Donald Westlake - Get Real

“It’ll take a little longer that way, but sure. How come?”

“Let’s see what’s in there.”

So Kelp donned his stethoscope, ooched himself a little further in under the counter, and, while pressing the stethoscope to the face of the safe, began slowly to turn the combination dial.

Clong. They all turned to look, and Tiny was putting the frying pan back on the island. “He was stirring,” he said.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” Dortmunder said.

“Quiet,” Kelp said.

So they shut up and watched, and Kelp painstakingly did his turns and his listenings, then ooched back out from under the counter and said, “I think so. Let’s see.”

A handle stood to the left of the dial. Kelp grasped it and turned it down to the right, and the safe said chack, and yawned open.

“There we go.” Kelp sounded pleased, but not full of himself.

“Nice job,” Dortmunder said.

They all stooped to look in at the metal box, which was three-quarters full of greenbacks. They were all neatly banded into stacks, but the pile of stacks was thrown in there every which way, making it hard to get a sense of what they had.

“They’re pretty messy, these guys,” the kid said.

Dortmunder said, “When Doug described them, I thought they wouldn’t be people to clean up after themselves a lot. Andy, what are they? Hundreds?”

Kelp reached in to root around among the stacks. “A lot of hundreds,” he said. “Some fifties. Some twenties.”

Tiny said, “Dortmunder, you have something in mind.”

Dortmunder said, “We take half of it.”

Nobody could believe that. Tiny said, “All that cash, and we leave half of it?”

“They don’t know how much they’ve got in there,” Dortmunder said. “Andy didn’t mess up their safe. We were always gonna put that window back together anyway, so we do that. We take half, we put everything back the way it was, and there’s no sign anybody was ever here except a little glass cutter line on the window nobody’s ever gonna notice and the bump on that guy’s head.”

“Two bumps,” said Tiny. “Three, if he stirs again.”

Kelp said, “Your idea is, they don’t know we found the money, so nobody’s after us for anything.”

“And,” Dortmunder said, “we can still collect the other money from the reality people.”

“I like this,” Kelp said.

“Just a second,” Dortmunder said, and turned to the under-counter cabinets, where he’d seen a clump of supermarket plastic bags. He took out four, doubled them for more strength, and passed them to Kelp. “Take most of the hundreds,” he said, “a lot of the fifties, and some of the twenties. Leave it still looking kinda full and very messy.”

“You know,” Kelp said, “I’m getting a little cramped under here.”

“I’ll do it,” the kid said.

“Good.”

Tiny lifted Kelp to his feet by his armpits. As the kid got into position to transfer bundles of cash to the plastic bags, Kelp said, “If we’re gonna go ahead and finish the reality thing and take stuff out of the storage rooms, I’ve been thinking, I might have a guy to take it all off our hands.”

Dortmunder said, “What kinda guy is this?”

“He does big box stores full of crap,” Kelp said. “He can always take a consignment.”

“What’s his name?”

“He doesn’t have a name, that anybody knows. He’s called My Nephew.”

“I’ve heard of this guy,” Tiny said. “He’s not somebody you ask to hold your coat.”

“That’s true,” Kelp said. “On the other hand, he doesn’t pay by check.”

“How’s that look?” the kid said.

On the floor beside him now, the two pairs of plastic bags bulged with cash. The interior of the safe, depleted, still contained a lot of cash, messily arranged.

“Good,” Dortmunder said. Slowly, he smiled. “You know,” he said, “every once in a while, things work out. Not exactly the way you thought they would, but still, they work out. Not bad.”

When they counted it all later that night in Dortmunder’s living room, counting it quietly because May was asleep elsewhere in the apartment, the total came to 162,450 dollars. After some quick computations, the kid informed them this meant 32,490 dollars apiece.

Definitely, a profitable evening on Varick Street. “I begin to believe,” Dortmunder said, “that a jinx that has dogged my days for a long long time has finally broken.” And, for the second time in one day, he smiled.

DOUG’S HORRIBLE WEDNESDAY actually started pretty well. Marcy and the gang were adding story complications down on Varick Street, the other production assistants, Josh and Edna, were working under an open assignment to come up with other reality subject matter, the debacle that had been The Stand was now filed and forgotten, and the only reason to come into the midtown office at all was that’s where he was expected to be. Also, although he would never have admitted it to anybody, he had the irrational but obsessive conviction that during the daylight hours the apartment was haunted, by people who had lost their jobs.

He was reading Josh and Edna’s latest bad ideas—but they were trying—a little after eleven that morning when Lueen stuck her sardonic head into his office doorway to say, “Your master’s voice.”

“I serve no master but my art,” Doug told her, but went off to see what Babe wanted.

Babe wasn’t alone in the room. Seated facing him across the desk, back to the door, was someone Doug initially took to be a Sikh in a white turban. Babe nodded toward Doug and said to this gentleman, “Here’s Doug Fairkeep now.”

The man uncurled in a savage rising spin to his feet, shoulders hunched, fists clenched, the face he now showed Doug convulsive with rage. He’s not going to punch me, Doug thought in terror, he’s going to turn me into an oil spill.

Then the man’s implacable forward momentum abruptly disappeared, like smoke, and he rocked back on his heels, opening his hands as he said, “That is not him.”

Babe said, “That is Doug Fairkeep.”

“He lied.”

“The man last night, you mean. That’s what I assumed.”

First clearing his throat to be sure he still had a voice, Doug said, “Babe? What is this?” And he now could see that the man was not a Sikh in a turban but some sort of Asiatic in a thick bandage around his head.

“Mr. Mg was staying on Varick Street last night,” Babe said.

“Asleep,” accused Mr. Mg. He was still very angry at somebody.

“A man who apparently didn’t know Mr. Mg was there,” Babe went on, “came in, turned on the light, said he was Doug Fairkeep and that he sometimes slept there when he missed his last train and—”

“Never,” Doug said. “Never any of it.”

“I know that, Doug.”

“Never slept there. Never went in there on my own. Never take trains anywhere.”

“Hit me with piece of iron,” Mr. Mg said.

Babe said, “Mr. Mg was treated in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s this morning, then came up here to tell us about it.”

Doug said, “How’d he get in?”

“He did not break in,” Mr. Mg said.

“Doug,” Babe said, “that’s the part I don’t get. Whoever this was, he has a way to get into Combined Tool without forcing anything.”

“Babe,” Doug said, “ I can’t do that. You’re the only one I know can do that.”

“Well, Mr. Mg as well,” Babe said. “Some other of our overseas associates.”

I just told the gang about these Asians, Doug thought. He said, “Babe, do you think it was The Heist gang?”

“Of course I do,” Babe said. “But how could they pull that off? You tell me.”