The Con Artist

by Fred Van Lente

  “Sleep it off,” he said. “And don’t let me see you coming around here.”

  “I won’t,” I said to the back of his head, “until I can think of a better comeback than that.”

  A forest of white masts crowded the marina on the other side of the harborwalk railing. It was pretty late, the day before the con actually started, so only a couple cosplayers and tourists witnessed the shame of my ejection from the Marquis.

  Idling in the small paved patio between the rear of the hotel and the harbor was that longtime San Diego institution: a pedicab. The driver was a woman dressed like a famed video game explorer, with a ponytail braid and khaki shorts. She sat on her bike seat thumbing through her phone. The passenger cab, or whatever you called it, had been transformed into some kind of lost Mesoamerican throne, all skulls and obsidian daggers, like a set piece in the stage show of an Aztec death-metal band. Throughout the city I had seen similar jitneys turned into famous furniture from pop culture, like the Iron Throne, or the New Gods’ Mobius Chair, or a Batbike.

  “Where to?” the driver asked as I climbed into the Mayan Popemobile. She had an accent I couldn’t have placed even if I was sober. Russian, maybe?

  I took a deep breath, the air briny. Metal halyards clanged against masts in the distance. A Viking longboat floated along the bay, flying the History Channel flag, presumably venturing out for raids on other basic cable channels.

  “I…” I suddenly had the burning urge to get away from here, away from the commercialized womb of the con. “Take me to your favorite place.”

  The driver turned back and looked at me blankly. “My favorite place?”

  “Yeah. Anywhere but here if you would, madam.”

  “I can’t bike to my favorite place.”

  “Your favorite place you can bike to would be perfectly fine.”

  She considered this request for a second. “That I can do.”

  Then she stood on the pedals and started pumping away.

  * * *

  – – – –

  The bay slapped the gray rocks heaped at the edge of the Seaport Village shopping district as the rickshaw rocked past the marina’s quaint faux–New England gables and tiny lighthouses. The edges of my Aztec throne were highlighted with green and orange track lights that lit up as the driver pedaled, along with a green glow from the undercarriage that made us look like the ghost of Tron cycles. We glided in our incandescent way through the erupting riot of coral trees planted on either side of the path, beige lightning trapped trying to crackle skyward.

  We passed a large abstract pink marble monument against which a forlorn bronze Bill Mauldin serviceman leaned, helmet drooping from his hand. Then the driver turned left onto a parking lot embarcadero that jutted into the sea. The bike path continued along a row of mottled eucalyptus. On one side loomed a massive aircraft carrier. Red, white, and blue Christmas lights twinkled diagonally from the control tower at this hour. A row of retired gunship helicopters slumbered on its deck.

  “Here we are,” the driver called back as the pedicab squeaked to a halt.

  We’d stopped before a huge, four-color monument that took me a couple seconds to recognize because previously I had only ever seen the subject matter in black and white. Looming over me was a giant U.S. Navy sailor—blue uniform, white kerchief and hat—with one arm crooked around a nurse in a white skirt and hose and shoes, leaning her back and kissing her. These were the central figures of the famous V-J Day photo from Times Square taken in August 1945, now rendered in three dimensions and three stories high.

  Craning my head up at it, I laughed. “This is your favorite place?”

  “That I can bike to. Yeah.”

  “How come, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  The driver shrugged. “So many statues, all around the world, are raised to death and war. This one is raised to love. To a kiss. If that’s not magical, I don’t know what is.”

  I got out of the wheeled obsidian throne to walk all the way around the statue. It was underlit below and I resisted the childish urge to look up the giant nurse’s white skirt. I returned to the side where the pedicab waited, glowing, the driver smoking a cigarette. It was a striking scene, so I sat down on a marble bench near the statue and started sketching.

  “So where is your favorite place?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the one you said you couldn’t bike to.”

  “Oh. It’s a forest. Białowieża, this big national park in Poland. When we were teenagers we’d drive up there and go camping for the weekends in the summer. Get drunk. Hike. It was awesome. Some of the oldest trees on planet Earth are in that forest. And you can feel it. It’s not like going back in time. It’s like time…stopped.”

  “How’d you wind up here?”

  “In America? I went to school here.”

  “You went to school in San Diego?”

  “No. I graduated from Penn State. I wound up in San Diego…” She blew the thin strands of hair that had fallen across one eye onto her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s stupid.”

  “Aw, c’mon.”

  “No, it’s embarrassing. It’s because of a boy.”

  “Not a man?”

  “Oh, no. A boy. We started dating in school and I followed him here after. But he left a long time ago. And I’m still here.”

  “I know what that’s like.”

  She grunted a deep central European laugh: centuries of perennially justified cynicism expressed in a short, single breath. “No you don’t. You’re a man.”

  I had no interest in arguing with that, so I kept my mouth shut. I turned to look back at the water bobbing between sea wall and battleship and laughed.

  “You better not be laughing at me,” she said.

