The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer [151]
“Amazing, isn’t it?” the Little Mermaid asks. “But if it ain’t broke…”
I nod and turn back to her desk.
“Now what can I do for you today?” she adds.
“I called about an hour ago—I’m here to get those backups for Arthur Stoughton.”
She flips through a stack of paperwork on her desk. “And do you remember who you spoke to on that?”
I take another quick scan of the room. There’s a closed door on my right. Nameplate says Ari Daniels. Under the door, there’s no light. “It was with an A—Andre… Ari…”
“Typical Ari,” the receptionist moans. “He’s already gone for the day.”
“Then how do I—?”
“I’ll show you how to sign it out—I just need your ID.”
I pat my chest, then my shirt pocket, then the back of my pants. “Oh, don’t tell me I—” I pull out my wallet and pretend to frantically search through it. “It’s sitting on my desk… I swear to you—you can call them right now. Extension 2538. It’s just… when Stoughton loses his cool—you don’t understand—if we don’t get this reloaded, he’ll—”
“Relax, darlin’, I don’t want the migraine either.” Shoving her chair back, she crosses around her desk and heads for the double glass doors in the righthand corner of the room. Even in Disney World, everyone’s afraid of the boss.
Through the glass, it’s a computer nut’s wet dream. Beige lockers filled with state-of-the-art mainframes and servers line the walls. Spools of uncut red and black wires twist along the floor. And in the center of the room, a laboratory-style workbench is covered with six computers, two laptops, a dozen keyboards, backup power supplies, and a mess of stray motherboards and memory chips. Forget the ancient stuff up front—here’s where Disney’s spending their cash. As we enter, two tech guys—one heavy, one skinny, both surprisingly handsome—are hunched over a flat-screen monitor. The receptionist waves hello. Neither looks up.
“Friendly,” I whisper.
“That’s why we don’t let them near the guests.”
Midway down the righthand wall, there’s a closet marked “Supplies.” Above the doorknob, I count three locks. The last one is a punch-code. Just like The Cage. Supplies, my tush.
“I still don’t see why they don’t keep this stuff in the North Service Area,” she complains as she pulls out keys and punches in the PIN code.
“Most of it is,” I say, checking to see if the tech boys are watching. They’re still lost in their flat-screen. “It’s just safer to have the dailies down here.”
With a twist of the knob, the door swings wide. Inside, two black metal storage racks are filled with hundreds of cassette tapes. Tapes we want; tapes we get. There must be four hundred in total—all set side by side, so only the spines of the cases are sticking out. At first they look like short, squatty cassettes, but as we step into the closet, they’re more like the digital audiotapes Charlie used to bring back from his old recording sessions.
“What was it you were looking for again?” the receptionist asks.
“T-The Intranet,” I say, trying not to sound overwhelmed.
She runs her fingers across the laser-printed labels that’re scotch-taped to the edge of each shelf. Alien Encounter… Buzz Lightyear… Country Bear Jamboree…
“Dis-web1,” she announces, pointing to a collection of seven tapes. The spine of each case is labeled with a different day of the week, Monday through Sunday.
“Which day do you need?”
If I had my choice, I’d take them all, but for now, it has to be one day at a time. “Yesterday,” I tell her. “Definitely yesterday.”
She slides out the case marked “Wednesday,” checks to make sure the tape’s inside, then unhooks a clipboard that’s Velcroed to the side of the storage rack. “Just fill it out,” she says, handing me both the