Get Real (24 page)

“No, we wouldn’t, Doug,” Andy said. “You’d be going too far to tell us something like that.”

“Besides,” the kid said, “we oughta do
some
of our own work. Right, guys?”

Solemnly, the guys all nodded their agreement.

Doug tried to keep his eye on the prize and ignore the crocodiles around his ankles. “Does this mean,” he said, “you’ll come
back to the show?”

“But just to film Knickerbocker Storage,” Andy said. “None of this other stuff.”

“Oh, I know. I wouldn’t want to…” And he let the sentence trail away, afraid to find out what he wouldn’t want to cause to
occur.

“We could even make it tomorrow morning at ten,” Andy said.

“Oh, I think two,” Doug said. “After lunch. I’ll need to get everything set up.”

His glass seemed to be empty again, somehow. Rising, he said, “Whatever happens, I’m glad we’ll be going on with it.”

They announced similar feelings, and Doug turned to the door, and the kid said, “Doug Fairkeep?”

Confused, Doug turned around. “Yes?”

“That is you, right?” the kid said. “Doug Fairkeep?”

“You know that,” Doug said. “What’s the point?”

The kid held up his cell phone. “If it should happen, someday,” he said, “that a cop, or a boss of yours, listens to this
conversation, we’d want him to be sure he knew who he was listening to.”

Andy said, “You see, Doug, you coming here to the OJ like this, and seeing Stan here, we understood we had to get to a place
where you weren’t a threat to us any more than we were a threat to you.”

“I see,” Doug said. “Don’t lose that phone, kid.”

“I won’t,” the kid promised.

In the cab going downtown, Doug believed he now understood the sensations felt by a person slowly sinking into the grasp of
an octopus. Play dead, he told himself.

But how?

W
HEN
K
ELP AND
Dortmunder and Tiny and the kid walked into the fake OJ Tuesday afternoon at two, Doug and Marcy and Roy Ombelen and Rodney
the bartender and the camera crews were already there, clustered around the left end of the bar, where in the real joint the
regulars reigned. As they approached the bar, Rodney was saying, “No way Shakespeare wrote those plays. He didn’t have the
education, he hadn’t been anywhere, he was just a country bumpkin. An actor. A very good actor, everybody says so, but just
an actor.”

Doug said, “Isn’t some duke supposed to be the real guy?”

“Oh, Clarence,” Rodney said, in dismissal.

“I heard that, too,” Marcy said. “That’s very interesting.”

“No, it wasn’t him,” Rodney said, scoffing at the idea. “In fact, if you study those plays the way I did, you’ll see they
couldn’t have been written by a man at all.”

Marcy, astonished, said, “A woman?”

“No sixteenth-century guy,” Rodney said, “had that kind of modern attitude toward women or instinctive understanding of the
woman’s mind.”

One of the camerapersons said, “My husband says it was Bacon.”

Another cameraperson, dripping scorn, said, “They’re not talking about meat, they’re talking about Shakespeare.”

“Sir Francis Bacon.”

“Oh.”

Roy said to Rodney, “I venture to say you have someone in mind.”

“Queen,” Rodney pronounced, “Elizabeth the First.”

Kelp and Dortmunder looked at one another. “You build it,” Kelp murmured, “they will come.”

Turning, Doug said, “Oh, there you are.”

“Here we are,” Dortmumder agreed.

“Can you start without me?” Kelp said. “I got a little gippy tummy this afternoon.”

“Oh, sure,” Doug said. He had a slightly manic appearance this afternoon, as though he’d forgotten and taken his medication
twice. “You go ahead, we’ll be setting up for a while.”

So Kelp exited the set, rounded the corner, and headed for the stairs. This was the top floor, so he only had to go up the
one flight to the roof door, to check into what they’d done to refix the lock and alarm now that he’d told them about its
being rigged. Whatever they’d done, Kelp was ready to disarm it right now, from inside, with the various equipment in his
various pockets.

And they hadn’t done a thing. Was that possible? The rerouted wire was taped exactly where Kelp had left it. The lock was
still nonexistent.

Hadn’t they believed him? Or maybe they’d just had too many other things on their minds. In any case, it did make life simpler.
Kelp opened the door, looked out at the roof, closed the door, and hurried back downstairs to the non-OJ.

Doug met him as he came into the set. “You okay, Andy?”

