Get Real d-15 Page 21

  Definitely, a profitable evening on Varick Street. “I begin to believe,” Dortmunder said, “that a jinx that has dogged my days for a long long time has finally broken.” And, for the second time in one day, he smiled.

  46

  DOUG’S HORRIBLE WEDNESDAY actually started pretty well. Marcy and the gang were adding story complications down on Varick Street, the other production assistants, Josh and Edna, were working under an open assignment to come up with other reality subject matter, the debacle that had been The Stand was now filed and forgotten, and the only reason to come into the midtown office at all was that’s where he was expected to be. Also, although he would never have admitted it to anybody, he had the irrational but obsessive conviction that during the daylight hours the apartment was haunted, by people who had lost their jobs.

  He was reading Josh and Edna’s latest bad ideas—but they were trying—a little after eleven that morning when Lueen stuck her sardonic head into his office doorway to say, “Your master’s voice.”

  “I serve no master but my art,” Doug told her, but went off to see what Babe wanted.

  Babe wasn’t alone in the room. Seated facing him across the desk, back to the door, was someone Doug initially took to be a Sikh in a white turban. Babe nodded toward Doug and said to this gentleman, “Here’s Doug Fairkeep now.”

  The man uncurled in a savage rising spin to his feet, shoulders hunched, fists clenched, the face he now showed Doug convulsive with rage. He’s not going to punch me, Doug thought in terror, he’s going to turn me into an oil spill.

  Then the man’s implacable forward momentum abruptly disappeared, like smoke, and he rocked back on his heels, opening his hands as he said, “That is not him.”

  Babe said, “That is Doug Fairkeep.”

  “He lied.”

  “The man last night, you mean. That’s what I assumed.”

  First clearing his throat to be sure he still had a voice, Doug said, “Babe? What is this?” And he now could see that the man was not a Sikh in a turban but some sort of Asiatic in a thick bandage around his head.

  “Mr. Mg was staying on Varick Street last night,” Babe said.

  “Asleep,” accused Mr. Mg. He was still very angry at somebody.

  “A man who apparently didn’t know Mr. Mg was there,” Babe went on, “came in, turned on the light, said he was Doug Fairkeep and that he sometimes slept there when he missed his last train and—”

  “Never,” Doug said. “Never any of it.”

  “I know that, Doug.”

  “Never slept there. Never went in there on my own. Never take trains anywhere.”

  “Hit me with piece of iron,” Mr. Mg said.

  Babe said, “Mr. Mg was treated in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s this morning, then came up here to tell us about it.”

  Doug said, “How’d he get in?”

  “He did not break in,” Mr. Mg said.

  “Doug,” Babe said, “that’s the part I don’t get. Whoever this was, he has a way to get into Combined Tool without forcing anything.”

  “Babe,” Doug said, “I can’t do that. You’re the only one I know can do that.”

  “Well, Mr. Mg as well,” Babe said. “Some other of our overseas associates.”

  I just told the gang about these Asians, Doug thought. He said, “Babe, do you think it was The Heist gang?”

  “Of course I do,” Babe said. “But how could they pull that off? You tell me.”

  “I can’t,” Doug said. “What’d they get?”

  “Nothing,” Babe said.

  “I looked carefully,” Mr. Mg said. “Nothing is gone. The money I put in my suitcase earlier, still there.”

  Doug said, “And the, uh…”

  “The safe?” Babe shook his head. “If they did look for it, they didn’t find it.”

  “I examined,” Mr. Mg said. “Not touched.”

  “Well, that’s good, at least,” Doug said, and it was, because if they’d gotten the money Babe would have hounded them all, made their lives a living hell. Then he had another thought and said, “Was it reported to the police?”

  “Nothing to report,” Babe said, “Nothing taken, no breaking and entering.”

  “I do not talk with police,” Mr. Mg said.

  Doug asked him, “What did you say in the emergency room?”

  “Fall in shower. Twice.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Mg, I really am, but there’s nothing I can do. Babe, is there anything I can do?”

  “No, that’s all right,” Babe said. “Mr. Mg just needed to see you, that’s all.”

  “Well, here I am,” Doug said. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Mg. Safe flight.”

  He turned away, but Mr. Mg said, “Doug Fairkeep.”

  Doug turned back. “Yes?”

  Mr. Mg nodded. “He knows your name,” he said.

  The next problem was even worse, and came in the form of a one-two punch. First the news came, in midafternoon, that with only the one show, The Heist, in production, and with nothing on the air, and with nothing in development, Get Real was being eliminated. Its assets would be folded in with its superior, Monopole, and all of the staff, except for Babe and Doug, would be let go.

  Babe had come to Doug’s office this time, to pass along this latest bad news, and was still there when Lueen extended her snakelike head into the doorway and said to Babe, more respectfully than she ever addressed Doug, “Mr. Pockell on one, sir, for you.”

