Get Real

24

ONE A.M. A gleaming black limousine comes to a stop on Varick Street. The building door beside it opens and two men come out and cross the sidewalk to the limo. The limo’s rear door opens and an extension ladder slides out horizontally into midair. First one of the men grasps the oncoming ladder, then the other. The two men turn and carry the ladder to the building doorway, open into darkness. The limo’s passenger says a word to the driver and climbs out to the sidewalk. He shuts the door, crosses to the building, enters into the same darkness as the other two men and the ladder, and shuts that door behind himself. The limo purrs away around the corner.

Crash.

“Turn on a light,” Tiny said. “You’re gonna bust every windshield in here.”

Kelp found the light switch and turned on the overhead fluorescents. “No, it was a side window,” he said. He was at the front end of the ladder.

Dortmunder, at the other end, said, “We’ll do the indoor stuff first.”

Kelp looked across the massed vehicles to the elevator platform way over on the other side. “I think,” he said, “we got to carry it over our heads.”

“Save a lotta glass that way,” Tiny commented.

Holding his end of the ladder up in the air over his head, Kelp started the dodging and weaving necessary to thread the needle in here. Dortmunder followed, his end of the ladder also up in the air, and Tiny followed as caboose. They would use the ladder to get to the second floor because they didn’t know what would be alarmed when the building was supposed to be empty, and the elevator seemed like a prime candidate for security.

As they neared the elevator, Stan and the kid came up out of a horseless hansom cab, both yawning a little. (Stan was out of the public part of events, but not out of the inner circle parts.) The kid said, “That’s really comfortable, that thing.”

“Not much scenery, though,” Stan said, and nodded at the ladder. “Good. Now we find out if the damn place is worth the trouble.”

“It better be,” Kelp said. “I’m not doing this for wages.”

At the elevator at last, Kelp put his end of the ladder down while Dortmunder walked the other end up toward the vertical. The other three came in at that point to lay hands on the ladder, to help and hinder, and when it was upright they pushed up the extension, elongating the ladder into the upper darkness.

“Ouch!”

Kelp looked over at Dortmunder. “You okay?”

“Not until you lower it a little so I can get my thumb out.”

“Sorry.”

They completed the extension without further incident, and Tiny said, “We don’t have to do a mob scene up there, everybody in everybody’s way. Dortmunder, you and Kelp go on up, see what it looks like.”

“Right.”

So Kelp went up the ladder, Dortmunder following, and on the next level they came to the empty space fronting Combined Tool. Six feet back from the hole for the elevator an off-white wall stretched across from the right-side outer wall, with the one brown door in the middle of it they’d seen before. Just to the left of the elevator area, a second wall came forward, perpendicular from the first one, running beside the elevator hole to the front of the building.

So this empty rectangle of space with the door in it was all at this level they could see. Of course this door too was equipped with palm-print recognition. They stood back—not too far back—and considered the situation.

“Wires,” decided Kelp.

“You’re right.”

They both had flashlights out now, shining them on the walls and ceiling. Kelp said, “Electricity. Phone. Cable. Security. A cluster of wires.”

Dortmunder pointed his light at the stone side wall of the elevator space. “They gotta do surface-mount. You can’t bury wires in a stone wall. See, like that.” And his light shone on a gray metal duct, an inch square, coming down from above. “That’s where they put in those cameras, to screw us outta the storage space.”

“Well, let’s see.” Kelp turned the other way, looking at the side wall where it came close to the front of the building. “There we go.”

His light showed another gray duct, a little larger, coming out of that side wall, very low and almost to the front. The duct emerged, made a left turn to go downward, then another left and headed off toward the door they’d come in.

Kelp called, “Tiny! You see that duct? I’m shining the light on it.”

“I got it.”

“Find where it goes, I’ll be right down.”

Dortmunder said, “And what am I doing?”

“Same as last time. Comere.”

They went over to the impregnable door, and Kelp withdrew from one of the rear pockets of his jacket the stethoscope and earphone gizmo. As Dortmunder watched, he bent to the door, listening here, listening there, then saying, “Hah.”

“You got it.”

“We know the thing has to be alarmed,” Kelp said, “and here it is. Only this time I want it to stop.”

“Okay.”

“Give me a couple minutes to get set,” Kelp said, “then you listen, and you tell me when it switches off.” He tapped a fingertip on the appropriate spot on the door. “Right there.”

“Done.”

Kelp went away down the ladder, and Dortmunder experimentally listened to the door’s faint hum for a minute, then, tiring of that, walked around in this blank, supremely uninteresting area until Kelp, from far away at the ground floor rear, yelled, “John!”

