Get Real

27

WHEN DORTMUNDER WALKED into the fake OJ at ten o’clock on Monday morning, Doug was there with Ray Harbach and Darlene Looper and Marcy and the flamboyant director, Roy Ombelen, plus a stocky fiftyish man in a bartender’s white apron and white shirt—though rather too white, in fact—who looked as though he might be Rollo’s mild-mannered cousin from San Francisco. More tofu than meat.

“Good morning, John,” Doug said. He had the harried look of a man having to remind himself to look cheerful. “Where’s the others?”

“They’ll be along,” Dortmunder said. He himself was feeling grumpy, since he’d thought everything would be done by now. They would set things up for the break-in, that was the plan, then disappear from Doug’s Global Positioning System, wait a week, and clean out Combined Tool and Knickerbocker Storage. Let Doug and his pals believe anything they wanted to believe, they wouldn’t be able to prove a thing. If they went so far as to look at a lot of old mug shots they might eventually identify one or more of their former reality-stars-to-be, but they still wouldn’t be able to prove anything, and Dortmunder and associates would all have rock-solid alibis for the night in question.

But it wasn’t to be. All at once, Combined Tool had turned into a pied-à-terre for a guy reading a Zeitung. They obviously couldn’t do their pre-heist survey with him there, and there seemed to be no way to find out who he was, or how long he intended to stay, or what he had to do with Combined Tool.

So there was nothing for it but to stick around a little longer, because none of them, not even Tiny, wanted to just walk away with no profit and no answers. Which was why he was here again, saying to Doug, “You wanted to start something today?”

“Roy’s going to tell you about it,” Doug said, “but it ought to wait till the rest arrive.”

“Fine,” Dortmunder said, and went into the non-OJ to sit at a booth on the right, which was, in fact, a little more comfortable than the ones in the original. Looking around he saw three cameras, hulking black things on big elaborate swivel-chair-type wheel arrangements, each camera attached by a black wire to the earphones of a cameraperson slouched negligently in a chair, reading a tabloid, while Doug and the others murmured together a little ways off.

He had barely made himself comfortable in this booth when that loud doorbell sounded, signaling the arrival of the rest, brought here in Tiny’s current limo. Doug hurried off to let them in.

Dortmunder had come here separately because he’d wanted a little solitary time to think over this unpleasant new development and had therefore decided to walk down from Nineteenth Street, hoping to find a solution to their problems along the way. Some hope.

Soon Kelp and Tiny and the kid appeared, and when they came over from the elevator they all started in about how terrific this imitation OJ was, and Dortmunder suddenly remembered, That’s right! I’m supposed to be seeing this thing for the first time. Instead of which, he’d just moped in and said something grumpy and sat down.

Well, fortunately, Doug and the others hadn’t noticed that slip, and now everybody else was making up for it; maybe overdoing it just a bit, but not bad.

Should he join them, suddenly overcome by this OJ clone? No; better just leave it alone.

Once everybody calmed down, Roy Ombelen assembled them at the tables in the non-OJ while he described what was going on. (Today his shirt was fuchsia, ascot teal, corduroy trousers café au lait, shin-high boots apricot.) “I realize,” he told them, “the security concerns you fellows are constricted by go a bit beyond the, shall we say, run of the mill? It is our firm intention not to recognizably film your faces, because such film we wouldn’t be able to use anyway.”

“You got that right,” Tiny told him.

“Well, that’s my job,” Ombelen said. “But in this particular instance, it’s your job as well. We will photograph you from above, from below, from behind. We will photograph your ears, your hands, your elbows. But we need your help to do this right, so here’s the one rule you must remember. If you can see the camera lens, the camera can see your face. Tell us at once if the camera has moved into the forbidden zone, and we’ll reshoot.”

“That sounds good,” Kelp said.

“It’s the only way,” Ombelen assured him, “we can make this peculiar situation work. Now, your opening scene, you will all be at the bar, and Ray Harbach will join you with some news. Our production assistant, Marcy, will describe the scene to you.”

Marcy, showing evidence of stage fright, took a position in front of them and said, “First, I want to introduce you to your bartender.” Gesturing at the obvious bartender to come forward, she said, “This is Tom LaBrava, he’s a professional actor.”

“Hi, guys,” LaBrava said. He showed no stage fright at all.

Marcy said, “Tom isn’t going to be part of the actual robbery plot, in fact he isn’t going to hear anything about it at all, so his face will be seen.”

“Better for the résumé,” LaBrava said, and grinned around at them.

Kelp said, “So he’s Tom? ‘Hi, Tom,’ like that?”

Doug stepped forward again, saying, “No, we decided we had to make it clear his part was fictional, so he has a character name.” Chuckling a bit hollowly at them, he said, “We felt you wouldn’t like it if we called him Rollo—”

“That’s right,” several people said.

“—So we’ve decided to go with Rodney. If that’s okay with you guys.”

Kelp said, “Rodney?” He sounded uncertain. Turning to LaBrava, he smiled in an amiable way and said, “Hi, Rodney.” He then made a thoughtful face, like somebody tasting a new recipe, mulled, and finally said, “Sure. Why not?”

“Hi, Rodney,” Tiny growled.

“How you doin, Rodney?” Dortmunder asked.

“Just fine,” LaBrava said. “I kinda like Rodney. It’s a name I can work a character into.”

“It’s you, Rodney,” the kid said.

“Okay, that’s fine, then,” Doug said. “Marcy?”

Marcy came back into her place, looking slightly less self-conscious. “What’s going to happen,” she said, “you’re all going to be at the bar, and Ray will come in and say he’s got something really interesting to tell you all. You want to know what it is, and he says it isn’t really something for public consumption, and you—John, I think—say to Rodney, ‘Okay if we use the back room?’ and he says, ‘Fine.’ And then you all head off that way for the back room. Let’s try it once or twice without the cameras.”

Then Roy Ombelen took over, to place them here and there at the bar, angling them in ways that felt a little weird but were apparently going to look okay in the film. Once he had them where he wanted them, he said to Harbach, “Now, when you come in the bar you come over to about here, where you can see everybody, and you tell them you’ve got this interesting information.”

“Okay, great.”

“Places, please,” Ombelen said. “Rodney, a little farther away along the bar, if you would. That’s fine. Ray, a little farther back. I want you completely off the set, and then you come in. That’s it, that’s perfect. All right, everybody. Action.”

And, on that word, the loud elevator machinery jolted into its racket, and the elevator began to sink, as everybody turned to stare and watch it go.

Obviously, nobody was going to rehearse anything with that going on. Doug moved a little closer to the elevator, shaking his head in irritation, and as the sound receded he turned to tell them, “There isn’t supposed to be anybody else coming here now. We left strict instructions, everybody stay away from Varick Street, we’re putting together a new show here.”

The elevator snarl, having receded, now advanced again, and soon it appeared, with Babe Tuck standing on it, arms akimbo, expression deeply annoyed. As Doug and Ombelen both approached him, both trying to say something to him, he marched straight across from the elevator to the set, glowered at everybody, and said, “This show is canceled. Shut it down.”