Take A Chance

Today started out like any other day for me. The sounds of an awakening, urban jungle growing louder as daylight crept over the horizon. It was never the rumbling trains, arguing neighbors, honking horns or alarm clock that woke me up each day. The anxiety of facing the day with next to nothing was more than enough to jolt me awake each morning. Like normal, I sat up in my bed, stared at the drywall underneath the peeling, gray paint on my bedroom wall before preparing to go to work. I must say, despite how normal my daily routine felt at that point, I could feel that there was something different about today. Like something out of the ordinary was around the corner. Not knowing what to make of that feeling, I got myself cleaned up and dashed out of the door for work.

A few years ago, I got really tired of hurricanes sweeping through the south. The last one that flooded New Orleans made me look in the mirror and say “Chance Thibodeaux, it’s time to get out of here” I have big dreams! Dreams that are a little tough to achieve in New Orleans without getting into some bad things sometimes so I spent most of my time there thinking to myself “There’s gotta be more to life than this.” Where I’m from and with the cards that I have been dealt, you have to do a little dirt to get by, otherwise, you won’t survive. Regardless of how true that is, I never liked it or thought it was fair. I always heard about the “bright lights, big city” opportunities that New York City had to offer, so I packed up and headed north! I didn’t have a plan when I left. There was something kinda freeing about the idea of just going sight unseen so I just took off as soon as I felt I had enough money saved. My family and friends thought I was crazy but I didn’t care. I figure, I only have a certain number of trips that I’ll make around the sun so I better make each one of them count. 23 of those trips have been spent listening to everyone make excuses for why they can’t or won’t do something that they really wanted to do. I just hate that it took a hurricane to make me realize that I was falling into that same rut. New York to me symbolized breaking that cycle so off I went.

Ever since I was little, I was good with my hands and technology. I figured with that skill set, finding a good job in New York City wouldn’t be a problem. Well, I was half right. I landed a job about a month after arriving but it wasn’t a good job. The money that I had saved up in New Orleans would have lasted me 6 months back there but it was nothing in The Big Apple! What I thought would last me 6 months was getting thin within 2. My dream was to find a tech company where I could work with microchips. I found a tech company, but I wasn’t working with microchips. I was in the mailroom in the basement of Microgram Technologies. I wish that I could say “Hey, it’s not glamorous, but it pays the bills” but that would have been stretching it...a lot! I was able to get an apartment upon arriving but after month 2, my car broke down and it was either, pay rent or fix my car. The subway stops 2 blocks from Microgram so I decided that I would let the car sit and ride the subway until I got enough money saved to get it fixed.

Like usual, I dashed out with my coffee, bag over my shoulder, and bagel clenched in my teeth. I trotted to the subway stairs, dropped my token into the slot and stood waiting for the next train. Being from New Orleans, I learned early to stay out of other people’s business but I couldn’t help but tune into the conversation taking place next to me on the platform. My attention was drawn to these two men because, in my mind, they were the last two people that I would ever expect to see talking to one another. One man had a scruffy beard, dingy clothes and smelled like he hadn’t showered in a day or so. The other man was well dressed and clean cut like he worked in a bank or something. That, coupled with the fact that they appeared to not want anyone to know what they were saying to one another piqued my interest even more. For the most part, what they were saying was hard to make out but as I inched closer, I could hear the well dressed man say to the other man “Just go along with the plan. The directions are in the little black book”. He then handed him a manilla envelope and walked towards the exit. The scruffy man briefly examined the envelope, looked around to see if anyone was watching him and quickly jumped on the train as the doors opened. When he entered the train, part of me said that I should walk to the other end of the train while the other part of me was curious about the manilla envelope. I stood close to where he sat hoping that he would open the envelope. We got 2 stops away from where I was due to get off when I noticed the man begin to go through the contents of the envelope. As we approached my stop, he returned the contents back into the envelope. Disappointed that I didn’t see anything of interest, I prepared to leave the train. The train doors open, the man grabs his bag, envelope, and quickly walks onto the platform. As I exit the train behind him, someone bumps his shoulder causing him to fumble the envelope in his hands. He didn’t drop the envelope but a few items fell out without him noticing. “Excuse me sir! You dropped something” I said as I bent over to pick them up for the man but he continued to hurry up the stairs to the street above. I grabbed the items and looked up to return them but the man was gone. I raced up the stairs and looked around to see if I could see the man but he was nowhere to be found. Thinking nothing of it, I made my way to Microgram so that I could start work. As I was walking, I began to look through the items that the man dropped. There were two bundles of papers that were folded in half and kept together by paper clips. The first bundle was a bunch of papers with seemingly unimportant information typed on them so I threw them in the first trash can that I passed. Expecting the same information to be in the second bundle of papers, I unfolded them to find a little black book nestled in the fold. The well dressed man’s words about a plan and directions in a black book flashed across my mind. I only had 8 minutes before my shift started so I put the black book in my pocket and jogged the rest of the way to Microgram. Despite my desire to dig into what I had found, I focused on my job and pushed through the first half of the work day.

