Donald Westlake - Get Real

“Oh,” Kelp said.

“There’s only so many,” Tiny said, “celebrities goin to the Oscars you can put up with. So finally I took him back, dropkicked him through the door, and said, gimme one doesn’t speak English. So how are you people?”

Dortmunder took over the conversational ball: “Just fine, Tiny.”

“I hope you got a good one here,” Tiny said.

“So do we,” Dortmunder said.

“It’s been a while,” Kelp said.

“Oh, I’m doin okay,” Tiny said. “I always do okay. I squeeze out a little livin here and there. But I’d like a little cushion for a while.”

“So would I,” Dortmunder said, and Stan and Judson came in together.

Stan carried a draft beer in one hand and a saltshaker in the other. As a driver, he preferred to limit his alcohol intake to the occasional sip, but beer left to its own devices soon grows flat, which nobody likes. A sparing shimmer of salt over the beer every once in a while causes the head to magically return.

Judson, on the other hand, was carrying a drink nobody recognized. It was in a tall cocktail glass with ice and was a kind of palish rose color, as though it were Tiny’s drink’s anemic sister.

When they came in, while the others were sharing greetings, Stan looked around, made a quick assessment, and said, “We’re late.” Then he homed in on the chair to Kelp’s left, leaving the kid to choose one of the chairs on the vulnerable side. But that was all right; he was a calm sort.

Once they were all seated, Kelp said, “Kid, if you don’t mind a nosy question, what’s that?”

“Campari and soda,” the kid said, with the proud smile of ownership.

“Campa—” Kelp pointed at the glass. “And what’s the yellow thing?”

“Lemon peel.”

“Uh-huh. If you don’t mind, how come?”

“Somebody had it in a movie, and it sounded nice. So I thought I’d try it.”

“And is it nice?”

“Yeah.” The kid shrugged. “Makes a change from beer.”

Everybody agreed with that, and then Kelp said, “John’s gonna tell the newcomers the story here.”

Stan said, “I picked up the kid at his place, and filled him in on the way over.”

“Oh,” Kelp said.

Looking around, Tiny said, “Does this mean I’m the last to know? I don’t like that much.”

Hastily, Stan told him, “What it is, Tiny, yesterday my Mom picked up a fare at Kennedy, he’s a reality television producer, turns out, he wants to film us pulling a heist, for twenty G a man plus per diem.”

Tiny nodded, but not as though he agreed with anything. He said, “And the get out of jail free card?”

Dortmunder said, “The guy says we’ll work around that.”

“Twenty years at hard labor,” Tiny commented. “That’s a lot to work around.”

Dortmunder said, “Andy and I had a discussion with the guy this afternoon, at his apartment.”

Stan said, “Oh? Where’s that?”

“One of those Trump buildings on the west side.”

“And how is it?”

Dortmunder shrugged. “Okay.”

“A little too bronze,” Kelp said.

Tiny said, “Over here, I’m still working around this.”

“Okay,” Dortmunder said. “Andy did some computer trick—”

“It’s no trick,” Kelp said. “I Googled.”

“Oh, sure,” Stan said.

“Whatever,” Dortmunder said. “Turns out, this guy’s little company is owned by a bigger company, owned by a bigger company, and like that. Like those cartoons where every fish is getting eat by the bigger fish behind him.”

Tiny said, “So? What does this have to do with you and me?”

“We asked him,” Dortmunder said, “did he have something in particular he wanted us to boost, and he said no, dealer’s choice, he just wants to make the movie.”

“The evidence.”

“Yeah, that. So Andy had a suggestion for him.”

“I’m ready to hear it,” Tiny said.

Kelp said, “Why not boost something from one of those companies up there on top of him? That way, if law suddenly shows up, we were just foolin, never gonna do it for real.”

“That’s not bad,” Tiny admitted.

“In fact,” Stan said, “that’s good. An escape hatch.”

“So then,” Kelp said, “he asked what kind of thing we’d like to lift, and we said cash, and he said there’s no cash anywhere in all these big corporations. And all of a sudden—”

“Yeah,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp nodded. “We both saw it. All of a sudden, he remembered something. But then he clammed up, pretended like nothing happened.”

Stan said, “Why that son of a bitch.”

“Somewhere,” Dortmunder said, “somewhere in his working hours, Doug Fairkeep has seen cash.”

Tiny said, “Where?”

“That’s what we gotta figure out.”

Kelp pulled some sheets of paper from his pocket. “I printed out the companies and what they do,” he said. “Three copies. Tiny, here’s yours, Stan, you can share with the kid, and I’ll share with John.”

The room became quiet, as though it were study period. Everybody bent over the lists, looking for cash, failing to find it. Finally Tiny pushed his list away and said, “There’s no cash there. Real estate, movies, aircraft engines. Forget cash.”

“It hit him,” Dortmunder insisted. “We both noticed.”

The kid said, “What was it, like he just remembered?”

“Yeah, like that.”

The kid nodded. “So it’s not cash he’s around all the time,” he said. “It’s just some cash he happened to see a couple times. Or once.”

Tiny said, “That still doesn’t help.”

“Well, wait a minute,” the kid said. “What were you all talking about when he suddenly remembered the cash?”

Dortmunder and Kelp looked at one another. Dortmunder shrugged. “How there was no cash.”

Kelp said, “How even with Europe and Asia it was all wire transfers.”

The kid looked interested. “That’s what he was saying just before he remembered? Wire transfers to Europe and Asia?”

Dortmunder said, “No, Andy, that was after. Before, I said there were all these companies, and some of them overseas, so there had to be some cash around somewhere.”

The kid said to Dortmunder, “So you talked about overseas first.”

“Yeah, I did. And then he did that stutter-stop thing—”

“And then, ” Kelp said, “he said how, even to Europe and Asia, it’s all wire transfers.”

“So it’s something foreign,” the kid said. “It’s cash, and it has something to do with Europe and Asia.”

“But Doug Fairkeep isn’t foreign,” Dortmunder said. “He doesn’t work foreign. His work is right here.”

“So where he saw the cash,” the kid said, “was here, on its way to Europe and Asia. Europe or Asia.”

Stan said, “Am I following this? We now think this Fair-keep guy at least once saw a bunch of cash around where he works, that was going to Europe or Asia. What the hell for?”

Kelp said, “They’re buying something?”

“What happened to the wire transfers?”

“Oh!” said the kid. When they all looked at him, he had a huge happy grin on his face. Lifting his glass, he toasted them all in Campari and soda, then knocked back a good swig of it, slapped the glass down onto the felt, and said, “Now I get it!”

That was the annoying thing about the kid, who was otherwise okay. Every once in a while, he’d get it before anybody else got it, and when he got it, he got it. So Tiny said to him, “If you got it, give it to us.”

“Bribes,” the kid said.

They looked at him. Stan said, “Bribes?”

“Every big company that does business in different countries,” the kid said, “bribes the locals when they want to come do business. Here, buy our aircraft engines, not that other guy’s aircraft engines, and you look like you could use another set of golf clubs. Here’s a little something for the wife. Wouldn’t you like to run our TV show on your station? I know they don’t pay you what you deserve; here, have an envelope.”