Get Real (16 page)

“Ssh,” Kelp whispered. Pointing toward the ladder, he whispered, “We gotta see.”

“Good.”

They went over to get the ladder, extended it without difficulty, and leaned it against the wall between two of the kitchen
windows. Stan whispered, “I’m not doing that thing like you and the kid did, with two people at once up on this thing. You
go up and come down, and then I’ll go up and come down.”

“I like that.”

Stan held the ladder and watched Kelp climb. The light from the kitchen was bright enough that he’d have to be careful up
there looking in. His head bent far back, Stan watched as Kelp eased up and over, and then the light was on part of Kelp’s
face including his right eye, and he was looking in.

Well? Get on with it. Stan wanted to call up to Kelp, Come on, what’re you looking at up there, what’s going on, but he knew
he couldn’t do that, and eventually Kelp did come back down the ladder. He looked at Stan, shrugged in a manner that didn’t
communicate anything, and gestured for Stan to take his turn.

Stan said, “What’s up there?”

“Look at it,” Kelp advised.

So Stan did. Up he went, and slowly eased his face into the light, and what he was looking at was the profile of a man seated
at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal and reading a newspaper. The word “Zeitung” was the biggest word Stan could see
on the newspaper, so it was in German.

The man himself was about fifty, thin, balding, spectacled, wearing a pale yellow dress shirt and dark patterned tie under
a buttoned-up black vest, plus dark pants and black shoes. Very formal dress for eating cereal on Varick Street in Manhattan
at one in the morning.

Stan went down the ladder. “We can’t do it,” he whispered. “Not with him in there.”

“I know it.”

“And you were all supposed to meet Doug here tomorrow. Except you weren’t going to.”

“Well,” Kelp said, “it looks as though we’re gonna meet Doug here tomorrow.”

W
HEN
D
ORTMUNDER WALKED
into the fake OJ at ten o’clock on Monday morning, Doug was there with Ray Harbach and Darlene Looper and Marcy and the flamboyant
director, Roy Ombelen, plus a stocky fiftyish man in a bartender’s white apron and white shirt—though rather too white, in
fact—who looked as though he might be Rollo’s mild-mannered cousin from San Francisco. More tofu than meat.

“Good morning, John,” Doug said. He had the harried look of a man having to remind himself to look cheerful. “Where’s the
others?”

“They’ll be along,” Dortmunder said. He himself was feeling grumpy, since he’d thought everything would be done by now. They
would set things up for the break-in, that was the plan, then disappear from Doug’s Global Positioning System, wait a week,
and clean out Combined Tool
and
Knickerbocker Storage. Let Doug and his pals believe anything they wanted to believe, they wouldn’t be able to prove a thing.
If they went so far as to look at a lot of old mug shots they might eventually identify one or more of their former reality-stars-to-be,
but they still wouldn’t be able to prove anything, and Dortmunder and associates would all have rock-solid alibis for the
night in question.

But it wasn’t to be. All at once, Combined Tool had turned into a pied-à-terre for a guy reading a Zeitung. They obviously
couldn’t do their pre-heist survey with him there, and there seemed to be no way to find out who he was, or how long he intended
to stay, or what he had to do with Combined Tool.

So there was nothing for it but to stick around a little longer, because none of them, not even Tiny, wanted to just walk
away with no profit
and
no answers. Which was why he was here again, saying to Doug, “You wanted to start something today?”

“Roy’s going to tell you about it,” Doug said, “but it ought to wait till the rest arrive.”

“Fine,” Dortmunder said, and went into the non-OJ to sit at a booth on the right, which was, in fact, a little more comfortable
than the ones in the original. Looking around he saw three cameras, hulking black things on big elaborate swivel-chair-type
wheel arrangements, each camera attached by a black wire to the earphones of a cameraperson slouched negligently in a chair,
reading a tabloid, while Doug and the others murmured together a little ways off.

He had barely made himself comfortable in this booth when that loud doorbell sounded, signaling the arrival of the rest, brought
here in Tiny’s current limo. Doug hurried off to let them in.

Dortmunder had come here separately because he’d wanted a little solitary time to think over this unpleasant new development
and had therefore decided to walk down from Nineteenth Street, hoping to find a solution to their problems along the way.
Some hope.

