Get Real

13

NINE P.M. The Holland Tunnel-bound traffic along Varick Street moved more freely now, and two groups of men, pedestrians, a trio and a duet, converged from north and south toward the GR Development building. As the groups came together on the sidewalk in front of the metal fire-door entrance to the building, greeting one another as though this were a happy coincidence, three miles to the north Manny Felder took many Weegee-style photos of the back room at the OJ while out front Roy Ombelen nursed his white wine and listened with growing astonishment to the regulars discuss the possible meanings of the letters D, V, and D, and farther east, in midtown, Doug Fairkeep, unable to keep his appointment with the other two at the OJ due to the revelation of the sexual orientation of Kirby Finch, brainstormed with his production assistants, while growing stacks of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee containers kept a kind of score.

Andy Kelp liked locks and locks liked Andy Kelp. While the others milled around and chatted to cover his activities, he bent to the two locks in this door, bearing with him picks and tweezers and narrow little metal spatulas.

Judson took the opportunity to ask Dortmunder, “You think we’re gonna find that cash down here?”

“I think,” Dortmunder said, “Doug has seen cash somewhere and it has to be somewhere he works. The two places we know where he works are that midtown office building and here. Maybe they wouldn’t want bribe money laying around the office, so we’ll see what we come up with down here.”

“There we go,” Kelp said, and straightened, and pulled open the door.

Pitch-black inside. They all piled in, and only when the door was shut did flashlights appear, two of them, one held by Kelp and one by Dortmunder, both hooded by electrical tape to limit their beams. The flashlights bobbed around, then closed on the iron interior staircase along the rear part of the left wall. At this level, it rose from front to back.

Holding the light on the stairs, Kelp moved off across the crowded garage toward it, followed by Tiny, who used his hips and knees to clear a path through the underbrush of vehicles. Judson went next, then Stan, who said over his shoulder to Dortmunder, bringing up the rear with the other light, “This reminds me of Maximillian.”

“I know what you mean,” Dortmunder said, Maximillian being the owner and operator of Maximillian’s Used Cars, a fellow known to purchase rolling stock of dubious provenance, no questions asked. He didn’t pay much, but he paid more than the goods on offer had cost the offerer.

“A fella,” Stan said, “could switch the cars around in here, waltz out with one a day for a week, they’d never notice.”

“You could be right.”

Kelp had reached the stairs and started up. The others followed, and when Kelp got to the second floor he turned to his right, tried to open the door there, and it was locked.

As the others crowded up after him, wanting to know the cause of the delay, he studied this blank door in front of him and said, “That’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” everybody wanted to know.

“It’s locked.”

“Unlock it,” everybody suggested.

“I can’t,” Kelp said. “That’s what’s weird. It isn’t a regular door lock, it’s a palm-print thing. There’s no way to get it open unless it recognizes your palm.”

Judson said, “Down on the street they put a little simple lock you went through like butter, and up here they’ve got a high-tech lock?”

“Like I said,” Kelp said. “It’s weird.”

Tiny, next nearest to Kelp, reached past him to thump the door, which made a sound like thumping a tree. “That’s not going anywhere,” he said.

Dortmunder, well back in the pack and therefore unable to see clearly for himself, called up the stairs, “Then that’s the one we gotta get into.”

“Can’t be done, John,” Kelp called back.

Judson said, “What about from upstairs?”

“What, down through the ceiling?” Kelp shook his head and his flashlight beam. “This time,” he said, “we don’t want to leave any marks we were here.”

“I can’t see anything,” Dortmunder complained.

“Okay,” Kelp said. “John, we’ll go on up the next flight.”

Everybody thudded up the stairs, which from the second to the third floor reversed and rose from back to front, and when at last Dortmunder got to the impassable door he stopped to frown at it all over, to look for hinges to be removed—no, they were on the inside—and to press his palm to the circle of glass at waist height. But the door didn’t know him, and nothing happened.

The others had gone on up to the third floor so, abandoning the door, Dortmunder trudged on up after them. At the top, he found them all lolling around at their ease in what looked like a dayroom combined with an office. A few sofas and soft chairs and small tables were scattered around this part of the building from front to back, with filing cabinets and stacks of cardboard mover’s cartons along the inside wall. Somebody had even switched on a floor lamp by one of the sofas, making a warm soft cozy glow.

“John,” Kelp said, from the depths of a green vinyl easy chair, “take a load off.”

“I will.” Dortmunder did, and said, “It’s that door, that’s what we want.”

Tiny said, “Not without demolition.”

“Tiny’s right,” Kelp said. “We can’t get into it, John. Not tonight. Not without doing some damage. And right now, we don’t want to do damage.”

“We want to know what’s in there,” Dortmunder said. “We need to know, what’s the setup.”

“Won’t happen,” Tiny said.

Dortmunder took from his pocket the drugstore receipt on which he’d written the firm names in this building. “What we got on this floor,” he said, “is Knickerbocker Storage. It’s all storage areas the other side of that wall.”

Stan said, “There’s a john down at the end there.”

“Fine.” Dortmunder consulted his list. “Up one flight, that’s Scenery Stars, that’s the people gonna make the sets, like the imitation OJ. And up top is GR Development, their rehearsal space for their reality shows. The question is, what the hell is the thing down one flight? It’s called Combined Tool. What would that be? If your name is Combined Tool, who are you?”

Stan said, “Do they make tools?”

“Where? How? That’s not a factory.”

At a side table, Judson had found phone books, and now he turned from consulting them to say, “Not in any phone book.”

Dortmunder looked at him. “Not at all?”

“Not in the white pages under Combined Tool, not in the yellow pages under Tools-Electric, Tools-Rentals or Tools-Repairing & Parts.”

Stan said, “So who the hell are they?”

“You got a company gets big enough,” Dortmunder said, “it’s got a dark side.”

“But it’s still a company,” Kelp said, “so it’s still got to have records and meetings and a history of itself.”

“Down in there,” Dortmunder said.

Stan said, “But what would Doug be doing in there? He’s not that important. That door doesn’t know his palm print.”

“He’s close to the operation,” Dortmunder said. “He works sometimes out of this same building. He works for them, and they trust him, and he happened to see something once.”

“You open a door in New York,” Tiny said, “you never know what’s in there.”

Rousing himself from his easy chair, Kelp said, “We might as well take off now. We’re not gonna do anything else in here tonight.”

Dortmunder was reluctant to go, with the mystery of Combined Tool still unsolved, but he knew Kelp was right. Another day. “I’ll he back,” he vowed.

As they trooped back down the stairs, Stan said, “I think I’ll pick up a car along the way. Won’t take a minute.”