Agents of Change

  Chapter Two

  I wake up, only to find myself surrounded by nothing more than three white walls. And a fluorescent light. Oh, that light, buzzing in its perch above me, flickering, pulsating as though it’s somehow aggravated by my presence.

  When I feel the urge to scratch an itch on my face, I realize that my hands are tied behind the back of the wooden chair I’m sitting in.

  “Hello?” I say into the emptiness. The only response I get is the echo of my own voice and the irritating flicker of the light, a flagrant violation of the Third Geneva Convention in its own right.

  I hear a door open behind me. Footsteps. Multiple people. I close my eyes and brace for the hit I know is coming. Which will it be? A punch to the head? A whip to the back? A whack in the nuts with a thick rope tied in an even thicker knot? Ever see Casino Royale with Daniel Craig? I think every man grabbed his balls while watching that.

  As the footsteps move past me, I open my eyes and see three people line up in front of me. The trio is intimidating, though I don’t think they’re here to inflict physical harm. No, these look like the type of people who’d prosecute me for the extensive yet perfectly legal stash of porn on my home computer instead. Don’t judge. A single guy has needs.

  Next to Elena—who now wears a black pants suit—stand two men, both dapper, sporting suits and ties. There is a stark generational gap between the two men. The first man, standing in the middle, has a Clark Kent persona about him. He’s tall, maybe 6’2” or 6’3”, has a full head of dark, closely-cropped hair and is kind of gangly and awkward-looking. Clark looks to be around my age, if not a touch older, and wears eyeglasses to boot.

  The elder of the two men is a short, stout, meek-looking man in his sixties with white hair on the top of his head. When he came in, I could see that he’s balding in the back of his head. If he’s lived this long and only has that small of a bald spot on his head, good for him. I also noticed that the old man walks with a slight limp and has a minor hunch in his back. Based on age and appearance, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the old guy is probably the wisest of the triumvirate, making him the most difficult to pull one over on.

  “Untie him,” the elder man tells Clark Kent.

  The young man comes around behind my chair and starts tugging at the rope.

  “You’re not going to be a problem, are you?” the old man says with a sort of deep, booming voice and an unmistakable Southern drawl. I shake my head as Clark makes headway with the rope behind me.

  “Where am I?” I say, looking up at that damn light again.

  The old man clasps his hands and completely ignores my question. “You must be hungry.”

  I furrow my brow, questioning the turn this situation has taken. “Very.”

  The old man waves at someone behind me. I turn around and see a mirror, two-way, I presume.

  The Man of Steel finishes untying me and returns to his place near Elena and the old man. I want to scratch the itchy rope marks on my wrists but my face … oh, my face. Razor burn is a bitch. I start scratching under my chin and work my way up to my cheeks, eventually building up more of a rub than a scratch.

  Out of the door behind me comes an older woman, built like a linebacker. The graying bun perched on the top of her head is none too intimidating, though. She rolls a table on wheels in my direction.

  “You like Cuban food?” says the old man.

  “Never had it.”

  The lady puts the food in front of me. It’s a hearty-looking meal of grilled chicken breast on a bed of yellow rice. The aroma and steam it exudes fills my nostrils. Also, a paper cup filled to the brim with soda. I pick up the cup before looking at the old man.

  “It’s not poisoned, I promise.”

  I take a small sip. Definitely Pepsi and, for now, definitely sterile. I’m usually an uncola guy but I’m not complaining. This is much better than what I had envisioned when I first heard my captors walk in.

  “It’s arroz con pollo. Agent Jimenez’s signature recipe,” says the old man, nodding in Elena’s direction. “Can we get you anything else?”

  “Yeah. You don’t happen to have any lotion or aftershave, do you? My face itches real bad.”

  The trio looks amongst themselves, caught off guard. These guys were prepared but not that prepared. Finally, Elena reaches inside her suit jacket and pulls out a small bottle.

  “Here,” she says, brandishing the bottle. “Hope you don’t mind vanilla.”

  While I love that scent, I don’t usually wear it myself. I grin and nod my head, creating a basket with my hands. Elena tosses the bottle and throws a perfect strike with the seriousness of a baseball pitcher. I squeeze a fairly small amount of lotion out of the bottle and massage it into my face.