Soon Kelp and Tiny and the kid appeared, and when they came over from the elevator they all started in about how terrific
this imitation OJ was, and Dortmunder suddenly remembered, That’s
right
! I’m supposed to be seeing this thing for the first time. Instead of which, he’d just moped in and said something grumpy
and sat down.

Well, fortunately, Doug and the others hadn’t noticed that slip, and now everybody else was making up for it; maybe overdoing
it just a bit, but not bad.

Should he join them, suddenly overcome by this OJ clone? No; better just leave it alone.

Once everybody calmed down, Roy Ombelen assembled them at the tables in the non-OJ while he described what was going on. (Today
his shirt was fuchsia, ascot teal, corduroy trousers café au lait, shin-high boots apricot.) “I realize,” he told them, “the
security concerns you fellows are constricted by go a bit beyond the, shall we say, run of the mill? It is our firm intention
not to recognizably film your faces, because such film we wouldn’t be able to use anyway.”

“You got that right,” Tiny told him.

“Well, that’s my job,” Ombelen said. “But in this particular instance, it’s your job as well. We will photograph you from
above, from below, from behind. We will photograph your ears, your hands, your elbows. But we need your help to do this right,
so here’s the one rule you must remember. If you can see the camera lens, the camera can see your face. Tell us at once if
the camera has moved into the forbidden zone, and we’ll reshoot.”

“That sounds good,” Kelp said.

“It’s the only way,” Ombelen assured him, “we can make this
peculiar
situation work. Now, your opening scene, you will all be at the bar, and Ray Harbach will join you with some news. Our production
assistant, Marcy, will describe the scene to you.”

Marcy, showing evidence of stage fright, took a position in front of them and said, “First, I want to introduce you to your
bartender.” Gesturing at the obvious bartender to come forward, she said, “This is Tom LaBrava, he’s a professional actor.”

“Hi, guys,” LaBrava said. He showed no stage fright at all.

Marcy said, “Tom isn’t going to be part of the actual robbery plot, in fact he isn’t going to hear anything about it at all,
so his face will be seen.”

“Better for the résumé,” LaBrava said, and grinned around at them.

Kelp said, “So he’s Tom? ‘Hi, Tom,’ like that?”

Doug stepped forward again, saying, “No, we decided we had to make it clear his part was fictional, so he has a character
name.” Chuckling a bit hollowly at them, he said, “We felt you wouldn’t like it if we called him Rollo—”

“That’s right,” several people said.

“—So we’ve decided to go with Rodney. If that’s okay with you guys.”

Kelp said, “Rodney?” He sounded uncertain. Turning to LaBrava, he smiled in an amiable way and said, “Hi, Rodney.” He then
made a thoughtful face, like somebody tasting a new recipe, mulled, and finally said, “Sure. Why not?”

“Hi, Rodney,” Tiny growled.

“How you doin, Rodney?” Dortmunder asked.

“Just fine,” LaBrava said. “I kinda like Rodney. It’s a name I can work a character into.”

“It’s you, Rodney,” the kid said.

“Okay, that’s fine, then,” Doug said. “Marcy?”

Marcy came back into her place, looking slightly less self-conscious. “What’s going to happen,” she said, “you’re all going
to be at the bar, and Ray will come in and say he’s got something really interesting to tell you all. You want to know what
it is, and he says it isn’t really something for public consumption, and you—John, I think—say to Rodney, ‘Okay if we use
the back room?’ and he says, ‘Fine.’ And then you all head off that way for the back room. Let’s try it once or twice without
the cameras.”

Then Roy Ombelen took over, to place them here and there at the bar, angling them in ways that felt a little weird but were
apparently going to look okay in the film. Once he had them where he wanted them, he said to Harbach, “Now, when you come
in the bar you come over to about here, where you can see everybody, and you tell them you’ve got this interesting information.”

“Okay, great.”

“Places, please,” Ombelen said. “Rodney, a little farther away along the bar, if you would. That’s fine. Ray, a little farther
back. I want you completely off the set, and then you come in. That’s it, that’s perfect. All right, everybody. Action.”

And, on that word, the loud elevator machinery jolted into its racket, and the elevator began to sink, as everybody turned
to stare and watch it go.

