ll drop him off there, and then show you lovebirds around.”

The tablet with access to Xavier’s mod controls was on the fourth floor, according to Maxine. Supposedly, it was being kept in a room behind the ‘third door to the left from the stairwell’ . . . but where was the stairwell?

Maxine’s voice came from the earpiece. “Congratulations on getting inside so quickly. Here’s to hoping you guys don’t get hate-crimed by some Dixies.” She chuckled. “I’m guessing you have some plan to separate yourselves from your tour guide at some point? Give me some sort of signal then, and I’ll give you turn-by-turn directions to the tablet.”

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened to the fifth floor. They walked a bit into the hallway, until Bettie knocked on one of the doors, and a small child opened it. He grinned, showing his braces, and sucked some saliva back into his mouth. “Tommie!” he said, jumping up and down at seeing Bettie’s son.

Tommie ran in through the door and tackled his friend, and the two bounced back and forth between the walls, moving into the apartment’s interior.

“Zach, where’s your mom and dad?” Bettie asked.

The little kid with braces cried out and escaped an armbar from Tommie, before turning his head to respond to Bettie. “They’re out shopping.”

“Oh, I should probably watch over them for a bit then,” Bettie said. “Sorry you two, is it fine if I put our tour on hold for a bit? I just wouldn’t be comfortable leaving these two little goblins on their own. And I can’t just invite ya’ll in here when it’s not even my own house. Why don’t you two . . . have a seat by the ice machine over there?” Bettie pointed to a gap between apartments down the hall, where a few plastic chairs poked out. “I’ll come out and join you when Zach’s parents get back.”

“That sounds good,” Derrick said. He pretended to remember something, and stuck his finger up. “Actually, is there a public restroom somewhere?”

“Oh, yes!” Bettie stuck her head out of the apartment again. “There’s one in the lobby on the first floor where we came in. You can find your way down there, can’t you?”

“Of course. Thank you, Bettie,” Derrick said. He waited for the apartment door to swing shut, and then he leaned in toward Xavier. “I’m going to go look for ‘it.’ You stay here and stay out of trouble.”

“What am I supposed to do here?” Xavier whined.

“I don’t know. Read a magazine or something,” Derrick said.

Derrick walked down the hall, passing by rows of closed doors. A television commercial boomed from behind the first door, and behind the second two men argued over something in hushed tones. He was making his way towards the staircase—there was no way to avoid the apartment residents on an elevator—and it was time to give Maxine the signal.

How exact was the sensitivity on the device he was carrying around? Keeping it in his pocket, Derrick paced a figure eight near the stairwell, and then Maxine’s voice was in his ear again.

“I’m assuming you’ve been able to get past your tour guide. I see you at the stairwell. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong stairwell. Go down and go straight. Head to the opposite side of the hall, and then get to the door on your right: the third one from the end of the hall.”

“Any idea if someone’s home?” Derrick whispered.

“What do you think I am, a psychic? I can’t tell if you’re still so far away from it. Butttt . . . if you put my device on the door, I can try and gauge the room that way. Get over there, and obviously avoid any witnesses if you can.

The hall was empty, but it wouldn’t be surprising if someone came out of their room at any minute. Derrick walked as fast as he could.

“Fuck!” came a voice behind one of the doors. “Jacob’s not going to like this.” The door knob rattled. Shit. There was a gap between the apartment doors with yet another ice machine, and Derrick rushed over to it, ducking his head, as he pretended to fiddle with the machine.

The apartment door behind him opened, and two men came out, stomping down the hall in their boots. The smell of cigarette smoke, and that cleaning chemical smell again, infused the air as they passed Derrick, who held his breath, and subtly fanned in front of his face with his hand.

“Everything always goes wrong around here,” one of the men muttered.

Derrick kept facing the ice machine, staring at its buttons, but focused instead on the footsteps treading across carpet. They stopped in front of what was probably the elevator, and one of them jabbed the button.

“Hey, calm down,” the other man said. “The boss says don’t make trouble. If we get kicked out, he’s going to be fucking mad.”

The elevator dinged, and they stepped in. After the doors closed, Derrick grabbed the cup of ice he had filled, and made his way down the hallway. The door with Xavier’s tablet was supposedly on the right.

Derrick cleared his throat, sending the noise to Maxine.

“Finally! What were you waiting around in the hallway for?” Maxine asked.

“There were some apartment residents walking by,” Derrick whispered, as quietly as he could. Forget looking Asian; if someone overheard him talking to himself and loitering around the hallways, he would seem even more out of place in the apartment building. “I didn’t want to stand out, so I just blended in for a bit until they passed away.”

“Okay, fine. Anyways, put my device up against the door. Quiet now, so they don’t hear you.”

“Which way should I put it??” Derrick asked, turning the device around in his hands.

“Hold on,” Maxine said. Then, the device whirred, and a portion of its body elevated above the rest. “Hold it up to the door, with the skinny half on top.”

Derrick did, and a yellow number appeared on the device’s screen, fluctuating every half second. ‘5 ft.’ ‘6 ft.’ ‘4 ft.’ ‘4 ft.’ ‘4 ft.’

“What’s this do?” Derrick whispered.

“It’s a radar, dummy. Can you hear anyone in the room?”

“No.”

“Okay, the readings from the device seem pretty even as well. If the resident is in another room, this won’t pick it up, but at least the entryway is clear.”

The lock on the door wasn’t the new type that worked with beacons. It was an old-style hybrid sort of lock, where you could use a key to open it mechanically, or enter in a digital combination, which would open the mechanical lock via motors.

Derrick had never been the type to pick mechanical locks. He only knew a few who did, and they were the type who did it for fun. But he did have a little device that would help gain them entry. He just had to figure out a place to hide it.

It was a tiny camera.

If he could aim it at the door with a good view of the panel where you inputted the combination, then he’d be able to capture the combination whenever the resident came to unlock the room. It wasn’t as good as securing the tablet itself, but with this information, Xavier would be able to get the tablet on his own at a later date.

And just with that, Derrick was going to earn his fee: easy-peasy.