Lee Williams, Harassment Agent - Episode 1

by Lee Williams

Line trills.

"Triple H, this is Valentina, who can we help you with today?"

Heavy breathing from the other end.

"Uh...  Yeah...  This is...  Uh...  Mr. Michael...  Richard..."

"Who referred you, Mr. Michael?"

"Uh...  Joe Fairlane..."

"Six digit PIN?"

"Seven...  Seven...  Four...  One...  Eight...  Three..."

"Perfect.  Who do you want us to harass?"

"What?"

Who do you want us to harass for you?"

"I just tell you who I want to harass?  Is this a joke?"

"No sir, we know Joe Fairlane.  This is the Harassment Help Hotline.  Just give us a name, and we'll proceed."

"Yeah, his name is Luke Gleber.  He's from St. Louis, Missouri."

"Okay, thank you.  Cyber or real life harassment?"

"Both I guess?"

"Sounds good, we'll put you down for both.  Drive to suicide?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Do you want us to drive him to suicide?"

"What?  No!  You guys can do that?"

"Physical violence?"

"No, just harass him."

"Arson?"

"No!  Well...  Maybe..."

"We'll put you down for Arson.  Would you like to place a dollar value?"

"Yeah, uh...  I guess when he pays 75,000 you can stop?  I don't know how that works."

"Excellent price, anything else?"

"No ma'am."

"Alright, again, my name is Valentina and I'd like to thank you for calling the Harassment Help Hotline!  Have a good day."

"Wait, hold on, how much do I owe you?  What if he can't pay 75,000 dollars?"

Call ends.

Valentina sat in her section of the office, which was in a run down part of town, and printed out several papers.  Then she looked over them, and made sure everything was accurate.  One Richard Michael has requested standard harassment on one Luke Gleber.  He was referenced by Joe Fairlane.  After she checked everything out, she walked to Ray's office to assign an agent to the case.

"Hello Ray," she said.  "How's it going?" Ray grunted.

"We need an Agent for a standard harassment case."

"They're all on call," he said.  "Except for a few."

"Scott?" she asked.

Ray laughed.  "In jail."

"Tommy?"

Ray laughed harder.  "In jail with Scott."

Valentina paused for a second.  "What about Lee?"

Ray started laughing hysterically.

"What?" she said.  "He still works here!"

"Yeah, your little boyfriend still works here, technically.  If he ever comes back from Mexico.  He's probably dead.  Cartel probably got him.  Or his brain damage."

"Why is he in Mexico?"

"He followed someone into Mexico from California and was in communication for four days before he disappeared.  He stopped answering our calls.  We told him he didn't have to do it, but he insisted.  Hopefully he doesn't think we're covering mileage and lodging there...  We have a dude in Mexico if you want to call him but none of us speak Spanish so we weren't able to talk to him.  He doesn't speak any English.  I don't know how Lee was talking to him."

"I'm Mexican and Venezuelan.  Also, Lee speaks broken Spanish."

"What?  You're f*cking what!?  Jesus Christ, call him already!"

Valentina dialed the Mexican number.  The person on the other end picked up.

He coughed, and said "Alo?"

"Alo? ¿Dónde está Lee Williams?"  ("Hello?  Where's Lee Williams?")

"Que?  ¿Quién es?"  ("Who?  Who is it?")

"Valentina.  De TripleH."

"Quien?"  ("Who?")

Valentina groaned.  "TripleH!  Harassment Help Hotline!"

"Ah, si, Lee Williams está en el Hospital.  En Tijuana."  ("Ah, yes, Lee Williams is in the Hospital. In Tijuana.")

"Que!?"  ("Who?")

"Si, pero yo no sé por qué.  En el Hospital Angeles Tijuana."  ("Yes, but I don't know why.  At the Angeles Tijuana Hospital.")

"Un agente está viniendo.  Gracias."  ("An agent is coming.  Thank you.")

"Bueno."

After three days I stepped foot outside of Hospital Angeles Tijuana.  Very good hospital, I guess.  They gave me the address of a pharmacy and told me to get some medications.  I asked where my prescription was.

