Chapter Ten
After the Arch Street debacle and my exposure at Phil’s Coffee—however uneventful it was—I decide to use the network of underground walkways in the area to traverse the short distance to The Gallery. The hunch I play is a good one; there aren’t nearly as many people—let alone cops or Agents of Justice—underground as there are sure to be on the surface. If my name is never cleared, I may have to take up a subterranean lifestyle.
The Gallery is a mall with over a million square feet of retail space that is now largely unused. Its reputation has taken a major hit over the past decade as the mall has become known as a popular hangout spot for teenage riffraff, even when they should be in school. For Josh, The Gallery’s pretty far. There’s nothing special about the place and there are plenty of other malls scattered across this metropolis. This mall, however, is still popular with those who love urban fashion, such as the getup I’m wearing now. I can’t understand how my brethren walk around town with the waists of their jeans wrapped around their ass cheeks.
Jimenez tells me via text message that I can find Josh in The Gallery’s food court. During my walk, that nagging voice in the back of my mind reminds me that I might not find the boy in The Gallery. It tells me that this may actually be another trap set by the A of I.
Fortunately, I do find Josh where Jimenez said he’d be. I can’t reconcile my suspicions with the fact that the A of I would have had to go to such great lengths—the Control Room, the Change Machine, the Arrowhead, Carla Andrews—just to see to it that I was framed for murder.
As is usually the case on a weekday morning, mall is barren. I’ve taken a seat at a table quite far from Josh so as to be more inconspicuous. I don’t think he ate lunch—most of these eateries aren’t open yet—but he is indulging in a Mrs. Field’s cookie and lemonade as he sits by himself. For someone hell-bent on suicide, he seems in good spirits.
The more I observe this kid, the more I wonder how he was singled out by the A of I. I’m sure that they probably try to save everyone who needs saving but—as he belches loudly—they couldn’t have found a more loathsome subject.
Josh stops playing on his cellphone and holds it to his ear. “Hello? … Yeah, I’m at the food court, where you at? … Alright, later.” He hangs up the phone, stands up and walks away from the wrapper and cup he leaves at his table. I wait a few moments before following him.
One half of the mall’s main concourse is brighter than the other as the sun’s angled rays shine through The Gallery’s glass ceiling. Walking in the shade, trying to keep my pants from falling, I keep a distance of about twenty yards behind Josh as he walks in the sunlight. In the distance stands a group of four black guys, all older than Josh, in front of a jewelry store. As the boy draws closer to the quartet, I keep walking, unsure of what to do. I’ll only have one chance to walk past them without drawing attention to myself.
As I draw closer, Josh trades bro hugs with the foursome. I stop in front of a sporting goods store and pretend to look at the Phillies gear in the window. I then take a peek over at the group; they’re huddled up like a football team. When I move a few yards closer, Josh hands something to the tallest member of the group. Tall guy takes a look at what he’s been given—a wad of cash. He takes a quick count of the money and hands Josh what looks like a small brown paper bag.
I can’t hear what’s being said but there is no acrimony. In fact, the tall guy, definitely the leader of the pack, puts his hand on Josh’s shoulder.
Suddenly, a member of the group looks over Josh’s shoulder and notices me. “What you looking at, homie?”
“Me? Nothing. What you looking at … dawg?”
“You want some of this?” the leader says.
I’m now five yards away from the group but retreating. “Sorry, I’m not looking for a fight.”
“Nah, man. I mean some of this,” he says, hand on his jacket pocket. “I got that ready rock,” he says, lowering his voice.
“You mean crack?!”
“Yo, shut the fuck up,” he says as all of his minions, including Josh, shush me.
“I’ll pass.” I hold up my hands as I walk backwards toward the sporting goods store.
Is this how Josh plans to go out? Overdosing on all the crack he can get his hands on? Given what I already know about the boy, I can’t say I’m surprised. But, for the life of me, though, I still can’t grasp why he came all the way down to The Gallery. They sell drugs in his neck of the woods, too.
Josh separates from the group and walks toward the food court again. I let him pass behind me before following him once more. As he passes the food court, I deduce that Josh’s next move is to get on the EL—it runs underground through Center City—and go home. Given my earlier episode on the bus, I can’t get on the EL.
I stop near the food court, pull out my phone, and call Jimenez. Voicemail. I turn my back to Josh and tightly grip my phone, making a fist with that hand. I then hold the top of my phone to my lips.
C’mon Jimenez, call me back. Tell me to abort.
