Get Real

20

HAVING BEEN SUMMONED to Babe Tuck’s office Thursday morning, Doug arrived to find a very dapper fortyish man with a large brushy-haired head and a wide op art necktie seated in one of the big leather chairs facing Babe’s beat-up desk. This fellow stood as Doug entered the room, as did Babe on the other side of the desk, and the new man turned out to be very short, out of proportion to both the large head and the neon necktie. Doug guessed at once that he was an actor.

Babe made the introductions: “Doug Fairkeep, producer of The Crime Show, this is—”

Doug said, “The Crime Show?”

“Temporary title,” Babe told him.

“I’ll think about it.”

“This is,” Babe insisted, “Ray Harbach. With your agreement, I think I want to add him to the show.”

Surprised, Doug said, “As the bartender?”

“No, one of the gang.”

Now Doug frowned, deeply. “Babe, I don’t know,” he said. “They’re pretty much a unit.”

“I feel,” Babe said, “what with one thing and another, we need eyes and ears inside the gang. You know what I mean. We don’t want any surprises, Doug.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.”

“We deliver surprises,” Babe told him. “We don’t collect them.” Gesturing at the chairs, he said, “Come on, at least let’s get comfortable.”

As they all sat, Ray Harbach took a small magazine from his jacket pocket and extended it toward Doug, saying, “I thought, to introduce myself, I’d show you my bio from my last Playbill.” He had a deeply resonant voice, as though speaking from a wine cellar. “We write those ourselves, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

Ray Harbach had left the Playbill conveniently folded open to the page with his bio, which was fifth among the cast, and which read:

RAY HARBACH (Dippo) is pleased to be back in the Excelsior Theater, where he appeared three seasons ago as Kalmar in the revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Other theater roles have included work by Mamet, Shaw, Osborne, and Orton. Film: Ocean’s 12; Rollerball. Television: The New Adventures of the Virgin Mary and the Seven Dwarfs at the North Pole; The Sopranos; One Life to Live; Sesame Street. I want to dedicate this production to my father, Hank.

“I see,” Doug said, and handed the Playbill back. “Thanks.”

Pocketing the Playbill, Harbach said, “I get the idea this is something a little different here.”

“To begin with,” Doug said, “it’s a reality show.”

Harbach smiled with the self-confidence of a man who will never run out of small parts to pay the rent. “Then what do you need me for?”

Babe said, “The fact is, it’s a reality show with a difference. Explain it, Doug.”

“We will follow,” Doug said, “a group of professional robbers as they plan and execute an actual robbery.”

Harbach cocked a large head. “An actual robbery?”

“Not entirely,” Babe said.

Doug said, “Babe, if they don’t do it, what’s the show about?”

“I understand that, Doug,” Babe said, “which is why we’re going along with the target, even with the additional complications.” To Harbach he said, “Get Real has corporate owners, and one of the thieves came up with the idea, if they chose a target that was owned within the umbrella corporation, it would give them a fallback position if the police happened to get involved.”

Harbach nodded. “I get it. Pretend it was never gonna be real.”

“Right.” Babe made a little fatalistic shrug gesture he’d learned many years ago in the Orient. “Unfortunately, the target they chose is a sensitive one, for reasons we don’t want them to know about.”

Harbach did his own shrug. “Tell them to pick something else.”

Doug said, “Then they’ll know we’re hiding something, and they’ll want to know what it is, and we don’t want them curious because we are hiding something.”

Harbach looked interested. “Oh, yeah? What?”

Babe said, “We’re hiding it from you, too. That way, if they start to think something’s going on, you won’t know what it is, but you’ll be right in there with them, you’ll know what they’re thinking, and you can pass it on to us.”

“So I’m the mole.” Harbach didn’t seem to mind that.

“The reason we cast you,” Babe said, “we were looking for a guy who’s a good solid actor, good credits, good rep, but also has some little dodgy elements in his past.”

“Oh, come on,” Harbach said. “I had a few wild times in my youth, but that was over long ago.”

Doug said, “Ever do time?”

Harbach was appalled. “Prison? My God, no!”

Babe said to Doug, “What Ray has is just enough of a background to make him plausible for our group.”

Harbach said, “You know, I don’t emphasize that stuff on my résumé.”

“This time,” Babe told him, “you need to. We want the gang to accept you as one of them.”

Doug said, “Babe, why are we adding him to the show? I mean, I know why we are, to have a spy inside the gang, but what do we tell them is the reason?”

“They are experts,” Babe said, “at crime. Ray here is an expert at acting in front of a camera, at selling a scene. He’ll be able to coach them, help them be more realistically what they already are.”

Harbach said, “I’m gonna need legal protection here, if this is gonna lead to an actual robbery.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Babe told him. “Legal’s putting together a contract addendum now, explaining what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. We’ll get it to your agent this afternoon.”

“That sounds good,” Harbach said. “When do I meet this gang?”

Doug said, “Our sets are about ready. I was gonna call them this afternoon to make a first run-through tomorrow.” To Babe he said, “They don’t like it if you call them in the morning.”

Harbach laughed. “Already,” he said, “they sound like actors.”