31

AS FAR AS DORTMUNDER was concerned, it didn’t feel at all like the back room at the OJ. For one thing, it was all too clean, and the lights were too bright. And for another thing, nobody at the OJ was moving walls back and forth all the time, so the cameras could get a different slant. And when they talked together at the OJ they said what they wanted to say, not what Marcy thought up.

Well, this was the last of it. They were going along with Doug and Get Real for this one extra day, but now that they knew Muller was clearing out of Combined Tool today, that would be the end of it. Go in that back window tonight—and he would definitely be going in there with them—look the place over for whatever was valuable, leave it behind, then go back in two weeks and clean it out. Finally.

They spent a couple hours on the back room scene Wednesday afternoon, and the television people all seemed pleased by how it came out. Roy Ombelen congratulated them and then said, “You can take the day off tomorrow. Marcy’s working out a little subplot with Darlene and Ray, so we’ll be shooting them tomorrow in Central Park. We’ll want you back here Friday at ten, we’ll do some building exteriors to go along with Ray’s walking on the walls.”

Friday, Dortmunder figured, would probably be a good day to take May and go for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. She could use a day off, and they hadn’t been to sea for a long time. From the happy smiles he saw on the other members of the gang, he could tell the whole group had plans for Friday that did not involve watching Ray Harbach walk up and down on walls.

People were all just saying so long, see you around, when here came Babe and Muller again, up the stairs. “Hold on,” Babe called, and walked over to say, “I’m glad I caught you. I got something I want you to see.” Turning to Muller, he said, “It’d be more comfortable downstairs, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course,” Muller said. “There is nothing to hide.”

Dortmunder cocked an ear at that. Nothing to hide? Downstairs? What was going on?

Babe explained. “What I’ve got here,” he said, flashing a DVD, “is the first cut of yesterday’s work. It’s just rough, the sound isn’t perfect, there’s no musical stings, but you’ll get the idea. I think you’ll like it.”

Roy Ombelen said, “I can hardly wait to see it.”

“Me, too,” Doug said.

The reality people were very excited now, but what Dortmunder wanted to know was, what downstairs? What nothing to hide?

Babe soon showed them. He led the way to the stairs, then down two flights to the door to Combined Tool. Pressing his palm to the glass eye in the door, he pushed gently and the door said snick and opened inward. Babe entered, switching on room lights, and the others trooped in after him.

We’ve been trying to get in here forever, Dortmunder told himself, and now they just open it up and invite us in. This is not good.

What they had entered was a large pale green living room, stretched most of the way across the front of the building, except where the elevator would go. The windows were clean and soundproofed against the Varick Street tunnel traffic. The furniture was expensive but anonymous, and so were the pictures on the walls, so that the room looked more like an upscale hotel lobby than a living room, except for the television and entertainment area and the wet bar. To add to the hotel lobby impression, a wheeled suitcase stood near the door, with a garment bag draped over it.

As Babe welcomed everybody into the place, telling them to sit down and put their feet up, Dortmunder said to him, “That’s some lock you got on that door.”

“That’s left over,” Babe said. “This location used to be part of a TUI research and development operation. They had a lot of very valuable metals in here, platinum and like that.”

“And secrets,” Muller said.

“That’s right,” Babe agreed. “New technologies, that sort of thing.”

“All in Asia now,” Muller said.

“So now,” Babe said, “it’s mostly used to store the files from those days and take care of our people from overseas when they visit, like Herr Muller here.”

“Or shipments,” Herr Muller said.

Babe shrugged that off. “Oh, sure, the occasional shipment,” he said, and made a little dismissive wave of the hand. “The kind of thing doesn’t need to go through customs. Business stuff. All businesses have their secrets.”

“You know, Babe,” Muller said, glancing very slightly toward the luggage by the door, “this time, perhaps it ought to stay here.”

Babe didn’t want to hear about that. “We’ll discuss it,” he said, curt, closing off that conversation, and turned a more cheerful face to the others. “But the point is, you want to see what you people did yesterday. Everybody take a seat.”

It was a spread-out living room, with all seating angled toward the large flat television screen. Babe grabbed a handful of remotes and got it all fired up, and then inserted the DVD and stepped back, grinning comfortably at the screen.

And there it was: the OJ. Dortmunder looked at it, and couldn’t believe it. Not only did the bar look a lot more real on television than it did in reality, but it looked more like the OJ, the real OJ.

And there they all were, seen from behind, from the side, from above. Never angled enough to show a face, but always making it clear which character was speaking, and always making sure the characters’ personalities came through.

Dortmunder watched himself and Kelp and Tiny and the kid and Rodney the bartender discuss the latest ball scores, and he could almost believe he was watching something that had happened. That was them. The lighting was a little distorted, the shadows a little angular, so that everybody and everything seemed more menacing, tougher, more interesting, but nevertheless still them. Look at that.

And here came Ray and Darlene, he looking like a finger-snapping crook in a Broadway musical, she like the singer in the honky-tonk, and not at all bad to look at. There were greetings, Kelp’s little remarks to Darlene no longer seemed so stupid, and then Ray announced he had news, and asked Rodney for the use of the back room, and it was over.

It had only been about three minutes long, but they all reacted as though they’d been asleep for hours, or maybe it was more like the sleep that goes on for years after you’ve eaten the poisoned apple. In any case, they all roused themselves from lassitude, blinked at one another, and the kid spoke first: “That was neat!”

Babe stood, smiling around at them all, and said, “Doug, I think you have a winner here. We just want to be sure to keep that tone.”

“Oh, I know we can,” Doug said. He was grinning from ear to ear, “Can’t we, Roy?”

“Absolutely,” Ombelen said. “This is very gratifying, fellows. I’ll see you all here at ten a.m. on Friday, day after tomorrow.”

“See you then,” the gang said.

As they all trooped down the stairs, Tiny spoke, only loudly enough for his own group to hear: “A meet, at Dortmunder’s.”