Get Real

30

DOUG WAS ASTONISHED when he turned around to see Babe walking toward the set with Herr Muller at his side, and for just a second he thought, Did he send all the way to Munich for Herr Muller, and how did he get here so fast? Then he realized Herr Muller must have already been here in the States, maybe even staying in Combined Tool, and the coincidence just seemed like a good omen. Well, Herr Muller owed him a good omen, didn’t he?

Doug wasn’t originally supposed to know anything about the double life of Herr Muller, and still wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been for a strange event that had happened almost three years ago during The Stand’s first season and just after Babe came over to reality from news. Until then, Doug had only known Richard Muller the way most people did, as a well-thought-of serious documentary filmmaker on subjects like South African gold mining or contemporary Arab slave trade that the American commercial television market hadn’t much use for but that the Europeans ate like candy. He had known that Herr Muller had a production deal with Trans-Global Universal Industries (TUI), one of the highest business levels above Get Real, and that on his occasional trips to the United States he might use Get Real’s facilities for interviews or editing, and in the normal course of events that’s all he would have known.

The day it happened, Herr Muller was in a morning meeting with Babe and, just by coincidence, he and Doug took the same elevator down, Doug on his way to lunch, Herr Muller apparently on his way to a plane, given the large garment bag he carried over one shoulder and the wheeled suitcase he towed behind. Doug knew the man well enough to nod and smile, and Herr Muller did likewise.

When they reached the lobby, all hell had broken loose. The space from the elevators to the revolving doors onto Third Avenue was full of milling querulous people, demanding explanations, being ignored. The doors were blocked by uniformed city police, frisking everybody before letting them leave the building, checking into all handbags and other parcels: a very slow process. Two more policemen by the elevators kept announcing that no one was to go back upstairs. Everybody had taken the elevator down, and everybody would now leave the building. Slowly.

The cops guarding the elevators would not answer any questions, and in fact would say nothing but that nobody was permitted to make a U-turn. It was a bit like rush hour in Hell.

“Well, this is a mess,” Doug said, and looked at Herr Muller to see the man as pale as a white wine spritzer. He really did look as though he might faint. Doug said, “What is it?”

“I cannot be searched,” Herr Muller said. He did not have a marked accent, but the kind of overcareful pronunciation that marked the foreign-born.

Doug was aghast, but in the film business this sort of thing is never entirely impossible. Leaning closer to the ashen man, pitching his voice under the clatter of the crowd, he said, “Drugs?”

“No no!” Herr Muller almost gained strength from the accusation, but then his terror struck him again, and he clutched at Doug’s arm, saying, low but shrill, “It is money. Cash money. Company cash money.”

“Money?”

“A half a million US dollars. I cannot explain such money to the police.” Herr Muller’s hand on Doug’s arm fluttered like an imprisoned butterfly.

Speaking hurriedly, Doug said, “Don’t call attention to us. Get on line, one of the lines here.”

Herr Muller obeyed, but also whimpered, “I cannot be searched.”

Doug said, “But you were gonna take a plane. How can you take that stuff on a plane?”

“We have a relationship with the airline. I am known as a filmmaker. I am never searched.” Looking out ahead at the unfortunately meticulous cops he said, with woebegone fatalism, “I am ruined, you know.”

“Hold on,” Doug said. “Just wait.” And, pulling out his cell phone, he speed-dialed Babe, got through his secretary, and said, “Babe, we got a mess in the lobby.”

“A mess? What kind of mess?”

“Something’s happened, the cops are searching everybody before they let them out of the building.”

“Is Richard Muller there?”

“He’s with me,” Doug said. “He told me about the—I think he’s gonna faint.”

“I am usually stronger than this,” Herr Muller said, but he kept a tight grip on Doug’s arm.

“I’ll be right down,” Babe decided.

Doug said, “No. Don’t do that. The cops aren’t letting anybody back into the elevators. If you come down, they won’t let you back up. Does the company have any influence with the New York police?”

“With street-level cops? Of course not. Doug, they can’t find all that, it’ll get back to the company, it’ll make all kinds of trouble.”

“Well, Herr Muller wouldn’t last long in interrogation, I can tell you that,” Doug said, and beside him, attached to his arm, Herr Muller moaned.

“Doug, it’s up to you,” Babe said. “You’re the only one there, the only one can do anything.”

“Do what?”

“Doug, you’re a producer. Produce something. You’ve thought your way out of bigger jams than this.”

“I have?”

“What if he does faint?”

“Babe, they’d search him before they put him in the ambulance. I don’t—” And then he did. With a sudden sunny smile at the frozen Herr Muller he said, “Oh, yes, I do.”

“You do?”

“I’ll call you later, Babe,” Doug said, broke the connection, and said, “Herr Muller, you work for me.”

Herr Muller looked at him with the tremulous beginnings of hope. “I do?”

