Chapter Sixteen
Sunday morning around ten o’clock Dorina’s telephone rang, She was in a playful mood and decided to answer it: “IRS, recovery division, Selma Blumenberg speaking, my badge number is 10225-3, how may I help you?”
Masculine laughter pealed from the other end of the line. “So, you’re going to tax me to death, are you?”
“Maybe. Do you have something to hide?”
“Well I might want to do something to you to the death but it won’t be taxes.”
“Hey.”
“Hey back at ya, What have you been doing with yourself.”
“Nothing much,” she said, though it suddenly occurred to her that she’d learned something new about the lawyer side of Mitch’s personality. He didn’t ask a question for which he didn’t already know the answer.
“Well I called you yesterday afternoon and you were out, so I left a message.”
Dorina glanced across the room at her answering machine, sitting atop one of the shelves of her étagère. The light at the top right side of it was blinking.
“Then I tried you again a couple of times last night and guess what! Beep! Beep!”
“Yeah. I was on the web. Why didn’t you try the cell phone?”
“Why didn’t you have it turned on?”
“Oh.” She quickly realized that while she carried the phone in her gear bag to the dance studio, she’d turned it off before her session, not wanting to offend Jacy or the dance instructor. But she’d forgotten to turn it back on.
“Oh. So is he bigger than me?”
“What?”
“The guy you spent the weekend with. Is he bigger than me?”
“Oh no, I’ve been really boring. Stayed in my jammies Friday night and played video games and pigged out on Chinese. Went to a ballet class yesterday afternoon, of all things. Last night I surfed the web.”
“Well I’ve missed you,” he said. “How would you like to take a little road trip today?”
Dorina said “Okay,” and hoped they would be going to the beach. He would arrive by lunchtime. She got ready for him by taking a long shower and then shaving her legs and continuing high up along her bikini line. A day at the beach would be a nice escape and probably healthier than hanging around the apartment web surfing, talking on the phone or watching videos. It was what she kept herself in such good shape for, she thought, as she packed sun block, tanning lotion and her high cut vivid floral maillot swimsuit in her gear bag. The suit was Mitch’s favorite, as he never tired of telling her. “It makes your legs look like they’re a mile long,” he would say. She also put a couple of large beach towels in the gear bag because she could never depend on Mitch to bring along his own.
On the news they said it would be very warm and sunny that day, topping out at over eighty degrees. Dorina decided to wear one of her favorite summer outfits, a lavender gingham romper and sandals. She could even round out the look with a stylish beach hat.
When Mitch appeared at her door a short while after that, she was surprised by what he wore: faded jeans, a t-shirt and Nikes. He looked like he was going to help a friend move instead of go to the beach. “Cute outfit,” he told her when he saw the romper.
Dorina was almost afraid to ask what his plans were for the afternoon because they almost certainly didn’t include going to the beach. But she had to: “What kind of a road trip did you have in mind?”
“It’s kind of a surprise,” he said. “I’ll tell you along the way.”
“I was hoping we would go to the beach.”
Mitch waved a hand dismissively, squinting. “Some other time. What we’re going to do today doesn’t involve fighting traffic, being forced to look at fat mamas in swim dresses, or balding idiot dudes in banana hammocks. And it could end up being very profitable.”
Dorina wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. “Should I change?”
“No, honey. You look adorable.”
Instead of the gear bag with the beach towels and her swimsuit, Dorina packed a picnic basket with grapes and fixings for Swiss cheese sandwiches. She also threw in two Tupperware style juice boxes filled with spring water she kept on hand.
“Darling, you don’t have to go to all that trouble,” Mitch said while he watched her wrapping zwieback cookies in plastic. “We can just grab something along the way.”
“That poison slop that they dish out at drive-thrus? No thank you.”
