The Manifest

Chapter 9

     Sitting in a little piece of crap dark room was not the way to live, at least according to Jerome Ryan. He was in his miniature little room, watching countless hours of security tapes for vice. People are not meant to be caged up like this, he thought to himself. It was almost as if he was being punished by someone higher up on the food chain, likely for asking too many questions about who knows whatever it was this time. Someone had to sit there and watch hundreds of security tapes looking for man who may or may not appear on them. It sucked, but it was his job for now. He'd rather be in the crime lab, analyzing voice recordings or working on a blurred video to help identify a crook for the good guys, but here he was doing the ultimate grunt work that produced little if any results. It's such a shame he was at atheist, because if he had any religion in his soul at all, he would pray for his deity to strike him down to put him out of his misery. That was not possible so he freshened up with a new piece of bubble gum and continued to plow through, convinced that he would never get out. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Jerome hated to be interrupted but was afraid to be rude in case it was his supervisor coming back to give him another work hard for the team lecture.

     "Who is it?" he called out with a little fear in his voice.

     "Special delivery for conspiracy boy." the voice outside the room replied.

     Jerome was confused since he never ordered anything, especially because he couldn't afford to right now. He also thought the voice sound familiar and walked over to open the door. When he did, he was surprised to see Edgar Willis standing there with what happened to be lunch with him. Jerome left the door open and returned to his desk.

     "Two meetings in the same week," Jerome commented, "The guys here at the station might get the wrong impression."

     "Yeah, they might think I actually value your opinion." Edgar said with thick sarcasm as he laid the food down on his desk.

     "More garlic bread?" Jerome said with a wiseass grin.

     "Actually, it's an exquisite pasta, freshly made at Costantini's," Edgar replied somewhat curious if Jerome had ever been there in his life. "But if you don't want it I'm sure there's someone out there who."

     "No!" Jerome called out, swiping the food and protecting it from Edgar as if it were his first born. He had been living on Mac & Cheese, Mr. Noodle and hot dogs for the last few weeks so this was like a slice of heaven in a Styrofoam box. Jerome stared to quickly eat the succulent pasta when he turned back to Edgar who was now watching from a chair.

     "I almost forgot you where there." He confessed between bite, "Do you want more information on what we were talking about earlier? After we talked I was so stroked about what was said that I did more snooping around and got a ton of great stuff for you."

     "That's great, but I want more than information. I'm here to offer you a job and pull you away from all of... this." He made a motion to the small dark room he was in. "I need someone who is an expert in the field we were talking about. It wouldn't also hurt to have someone with your technical and forensic background on my payroll as well."

     Edgar sat back and waited for Jerome to respond. He knew the young man was on probation and basically banished from the work he really loved, thus already on the edge and ready to walk out and go private.

     "You want me to work for you?" Jerome repeated, as the thought of working for Edgar didn't seem so bad, "How much would I be making? I didn't think you guys had the payroll to expand anymore."

     "Tuck and I hit pay dirt, scoring a massive payday." Edgar said, somewhat stretching the truth as far as he would like. "We're actually going to do a lot of hiring in the next few days. Because of our recent financial gains, I'm able to offer you a very hefty pay percent raise and work that won't be anywhere near this boring."