"It's your manager, who loves you. Don't ask where I am. They tell me you've been on my trail, telephonically speaking. What I would call a sudden turn of events. You looking for me."
"Where are the tapes?"
"What tapes?"
"You had somebody go through this apartment. Trans-paranoia owns a key. I remember that. And I know you've got the tapes."
"What tapes?" he said. "I want to hear you say the whole thing. What tapes? Tell me in my ear."
"Mountain tapes."
"So those tapes. So those are the tapes you're referring to when you say I have the tapes."
"Where are they, Glob?"
"I don't have them."
"Of course you have them."
"Of course I have them. I've been thinking about those things every day for over a year now. Once you walked off the tour, I stopped thinking and started lusting. I got itchy fingered. I got wild. You walked off the goddamn tour, Bucky. You took away my action. We needed product, see. You were failing to deliver product. Product is something that matters deeply. You owed us product. Contracts in our files specified what product you owed, when it was due, how it was to be presented. This was not a question of a few thousand dollars gurgling down the drain. We're a parent corporation. We've got subsidiaries and affiliates all over the place. Do you know what they're constantly doing? They're yowling for their food. Feed me, feed me. Enormous sums of money were involved in your disappearing act. All these companies with their mouths opened wide for the worm breakfast, the worm lunch, the worm dinner. I needed the tapes to keep some kind of action going. Create demand for exotic product. Keep the public salivating. So I had a man hang around from time to time. Whenever you left the building he called me and I got down there quick-quick and snooped around hoping against hope to find the famous tapes. We also spent two days covering every inch of your mountain place. But I figured you were sitting on them. I figured they were right there in Opel's apartment. Trouble was you never left for very long. I couldn't give the place a professional Bogart-movie kind of going over. I entered on tiptoes and lifted up here and looked in there, dainty as a parakeet, covering my tracks before I even made any tracks. The night I finally got to the package was some terrific night because I don't know how many guys go charging up and down the stairs making animal sounds and stomping with their feet. Doors being smashed open and all kinds of commotion below me and then above me and there I am on tippytoes in the middle of the room with this package in my arms which I know contains the mountain tapes and this Mongol horde is racing up and down the stairs making sounds of conquest. I thought sure they'd break in on me and confiscate the object. When they left I heaved three long sighs and blessed myself in the Russian manner, right shoulder first, which my original wife used to do almost constantly before she got pissed off at God and started drinking vodka gimlets. Three sighs of relief. Thank you, Jesus, for letting me find the mountain tapes and for not letting those cuckoos come in here and butcher me, a poor senior executive performing his humble task." "That's what amazes me," I said. "The fact that you'd go to all that trouble. Your money, your position, your reputation. You more or less own this building, Globke."
"You don't understand, Bucky. You never carried ob-noxiousness to its logical conclusion. Nothing is too personally distasteful for me to get involved in as long as it helps create a new product or extends the life of an existing product. Besides I don't want to get detached. Middle age and overweightness. These are enemies you can't fight from a swivel chair. Why do you think I don't have a chauffeur when my counterparts in the industry on both coasts have chauffeurs? I don't want to get detached. I want the challenge of traffic. I want to get down on my hands and knees and butt heads with the opposition. Action, action, action. It paid off, didn't it? I got the tapes, right? It was worth the trouble, wasn't it?"
"I was about ready to hand them over," I said. "I was ready to come back out."
"That pleases and delights me, Bucky. To think we're back in the old synchromesh pattern."
"I had to figure something out before I handed them over. I knew the tapes were a perfect answer in one sense. They were something unexpected, undreamed of, a whole new direction. But I can't go out before crowds and do those same songs. The effect of the tapes is that they're tapes. Done at a certain time under the weight of a certain emotion. Done on the spot and with many imperfections. This material can't be duplicated in a concert situation. So the tapes can be released, sure. But how do I get released? How do I get back out before crowds? I don't know how to work that little trick."
There was movement to my right and I looked quickly in that direction. Something white. Paper under the door. Neatly folded sheet. I told Globke to hold on and I went to see who the latest bidder was for my tune, influence and the objects in my possession. There was a brief message printed in tiny letters on the lined sheet. It took me a while to read it and put all the parts together. Bohack of Happy Valley. I went back to the phone.
"Somebody wants to see me. It concerns something I'd like to get out of the way. Let me call you back."
"You can't call me back. I'm unreachable. I'm with the tapes and I don't want to reveal any more of anything over the phone. I'm not giving out my number or my physical whereabouts. Ill be back at my desk tomorrow. We'll talk then. Don't worry about a thing. I not only know the answer to your question. I even know the question that follows the answer."
"Good. Very good. Terrific."
I went to the window as the message had specified. Three men crossed the street and came toward the building. I opened the door and waited. Two took positions against the wall behind the bathtub. The third was Bohack, an enormous man with a circular face and sparse beard. He leaned against the tub, smiling and slowly nodding. At a tangent to his easygoing manner was the barest trace of effort. The flesh near his eyes crinkled like rice paper and his lips were embalmed in that uninhabited smile of the world's more polite races. It seemed possible to abstract a fifteenth-century Chinese poet from the center of his face.
"Tremendous apologies," he said. "We never thought we'd have to infringe on Bucky Wunderlick like this. But here we are all the same. Goes to show you. This is Longboy and that's Maje. At the outset all we wanted to do was pay tribute to a man who separated himself from the legend of his legend and went into seclusion. But the tribute's gotten out of hand, causing x-amount of trouble. We came here to fill in the blanks because the sooner we do that the sooner we free Bucky Wunderlick from connection with the product. Do you know where Hanes is?"
"No."
"We can't locate Hanes. No trace of him. He's out there peddling. He's trying to make contact. It's a question of who gets where first. Do you know where Dr. Pepper is?"
"No," I said.
"First we couldn't locate Pepper. Then we got him and made arrangements. Now we can't locate him again. Do you know where Watney is?"
"No idea."
"We can't locate Watney to find out for sure if he was able to get his hands on the product. We know he was interested but we think he either failed to bid or his bid fell short. Okay – Azarian. Do you know where Azarian is?"