Dorina remembered the first time she’d ridden in Mitch’s beloved car, the “Silver Bullet.” Though not yet a partner at his firm, Mitch ponied up a pretty penny to buy his BMW. “In L.A.,” he said “You are what you drive.” Still she worried about him overextending himself to get his dream mobile but changed her mind somewhat after she’d felt the cushiony leather and the richly appointed interior which included authentic wood grain on the dashboard. It was the first car she’d ever ridden in with a changeable face instrument panel. Mitch clicked what looked like a reset button and brought up several different configurations of virtual gauges. Surprising her even further, when Mitch had taken her out onto the interstate and dropped the pedal, a calm woman’s voice came on after a certain point and purred “Speed. Limit. Exceeded.”
Yet Dorina wished he would be using that car to take them to the beach. Instead, she realized that they were headed east, to the mountains or the desert. She noticed a file folder in the console with what appeared to be map printouts. “So where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Hey, dial up Spiro Gyra on the MP3, would you?”
Dorina pushed the button on the far right side of the dashboard screen and the keypad and readout ejected from the wood grain. The car’s sound system could either access programs via satellite or go online and pull up audio libraries. She simply typed in “Sp,” entered and selected Mitch’s favorite release from the band. Within seconds the first notes of jazzy brass sung sweetly from the high-end factory installed speakers.
Mitch said “Turn it up a little.”
Dorina took the cue to play their game again. She cupped her ear with her and said “What?”
“Turn it up a little!”
“WHAT?”
Mitch, who had been looking out at her out of stern eyes, softened his features and started to laugh, shaking his head. He dropped the subject of turning up the volume, concentrating on the road ahead. Dorina wished they could drive without any music at all but it was not her car and not her decision. She had lots of questions to ask him about the new mercenary attitude he’d shown a few days ago and about his alliance with Wayne. She realized that it may have to wait until their next quiet conversation together.
When they drove together and Mitch turned up the stereo at too loud a volume for normal conversation, it ironically reminded her of her father. They found little to discuss when they rode in the car together and didn’t have a stereo to fill the often deafening silence. Her father would contrive conversations about school and what she was learning and which subjects she liked. Throughout her school years Dorina liked to keep the subject of school confined within the school building from eight o’clock to three p.m. Monday through Friday. “You won’t get into a good college with that way of thinking,” her father had said, though Dorina thought things had turned out all right. She even had a sense that her future may even turn out brighter than she’d ever hoped although she didn’t know how just yet.
The third cut on the studio release was quieter and softer, a mellow, reflective tune.
Dorina seized the opportunity to put a few words in her boyfriend’s ear. “How long have you known Wayne?” she asked.
Mitch shrugged. “Ever since I started at the firm. He’s a cool guy, isn’t he?”
Dorina thought back to their Thai lunch together. He had been striking looking with his dark hair and intense eyes but otherwise had seemed like an automaton to her. When she was about nine years old and started religiously watching MTV and VH1, she remembered watching a music video called “
Lawyers in Love.” Although she had trouble remembering the artist or even the basic melody of the song she remembered the concept. About a hundred nearly identical lawyers in navy blue suits and Clark Kent glasses formed a Busby-Berkeley style dancing line, swinging their suitcases through the air as they stepped and kicked. Dorina felt that Wayne would have fit in well as one of the faceless lawyer-dancers. She kept the observation to herself, though, so she wouldn’t offend Mitch.
“He’s okay,” she finally said. “A little personality challenged, but okay.”
Mitch shook his head, turning briefly to look at her. “That’s what you say about anyone who isn’t an over-the-top buffoon. Not everyone can be the life of the party.”
Dorina was confused. “That’s not really what I meant, though. He just seems overly concerned with, you know, money.”
Though keeping his eyes forward, Dorina could see his eyebrows rise. “I got news for you kid. Poverty sucks.”
She looked around at the lush carpet, leather, and state-of-the-art electronic accoutrements. Just then a faster, louder song came over the sound system and if she wanted to engage Mitch into a philosophical argument about greed, she would have to talk over the volume or just switch the stereo off. She quickly decided that it wasn’t getting a blood pressure spike over and leaned back in her seat. They seemed to be moving out of civilization and into what she called “Tumbleweed Country.” Maybe he was planning on taking her to Las Vegas but if so, he probably would have dressed nicer.
