Get Real by Donald E. Westlake

settled into his chair and Stan onto the sofa, where he said, “I been thinking. That’s why I’m here.”
    John nodded. “I figured it was something like that.”
    “What I been thinking about,” Stan said, “is this reality caper thing.”
    “I guess we’re all thinking about that,” John allowed.
    “So here’s what I come up with,” Stan said. “This is more complicated than it looks, because we’re tryin to come up with two
     heists at the same time.”
    John thought about that, then nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s right. The one they see and the one they don’t see.”
    “While
they,
” Stan said, demonstrating with arm movements, “think we’re doing something to put in front of their camera, we’re
actually
doing something we don’t want them to know about, because it’s stuff
we’re
not supposed to know about.”
    “The cash in Combined Tool,” John said. “If there
is
cash in Combined Tool.”
    “There’s something in there,” Stan said. “Something with a value on it. That high-tech door tells you that much.”
    “I think,” John said, “what we gotta do is their heist first, collect our pay, and then pick up the tools.”
    “Well, that’s what I was thinking about,” Stan said. “Once we do their heist, we got no more access to that building.”
    “Well,” John said, “we’ve always got
access.
”
    “Yeah, but not so easy,” Stan insisted. “If there’s an excuse for us to be around that building anyway, it gives us more elbow
     room, like.”
    John shook his head. “We can’t do Combined Tool first,” he said. “They’ve got to know it’s us that did it. They’ll call off
     the other thing
and
they’ll call the cops.”
    “So what we do,” Stan said, “we do them both at the same time.”
    John frowned at that. “What, a couple of us one place, a couple another place?”
    “No, that’s not the idea.” Stan spread his hands. “I know you think it’s a mistake for drivers to come up with ideas.”
    “Not exactly a mistake,” John said, being diplomatic. “Just unnecessary.”
    “Well, I did my thinking anyway,” Stan said, “and I’m gonna tell you what I come up with.”
    “I’m listening,” John said, but couldn’t entirely hide a hint of skepticism in face and voice.
    “We haven’t given Doug our target yet,” Stan pointed out, “because we didn’t pick it yet.”
    “Right.”
    “And Andy, sometime back, suggested to Doug we make the target one of the outfits in that corporate spaghetti they got over
     there. People thought maybe that was a good idea.”
    “Maybe,” John said. “I don’t seem to remember Doug being really excited about it. So what do you want to do?”
    “The storage place,” Stan said. “One floor up from the tool place. People put things in storage if they got no use for them
     right now but they’re too valuable to throw away.”
    John said, “Wait a minute. What? You want to knock over Knickerbocker Storage? In the same
building
?”
    “At the same time,” Stan said. “We’re right there already, we can get alarms shut down, we can get the electricity off if
     it comes to that. We can probably go right down through the floor from one of the storage units.”
    “That you’re not gonna do,” John told him. “That isn’t just some little thin wood floor like a house in the suburbs. That’s
     a building you can drive trucks around in, every floor. Those floors are gonna be concrete, thick slabs of concrete.”
    “All right, some other way,” Stan said. “Maybe there’s a fire escape in the back.”
    “I don’t think so,” John said. “There’s that inside metal staircase, with the trapdoor to the roof. That’s the second exit,
     all you need for the fire code.”
    “Then some other way,” Stan said, shrugging that off. “The point is, we’re
there.
”
    “Yeah, we would be,” John said. “You’re right about that. The question is, would Doug go along with this?”
    “We