Black Market Merchant

Chapter 190: Ready to Go
The next morning Lisa woke up right at daybreak. She did not want to waste any time with getting the preparation’s ready for their factory break out. In her mind this was the event that would be the ticket to finally set up the fight against Martinez and get the long overdue revenge for Hanna.

After sneaking out of the room without waking the other ladies and washing her face off in the river, Lisa went to cross the dam. She wanted to start moving the first of two piles of wood that Hanna had moved there the night before right away. As she crossed something ominous caught her eye. The black smoke that was rising from downtown docks where the gang war was going on was still billowing. In fact, the smoke seamed to have spread to cover what might be several blocks. Whatever was going on down there was surely getting out of control.

Though the thought of a fire getting out of control and damaging the rest of town was a problem, it was not Lisa’s problem. Neither was it a problem for anyone in the town that she knew. The fires seemed to be raging only in the downtown area.

When she finished crossing, she put all thoughts aside of the fire and started working on the first pile by separating the tree trunks and biggest limbs from the leafy branches and root balls. This didn’t take long for the pile had few vines and many of the branches were already brittle from being in the heat. Lisa had the first pile already fully organized when Ava and Wayne came to join her.

“Hey guys, good morning.” Lisa called to them.

Lisa had taken off her blue T-shirt thanks to the early spring heat that had already settled early into the morning and had hung it on a nearby branch. For now, all she had on was the top half of her black body suit, faded jeans, Yankees hat, and her combat boots. She then used the T-shirt as a substitute towel to dab at her face and then draping over her shoulder she waited for them to join her.

“Morning Lisa. You are up earlier than usual.” Ava replied.

“We need to get ahead on things, and this is something that would take a while to get done. I am used to not getting a lot of sleep anyways. If I sleep too long, I almost always get a headache.” Lisa replied. “So, what are the others doing?”

“The other three guys already headed down to the north end of the docks to catch fish.” Wayne said pointing his thumb over his shoulder. “We checked out several storage units yesterday and found a couple of boxes of cloths. We are going to bring them back and check the rest of the units today. We were just coming to see if you needed anything.”

“No, I am fine.” Lisa replied readjusting her faded black hat to better block the rising sun. “I am going to bring this pile across the dam and then take Zane to get some supplies for the raid.”

“Need us to help carry a few branches before we go?” Ava offered.

“Sure, why not.” Lisa replied. She then put on her blue T-shirt and then the three of them got to work.

…

“Come on Zane, try to keep up.” Lisa called over her shoulder. The two of them were jogging through the market district and Zane was having trouble keeping up with her pace. “The only way I could let Sadie to let you go free from her training was if I promised to make you run.”

“I-I know, b-but why g-go so fast?” Zane puffed.

“Because we got work to do! It’s already past noon. If Ava and Wayne hadn’t found that stack of mattresses, we would have been done already.” Lisa replied and she sped up just as soon as he caught up with her.

They were heading for Fogle’s Corner Store. Lisa had been wanting to come back at some point and now she had a reason to. When Lisa came to the intersection, she saw the big white lettered ‘Open’ sign was still hanging on the front door. The rest of the shop still had the same worn out and peeling look to it. The only difference was one of the windows looked to have been freshly boarded up.

Once Zane had caught up and regained his breath, the two of them went inside. The little bell above the door tinkled cheerily as they entered. Once again Lisa felt the still, homely antique air of the shop wash over her soothingly. Looking around Lisa noted that the store looked barely any different than the last time she was here.

“So, what are we looking for?” Zane asked rubbing a finger along the top of nearby shelf. He raised his finger to see that a thick layer of dust had settled on the items in here.

“Three things.” Lisa replied striding confidently into the store. “We need two ladders, two coils of rope and big cloth dish towels. Lots of dish towels.”

“Uh, ok. The rope and ladders make sense to have, but why do we need dish towels?” Zane asked.

Just then the backroom door cracked opened slightly and Mr. Nakamura peeked his head cautiously to see who had come in. Lisa heard the door opening and turned to give him a small friendly wave. “Hello again sir. I told you that I was going to come back later.”

Seeing Lisa, Mr. Nakamura relaxed slightly and came out to stand behind the counter. Like before the careful old man had both hands lowered under the counter where his weapon might be.

“So you did. What brings you back here after such a length of time? Do you need more sawdust?” Mr. Nakamura asked as his turkey neck wabbled at every word.

“I do not.” Lisa replied as she slowly approached the counter. “I came to buy some more common place items. I recall last time that you had several work tools and I need to know if you have ladders, rope, and dish towels among them.”

“I know I have the ladders and dish towels. They both are right over in the far corner, near the front of the store.” Mr. Nakamura said pointing beyond Lisa’s left.

