Ch. 41 – Hard Bargain

Clap. Clap. Clap. “You took your sweet time, Derrick.” Maxine came into view as Derrick and Xavier passed a few stacks of boxes. She was in a push-up position, back straight and chest lowered to the ground. She pushed herself off the floor and clapped mid-air, before landing back in a perfect push-up position. She jumped her feet up to her hands and then stood up, tossing her sweaty hair back. “Did you finally make up your mind?”

Xavier whistled low.

“Kind of,” Derrick said. “But we need to work out the details.”

“I’ve got stuff to do, so let’s go quick quick quick.” She snapped her fingers.

Derrick nodded, and picked up Maxine’s device, which he had set down on the table before leaving to make the phone call. He turned it around in his hands: it looked like an ancient dumb mobile phone, but even thicker, and smelt like fresh solder. “Can you pull this off?”

“Yeah I can.” Maxine’s hand touched his, as she took the device from him and fiddled with the buttons.

“Seems like it’d be kind of tough.”

“Wanna bet?” Maxine smirked.

Derrick knew better than to bet against Maxine when it came to data extraction. “Okay, then. Thanks in advance.”

He motioned for Xavier to sit down on one of the plastic crates, and then sat down himself. Ouch. The plastic, grid-like surface was uncomfortable, and If the conversation went on for much longer, he would have to find a different seat, or his butt would be very sore.

“Alright, Mr. Williams. Let’s discuss the situation. You offered to pay me to help retrieve a device belonging to this ‘Charlene,’ so that Maxine can extract the login information to the account that’s controlling your penis prosthesis.”

“Man, why are you talking like you’ve got cold feet? Didn’t you already say you were gonna do it?”

Derrick bit his lip, holding back a stream of expletives. It was a risky job, not one where they could just rush in and nab the device. “I said that I’d come back here to discuss the details. And the details are important, seeing as we’d be putting our lives on the line.”

Xavier blew air out his lips, and crossed his arms. “Okay, fine. But hurry up! Time’s running out, and I gotta have it tonight.”

“Okay, that’s my first question. When exactly do you need the device by?”

“Shit, I’m gonna be smashing this honey no later than ten.”

“. . . How much flexibility do you have around that time frame?”

“Zero, man! I’m not playing with you!”

“I don’t see the big deal,” Maxine chimed in. “If you get blue balls, you could just get those replaced too.”

Derrick feigned a cough, and grit his teeth to hold in the laughter. “Okay, so . . . let’s say you’d want the device by around eight, so we could theoretically extract the account details by nine, and then give you an hour to go meet your girl at ten?”

“Fine. Yeah yeah yeah, that’s fine,” Xavier said.

“Maxine, does that seem reasonable?”

Maxine’s gaze flicked over to Derrick. She had been watching the two of them intently, instead of continuing her impromptu workout session. “An hour? Boy, I can do it in half an hour, even.”

“But there’s no guarantee that it’ll be that easy, right? Sometimes extracting data from a device takes longer than expected.”

“. . . True,” Maxine. “Half an hour is close to my best time.”

“Okay—hey, are you listening?” Derrick snapped his fingers at Xavier, who had pulled his phone out from his pocket.

“Wha—,” Xavier said, glancing up from his phone. “Yeah, yeah. What’d you say?”

“I was going to say that I can’t guarantee we’ll get your data extracted by a certain time. If Charlene is holding it, or if it’s in a room full of Dixies, I’m not going to break in and fight them for the device. That’s on you. The best I can promise is to get you a more exact location for the device by around eight o clock.”

Xavier groaned, and scooted his plastic crate forward, making an awful scraping sound. “And what the fuck am I supposed to do if it’s stuck in a room full of Dixies?”

“Respectfully, sir, you need to hire someone better suited for the job.”

“Fine! Man what am I even hiring you for, anyways . . . Can we go now?”

“Hold on, there’s one more big issue before we start preparing to investigate.” Derrick swallowed and cleared his throat; he was about to start pushing his luck. But given that Xavier had just walked into a strange building in Old New York City and pulled five thousand dollars out of his pocket on a whim, there was guaranteed to be more where it came from, right? The man had seemed gleeful about taking a large score of cash and valuables off the Hermanos. “The fee: five thousand seems a little low. I’d like eight thousand, at least.”

“What?!” Xavier sprung up and started smacking his own head. “Eight thousand dollars? Are you kidding me? Five thousand fucking dollars isn’t enough for you?”

“Considering the urgency, and the fact that I have to pay Maxine her retainer, we’re looking at—”

“—Ten thousand. I’m not cheap.”

Derrick and Xavier both whipped their heads around to stare at Maxine.

She winked at Derrick. “Hey, don’t sell yourself short, big guy.” Heh, I guess the girl really does look out for me. I’ve got to thank her some time.

