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  Max exhaled as noisily as if he still smoked those old cigars, dropped back into his swivel chair, continued to glare outward, and said, “I say I don’t like it, that’s what I say.”

  “Don’t like what, Max?”

  At last Max looked Stan in the eye, and nodded, though not with much satisfaction. “Morning, Stanley.”

  “Good morning. What don’t you like?”

  For answer, Max glared again out the window. “Any of those birds look like a television person to you?”

  “What, a repairman? I don’t think they have those any more.”

  “No, a reporter,” Max said, as though the word were synonymous with “dungheap.” “Ever see any of those people on the air?”

  Interested, Stan stepped closer to the windows and considered the candidates. “Not unless it was a perp walk,” he decided. “What’s up, Max?”

  “Siddown, Stanley, you’ll give me a crook in my neck.”

  So Stan sat in the client’s chair and said, “You’ve had a problem with reporters?”

  “No, and I don’t want any. But one of these local channels, busybodies, on their six o’clock news, they been doing a deep investigative thing on customers and the people that sell to customers.”

  “Aha.”

  “If you ask me,” Max said, “what they’re investigating is people that sell to customers without using their crappy TV station for advertising.”

  “That makes sense,” Stan said. “You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you.”

  “I wanna bite some hand. They’re goin after all kinds of legitimate businessmen, Stanley. Furniture stores where you don’t pay any money down. That’s a worthy thing, isn’t it?”

  “Sounds it.”

  “So what if they come to take the stuff back next year and sell it all over again to the next yo-yo? It was never anything but junk anyway.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And appliance stores, those too,” Max said, “and—you know it—used car dealers.”

  Stan nodded. “They been to see you, Max?”

  “No, but they hit one in the Bronx, and they hit one in Staten Island, nailed them for perfectly ordinary business practices, but, you know, the stuff that’s difficult to explain to the layman.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Max did his best to look pathetic. “Stanley,” he said, “I don’t want to be under scrutiny, you know that.”

  “None of us does, Max,” Stan agreed. “It’s like a contagious disease.”

  “You know it.”

  “Maybe they’ll pick a competitor.”

  “Your lips to God’s ear. In fact, I got a couple suggestions, only I’m not about to attract attention.” Max shivered all over, relit his imaginary cigar, and said, “But why should I borrow any trouble? Usually, you come to see me, you got a vehicle, it’s a fine vehicle, only the dog ate the registration.”

  “That’s what happens, all right,” Stan agreed.

  “Also,” Max said, now smiling on Stan like some son or other close relative in whom he was well pleased, “you understand the ways of the real world, how, when you bring me these orphans, how it costs me out of pocket to bring them back into the world of ordinary commercial trade, which is why there’s gotta be a little discount from book value between us from time to time.”

  Stan, who found his cost of raw materials not burdensome, said, “We help each other out, Max, and I appreciate it.”

  “So now,” Max said, finished with the emollient of human empathy, “what have you brought me today, Stanley?”

  “To begin,” Stan said, “a black Caliber, maybe two years old.”

  Max looked at him. “To begin?”

  Unpocketing his cell phone, Stan reached it across the desk to show Max the pictures he’d taken. “I can get you,” he said, “one of these a day, as many as you think you like. After that, maybe a few more, who knows?”

  Max took the phone and scrolled through the pictures, then frowned at Stan. “What’d you do?” he asked. “Follow them to their nest?”

  “Where they are now,” Stan said, “they’re kind of goin to waste. They were used on TV shows, but now they’re just like in storage, like an old costume.”

  “TV shows?” Max didn’t like that. “Stanley, I don’t want somebody from television news to come in here and recognize one of these vehicles. Hey, I used to drive that, call the cops.”

  “Not that kind of TV,” Stan assured him. “Nothing to do with the news, these are reality people, they don’t come to the outer boroughs.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. And these cars, I think they’ll be happier out and about in the world.”

  “You’re a very thoughtful boy.” Handing back the phone, he said, “I’ll give a new home to every one of these, you pick the rotation. You want I should run a tab?”

  “Oh,” Stan said, carelessly, “I think pay as you go is easier, you know. Less paperwork. We look at each of these when I bring it in, we tell each other what we think it’s worth, we come to an agreement, and then I’ll take the cash. Simple. Friendly.”

  “Some do it that way,” Max agreed, as though it didn’t much matter one way or the other. Heaving himself to his feet, he said, “Well, let’s look at your first episode.” But then he stopped, to stare out the window again. In some astonishment, he said, “Look at that.”

  Stan looked. The new customer who’d just joined the random molecules slowly crisscrossing the lot was a huge man with a huge black beard and a whole lot of woolly black hair. He was dressed in a kind of muted orange muumuu, so that he looked mostly like the king of the apricots.

  “Wow,” Stan said. He meant it as a compliment.

  Leaning forward over the desk, hissing toward the window, Max said, “Could he be undercover?”

  “As what? A blimp?” Stan shook his head. “Come on, Max, lemme show you the car.”

  But Max was still staring out the window. “Look what he’s doing.”

  The new arrival had taken a big interest in a Volkswagen Rabbit, not a particularly big car. Stan said, “What’s he gonna do with that?”

  The big man opened the Rabbit’s driver-side door. Before Harriet’s nephew could get there to discuss the situation, he’d started to insert himself behind the wheel.

