Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 01/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  He sounded sour. I didn’t exactly blame him. No one likes to talk money, especially when they know they’re being unreasonable.

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” I said. “Although it is an honor—”

  “Yadda yadda yadda,” he said, waving a hand as he used the outdated Seinfeld reference. “Can you pay the extra or not?”

  “No, sir.” I didn’t add anything else. I didn’t make excuses; I didn’t remind him about the already existing contract.

  I already knew I had the upper hand. Why? Because there were no handlers here. Either they’d been fired, let go because of financial reasons, or they weren’t willing to make this argument for their very famous employer.

  “Damn,” he said, “you were my only hope.”

  The wistfulness with which he said that line made it a veiled Star Wars reference, echoing the holographic Princess Leia’s line in the original movie: “Obi-wan Kenobi, you are my only hope.”

  I studied Karnikov for a moment. His thick blond hair was mussed and he had a bit of peanut butter on the collar of his T-shirt. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my reflection in the window.

  In that moment, I gained some respect for him. The bare feet, the T-shirt, the Seinfeld reference followed by the Star Wars reference—he was playing me, and doing it in a very sophisticated way.

  He wanted me to think we had common interests, that we were both fans, putting me at ease and giving him the upper hand. And that was why he was doing this alone.

  It’s easier to manipulate someone one-on-one.

  It might have worked, too, if I were ten years younger and twenty years less jaded. Or maybe if I had been a True Fan in the first place (meaning someone who really, really, really was a fan, not just someone who liked Karnikov’s work).

  But I wasn’t a True Fan and I was pretty damn jaded.

  “Sorry,” I said. “We just don’t have the extra funds. But we will pay you the second half of your appearance fee by direct deposit right after your final panel, if you like. That’s less than two weeks away, and the money will be instantly liquid.”

  I had checked our books before I arrived and saw that we could pull off the direct deposit thing—barely.

  He looked at me sideways and for a moment, I saw the actor unmasked. There was avarice in those cobalt blue eyes. That was the one thing that put famous actors at a disadvantage. We had already seen every single expression they had on screen and knew how to read their faces as clearly as if they were a member of our family.

  That look of avarice lasted only a half second, but that was a quarter second too long. He covered it quickly, but not quickly enough.

  I had him.

  “You can?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Can you do it now?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We won’t be getting the last of our money until the convention starts.”

  “I thought the thing was sold out,” he said.

  Thing. No fan would call CelebCon a thing. It would be the con or CelebCon or the convention. But never ever “the thing.” Thing was what other people called our tribal meeting places. Thing bordered on a term of disrespect.

  That one word was as revealing as the look, but I got a hunch he really didn’t care.

  “It is sold out,” I said, irritated he had caught me in the lie. So I made up another one. “But we only take deposits. We collect the rest when the attendees show up.”

  “Stupid way to run a show,” he said.

  I shrugged, pretending a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “That way we keep the deposits of the no-shows and sell expensive at-the-door tickets.”

  It sounded believable to me, and apparently to him as well. Which also proved he wasn’t a fan. He would have known that prereg people not only paid in full, they got a discount for signing up early—something I would have argued about changing had I known we were going to sell out at prereg prices five hours after we announced Karnikov’s presence.

  “When’s my last panel, as you call it?” he asked.

  I was prepared for that too. “Sunday morning.”

  “Sunday ... morning?” he asked, as if I had told him I was going to dip him in chocolate and sell the licking rights to the highest bidder. “I don’t do mornings.”

  “You had no restrictions in your contract,” I said.

  “And,” he said, “you can’t transfer funds on Sunday.”

  “I know,” I said. “But the money will be in your account and available first thing Monday morning.”

  He made a face. “How about we blow off Sunday? When’s my last appearance then?”

  “Saturday night,” I said, trying not to smile. He had come prepared to negotiate. So had I. I had asked programming to tentatively schedule him Sunday morning, with the idea that we could cut that panel. If we got him to do it, fine. If not, it was a bargaining chip—a chip that was working now.

  “I’ll have the money Monday morning when banks open?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You can’t do better than that?” he asked.

  “No, sir, I’m sorry.”

  “What about charging for autographs?”

  “We pointedly advertise that we don’t let anyone charge for autographs.”

  “Change that,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s also in your contract. It’s a deal breaker.”

  He crossed his arms and frowned. His eyes met mine. I recognized that look, too—the look of presidential steely determination that he had used in at least three films.

  “I don’t believe in deal breakers,” he said.

  “I’ve noticed,” I said. “That’s why you get sued so much.”

  “You fat bastard,” he said. “You should show a little respect.”

  “You first,” I snapped.

  He looked at me in surprise. Apparently most people didn’t demand respect from him.

  I continued, “I have the authority to cancel your contract altogether, and if I do that, we’ll demand you repay the appearance fee in full. And we’ll put the entire fiasco on tonight’s news so your fans know it’s not us breaking the deal.”

  His cheeks pinked delicately, as if the makeup department had snuck in and added just a touch of color. I saw a whole new look on his face, one he had never played in all of his films.