  Pockell was an executive with Monopole. Babe stood beside Doug’s desk to take the call, saying, “Yes, sir,” and then, in shock, “What?” and then, in horror, “Oh, no!” and then, in almost unheard-of panic, “I’ll be right there.”

  He slammed down the phone and would have run from the office but that Doug said, “Babe? What’s up?”

  Babe halted, stared at Doug, and shook his head. “I don’t think there’s any way to save it this time,” he said. “This comes down from way on high. Get Real has no more assets to fold into Monopole. The Heist is scratched.”

  47

  DORTMUNDER, ignoring the lights, ignoring the boom mike dangling in midair above his head, ignoring the camera brushing his cheek, said, in his tough-guy grunt, “There’s too much tunnel traffic by that place. You can’t keep a getaway car hanging around there.”

  Kelp, also hulking over the backroom table, said, “But you gotta have a getaway car, or how do you get away?”

  Tiny, who didn’t have to do anything more than go on being himself, said, “If you’re gonna steal a getaway car, while you’re at it steal a pair of walkie-talkies.”

  Kelp said, “But people can listen in on those things. You got no privacy.”

  The kid, whose television persona was baby-face killer, said, “So talk in code.”

  Kelp said, “What code?”

  The kid shrugged, “Red sails at sunset,” he said, “means come pick us up now.”

  Dortmunder said, “If you’re not gonna give the address, why do code?”

  “Then don’t do code,” the kid said. “I don’t care.”

  “Cut,” said Roy, and when everybody turned to look at him he beamed upon them all and said, “Fine. Delovely. Everybody take a break now while we reposition the cameras and the walls.” To Marcy, observing behind camera two, he said, “Very nice, Marcy. Played even better than I expected.” Because Marcy was the one who’d worked out the bit about the walkie-talkies and the code.

  Marcy blushed in gratitude and pleasure, and the kid led everybody in giving her a nice if ragged round of applause. She was really very helpful, Marcy, very useful to actors who weren’t really actors.

  “Okay,” Roy said. To the crew he said, “Position three.” To his cast he said, “Five minutes.”

  Dortmunder and the other performers rose and stretched and moved out of the backroom set as the crew came in to move everything around. It was funny how this worked, physically. You felt fine while you were doing it, just going along easy, no problem, but
as soon as Roy called cut everybody was stiff and sore, yawning and scratching themselves. Maybe it had something to do with concentration, like when Kelp was examining a safe.

  It was late afternoon now, and Roy would have time for only one more setup today. He was trying to fit a lot in because the schedule was that this was to be their last week at the back room or the hall, though the OJ set would stay up for more use later on.

  Next week they’d be doing exteriors in this neighborhood. Since they’d use cameras hidden in cars and wouldn’t mind filming civilians who happened to walk by while they were shooting, the term in the television business seemed to be that they were “stealing” the shots. Not exactly.

  The gang and Rodney moved toward the comfortable chairs in the OJ set, and all at once the racket of the elevator sounded, receding from their level downward. It faded and stopped, and then started again, and neared, and very soon stopped again.

  Kelp looked at Dortmunder. “Stopped on two,” he said. Combined Tool.

  “Be ready,” Dortmunder advised.

  “Oh, I am.”

  It had been agreed it would raise too many suspicions if Kelp were to plead illness or offer some other excuse not to show up here today, but if by chance last night’s Asian were to enter the place he would recognize Kelp at once, so what Kelp would do, in that circumstance, was make himself scarce. “That gippy tummy again,” he said, and shook his head.

  They sat comfortably in the false OJ, Rodney distributing cans of Bud, but there wasn’t much conversation. Most of them were waiting for the elevator to do something.

  There: racket, racket, racket, getting nearer. “Watch my seat,” Kelp said, and rose, and walked out of the OJ set.

  The elevator racket got as loud as it was going to get, and then it quit, and then Kelp came walking back around the edge of the set, shaking his head. As he sat across the table from Dortmunder and in front of his beer, he said, “Not him. Other friends of ours,” and around the corner came Doug and Babe.

  From the instant they appeared, everybody could see from their faces that there was trouble ahead. They both looked grim; death in the family grim.

  Babe saw the expressions on the group watching him, nodded, and said, “Doug, get Roy in here, will you?”

  “Sure,” Doug said. He was carrying an attaché case, which he put on a nearby table.

  “Oh, and Marcy.”

  “You know, Babe,” Kelp said, as Doug went off on his errand, “every time you come here it’s to shut us down.”

