I wrote this crime caper in the NYCMidnight short story challenge recently, and I’m sharing it as a nod to my CLP Survivor group. When you see it…

Crooked Trails

The first memo was distributed in November of 2015. Rent at Breezy Brook Apartment Homes was increasing $50 a month so they could upgrade the property’s lighting. Automated lights in the parking lot and the common areas, for “residents’ security and peace of mind.” Only whoever typed up the memo spelled it “piece.”

“I’d like to give them a piece of my mind,” Jeff had grumbled at the time. A year later, after cheap, crappy lighting had been installed, rent increased by double that amount, and many residents did give management a piece of their mind. This time, the rate hike was to get the newest high-efficiency washing machines and driers in the laundry room. But they were more expensive, so the community laundry room went from having five decent washer and drier sets to only two newfangled high-efficiency ones. And if residents didn’t use the special detergent, the machines would go berserk.

Now, when Jeff arrived home after work to find a third memo taped to his door, he yanked it down and scanned it long enough to spot “increase of $100 per month.”

“Damn it!” Jeff crunched the paper in his fist before stomping to his neighbor Rodney’s door.

“You see this?” he spat when Rodney opened the door, beer in hand as usual. Rodney didn’t need to see the crumpled paper in Jeff’s hand to know what he was talking about.

“Yeah, dude, that’s tough,” Rodney said, waving Jeff toward the couch. “You want a beer?”

“When I moved here three years ago, the rent was $750 a month,” Jeff said. “Now it’s gonna be a thousand.” He took the beer that Rodney handed him, and they sat down.

“The owner’s real smug about it, too,” Rodney said. “He was up here with some other dressed-up fools, talking about how they’re gonna make Breezy Brook an upscale, modern place.”

“Ha! Upscale,” Jeff scoffed, shaking his head. “Fancy Breezy Brook, where there ain’t no breeze and there ain’t no brook.”

“But get this,” Rodney said. “That’s what they plan to do next. Out there in the courtyard and the path from the parking lot? They’re gonna put in like a nature trail or something, with a creek and waterfalls, stuff like that. People are saying rent’s gonna go up a lot more in the next couple years.”

Jeff stood up, growing more furious by the second. “This is getting out of hand, Rod, don’t you think? He’s trying to run us all off. Most of the people here can’t afford rent this high.”

Rodney took a swig of his beer and nodded. “I hear ya, bro. What are you gonna do? Move?”

“Nah, don’t you see? If we move out, he wins. I’m thinking more like … stop him.”

Rodney furrowed his brow. “Stop him how?”

Jeff’s anger had turned to pacing. “I don’t know, but I’ll come up with something.” He stopped and planted his eyes on Rodney’s. “You in?”

Rodney raised his eyebrows.

“If I come up with a plan, some way to get back at this guy, are you in?”

Rodney chuckled and said, “Sure, man. Yeah. I’m in.”

***

Jeff spent the next week searching online for everything he could find on the Breezy Brook owner. He loved this investigative stuff. If he could turn back time, he’d become a secret agent or someone like Detective Tutuola on Law & Order SVU. Instead, he had dropped out of college to chase after a girl, and when that didn’t work out, he didn’t go back to school. Just took a job doing what he was qualified for, which wasn’t a whole heck of a lot. But it led him to interesting people, who led him to interesting places, where he landed a job as a bike courier (he didn’t even know those existed in the digital age) in the city of Craston. It didn’t pay much, but it kept him in shape and allowed him the privilege of enjoying the outdoors when most people he knew were stuck inside a cubicle inside a box inside a concrete building all day. It also afforded him plenty of breaks, during which he sat in the shade and continued his investigations on his phone.

He learned the owner of Breezy Brook was Brad Taylor Brooks, but he had social media profiles under the monikers Breezy Brad, B.T. Brooks, and, Jeff’s favorite, Bad Boy Brooks. Upon further digging, Jeff found that this bad boy went by many different names: Taylor Brooks, Brad Taylor, Brooks Taylor, and a half-dozen more. And for each name variation, he owned a different now-defunct business. There was a car detailing service, a graphic design company, a maid service, and even a small publishing company.

“He’s a crook! A fraud,” Jeff shouted at Rodney one day after work. He had contacted some employees and clients at each of the businesses Brad or Taylor (or whatever his real name was) had owned, and what he learned sickened him.

Brooks had swindled people out of tens of thousands of dollars; he had left staff and customers high and dry without paying them or delivering on promises; he had piled up the lies so high that even he couldn’t keep things straight, so every time his life started to implode, he took off and created a new identity and a new business.

“We have to stop him,” Rodney said.

“Make him pay,” Jeff agreed.

“So what’s your plan?”

“Okay, hear me out,” Jeff began. “Brooks’s other businesses no longer exist, but he did leave behind a trail of ticked-off people willing to help us. And he owns another property like Breezy Brook. It’s called …” he swiped up on his phone to look at his notes. “Crooked Trail.”

