Get Real

“And then you hiccupped,” Andy said.

Doug looked at him. “I did?”

“We both noticed it,” Andy said. “All of a sudden, you remembered where you’d seen cash, and you tried to cover up for it.”

“So it looked to us,” John said, “that Combined Tool, down on Varick Street, was the most likely place you saw cash. Because it was the most high-tech door locks in America. So that’s why we said Knickerbocker Storage, so we could knock over Combined Tool while you’re taking pictures of Knickerbocker Storage.”

“Oh, my God,” Doug said. “And that’s why you had to pretend Stan wasn’t involved any more, because we knew his last name and how to find him.”

“But then it turned out,” John said, “we were right but we were wrong. Cash going to Europe, like we thought, but not kept on Varick Street, just in the suitcase of the German guy staying overnight, every once in a while. We can’t use that, cash comes in, goes right out, we never know the schedule. We need cash there, right there, all the time. So that’s why—”

John stopped and frowned at Doug, who suddenly felt guilty or self-conscious or something. “What?” he said. “What?”

John looked at Doug but spoke to Andy. “Did you see that?”

“I sure did,” Andy said.

“Even I saw that,” Tiny said.

Gri

“Good news? What do you mean?” But already, Doug understood. Somehow, he’d given himself away. The same as last time, they’d read him, quietly but intensely. Oh, what did they know now?

Andy said to John, “You think it’s in the midtown offices? That’s another set of problems.”

“Well,” John said, “probly what we’d do, we’d dismantle an elevator, maybe with two-three people inside it, then use the stairs and blow the office door out while security’s going nuts over their elevator. Choose a doctor’s office on a lower floor, spend the night there, go out in the morning with the incoming perso

Andy said, “Depending where this cash is.”

“Well, yeah.”

Andy gave Doug his brightest most cheerful look. “Where is it, Doug?”

“Please,” Doug said. “Don’t do this. You’re asking me to commit a crime.”

Andy said, “You’re asking us to commit a crime. And you’re go

“But I…” Doug said, and ran down.

He didn’t know what to do. Nobody had lured him into this. He’d lured himself into it. But how could he get out of this mess without losing The Heist? And how could he save The Heist without putting himself into terrible trouble? He reached for his glass, and to his shock it was empty. A few tiny ice cubes, a curl of lemon peel.

What to do? He didn’t dare leave this room to get another drink. But how to go on without one?

John said, “That empty? Have some of ours. We got plenty.” And he pointed at the “bourbon” bottle.

Doug shook his head. “No, John, I couldn’t—”

“There’s ice cubes in the bowl,” Andy offered. “Calms the taste. Just put the lemon on that tray there.”

“Go ahead,” said John.

So Doug dumped out his lemon peel, dropped in a few ice cubes, and poured out a few fingers of the brown liquid.

Meanwhile, returning to the business at hand, John said, “If there’s cash up in the midtown offices, and if it’s there all the time, or even most of the time, then maybe we could work something out to get our hands on it, and you can still make your show.”

To stall, Doug sipped from his glass, and immediately his face puckered up like a pine tree knot. He blinked away sudden moisture in his eyes and said, “You guys drink this all the time?”

“Only on occasions,” John said.

“Well, my respect for you has just increased,” Doug said.

“Thank you, Doug.”

Andy said, “Where in the office is it, Doug?”

Doug sighed. No escape. “Not in the office,” he said.

John said, “Someplace else? We figured, either midtown or Varick Street.”

“No, you were right,” Doug said. He was suddenly very tired, as though he’d been undergoing severe interrogation for a week. He swallowed a bit more of the brown liquid and sighed.

John said, “You mean, it is on Varick Street? But Muller just brings it overnight and takes it away.”

“No,” Doug said. “This is other cash. I’ve never met these people, I understand they’re very dangerous. Even Babe keeps out of their way. They’re from somewhere in Asia, Malaysia or Macao or somewhere like that.”

“Tell us about it, Doug,” Andy suggested.

“Asia’s the new opening-up market,” Doug told them. “It’s very Wild West out there, all the big companies have local teams to take care of local problems. You know, even in Russia you gotta hire a Russian that’s go

“This is what we were figuring,” John said.

“Well, that’s what it is. We have to keep cash available because you never know when there’s go

“No, we wouldn’t, Doug,” Andy said. “You’d be going too far to tell us something like that.”

“Besides,” the kid said, “we oughta do some of our own work. Right, guys?”

Solemnly, the guys all nodded their agreement.

Doug tried to keep his eye on the prize and ignore the crocodiles around his ankles. “Does this mean,” he said, “you’ll come back to the show?”

“But just to film Knickerbocker Storage,” Andy said. “None of this other stuff.”

“Oh, I know. I wouldn’t want to…” And he let the sentence trail away, afraid to find out what he wouldn’t want to cause to occur.

“We could even make it tomorrow morning at ten,” Andy said.

“Oh, I think two,” Doug said. “After lunch. I’ll need to get everything set up.”

His glass seemed to be empty again, somehow. Rising, he said, “Whatever happens, I’m glad we’ll be going on with it.”

They a

Confused, Doug turned around. “Yes?”

“That is you, right?” the kid said. “Doug Fairkeep?”

“You know that,” Doug said. “What’s the point?”

The kid held up his cell phone. “If it should happen, someday,” he said, “that a cop, or a boss of yours, listens to this conversation, we’d want him to be sure he knew who he was listening to.”

Andy said, “You see, Doug, you coming here to the OJ like this, and seeing Stan here, we understood we had to get to a place where you weren’t a threat to us any more than we were a threat to you.”

“I see,” Doug said. “Don’t lose that phone, kid.”

“I won’t,” the kid promised.

In the cab going downtown, Doug believed he now understood the sensations felt by a person slowly sinking into the grasp of an octopus. Play dead, he told himself.

But how?