Get Real (21 page)

But it wasn’t any good. That is, it wasn’t any good on purpose. The whole point of the week was that Tiny knew this pawnbroker,
so they all went over to talk with him (taxi scenes, with Tiny all over the front seat, and another reason not to include
Ray), because this pawnbroker would be willing to take whatever it was they would be removing from the storage company.

But then it turned out he was only willing to take the stuff on consignment, and consignment was not going to cut it. Thieves
don’t work on consignment. Thieves obtain the goods, they sell the goods, they take cash on the barrelhead. That’s why they
finish with such a small percentage of the value of whatever they’ve taken, which was all right, because it meant they had
something where they had nothing before.

So the pawnshop guy didn’t work out, at least in terms of what Doug kept calling the arc of the story. But in terms of what
they were really doing, the pawnshop did exactly what it was supposed to do. Face it, in truth, if you and a group of friends
decide to knock over this or that, what you do, you discuss it once (the OJ back room scene), you case the place (scout the
location, in Doug’s term), you go in and get whatever it is and bring it out, and if it isn’t cash you discuss it with a fence,
and that’s it. Over and done with.

There’s no way to get a whole television season out of a scenario like that, which is why the fertile little brain of Marcy
was called upon to find frustrations and interruptions and roadblocks along the way. For a whole season, they’d start to plan
the job, they’d move along setting it up, and then Marcy would throw a monkey wrench into the works, so that off they’d go
back to the OJ for another confab.

That’s part of what made this whole thing strangely interesting: you never actually did anything, you just kept planning to.
And at some point every day you’d sit in front of a television set and watch what you did yesterday, and agree you weren’t
half bad. None of them; they were none of them half bad.

But here comes Babe again, with his shut it down you’re canceled. So now what’s up?

Doug voiced the question for them all: “Babe? Now what’s up? What’s gone wrong?”

“These people,” Babe snarled, pointing at them all, “are thieves. They’re rotten thieves.”

Doug, sounding as bewildered as everybody else, said, “Of course they are, Babe. That’s why they’re here.”

“They’re stealing,” Babe snapped at him, “from
us.
”

“The storage business,” Doug agreed. “Yes, we know, we—”

“Cars,” Babe said.

In that instant, Dortmunder knew. And without looking at the others, he knew they also knew. Stan was going freelance.

Doug, who didn’t share this knowledge, said, “Cars? Babe, what are you talking about?”

Now, Babe pointed floorward. “At least four of the vehicles downstairs,” he said, “are missing. One of them was needed for
a show yesterday, and when the driver got here it was gone.”

“Oh, guys,” Marcy cried, heartstruck. “You wouldn’t.”

“We didn’t,” Dortmunder said.

Babe said, “We have people coming downtown to do an inventory, find out exactly how many these people took.”

“Not us,” Dortmunder said.

Babe didn’t even bother to look at him. “I know there’s no honor among thieves,” he told Doug, “but this goes too far. We’re
paying
them, Doug, Each and every one of them has twenty-four hundred dollars out of us already.”

“Less taxes,” Kelp said, sounding bitter. “I don’t know where
that
money’s going.”

Doug turned to this new problem. “We talked about this, Andy,” he said. “It’s true your money’s coming from out of the country,
but US citizens have to pay income tax no matter where they’re working, or where they get paid. You understood that, you agreed
with it.”

“And,” Babe said, ice-cold, “it doesn’t make up for stealing our cars when you’re supposed to be cooperating with us.”

“Not us,” Dortmunder repeated.

Kelp pointed at Dortmunder and said to Babe, “He’s right, you know. It wasn’t us.”

Babe put hands on hips and lowered his head at Kelp. “Are you going to try to tell me,” he said, “you and your
friends
here didn’t rig the front door, and the back door, too, for some reason, so you could get in and out of this building whenever
you want?”

“Of course we did,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder said, “Sure we did. That’s what we do.”

Now Babe managed to glare at the entire crew of them at once. “You
admit
it?”

“That’s how it works,” Kelp said. “You never go into a place unless you know how to get back out again. It’s called an exit
strategy.”

Dortmunder explained, “You never want to be in a box with only one way out.”

