Donald Westlake - Get Real

The others had gone on up to the third floor so, abandoning the door, Dortmunder trudged on up after them. At the top, he found them all lolling around at their ease in what looked like a dayroom combined with an office. A few sofas and soft chairs and small tables were scattered around this part of the building from front to back, with filing cabinets and stacks of cardboard mover’s cartons along the inside wall. Somebody had even switched on a floor lamp by one of the sofas, making a warm soft cozy glow.

“John,” Kelp said, from the depths of a green vinyl easy chair, “take a load off.”

“I will.” Dortmunder did, and said, “It’s that door, that’s what we want.”

Tiny said, “Not without demolition.”

“Tiny’s right,” Kelp said. “We can’t get into it, John. Not tonight. Not without doing some damage. And right now, we don’t want to do damage.”

“We want to know what’s in there,” Dortmunder said. “We need to know, what’s the setup.”

“Won’t happen,” Tiny said.

Dortmunder took from his pocket the drugstore receipt on which he’d written the firm names in this building. “What we got on this floor,” he said, “is Knickerbocker Storage. It’s all storage areas the other side of that wall.”

Stan said, “There’s a john down at the end there.”

“Fine.” Dortmunder consulted his list. “Up one flight, that’s Scenery Stars, that’s the people gonna make the sets, like the imitation OJ. And up top is GR Development, their rehearsal space for their reality shows. The question is, what the hell is the thing down one flight? It’s called Combined Tool. What would that be? If your name is Combined Tool, who are you?”

Stan said, “Do they make tools?”

“Where? How? That’s not a factory.”

At a side table, Judson had found phone books, and now he turned from consulting them to say, “Not in any phone book.”

Dortmunder looked at him. “Not at all?”

“Not in the white pages under Combined Tool, not in the yellow pages under Tools-Electric, Tools-Rentals or Tools-Repairing & Parts.”

Stan said, “So who the hell are they?”

“You got a company gets big enough,” Dortmunder said, “it’s got a dark side.”

“But it’s still a company,” Kelp said, “so it’s still got to have records and meetings and a history of itself.”

“Down in there,” Dortmunder said.

Stan said, “But what would Doug be doing in there? He’s not that important. That door doesn’t know his palm print.”

“He’s close to the operation,” Dortmunder said. “He works sometimes out of this same building. He works for them, and they trust him, and he happened to see something once.”

“You open a door in New York,” Tiny said, “you never know what’s in there.”

Rousing himself from his easy chair, Kelp said, “We might as well take off now. We’re not gonna do anything else in here tonight.”

Dortmunder was reluctant to go, with the mystery of Combined Tool still unsolved, but he knew Kelp was right. Another day. “I’ll he back,” he vowed.

As they trooped back down the stairs, Stan said, “I think I’ll pick up a car along the way. Won’t take a minute.”

BY MONDAY, Doug knew he just had to get out of Putkin’s Corners, Stand or no Stand. He’d been here since Friday, struggling with the problem of Kirby Finch’s inversity—if that was a word—and he could feel himself on the very brink of going native. Even Marcy was beginning to look good.

Fortunately, he had Darlene Looper on hand to remind him what a proper object of lust was supposed to look and sound like. A talented if unagented actress, Darlene was a corn-fed beauty who, like for instance Lana Turner long before her, could show glints of a darker side. It was that darker side Doug was determined to tap into.

She was off The Stand now, no salvaging that situation. But how about Burglars Burgling (tryout)? Given the right makeup and wardrobe, Doug could just see her as a continuation of the long line of blonde sexpot gun molls extending back to before movies discovered sound. Give her a short slit skirt, fishnet pantyhose, and a nice small silver designer pistol slipped under the black frilly garter on her thigh, and there wasn’t a felony on the books a man wouldn’t be happy to commit with her. Doug saw her as the candy on the arm of Andy; surely he wasn’t gay. So back to New York Darlene would come, traveling in Doug’s Yukon with himself and Marcy. Marcy in the backseat, of course.

None of which dealt with the real problem that had forced him to drive one hundred miles north from the city last Friday. Now that this year’s story line for The Stand had been fatally wounded by young Kirby Finch, what could replace it? What was their throughline story for the year, culminating in spring’s sweeps week?

Many useless solutions were proposed, starting with the all-night brainbender session at Get Real on Thursday. For instance, Josh: “Kirby decides to become a priest. The family’s ambivalent, and just when they’re coming around, just when they’re learning acceptance, he decides he’d rather stay with the family, at least until the farmstand succeeds.” Doug: “No.”

Or Edna: “Kirby’s big brother, Lowell, the intellectual, carrying too heavy a load of books out of the library, trips and falls and is paralyzed. There’s one slim chance an operation will give him back the use of his arms and legs, and at the end of the season, where we were going to do the wedding, he walks!” Doug: “No.”

Or Marcy, Friday morning, on the trip up: “We go with the reality. Kirby comes out of the closet.” Doug: “He isn’t in the closet, that’s the problem.” Marcy: “He comes out to his family. They don’t know what to do, what to think, and they finally decide blood is thicker than prejudice, and they’ll stand by him. Everybody learns a wonderful lesson in tolerance.” Doug; “No.” Marcy: “Doug, it could be very real.” Doug: “But it couldn’t be reality, Marcy, reality shows do not solve society’s problems. They don’t even consider society’s problems. Reality is escapist entertainment at its most pure and mindless.”

All weekend the suggestions kept coming in. Harry Finch, father of the fairy: “What I say is, we bring that Darlene back. Turns out, she’s my daughter. Wrong side of the blanket, you know. Family’s all upset, thinks she’s trying to horn in on the success of The Stand, they finally come around, see she’s just a poor lost girl, needs a family, at the end we all hug and kiss and have a big celebration.” Doug: “Let me think about that, Harry,” which is how you say no to a civilian.

Finally, Monday morning, when Doug went along the walk from his motel room to Darlene’s room to see if she was packed and ready for the trip, he found her appropriately dressed but seated on the bed among her unpacked goods, frowning into space.

“Darlene? What’s up?”

She looked startled out of her reverie. “I was just thinking,” she said.

“We gotta get going, Darlene.”

“Oh, I know that. But I was thinking about the problem here, and I was wondering if something that happened to a friend of mine might be any use.”

Another “solution” to the problem, eh? Well, might as well listen. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Her folks eloped,” Darlene said. “You know, years ago, just before they had her. I think it was gonna be pretty close, which came first.”

“That happens sometimes,” Doug agreed.

“Only if you’re not paying attention,” she said, and shrugged. “Years and years later,” she told him, “they found out, that preacher wasn’t any preacher at all. He was a fake.”