Dorina glanced at the subdivisions cut into the dry foothills. The large, expensive houses sprang up in neat rows, most likely habitats for commuters to Silicon Valley. The earth had been artificially tilled and irrigated; topsoil probably trucked in, to give the homeowners perfect, emerald green lawns. She laughed to herself when she pondered human’s ability to recreate their own world. Mitch suddenly said “Hey!” and she turned quickly to see him waving his hand in front of her face. “Turn the volume down on that, I want to show you something.”
Dorina pushed the button and lowered the volume on the flip-out keypad so that they could barely hear the brass and percussion. Mitch pulled the file folded with the map printouts from the console. He gave them to her.
“We’re going to try to find Merlin’s Lair,” he said.
She had to shake her head, to make sure she was hearing him right. “Merlin’s Lair? Isn’t that the underground soundstage for H.R. Lewandowski?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“But I heard that it’s hidden. How do you propose to find it?”
“That’s what all the maps were for.”
Dorina thumbed through a stack of topographical maps that represented the desert and foothills way out east of L.A., on the way to Nevada. “Where did you get these?”
“While you were surfing all weekend long I did a little bit myself.”
She looked at the maps again. They looked confusing to her, riddled with elevation lines and notations that she felt only a geologist might understand. And these maps are supposed to tell you where you can find Merlin’s Lair.”
“That’s what they said on the web site.”
After turning the printer-generated sheets sideways and upside down, Dorina shrugged. “I don’t see an ‘X’ that marks the spot.”
“Well of course not, Sherlock. You have to decode them a little and you have to know what you’re looking at.”
“Oh. And you can understand these hieroglyphics?”
“Good enough to get by. I took a geology course in undergrad. They touched on this kind of stuff.”
She turned sideways in the seat, so that she was facing him. The best response, she thought, was a little humor. “Okay. Let’s say that using these, you’re lucky to find the entrance and somehow get into Merlin’s Lair. What then?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean do you do spy work on how they make those movies or do you try to find the man himself and flat out ask him if he stole his ideas from Journey Galaxian?”
“Whoa, whoa. You’re getting way ahead of me here. Let’s just take it one thing at a time, shall we? The first order of business is to find the site.”
“And then what? Try to charm our way past security?”
“Well, it’s not like it’s Fort Knox or something. Why do you think I’m dressed like this? We make like we’re a couple of film students out on a little jaunt. They wouldn’t turn us away. It’d be bad publicity.”
“Whatever.” She turned again to face the dashboard and look out the windshield at the wide open vista, checking to see if buzzards circled overhead.
“He’s a lot more likely to be candid with a couple of college students rather than a room full of suits in a high pressure negotiation.”
“Makes sense to me. When do you want to eat?” She noticed that he was paying more attention to roadsides and landmarks.
“I think we’re getting close. Gimme that map.” Dorina was going to ask which one but instead handed over the stack of papers. Mitch wasn’t quite ready to receive them and some of them slipped through his fingers, fluttering down to the floorboard.
“Babe, there’s plenty of places to pull off around here. If you think we’re close, then you can look over the maps and we can stop and eat while you figure out what to do next. It’s better than just driving around with only a vague idea of what you’re looking for.”
“Good point. I am starting to get a little hungry.”
He eased the car off onto a patch of weed choked desert sand, driving slowly along to distance themselves from the road and the diesel of oncoming semis. At first he simply wanted to stay in the car, but Dorina convinced him they should try to take advantage of the warm, beautiful day and make a picnic out of it. When he opened the trunk lid they discovered that they could put the picnic basket on the trunk floor. The rear bumper made a nice, convenient bench for them to sit on.
Dorina’s picnic basket was of the old fashioned variety, made of wicker and deep, with a twisted wicker handle at the center and two flat covers. One side served as a shelf for her to put the sandwiches together, setting the slices of bread atop paper towel. Mitch dropped grapes into his mouth and munched on them while looking at the maps quizzically. She busied herself by slathering dollops of sandwich spread. When she started placing down dill pickles sliced lengthwise she brought sound to the desert quiet by continuing her thoughts out loud about their trip. “Mitch, another thing I was thinking, how do we know that H.R. Lewandowski and Merlin’s Lair haven’t already worked out some kind of deal. You know. Off the books, under the table.”