  I pick up my fork and start gathering rice with it. “Okay, so when do we get to the part where you tell me who the hell you guys are?”

  “My name’s Donald Richardson,” says the old man. “This here is Nick Hamilton and I believe you’ve already met Elena Jimenez.”

  “Yeah, she’s a real knock-out.”

  “Sorry she drugged you. We had to make sure you wouldn’t run,” he says.

  “I think just calling me in would have sufficed,” I say.

  “We couldn’t risk you seeing our location,” Richardson says. “Not yet, at least.”

  “That’s reassuring,” I say through a big wad of rice in my mouth.

  Richardson draws closer to me, arm’s length in fact, making me nervous for the first time since these guys first showed themselves.

  “Calvin, what would you do if I told you I could give you a chance to change the world?”

  I stop chewing, Pepsi in hand. “I’d say bullshit.”

  “What if I told you that you could be an Agent of Influence?”

  “Excuse me?” I say, nearly choking on my soda.

  “Influence. You know what it means to be influential, don’t you?”

  I nod my head.

  He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Calvin, you are at the Philadelphia branch of the Agency of Influence.”

  I laugh, inadvertently projecting a grain of rice onto Richardson’s weathered face.

  The old man doesn’t flinch.

  “Agency of Influence,” I say. “That’s funny. Do I call each of you ‘Agent’ then?”

  The trio remains poker faced. These people are serious.

  “Your reaction was predictable, Cal—can I call you Cal?”

  I throw my hands up, afraid of what will follow. “Why not?”

  “We’ve set up a tour of our facility just for you. When we’re through, you’ll see … this is no joke.” Agent Richardson motions for me to stand. Hamilton and Jimenez walk past me to the front of the room. Hamilton opens the door and holds it as the rest of us, led by Jimenez, walk through it.

  To my surprise, the barren room simply leads to a short hallway. Reminiscent of a hospital, the hallway is literally and figuratively cold, lined with windows and doors on either side.

  I trade glances with Hamilton; he seems like a reasonable fellow. But when I look at Jimenez, she ignores me. As we continue walking, I notice that the curtains on all of the windows are closed. “Is this a government agency?”

  “No,” says Hamilton.

  “What is it then? Who runs this place?”

  “Easy, easy,” the old man says. “One question at a time.”

  “Our government doesn’t know we exist,” Hamilton says.

  “In general,” says the old man, “the world has remained largely oblivious to our presence.”

  “What do you mean the world?” I say.

  “This is just one of several hundred branches worldwide,” the old man adds. “Each one is tied to a major metropolitan area—or country, depending on its size.”

  “I still don’t get what goes on here.”

  When we stop at a door along the hallway, Hamilton unlocks it and turns on a set of dimmed track lighting overhead. Upon entering the room,
I see that it’s a small auditorium, one that could pass for someone’s tricked out home theater.

  “Take a seat,” Richardson says.

  I oblige and sit next to the aisle, surprised to find reclining seats and retractable armrests, replete with cup holders. Jimenez takes a seat in the row in front of me, Richardson sits behind me. Hamilton chooses to stand against the wall.

  “An agency like this has a lot to offer a guy like you,” the old man says before nodding to Hamilton.

  “Calvin, our agency—consider us the people responsible for delivering good karma, so to speak,” Hamilton says.

  “So, you’re like guardian angels.”

  “Kind of. We don’t work for God.”

  “Cal,” the old man interjects, “as an Agent of Influence, you’d be making a difference in people’s lives. Bringing them good fortune when they need it the most.”

  I furrow my eyebrows. “Agents of Influence? Is that really what you call yourselves?”

  “Richardson’s the director of this branch. He used to work in the field. We all have worked in the field,” Jimenez says.

  “The field?”

  “Yes. Influencing people usually requires engaging them,” Hamilton says, careful not to sound condescending. “On a personal level.”

  “Hamilton just left the field and now works behind the scenes. He’s my number two,” says Richardson.

  “That’s why you’re here,” says Jimenez. “We have an opening for a field agent.”