“Yar!”

“Start listening!”

“You got it.”

Bending to his work, Dortmunder listened through the gizmo to the humming of the door. It was a very soothing kind of hum, really, especially when you positioned yourself so your back could be comfortable. It was a non-threatening hum, an encouraging hum, faint but unending, assuring you that everything was going to be all right, all your troubles were over, you’d just sail along now on the calm sea of this hum, no nasty sur—

“JOHN! WHAT THE HELL’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?”

The scream, about an inch from his non-gizmo ear, was so loud and unexpected he drove his head into the door to get away from it, and the door bounced his head back into the scream with a new ache in it. Staring upward, he saw what appeared to be Kelp’s evil twin, face twisted into a Kabuki mask of rage. “What? What?”

“Can’t you hear anything?”

“The hum.” Dortmunder straightened, pulled the earphone out of his unassaulted ear, assembled the tatters of his dignity about himself, and said, “You wanted me to listen to the hum, I listened to the hum.”

Now Kelp frowned at the door. “It never stopped.”

“Never. It was gonna stop, I’d tell you.”

“I shouted up from downstairs,” Kelp said. He was growing a bit calmer.

“I,” Dortmunder said, self-respect now totally intact, “was listening to the hum.”

Again Kelp frowned at the door. His rage with Dortmunder seemed to be forgotten. “I did everything,” he said. “I shut down everything, I bypassed everything.”

“Hum,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp stood frowning, thinking. From downstairs voices were raised, full of questions for Kelp, but he continued to frown at the door.

“They’re calling you,” Dortmunder said. “Pretty soon they’ll come up and yell in your face.”

Slowly, Kelp was roused from his studies, and called down, “I’ll be right there!” Then, to Dortmunder, he said, “I didn’t yell in your face, I yelled in your ear.”

“Very similar.”

Kelp nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Accepted,” Dortmunder said.

“I was upset,” Kelp explained.

“I am remaining calm,” Dortmunder said. “You wanted to go down the ladder?”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do here,” Kelp said. “We are not gonna get through that door.”

“Not tonight, anyway,” Dortmunder said, and Kelp didn’t say anything.

So they went down the ladder, Kelp first, to find the others at their ease in the hansom cab. Tiny pretty thoroughly occupied the rear-facing front seat, with Stan and the kid opposite. The seats were well-cushioned, to accommodate the needs and expectations of tourists.

Kelp clambered up to the driver’s perch, above and behind the others, not quite so padded, but not bad. Dortmunder stood there, and then the kid said to him, “Grab something and sit.”

“Sure.”

Dortmunder looked around. A motorcycle with a sidecar stood alertly nearby. He rolled it over next to the hansom cab, settled himself into the surprisingly comfortable sidecar, and said, “It looks as though Kelp doesn’t know how to get past that door.” He might be remaining calm, but that didn’t mean he’d forgiven or forgotten.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Kelp said, too absorbed with the problem to take offense. “The only thing I can figure, they’ve gone wireless. And why wouldn’t they? They’ve got TV and the Internet and all that, so why not go wireless?”

The kid said, “Andy? What do we do about it?”

“Nothing,” Kelp said. “If it’s wireless, we’re screwed.”

“Well, that isn’t the only possibility,” Dortmunder said. “We haven’t tried out back yet.”

“I don’t know,” Kelp said. “It’s lookin tight.”

“If this thing isn’t gonna happen,” Tiny said, “it’s time for us to start packing tents.”

“It’s going to happen,” the kid said, suddenly energized. Clambering over the other passengers, he climbed out of the hansom cab and said, “Bring the ladder out back, I’ll climb up it and see what the windows do.”

“They won’t open,” Tiny told him.

But the kid refused to be daunted. “Come on,” he insisted. “Let’s go see what’s what.”

“If we’re gonna keep on with this,” Tiny said, rising from the hansom’s front seat, causing a smallish tremor that rattled Stan around on the backseat like a lone die in a padded cup, “I’ll carry your ladder, kid.”

“Thank you, Tiny.”

First Tiny retracted the ladder, getting more help than he needed along the way, and then he held it up horizontally over his head and set out across the valley of vehicles. If the world wore a propeller beanie, this is what it would look like.

They all made their way diagonally across the interior of the building, to the rear door Kelp had earlier tamed. He opened it again now, and everybody got out of the way as Tiny carried the ladder outside. He extended it, all by himself, then leaned it against the wall next to the leftmost second-floor window, which was smaller than the other windows at that level, and said, “Okay, kid, do your thing.”

