The place was also cluttered with broken barstools and tables, open tall metal lockers in which hung the remnants of waiters' uniforms from some era of O.J. history before Dortmunder's time, and many cartons of empty bottles, some of them bearing the logos of long-extinct bottlers.

And halfway down one side wall, close to that overhead light source, which was a blessing, there stood a battered old gray metal desk, with an equally battered gray metal swivel chair in front of it. The kneehole was on the left of the desk, while on the right were two tall file drawers.

Okay, that's more like it. Dortmunder settled himself into the squeaking chair with his left elbow on the desktop, opened the upper squeaking drawer, and let his fingers do the walking among the folder tags in there, stopping when he came to "SLA."

SLA. The State Liquor Authority, the god of the taverner, whose rules are the closest thing in their world to Holy Writ, because they have the ultimate power of life and death: they can shut you down.

The SLA folder was more than an inch thick. When Dortmunder opened it on the desk and bent low to read it in the uncertain light, he saw that the papers were roughly in chronological order from front (old) to back (new), and that the earliest documents were forty-seven years old. That was when Jerome Hulve and Otto Medrick, d/b/a Jerrick Associates, applied for and eventually received a liquor license for the O.J. Bar Grill at this address. (Why the reverse of initials? Maybe the J.O. Bar Grill didn't sound as melodic to them.)

Thirty-one years ago, Otto Medrick, now d/b/a O.J. Partners, bought out the half-interest from the bar now in the possession of the estate of Jerome Hulve and had to go through a whole lot of paperwork all over again, as though he were a brand-new guy. And six months ago, Otto Medrick, whose address was now given as 131-58 Elfin Dr., Coral Acres, FL, sold O.J. Partners to Raphael Medrick of 161-63 63rd Point, Queens, NY, for no cash down and a percentage of profit over the next twenty years.

Raphael Medrick, when taking the reins, also had to present the SLA with a bushel of paperwork, even more than Otto thirty-one years before, and some of the extra paper was interesting. Letters attesting to Raphael Medrick's rehabilitation had been proffered by his attorney, by a judge from Queens County Court, and by Raphael's former probation officer. All wrote that Raphael's previous (brief) life of crime had been nonviolent, totally repudiated by Raphael himself, and caused by association with bad companions from whom Raphael was now forsworn. A letter from Otto Medrick further assured the SLA that Otto had complete confidence in his nephew Raphael, or he would certainly not turn over to Raphael his every asset in this world.

When Dortmunder at last lifted his head from this family saga, nearly an hour had gone by since he'd first switched on the basement light, and he realized it had been quite a while since he'd heard movement from the troops upstairs. Aware of a new stiffness in his back caused by the need to bend so close over the papers in this uncertain light, he creakily straightened himself, cocked an ear, and listened.

Nothing. When he looked over toward the stairs, he could see no lines of yellow light in the ceiling.

He stood, did a couple deep knee bends, regretted them, and walked over to look more closely up the stairs at the unbroken ceiling. No light. He stepped to the wall, switched off the basement light, and still no illumination from upstairs. So he flipped the light back on and started up the stairs to see if it would be possible to get out of here.

All by itself the trapdoor was pretty heavy, being made of wood thick enough to walk on. When you put lengths of duckboard on top of it, what would that do?

Nothing good. Dortmunder went up the stairs, bending forward, until his back was against the bottom of the trapdoor and his knees were bent. He was on the side away from the hinges. He braced himself, pressed upward with legs and back, and nothing happened except that little bolts of pain shot here and there through his body.

Not good. Not at all good. In order to get on with his life, which he very much wanted to do, he had to get out of this basement. Come on, it can't be that heavy.

Going back down the stairs, he rooted among the broken bits of furniture till he found a cracked-off wooden barstool leg, tapered like a simplified bowling pin. Grasping this, he went back up the stairs, leaned up to the farthest corner he could reach, and insisted that it lift, just insisted and insisted, and then it did lift, and immediately he slid the leg into the new narrow space. A beginning.

Next it was an entire barstool he brought, carried it up the stairs horizontally, and forced the curved back of the seat into the narrow opening he'd made. He levered the stool downward, pushing the trapdoor minimally upward, until the broken leg fell out, which he immediately wedged upright between trapdoor and the second step from the top. Freeing the barstool, he jammed it in, standing up, between the trapdoor and the fourth step, causing the leg to fall over.

It was slow work, and tiring, but with every move, using different pieces of furniture, he made the trapdoor infinitesimally lift, until eventually there was a wedge of space at the top of the stairs just large enough for a person to squirm through, being very sure he didn't kick any props out of the way behind himself as he went.

He was very tired. It was almost daylight. Still, if he didn't put everything back the way it was supposed to be, they would know they'd had a visitor, and that wouldn't be a good thing for them to learn.

Weary, Dortmunder dragged the duckboard out of the way, opened the trapdoor and hooked it, then went back to the basement, took documents from the SLA folder containing uncle and nephew Medrick's most recent addresses, put everything in the basement back where it had been, switched off the light down there, and went back up by the amber light over the cash register.

Weary. On the way out, he grabbed a bottle of Stoli the wedding guests had left behind. You kidding? He deserved it.

IT WAS CALLED the Twilight Lounge, and it was east on Forty-third Street, between a wholesale to-the-trade-only plastic flower showroom and a store that called itself "Sickroom Party Supplies," with an unfortunate display window. Looking at that sign, Kelp said, "Shouldn't that be the other way around?"

"Shouldn't what?" Dortmunder asked. He was feeling skeptical and unobservant.

"Doesn't matter," Kelp said, and pushed through the swinging door into the Twilight Lounge, where they were at once drenched in the crooning of Dean Martin, his voice morphine-laced molasses.

It was J. C. Taylor who'd come up with this joint for their meeting ground, now that the O.J. was becoming increasingly unlikely. "Josey doesn't know the place herself," Tiny had explained to everybody, in various phone calls earlier today, Friday, after Dortmunder had dragged himself out of bed to make his own phone calls to say they needed a place to meet and discuss his discoveries of last night. "A guy down in the post office substation in her building says he goes there; it's quiet, they mind their own business, there's a back room we could use, just say Eddie told us about it."

Well, it was worth a try. Anything, they all agreed, rather than gather in Dortmunder's living room again. So, four o'clock Friday afternoon, here they were in the Twilight Lounge, a sprawling, lowlit joint half full of wage earners taking an indirect route to their suburban homes for the weekend, the whole scene suffused by the umber gurgle of Dean Martin.

There were two bartenders at work: one hardworking, blank-faced guy with his sleeves rolled up, one friendly girl with all the time in the world. Rather than break into the three conversations the girl already had under way, Kelp leaned over the bar and said to the guy en passant, "Eddie sent me.