  “I—I’m sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”

  The old man nods to Jimenez. She removes a small remote from her pocket and presses a button. Expecting a movie of sorts, I am surprised when the projection screen is filled with images taken from some of the more intimate moments of my life. The more recent photos look like they were taken with a still camera. The photos from times long gone appear to have been captured with a surveillance video feed.

  These guys have been watching me.

  My amazement over the fact that these guys were actually able to capture these photos is upstaged only by my amazement over the moments these images actually illustrate. Me high-fiving that ten-year-old from the little league team I coached a few summers ago. A happy moment with Ronni. My shirtsleeves rolled up as I pick up trash with coworkers at Fairmount Park.

  I’m not quite sure what to say or how to react. “How—where did you get these?”

  “As you can see, we’ve been following you for some time,” Richardson says. “I told Hamilton that if he wanted to leave the field, he had to get me a replacement who could be as good as he was.”

  “But—”

  “You’re intelligent, you think quickly on your feet and,” Hamilton says, “you have a desire to make a difference.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” I say. “You hardly even know me.”

  Richardson waves me off.

  “Seriously. I do this stuff for a few hours, not as a full-fledged career.”

  “Director of business analytics at Maxwell,” Richardson says. “Six-figure salary. Huge employee stock options. And you absolutely hate it.”

  “How do you—”

  “C’mon, you don’t think that matchmaking gig’s actually fooling anybody, do you? We know what you’re really after.”

  “We know what you’re capable of,” Jimenez says. “You passed our final test this morning.”

  “Test?”

  “That wasn’t actually Mr. Grace you talked to on the phone,” Richardson says.

  “Huh? What do you mean?” I say with a nervous snicker. “It sounded just like him.”

  Hamilton crouches down to meet me at eye level. “You like working with people, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want your life to have meaning, right?

  “Well, yeah, but I…kinda have those things now.”

  Hamilton grins, almost offended. “Calvin, this isn’t even in the same realm as matchmaking.”

  “Then, what’re we talking about?”

  “Raising people up,” Richardson says.

  “How do you raise people up?” I say, mocking the old man.

  “Any number of ways,” Jimenez says. “Friendly encounters, generosity—”

  “So, what, you throw a homeless guy a few bucks?”

  “It’s not about money,” Richardson says, hand now on the knob of an unobtrusive door along the wall. “It never is with the A of I. But, if that’s what makes you happy, you’ll be happy to know that you’re better off here than at Maxwell.”

  “I don’t care about money.”

  “Of course,” the old man says. “Why else would a man of your stature drive a Kia? Or send your mother five hundred bucks every month?”

  I shoot the codger a look. These guys know way too much.

  Richardson opens the door. I let the other agents leave the theater ahead of me. When I enter the next room, which is nearly as long as a subway car, I’m stunned by the inordinate number of flatscreen monitors mounted on the wall. Small, recessed flood lights hang over the room. The colors in each monitor jump off the screens thanks to the room’s dim lighting.

  “We call this the control room,” Richardson says.

  As I look at the monitors, they are fixed on countless individuals. A man at home watching sitcom reruns, beer in hand. A woman walking down a city street, grocery bags in hand. There are even cameras capturing these individuals in their cars, some drivers on the phone, some jamming out to their favorite tunes.

  “Oh my God. What the hell kind of operation are you running here?” I say, not sure whether to be amazed or disgusted. “I could have this place shut down by the end of tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, you could tell the authorities,” Hamilton says, shrugging. “But who would believe you?”

  “How do you get all these cameras …?”

  “Our system’s been around for decades. We get—”

  Richardson backhands the young man in the arm. “We’ll tell you how it all works, if you decide to join us,” the old man says.

  I scoff and shake my head as I look at the monitors. At the bottom of the wall of monitors is a long table. The four of us stand near one end of the table. At the other end, to our left, sit two people, a man and a woman. They appear to be recent college grads, taking notes and keeping tabs on the monitors. They both wave in our direction before going back to work.

  “Those guys are part of our intelligence team,” Hamilton says.

  “Intelligence?”

