Get Real (15 page)

Slowly, Kelp was roused from his studies, and called down, “I’ll be right there!” Then, to Dortmunder, he said, “I didn’t
yell in your face, I yelled in your ear.”

“Very similar.”

Kelp nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Accepted,” Dortmunder said.

“I was upset,” Kelp explained.

“I am remaining calm,” Dortmunder said. “You wanted to go down the ladder?”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do here,” Kelp said. “We are not gonna get through that door.”

“Not tonight, anyway,” Dortmunder said, and Kelp didn’t say anything.

So they went down the ladder, Kelp first, to find the others at their ease in the hansom cab. Tiny pretty thoroughly occupied
the rear-facing front seat, with Stan and the kid opposite. The seats were well-cushioned, to accommodate the needs and expectations
of tourists.

Kelp clambered up to the driver’s perch, above and behind the others, not quite so padded, but not bad. Dortmunder stood there,
and then the kid said to him, “Grab something and sit.”

“Sure.”

Dortmunder looked around. A motorcycle with a sidecar stood alertly nearby. He rolled it over next to the hansom cab, settled
himself into the surprisingly comfortable sidecar, and said, “It looks as though Kelp doesn’t know how to get past that door.”
He might be remaining calm, but that didn’t mean he’d forgiven or forgotten.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Kelp said, too absorbed with the problem to take offense. “The only thing I can figure, they’ve
gone wireless. And why wouldn’t they? They’ve got TV and the Internet and all that, so why not go wireless?”

The kid said, “Andy? What do we do about it?”

“Nothing,” Kelp said. “If it’s wireless, we’re screwed.”

“Well, that isn’t the only possibility,” Dortmunder said. “We haven’t tried out back yet.”

“I don’t know,” Kelp said. “It’s lookin tight.”

“If this thing isn’t gonna happen,” Tiny said, “it’s time for us to start packing tents.”

“It’s going to happen,” the kid said, suddenly energized. Clambering over the other passengers, he climbed out of the hansom
cab and said, “Bring the ladder out back, I’ll climb up it and see what the windows do.”

“They won’t open,” Tiny told him.

But the kid refused to be daunted. “Come on,” he insisted. “Let’s go see what’s what.”

“If we’re gonna keep on with this,” Tiny said, rising from the hansom’s front seat, causing a smallish tremor that rattled
Stan around on the backseat like a lone die in a padded cup, “I’ll carry your ladder, kid.”

“Thank you, Tiny.”

First Tiny retracted the ladder, getting more help than he needed along the way, and then he held it up horizontally over
his head and set out across the valley of vehicles. If the world wore a propeller beanie, this is what it would look like.

They all made their way diagonally across the interior of the building, to the rear door Kelp had earlier tamed. He opened
it again now, and everybody got out of the way as Tiny carried the ladder outside. He extended it, all by himself, then leaned
it against the wall next to the leftmost second-floor window, which was smaller than the other windows at that level, and
said, “Okay, kid, do your thing.”

“Right.”

The kid scrambled up the ladder, took his flashlight out of his jacket pocket, and shone it in through the window. “It’s a
bathroom,” he reported.

Stan said, “We already figured that. All the johns are in the back corner there.”

“This is a very nice one,” the kid said. “Big walk-in shower, a painting of some castle on the wall, and one of those things
girls use.”

The others all looked at one another, baffled. Stan hazarded, “A hair dryer?”

“No, no,” the kid said, rattling the ladder a little. “One of those things that’s like a toilet but isn’t.”

“Oh,” Kelp said, “a bidet,” pronouncing the T.

Dortmunder said, “Is that how you say that?”

“How would I know?” Kelp asked. “I never had to ask for one.”

Tiny said, “Kid, come down, move the ladder, see what else is up there.”

“Right.”

The kid came down, over, and up, and shone his light in the next window. “It’s a kitchen,” he said.

Dortmunder, unbelieving, said, “A
kitchen
?”

“A really nice one,” the kid said. “Big refrigerator, microwave, all kinds of stuff.”

Dortmunder said, “In Combined Tool? This is getting weirder.”

The kid said, “It’s big, too. It looks like it goes almost all the way across the back.”