  “No, not at all,” I said. “I just realized I’m sitting here by the sea, thinking about your forest. If I was in the forest, I’d probably be thinking about the sea.” I shook my head. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve been trained to look at everything except what’s really there.”

  She nodded. “You know I’m charging you for this whole time, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.” I held up my sketchbook. “Finished.”

  She took it from me and smiled at the drawing, of which I was proud. “It’s lovely,” she said. She flipped through the pages and then handed it back to me.

  “It’s yours, you can have it gratis.”

  She took a long drag on her cigarette, then shook her head as she exhaled.

  “Thanks, but you can keep it. I don’t want you to have to rip a page out of your beautiful book. Besides…I’m not one of these people who needs to look at herself all the time.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, and climbed back into the pedicab for the ride back to the Bayfront.

  “You’re pretty good. What kind of art do you usually do?”

  “Comic books, mostly.”

  “Really?” She turned back to me, nose wrinkled in puzzlement. “They still make those?”

  THURSDAY

  hristine and I were arguing over the check in a restaurant. I had ordered the great white shark and it never came, but she said you got the kraken and that’s basically the same thing, and I said no those are two sea monsters that don’t taste anything alike, and over the lava river in the kitchen staffed by gum-cracking roller derby girls a phone kept ringing and ringing and no one was picking it up.

  Finally, I woke up. It was still dark, and I didn’t know where the phone was. So I flopped around a bit in the too-big bed until I found a light switch. Whatever rocket scientist designed this room had put the phone over on the glass-lined writing desk near the window. Its ring was a high fluttering trill, rising and fading before striking again, like a delayed-reaction heartbeat. It just sounded excited that someone wasn’t using their cell phone for once.r />
  I managed to untangle myself from the sheets and staggered over to the receiver. “Hello?”

  “This is the front desk.” Flat, nasal woman’s monotone.

  I looked and looked until I found the clock: 4:35 a.m. “Uh-huh?”

  “Some detectives from the San Diego Police Department would like to speak with you.”

  I became aware of the throb of my hangover and the dryness of my mouth. It was the same story, every con: I overdid it with the drinking the very first night and then felt like shit the rest of the weekend. I really needed a glass of water, and also—

  “Wait. Did you say police?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re here now?”

  At that moment there was a knock on my door.

  I blinked. I had stripped down to my boxer shorts after I got home and belly-flopped onto the bed. I remembered being at the Marquis poolside bar, and the fight, and then going to the kiss statue after the fight, but I had no memories whatsoever of returning to the hotel and going to sleep.

  I didn’t know if the desk clerk said goodbye or not; I didn’t. I hung up and shouted “Just a second” at the door.

  I somehow managed to find last night’s jeans crumpled on the bathroom floor but couldn’t find my shirt before whoever was at the door knocked again and said, “Police.” His voice was at a normal volume but the word boomed loud and clear.

  “I hear you,” I called. “Just getting dressed.”

  I gutted the drawer beneath the flatscreen TV until I found a plain olive-green T-shirt and pulled it over my head.

  Through the peephole I could see two men in suits who, beneath the gaudy fluorescent light of the hallway and my currently compromised cognitive capacity, reminded me of the detectives in Todd McFarlane’s Spawn comic books, Sam and Twitch: one short, broad, and angry-browed; his partner tall, slim, spectacled, with the pale shock of a widow’s peak rising like an eternal flame off the top of his head.

  I opened the door and Sam said hello and mumbled each of their names, which were neither Sam nor Twitch, but I didn’t quite catch them.

  “Mind if we come in?” Twitch said.

  “Ah…” I suddenly became self-conscious about the clothes I had strewn all over the floor hunting for my shirt. “It’s kind of a mess in there. I’d rather…”

  Neither of them reacted visibly. “That’s fine, we can talk in the lobby,” Sam said.

  “Can I ask what this is about?”

  “Sure you can,” Twitch said.

  I waited for them to tell me but they just stared at me in silence. At last, Sam chuckled and slapped me on the shoulder. “Cop humor.”

  “Oh.” I blinked. “Oh.”

  “Sorry. There’s just been an incident that happened earlier tonight. We were hoping you could help us out.”

  “Provide some insight, like,” Twitch said. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

  I looked down at my bare feet. “Should I…?”

  “Nah,” Twitch said. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. That’s how quick this should be. Shoes and socks optional.”

  “Also, it’s easier to catch you if you try to make a break for it,” Sam said.

  I must have blanched because Sam barked a laugh and slapped me on the shoulder again:

  “Cop humor, brother. Cop humor.”

  * * *

  – – – –

  My room was on the eleventh floor and it was an endless Space Elevator ride to the Space Lobby, me wedged in between the two cops.

  “So you here for Comic-Con?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling for no reason other than I was nervous.

  “Who are you dressing as?” Twitch said.

  “Sorry?”

  “What’s your costume?” Sam said. “Like, Captain America, or Winter Soldier, or the Joker, or what?”

  “I think I seen more Winter Soldiers than Captain Americas wandering around town this year,” Twitch said.

  “I think you may be right. A lot of lady Winter Soldiers too.”

