Donald Westlake - Get Real

Roy said, “But you told us the bosses loved it.”

“At Monopole,” Babe told him, “they did. They were already looking for foreign sales. They sent it up to the level above them, Intimate Communications, and those people loved it so much they sent it on up to TUI, even though they didn’t have to, not yet, and TUI ordered everything shut down.”

Roy said, “Remind me. What’s TUI?”

“Trans-Global Universal Industries. They’re into a lot more than television production, and the CEO there now is a man named Gideon, who is a morality crusader. No porn, no excessive violence, no profanity, nothing you couldn’t show a ten-year-old. A dull ten-year-old. Wholesome stories with wholesome morals tucked into their wholesome endings.” Voice dripping scorn, Babe said, “ The Heist, it seems, glorifies criminals.”

“So what?” said Kelp.

“It does not,” cried Roy. “It shows the human side of the criminal life. It shows the hard work, the thought—”

“Glorifies criminals,” Babe said. “Once you’ve said those words, that’s like a magic incantation, it’s the end of the discussion.”

Rodney the bartender said, “Because The Heist glorifies criminals, they’re shutting down the whole company?”

“Well,” Babe said, “ The Stand is gone, and there’s nothing else on deck, and Get Real was too expensive an operation not to have anything come out of it. So Doug and I are going to be working for Monopole, and the rest of the staff, I’m sorry to say, is out.”

Marcy, sounding tremulous, said, “You mean I’m fired?”

Doug answered. “Nobody’s fired, Marcy. It’s just that none of those jobs exist any more.”

“And now,” Babe said, “I have a little more business to conduct with just the gang, so if everybody else could grab a seat somewhere outside, this won’t take long, and we can all leave together.”

Rodney the bartender said, “Am I in this, or out of this?”

“Just the gang,” Babe told him.

The former Rodney removed his apron and dropped it on a chair. “It’s been fun, folks,” Tom LaBrava said, and he and Roy and Marcy, all downcast in their own separate ways, left the ersatz OJ for the final time.

Dortmunder said to Babe, “What about the human fly and Darlene?”

“They weren’t going to be taping again until the exteriors next week,” Babe said, “so we phoned them. They already know.” He turned to Doug. “Doug?”

“Right,” Doug said, and opened the attaché case he’d left on a table. “We have contracts with you guys,” he said, “that called for a twenty-thousand-dollar payout per man, plus per diem, some of which has been paid.” Taking papers from the case, he said, “These are forms in which you acknowledge the series has been canceled and will never be on the air, and you’re accepting ten thousand a man in cash as full and final payment for your work on The Heist. ”

That’s why they stopped at Combined Tool, Dortmunder told himself. They’re about to give us some of the cash we left behind. And in a few weeks we’ll go back and take a lot more, and not worry much about neatness. Glorify criminals. And?

Doug was now showing the cash in the attaché case and saying, “The forms are made out in the names you gave Sam Quigg, so just sign those same names. All that matters is it’s really your handwriting.”

This is a little too much like wages, Dortmunder thought, as he and the others went over to sit at that table and sign the forms in three places, initial in two, and receive ten thousand dollars in banded bundles of hundreds and fifties, which they then concealed on and about their persons.

Nobody was interested in long good-byes. The crew left their cameras and other equipment behind, and then the whole crowd gathered together onto the elevator for the final sink down to the ground floor.

As the garage door was being lifted, Dortmunder glanced at all those parked vehicles over there, some of which Stan would certainly be driving in the weeks ahead. So it hadn’t been a total loss.

Out on the sidewalk, a limo appeared for Babe and Doug, to whisk them away. Roy and Tom LaBrava and the crew walked off with their right arms raised, looking for cabs. Tiny led the way toward the corner around which his own limo lurked.

Nearing that corner, Dortmunder looked back and saw that Marcy was still standing there in front of the building, at a loss. “That was too bad about Marcy,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s tough,” Kelp agreed.

“She was really a great help to us.”

“Yeah, she was.”

They took another couple of steps and Dortmunder said, “We might could get together and give her some of what we got.”

“There’s an idea,” Kelp said, and kept walking.

Dortmunder almost stopped, but then he too kept walking, on around the corner. “Oh, all right,” he said.