  “Yes. They’re kind of the behind-the-scenes guys. They monitor all of our case subjects, keep close tabs on them and let us know when we need to act.”

  “What is this, the CIA?”

  “I present you your first case, if you were to join us,” the old man says. He points at a monitor that shows a black woman at home, sitting on a torn couch while smoking a cigarette. Her hair is wild, half done. One half of her head as been braided, the other half stands up in the air a la Don King.

  “This is Carla Andrews,” says Jimenez. “A single mother living in Nicetown with three kids. She’s been considering walking out on her children for the last week or so.”

  On the monitor, two young kids wearing a random ensemble of dirty and tattered clothing run past the mother in the living room, stopping only when the mom yells at them. The kids then sit down on the living room’s brown carpet, which is so sullied that it appears black.

  “The father’s not around, is he?” I say.

  “Their fathers,” Jimenez says. By the looks of the mother, her kids, and the somewhat squalid conditions of the family’s home, the Andrews Family could use a pick me up.

  “What does she do for work?”

  “Nothing,” Jimenez says.

  “Welfare?” I say.

  Jimenez nods.

  “Do you know why we’d give you this assignment?” Richardson says.

  Of course I do. In the short time I’ve known them, the Agency of Influence has made a habit of tugging
at my heart strings and they know this hits too close to home for me. Literally. Despite my education, I grew up in Nicetown and, despite its name, it epitomizes the modern-day ghetto. It’s the type of place that would scare the crap out of your average suburbanite. Rowhomes upon rowhomes line the neighborhood’s narrow streets. Pavements are uneven, porches are unkempt. Drug dealers command street corners the way Napoleon commanded Europe. The distinct odor of ganja persistently permeates the atmosphere. Little boys mimic their favorite football stars while playing two-hand touch in the street; most of them don’t finish school. Little girls play hopscotch and jump rope on the sidewalk; many of them spawn children far before they’re ready.

  It’s no place for a child to live. You never know when a stray bullet might be the last sensation you feel. Walking to the corner store with your head on swivel like an American in Afghanistan is a difficult way to live for anyone, regardless of age. At least, that’s probably an outsider’s view of it. When you live it every day like I did, you think nothing of it because that’s just life. It’s just like how you never realize how deep or high-pitched your voice is until you hear it the way everyone else hears it, through a recording. It’s not until you’ve lived anywhere else that you can see the ghetto for what it truly is.

  In Nicetown, I witnessed the plight of several single mothers—white, black, and Latin—all of whom seemingly had no way out. Fortunately for me, my mom had her shit together. I can’t imagine having a mom who would question her desire to care for me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I get it, but…”

  “But what?” Hamilton says.

  “I don’t know … what makes you think she’ll listen to me? They need money not a social worker.”

  The two younger agents look over at Richardson. “We’re not exactly talking about social work here,” the old man says. “This way.”

  He ushers us to the other end of the table and a door that leads back to the hallway. I take a look at the two intelligence agents before leaving the room. The girl, a cute redhead, is most definitely a recent college grad. Upon further examination, the guy may be just a couple of years younger than I. He looks kind of like a frat boy, square jaw, pompous aura, and all. As we exit the room, I notice Frat Boy take a peek at Jimenez’s ass. Boys will be boys.

  Out of the control room, we start walking further down the hallway. In the distance, I see a large window but I can’t yet see what lies behind it.

  “Cal,” Richardson starts, “the thing that separates Agents of Influence from social workers are, well, special abilities.”

  “Like, superheroes?” I say, shooting him a quick glance.

  “Sort of.” The large window comes closer and closer into view.

  Hamilton motions for my attention. “Calvin, have you ever met an attractive woman who you thought was being way too nice to you?”

  “I guess.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Like, she’s way out of your league but she’s just too friendly to be true?”

  “Oh, for sure. It’s a big tease.”

  “That’s some of what we do.”

  “Really?”

  “You felt better about yourself after that encounter, right?”

  I scoff but it’s true. As a man, a compliment’s always nice but when it comes from someone who also happens to be very attractive, it provides a boost to your ego. Such an encounter can even encourage you to become a better person.