Obviously, nobody was going to rehearse anything with that going on. Doug moved a little closer to the elevator, shaking his
head in irritation, and as the sound receded he turned to tell them, “There isn’t supposed to be anybody else coming here
now. We left strict instructions, everybody stay away from Varick Street, we’re putting together a new show here.”

The elevator snarl, having receded, now advanced again, and soon it appeared, with Babe Tuck standing on it, arms akimbo,
expression deeply annoyed. As Doug and Ombelen both approached him, both trying to say something to him, he marched straight
across from the elevator to the set, glowered at everybody, and said, “This show is canceled. Shut it down.”

D
OUG WAS STUNNED
. Shut it down? Cancel? But it was coming together so well. It was going to be wonderful, the most exciting innovative new
reality show since
Sitcom Reunion.
So much more fun to work on than
The Stand.
Cancel it? Shut it down? What did Babe mean?

Doug voiced the question: “Babe? What do you mean?”

Babe, looking the angriest he’d been since he quit the news beat, said, “I talked with Quigg this morning.”

Doug nodded, not sure why. “About what?”

“About these
phonies
,” Babe said, jabbing a thumb in the general direction of the cast.

Now Doug was shocked. “Phonies? Babe, you mean these people aren’t crooks? They aren’t hardened criminals after all? They’re
just people, like everybody else?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care what they are,” Babe said. “Every single piece of ID they gave Quigg on Friday is a phony.”

“Of course it is,” John said. “You gotta know we can’t give you our real names.”

“Names shmames,” Babe said. “What I need is legitimate rock-solid Social Security numbers. Not those soybean statistics you
gave Quigg.”

“I don’t think we’re following this,” John said.

But Andy said, “John, maybe they got a legit problem.”

“And I,” John said, “got an
il
-legit problem.” Then he looked around and said, mostly to Babe, “We’re kind of a crowd here. Why don’t you and him and him
and me”—pointing to Doug and Andy—“siddown at a booth there and talk this over. Everybody else takes a break somewhere.”

Roy Orbelem said, “There’s some nice sofas over there. Beyond the hallway set.”

“All right,” Babe said, though grumpily. To John he said, “If you think you got something to say.”

“Let’s find out.”

Everybody started to move, and Andy said, “Rodney?”

The actor/bartender looked alert. “Yes, sir?”

“You got any actual beer around here?”

It was Doug who answered. “We do, for the shoot. It’s in a cooler under the bar.”

“I’ll get it,” the new Rodney offered, and went away to do so.

So Doug and Babe and John and Andy, all of them looking grim in a variety of ways, settled into a booth to wait for their
beer to be delivered. Doug took that hiatus to notice a change that had occurred in the dynamic of the gang. Before this,
the impetus or spark plug had usually been Andy, sometimes the now-gone Stan, occasionally Tiny. But now, in the face of some
unknown and unexpected apparent disaster befalling them, John had quietly taken over and everybody had tacitly agreed he had
the right to do so. Interesting. See how that dynamic could be worked into the show. If there was a show.

Rodney soon brought four cans of Budweiser, solemnly said, “Call me, gentlemen, when you’re ready for more,” then grinned
and winked to show he was merely getting into the part, and left.

Andy picked up his beer can, looked at it, and gave Doug a skeptical eye. “Product placement?”

“They will be providing the beer,” Doug agreed. “It’s a perfectly fine beer.”

“Uh-huh,” Andy said, popped open his can, and took a noncommittal slug.

Babe turned to John. “Just so you know what’s happened here,” he said, “the Social Security numbers are much more important
than the names. You can call yourself Little Bo Peep for all I care. But a corporation like ours simply cannot employ anybody
who cannot demonstrate, with a valid Social Security number, their right to work in this country. We absolutely cannot hire
wetbacks.”

Andy said, “Wetbacks?” sounding incredulous.

Babe patted the air in his direction. “Listen, I know you guys are homegrown, I know you’re not illegal aliens.”

“We are,” John said, with dignity, “illegal citizens.”

“And we can’t hire you,” Babe said. “It’s as simple as that. The feds require that we vet every hire and make them
prove
they have the right to work in this country.”