“Right.”

The kid scrambled up the ladder, took his flashlight out of his jacket pocket, and shone it in through the window. “It’s a bathroom,” he reported.

Stan said, “We already figured that. All the johns are in the back corner there.”

“This is a very nice one,” the kid said. “Big walk-in shower, a painting of some castle on the wall, and one of those things girls use.”

The others all looked at one another, baffled. Stan hazarded, “A hair dryer?”

“No, no,” the kid said, rattling the ladder a little. “One of those things that’s like a toilet but isn’t.”

“Oh,” Kelp said, “a bidet,” pronouncing the T.

Dortmunder said, “Is that how you say that?”

“How would I know?” Kelp asked. “I never had to ask for one.”

Tiny said, “Kid, come down, move the ladder, see what else is up there.”

“Right.”

The kid came down, over, and up, and shone his light in the next window. “It’s a kitchen,” he said.

Dortmunder, unbelieving, said, “A kitchen?”

“A really nice one,” the kid said. “Big refrigerator, microwave, all kinds of stuff.”

Dortmunder said, “In Combined Tool? This is getting weirder.”

The kid said, “It’s big, too. It looks like it goes almost all the way across the back.”

Tiny said, “Go to the last window, see what’s in there.”

So the kid did, and said, “It’s a pantry. Big one, lots of nice shelves, but not much in there. Some pots and pans, some dishes. No food.”

“Let me see this,” Kelp said, and suddenly hurried up the ladder.

The kid, feeling the tremors in the ladder and looking down to see the top of Kelp’s head getting nearer, said, “Hey. You think this is a good idea?”

“Yes,” Kelp said. “Lean to the left.” And he muscled upward to the kid’s right, while the kid held on with all of his fingers and many of his toes.

“I think I’ll hold the ladder now,” Tiny said, and did so.

With the two of them side by side on the same rung up there, Kelp peered intently in at the sides and bottom of the window, pushing the kid’s head out of the way and saying, “Shine the light over there. No, on the jamb. Okay, and down. Okay.” And back down the ladder he zipped, followed a bit shakily by the kid.

Dortmunder said, “So whadaya think?”

“I think we aren’t gonna know what’s in there until we go in there,” Kelp said. “So we don’t know if it’s worthwhile until we do it.”

“And then,” Stan said, “it could turn out not to be cash at all, but some big boss’s love nest.”

“That would irritate me,” Tiny said.

Dortmunder said, “With the palm-print locks? I don’t think so. Andy, do you see any way to get in there through a window?”

“One way,” Kelp said, “and one way only. But it’s gonna use the place up, I don’t think we’ll be able to do the same thing twice.”

Tiny said, “You mean break the window.”

“No, I don’t,” Kelp said. “You break the window, you make a vibration, and that sets off the alarm.”

Dortmunder said, “In that case, you can’t open the window either.”

“I don’t wanna open it,” Kelp said. “This is not an easy thing here. What we’re talking about is at least two more trips.”

Tiny said, “Back twice more? This is beginning to look like a career.”

“We’re in it this far,” Kelp said, and nodded toward the far end of the areaway. “In the meantime, we can leave the ladder in the corner back there. Nobody’s gonna notice it.”

Dortmunder said, “Two more trips and still the ladder, but you don’t want to open the window and you don’t want to break it. What do you want to do in these trips?”

“The first one,” Kelp said, and gestured up toward the pantry window, “we bring epoxy and seal that window to the frame. I looked at it, and nobody ever opens it, so they’re not gonna notice.”

Tiny said, “Why are we doing that?”

“Vibrations again,” Kelp said. “Because when we come back the second time we’ve got our glass cutter and our suction cup with the handle on it.”

Dortmunder lifted his head, with a sudden surge of that unexpected quality: optimism. “I see it!” he said.

“If we do it right,” Kelp said, “we cut out the whole pane in one piece, prop it inside, go in, do what we’re gonna do, and on the way out we epoxy the glass back in place. ”

The kid said, “The line will show, where it was cut.”

Kelp said, “What do we care?”

“Oh, yeah,” the kid said. “Right.”

Tiny said, “I’m not gonna get through that window.”

“That’s okay, Tiny,” Stan said. “I’ll take pictures up there with my cell, you won’t miss a thing.”

Dortmunder said, “Glue tomorrow night, glass cutter Sunday night, and then on Monday morning we tell Doug we don’t want reality after all.”

“As we don’t,” Tiny said.