People who play the game need to access all kinds of obscure and out-of-date media; you never know where the clues, connections, or inconsistencies are going to pop up. I have two different brands of micro-cassette recorders, three reel-to-reels, two turntables, and a MiniDisc player, and those are just a few of the archaic media formats I’ve had to use in my search for clues related to Rabbits.
“This looks familiar,” I said as I lifted the photograph out of the box.
“What?” Chloe said, handing me Baron’s cassette player.
I passed Chloe the photograph. It was a picture of a brick wall in a back alley—the brick wall I’d discovered behind that dumpster.
“It’s the same place,” I said.
“It has to be connected,” Chloe said.
As Chloe was looking for an outlet so she could plug in Baron’s cassette player, I heard the sound of footsteps outside the door.
“Sshhh,” I said.
“What?”
I pointed toward the front door.
Chloe and I sat in silence staring at the crack between the door and the floor.
Shadows.
Somebody was there.
We heard the muted whisper of voices, followed by the jangle of something that sounded like keys or tools.
I grabbed the cassette tape, photo, and wooden box and the two of us tumbled out the window we’d climbed through earlier.
I heard the door to Baron’s apartment open as my feet hit the ground, but I didn’t risk sticking around to see who it was.
I ran to catch up with Chloe.
* * *
—
“Did you see who it was?” Chloe asked as the two of us got into her car.
“No,” I said.
“Your place?”
“Do you have a cassette player at yours?”
“You don’t wanna go home?”
I finally told her about the creepy wool-suit dude and cyclist combo from earlier, and we agreed that my place was probably being watched.
“We need to hear what’s on that cassette,” I said.
“There’s a player at the arcade,” Chloe said.
I nodded. “Good idea.”
* * *
—
We entered the arcade, said a quick hello to the part-time evening-shift guy named Marcus, and made our way upstairs to the Magician’s office.
Chloe stepped over the piles of books and papers with practiced precision as she made her way to a tall wooden filing cabinet filled with a variety of anachronistic electronics. She fished around for a few seconds and finally pulled out a Realistic brand portable cassette player.
“I’m pretty sure this one works,” she said as she bent down and plugged it into the wall behind one of the Magician’s desks.
I pulled a couple of rolling chairs over and the two of us sat down.
“You ready?” Chloe asked, her finger resting on the play button.
“Ready.”
She pressed play.
The recording began with what sounded like somebody opening a door, walking across a room, and putting a vinyl record onto a turntable.
The person walking around on the recording never spoke. They just set the needle down and a jazzy lounge-type song started to play.
I didn’t recognize it, so I loaded the world’s most popular audio fingerprint app and pressed the button that would activate its “listen and identify” function.
A few seconds later I had the information.
The app told us it was a song called “Third World Man” from the album Gaucho by Steely Dan.
The recording ended as soon as the song stopped playing.
“Fucking Steely Dan?” Chloe said.
I shrugged. “Let’s listen again,” I said.
Just as Chloe was about to press play on the cassette player, we heard a knocking from downstairs.
Chloe pulled out her phone and loaded a security application.
“Fuck,” she said, and handed me the phone.
On the screen was a security-camera feed from the front door. There were three people visible.
It was Swan and the twins.
38
R U PLAYING?
We left the arcade through the back and drove over to Chloe’s apartment, checking every few minutes to make sure we weren’t being followed.
At Chloe’s place, we made a digital copy of the recording and then put the resulting file through a bunch of specialized software to see if there was some kind of clue hidden in the visual wave form depiction of the audio.
There was nothing.
Chloe picked up the photograph of the back alley from the wooden box I’d found in Baron’s place. “I think we should go down there and check out the wall.”