I take a deep breath and look to my left. An empty store. Nothing there to preoccupy my mind, nothing there but my reflection to remind me of the power I have and the reason I have it.
Just walk away, Calvin. It’s not that hard …
I turn around and watch Josh near the entrance to the EL station. I look down to the floor and then back up to Josh. The EL is indeed risky but the train presents a contained area within which I can engage the boy. And, if push comes to shove, I know I can fight like hell to escape.
As I start jogging toward Josh, he turns left down a set of stairs, at the bottom of which is the aforementioned EL stop. When he reaches the bottom and drops a token into one of the fare machines, I skip down the stairs. I check the money in my pocket and see that all I have are twenties except for a five dollar bill. As Josh enters the station, I walk over to a token machine and force my five into its slot, keeping an eye on the boy.
While the machine processes my transaction, I hear a train in the distance. I look around the corner, urging the machine to move with a bit more alacrity. If I lose the boy while getting tokens, that will be a clear sign that I’m supposed to abort.
The sound of the oncoming train reaches its apex, but it’s a westbound train. False alarm.
The machine finally spits out my tokens and I enter the train station, the distinct stench of urine filling my nostrils. I find Josh sitting on a bench. I, however, continue standing. The station is relatively empty so there’s no point in crowding the kid just yet.
We trade brief glances—he’s not oblivious to my presence. I’ll need to be less obvious until we get on the train. Someone who lives as far away from The Gallery as Josh does will need to take the EL to the end of the line. That gives me about twenty-five or thirty minutes. Plenty of time.
I look down into the dark tunnel and see a bright, white light coming in our direction. When I remember Hamilton’s story about the former assistant superintendent, my legs take me away from the edge of the platform.
Peeking at Josh, I find that he’s on his cell phone, once again. It shocks me the kind of phones teenagers carry these days. I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was halfway through college. Now it’s not uncommon for these kids to carry smartphones.
I watch as the train enters the station, bringing a gust of wind with it. Josh stands up and approaches the thick yellow line signifying the edge of the platform. I take my place about ten yards down from him. When the train comes to a stop, I get on the same car as the boy but one door down. He sits in a forward-facing seat, next to a window. I sit down in a side-facing seat so I can keep a close eye on the boy’s movements. With a harmonic tune, the doors close and the train presses on to the next station.
At this time of day, the train is half empty. To my right, a little girl of about two years old squirms in her seat next to her mother. A young guy with large headphones jams out to rock music. To my left, with his back to me, Josh. I tak
e a moment to confirm that the Yankees hat is still perched at an angle on the top of my head. Until now, I’ve been able to simply check the skin on my hands.
I could use some aspirin. My wooziness has worn off but now I have a headache thanks, most likely, to the dude with the nightstick.
Following Josh’s lead, I pull out my phone and, once again, look at my photos. The first photo I come across is my favorite of Ronni and me. We’re at a Fourth of July celebration at Penn’s Landing. On what was a muggy night, my face glistens in the camera’s flash as Ronni’s hair sticks to her face. My arm is around her waist and she’s flashing her luminescent smile, of course.
When the train makes its final underground stop, I remember my conversation with Hamilton. If he can turn his life around, albeit with Richardson’s help, perhaps Josh can do the same, starting today. An encounter with an Agent of Influence can be a turning point in someone’s life. I’m going to attempt the same with Josh.
The train climbs out of the tunnel and reaches its full elevation. Out of the window behind me, I see the majority of the city to the west, its high-rises sparkling in the sun’s merciless glow. The EL then stops at its first elevated station. With a handful of passengers entering the car, I take the opportunity to slide into the seat next to Josh. He shoots me a look before going back to a game on his phone.
“What are you playing?” I say, trying to be more like myself, despite my apparel.
“Angry Birds.”
I snicker. “There’s angry birds all over this town. They don’t look anything like those.” My joke goes over Josh’s head. Instead of a laugh, my lame attempt at humor only elicits a loud sigh. If these are to be Josh’s last moments on Earth, does he really want to spend it playing Angry Birds? With a wink of my eye, I crack the screen on Josh’s phone.
“What the hell?” he says.
“That sucks.”
Josh leans his head against the window, avoiding eye contact with me.
“Hey, what school do you go to?” I say.
Josh looks at me without saying a word.
I swallow hard. I’m fully engaged now. “You go to Lincoln, don’t you?”
“Yeah. How did you—”
“I’ve seen you before.”
