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Chapter 5
March 21
Roger
At 1:00 AM I arrived at home, cranky and hungry. After eating a cold piece of meatloaf, I loafed into bed. Dorothy's piano woke me up several hours later, harshly reminding me of my responsible duties as a negotiator. Before I knew it I was down the highway headed for the beach cursing to myself.
There were twenty-nine piers in total, so I had one down and twenty-eight to go. Piers one through five were situated on the industrial side of the beach. There were more warehouses, buildings, crates, and machinery, most of them empty and abandoned due to the failure of the fishing industry. However, there was no relaxing quiet dock here in front of pier number one. Its hangar was occupied. Its quite easy to tell when you're walking down a deserted beach and then all of a sudden hear the racket of industry.
The warehouse read 'Readerman's Factory.' Inside the dark hot warehouse were several men busy at work on some sort of marine vehicle. Which I thought was kinda suspicious considering the people in the city were none too eager to get into the water.
"Is there a man named Readerman here?" I yelled above the sound of hammering and welding.
A skinny-looking man stopped working and looked down on me, removing his safety mask. He made a noise, stood up, and turned to what I could only assume was his boss.
"Didn't you hear me when I said I wasn't interested? I don't wanna buy anything!" said a big shouldered middle-aged man who emerged from the top of the boat.
"Okay. What is it you're not going to buy?"
"Huh?" the man said, taken aback. He glanced at me up and down. "You're not the insurance agent."
I looked down at my suit.
The man got to the ground, took a better look at me, and grunted. He dragged a rolling table with various tools on them, in which he brushed them away. He grabbed a rusty coffee pitcher and mug from the corner and slapped it down.
"Serve yourself," he growled.
Not what I call customer service.
The man proceeded to work. He grabbed a piece of heavy machinery from the corner and began to drag it.
"If this titan's wrath on the sea continues what are you gonna do about it because there won't be anyone left who'll set foot on a boat around here," I said.
"Like I care. This is the only job I know. Whether those fisherman use their boats or not, I'll still keep building the darn thing," he said, holding a gas flame to the underbelly of the boat.
"I heard you're building some kind of unique and unusual ship. Is that true?" I asked relentlessly.
He paused and removed his mask once more to look at me. "Hmph. Now who did you hear that from, huh?"
One always has to know the right questions to ask.
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From that pier it was only a thirty minute drive to the Speakeasy. I went in as usual, exchanged several 20s for my favorite bottle, and took the next table over to be with my big help, the one I call the Big Ear.
As I was telling him about everything I learned about at the warehouse a certain girl caught my eye. She had blonde hair and a pale complexion, very dark eyes and bright pink lips. At first I thought it was Angel, but, no, she was way too young. And this girl was... well, way too expressive and happy to be Angel. The young girl in front of me slipped a coin in a slot and was making some sort of jolly innocent phone call to a girlfriend.
"They build a ship that can go underwater," he laughed from behind his newspaper. "Isn't that funny?"
Hearing something funny from the other line, the girl giggled, twisted a curl of her hair, and I thought it was the most prettiest naive thing.
"You're not laughing, Mr. Negotiator?" the Big Ear interrupted my thoughts. "It wouldn't be called a ship if it went underwater."
I watched as the girl said goodbye to her friend and skipped off happily to talk with her friends at a booth.
"But there's something you can't reach at the sea to the south without diving," the Big Ear said.