Mitch kept looking at the maps while he responded to her. “Because those kinds of things aren’t done.”
“Oh no? What do you call Enron? Or WorldComm?”
He reached for the first finished sandwich. “That was accounting. They got the Galloping Gourmet to cook the books.” After he chomped off a corner of his Swiss cheese and lettuce treat, he continued his thought, talking with his mouth full. “Besides, old Mr. Neil Neiman wouldn’t still be pissed off if they’d cut a deal.”
“Swallow, please.” She waited for him to finish his first bite then asked him the next question. “How do you know he’s pissed off?”
“Because I know. That’s one of the great things about being a lawyer. You get to find out things the public wouldn’t get to know in a million years.”
“You’ve personally talked with him?”
“Well I know people who have talked with him. People who have had him as their client for years and years.”
“But have you talked with him?”
He paused to look at her for a moment, narrowing his eyes. He appeared to be looking at her as if for the very first time. “No. But what’s the difference. He’s pissed off, and I know he’s pissed off.”
“So you think it’s wrong that H.R. Lewandowski might have gotten his ideas from the old Galaxian TV series and has gotten really successful.”
Mitch had taken another bit
e of the sandwich and paused to ponder her question.
“Yes, I think it’s wrong. It’s like looking over your neighbor’s shoulder and copying their answers during the final exam. It’s like copying something out of a book or magazine and claiming it as your own words.” He looked at her, squinting from the bright sun, small beads of sweat forming on his forehead from the heat. “Why are you asking me all this?”
She shrugged. “Priorities, I guess. I just get the feeling from talking with Jacy that it isn’t all that big a deal. And I don’t think she and Neil Neiman are enemies the way that Wayne said they are.”
“What, did you see them together, all lovey-dovey or something?”
“No. But I just don’t believe Jacy Rayner is the type of person to hold that kind of a grudge. Definitely not for twenty years, anyway.”
Mitch let the matter drop after that and continued to look at his maps. Dorina finished her sandwich, noticing that heat from the desert sun had melted the cheese.
Soon after that, Dorina packed up the picnic basket and they headed back inside the car. They took their spring water drink boxes with them as Mitch eased the Silver Bullet back onto the road, creeping along at first. “From what that map tells me,” he said, “we’re right in the area.”
Dorina said “I guess we just have to look for the great big billboard that says ‘Merlin’s Lair, next exit.”
Mitch smiled wryly at her. She noticed that an eerie calm had settled over the mesas and buttes of the California desert country. It was surprising to her that there were so few other cars on the road with them. Maybe everyone else went to the beach, she thought.
The virtual speedometer reading on the dash wavered around fifty-five to sixty-five, which was unusual for Mitch, who had always liked to get where he was going.
A couple of high, fluffy clouds passed overhead. Out here the land was so wide and expansive that Dorina could see their shadows passing over the sand and wind-gouged rock formations. Mitch was still looking as intently at the map printouts as he was the road ahead of him, but suddenly his eyes got very big. “There it is!” he said, bouncing up and down in the seat. “Right there! That butte!” He showed her the paper. “See that swirly, whorly thing on there that looks like a thumbprint? It’s that butte over there.”
Dorina looked at the topographical map again and again wondered how anything that cryptic could be representative of the land they saw around them. “Well, I don’t see any other roads around here,” she said. “You’d think they’d at least have a road leading up to it or something.”
“No, that’s too easy,” Mitch said. “Tracks, tracks. Let’s look for tracks. They probably go off road or something for awhile and then catch up with it off the beaten path.”
“What kind of tracks should we be looking for?” Dorina asked, looking at the side of the road.
“Anything,” came the reply. Suddenly Mitch saw what he was looking for. He said “Voila!” and eased the Silver Bullet off the road again. He pulled up within a few feet of some tracks in the sand.