“You go to Lincoln?”
“Went to Lincoln. I dropped out.”
“Sweet.”
“I guess,” I say. “It ain’t that fun. Kind of boring.”
“I want to drop out.”
“Yeah?” I check my Yankees cap to make sure it’s still there.
“Yeah. I hate school.”
“Don’t you want to go to college?”
“Hell no,” he says, laughing. “And why do you care? Didn’t you just say you dropped out.”
I shrug. “You’re right. I guess I just got tired of people telling me what to do all the time.”
“For real. All these people keep telling me I need to go to college to make money. No I don’t.” Josh might be a little rough around the edges but he’s right about that.
More people enter the train as we reach another stop.
“What would you do?” I say. “To make money, I mean.”
Josh looks around the train before leaning in toward me. “I’d push.”
“Push?”
Josh nods his head.
Full disclosure: I’m not hip enough to know what he’s talking about but I don’t want to seem like the dork who doesn’t know what it means. “How much can you make doing that?”
“Lots,” he says with a straight face. “I make a couple c-notes a day.”
“Oh, so you do this already?”
“You ask too many questions,” he says.
“My bad.” Okay, I’m not getting anywhere with this conversation. In fact, I’m only encouraging Josh to drop out of school. “What does your mom do?”
He sucks his teeth. “She ain’t around no more.” He turns back to the window.
“What happened to her?”
“She died,” he says, turning back to me.
“Ah, man, sorry about that.”
He waves me off. “Whatever. It was an accident.”
“You ever feel … guilty about it?”
“No.” He’s being quite cavalier about this for being driven to suicidal thoughts. Then again, that’s how most young males act. It’s a way to hide their feelings.
“Man, I don’t know how you deal with that.”
“I just do my thing, man.”
Screw it. “Like drugs?”
“Yeah.”
“You buy some from those guys at the mall?”
Josh looks at me, offended that I would ask him such a question. The train starts to slow down as we reach another station.
“What are you, a cop or something?”
“Give me the drugs, Josh.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Give me the—”
Josh slugs me in the jaw, almost knocking me out of my seat as the train comes to a stop. He climbs over the seat in front of us and runs for the nearest set of doors. I orient myself, stand up, and chase Josh off the train and out to the platform.
He bumps a couple of would-be passengers on his way to the stairwell leading to the street below. My head now pounding, I run into the stairwell, two seconds off of the boy’s pace, stopping to hike my pants up to a normal height. Josh gains some separation from me, galloping down the stairs with the pace of a racehorse. I, meanwhile, have had enough aerobic exercise for one day.
When I reach the bottom of the stairwell, Josh takes a right turn and starts running down the sidewalk. The Kensington part of town is littered with abandoned factories, run down boutiques, and decrepit homes—half of which stand in the EL’s imposing shadow. In addition, the EL’s light blue stanchions, each separated by about twenty yards, stand guard at the edge of the sidewalk.
Now thirty yards ahead of me, Josh takes a slight turn to his left and looks back at the oncoming traffic. With the coast relatively clear, the boy races across the street.
The ear-piercing screech of a car’s tires comes from my left. A Lincoln Navigator revs past me before swerving out of control. In front of a stanchion, the boy turns around and freezes.
“Josh!”
Bang!
After it had accelerated just moments ago, the car stops dead in its tracks, crumpling flush against the EL stanchion with its front tilted upward. Still standing on the other side of the street, I wait to see Josh emerge from the wreckage but there’s no sign of him.
A slew of people leave their cars, homes, and bodegas, flocking to the wreck like ants on a donut left in the grass. I cross the street hoping for a miracle but expecting the worst. When I approach the car and look inside I find that the driver—a woman—is unconscious, her seat belt on and head against her airbag.
I look to the front of the car and swallow hard again. Josh’s body stands pinned to stanchion, the front of the car’s mangled underbody and grille flush against his chest. His eyes are closed and his white T-shirt is soaked in blood.
I suddenly feel the need to gasp for air. “Oh, God, no.” Some in the crowd force open the driver side door of the Navigator and reach for the driver. “Don’t touch her! Call 911!” I say, tears forming in my eyes. The crowd looks at me, puzzled. I take a look at my clothing and realize that I’ve changed back to myself.