Xavier’s eyebrows were so knit together that they almost touched. “You! You! Goddamn I knew you was a fucking bitch,” he spat, stabbing a finger at Maxine. “Ain’t nobody wanna mess with yo sorry ass that’s probably why you out here all by yourself in this piece of shit building. Fuck!”

Derrick wiped off a bit of Xavier’s spittle from his pants, shrugged, and gestured to Xavier. “Well, Mr. Williams. This is our professionally recommended plan and fee. If you’d like to go through with it to find the device that’s connected to the Better Butler servers, I’ll come along, but both she and I need to be compensated. Of course, you could always go in there by yourself and just wing it.”

“You’re fucking robbing me bro! I’ll take my chances.” He dusted himself off with exaggerated sweeps of his hand, and paced back and forth near the start of the hallway, inching closer to it each time.

“Does this Charlene have a boyfriend?” Maxine asked.

Xavier turned around. “What’s it to you?”

“Well, I’m just thinking,” she said, tapping a pen on her lips deliberately, like an instructor about to unleash a diabolical quiz question upon her students. “What if the boyfriend sees you there? You know what the Dixies are like. If they found out one of their own was shacking up with a black man, well . . . What do you think they would do?”

Xavier opened his mouth, and swallowed audibly. “She—yeah I think she found a boyfriend after we split.”

“Well then,” Maxine said. “Are you sure you want to go there by yourself? If you let Derrick take my machine, I can get you right to the device, and then you can skedaddle.”

Xavier groaned, and shook his head, like he was warding off a demonic voice in his ear, and then finally glared up at Derrick. “Alright, take your fuckin’ money. You’re lucky I got all that cash from the Hermanos.”

“Perfect,” Derrick said. “I can receive half up front, and half when the job is completed. You brought five thousand dollars with you, I believe? We can count it to make sure the amount is right, and . . . Maxine?”

Maxine was already picking fallen bills off the floor. “Yeah, I’m on it.” She handed the bills, neatly aligned, to Derrick and then made her way past piles of junk toward the back of the room. She stepped high over boxes, and shimmied around carts; it was probably what Derrick looked like when he was navigating around the messier part of Hack Alley’s shop. She brought back a gray and teal device resembling a printer, and set it down on the floor.

Derrick slotted the bills in a small tray that was perfectly sized for bills. Then, Maxine woke the device up, and it started ‘scanning’ the bills.

A series of green check marks popped up on the devices display.

“Yup, they’re real.”

Derrick’s heart was thumping in his chest. He was getting paid.

#

“. . . and make sure not to press this button, or it’ll start beeping.” Maxine pointed at one of the many nearly-indistinguishable buttons on her custom device. “Got it?”

“Okay, I think I’ve got it,” Derrick said, turning the device right-side-up again.

Having finished the brief crash course on Maxine’s all-in-one-tool, it was time to get into some logistics.

“So,” Derrick said. “Let’s talk disguises. If I’m seen by Dixies, I don’t want them to recognize me out in public in the future.”

“Great idea,” Maxine said, tugging at her hair. She was draped across the back of her swivel chair, knees almost touching Derrick’s. He hadn’t noticed it during her lesson on the functions of prototype device she was making him the guinea pig for, but Maxine smelled pretty nice. “OH! I know,” she shouted, slapping the swivel chair. “I have wanted to try this for the longest time, and you’re going to be my test subjects.”

“Uh oh,” Derrick said. “What exactly do you want to try?”

Maxine pushed off the ground and rolled in her swivel chair over to her computer. “Think about it: two strange, rough-looking guys walking around a neighborhood means trouble. But, what if it was a boyfriend and girlfriend, walking around and looking at potential apartments?”

“Shittt, that’s a trap. If she starts talking to you about apartments and shit, you better run for it,” Xavier chimed in.

Derrick frowned. “A young couple?” There was only one woman in the room. Did Maxine want to try going out into the field herself? “Wait, but you have to stay here and monitor the public wifi and communications, don’t you?”

“Yeah, duh.” She rolled her eyes. “Neither of you can do that, so of course I have to. Since you two are both guys, one of you is going to dress up like a girl.”

Derrick winced. It was bad enough having an ugly face; being an ugly girl was probably even worse. “I don’t know about that. Neither me nor Xavier would make a very convincing girl—”

“Let’s see,” Maxine said, cutting Derrick off. Her gaze flicked from Derrick to Xavier, and her wicked smile twitched with excitement. “Derrick is too big and tall, so . . . you!” She pointed at Xavier. “Get ready, because I’m going to make you realll pretty.”

Xavier jerked up. “Huh, me? No! I ain’t no sissy boy. Why do I have to dress up like a girl? Hey!”

Maxine squatted down and hoisted Xavier up by the waist, and then plopped him down in the swivel chair. “Because you’re so thin and petite of course! I’m going to have a lot of fun dressing you up.”

“Nooo, man!”