Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make sure nobody found this thing and only certain people could open it. I’m starting to think I should leave the bottle where it is. But if I do that, I’ll never know what the big deal is. Maybe it’s exactly what I need.

I pull on the lever. The door opens like it’s on freshly oiled hinges and inside . . . there’s a cocktail napkin.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

A goddamn cocktail napkin? I pull it out to take a closer look. It’s from Kelbo’s, a chain of old L.A. tiki bars that started in the forties. I remember the last one closing down in ’94, the year before I left L.A. I turn the napkin over and written in pen is “TRinity 34778”.

Trinity? The fuck is Trinity? Somebody’s name? The nuclear bomb tests? Some Catholic shit? I take a deep breath, calm down, start thinking.

Whatever it means has to be from somewhere between 1947, when the bottle was found, and 1994, when Kelbo’s closed. Something about the writing bugs me and after a few minutes of staring, it clicks.

The first two letters, TR, are capitals, then five numbers. It’s a phone number from the old telephone exchange system, when there weren’t as many people with their own numbers and you had actual operators to talk to.

The first two letters of the word matched numbers on the phone. But different cities might share the same numbers. So out of something like 32 you might get EAstgate, FAculty, and DAvis.

Or in this case, 87, TRinity. The phone number on the back of the napkin is 873-4778. My momentary excitement at figuring it out dies fast. They had area codes back then, but they’ve split them up over and over as more phone numbers were needed. Who knows how many people have that same number in different area codes now? There’s 818, 323, 213, 310, and those are just the ones I can remember.

I check the time on my pocket watch. It’s almost eleven. I write the exchange and number in pen on my hand and lock the napkin in the safe, shoving the crates back in place. It was there for a reason, and something tells me I shouldn’t let anybody else get hold of it.

Exhaustion hits me like a brick. The Adderall and Vicodin have worn off and I’m tired and everything hurts. I need sleep. I’ll hit the motel for a few hours’ shut-eye and figure this out in the morning.