  When I was a teenager, I worked at a movie theater. It was one of those large multiplexes that showed every movie, including the indie films no one’s ever heard of. There was a good length of time during my senior year of high school, maybe a month—October I’ll say—when I wasn’t myself. I had just found out my girlfriend at the time cheated on me. I was moody, I never smiled, and I never did anything after school but work, homework, and exercise. I got in countless arguments with my mom because I could sense a sort of sadistic relief from her—she never approved of said girlfriend. She carried herself with one of those I told you so vibes that really pissed me off.

  But every Friday night in October, a girl—I think she introduced herself as Denise—came to the theater and came to my line at the concession stand. Denise was gorgeous; long brown hair, green eyes, and teeth straight as an arrow. She also always smelled of vanilla. Denise never stopped smiling and always had a kind word to say. Whether it was about the efficiency of my service, or my complexion, or my haircut, or my smile … you name it, she found something for which to compliment me.

  For some reason—perhaps because our encounters were always so mind-blowing—I could never summon the courage to ask her out. When I finally did, that’s when her visits to my theater stopped. For the next three or four Fridays, I always kept a hopeful eye out for Denise but I never saw her again.

  In retrospect, I thought it odd that a girl so young, so beautiful would be going to the movies by herself every Friday, in October no less, a month when the only new releases are those crappy horror flicks. She always ordered the same thing—a small popcorn and a small Coke—and I never saw her actually leave the theater. Maybe she went to the movies with friends and decided I was her best bet for good service. Or, maybe she was a tease, an Agent of Influence thrown my way to help me recover from the post-breakup blues. If so, it was cruel but it worked.

  “So you give people a confidence boost?” I say.

  Jimenez nods. “Sometimes.”

  “Those are easy, though,” Hamilton says. “We all do those every now and then when we feel the urge to go back in the field.”

  “What’s a challenging case, then?”

  A few feet from the large window, Richardson and Jimenez look at Hamilton. His expression turns sober.

  “Two years ago, a man from Abington, married with three kids and another on the way, was dismissed from his job with the school district.”

  “Laid off?” I say.

  “Not exactly. He was assistant superintendant. A new superintendant came in and cleaned house.”

  “Damn.”

  Hamilton goes on to explain that it was a double whammy for the guy. He had put in sixteen years with the district and was expecting a promotion. Obviously, the guy took it hard. His family lost their house and his severance package wasn’t enough. He also started to question his abilities as a father and husband.

  “I bet,” I say. “Was he suicidal?”

  “Sort of.” The guy eventually developed an elaborate scheme to take out the board and the superintendent at a board meeting. He managed to plan all of this without his family’s knowledge.

  “With what? A bomb?”

  “A gun. An UZI.”

  “What happened to him?” I say.

  “Well, at the eleventh hour, I talked him out of it. He knew his family still loved him but I had to convince him that this was a good time to look for a job he would really enjoy.”

  “Did he?”

  Hamilton stops walking. The rest of us follow suit as he explains that the man went to City Hall to interview for a job but was killed fifteen minutes later. “A fight broke out in the City Hall subway station. He was accidentally pushed onto the tracks. A train was coming …”

  “That’s right,” I say slowly, “I heard about that on the news. Wasn’t the fight over some sneakers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That could’ve happened to anyone,” I say, trying to start the process of changing the subject.

  “That’s what these guys said,” he says, pointing at Richardson and Elena. “I know they’re right, but …”

  The old man pats Hamilton on the back and motions for everyone to continue toward the large window.

  “Now we’ve come to the piéce de résistance,” the old man says, butchering the pronunciation like a true Southern American.

  As we move closer to the large window, I begin to see steel. Oodles of stainless steel. Standing in front of the window now, it’s obvious that this large room is some kind of laboratory. Computer moni
tors with endless data litter the left side of the lab. Controls and the tables upon which they sit fill the right side of the room. In the center stands what appears to be a table in an upright position. The four binds situated along the table’s edges are a dead giveaway. All of the doohickeys, gadgets, and hardware are all intertwined by a series of cables.

  Realizing what comes next, I suddenly gasp for air. “I’ve seen this movie before. The black man’s always the first to go.”