Get Real

7

AT FIRST, Dortmunder couldn’t figure out why he was suddenly hearing a jangly version of “The Whiffen-poof Song” on chimes. He looked across Fairkeep’s neat if anonymous living room at Andy, seated at his ease on the other tan leather armchair across the kilim carpet, and as the final bah ricocheted around the gray-green walls, leaving only a metallic echo of itself, Andy said, “Doorbell.”

Dortmunder said, “He’s ringing his own bell?”

“Well,” Andy said, being an understanding sort of guy, “he’s not used to the situation. You oughta be the one that lets him in, he knows you.”

Andy’s decision to attend this meeting after all had been the result of that Google search done on the computer in Andy’s apartment, which had not only given them Fair-keep’s address, and Ivy League college record (low Bs), and marital status (un), and DVD rental preferences (date movies, mostly), but had also, once Andy switched to a different question, described the entire corporate Christmas tree of which Get Real Productions was a shiny but small bauble on a lower branch. Armed with this knowledge, and being in possession of Fairkeep’s residence, Dortmunder rose, crossed to open the apartment door, and said, “You made good time.” (He felt it would be better to begin with a pleasantry.)

Eyes wide, straining to scan every bit of the room at once, Fairkeep said, “I took a cab.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, to reassure him, “ourselves, we didn’t take anything.”

Fairkeep’s stare froze on Andy. “Who’s this?”

“This is Andy,” Dortmunder said, closing the door. (Fairkeep flinched, then tried to cover it.)

“How ya doing?” Andy said.

“Andy,” Dortmunder explained, “will be another one on the payroll if it comes to that.”

Seeing nothing amiss, and nothing missing, Fairkeep grew a lot calmer, saying, “Well, if it comes to that, we’re gonna need something more than first names.”

“When we’re just batting it around,” Andy said, “first names are friendlier. Yours is Doug, right?”

Before Fairkeep could answer that, Dortmunder gestured generally at the room and said, “Which chair is yours, usually?”

“What?” Fairkeep gaped around, apparently baffled by the question, then pointed at the chair where late Andy had sat. “That one.”

“Fine,” Dortmunder said, “I’ll take that one over there.”

“And I’ll,” Andy said, “be very happy on this sofa here.” And sat down with a big smile.

Seeing both his guests seated on his furniture, Fairkeep belatedly and abruptly also sat, rocking the armchair a bit. “You wanted to talk to me.”

“We had some more questions,” Dortmunder told him. Having plotted the whole thing out in his mind, he started with question number one: “What is it you want us to steal?”

Surprised, Fairkeep said, “I don’t know. What do you usually steal?”

“Things that turn up,” Andy said. “But you don’t have any particular valuables in mind.”

“No. We don’t supply the story line, you do. We film you doing what you do—”

“And then you shape it,” Dortmunder said, “and make it entertainment.”

“That’s right,” Fairkeep said. “Even if the setup’s kind of artificial sometimes, you—Let me give you an example.”

“Good,” Dortmunder said.

“Let’s say we rent a house, and we furnish it,” Fairkeep said, “and we put spycams all through the house, and we get a bunch of college kids, boys and girls, and we pay them to live in the house. But the gimmick could be, they have to spend the whole summer vacation there, they can’t ever step outside the house. Anybody leaves the house, they’re out of the game. We ship in food, and they can watch TV, and like that. And they don’t know each other before they start. And we can make up any rules we want to make up, make it different from any other show like that.”

Dortmunder said, “And you get people to do this? All summer?”

“We’ve got waiting lists,” Fairkeep said.

Dortmunder nodded. “And people watch this.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I am surprised.”

“The point being,” Fairkeep said, “in a situation like that, what’s gonna happen? Who falls in love, has a fight, can’t hack it. We do the setup, but then they just do themselves. Same with you.”

Andy said, “Only, where’s our setup?”

“Well, with you,” Fairkeep told him, “you’re the setup. Like we’re shooting one now, The Stand, it’s a farm family upstate, they’re running a vegetable stand out by the road, they’re a quirky family, kind of kooky, but they’ve got to make this stand work, they really need the money. Maybe you’ve seen it. The Stand.”

“Never,” Andy said.

“Oh, well,” Fairkeep said, “they did that stand thing anyway, long before we came along, but now we shape it—”

“—And make it entertaining.”

Fairkeep’s nod at Dortmunder was a little uncertain. “That’s right,” he said. “So whatever you want to do, that’s what you do, and we’ll film it.”

Andy said, “Well, we were thinking, if it was gonna be like that, maybe it would be good, you know, what you call your tie-in—”

“Product placement,” Dortmunder suggested.

“That, too,” Andy agreed. “What we were thinking, Doug, if we lifted something that was connected to your own company some way, it might give us an inside track on things.”

“A mole, like,” Dortmunder said.

“And the other thing,” Andy went on, “if the cops suddenly showed up to bust us, we could all just laugh and say it was all in fun, we were never gonna lift anything anyway.”

“An insurance policy,” Dortmunder said.

Fairkeep looked doubtful. “Take something from Get Real? There isn’t anything at Get Real. We want you to aim a little higher than office supplies.”

“We weren’t,” Andy said, “thinking of Get Real.”

“Oh, you mean Monopole,” Fairkeep said, sounding surprised that Andy would know about that. “Our big bosses?”

“Well, not your big bosses,” Andy told him, taking a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. Opening it, consulting it, he said, “What we got from Google is, Get Real is a subsidiary of Monopole Broadcasting, doing commercial TV and cable and Internet broadcasting and production and export. Sounds pretty good.”

“Yes,” Fairkeep said. “But Monopole isn’t—”

“Now, Monopole,” Andy said, frowning at his list, “is sixty percent owned by Intimate Communications, and that’s owned eighty percent by Trans-Global Universal Industries, and that’s owned seventy percent by something called SomniTech.”

“My God,” Fairkeep said, sounding faint. “I never worked it out like that.”

“Now, all of these are East Coast companies,” Andy said. “Among them, they’re in oil, communications, munitions, real estate, aircraft engines, and chemistry labs.”

Fairkeep shook his head. “Makes you feel small, doesn’t it?”

Dortmunder said, “Doug, somebody in that mob has to have some cash.”

Fairkeep blinked at him. “Cash?”

“Doug,” Andy said, “we can’t resell an aircraft engine.”

“But there is no cash,” Fairkeep told him. “Per diem for the crew on the road, that’s all.”

“Think about it, Doug,” Dortmunder urged. “Somewhere in all those companies, all those businesses, and a lot of them are overseas, somewhere in all that there’s got to be someplace with cash.”

Shaking his head in absolute assurance, Fairkeep said, “No, there isn’t. I have never seen cash in—” And then he kind of stuttered, as though he’d just had one of those mini-power outages that makes you reset all your clocks. In a second, less than a second, power was restored, but Fairkeep continued the sentence in a different place. “—Anywhere. It just isn’t done. Even Europe, Asia, all those transactions are wire transfers.”

Dortmunder had seen that little blip, and he was sure Andy had, too. He said, “Well, Doug, will you at least think about it?”

“Oh, sure,” Fairkeep said.

“Good.” Getting to his feet, because the explanation for the power outage would not be found in this room, not today, Dortmunder said, “We’ll be in touch.”

Surprised, Fairkeep said, “Is that it?”

“For today. We’ll get back in touch when we fill out the roster.”

“Oh, the five men, you mean,” Fairkeep said. “But you don’t even know what the robbery is yet, so you don’t know if you’ll need all five.”

Rising from the sofa, Andy said, “Here’s a rule for you, Doug. Never go in with fewer crew than you need.”