The two stared at each other for a moment before bursting out laughing.

“Perfect name, isn’t it?” Jeff said as he settled. “Now, he’s doing this other place just like he’s doing us. Raising rent and putting in completely unnecessary things. So let’s have some fun, shall we?”

***

 Saturday night was Phase One of the plan that Jeff hoped would drive Brooks bananas.

Jeff and Rodney pulled up to the back of Crooked Trail in a borrowed black van. Dressed in black and toting a bag of wrenches, screwdrivers, and duct tape, the pair pulled a dolly into the dark laundry room after cutting the power to the security lighting. The complex was practically identical to Breezy Brook, making navigating in the dark easier.

Jeff stood guard while Rodney disconnected the washers and driers one by one, and they heaved all four appliances into the back of the van.

When morning came and Breezy Brook residents wandered into their laundry room to find two additional washer and drier sets, they were thrilled. And Jeff and Rodney were the first to dial the apartment manager’s number to thank them for seeing to it that they had the appliances they so badly needed. The manager was confused, to say the least.

It took two days for Mr. Brooks to come out and inspect the situation, and Jeff would have given anything to see the bewildered look on his face that Rodney described. It took two more days for the washers and driers to be taken back to Crooked Trail. By that time, word had gotten around at Breezy Brook what Jeff and Rodney were up to, and the pair gained a respectable fan base, minus a couple of Karens.

Then came Phase Two.

It was a typical Friday night at Crooked Trail, but Jeff hoped this next phase would be anything but. Rodney deftly rewired the security lighting so that anytime movement passed the sensors, instead of bright lights illuminating, a deafening airhorn would blast, scaring the daylight out of anyone within a 20-yard radius.

“Remind me what the point of this is?” Rodney said as he worked. “How will this make our rent go down?”

“Man, I don’t even care anymore,” Jeff admitted. “I just wanna make Brooks lose his mind.”

Rodney thought for a moment, then nodded. “This should do it, bro.”

Once back home, Jeff called the cell number he had found for Brooks, disguised his voice, and told him he suspected another theft was taking place at Crooked Trail. Then he called Crooked Trail’s onsite manager.

“Excuse me, sir. I’m a resident here, and the lights around the property are not on.”

The manager grumbled that it would have to wait until morning, but Jeff persisted. “Sir, it’s for residents’ safety, and I don’t feel very safe with it being pitch black out here. What if those thieves come back?”

The manager sighed, and Jeff tried not to laugh as he heard the rustling sounds of the manager getting out of bed.

“Fine,” the manager spat. “I’ll go take care of it.”

“Wait, don’t hang up,” Jeff said. “Can I stay on the line, please? I’m out here in the parking lot in the dark, and I’d just feel safer.” The manager grumbled some more but didn’t hang up.

Jeff and Rodney held in their laughter as they waited for the inevitable, and when it happened, it was glorious. Jeff put the phone on speaker, and the two listened to the grumpy manager cuss up a storm as he fiddled with the breaker box and light controls. Soon after came the sounds of two men talking, and they assumed Brooks had arrived. And then the real excrement hit the fan.

The blast of airhorns mixed with panicked curses from Brooks and the manager, the crash of a cellphone falling on concrete, the shuffling steps of the two befuddled men scrambling to figure out what was going on, the shouts of residents coming outside to investigate, and the grand finale: someone slamming off the power and Brooks’s voice squeaking out like a fourteen-year-old boy, “What in God’s name just happened?” followed by the sirens of police cars.

Jeff hung up the phone, and he and Rodney laughed until tears seeped from their eyes and their stomachs ached.

“What could possibly top Phase Two?” Rodney asked Jeff the next morning over donuts and beer.

“The third and final phase,” explained Jeff, “is more low-key, but this is where we give Brooks what’s coming to him.” Jeff beamed, proud of what he’d been able to pull together. With the help of furious folks that Brooks had screwed with over the past decade, Jeff amassed a thick file folder full of e-mails, receipts, complaints, and paper trails for every rotten deal Brooks had made and every fake name he had used and every dime he had stolen. One copy of this file would be sent to the Craston Daily News, and one would be sent to the Craston Police Department.

Jeff was right. In two weeks’ time, he saw the story in the newspaper, then on the local TV station news, and within the month, it even gained the attention of the FBI. Crooked Brooks was finally going to get what he deserved.

***

One Friday a year later, after an easy day of riding around downtown in beautiful weather, Jeff rolled his bike off the elevator and toward his apartment. From down the hall, he could see a note on his door. Ever since some new person bought the apartments when Brooks disappeared, they’d gotten cheery notes from management about meet-and-greets and community events. This one was different.

Jeff took the note down and read:

Dear residents,

Thank you for your support during this transition to a new owner and management team. Due to rising inflation and the need for more modern amenities at Breezy Brook, your rent will increase by $75 a month, effective August 1.

CEO Brenda T. Brooks

“Son of a gun!”