"No, guero."  She smiled.  "No prescripción."

Flashback to several weeks ago.  I followed some f*cking lunatic from California to Mexico starting in San Dimas, going through San Diego, then passing through Chula Vista, and San Ysidro, and then finally, I saw him walking through the border into Mexico and took the billionth video of him.

He was walking through the border very quickly with a hat and a suitcase.

He was not Mexican.  He was wearing a button down.  Doesn't really matter, he was trying to disappear.

He deleted his current email, so I logged into his mother's and looked through it.  She doesn't know how to use a cell phone so they kept in frequent email contact, meaning he probably gave her his new email.  And, unsurprisingly, he did.  So I sniped that and sent the video through a Swiss anonymous email service to xx2777@gmail.com promptly.

Then I stumbled for a second and walked into a store while I was still in the U.S. and bought a bottle of water.  I was shaking, and it wasn't even hot out.  I stopped and thought about what to do, because I can either end the assignment early and not make any extra money from the Dollar Value, or I can follow him into another country with no guarantee I'd make it back out.  But I wanted the money... And I was shaking.

Hopefully I'm not sick.

I had my passport, I had some money, clothes, and papers and shit like that in a small bag.  I had a gun.  I had bear spray.  A camera.  I decided I was good to go.

But first, I stopped for tacos.

I walked up to the border an hour later and promptly vomited into a potted plant.  Maybe it was something I ate.  Was there time to stop?  Did I have to keep going?

Why not step foot on the bridge?  Wouldn't you?  As a matter of fact, I think I should trudge forward feeling very strange, nowhere in particular to go in Mexico, although I do have mileage and lodging covered... I think.  But what was the price on this guy again?

I shuffled through my papers and remembered.

40,000 dollars.  No giving up on that.  I sent him the instructions to end the harassment already, which included paying the money.  He hasn't responded.  Besides, I already chased him all the way down California, slashed his tires, clipped the spokes on his bike, hacked his wireless networks, shut off his landlines, cut off his electricity, disabled his security systems, blacklisted the IMEI of all of his cellphones, threw dog shit at his house, threw glass bottles of paint at his house, and threw a brick through his window.

Basically just harass him.

Because I'm a harasser.

I just f*ck with people.

I don't even remember his name.  My vision was starting to blur.

I made it into Mexico and shambled to a motel and called my friend Emilio.

He came through, and I was sweating bullets.  I spent a week trying to track him down with his help but it didn't work.  However, I was spending long amounts of time sleeping.  I go to bed and wake up twelve hours later feeling just as tired.  Then I felt awake for seven or so more hours before I passed out again.  Eventually, one night, my whole body locked up and I couldn't move.  Emilio eventually called the ambulance and I spent four or so hours paralyzed in a chair in Hospital Angeles Tijuana and then spent the next three days there.

Which brings us to where we started, me finally being released from the hospital with back spasms and possible neuropathy and no time to follow up, at least not there.  I had to think.

So I ate a couple tacos with Emilio.

"Bro, give up," he said.  "He's gone.  You lost him."

"It's 40,000 dollars, Emilio.  The bonus!  The f*cking bonus!"

"Dawg, you are in Mexico.  You're an American national who stumbled into the country trying to harass someone and ended up in the hospital because of neurological issues.  He's probably far away now.  Didn't you already get paid for this?"

"40,000 dollars.  And yes."

"Well, it doesn't matter, because you can't stop shaking and some chick named Valentina called my uncle about you."

I snapped awake.

"Someone called your uncle?"

"Yeah, someone named Valentina called...  They're looking for you."

"Juan or Carlos?"

"What?"

"Did they call Juan or Carlos?"

"Is that really the important part?  You instructed both of them to take calls from the number.  In really terrible Spanish..."

"Carlos is a dick."

"Yeah, I know Carlos is a dick.  I think it was Juan..."

"Wait, so Valentina called me?"

"Yeah, you're needed in the U.S.  Do you have your phone?  Or anything?"

"Just my money."

"Well, then we need to get you back in."