  “You think you’re important. You think that you can upset my fans,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think I’m important. I think we have a business arrangement, and I expect you to live up to your side of the bargain. Honestly, all you have to do is sit on two one-hour panels, and give a speech you’ve probably given a hundred times before on Saturday night. You have to sign a few autographs, wave politely, and then vanish in your limo. For that, you’ll make more than most people make in an entire lifetime. You don’t do it, no skin off my nose.”

  “Your convention will collapse,” he said.

  Probably. But I didn’t care. And that I-don’t-care attitude showed in my shrug. “We had four CelebCons without you. I think we can manage a fifth without you as well.”

  I turned and walked away, not sure if I wanted to make it out of the room before he said something or not.

  “What do they call you, fat boy?” he asked.

  I continued toward the door. I’d been called fat boy in school, and I hadn’t answered to it then. I certainly wasn’t going to answer to it now.

  “What’s your name?” he asked with more than a little desperation.

  “Spade,” I said, and walked through the door into that grand foyer.

  “Spade what?” he asked, following me.

  I had him.

  “Just Spade,” I said.

  “Well, Spade,” he said. “You guys pay for my limo and my meals and get me the hell out of there the second that I’m done talking and we have a deal.”

  That was already in our contractual deal, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I nodded.

  “Done,” I
said, and left.

  Celebrity assholes always make me feel dirty. It’s like a love affair gone bad. Or maybe something even worse—like you’ve discovered that your beloved is a gold digger or worse, a hooker.

  Even though I wasn’t a true fan of Karnikov, I had liked his movies. I knew, as I walked to my rented Lexus, that I would always watch them now and hear his famous voice calling me fat boy.

  I was mad, deep down mad, not so much at him—I had read the press; I knew he was a piece of work, even for an entitled celebrity—but at me. I had volunteered to handle him. I had been prepared for his nastiness, but I had forgotten the consequences.

  And the consequences struck me in my innocent fan-boy self.

  I thought I had calmed myself by the time I got back to the convention site. I parked as close to the building as I could get and got out of the Lexus.

  I took a deep breath, hating the dryness of the L.A. air, hating the heat, and headed toward the building.

  “Spade?”

  The female voice sent a shiver down my spine.

  I turned, half expecting to see nothing at all.

  Instead, Paladin stood in front of me. I hadn’t even seen her as I drove up, which showed just how distracted I was.

  She was slight, athletic, and beautiful in a way you normally didn’t see in science-fiction fandom. Some of the professionals—the writers, artists, actors (the pros, as we call them)—achieved that kind of beauty, but not the fen. Not usually.

  But Paladin was a fan. She wore faded jeans and a T-shirt with one of artist David Cherry’s tough females from some book cover. It showed the depth of my distraction that I couldn’t immediately summon the book’s title and author.

  I had barely come up with the name of the artist.

  Paladin was a legend in fannish circles. I’d heard of her long before I met her. I’d initially figured she was a guy with delusions of grandeur, naming himself after the Richard Boone character in the long-lost fifty-year-old Have Gun, Will Travel television show. I expected this fannish Paladin to be dressed in an Old West costume and to hand out business cards that said,

  Have Gun

  Will Travel

  Wire Paladin

  San Francisco

  And it turned out she did have a card, and the only difference from the original was that it now said “E-mail Paladin@paladinsanfrancisco.com.”

  I didn’t contact her in order to meet her. In fact, I’d never contacted her. We first met when she wanted to consult with me on one of her cases at FleshCon a few months before.

  I figured (hoped) we would stay in touch, but we hadn’t. Or she hadn’t.

  I was too scared to contact her. Not because she was scary, but because she was female, and I was attracted to her.

  I had forgotten how small she was. More than a foot shorter than I am, thin in an ethereal way, like the elves in the Lord of he Rings films. She was strong, but her muscles weren’t her dominant feature.

  Her eyes were. Big and beautiful and filled with intelligence. Although I was also partial to her ears. She was blessed with real fannish ears, small with a bit of a point on top.

  “Paladin,” I said, too hot, tired, and discouraged to come up with a witty greeting. The last time we’d gotten together, we’d had a witty repartee. I wasn’t sure I was repartee-ready. I certainly wasn’t feeling witty.

  “I can’t believe you’re involved with this mess,” she said.

  My shoulders slumped. “I get involved in a lot of messes. It’s part of being a SMoF.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t mean the standard convention mess. I mean the whole Karnikov thing.”

  I sighed. I was going to get it from all sides. “It wasn’t my idea to invite him. I opposed him being guest of honor.”

  “But you didn’t quit when they invited him anyway.”

  “If I quit every convention where I disliked a guest of honor, I wouldn’t work on more than five per year,” I said.

  It was a sign of how tired and dejected I was that I even admitted that. Usually I kept my dislike of some of the people in sf prodom to myself. Multimillionaire celebrities didn’t have a patent on obnoxiousness. Some five-figure writers and even no-figure fans could be assholes as well.

