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government officials, a smattering of foreign representatives whose countries had somehow caught his interest—we still don't know how or why he picked the ones he did—and a few oddballs like me. I'd been up on a ladder doing some woodwork repair in the White House when the ambassador apparently expressed some sort of vague approval of me. The next thing I knew I'd been hauled down, poured into a suit and handed a briefcase, and tossed in among the smiling State Department wonks whose job it was to dog the ambassador's size-28 footsteps.
Long afterward I learned that what had captured the ambassador's attention was not me but rather the hammer I'd been using. But by then I'd overheard enough under-the-breath comments about my relative usefulness to the group that sheer native orneriness required me to keep quiet about the error.
Besides, the briefcase they'd handed me that first day had contained a presidential plea for my cooperation and about two bucketfuls of money, both of which I was far too patriotic to walk away from.
But for whatever reason, I was in that elite group. And I'd been with them for about five weeks when, from out of the blue, the ambassador made his request.
We still don't know what prompted him to bring it up at that particular time.
For that matter, we're not even sure how he knew about Broadway, unless he'd picked up a reference from one of those pirate transmissions their probes had been making. But however it happened, there it was, plain as day, that morning on the RebuScope: "Are you sure that's what it means?" Dwight Fogerty, a senior State Department wonk and head of our little group, asked as he peered back and forth between the RebuScope and the tentative translation.
"I don't see what else it could be, sir," chief translator Angus MacLeod said.
He'd been loaned to us by MI6 because he was both a whiz at cryptanalysis and a
huge "Concentration" fan. Angus always called Fogerty "sir" because he was polite, not because Fogerty deserved it. "It's clearly 'eye w-ant two cee a br-rod-weigh' something. What else but play?"
"Well, who says that scale thing is 'weigh?' " Fogerty countered. "Maybe it's
'Broadscale' something."
"There's no such word as Broadscale," someone pointed out. "Or place, either."
"There's a Broad Sound, though," someone else said, punching keys on a laptop.
"It's near Rockhampton in Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe that's a
radio or stereo speaker, not a scale."
"And what, that last picture is us and him throwing a beach ball back and forth?" Fogerty scoffed.
"Well, then, maybe it's supposed to be 'Broadsword,' " one of the other wonks said. "The damn RebuScope's screwed up before. Maybe he wants to see some sword demos from one of those Medieval-nutcake groups."
"It's 'I want to see a Broadway play,' " Angus said firmly. "I'm sure of it."
Fogerty muttered something vicious-sounding under his breath. Why the ambassador had chosen to use a gadget as ridiculously hard to understand as the RebuScope for his messages to us was a mystery, but most of us had gradually developed a
sort of resigned acceptance for the procedure. Fogerty, who dealt with the gadget more than anyone except Angus, roundly hated the thing, and seemed to be ru
Smith, get on the horn and find out who the hell we talk to about doing that."
I cleared my throat. "You don't need to call the White House, Mr. Fogerty," I said. "I know some people on Broadway."
"We're not interested in pretzel venders, thank you," Fogerty said tartly, gesturing at Smith. "We need a producer or theater manager or—"
"I know all of them."
Fogerty stopped, his gesturing hand still poised in midair, and turned his head to look at me. "You what?" he asked.
"I know all of them," I repeated. "Up until a year ago I was working with one of the top set designers on Broadway."
It was, and I'll admit it, an immensely soul-satisfying moment. The whole bunch of them just stood there, professionals and wonks alike, staring at me like something that had just crawled out of the primordial ooze and asked whether the Metro Blue line stopped here. All except Angus, that is, who had a faint but knowing smile on his face. Obviously, he was the only one in the group who'd bothered to read the FBI's rundown on me after I was booted aboard.
Fogerty recovered first, in typical Fogerty fashion. "Well, don't just stand there, Lebowitz," he said, waving Smith forward with his phone. "Let's get to it."
The first step, I decided, would be to figure out which Broadway offering would be the best one to take the ambassador to see. I put in a call to Tony Capello, theater critic, and we spent fifteen minutes discussing the current crop of plays and musicals in town.
Actually, the first twelve of those minutes were spent talking over the old times when I was a lowly carpenter and Tony was chief gopher for a succession of minor choreographers. I would have cut off the reminiscences earlier, except that the delay so obviously irritated Fogerty. When I finally got Tony down to business, his advice was instant and unequivocal: "And Whirred When It Stood Still," currently in previews at the St. James.
"So what's the play about?" Fogerty asked when I relayed the recommendation.
"According to Tony, it's pleasantly harmless froth," I assured him. "Nothing that'll confuse the ambassador or put human beings in a bad light. At least, not in any worse light than plays typically do."
"Assuming he understands it at all," Fogerty growled, gesturing to his overworked secretary. "Lee, better have someone vet it anyway, just to be on the safe side. All right, what about this St. James Theater? It's on Broadway?"
"Well, actually, it's on West 44th Street," I said. "But it's—"
"West 44th Street?" Fogerty echoed. "He wants a Broadway play."
"It is a Broadway play," I told him stiffly. "The St. James is in the theater district, half a block off Broadway itself. It counts. Trust me."
He glowered, but apparently decided he'd shown enough ignorance for one conversation. "Fine," he grunted. "Let's just hope it counts with the ambassador." The manager at the St. James, Jerry Zachs, was less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. "You must be joking," he said, looking back and forth between Fogerty and me. "Bring that behemoth into my theater? Who's going to pay for the fifty seats it's going to cost me?"
"Oh, do try not to go off the deep end here, Mr. Zachs," Fogerty said, his voice hovering between imperious and condescending. "We won't have to remove more than nine seats at the most to fit him in."
"Sure—to fit him in," Jerry shot back. "What about these seats in front of him you want left empty?"
"That's only another twelve seats," Fogerty told him. "Four rows by three seats—"
"I can multiply, thank you," Jerry growled. "I can also multiply by ticket prices and see I'm already out about a grand and a half. And what about all the seats right behind him where no one's going to be able to see? Huh?"
Fogerty shrugged. "Fine. We'll put his entourage there."
"At full price?" Fogerty lifted his eyebrows. "Don't be silly. They won't be able to see the show from there. How do you expect to charge full price?"
Jerry's complexion was edging into a soft pink, which from my experience with him was a dangerous sign. "I'm sure we can work something out," I jumped in before he could say anything. Fogerty had a virtually unlimited budget to work with, but he could go all chintzy at the oddest moments. "What's important is that the ambassador be treated like the VIP he is."
"That's right," Fogerty said, apparently believing I was on his side here.