Before their suspicions come to a head, I turn and run into an empty alley, bend over at the waist and put my hands on my knees. I gulp as much oxygen as my lungs will allow between my silent sobs. I suddenly begin feeling lightheaded again, my headache intensifying. With my tears dropping to the pavement, I close my eyes and imagine Ronni. I see her smiling face in front of me, her arms around my shoulders. I miss her fiercely. It would be impossible to feel this hopeless, this lost if she were by my side.
I open my eyes and peek around one of the alley’s brick walls, hands over my head, as I observe the scene while listening to sirens in the distance.
br /> Standing by herself in the middle of the street is a girl in a light blue Phillies cap and sunglasses. In fact, that’s the same girl I saw when I was arrested at the school. This time, she’s on a cell phone.
I start to wipe the tears from my eyes to get a better look but, before I can do so, she hangs up her phone and turns away from the scene.
“Calvin!” I hear a voice say.
It’s Jimenez in her Jetta.
I shake my head.
“Get in the car!”
“You stay the hell away from me!”
“The cops are coming! Get in the car!”
I look around to make sure the coast is clear before racing out of the alley and into the car.
“What happened?” she says.
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
“Huh?”
“You know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“What you think I did this?”
I roll my eyes at her and look through the passenger window. We make a u-turn and drive away from the scene.
“Tell me what happened,” she says.
“Josh was hit by a car. Pinned against an EL pole.”
“Oh my God.” Jimenez looks over at me. “You think I caused that?”
“I don’t know. I just know every time you tell me to go somewhere, an A of J seems to conveniently pop up.”
“Okay, you can blame me for the Mint and Reading Terminal Market, but this? How would I know he’d take the EL and get off here?”
I ignore her. “I know who caused the accident.”
“Who?”
“The girl with the Phillies hat and sunglasses.”
“Wait, the one who was at Lincoln?”
“Same hat, same clothes, same everything.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Swoosh!
I turn back into Lindsay Wagner so as not to draw attention from any cops we might pass.
“It probably was her. What are the odds she’d be at the school yesterday but not today?” Jimenez says.
“Just like Josh … and what are the odds I’d see her in both places?”
“Ay dios mio. Richardson was afraid of this,” she says, still not looking at me.
“Afraid of what?”
Jimenez’s eyes remain affixed to the road.
“Tell me!”
“There’s a mole in our agency.”
“You’re kidding.”
“The A of J had to have known that Josh was your subject. They were following the both of you.”
“Why would they—”
“No idea.”
“What about the ID? How did the investig—”
“Nothing. Both Seville and Darling said they got it from the ID collection. But when I cross-referenced our database, there was no record of the card having ever been made.”
“So, whoever the mole is must’ve planted it there.”
“Right.”
“Shit,” I say, leaning back in my seat. “So I was set up.”
Jimenez nods her head.
“Okay, so let’s change forms when we go back to the branch. Whoever’s nearby when we change back into ourselves has to be the mole, right?”
She shakes her head. “They wouldn’t be that stupid. Their cover would have been blown a long time ago. Whoever the mole is works for the A of J but hasn’t gone through their Change Machine.”
On the interstate now, I think about the choice I had before hopping on the Change Machine. I wish I would have chosen the safer, more boring choice. “How do I know you’re not the mole?”
“Calvin,” she says, punched in the gut, “you can trust me.”
I suddenly sit up and scoff. “Oh, of course I can. Up to this point you’ve been real trustworthy.” My resentful gaze meets hers.
“You’re right,” she says. “We’re all responsible for this.” If Jimenez is acting sympathetic, she ought to be in pictures. Otherwise, her eyes look as though they actually exude pain. She averts her gaze, returning it to the road.
A long, awkward silence falls over the car. Jimenez and I are left with nothing but the ambient noise of the car’s tires rolling on the highway. She must know what I am thinking, all of the pent up anger and frustration I must feel. I, however, don’t know how she feels.
She is either burying herself in remorse or plotting her next twisted move when her phone rings. “Hello? … Yes, we’re on our way … Okay, I’ll tell him … Bye.” She hangs up the phone and places it back in her center console. “It was Richardson. He wants to meet with you back at the branch.”
What choice do I have? “Fine.”
“We will get you out of this. I promise.”
“Don’t promise things you have no control over,” I say, keeping my eyes on the road.
The truth of the matter is that keeping me holed up at the Agency of Influence may hide me from the cops but it won’t protect me from the mole. The frustrating thing is that I have no clue what the mole wants from me. Money’s the only thing I have, but I’m not wealthy.
If, however, their aim was to tear my life to pieces, then they have been nothing if not successful.