Get Real (22 page)

Meanwhile, to the left end of the bar, the regulars were discussing the Internet. “It’s the biggest scam in the world,” one
of them was saying. “I mean, why go through all that? The first thing you gotta do, even before you start, you gotta go out
and put good cash money right down and buy this adding machine kind of thing.”

“Computer,” a second regular suggested. “They call it a computer.”

“Sure,” said the first. “And what does it compute? It’s an adding machine.”

“Well,” said the second regular, “I think it’s more than that. I mean, I don’t know this myself, but the way I understand
it, this machine connects to everything everywhere. Somehow.”

“So?” said the first regular. “My phone connects to everything everywhere. My television connects with everything everywhere.”

A third regular now joined the discussion, saying, “Just last week I got a wrong number from Turkey. The guy wanted me to
reverse the charges. I told
him
what to reverse.”

Meanwhile, the tourist, still waving his euro, was now trying blandishment. “&%$&&@*+, &&%$)**,” he wheedled, with what he
apparently hoped was a winning smile.

It lost. “If it isn’t green,” Rollo said, “I got no use for it. Pass that thing at the UN or somewhere.”

To the left, a fourth regular had joined the conversation, while Dortmunder waited patiently in the middle, resting his forearms
on the bar, reading the labels on the bottles across the back, remarking to himself how few of them he thought he’d be able
to pronounce. This fourth regular began by announcing, “It’s all another government giveaway to the big farm interests, like
those subsidies and pushed-up crop prices and all that stuff. If you do sign on to this Internet thing, you know what they
make you do? You gotta sign up for shipments of salty meat!”

The second regular veered around as though he’d just seen an iceberg. “You do?”

“It’s true,” the fourth regular insisted. “I read about it, I read about it a couple times. People got all this meat, they
don’t know what to do with it.”

The first regular, doubtful, said, “I think you got something wrong in there.”

“No way, Jose.”

The first regular lowered an eyebrow. “Do I look Hispanic to you?”

“I dunno,” the fourth regular said, undaunted. “Lemme see you dance the mambo.”

“Keep it down over there,” Rollo said. Many years of experience had taught him the precise moment for a calm but firm intervention.

The fourth regular kept his mouth open, but perhaps spoke something different from what he originally intended. “All I know
is,” he said, “the government’s overdoing all this crap. They’re intruding on everybody’s lives. They’re sticking their nose
in everywhere.”

“The camel under the tent,” said the third regular, the one with the pal in Turkey.

This comment was met with such a profound silence that Dortmunder could clearly hear that the tourist had now decided to get
on his high horse and was demanding his rights, or respect, or a fair hearing, or a retrial, or something, all in a firm voice
punctuated by a fingertip, from the hand not holding the euro, bonk-bonk-bonking the bar. “%#$&&,” he said. “*&+@%%$# %&*++%$,
$%#&@1/4**& $%& +*%$# *$%&$+@@.”

Rollo at this point held up a hand palm outward in the universal traffic-cop sign for “stop.” “Hold on,” he told the tourist.
“I got an actual customer here, one that doesn’t deal in wampum.” Turning to Dortmunder, he said, “You’re the first.”

“We’re five tonight,” Dortmunder told him.

“I know, the beer and salt told me. Let me give you the makings for you and the other bourbon.”

During this exchange, the regulars had been wondering if a blog was something you could catch and the tourist was giving Dortmunder
the fisheye as though suspecting somebody around here was trying to jump the line.

If so, it was successful. Rollo slid the tray with the glasses and the ice and the Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—“Our Own
Brand”—along the bar to stop in front of Dortmunder, but then he said, “Hold on.”

“Hold on?”

Rollo was looking over Dortmunder’s shoulder, so Dortmunder turned and here came Tiny and the kid. “Just in time,” Dortmunder
said.

“Which means somebody’s late,” Tiny commented.

The tourist didn’t like it that an entire crowd seemed to have taken his place at center stage, but he was bewildered as to
what to do about it. Holding up his euro to show it to the three of them, he said, “&%*$*@, &*$@+ *&%*+,” his manner now showing
a plea for international friendship here, some common fellowship, human understanding.