  Paladin tilted her head a little, as if she were studying me. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You could never offend me,” I said, deciding truthfulness was the mode of the day.

  She smiled at that. “I’m sure I could.”

  “I’m not going to dare you to try,” I said. “I have a hunch you can achieve anything you set your mind to.”

  “I wish that were true,” she said. “But I learned long ago that I can’t do everything.”

  I’d learned the same thing. And I couldn’t stand in the heat and dry air, feeling dejected in front of one of the most beautiful women in the world any longer.

  “If that’s all,” I said, “I’m in desperate need of air-conditioning and an iced coffee.”

  “I’ll buy,” she said, and pulled the door open for me.

  “Paladin,” I said in a chiding tone. She didn’t have to buy me anything. In fact, she should never buy me anything. I was the Microsoft Millionaire. She worked hard for each and every dime.

  “Give a girl a break, Spade,” she said. “The last time I asked you for a favor, I was going to buy breakfast and you stole the check.”

  “You’re asking me for a favor?” I said as I walked through the open door into a frigid interior. Someone wasn’t following the environmentally friendly air-conditioning rules and I was grateful.

  “I’m asking you for a favor,” she said. “And I want you think hard before you say yes.”

  “I promise I will,” I said. “So long as I can think with an iced coffee in front of me.”

  “Done,” she said.

  And in a moment, it was.

  Paladin had found a little coffee bar inside the convention center, a bar that I hadn’t even noticed. It was small, it was dark, and it was attractive, not usually things found in a convention center. It had lovely wood tables, maroon walls covered with black-and-white Ted Croner New York at Night photographs from the late 1940s, and an actual bar with a top made of polished walnut. This little place had so much class that I doubted it would be in business the next day, let alone when the convention started.

  She ordered me an iced coffee and herself an iced tea. Then she bought two pieces of lemon cake, a cinnamon bun, and a gigantic chocolate-chip cookie. I would have protested, except I had watched her eat once before. I had a hunch most of those calories were for her.

  She brought me two tall glasses of water even though I hadn’t asked for them, and stood over me while I drank one. Then she took the glass back to the coffee bar just as our order came up.

  I smiled at her concern. Apparently, I looked as bad as I felt.

  She rested the tray on one hand, removed the drinks first, and then the food. She waved a piece of lemon cake at me.

  “You don’t have to have it,” she said, and I couldn’t tell from her tone whether or not I would disappoint her if I ate it. Maybe she wanted it.

  I took the cake. Breakfast had been a long time and one nasty celebrity ago.

  She straddled the chair across from me, and picked up her fork like a weapon. Then she looked at me, as if daring me to comment on all her food.

  I didn’t. I took one dainty bite of the lemon cake, which was better than expected, and slurped some of the iced coffee.

  By the time I’d done that, she had already eaten the cookie.

  “Thanks for this,” I said.

  She nodded, halfway through the cinnamon roll.

  “You mentioned a favor.”

  She nodded again, finished the cinnamon roll, and pushed the cake aside, as if she were saving it for later.

  “I want to head security,” she said.

  “The convention center takes care of security,” I said.

  “For the convention itself,
” she said.

  “We have a security director,” I said. I liked the director, Doris Xavier. I trusted her. She was another SMoF. We’d worked dozens of conventions together.

  “I know,” Paladin said, “but I think it’s better if I’m in charge.”

  I wasn’t so certain. The last time we ate together (on our first and only case together so far) she had described herself as a bulldozer. In fact, she had asked me to work with her because she liked my finesse and thought herself incapable of the same thing.

  We resolved the case—rather, I resolved the case—with that finesse.

  A lot of times, convention security required a delicate touch. We were dealing with paying guests, after all, as well as some well-known people. One bulldozer moment could create a crisis that would reverberate through Fandom for years to come.

  “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?” I said.

  Paladin looked over her shoulder, then glared at the barista behind the counter. The woman moved to the other side of the tiny coffee bar. Paladin took her lemon cake, and cut off a piece, staring at it.

  “I’ve been trying to get Karnikov for years,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” I hadn’t expected that. “Get him for what?”

  She stared at me as if I should know. Then she raised her eyebrows.

  “Okay, I know he’s an ass.” I felt the reverberation of that “fat boy” comment all over again. “I know he’s broken dozens of contracts, drinks too much, and is uninsurable. I know he can be violent on set. Everything the tabloids know, I know. And I have no idea why you would want to get him.”

  “You should have a list,” she said, and there was crispness in her voice I had never heard before, as if just talking about Karnikov disgusted her.

  “I had a file,” I said. “I made it up when the concom was considering Karnikov. I did have a list—more than a hundred reasons not to book this guy. But—”

  “Not that kind of list,” Paladin said. “Don’t you SMoFs have a list of the people to watch at conventions?”

  It took me a moment to understand her, primarily because I didn’t handle security. She meant The List, passed from convention to convention, of troublesome adults. Science-fiction, gaming, and comic-book conventions attract kids. Any place that attracts kids also attracts their predators.