Kelp said, “We rigged the roof door, too, did you know that?”

“What?” Babe could not hide his astonishment. “You can’t take cars out the roof!”

“We don’t take cars anywhere,” Dortmunder said. “The only time we take a car is when we need transportation to where we’re
gonna take what we’re gonna take.”

Darlene suddenly announced, “Well, Ray and
I
didn’t take any old cars.” She sounded as though she couldn’t decide if she were angry or weepy. “We have alibis,” she told
the world. “We both have alibis. We alibi each other every second.”

“Darlene,” Ray said, a note of caution in his voice.

Doug said, “Darlene, nobody thinks you
or
Ray did anything you weren’t supposed to.”

“And neither did we,” Kelp said. “Maybe even more so.”

Babe was beginning to look bedeviled. “If you people didn’t take those cars,” he said, “and I don’t believe that for a second,
but if you didn’t take them, who did? Who else would?”

“Babe,” the kid said, surprising everybody. When Babe met his look, he said, “How many people have keys to this building?”

Babe frowned at him. “I have no idea,” he said. “So what?”

“A hundred?” the kid asked. “A thousand?”

Now Babe did try to think about it, and shrugged. “Probably more than a hundred,” he said. “Certainly less than a thousand.”

And the kid said, “And you trust every one of them?”

Exasperated, Babe said, “I don’t even
know
every one of them. What difference is that supposed to make?”

“There’s all those cars down there,” the kid said. “Just sitting there. Mostly, nobody cares about them. They’ve got the
keys
in them, Babe. More than one hundred people know they’re there.”

Babe shook his head. “And why,” he said, “did it just happen to happen
now,
when you people are in the building? Free run of the goddam building.”

“Well,” the kid said, “if I was working up in your midtown offices, and I knew all these cars were down here, and I had a
key to the building, and I knew you were working down here with this gang of criminals, wouldn’t I think maybe this would
be the perfect time for a new set of wheels?”

Troubled, Babe looked at Doug. Troubled, Doug looked at Babe.

Dortmunder said, “The fact is, we all live right here in Manhattan. We’re not going anywhere that needs cars.
Four
cars? I don’t even need one car.”

Doug said, “Babe? I think they’re telling the truth, I really do. What’s the advantage to them? And look at all the great
footage we got.”

Babe could be seen to waver. “I don’t know,” he said.

“I do,” Tiny said. Turning to Dortmunder, he said, “This isn’t working. We seen ourselves on the little screen, we got our
twenty-four hundred except for the taxes, it’s time to get out of here. We got some real capers we could work on. No more
of this make-believe.”

The kid said, “I think Tiny’s right.”

Stricken, Doug said, “No! John? Andy?
You
don’t want to give up, do you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Kelp said, “and now that the kid brought it up, I think I do.”

Dortmunder suddenly felt lighter, in all his parts. It was as though a low-grade fever he’d had, that he hadn’t even realized
he was suffering from, had broken. They’d done a lot of this reality thing, they knew how it worked, who needed any more of
it? “I think,” he told Doug gently, “I think what you got here is an extremely short reality series.”

Babe said, “Now hold on. There are contracts involved here. Obligations.”

“Take us to court,” Kelp advised. Turning to Dortmunder, he said, “Ready, John?”

“Never more.”

Darlene had now apparently figured out which way she was going: teary. “Oh, please,” she wailed. “You can’t stop now. We did
so much great footage. You should
see
Ray and me on the lake in Central Park, it’s the sweetest thing you ever saw in your entire life.”

“That really was a terrific scene, John,” Ray said. “If you saw that scene, you’d definitely want to keep going with this
show.”

“Then it’s a good thing,” Dortmunder said, “I didn’t see it. Good-bye, Doug.”

Kelp said, “What is it people say? It’s been real.”

The four of them headed for the stairs. Behind them, Doug cried, “But what if we sweeten the pot? Why don’t you guys get an
agent? John! How do we keep in touch?”

M
ONDAY AFTERNOON
, Stan decided it was time to let the rest of the guys in on what he’d learned down on Varick Street. It was going to be a
blow to them, it was going to dash a lot of their hopes, but they’d be better off knowing it sooner rather than later. Stan
hated to be the bearer of bad news, but he really had no choice.