They both got out of the car. To Dorina the tire tracks seemed wide, like the kind made by a dump truck or at the very least, a ZUB. She traced them down the sand to where they curled around another butte and disappeared.
“Let’s go,” Mitch said running back to the car and opening his driver’s door.
She followed him. “Are you sure you want to drive off road like this? Those tracks looked like they were made by a truck with big tires.” Besides that, his precious vehicle might get all dusty and pitted by pebbles and rocks.
“Well what else are we going to do?” Mitch said, “Walk?”
When the Silver Bullet cut the ground along the path made by the larger vehicles, it kicked up small clouds of dust. Dorina could hear pebbles tink and ping off the underbody and exhaust parts. They reached the butte where the path turned and saw that it led down
a hill. It was a gradual grade, but Dorina still wondered if they would get enough traction to make the return trip.
Up ahead, barbed wire fencing. Dorina noticed that it stretched on in either direction as far as the eye could see. Like the Great Wall of China. Directly ahead of them on the path, however, was a gap in the fencing guarded by orange and white highway girders.
Mitch laughed out loud. “Now you tell me that this guy doesn’t have something to hide.”
They parked immediately before the girders. Mitch kept the engine running, got out of the car and pushed the girders aside, leaving a wide enough space for the Silver Bullet to pass through. “I’m not liking this too well,” Dorina said. “I don’t think we should go any further. We’re not supposed to be here. We don’t even know if this is it. It could be some kind of government thing like a place where they keep alien spaceships that crashed into
earth or an evil think tank.”
“You read too much,” Mitch said, gunning the engine as the car lurched ahead and through the fence opening. The sand was smoother and more hard packed past the fence
that near the buttes. Dorina wondered if earth moving machinery or steam rollers had flattened it. “Over there,” Mitch said, pointing to something to his far right. At first glance it looked like an adobe to Dorina. They were a couple of miles away. When they drew closer she realized that the edges were sharper and she saw that it was an entrance to a garage.
Dorina shrieked as the wail of sirens pierced the air. She glanced all around and saw five white cars with green stripes marked “Security” converging on them. Blue lights flashed atop their roofs. She realized that she wasn’t the only one screaming. Mitch had let out with an open-mouthed howl, grabbing the steering wheel, yanking it one way and then another. The car shifted and jerked on the sand as though it had been a roller coaster car on a zig zag track. “Stop, Mitch, Stop!” Dorina shouted, and she saw him jam his foot on the brake at the same time as three of the cars swirled in against them.
The tires from the other cars also screeched to a halt and volumes of dust and sand had been kicked up, making a heavy, amber colored cloud. Some of the dust seemed to have made it inside the car, because both Mitch and Dorina started to cough as they struggled against the seat belts, which had bound them to the seat like rubber bands. When Mitch finally realized they had stopped completely, he pounded his steering wheel with the side of his fist. “Those assholes could have killed us!” he shouted.
Dorina reached out with an arm, to shush him. The cloud of dust gradually settled around their car and she could make out human forms milling about around them. She had counted five cars, but it seemed like up to ten men suddenly circled their car. They wore wide brimmed Mounties style hats which she felt was strange since she’d never seen that kind of head gear on any California police officers. When the dust cleared even further, she could make out their expressions and their distinctive facial features and body type differences. There were tall ones, short ones, young ones, older ones, and they all showed genuine looks of concern instead of cocky looks of anger, the way she expected.
A tall one bent down near Mitch’s driver window. It occurred to Dorina that the gentleman must be very brave or trusting. Or stupid. “Roll down your window, Mitch,” she told him.
“I’ll roll it down and punch out this motherfucker,” Mitch snarled.
When the window came down it revealed a fatherly looking man in his early fifties, with salt and pepper sideburns dropping down from the brim of his hat. “Good day,” he said when the window had opened completely.
“Do you realize you could have killed us back there?” Mitch said. “You better have a really good reason for swarming us like that.”
