It look me a couple of hours to recover from Honoria’s departure. At first I maturely tried to drown my worries in a few drinks at the inn bar but was distracted by people coming up to me and starting conversations that seemed to interest them but not me. I regretted letting Honoria go, wishing that I’d gone with her or had insisted we stay until the next morning. I knew I’d never shake the deep anxiety I was feeling until I got back to Honoria, Wall Street and sanity. If I was to achieve anything from this disastrous trip then I had to try to learn all I could in the next few hours and to hell with the consequences. Since normal laws obviously didn’t hold sway in Lukedom even if I were caught red-handed breaking into Jake’s office, so what? The worst thing Lukedom would do to me was kick me out!
So I dropped into the town hardware store and purchased a small crowbar, a hacksaw, a flashlight and even a set of skeleton keys, though I doubted they’d fit any lock I might get interested in. It was too bad Rick wasn’t back from the airport: he could probably steal anything without all this hardware.
After dinner, when it was fully dark, I marched over to the church which, thankfully, was lightless and seemed deserted. The side door was locked but the main door to the church itself was unlocked! I wandered down the central aisle and up past the altar and off to the right where I saw a passageway. Sure enough it led down a short hall to a door which was, voilà!, unlocked. I recognized the new hallway as the one leading to Jake’s office.
The office door was locked and none of the skeleton keys fitted, but I grinned. I then took great pleasure in using the crowbar to split the door open, happy to see the lock dangling nicely askew when I was finished.
Inside, I went to the desk to see if anything interesting was there that hadn’t been in the office on Sunday. There was some new correspondence, but again nothing but fan letters, inquiries, psychiatric pamphlets and a letter of insider gossip.
I then attacked the locked drawer of the file cabinet. Again the crowbar did the trick, leaving the lock a hapless clump of metal on the floor and the whole front plate of the cabinet swaying in the wind, fastened now only on one side.
But the files themselves were less fun. They were arranged chronologically, starting in 1975, thick files for the early years, then a decade of thin ones, then thick files again for the last three years. I began browsing through 1990 for references to my father but was disappointed to find none whatsoever. As I continued scanning various documents I gradually became aware of references to DI, capitalized but without periods. Whether DI was a person or an organization wasn’t clear, but whoever or whatever it was, DI was an important contributor to Lukedom – especially money. Most references to DI were in connection with receiving or requesting funds.
This was clearly important, but nothing I read indicated where or in what manner this DI existed, human or institutional.
After a half-hour I tired of scanning documents in the dim light of my flashlight and went to the waste-paper basket. After spilling the contents on to the floor I was about to kneel down to make a search when I realized someone had turned on the hall light.
Footsteps began echoing down the hall towards me. A man was humming. I remained frozen, standing next to the open and battered file cabinet, my feet buried in the sea of trash from the waste-paper basket, staring at the open and damaged office door.
Jake arrived, switched on the office light and stopped to stare at me.
‘Jesus,’ said Jake. ‘What a mess!’
I looked down at the jumble I was standing in, then back at Jake.
‘Looks like a break-in,’ said Jake, fingering the broken lock of his door. ‘You notice anyone?’
I stared at Jake.
‘Notice?’
Yeah,’ said Jake, finally entering and taking a seat in his desk chair. ‘Anyone leaving when you came into the building?’
‘Uh, no.’
‘Jesus, the guy left his crowbar,’ said Jake, taking hold of the instrument I’d left on Jake’s desk. ‘Can you get fingerprints from metal?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, trying casually to hold my flashlight behind my back.
‘Hell, who cares?’ said Jake. ‘There’s nothing worth stealing in here anyhow. Probably just some random dice decision.’
‘It was me,’ I at last blurted.
‘You made a random dice decision?’ said Jake, looking up. ‘That’s great!’
‘I broke in here,’ I continued, beginning at last to feel something, namely annoyance. ‘It’s me who wrecked the file cabinet and spilled the trash.’
‘That’s terrific!’ said Jake, swinging around in his chair and beaming at me. ‘What else did the dice tell you to do?’
‘It wasn’t the dice!’ I snapped. ‘I broke in here to try to find out something about my father!’
Jake frowned.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘And you didn’t ask the dice if it was a good idea?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘Who or what is Dl?’ I asked aggressively.
‘And who’s writing you from Tokyo?’
‘Ah, ha.’
Well?’
Jake continued frowning and finally emitted a big sigh.
‘You’ll never get anyplace without the dice,’ he said sadly. ‘As long as you make your own decisions you’ll look in all the wrong places. You expect to find a letter from Luke in there?’
‘I didn’t know what I’d find,’ I said, kneeling now and beginning to put the trash back in the basket. ‘I just knew you weren’t helping but that you must know where Luke is.’
‘Hey, I’m helping!’ insisted Jake, bending forward in his chair to help with the clean-up. ‘You’ve already been here two days and only need another five for me to give you a real lead. You’re just not patient.’
‘What’s DI?’ I asked Larry, standing and irritably reclaiming my crowbar from the desk.
Jake looked up without expression for a long moment, then sighed.
‘I can tell you in five days. Tomorrow morning you have to start work with your diceguide. He – or maybe it’ll be a she – will really let you know what’s what.’
‘I already know what’s what.’
‘Sure.’ said Jake, ‘and he’ll teach you what else can be what if you just give it a chance.’
I glared at Jake for a long moment and then marched out. I didn’t even bother to reclaim my hacksaw.