Tiny reached out and tapped the tourist on the binoculars. The tourist flinched, and looked alarmed. Tiny told him, “What
you want to do is, when in Rome, don’t be Greek.”

The tourist blinked. All languages, even his own, seemed to have deserted him.

Rollo, having been busy, slid Tiny his bright red drink and said to the kid, “What’ll it be tonight?”

“Well, I think I’d just like a beer,” the kid said.

Rollo, deadpan, gave Dortmunder a lightning-fast look that said, “I believe our little boy is growing up,” then turned and
drew a draft as Dortmunder picked up his tray and Kelp, arriving, said, “I’m a little late, let me carry that.”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said, and, empty-handed, led the way toward the regulars, who were now trying to figure out if the Internet
could look back at you.

“Wait a second,” Kelp said.

So they all stopped, and Kelp turned to the regulars to say, “The answer is yes. Just a little while ago there’s a woman right
here in New York City, she works for the Apple Store, you know, the computer store, and somebody burgled her apartment and
took a lot of stuff including her home computer. Now, she’s very savvy about computers, and she knew a way, from another computer,
how she could talk to her computer and tell it to take pictures of where it found itself. So it did, and there’s the two guys
who boosted it, so she took their pictures down from the other computer and gave them to the cops, and pretty soon the cops
got the perps and the woman got her computer and her other stuff back, and the moral of that story is, do not commit a crime
anywhere near the Internet.”

Kelp nodded at them, to be sure they’d followed his story, and then said to the others, “Okay, let’s go.” And the four of
them took off around the regulars, who were sitting in a row there now like an aquarium full of thunderstruck fish, and on
down the hall, where the kid said, “Andy, that’s cool. Did that really happen?”

“Yes,” Kelp said. “And let it be a lesson to you.”

Solemn, the kid held up his beer glass in a toast to lessons learned. “It is,” he said.

A
ROUND THE BACK ROOM TABLE
, they sorted themselves by order of appearance, Dortmunder facing the door, Tiny and the kid flanking him with their oblique
views toward the door, Kelp first closing the door and then taking the chair beyond the kid, with its oblique view away from
the door.

As they settled into their places Tiny said, “Stan is the one called this meet, and Stan is the one that isn’t here. I call
this rude.”

Dortmunder said, “There’s probly an explanation.”

Tiny lowered a brow at him. “You always think the best of everybody,” he accused.

“Not always,” Dortmunder said, and the door opened and Stan came in.

“Uh-huh,” Tiny said.

Stan, closing the door, saw he had a choice between the chair next to the irritated Tiny or the chair with its back fully
to the door. As he hesitated over these selections, he said, “Sorry I’m late, but I got an explanation.”

“I thought you would,” Dortmunder said.

Stan put his beer and his salt on the table and his body on the chair next to Tiny. “This time a year,” he said, “you got
your tourists, that flood just picking up, you got your Europeans with their luxury apartments in Manhattan just opening them
up for the new season, you even got your American travelers wanna see is New York as scary as their uncle said. So this time
a year,” he concluded, “I don’t take the Belt Parkway. It’s fulla sightseers that don’t know how to drive in New York. Or
anywhere else.”

Kelp said, “This is the explanation?”

“This is the preamble,” Stan told him. “I just want you to know I know what I’m doing. So on city streets, I know where the
construction is, I know where the national pride day parades are, I know where the strikes and the demonstrations are, so
I pick my route. Tonight, I come up Flatlands and Pennsylvania and Bushwick and the LIE to the Midtown Tunnel, because inbound
isn’t that bad in the evening hours, and then up the FDR to Seventy-ninth and through the park. This is the plan.”

“This isn’t a plan,” Tiny said. “This is a travelogue.”

Dortmunder said, “Tell us, Stan. What went wrong?”

“It’s all working,” Stan said. “I’m all the way to Manhattan, I’m on the FDR. There’s pretty thick traffic, but it’s moving
along. I’m in the middle lane and I see, maybe three cars up in the right lane, this Honda that the left front wheel comes
off.”

That got everybody’s attention. Kelp said, “What? It just fell off and lay on the ground?”