Dorina noted the nametag affixed to the gentleman’s shirt pocket. It read “Raphael.”
The insignia on his hat read “Security” and nothing on any of the cars or any of the other men indicated any kind of state, county, or municipality affiliation. “Sir, you’re on private property. That roadblock near the fence was put there for a reason.”
None of the security guards were armed as far as Dorina could tell. She felt instinctively that she could diffuse the situation by getting out of the car. That way the officers could tell that at least one of them posed no immediate threat. When she opened her door, however, Mitch grabbed after her. “What are you doing?” he said. “They didn’t ask us to get out of the car.”
Not yet, Dorina thought as she was aware of the other eight security officer’s eyes on her when she walked around the car to talk to Raphael. She had to step carefully. The criss crossing tire tracks had carved deep grooves in the sand that left high ridges that may have tripped her if she didn’t watch where she was going. “I know we shouldn’t be here and we really don’t mean any harm. We’ll leave quietly, I promise you.”
Mitch still stayed in the car. “Why this big show of security, anyway? Don’t you think that all of these cars swooping down around us is getting into overkill?”
“We’re necessary for the purpose of apprehending unauthorized vehicles,” Raphael said, droning his words in a militarily precise cadence.
Another man stepped forward to converse with Mitch. He was rounder and younger than Raphael. Dorina looked for his nametag. It read: “Queensbury.” “Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to leave,” he said in a firm, but polite tone. “If you’ll allow us to escort you back to the highway, there won’t be any other problems.”
Mitch narrowed his eyes at the second officer. Dorina knew that her boyfriend had a low opinion of people who carried around more than a little extra weight. He seemed to think that it showed a lack of discipline. “What makes you think we’re not authorized?” he asked, with a slight sneer in his tone.
Dorina wanted to say something, but Raphael beat him to it. Patiently, he said “Sir, that’s not important. Now I’m sure you’d like to avoid any further problems and it will be much easier if you’ll just allow us to take you back to the highway.”
Mitch pointed to the bunker-like structure a mile in the distance. “What is that, anyway?” Again, Dorina thought, never asking a question to which he didn’t already know the answer.
Raphael started to open his mouth to speak, but Queensbury interrupted. “We can’t tell you that. Now if you’ll just follow us peacefully we’ll resolve the situation without any further problems.”
Mitch still wasn’t budging. “This is very irregular,” he said. “Who do you guys work for, anyway? And who gives you the right to chase and detain people.”
Dorina was getting angry. She walked up to Mitch’s driver window and bent her knees, bracing her hands against them to crouch down to his level. “These men are being very patient with you and you know you’re not supposed to be here. Now I’m going to get back into this car and we’re going to leave.” Mitch turned his eyes upward and snarled.
Dorina walked around the car and re-entered through her passenger door. Once she had settled into the seat and closed the door, she turned to Mitch. He said “I’ll tell you, this guy’s got something to hide.”
She hissed “Honey, this may not even be what you think it is, despite what that god-forsaken map says. Ever think of that? Now put the key in there and let’s go!”
Reluctantly, Mitch started the Silver Bullet’s engine. The security officers surrounding them all dispersed and swung themselves back into their cars. They all backed away from the Silver Bullet while Mitch executed a corner turn in reverse and maneuvered the car toward the chain link fence. While he drove toward the opening, two security cars flanked him and three others followed closely behind. The three security vehicles remaining tailed him out the gate, down the sand, and back around the butte. They accompanied him all the way to the highway as they’d promised. “I’m sure the congressman for this district will be very interested to learn about all these little shenanigans these ‘officers’ pulled.”
Dorina wanted to tell him that they were lucky they weren’t shot at, but thought that such a comment would make matters worse. “Let’s just go home,” she said. “Before we get into any real trouble.” They drove back to her apartment in silence, mercifully filled in by more jazz music playing loudly on the Silver Bullet stereo. Seventeen years earlier, almost to the day, the “thunderbolt” of inspiration H.R. Lewandowski received occurred during another lonely afternoon in the southwestern American desert. Here is how it happened.