41

WHEN KELP AND Dortmunder and Tiny and the kid walked into the fake OJ Tuesday afternoon at two, Doug and Marcy and Roy Ombelen and Rodney the bartender and the camera crews were already there, clustered around the left end of the bar, where in the real joint the regulars reigned. As they approached the bar, Rodney was saying, “No way Shakespeare wrote those plays. He didn’t have the education, he hadn’t been anywhere, he was just a country bumpkin. An actor. A very good actor, everybody says so, but just an actor.”

Doug said, “Isn’t some duke supposed to be the real guy?”

“Oh, Clarence,” Rodney said, in dismissal.

“I heard that, too,” Marcy said. “That’s very interesting.”

“No, it wasn’t him,” Rodney said, scoffing at the idea. “In fact, if you study those plays the way I did, you’ll see they couldn’t have been written by a man at all.”

Marcy, astonished, said, “A woman?”

“No sixteenth-century guy,” Rodney said, “had that kind of modern attitude toward women or instinctive understanding of the woman’s mind.”

One of the camerapersons said, “My husband says it was Bacon.”

Another cameraperson, dripping scorn, said, “They’re not talking about meat, they’re talking about Shakespeare.”

“Sir Francis Bacon.”

“Oh.”

Roy said to Rodney, “I venture to say you have someone in mind.”

“Queen,” Rodney pronounced, “Elizabeth the First.”

Kelp and Dortmunder looked at one another. “You build it,” Kelp murmured, “they will come.”

Turning, Doug said, “Oh, there you are.”

“Here we are,” Dortmumder agreed.

“Can you start without me?” Kelp said. “I got a little gippy tummy this afternoon.”

“Oh, sure,” Doug said. He had a slightly manic appearance this afternoon, as though he’d forgotten and taken his medication twice. “You go ahead, we’ll be setting up for a while.”

So Kelp exited the set, rounded the corner, and headed for the stairs. This was the top floor, so he only had to go up the one flight to the roof door, to check into what they’d done to refix the lock and alarm now that he’d told them about its being rigged. Whatever they’d done, Kelp was ready to disarm it right now, from inside, with the various equipment in his various pockets.

And they hadn’t done a thing. Was that possible? The rerouted wire was taped exactly where Kelp had left it. The lock was still nonexistent.

Hadn’t they believed him? Or maybe they’d just had too many other things on their minds. In any case, it did make life simpler. Kelp opened the door, looked out at the roof, closed the door, and hurried back downstairs to the non-OJ.

Doug met him as he came into the set. “You okay, Andy?”

“Oh, fine,” Kelp said. “Just one of those little things, you know, it comes along and then it goes right away.”

“Stress gets to everybody, Andy,” Doug said.

“Yeah, I guess so. Oh, there’s my bunch.”

Marcy and the rest of the cast were now clustered at one of the side booths, and Marcy waved to Kelp and called, “Come on over, Andy, we’re working out the story line.”

The story line. 1) You go in. 2) You take what you came for. 3) You go out. If civilians are present, insert 1A) You show, but do not employ, weapons.

Marcy’s story line would be a little more baroque. Kelp went over, found a sliver of bench available next to Tiny, perched on it, and Marcy leaned in to be confidential, saying, “I hope you held out for a lot more money.”

“Oh, sure,” Kelp said. “You know us.”

Because, of course, Marcy didn’t know anything. She didn’t know why they’d left, and she didn’t know why they were back. So, as with the reality show, she was making up her own story line, which was perfectly okay.

“What we need, in the next couple weeks of the show,” Marcy told them, “is some sense of menace. Not from you guys, some other outside force.”

Dortmunder said, “Like the law, you mean?”

“No, we don’t want to bring the police in until the very end of the season. The escape from the police will be the great triumph, and it’ll make up for you not getting the big score you were counting on from the storage rooms.”

Kelp said, “Oh, we’re not getting that?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Marcy said. “I don’t want you to know the story too far ahead, because it can affect the way you play it. But I can guarantee you, the escape from the police will be the climax of the first season.”

“I’d watch it,” the kid said.

“For a menace from the outside,” Marcy said, “what do you think of another gang going after the exact same target?”

Kelp said, “Wasn’t that in a Woody Allen movie?”

“Oh, it’s been in dozens of movies,” she said. “That’s all right. Nobody expects reality to be original. People will see that, and they’ll laugh and they’ll say, ‘Just like the Woody Allen movie, and here the same thing happens in real life.’ ”

Dortmunder said, “That’s what they say, huh?”

“Oh, people get very caught up in these stories,” Marcy told him. “It’s like their own reality, only better. More interesting.”

Tiny said, “Where does this frightening other gang come from?”

“Well,” Marcy said, “we were hoping you all might know some people.”

Tiny said, “People to muscle in on our score? Point them out.”

Marcy looked troubled. “You don’t like that idea.”

“Not much,” they agreed.

“Well, Babe suggested,” Marcy said, sounding unconvinced, “maybe one of you double-crosses the rest of the gang, sells you out to the owner of the storage place.”

Dortmunder said, “Get Real is the owner of the storage place.”

“Well, yes.” Marcy nodded, but wasn’t happy. “Whenever there’s a problem like that,” she said, “Doug says we’ll work around it, but I don’t see how we could work around that one.”

Kelp said, “Just for curiosity’s sake, which of us did you tap for the Judas?”

“We hadn’t decided,” Marcy said. “We thought we’d leave that up to you.”

“Then I guess we’d vote for Ray,” Dortmunder said.

“That’s right,” Kelp said. “He’s already got the experience.”

Marcy blushed. It was an uncomfortable sight, because she didn’t do it well, but just came out all blotchy, like measles, or a face covered with cold sores. The others looked away, giving her a chance to get control of herself, and she coughed and said, “Most of us didn’t really think that was a good idea, anyway.”

“Most of you were right,” Tiny said.

The clatter of the elevator was heard, rising through the building. “Oh, that’ll be Babe,” Marcy said.

Dortmunder said, “Coming to shut us down again?”

Marcy laughed, as though that had been a joke. “He’s coming with Darlene and Ray,” she said. “That’s the other thing we’re going to do, to build suspense. Today—Oh, wait,” she shouted. “That’s too loud.”

It was. They all waited. They couldn’t see the elevator from inside the set, but they could hear when at last it stopped.

Marcy, talking more rapidly now, said, “You’re all going to be in here, at the bar, just talking, and it would be nice if you could be reminiscing, you know, about other robberies you did. How you found out the target was there, and how you did it, and how you got away.”

“And how,” Tiny said, “the crime remained unsolved until now.”

“Well, I expect you to change some details,” Marcy said, and Darlene and Ray and Babe came into the joint.

Babe was in a good mood for once. “Hello, all,” he said. “No, I’m not here to shut you down.”

“That’s too bad,” the kid said. “There’s a matinee I wanted to see.”

“Ha ha,” Babe said. “Marcy, did you try out those ideas on the guys?”

“They don’t seem to like them,” Marcy said. “And they don’t have any other gangs they’d like to work with.”

“And the traitor in their midst?”

Nodding at Ray but talking to Babe, Dortmunder said, “That’s already been tried.”