With my curiosity brimming over, I sat down in the lunchroom and started reading the little black book that I had found. By the time I got to page 4, I knew what I had to do...take the rest of the day off and head to the main subway station. I rushed to my supervisor’s office, fed him a story about suddenly not feeling well and headed to the main subway. Microgram was a cool job with a lot of cool co-workers but entry level mailroom pay wasn’t cutting it. I was making my rent by the skin of my teeth but I was a few days from my lights and gas being turned off so my eyes lit up when the little black book told me that a nice amount of money was about to be dropped off at the main subway station.

It was 12:07 pm when I left work. According to the little black book, $20,000 was about to be placed in a subway station locker. Payment for services that, according to the little black book, had been completed about 30 minutes before I left to go to the subway station. The book said that money would be dropped off for the scruffy faced man 2 hours after he had made sure the “goods” were delivered. I was pretty sure that, based on the amount of money being paid and the method by which it was being paid, the “goods” spoken of wasn’t pizza dough. No one was going to report it stolen so I figured that I could scout out the area before the drop if I got to the subway station early enough. I got to the main subway station about 40 minutes before the scheduled drop. The little black book said the money would be placed in locker number 829. I posted myself on a bench nearby so that I could have a clear look at anyone who approached the locker. About 20 minutes later, a man walked up to locker 829 and placed a backpack in the locker. He entered the code to lock it and quickly walked away. My nerves were shot but I calmed down by reminding myself that the scruffy guy wouldn’t know to be at the locker when I arrived because I had the little black book with the pick up instructions. I took a deep breath, trotted over to the locker and entered the code from the little black book. When the locker popped open, I quickly put the backpack on and began to make my way towards the exit. I could feel the anxiety leaving as I approached the exit doors but the anxiety returned like a boomerang when I saw the scruffy man walking up to the same doors that I planned to walk out of. The moment I saw him, I quickly turned to the right and began walking towards the escalators that led to the trains. I got to the escalators that led down to the trains and looked behind me to see if the scruffy man was behind me. As I feared, he was heading towards the escalators that led to the trains. I noticed that he appeared to be looking at some sort of device as he frequently looked up to make sense of everything going on in the subway station. I was a considerable distance in front of him but it seemed that he made every turn that I made. That’s when it dawned on me...the bag had some sort of tracker in it! Desperate to get away from this guy, I rifled through the bag as discreetly as I could while walking. I reached in the front pouch on the backpack and pulled out what appeared to be a transmitter. Hoping this was what the man was tracking, I sped up and ducked around a corner. As luck would have it, a janitor was driving the opposite direction on a cart picking up trash. I tossed the transmitter onto the cart as it passed by and watched as it passed the corner that I ducked around. The scruffy man got to the base of the escalators, looked at his scanner, briefly looked in my direction and then zeroed in on the janitor’s cart and began to follow him. It looks like I’m about to change my name from Chance Thibodeaux to Scott Free.

By Brian Simpson