The wind was blowing colder now, whipping and swirling leaves and debris in the street like you'd see in a Halloween movie. There were still people out, but they bustled around now with their chins down and hands pulled into their sleeves. The city was settling into that depth of night where people returned to their dwellings for the evening. I looked again at the saved address I'd put into my phone, just to be certain I was at the right place, although I knew I was.
I crossed the street towards the lobby of the brightly lit condo tower, shooting glances up towards its hundreds of checkered lights. His apartment was on the twenty-eighth floor, Suite 2804. Unlike the last scenario, I wouldn't be able to just poke around through the windows like a stalker to see if the guy was home, I'd have to leave this one to chance to a certain extent. I had his cell number —Carson had also written it on the napkin— but if I called ahead from a payphone asking weird questions about his location, he'd get suspicious. A coyote doesn't call ahead to the rabbit to see where it is before tearing it down, even if in this instance the rabbit is also a coyote.
I entered the front foyer of the condo tower, access to the lobby barricaded by a sleek set of glass doors that needed an electronic key fob that only residents had. I took my phone out and pretended to make a call while I fished around in my pocket for the non-existent key fob. A shrewd little blond woman wrapped in a giant purple shawl pushed past me with an annoyed scoff, scanning her key fob and casting me suspicious backwards glances as she entered the lobby. She'd probably seen a fair amount young "hooligans" trying to sneak into her building to go to parties or have late night encounters. Fortunately, I'd also seen enough stuffy sticklers to know she wasn't the one to sneak in behind.
A couple of seconds later a tastefully-dressed couple in their early to mid-thirties exited, the husband giving me a curt grin that was more just an involuntary flexion of lips. The glass doors were still partially open as they walked past me and I could have reached out and grabbed one before it closed. I remained casual and kept pretending to talk on my phone, fishing around in my pocket for that imaginary key fob. The front desk concierge was lazily eying me from behind his computer, satisfied when the door clicked closed and I made no attempt to grab it. It didn't matter. I could already see my access to the building approaching behind me in the reflection of the glass.
As soon as the couple stepped outside, two young men came bounding into the foyer talking loudly, slightly intoxicated, shirt collars frayed and untucked, keys jangling in hand, access fobs dangling on their keys. I pretended to be highly engaged in my fake phone call and I extracted my own set of keys, fumbling them as I pretended to grip a useless piece of plastic on my keychain which resembled the access fob. Then I timed my approach to the scanner on the glass doors and bumped into the first of the two guys as they went to scan their own (real) access fobs.
"My bad," I mumbled to him, clattering my keys to the ground. I'd meant to drop them on purpose so he'd have to scan his first, but I bumped him with my bad side and a throb of pain ricocheted down my arm causing me to genuinely drop them.
He made a noise of acknowledgment to and smacked his set of keys against the scanner, the door making a satisfying click. He swung it open and crossed through, his buddy following behind, lazily smacking his keys against the scanner in a habitual way. He held the door open for me for a brief second with his foot without turning around, and I stepped through, following suit with the key smack against the scanner. A little green light had lit up when they'd done it, but it remained blank for me. Didn't matter in the slightest. I was already in the lobby, walking along with them as though we were a group headed to the same place. I could feel the guard at the front desk eyeing us as we cruised through the lobby towards the elevators. I made sure to stay with them even as we got to the elevators because some buildings require key fobs to use the elevator as well. This wasn't the case, but it was nice to know that I had my two drunken, loud-talking buddies to unsuspectingly aid me if I needed it.
YOU ARE READING
MOSAIC
Mystery / ThrillerMarko is a young artist, who strains himself more and more each day against the sensation that time is hastening at a velocity which threatens to crack apart his sanity, and drag him to depths where the rapid crawl of anxiety will dismantle what lit...