  “Those other times,” Babe said, “I was acting out of anger, and I was wrong. This time, I’m following orders, and if those people are wrong, and I think they are, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Doug came back, followed by Roy and Marcy, Roy not concealing his irritation and impatience, but also not noticing the atmosphere in the room. “Babe,” he said, “I must say I have very little time here.”

  “Roy,” Babe said, “I have to tell you, you don’t have any time left at all.”

  Roy frowned. “What?”

  “They’re shutting us down,” Babe said. “In fact, they’re shutting the whole company down. As of now, Get Real no longer exists. This building will go to Monopole. The lease on the midtown offices will be given up. And The Heist will never be aired.”

  Roy said, “But you told us the bosses loved it.”

  “At Monopole,” Babe told him, “they did. They were already looking for foreign sales. They sent it up to the level above them, Intimate Communications, and those people loved it so much they sent it on up to TUI, even though they didn’t have to, not yet, and TUI ordered everything shut down.”

  Roy said, “Remind me. What’s TUI?”

  “Trans-Global Universal Industries. They’re into a lot more than television production, and the CEO there now is a man named Gideon, who is a morality crusader. No porn, no excessive violence, no profanity, nothing you couldn’t show a ten-year-old. A dull ten-year-old. Wholesome stories with wholesome morals tucked into their wholesome endings.” Voice dripping scorn, Babe said, “The Heist, it seems, glorifies criminals.”

  “So what?” said Kelp.

  “It does not,” cried Roy. “It shows the human side of the criminal life. It shows the hard work, the thought—”

  “Glorifies criminals,” Babe said. “Once you’ve said those words, that’s like a magic incantation, it’s the end of the discussion.”

  Rodney the bartender said, “Because The Heist glorifies criminals, they’re shutting down the whole company?”

  “Well,” Babe said, “The Stand is gone, and there’s nothing else on deck, and Get Real was too expensive an operation not to have anything come out of it. So Doug and I are going to be working for Monopole, and the rest of the staff, I’m sorry to say, is out.”

  Marcy, sounding tremulous, said, “You mean I’m fired?”

  Doug answered. “Nobody’s fired, Marcy. It’s just that none of those jobs exist any more.”

  “And now,” Babe said, “I have a little more business to conduct with just the gang, so if everybody else could grab a seat somewhere outside, this won’t take long, and we can all leave together.”

  Rodney the bartender said, “Am I in this, or out of this?”

  “Just the gang,” Babe told him.

  The former Rodney removed his apron and dropped it on a chair. “It’s been fun, folks,” Tom LaBrava said, and he and Roy and Marcy, all downcast in their own separate ways, left the ersatz OJ for the final time.

  Dortmunder said to Babe, “What about the human fly and Darlene?”

  “They weren’t going to be taping again until the exteriors next week,” Babe said, “so we phoned them. They already know.” He turned to Doug. “Doug?”

  “Right,” Doug said, and opened the attaché case he’d left on a table. “We have contracts with you guys,” he said, “that called for a twenty-thousand-dollar payout per man, plus per diem, some of which has been paid.” Taking papers from the case, he said, “These are forms in which you acknowledge the series has been canceled and will never be on the air, and you’re accepting ten thousand a man in cash as full and final payment for your work on The Heist.”

  That’s why they stopped at Combined Tool, Dortmunder told himself. They’re about to give us some of the cash we left behind. And in a few weeks we’ll go back and take a lot more, and not worry much about neatness. Glorify criminals. And?

  Doug was now showing the cash in the attaché case and saying, “The forms are made out in the names you gave Sam Quigg, so just sign those same names. All that matters is it’s really your handwriting.”

  This is a little too much like wages, Dortmunder thought, as he and the others went over to sit at that table and sign the forms in three places, initial in two, and receive ten thousand dollars in banded bundles of hundreds and fifties, which they then concealed on and about their persons.

  Nobody was interested in long good-byes. The crew left their cameras and other equipment behind, and then the whole crowd gathered together onto the elevator for the final sink down to the ground floor.

  As the garage door was being lifted, Dortmunder glanced at all those parked vehicles over there, some of which Stan would certainly be driving in the weeks ahead. So it hadn’t been a total loss.

  Out on the sidewalk, a limo appeared for Babe and Doug, to whisk them away. Roy and Tom LaBrava and the crew walked off with their right arms raised, looking for cabs. Tiny led the way toward the corner around which his own limo lurked.

  Nearing that corner, Dortmunder looked back and saw that Marcy was still standing there in front of the building, at a loss. “That was too bad about Marcy,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s tough,” Kelp agreed.

  “She was really a great help to us.”

  “Yeah, she was.”

  They took another couple of steps and Dortmunder said, “We might could get together and give her some of what we got.”

  “There’s an idea,�
� Kelp said, and kept walking.

  Dortmunder almost stopped, but then he too kept walking, on around the corner. “Oh, all right,” he said.

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