“Oh, fine,” Kelp said. “Just one of those little things, you know, it comes along and then it goes right away.”

“Stress gets to everybody, Andy,” Doug said.

“Yeah, I guess so. Oh, there’s my bunch.”

Marcy and the rest of the cast were now clustered at one of the side booths, and Marcy waved to Kelp and called, “Come on
over, Andy, we’re working out the story line.”

The story line. 1) You go in. 2) You take what you came for. 3) You go out. If civilians are present, insert 1A) You show,
but do not employ, weapons.

Marcy’s story line would be a little more baroque. Kelp went over, found a sliver of bench available next to Tiny, perched
on it, and Marcy leaned in to be confidential, saying, “I hope you held out for a lot more money.”

“Oh, sure,” Kelp said. “You know us.”

Because, of course, Marcy didn’t know anything. She didn’t know why they’d left, and she didn’t know why they were back. So,
as with the reality show, she was making up her own story line, which was perfectly okay.

“What we need, in the next couple weeks of the show,” Marcy told them, “is some sense of menace. Not from you guys, some other
outside force.”

Dortmunder said, “Like the law, you mean?”

“No, we don’t want to bring the police in until the very end of the season. The escape from the police will be the great triumph,
and it’ll make up for you not getting the big score you were counting on from the storage rooms.”

Kelp said, “Oh, we’re not getting that?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Marcy said. “I don’t want you to know the story too far ahead, because it can
affect the way you play it. But I can guarantee you, the escape from the police will be
the
climax of the first season.”

“I’d watch it,” the kid said.

“For a menace from the outside,” Marcy said, “what do you think of another gang going after the exact same target?”

Kelp said, “Wasn’t that in a Woody Allen movie?”

“Oh, it’s been in dozens of movies,” she said. “That’s all right. Nobody expects reality to be original. People will see that,
and they’ll laugh and they’ll say, ‘Just like the Woody Allen movie, and here the same thing happens in real life.’ ”

Dortmunder said, “That’s what they say, huh?”

“Oh, people get very caught up in these stories,” Marcy told him. “It’s like their own reality, only better. More interesting.”

Tiny said, “Where does this frightening other gang come from?”

“Well,” Marcy said, “we were hoping you all might know some people.”

Tiny said, “People to muscle in on our score? Point them out.”

Marcy looked troubled. “You don’t like that idea.”

“Not much,” they agreed.

“Well, Babe suggested,” Marcy said, sounding unconvinced, “maybe one of you double-crosses the rest of the gang, sells you
out to the owner of the storage place.”

Dortmunder said, “Get Real is the owner of the storage place.”

“Well, yes.” Marcy nodded, but wasn’t happy. “Whenever there’s a problem like that,” she said, “Doug says we’ll work around
it, but I don’t see how we could work around that one.”

Kelp said, “Just for curiosity’s sake, which of us did you tap for the Judas?”

“We hadn’t decided,” Marcy said. “We thought we’d leave that up to you.”

“Then I guess we’d vote for Ray,” Dortmunder said.

“That’s right,” Kelp said. “He’s already got the experience.”

Marcy blushed. It was an uncomfortable sight, because she didn’t do it well, but just came out all blotchy, like measles,
or a face covered with cold sores. The others looked away, giving her a chance to get control of herself, and she coughed
and said, “Most of us didn’t really think that was a good idea, anyway.”

“Most of you were right,” Tiny said.

The clatter of the elevator was heard, rising through the building. “Oh, that’ll be Babe,” Marcy said.

Dortmunder said, “Coming to shut us down again?”

Marcy laughed, as though that had been a joke. “He’s coming with Darlene and Ray,” she said. “That’s the other thing we’re
going to do, to build suspense. Today—Oh, wait,” she shouted. “That’s too loud.”

It was. They all waited. They couldn’t see the elevator from inside the set, but they could hear when at last it stopped.

Marcy, talking more rapidly now, said, “You’re all going to be in here, at the bar, just talking, and it would be nice if
you could be reminiscing, you know, about other robberies you did. How you found out the target was there, and how you did
it, and how you got away.”

“And how,” Tiny said, “the crime remained unsolved until now.”

“Well, I expect you to change some details,” Marcy said, and Darlene and Ray and Babe came into the joint.

Babe was in a good mood for once. “Hello, all,” he said. “No, I’m not here to shut you down.”

