Infinite Loop - Chapter 21

Back to the Ship

As he looked at the vessel, it was deadly quiet, and no one appeared to be patrolling. Along the pier, back from the dock cranes, was a long continuous building with the silent warehouses inside. Indistinct numbers near the top of the massive squat building identified the many overhead doors, and all of them were closed. The numbers gave him no indication of where the cargo items from his ship might be. Slowly, he walked along the edge of the building. Scouting the area while he looked for something that might help, Warren heard a person walking near the edge of the dock. Whistling a tune, the night watchman held a lantern, its dull light revealing his path. Warren pressed himself against the wall in the deepest shadow. Breathing a sigh of relief when the man passed by, he continued along, near the walls of the building.

After walking the entire length of the structure, Warren leaned against a wall at the end of the pier, thoroughly discouraged. He turned the problem over in his mind. Nothing he found would guide him to the missing trunk. Even if he broke in, where would he start? As he began to turn back, he heard noise coming from around the corner. As he peeked around the corner of the building, he noticed a single light shining above an elevated platform on the backside of the pier.

Deciding to gamble with his luck, Warren carefully made his way to the steel steps leading to a white wooden door. The door had a sign marking it as the stevedore office. He quietly took each rung of the iron steps until he could see past the pane glass covering the upper half of the door. Inside, he noticed a large desk facing the door, its top filled with paper and forms. A man in coveralls sat behind the desk, his back to the door as he wrote on a chalkboard. From what Warren could understand, it was a schedule of cargo coming in and going out to the ships. Warren watched the worker return to several large clipboards which appeared to have more information about the ships. He also noticed a small hallway leading deeper into the building.  After watching the longshoreman continue his work for a while, Warren moved away, deciding to look for another entrance into the building. Just as he stepped away, the man inside the office went to the door. Warren scrambled away, moving into a shadowed crevice along the brick wall. The longshoreman came out of the office and stretched with a yawn. He went down the steps and went over to the edge of the dock.  After lighting a cigarette, the man began to pee into the harbor below. Seeing his opportunity, Warren moved quickly up the steps and entered the office.

When he got to the desk, Warren frantically scanned the clipboards on the desk, finding one which showed the name of the Andes on the front. Flipping over the front page, he came to the details of the incoming cargo from the day before along with some notes. Handwritten in the margins, he recognized his name. Then, he stopped. His trunk numbers and his name were on the clipboard. But one line had been scratched out with a note stating the police picked up the item onboard the ship.

I’ve got it.