  “A lot of hot lady Winter Soldiers.”

  “You got that right. Makes me question my sexuality. It truly does.”

  “Well, when you find out the answer, keep it to yourself.”

  I felt the need to say, “I’m not a cosplayer, I’m one of the guests—I’m an artist.”

  Sam said, “Is that right? That’s cool. Oil or watercolors?”

  “Comic books.”

  Twitch frowned, puzzled. “They still make those?”

  * * *

  – – – –

  Spider-Man had passed out in the far corner of the Space Lobby, his head thrown back against a couch. He had really let himself go since Gwen Stacey died. The upper half of his Spandex had peeled away from his waistline and rolled all the way up to his man boobs, exposing a great white beer belly that gleamed like a giant pearl. A security guard texted by the front doors and paid him no mind at all.

  The detectives walked toward a couch close to those doors and I followed them, my bare feet making slap-suck-slap-suck sounds on the marble floor tiles. There was no one else here this early in the morning except for us, the guard, a weary Mexican American front desk clerk with a Wonder Woman tiara resting on her hair, and Spidey.

  Twitch produced a neat little black Moleskine notebook from his inside jacket pocket and undid the elastic strap. As if I had already commented on it, he grinned apologetically and said, “My kid got it for me for Christmas. I know, it looks too fancy to be a cop’s pad, right?”

  “I call it his Book of Special Thoughts,” Sam said and winked at me.

  “Ball-buster,” Twitch said. “Like I’m writing poems in it and shit.”

  “Dear Book of Special Thoughts,” Sam said with a lisp, “this is my Ode to the Crackhead Who Shot His Baby Mama.”

  “But my little girl got it for me for Christmas, so, you know.” Twitch gestured to an empty armchair opposite the couch he sat on. Sam draped his ham hocks over the arm on the other end.

  Twitch asked me for the spelling of my name, which he dutifully wrote down in the Book of Special Thoughts. “Okay, and for profession, we got comic book…artist? Is that right?”

  “Penciller, technically, I guess, but comic book artist is fine.”

  “Sounds good. And where in God’s green Earth did you come from to visit us here in San Diego for our famous Comic-Con today?”

  “Cleveland,” I said.

  “Cleveland. And is Cleveland where you make your permanent residence?”

  “No…”

  “Okay, and where is your permanent residence, sir?”

  “I…” I smacked my dry lips. I never did get that glass of water. “I don’t really…have one at the moment.”

  Sam and Twitch looked at each other. It was the first time they had any visible reaction to anything I said so far.

  “No permanent residence?” Sam said.

  “No,” I said. The next words came out slowly, deliberately, well-worn from constant repetition. “I gave up my house three years ago. Now I live entirely at cons. They fly me out, put me up in hotels, and I go to my Artists’ Alley table and draw sketches for people, and then another con flies me somewhere else. I just ask them to extend my stay past the weekend in either direction, instead of paying me an appearance fee. So, technically, if you’re asking me my permanent residence…” I looked around the lobby, spotted Spider-Man snoozing in the corner, and jerked a thumb at him. “You’re looking at it.”

  Twitch’s eyes had narrowed quizzically at the beginning of my explanation and remained so. “But there are no comic cons during, like, Christmas weekend. Or New Year’s. Where do you go when there is no con?”

  “I…I have my car.”

  “Your car,” Sam said.

 
“You live out of your car,” Twitch said.

  “Only when I absolutely have to. Around the holidays, like you said. When my parents are truly driving me crazy and I can’t deal staying with them.”

  “Where is your car now?” Twitch said. “Is it in Cleveland?”

  “No, Newark Airport,” I said. “Long-term parking.”

  “So your permanent residence is in Newark?”

  “It’s where my mail gets sent.”

  “To your car?”

  “To a UPS Store.”

  “Huh,” Twitch said. “You’re like a gypsy.”

  “Or a hobo,” Sam said.

  “Okay, okay, I feel like we’re focusing too much on the residency thing,” Twitch said, raising his hand to forestall an objection no one was making. “We’ll get your cell phone number and that’s how we’ll get in touch with you if we need to. So can you tell us your whereabouts from, let’s say, eight p.m. yesterday evening to…well, when the desk clerk phoned you in your hotel room.”

  “Be as detailed as you can be,” Sam said.

  I blinked. “Why?”

  “Generally speaking, sir, we prefer to ask the questions. Gets everyone home quicker that way.”

  “Those of us with homes,” Twitch said.

  “You know a Daniel Lieber?” Sam said, glancing down at his notes. “Also known as Danny Lieber?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Professionally,” I said. “He was my editor for many years.”

  “An editor—for comic books?”

  “Right.”

  “Was this before or after he was fucking your wife?” Sam said without expression.

  I looked at him slowly. I made sure to match his expression​lessness.

  “Before,” I said.

  Reading from the Book of Special Thoughts, Twitch said, “Sir, witnesses say they saw you drinking at the poolside bar at the Marriott Marquis down the street here from about nine p.m. to about eleven-thirty this evening, is that correct?”