"Thomas A. Easton - Movers and Shakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

office: soundproofed, thank God.

Wirtz was more of a puzzle than I'd ever stopped to think. It had taken the OSHA guy to show me that.
If I wasn't a boozer from way back, I might have reacted like him the day Wirtz showed up on my
doorstep. But I didn't. And now look at me. A businessman. An industrialist, yet. Getting rich, even. It
was like having a fairy godmother. But how long was it going to last? Wirtz was in a hurry now, which
meant he intended or hoped to be done soon, probably before the snoops came back. I had to wonder if
I could hack it without him. I certainly never had before.

As it turned out, it was a good two weeks before the feds came back, and by then the control room was
a comfortable ten by twelve by eight, occupied by a college kid picking up a little cash for the fall. Wirtz,
you see, had been done in ten days.

Four or five days before the feds showed up again, I came to work and found the place quiet. Shut
down. Nothing running. Piles of garbage beside the hoppers where the trucks had dumped their loads.
And the door to the control room wide open.

I walked -- walked, hell, I ran -- over to ask Wirtz what he was up to. Was he molting or something?
But I never got a chance to open my mouth. The control room was empty. Wirtz was gone. In his place,
lying on the control room floor beside the window, was a piece of paper.

It was an apology. Wirtz, it seemed, was no scholar. He was a shipwreck. He'd been cruising over town
one night when a piece of his engine fell off. It wasn't much, just a little doohickey that looked like a piece
of twisted pipe and let him go home in a month instead of a century, so he had been able to land safely
and hide his ship. But when he went looking for the doohickey, he couldn't find it. It was moving through
the city, his instruments told him, faster than he could move without his ship. He caught up with it when it
stopped moving, though, and found it buried under ten feet of garbage and fill, well beyond his solitary
reach. So he had found me and set things up so he could search the whole damned landfill if he had to.
And he had finally found his doohickey. Now he was on his way home, but he'd be back. And I should
have a bottle waiting.

I laughed. I'd been had, conned by a friendly little boozer just my style. I looked forward to seeing him
again. In the meantime, I was off my uppers for a change. I'd gotten as much out of it as he had. And I
could get a little more, too, if I could just get on the stick and get that control room replaced in time.

It took two days and a lot of overtime to get the new structure built. Two-by-fours and plywood and
tarpaper. The same air conditioner. The same controls, though with bigger handles. Windows in the walls
in addition to the one in the floor. And it was worth it. When the OSHA guy came back, he was totally
confused. Had he been seeing things? I could see the answer in his buddies' faces: he must have, with the
story he'd been telling, and he wouldn't have his job all that much longer.

I'd been had, sure, but so had he. I'd passed it on, and that's what makes life bearable.

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