“Hell, no,” Stan said. “It kept going. And the Honda has this balance, so it keeps going, too. But the wheel’s going faster
than the cars, and when the guy driving the Honda sees this wheel pull out in front of him, he panics.”

Tiny nodded. “Many would,” he said.

“So he hit the brakes,” Stan said. “And there goes his equilibrium. He’s doing fifty, his left front hits the roadway, all
at once he looked like six Hondas going in six different directions all at once, including straight up. It was like a dance,
only fast. And now everybody else’s hitting the brakes, and the Honda’s all over the road, and when it finally stops it’s
blocking all three lanes, with parts falling off and scattered around the general neighborhood. All the traffic from behind
is pressing way up, there’s no way to go forward, and there’s no exit anywhere near there. We’re stopped.”

The kid said, “What happened to the wheel?”

“It kept going,” Stan said. “It was in front of the crash, so it just kept going. Unless it took the Triborough it’s in Westchester
by now.”

Dortmunder said, “What about the guy in the Honda?”

“Well, I guess he’s all right,” Stan said, “only the Honda has kind of closed around him so he can’t get out. Eventually they
had to cut him out, so that was another delay.”

The kid said, “Who cut him out? The cops?”

“No,” Stan said. “The cops got there first and just stood around and made phone calls. Then the ambulance, that can’t do anything
because this guy’s like a canned ham and they still gotta open the can. Then the fire department shows up and they got this
special machine for opening up vehicles at times like this that things have gone a little worse than usual.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “there was no way you could plan for that.”

Stan said, “Oh, you can
plan
for anything, that doesn’t matter. The point is, though, they finally got us outa there and the rest of it was a snap. Even
the bicycles popping wheelies on the park transverse weren’t a problem. But I’m late, and I’m sorry, and that’s the reason.”

“And you got,” Tiny said, “something to tell us.”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re here.”

Kelp said, “We also got something to tell you, but you called the meet, so you go first.”

“Okay,” Stan said. “While you guys’ve been playing with the reality people, I’ve been dropping into Varick Street a little
later at night.”

“We know that,” Kelp said.

“Oh, yeah?” Stan shrugged and said, “Well, anyway, last night I decided to take a look at Knickerbocker Storage, and I know
that’s what we got our hopes fixed on, now that the cash for Europe thing doesn’t work out, but the truth is it’s no good.
I hate to tell you this, guys, because I know you’re counting on it, but there’s just no caper there.”

“That’s funny,” Kelp said. “That’s the same news we were gonna tell you.”

“Not that funny,” Tiny said.

Stan said, “So you guys saw it, too, all that crap in the storage place?”

“No,” Kelp said. “We didn’t look in there. That was always supposed to be the fake thing anyway, so we could go after the
cash going to Europe. But that didn’t work either, so finally we just walked off.”

“We walked off,” Tiny said, “because we were accused of stealing cars.”

“Oh,” Stan said.

Kelp said, “If you planned to go back there tonight, bring a toothbrush.”

“So that’s over, is what you’re saying,” Stan said. “The whole reality thing. And we all knew it at the same time. So now
what we got to do is figure out what we
are
gonna do.”

Kelp said, “Anybody got any prospects? Anything might help?”

Stan said, “Hold that for a minute. All that storytelling, I used up my beer.” Rising, he said, “Anybody else? Kid?”

“Sure,” the kid said.

“Tiny?”

“I’m okay,” Tiny said.

Kelp said, “John and me, we’ve got this bottle.”

“Fine,” Stan said. “I’ll be right back.”

Holding his empty glass, he turned and opened the door, and Doug was standing there. Doug’s anxious expression switched to
pleased surprise and he said, “Stan! When’d you get back?”

Stan closed the door.

N
O
. T
HEY COULDN’T DO THAT.
They couldn’t just ignore him, could they? Doug stared at the closed door, right there in front of his nose, and he couldn’t
believe it. He’d
seen
them, the four guys sitting around the table just exactly like the OJ back room footage they’d shot, plus Stan right there
in the doorway, and the next thing, Stan slams the door. Right in front of him.

They can’t do that. They can’t pretend they’re not in there, not after he
saw
them. Did they think he’d just go away? Well, he wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t go away. He needed those guys. He needed
The Heist
, now more than ever.