“That’s too bad,” the kid said. “There’s a matinee I wanted to see.”

“Ha ha,” Babe said. “Marcy, did you try out those ideas on the guys?”

“They don’t seem to like them,” Marcy said. “And they don’t have any other gangs they’d like to work with.”

“And the traitor in their midst?”

Nodding at Ray but talking to Babe, Dortmunder said, “That’s already been tried.”

“Oh, now,” Babe said.

Marcy said, “I was just starting to tell them about the action today. All of you are in the bar here, including Darlene, and
you’re all just talking about your old successful robberies, with changes, of course, with changes. And then a mysterious
man comes in and sits in the back there, back near where the door would be if there was a door.”

“That’s me,” Babe said.

“Everybody becomes aware of him because he’s just watching people, but nobody knows who he is.”

“Mine is one of the faces we can show,” Babe said. He sounded modest about it.

“And then the camera,” Marcy said, “the camera sees, and so do the people at home, that
Darlene
knows who he is, and doesn’t want anybody else to catch on. Is he her father? An ex-husband? A hitman, sent to kill her by
somebody from her past? She seems to be afraid of him, right, Darlene?”

“I’ve been practicing,” Darlene said.

Marcy approved. “Good.” To the others she said, “So this is a mystery and some suspense, and we’ll run it out as long as we
can. But for today, you all just become aware of him, but don’t do any big reactions, don’t try to talk to him or anything
like that. Okay?”

“You want us to be cool,” the kid said.

“Exactly.”

So everybody agreed with that idea, and then Babe said, “I’ve been around these shows a few years now, even dreamed up a couple
of them, but I’ve never actually been in one before. Seemed like a good time to get my feet wet.”

Roy Ombelen said, “And we’re very glad indeed to have you among us, Babe. And now, lady and gents, if we could begin with
Rodney in place, and Tiny and Judson sitting at—”

“Oh, that’s me,” the kid said. “I almost forgot.”

“I believe in names,” Roy told him. “In any event, you’ll both be at the bar, chatting with Rodney, nothing important, and
then you other four come in all together. Now, Darlene, I need you at the left end of the group along the bar, so when Babe
comes in you’ll have a clear view of him. The group chats—”

“About the hits of yesteryear,” Kelp said.

“Even so. Now we’ll be doing an existing storefront entrance for Babe’s coming into the bar from the street, so at the moment
that’s supposed to happen, Darlene, I’ll snap my fingers. You look over that way, toward the pretend door, and you see him.
You’re startled, and then you cover up, and the conversation goes on. Everyone all right with that?”

Everyone was all right.

“Good.” Roy turned to Babe, saying, “Now, you don’t look at anybody, you just come in and walk to the right end of the bar,
away from the others. Rodney, you go to Babe. He orders a beer, you give him the can and the glass, he pays you and goes back
to that table there, and you go back with the group. Okay?”

Everybody was still okay.

“We’ll probably,” Roy said, “have to take a break at that point to relight that table, but up till then, you people just do
your conversation, that’s the ostensible focus of our scene. Okay?”

Still okay.

“Very good. Places, please.”

So everybody slid once again into reality. Kelp found it an easy place to be, no difficult demands, just talking like tough
guys. Nobody even thought about cameras any more.

Kelp watched Darlene, and she really did a nice job of it. A real actress, she knew how to get the effects with really very
small moves.

Meanwhile, the group cut up old jackpots, the bank in the trailer, the emerald they had to keep going back and getting again
and again, the ruby that was too famous to hock so they had to put it back where they got it, the cache of cash in the reservoir.
The time just seemed to go by.

Walking up Seventh Avenue with Dortmunder when the day’s work was done, Kelp said, “I didn’t think Babe was very good at that
stuff.”

“I know what you mean,” Dortmunder said. “He was too stiff like.”

“He doesn’t have a natural ease in front of the camera.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “his is really a very small part, it won’t matter much.”

“And the rest of us,” Kelp said, “can carry him.”

S
TAN DROVE
the GMC Mastodon hybrid from where he’d found it, alone and unattended on a dark side street in Queens, across Northern Boulevard
to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Manhattan, the quickest most direct route after midnight, which this was, making today
Wednesday, three weeks since the Wednesday since they had first heard of the existence, from Stan’s Mom, of Doug Fairkeep
and reality.