“Yes, you do.” Doug found and handed over one of his business cards. “That’s me. I’m doing a reality show now called The Stand, and you work for me, and we’re heading upstate to where they’re shooting the show.”

Herr Muller turned Doug’s card over and over, as though it might contain some important clue to something. “How can this help us?”

“Just let me do the talking,” Doug said. “You’re my assistant, you work for me. Better put that card away.”

It took nearly a quarter hour to get to the revolving doors of the exit, and when they did get there at last Doug pointed at the wheelie bag and said to the cop there, “I don’t want you to get too excited, but we got half a million in play money in there.”

The cop frowned at him. Cops don’t like to have their leg pulled. “Oh, yeah?”

Doug handed over another of his business cards. “I’m with Get Real, a reality show producer, our offices are upstairs here.”

The cop held the card, but eyeballed Doug. “Oh, yeah?”

“We’ve got a show, The Stand, we’re gonna do a gag with play money.”

The next cop over to Doug’s right looked up from his study of a lady’s handbag. “Did you say The Stand?”

“That’s right,” Doug said. “You’ve seen it?”

“A couple times,” this second cop said. “It’s pretty good. It’s about these people upstate, right? They’re selling vegetables.”

“The Finches.”

“That’s right,” the cop said. “Finch. That’s a funny name, Finch.”

“Well, they’re a funny bunch,” Doug said.

The first cop, tone a little softened, said, “So you’ve got fake money in there, for the show?”

Realizing they were actually going to have to do something like this on the show now or risk trouble down the line, Doug said, “Yeah. The stunt is, they’ve been collecting all this cash, make a mortgage payment, and a sudden wind comes up—”

“Oh,” said the lady with the handbag. “That’s terrible.”

“Oh, but it’s all right,” Doug assured her. “They get almost all of it back.”

The first cop said, “Let’s see this money.”

So Herr Muller lay the wheelie on the floor on its back, knelt over it, and unzipped the top. He peeled it back, and they all looked in at five hundred thousand dollars in bright crisp new hundred-dollar bills, the largest denomination now printed by the US Treasury, all of it banded into blocks. They looked damn real.

“Those,” the first cop said, “look damn real.”

“They’re supposed to,” Doug said. “We’ll do close-ups in their hands and all of that.”

The first cop looked at Doug’s clearly legitimate business card. He looked at his fellow cop, now picking through a messenger’s tote bag of documents. He shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Go on through.”

It turned out later that a big-ticket jeweler on the third floor of the building had been robbed, by two men and two women pretending to be customers. They’d tied up the staff, but one employee got loose almost immediately and phoned the building’s security, who sealed the doors and brought in the city police at double time, so the robbers should still have been inside, though they and the jewelry were never found.

The experience, however, did create a bond between Doug and Babe, who was both grateful and admiring of Doug’s quick-witted cool. The same closeness did not evolve with Herr Muller, who had felt shamed by his weakness and who since then, on his trips to New York, had subtly avoided Doug, as an unhappy reminder of the day that he had failed.

Too shaken to go on with his flight to Europe on that fateful day, Herr Muller had been grateful for an escort and had wanted to go to the company’s building on Varick Street, where, before leaving the cab, he said, “Please tell Babe Tuck I will spend one more night at Combined Tool.”

So here they were again, all of them together on Varick Street, where Babe said, “Roy, are you finished shooting for today?”

“All done,” Ombelen said. “We’ll do the back room scene tomorrow. And Babe, it’s really coming along very well.”

“Glad to hear it,” Babe said, sounding as though he didn’t give a damn. “You and the crew can take off now, I need to talk to our performers a minute.”

“Of course,” Ombelen said.

“And take the stairs down. That’s how we came up, so we wouldn’t make a racket while you were taping.”

“Very nice. Thank you.”

As the others left, Babe led Doug and Herr Muller and the four robbers to the bar set, where they took a couple of adjoining booths and Babe said, “We’ve got it worked out. Gang, this is Richard Muller, he’s got a production company in Munich, he’s gonna hire you for a reality show they’ve got over there. You’ll shoot the show right here, but the company’s over there.”

Andy, the quick one, said, “So this means no Social Security numbers?”

“That’s right,” Babe told him. “And you can call yourself anything you damn please, just so you remember to use the same name every time.”

“And signature,” Herr Muller said.

“That’s right,” Babe said. “Herr Muller has employment forms for you, you put in whatever fairy tales you like, but then it’s got to be your own handwriting for the signature. Muller’s going back to Munich tomorrow, he’ll file the papers, start the production company, and you’re all set. He’ll pay you in cash. US cash.”

Herr Muller said, “Please,” and held a hand up. When he had everybody’s attention, he said, “Do not become arrested while you are in my employ.”

John, the gloomy one, nodded at Herr Muller. “We’ll do our best,” he said.