Tiny said, “Go to the last window, see what’s in there.”

So the kid did, and said, “It’s a pantry. Big one, lots of nice shelves, but not much in there. Some pots and pans, some dishes.
No food.”

“Let me see this,” Kelp said, and suddenly hurried up the ladder.

The kid, feeling the tremors in the ladder and looking down to see the top of Kelp’s head getting nearer, said, “Hey. You
think this is a good idea?”

“Yes,” Kelp said. “Lean to the left.” And he muscled upward to the kid’s right, while the kid held on with all of his fingers
and many of his toes.

“I think I’ll hold the ladder now,” Tiny said, and did so.

With the two of them side by side on the same rung up there, Kelp peered intently in at the sides and bottom of the window,
pushing the kid’s head out of the way and saying, “Shine the light over there. No, on the jamb. Okay, and down. Okay.” And
back down the ladder he zipped, followed a bit shakily by the kid.

Dortmunder said, “So whadaya think?”

“I think we aren’t gonna know what’s in there until we go in there,” Kelp said. “So we don’t know if it’s worthwhile until
we do it.”

“And then,” Stan said, “it could turn out not to be cash at all, but some big boss’s love nest.”

“That would irritate me,” Tiny said.

Dortmunder said, “With the palm-print locks? I don’t think so. Andy, do you see any way to get in there through a window?”

“One way,” Kelp said, “and one way only. But it’s gonna use the place up, I don’t think we’ll be able to do the same thing
twice.”

Tiny said, “You mean break the window.”

“No, I don’t,” Kelp said. “You break the window, you make a vibration, and that sets off the alarm.”

Dortmunder said, “In that case, you can’t open the window either.”

“I don’t wanna open it,” Kelp said. “This is not an easy thing here. What we’re talking about is at least two more trips.”

Tiny said, “Back twice more? This is beginning to look like a career.”

“We’re in it this far,” Kelp said, and nodded toward the far end of the areaway. “In the meantime, we can leave the ladder
in the corner back there. Nobody’s gonna notice it.”

Dortmunder said, “Two more trips and still the ladder, but you don’t want to open the window and you don’t want to break it.
What
do
you want to do in these trips?”

“The first one,” Kelp said, and gestured up toward the pantry window, “we bring epoxy and seal that window to the frame. I
looked at it, and nobody ever opens it, so they’re not gonna notice.”

Tiny said, “Why are we doing that?”

“Vibrations again,” Kelp said. “Because when we come back the second time we’ve got our glass cutter and our suction cup with
the handle on it.”

Dortmunder lifted his head, with a sudden surge of that unexpected quality: optimism. “I see it!” he said.

“If we do it right,” Kelp said, “we cut out the whole pane in one piece, prop it inside, go in, do what we’re gonna do, and
on the way out we epoxy the glass back in place. ”

The kid said, “The line will show, where it was cut.”

Kelp said, “What do we care?”

“Oh, yeah,” the kid said. “Right.”

Tiny said, “I’m not gonna get through that window.”

“That’s okay, Tiny,” Stan said. “I’ll take pictures up there with my cell, you won’t miss a thing.”

Dortmunder said, “Glue tomorrow night, glass cutter Sunday night, and then on Monday morning we tell Doug we don’t want reality
after all.”

“As we don’t,” Tiny said.

D
OUG WAS WORRIED
about Stan Murch. Not worried about him, exactly, but more worried
for
him. The news that he had been peremptorily kicked out of the gang had come as a real shock. Weren’t gangs supposed to stick
together? Wasn’t it the gang against the world, and they relied on one another because there was nobody else they
could
rely on?

And what made it even worse, in some way it was Stan Murch who had put this gang together. His mother had sent Stan to Doug,
and Stan had shown up with John, and then at the next meeting Andy was there, and it really looked as though this was a tight-knit
group, people who had known and trusted one another through many nefarious experiences. Tiny and Judson had come in to complete
the crew, and it had all made sense.

But then, because he himself had added Ray Harbach to the mix, all at once they threw Stan out. No regrets, no good fellowship,
just cold calculation. It had changed the way he looked at the gang, and not for the better.

