Donald Westlake - Get Real

Reality was a revelation to Darlene. It seemed to her it must be very like the way the soap operas used to be, when they were the hottest thing around. Sure you’re all professionals, but nevertheless you’re getting together every day like kids in a barn to put on a show. It’s open-ended, it’s seat-of-the-pants, and it’s fun.

It also, through The Zaniest Challenge of the Year!, brought her to New York and a new roommate, Lauren Hatch, an investigative reporter wannabe, currently a gofer for an online gossip columnist. A skinny, sharp-featured laser-eyed workaholic, Lauren was Darlene’s age but appeared to have no interest in sex of any kind unless it concerned other people and could be spread on the Slopp Report.

The Stand was supposed to have been Darlene’s big break, playing a real-life bride on prime-time television, known and loved by the whole world. Doug had explained to her that the marriage would have to be a legal one, but the fix was in and an annulment would be the easiest thing in the world. All she had to do was swear in court she hadn’t meant it when she said, “I do,” which would be the truth, and there she’d be, single again, with an already guaranteed exclusive on the Slopp Report (a four-hour exclusive) in which she would explain that marriage wasn’t for her, she was wedded to her career.

Well, that hadn’t happened, entirely because Kirby Finch was something that had never been seen in North Flatte, Nebraska, at least not by Darlene, so far as she knew. He was entirely unnatural, Kirby was, and Darlene considered herself well out of it, particularly with the “gang” already in place to give her another chance of a lifetime.

Of course, if she were to hook up with the “gang,” she’d have to hook up with one particular member of it. Group sex could be implied in the world of reality, but not confirmed. Besides, Darlene, who hadn’t tried it, didn’t think she’d like it.

So it kind of came down to the kid and the sharpie, and it wasn’t an easy decision. They were very different, but both were fun, both were quick-witted, both could look appropriate as her escort; at an awards dinner, say.

The question was, which would be right for her, her needs, her future, her image. There was a lot to be said for both of them. Fortunately, she didn’t have to decide right away.

From Doug’s place they walked, not very far, to a bar/restaurant on West Fifty-seventh Street called Armweary’s, a funky dark wood place, pretty full for a Monday night, with waiters who appeared to be waiters and not actors between gigs. The place was loud, but not too loud to hear the people at your table, and Darlene quickly noticed that, while everybody had a lot to say, nobody had anything at all to say about the show they were going to be on or the “robbery” they were going to pretend to commit. All of that seemed to be off-limits somehow, so, even though there was a lot about this crowd and their series she would love to know, she was smart enough not to push the envelope.

They all chipped in to buy her dinner, which was sweet. Then it was time to go, and out on the sidewalk, while she was preparing herself to say it had been a wonderful evening but she was really tired right now, all the others were telling one another so long and planning when they would meet again.

The kid did finally turn to her and say, “How do you get home?”

“Oh, I just walk up to Seventy-sixth Street,” she said. “It’s nothing, I do it all the time.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, and everybody took off, in various directions.

Walking up Broadway, Darlene found herself brooding over the fact that not one of them had even tried to come home with her. She hadn’t wanted any of them to, but still.

Awful thought. They weren’t all Kirbys, were they?

BABE TUCK SAID, “You agreed to what ” “Well, we didn’t exactly agree,” Doug said, seated across the pockmarked old wooden desk Babe had brought with him from his foreign correspondent days. “Andy just suggested, if we could find a target from inside our own corporation, then, if something went wrong, we could all claim it was never going to be a real robbery anyway.”

“But we want a real robbery,” Babe pointed out. “That’s the whole idea. Reality on the edge.”

“I think they’re a little insecure,” Doug said. “They’re not used to doing a burglary with cameras pointed at them.”

“You told them we’d cover their asses? Halo their heads? Alter their voices?”

“They know all that,” Doug agreed. “It’s just, I think, it’s just all a little too strange. They want some kind of reassurance.”

“An escape hatch,” Babe suggested.

“Exactly.”

“I can under stand that,” Babe said. “There’ve been times when I wouldn’t have minded an escape hatch myself.”

“So in theory,” Doug said, “it’s not an idea we’d reject out of hand.”

“A little strange to steal from yourself,” Babe said, and shrugged. “But I suppose the network could stand it. Might even be something salutary in it.”

Politely, Doug said, “Salutary?”

“See our own vulnerabilities from the outside,” Babe explained. “Find out where we need to shore up our defenses. So they’ve picked some underbelly of ours, have they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What?”

Doug seemed reluctant to speak, and then he said, “Sir, before that, let me—”

“You’re calling me sir a lot,” Babe said, not as though he liked it.

“Am I?” Doug could be seen to replay his mental tape. “Oh, yeah, I guess I am. I guess I’m nervous.”

“About what, Doug?”

“First, si—Babe, let me say we agreed at the beginning, if anything ever made them uncomfortable, they didn’t have to do it.”

“Of course.”

“They now say it’s this target, or they’re not gonna be comfortable.”

“Then,” Babe said, “you’d really better tell me the target.”

“The storage facility on Varick Street.”

“The— Varick Street?”

“They say they wanted a place in that neighborhood to make the filming easier,” Doug explained. “There’s a Chase bank on the corner—”

“Of course there is.”

“They say they considered doing that,” Doug said, “but they’d have to do it in the daytime, and there’s too much tunnel traffic out front, and they’d never get away. So they decided to go with the storage facility in our building.”

“On Varick Street.”

“It’s called Knickerbocker Storage.”

“I know what it’s called,” Babe said.

“They say the losses will be covered by insurance, and that’s true, so that should make it even easier for us to say yes.”

“Doug, Doug, Doug.”

Doug said, “I know. Babe, I thought about this, and thought about it, and we’ve got a double problem here.”

“How so?”

“If we say yes,” Doug said, “we’re exposing ourselves in ways we can’t even be sure of. But if we say no, if we scrub the whole operation, Babe, what do we tell them is our reason ?”

“We don’t want to do it,” Babe said. “We don’t have to give reasons.”

“Babe,” Doug said, “these are professional burglars. They can smell profit around corners. If we say no, not that place, you can hit anywhere else in our whole corporate structure, but you can’t do anything to Varick Street, they’re going to wonder why.”

“Let them wonder.”

“Babe,” Doug said, “I live in an apartment in a new high-tech building. My door has a hotel-type card instead of a key.” He took it from his shirt pocket to show it. “We’ve got doormen, closed-circuit TV. Those guys have taken to dropping by my apartment.”