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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.”

  28

  DOUG 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.”

  Doug said, “John, when they took me on, I showed them my passport.”

  Babe said, “All right, I apologize. When Quigg first gave me the news, I got really pissed off, I don’t know if you noticed—”

  “Kinda,” Andy said.

  “Well, now I see,” Babe said, “you just didn’t understand the situation. You thought all you had to do was spread a little fantasy and then get on with the job. But I’m sorry, guys, it’s more serious than that.”

&nb
sp; “I can see it is,” John said, and started to brood.

  Doug found that fascinating, the way the man’s eyes seemed to go out of focus, as though he were actually looking at something on a hillside in western Pennsylvania or somewhere, while his head from time to time nodded, and the other three at the table sipped their beers and watched. Until, some time later, his eyes refocused, and focused on Doug, and he said, “Passport.”

  “That’s right,” Doug said. “I had to show them my—”

  “We talked, one time,” John said, “you said wire transfers.”

  “Wire transfers?”

  “Money going to Europe, on account there’s nothing in cash any more.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot about that.”

  Babe said, “You talked about wire transfers?”

  “When they were looking for things that might be robbery targets,” Doug explained.

  “Well, how about that, then?” John asked.

  Doug didn’t get it. “How about what?”

  “Wire transfers,” John said. “We don’t work for you any more, we work for some European part of that big company up above you. They hire us, they send us here to do this show, all the pay comes from Europe, we don’t have to be anybody’s citizens.”

  Andy, sounding excited, said, “Why wouldn’t that work? Let’s say in England you own a show called, I dunno, You Better Believe It, and—”

  “I think we do, in fact,” Doug said.

  “So there you are.” Andy lifted his beer can in a toast. “We work for those people. You don’t have to tell the Americans about us at all.”

  “This,” Babe said, “would not be as simple as you think.”

  “But possible,” John said.

  Babe shook his head. “I’m not sure yet. Do any of you have a passport?”

  “I can always get a passport,” Andy said. “I wouldn’t wanna get on a plane with it. I might drive a car into Canada and back with it.”

  “That’s been done,” John said.

  Doug suddenly thought of a way that might be even better and simpler, though even less legal, but when he turned his wide eyes in Babe’s direction he saw that Babe had just thought of it, too.

  Combined Tool.

  Years of foreign correspondence had taught Babe how to keep his cool. “Let me work on this,” he said. “I don’t know if we can make anything happen or not, but we’ve come this far with it, we might as well go on, at least a few more days. Then, if we can make it work, we haven’t lost any time.”

  “We’re thinking of a September launch,” Doug confided.

  “If there’s a launch,” Babe said. He knocked back the rest of his beer and heaved out of his seat. “You all keep going here. Doug, when you come back uptown, come see me.”

  “I will, Babe,” Doug said, and just managed not to give a conspiratorial wink.

  29

  WHEN THEY FIRST started to do the camera thing, Dortmunder found himself, to his surprise, itching all over. That was completely unexpected, the idea that all of a sudden he’d be feeling this great need to scratch, all different parts of his body. He didn’t want to scratch, he just felt compelled to scratch, but he fought it off, because he was damned if he was going to stand there and look like an idiot, scratching himself like a dog with fleas in front of a bunch of cameras.

  And the cameras themselves were intrusive in ways he hadn’t guessed. They were like those barely seen creatures in horror movies, the ones just leaving the doorway or disappearing up the stairs. Except that the cameras weren’t disappearing. They were there, just incessantly there, at the edge of your peripheral vision, their heads turning slightly, polite, silent, very curious, and big. Big.

  Between the nudging presence of the cameras and the maddening need to scratch all these itches, Dortmunder found himself tightening into knots, his movements as stiff as the Tin Woodman’s before he gets the oil. I’m supposed to act natural, he told himself, but this isn’t natural. I’m lumbering around like Frankenstein’s monster. I feel like I’ve been filled up with itchy cement.

  Roy Ombelen had them go through the scene, and Dortmunder thought it went along pretty good, except for the stiffness and the need to scratch, but then Roy said, “Cut,” and then he said, “Guys, let me make one other thing clear here. We know we don’t want the cameras to look at your faces, but the other part of that, we don’t want you to look at the cameras. You’re in a conversation, so be in the conversation. Look at the people you’re talking to. There are no cameras here, okay?”

  Okay, they said, and Roy started the scene again, and they all caught on to that part pretty quick, all of them. In fact, Dortmunder noticed, once he wasn’t thinking about the cameras, the itches started to fade. Another plus.