The fact is, there was no caper there, not on Varick Street. Last night, having time on his hands and a little curiosity that
had been building for quite a while now as to the contents of the rooms in Knickerbocker Storage, Stan had paused before removing
that lovely pink Chevy Corvette from the ground floor to go upstairs, ease his way into a couple of the storage rooms, and
just have a look at what they might be taking with them on the night.

Which turned out to be nothing. Crap. Wicker hampers full of old clothes, some of them clean. Tired scratched equipment for
every known sport. Girly magazines from the fifties, for God’s sake. Boxes of framed photos of weddings; how many times should
you get married before you’re ready to stop keeping a record? In a word: no dice.

It was only right to tell the guys. Their smart move, once he brought them up to speed on this, was to quit that reality series
and get back to the real world. Out there somewhere, there was still dishonest work to be done.

He himself would be hitting Varick Street just one more time, to pick up that nice green Subaru Forester with the camera mountings
replacing the front passenger seat, a minor flaw that he knew Maximillian’s crack garage crew would have no trouble eliminating.
But all that would be much later tonight; between now and then, it was time to make a meet.

When he tried, he couldn’t manage to make contact with any of them directly, which meant they were all still laboring away
in the vineyards of reality, but he did get to leave messages for them, after one false start.

The false start was that, the first time he phoned John, there was nobody home at all, and of course John wouldn’t know an
answering machine if it reared up and spat him in the eye, which it would. But then, when he called Andy’s place, the phone
was answered by Anne Marie, Andy’s live-in friend, and after he identified himself and they used a minute in small talk he
said, “Would you tell Andy I wanna get the guys together, I got some news for them they’re gonna wanna know.”

“Sure, Stan. Where and when?”

“I think we need to visit the OJ at ten,” Stan said. “Kind of like a reentry portal to the actual world.”

“I’ll tell him,” she promised, and he went on to call Tiny’s number, where J. C.’s answering machine said, “This is the J.
C. Taylor voice mail. Mr. Taylor is unavailable at this moment. Your call
is
important to us, so please leave your name and number after the beep. And have a nice day. Or night.”

Giving this machine the same message he’d given Anne Marie, Stan added, “I don’t think the kid has a voice mail, so maybe,
Tiny, you can tell him what’s what. And if any of us finds himself in a living room somewhere, maybe we oughta pick up an
answering machine for him. It would be a nice thing to do, and he’d actually use it.”

After that, he paused for a refreshing beer, tried John’s number again, and this time got May, whose, “Hello?” was delivered
on such a rising curve of mistrust that he hastened to say, “It’s Stan, May, how you doing, it’s just me, Stan.”

“Oh, hi, Stan. We haven’t seen you for a while.”

“I been working different parts of the street from the rest of the guys,” Stan said. “But I picked up some info here and there
that I think everybody oughta know, so I’m asking people to make a meet tonight at the OJ at ten.”

“I’ll tell John,” she promised. “You’re sounding good, Stan, How’s your Mom?”

“Terrific,” Stan said. “She’s out with her cab right now, but she’ll be back pretty soon.”

“Tell her I said hi. And I just got back from the Safeway, so what I’m gonna do is sit down and put my feet up.”

“Good idea,” Stan said. “I’ll probably do the same.”

Five in the afternoon. All over town, people were sitting down and putting their feet up. Stan, too.

W
HEN
D
ORTMUNDER WALKED
into the OJ at ten that night, Rollo was off to the right end of the bar, in conversation with a tourist. There were many
ways to tell he was a tourist, such as the binoculars and camera both hanging from straps around his neck, the sunglasses
pushed up onto his forehead, the many-pocketed camouflage jacket with the maps jutting out of most of the pockets, his pants
cuffs tucked into the top of his heavy-duty hiking boots, and the fact that he was trying to pay for his beer in euros.

Rollo was having none of it. “We only do American money,” he explained. “It isn’t worth much, but we’re used to it.”

“%#&_#&%$*@ @¼&%#$,” said the tourist, and went on holding out the colorful little piece of paper.