Get Real

6

DOUG FAIRKEEP’S IMMEDIATE BOSS at Get Real was a barrel-bodied bald sixty-year-old named Babe Tuck, who had come over from the news side after thirty years as a foreign correspondent. In the company bio online, a hair-raising read, were listed the times he’d been gassed, kidnapped, shot, abandoned in mid-ocean, set fire to, poisoned, dropped from a helicopter, and tied to the railroad tracks. “I’ve had enough of the real world,” he’d announced, when making the transfer to Get Real. “Time to retire to reality.”

Everybody was a little afraid of Babe Tuck, partly because of his history and reputation, but also because his mind was seriously twisted. He not only came up with the most outrageous ideas for reality series, he then went on to make them work. The One-Legged Race, for instance. All those wheelchairs, all those colostomy bags, all that bitching and complaint. Apparently, the fewer the limbs you had, the bigger the ego, to compensate.

So Doug had been pretty sure Babe wouldn’t immediately reject the idea of filming professional criminals performing a professional crime. All it needed was for Babe to see how the idea could be made practical. Therefore, all he said was, “We’ll have to run this by legal,” when Doug finished describing the layout of the show.

Doug smiled. “We’ll have to run this by legal,” was obviously a way to say, “Yes, if…” That was fine. The if would work itself out; all Doug had needed was the yes.

“I’ll talk to them over there,” he offered, “or you can. Whatever you want.”

Making a note on the legal pad on his desk, Babe said, “I’ll make an appointment. Now we come to the question, violence.”

Doug sat back in the leather visitor’s chair, Babe’s office being grander than his own, which was only right, but not garishly so, which was gratifying. “The cabbie,” he said, “Mrs. Murch, told me her son and the other guys didn’t like violence, avoided it whenever they could.”

Babe nodded, frowning at the note he’d just made. “Does this make them a little too Milquetoasty?”

“When I didn’t want to turn over the recorder,” Doug said, “Stan offered to throw me under a bus. A moving bus.”

Surprised, Babe said, “That’s a little violent.”

“I didn’t take it literally,” Doug assured him. “I took it to be Stan telling me he would do what it took, so he was showing me the extreme case. Naturally, I gave him the recorder before we got anywhere near there.”

“So there’s a threat of violence,” Babe said, “without the actual violence. That’s good, I like that.”

“These guys,” Doug said, “have a certain grungy kind of authenticity about them that’ll play very well on the small screen.”

Nodding, looking at his notepad, sucking a bit on his lower lip, Babe said, “What are they gonna steal?”

“That’s up to them,” Doug said. “We didn’t get that far.”

“No widow’s mites,” Babe cautioned. “No crippled newsie’s crutches.”

“Oh, nothing like that,” Doug said. “Our demographic would like to see some snooty rich people get cleaned out.”

“Clean out the Saudi Arabian embassy,” Babe suggested.

Laughing, Doug said, “I’ll pass that idea on.”

“But not yet,” Babe said. “Let’s clear it with legal first, make sure we know what we’re doing and we can actually do it. Not too much contact right at first.”

“I won’t move,” Doug promised, “until I get your say-so.”

“Good thinking,” Babe said. “I’ll get back to you.”

Doug smiled all the way from Babe’s office to his own, where Lueen looked up from her suspiciously clean desk (what did she actually do around here?) to say, “Somebody named John called for you.”

Ah, John: the gloomy one. Following on Babe’s desire for no premature contact, Doug said, “It’s late in the day, Lueen, I’ll get back to him tomorrow.”

Pushing a pink While You Were Out slip across her desk toward him, she said, “He especially said he wanted to talk to you today. ‘No surprises,’ he said.”

Doug frowned. “No surprises? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Beats me. There’s the number anyway.”

Doug picked up the slip, looked at it, and saw immediately Lueen had made a mistake. “No, it isn’t,” he said.

She gave him a skeptical eyebrow. “What do you mean it isn’t?”

Holding the pink slip in his left palm, he tapped the phone number with his right index finger. “Lueen,” he said, “this is my phone number.”

She seemed pleasantly surprised. “Well, how’d he do that?”

Doug felt the earth shift slightly; an unpleasant sensation. Pushing the phone slip back toward Lueen he said, “You dial it. And I would very much prefer it if you got my answering machine.”

“No skin off my nose,” she said, made the call, and said, “John?”

Doug moaned minimally, and Lueen said, “Sure, Doug is right here. Hold on.”

“I’ll—I’ll take it at my desk,” Doug said, and fled to his office, where he picked up the phone with both hands, as though it just might make some kind of fast move on him. Into it he said, “Hello?”

“Doug?” John’s voice.

“What are you doing in my apartment?”

“It’s a nice place, Doug, you got good taste. Only that woman Renee moved out, I guess.”

“A year ago,” Doug said, and then thought, I can’t have a calm conversation with the man, he’s in my apartment. “What are you doing there?”

“Waiting for you. Quiet place for a meet. Only could you bring a six-pack? We like Heinekens.”

“Heinekens,” Doug echoed, and hung up the receiver.

What pier had he walked off here?