“Thank you very much. Zane, go ahead and get the tallest ladders you see.” Lisa asked.

As Zane went to get the items Mr. Nakamura continued speaking, “Now as for the rope, I am not sure if what I have is what you are looking for.”

“Is the rope old or small?” Lisa asked.

“I’ll let you be the judge of that. I won’t be asking what you plan on doing with all this stuff and I don’t want to know. I’ll be right back.” Mr. Nakamura said turning to go. However, he stopped in the doorway and looked back. “You have something to trade with, right? You don’t have that big box with you this time.”

“I’ll be paying in cash.” Lisa replied giving a grin.

“Hmpf, it better not be counterfeit.” Mr. Nakamura grunted before disappearing into the back of the store.

Lisa then left the counter and went to see how Zane was fairing. She found that he had already placed a ladder that looked to be three meters high on the floor by the front door. The ladder looked rusty but if the steps were sound it wouldn’t matter.

Zane, however, seemed to be still looking at something in the corner of the room. Curious as to what it was, Lisa walked softly up behind him and peaked over his shoulder. She then saw that Zane was holding a picture book titled, “Parks of North America”. He was slowly looking at the pages admirably, particularly the ones with lush green trees and waterfalls.

“That a nice place to visit. I’ve been there.” Lisa whispered as she reached around Zane to point at a picture of Niagara Falls.

“Woah, uh, I was just looking.” Zane bubbled as he quickly closed the book and stuffed it back onto a shelf.

Lisa chuckled, “Its fine. I don’t mind that you were looking at a book, because books are great things! You don’t see those kinds of views around here either. Everything is just bland and faded.”

“A-as a kid, I-I always wanted to go somewhere like that.” Zane mumbled embarrassed that he was caught.

“Maybe one day you will.” Lisa said reassuringly placing a hand on his shoulder. “Stick with me and going to some pretty park won’t be the only thing you do.”

Zane smiled sheepishly and nodded. He did not want to say anything more, because he felt conflicted again. Here she was acting all nice and friendly whereas the day before she was threatening him. He just couldn’t place a finger on her personality.

“In any case, grab that red ladder.” Lisa said pointing at the tallest of the remaining ladders. “Where are the dish towels at? Wait, I see them in that cardboard box, and it looks like there are enough of them too.”

Lisa and Zane grabbed the items they needed and headed back for the counter. Moments later Mr. Nakamura returned with heavy looking blue crate covered with a torn portion of a tarp.

Mr. Nakamura place the crate onto the counter with a heavy thump, and sighed, “Whew, I had to get this out of the attic, and I haven’t been up there in sometime. You better be paying with real cash otherwise all that work was wasted.”

“Don’t worry, I always pay honestly.” Lisa answered as she took the tarp off the blue crate.

Inside was what looked to be three coils of rope and they all looked old. Incredibly old. The ends were frayed, the lengths of rope had bits and pieces of itself sticking out like bedhead, and the color was nearly gone from them too.

“Well, I have seen better rope.” Lisa sighed. She then picked one up and saw that the only thing what was a positive sign was that the rope was four or five centimeters thick. She then pulled the rope taut twice to test its strength. “As long as these hold out long enough for this one job it won’t matter anyway. Now, Mr. Nakamura, let us talk prices.”

Lisa then pulled out from her jeans pocket a leather wallet and slapped it on the table. Sticking out from the sides was a fat stack of bills.

Mr. Nakamura remained stone faced as he picked up the wallet and pulled out two of the bills. He then pulled out from under the register a highlighter pen and proceeded to mark the bills right down their middle. He eyed Lisa skeptically during the whole process, but Lisa remained smiling and confident.

“The bills are real. I will give you the ladders for ten dollars apiece, the all the dish towels for five, and this rope for ten apiece.” Mr. Nakamura replied flatly lowing the bills from his face.

“I’ll agree to the ladder price and the towel pricing too. That rope however, its in bad shape. How about two dollars for each?” Lisa asked as she fiddled with the ropes frayed end.

“Three dollars.” Mr. Nakamura countered.

“Deal!” Lisa replied grabbing the wallet off the counter. She then proceeded to thumb out the correct charge as Mr. Nakamura watched her carefully.

Once he had the money, he checked each bill in turn, just to be sure all of them were real. Lisa and Zane were heading out the door when Mr. Nakamura called to them. “Come back anytime. All these bills are legit, and I love an honest customer!”

Looking back, Lisa could see that the old man was smiling now. “If I need something I’ll come back for sure!”

“That was easy. He had everything we needed.” Zane said as he carried the two ladders, one in each hand.

Lisa nodded as she carried the two boxes of supplies. “It was. Now, if the others caught enough fish, we are ready to go tonight!”