And how would Stan have taken it? Oh, John and Andy had dismissed all that, as being nothing of importance, because Stan knew
the ways of the world and there would always be another job, but did that make sense? Would Stan not be resentful even a tiny
bit?

Nonviolent, Doug thought. They’re supposed to be nonviolent, but who says so? They do. Do they
look
nonviolent?

He remembered asking them, John and Andy, when they’d told him Stan was out, asking them because he so much didn’t want anything
really bad to happen, asking them if they’d actually killed Stan—the way the mobsters on television always do a reduction
in staff—and he clearly remembered Andy’s answer:

“I can guarantee you, Doug, we stay away from violence completely unless there’s absolutely no way it can get back at us.”

And that’s a slippery sentence once you start to look at it, isn’t it?

What if they
had
killed Stan? Tiny, with those big hands of his. Killed him to keep him from betraying the gang to the police as revenge for
his ouster, or to keep him from spying on them and robbing
them
once the job was done. Didn’t honor among thieves, really, go out with Robin Hood?

Doug fretted the entire weekend about Stan, where he was, what he thought about what had happened, and by Sunday afternoon,
two days after he’d been told about Stan’s downsizing, he couldn’t stand it any more. He had to find out. No matter what the
truth was, he had to know it.

So finally, Sunday afternoon, giving up his futile attempts to read the Sunday
Times
, he took the only route he knew to get in touch with Stan, and phoned his Mom, only to get her answering machine, with her
distinct impatient voice: “If I know you, say so, and I’ll call you back.”

“Mrs. Murch,” he told the machine, “this is Doug Fairkeep. Would you please have Stan call me as soon as possible?” And he
hung up, to fret some more.

She called back at seven that evening. “He’s outa town,” she said.

“Out of town?”

“He went to California for maybe a month,” she said. “He had a couple possible job opportunities out there.”

“Do you have a contact number for him?”

“Not me,” she said. “He’ll check in, I’ll tell him you called.”

“I’d really like to hear from him.”

“You know how often people call their mother,” she said. “When he gets a minute off his busy schedule and gives me a ring,
I’ll give him your message.”

“Thank you,” Doug said.

That was his own mother.
She
wouldn’t cover up for them, would she, if they’d… done… anything? Or had she been intimidated? (Though she hadn’t sounded
particularly intimidated.)

But the more he thought about it, if they did decide to eliminate Stan because he knew too much, wouldn’t that mean Doug also
knew too much? Not a happy thought.

All in all, he had a troubled night.

H
E CALLED
my Mom this afternoon,” Stan said, as Kelp got into this nice Chevy Gazpacho that Stan had borrowed half an hour ago from
a perfectly legal parking place on West Forty-ninth Street.

Shutting his door, putting on his seat belt—because who wants to listen to all that ping-ping-ping—Kelp said, “Doug? What’d
she tell him?”

Stan put the Gazpacho in gear and continued on downtown. “What we said. I’m out of town into California a while, considering
my job prospects.”

“Good.”

Last night’s expedition to Varick Street, like this one tonight, had been only the two of them, since they didn’t need a whole
crowd to gaff one window. They’d brought a different car from a different neighborhood last night, gone through the house
like smoke, Kelp up the ladder while Stan held it, and sufficient epoxy glue was spread there to hold USS
Intrepid
in place. A gas-pipe explosion could take out the entire block, but that window would not leave that frame.

Tonight would be step two of the plan: Cut out the lower pane, carefully place the pane inside the room, case Combined Tool
to find out at last what the hell was in there, gently epoxy the pane back in place, and depart. John had wanted to come along
tonight, just because it was a kind of a matter of personal pride for him to walk around inside that forbidden city, but he’d
come to understand it wasn’t necessary; soon they’d be going in for real.

Now, Stan parked in a temporarily legal place a couple blocks from Varick Street, and he and Kelp used paper towels to wipe
down anything they might have touched in the car. When they were done here, Kelp would cab uptown and Stan would subway to
Canarsie, and eventually the city would take charge of the Gazpacho. In the meantime, Kelp carried the thick tube of epoxy
and the strong suction cup with a handle.

The walk to Varick Street and through the building was uneventful, but when they went out the back door to the areaway and
looked up the lights were on in Combined Tool. “What the hell,” Stan said.