"Why?"

"75,000 dollars?"

"Nevermind, we'll go."

I loaded up on a shitphone at a nearby "discount" electronics store.  I got a small bag and placed all my shit in it.  I walked into a tattoo shop and bought a knife.  Then I headed for the spot with Emilio in his f*cked up car.  We ended up in a parking lot a good ways west into the desert where there was a large truck with a man waiting outside it.

"This is how my cousin got in."

"Wait, hold on, we're trafficking me into the country?"

Don't be racist."

The man opened the truck and pushed some hay bales out of the way very forcefully and I entered into a small compartment with benches made of hay and several people in it.  I sat down.  Some young guys, a couple women.  One lone child.  Emilio waved me off.

Then after the truck started moving, the fatigue kicked in and I fell asleep.  I woke up to one of them shaking me.

"Guero.  Guero!  Estamos aqui!  Despertar!"  ("Guero.  Guero!  We're here!  Wake up!")

"Huh?  California?  Bueno, bien, good, whatever, Jesus Christ...  What time...  ¿Qué hora?  ¿Qué hora es?"  (What time?  What time is it?)

"Yo no sé.  Levantarse."  (I don't know.  Get up.")

I asked, "¿Dónde en California?" (Where in California?) but he walked away.

I caught a Greyhound bus from wherever the f*ck I was to San Ysidro and called Valentina.

She picked up and said, "Ray needs you to do OSINT gathering on Luke Gleber.  He's in St. Louis.  Let me know when you're ready for the phone number."

"Not even a hello?  How are you?  Where have you been?"

"You chose not to end the mission."  "He went to Mexico!  I f*cking chased him into Mexico!  I was trying to do my job!  Also, why give just me a 40,000 dollar contract?  I'm one guy!"

"Does it matter?  You're never going to find him now, and obviously you made it back into the U.S., so unless you want to double-down and go back to Mexico to look for him, just dox this new guy and come the f*ck back.  Oh, and if you didn't want to do the 40k assignment, don't bother coming back to work because this 75k, which is your only available assignment right now, is what you're working on.  Bye."

She gave me the number.  The first thing I did was do a CNAM search to get the name from his Caller ID, which confirmed he was in fact this Gleber fella.

The area code was 314, St. Louis, so that matched up.  Wasn't hard to find him in this people search site, cross-referenced with voting records and property deeds and the like, I managed to track down where he lived.  It was some mediocre looking neighborhood called Patch in South St. Louis.

I scoped out the house on Street View, thank you Google, and saw it was a two-story house.  The windows on the bottom floor were barred, however the top floor were regular windows.  There was a fence, but it looked like I could jump over it, whenever this neurological bullshit goes away.  I could see a box from T-Mobile on the side of his house as well as a satellite dish.  He had a Ring doorbell camera.  Secured by ADT sign.  I love Google Maps.

A car was outside, a 2012 Honda Civic.  Looked like it could be his.  Bright red with race car paint and a massive spoiler.  Look at this guy...

And he is in fact 20!  That explains it.  I wonder what he did to piss this grown man off to the point where he's paying an agency to harass him with the dollar price of 75,000 US dollars.  Maybe he said one too many mean things into the mic during video game time...  Or memed on him on Twitter a little too hard.

Doesn't concern me.

I called Ray.

"Hello?" he screamed.  "Who the f*ck is this?  How did you get this number?"

"It's your favorite agent!"

"F*ck!  There goes 300 dollars..."

"What?  What do you mean?"

"Me and Valentina had a bet.  I bet 300 dollars you wouldn't come back."

"Man, f*ck you."

"What do you want, kid."

"Fly me back to SLC.  Please."

"Get here yourself."

"Do it or I'll show Valentina the video from the time I caught you walking to and from the bathroom with that picture of me and her at the - "

Okay, Christ!  Go to the airport!"

Works every f*cking time.

Soundtrack

Wicked Game - Chris Isaak

In the Mood - Robert Plant

Cruz De Marihuana - Grupo Exterminador

Megablast - Downhill2k01

This Feeling - my!lane