  “That’s not gonna work,” Max said.

  The man kept squeezing and twisting himself farther and farther into the Rabbit. Stan said, “Is he gonna drive it or wear it?”

  “If he can’t take it off,” Max said, “he’s bought it. Let them work it out for themselves, Stanley, come show me what you brought.”

  So off they went to have a look at Stan’s ex-Caliber.

  35

  THIS TIME it WAS REAL. Darlene knew it, and she knew Ray knew it, too, so they both knew it. At long last love, the real thing.

  And to think it was all because of a reality show. The irony of it. To find true love in such an artificial setting, it just went to show, didn’t it? You never knew what was going to happen, you just never did.

  It all began on the Thursday, the second day of taping, when the gang got the day off while Darlene and Ray and Marcy and Roy Ombelen and the tape crew went to Central Park to work out some improv, which was just simply fun to do. Inject some of your own personality, your own feelings, your own ideas, into the story line.

  The setup was this: Ray, the wall-walking specialist of the gang, had recently met Darlene and had wanted to show her off to the guys, but when he did, the contrast between her nearly fresh innocence (it’s all in the acting) and their jaded disbelief (no acting required) had shown him his life in a whole new light.

  So they’d gone off to Central Park together, that was the idea, to be away from the others, unobserved, so they could talk things over. What was their relationship, really? (In reality show terms, that is.) What was their future? Did they have a future together?

  They spent most of that day filming all over the park,
with all the necessary permits, that was part of what made the day so special and so much fun and so liberating. They rowed a boat together on the lake, they wandered together in the Ramble, they watched the joggers endlessly circling the reservoir (without joining them, although Marcy would have dearly loved it if they had), they walked around Belvedere Castle, they observed the imposing stone buildings that stood like sentinels in long straight rows all around the periphery of the park, and they talked it all out, coming to several different conclusions in the course of several different takes of each sequence, because Roy wanted to keep his options open. (At that time, so did Ray.)

  And they shared one brief tentative tremulous kiss, late in the day, on the path beside the Drive, surrounded by taxis and hansom cabs and joggers and bicyclists, all of whom, this being New York, ignored the smoochers in their midst.

  And then they all went home, walking out of the park, Darlene and Ray and the others, and they didn’t even hold hands. But they knew, they both knew, and a little later that evening they confirmed their knowledge.

  Ray had a very nice apartment in a small old gray stone building on West Eighty-fifth Street, pretty near Central Park, a third-floor walk-up, at the back, large living and bedrooms, very modern kitchen and bath. He was after all a financially successful actor, in everything from off-off-Broadway Strindberg revivals to Christmas-season electric shaver commercials. He was also a member of three actors’ unions, SAG, AFTRA and Actors’ Equity, which was too poor to have an acronym.

  The show didn’t need them any more that week, so they spent all that time in Ray’s apartment, getting to know one another from every angle. He had a callback for an incontinence commercial Friday afternoon (he didn’t get it), and she spent that time searching the place for secrets, careful to leave no traces. She didn’t find any secrets, which was both pleasing and a little disappointing, and rewarded Ray on his return (also making up to him for the incontinence rejection) by some very special attention.

  By Sunday night, sticking close to Ray’s place, they’d ordered out Thai, Italian, Mexican, Brazilian, and Bangladeshi. Monday morning they were expected back at Varick Street at ten o’clock, when Marcy would tell them where their story line was going. Ray’s shower was above the bathtub, which meant it was plenty big enough for them to shower together, again, which made them a little later leaving the apartment than they’d planned, but they were lucky in catching an immediate subway downtown and were hardly late for the call at all.

  With everybody assembled on the OJ bar set, Doug was still giving them all today’s pep talk, prior to Marcy unclosing the future to them, when the sudden clank-and-broowwrrr of the damn elevator started again. Doug, already stressed and irritated by the responsibilities of reality, loudly said a couple of things his father wouldn’t have said in front of the ladies, and then the elevator snarl stopped and here came Babe again, this time accompanied by the stone-faced personnel man, Sam Quigg.

  “Babe?” Doug called, no longer showing his irritation; in fact, showing a desire to be of use somehow, if a use for him could be found. “What’s up, Babe?”

  For answer, Babe stopped flat-footed in front of them all, arms akimbo, as he raked them in a turning pivot of rage, like a big cannon on a battleship, and grated, “This show is canceled. Shut it down.”

  36

  DORTMUNDER COULDN’T believe it. Again? Now what? Over the last week, he and the others had gotten used to this weird business. Dortmunder was still basically opposed to the whole thing, he assured himself of that, but there was just something about actually doing it. It was fun in some sort of unexpected way, and it drew you in.

  For instance, last week they kind of took the show on the road. All of them except Ray, since there was to be no actual planning or wall-walking involved, went to a real pawnshop and talked to a real pawnbroker, who wasn’t like old suspenders-wearing pawnbrokers in the movies, but was some kind of Asian guy, very thin, who talked very fast with a hard click-like thing at the end of every word. He thought what they were doing was hilarious, and he kept cracking up with high-pitched giggles, his whole face scrunched around his laughing mouth. Marcy and Doug kept at him to stay serious, to remember the actual cash money they’d be paying him, and eventually he did settle down enough so they could get through it.

  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 citizen
s 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.”