  But then Roy cut them again and said, “Doug, I think we need the girlfriend in on this. Give the cameras something else to look at.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Doug said.

  So Darlene came over from the sofa where she’d been reading a People magazine, and Marcy told her who she was and what was motivating her and gave her a couple of things she might want to say. The idea was, she came to the bar with her boyfriend Ray, but then she would wait in the bar while the others went to the back room to talk business. Also, because she wasn’t part of the robbery story, the cameras wouldn’t mind looking at her, which everybody thought was okay.

  They rehearsed it the new way, with Darlene, and people were getting more relaxed, more into the flow of things. Gradually, Dortmunder grew less stiff and itchy, and it was even becoming kind of fun, sitting around, pretending to be tough guys in a tough bar talking tough to each other. It was very different, this new OJ, not having the regulars around to sing a cappella.

  They did it three times, all the way through, with the cameras on, and it all seemed to go very smoothly. Between takes Marcy would suggest small changes in what people would say, and after a while it all got to be so easy and natural that Dortmunder found he was actually enjoying himself, as though he were really in a real bar having a real conversation with a real bartender.

  It was a short scene, which was probably a good thing for those members of the cast not used to this sort of activity. It opened with Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny and the kid sitting at the bar, talking with Rodney, ordering drinks—somehow they all seemed to be drinking Budweiser beer—and then Ray Harbach came in with Darlene. Marcy gave Kelp a couple of flirty things to say to Darlene, which he did mostly as though he was trying to lift her spirits rather than put the moves on her, which was just as well, because Marcy hadn’t given Darlene any reaction instructions, so Darlene just stood there with a vacant smile on her face while Kelp’s witticisms wandered off away from the set.

  On the one hand, Darlene didn’t add much to the occasion, basically having not been given anybody to be or any reason to exist, but on the other hand her presence did completely change the dynamic and everybody felt it. The gang became more confident, somehow, and more united. The same things said by the same people in the same way became more interesting.

  After the third taped run-through of the bar scene, Roy Ombelen told Darlene and Rodney the barman they were finished for the day and they’d be getting a callback when they were next needed, which would be sometime after tomorrow. They left, and when the receding elevator racket finished, Ombelen led his five players and his camerapeople and two other guys who had something to do with light and sound and his producer to the hall set with the fake restrooms.

  And now there was a delay because the lighting was all wrong and something was screwed up with the sound, so the reality stars of tomorrow were told they could go back and lounge on the OJ set while the hall was being perfected.

  Once away from the cameras and the role-playing, Dortmunder found himself returning to his right mind, and he wished he could talk with the others, or at least with Kelp, about this situation, but of course he couldn’t, not with Harbach here. So he sat in silence, telling himself the things h
e would have been telling Kelp, things he already knew, until he couldn’t stand it any more, and that’s when he stood and said, “Andy, let’s walk a little.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Kelp said.

  Harbach looked briefly as though he might volunteer to walk with them, but the kid, recognizing what Dortmunder was up to, chose that moment to say, “Ray, I keep thinking you look familiar somehow. Would there be any television shows I might’ve seen you on?”

  “Well,” Harbach said, “I don’t suppose you’ve watched a lot of soap operas,” by which time Dortmunder and Kelp were already on their feet and out of the OJ set, so that danger was averted.

  This was still a pretty big building, and there was still a lot of underused floor space away from the three sets. Dortmunder and Kelp strolled through this, and Dortmunder said, “What are we gonna do here?”

  “Well,” Kelp said, “we still got the problem of the tenant.”

  “I know that. We gotta come back tonight and see if he’s still there. And this time, I gotta come along, because if we can go in, I wanna be there.”

  “Okay, sure. But what if he’s still there?”

  “I dunno about this TV thing,” Dortmunder said. “I mean, it wasn’t too bad after a while—”

  “Once you got used to the cameras. And the guy carrying the microphone in the air over your head.”

  “He didn’t bother me so much,” Dortmunder said, because he’d barely noticed that guy. “But, Andy, this isn’t what we do. What we do is, we go in, we pick up what we pick up, we go out. One, two, it’s done. This thing, they rehearse it over and over.”

  “Maybe,” Kelp said, “the guy will be gone tonight. And we can give up our TV career.”

  “Hey, Andy! Hey, John!”

  It was Doug, over by the sets, waving to them, so they went over there and Kelp said, “Are we ready for my close-up?” which Dortmunder didn’t get, but which apparently Doug did, because he laughed and said, “Just about, Norma. I wanted to tell you guys, when they’re done taping today, I’d like you to stick around a little. Babe’s coming back downtown, and he thinks he might have the solution to our problem.”