The Con Artist

by Fred Van Lente

  “Sounds about right.”

  “And where did you go after you left the Marriott?”

  “After you were thrown out, we heard,” Sam said.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Is that piece of shit pressing charges against me? After everything else he’s done to ruin my life? You’ve got to be kidding me. I didn’t lay a finger on him!”

  “Not for lack of trying,” Sam said.

  “Mr. Lieber was found dead by a bunch of folks in costume trying to take a picture on the steps of the convention center at just a few minutes past midnight,” Twitch said.

  “Shot,” Sam said. “Twice. In a very unfriendly fashion.”

  I looked at the cops.

  The cops looked at me.

  “Are you serious?”

  “No,” Sam said, “this is all part of our stand-up comedy routine. Which we practice late at night in random hotel rooms to audiences of one.”

  The world narrowed then, becoming very cold and small and focused on the men sitting directly in front of me.

  “Where did you go after the Marriott?” Twitch asked again, more gently this time.

  I didn’t know what else to do other than answer. “I…I got in a pedicab outside the hotel and asked the driver to take me…somewhere. We rode around for maybe an hour. We hung out at that big statue, out by the battleship, what is it called? The Kiss.”

  “It’s called Embracing Peace,” Sam said.

  “We’re very proud of our landmarks here in San Diego,” Twitch said.

  “Big military presence here in town.”

  My brain was only now beginning to resynchronize with reality. “I support…uh. I support the troops,” I said, almost like a sleepwalker.

  “I’m sure that means a lot to them. Then what did you do?”

  “Then I asked her to take me back here, and I went to bed. Must’ve been just after midnight.”

  Twitch’s ballpoint pen hovered over a fresh page in the Book of Special Thoughts. “The driver was a woman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You get her name?”

  “No. She said…she said she was from Poland?”

  “A lot of people are,” Sam said.

  “Polish people, mostly,” Twitch said.

  Sam said, “Did you catch the name of the company on the side of the cart?”

  “No.”

  “You pay with a credit card?”

  “Cash, I think.”

  “You think. You get a receipt?” Twitch asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Sam and Twitch looked at each other.

  “Well,” Twitch said, putting his pen down without having written anything.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said suddenly, with more force than I meant to. “Do I have to say it out loud?”

  “Doesn’t hurt,” Twitch said.

  “Doesn’t help much either,” Sam said.

  * * *

  – – – –

  “I…” I looked at the ground, then looked at the detectives.

  “Yeah?” Twitch said.

  “I think I should get a lawyer before talking more to you guys,” I said.

  “Why? Have you done something wrong?” Sam said.

  The instantaneous way it came out of his mouth, like an actor responding to a cue, led me to believe he had offered that response to the same question the same way many, many times before.

  “No,” I said, but then that was pretty much all I had. Flop sweat had broken out on my brow, which made me nervous, which caused flop sweat to break out on top of the original flop sweat, and so on, in the usual manner of flop sweat.

  “Look.” Twitch held up his hand again—I was such a pathetic suspect that the detectives felt like they needed to help me along a little bit. “You can absolutely have a lawyer present if that’s what you want, but as a legal requirement that only comes into play if we place you under arrest. But, you see, we haven’t arrested you for anything.”

  “So,” Sam said, “no lawyer.”

  “So then I don’t have to talk to you guys?” I said.

  “You’re asking me?” Twitch said. “You’re asking me, I would say, I would really like it, and in general it’s in your best interest, and if you’re interested in finding out who killed your friend, your editor, and see that person brought up on charges, then you most definitely should speak with us. But no, you have no legal obligation to speak to us, no.”

  “Of course, we have no legal obligation to not arrest you,” Sam said, and smiled as soon as he saw understanding sink into my face.

  “You’d need a charge,” I said even as the threat center in my brain finally shook off the cobwebs and punched the Emergency Alarm button, alerting my mouth to the idea that perhaps being so argumentative with the police was not the wisest of strategies.

  “That we would,” Twitch said.

  “Say, what do you have there in your Book of Special Thoughts, partner?” Sam said.

  Twitch looked down at the Moleskine. “Oh, hey look, ‘no permanent residence.’ It says it right here. See?”

  “Uh-oh.” Sam didn’t take his gaze off me. “The charge would be vagrancy, then.”

  I scowled. “I have a hotel room.”

  Twitch said patiently, “A vagrant, in the strictest sense, is a person with no fixed residence or income.”

  “ ‘Idle’ is what the law books say,” Sam said.

  “Who travels from place to place, living off the charity of others.”

  “That’s kind of like, literally what you just told us you do.”

  “And vagrancy is illegal within the metropolitan limits of the city of San Diego.”

  “Then you’d have to arrest half the people at this convention,” I said.

  “We don’t have to do anything,” Twitch snapped.

  “Just like you,” Sam said.

  “But we’d like you to talk to us.”

  “That’s a very strong like.”

  “So what do you say we start all over again, at square one, in the cooperation department? And you tell us your movements between eight p.m. yesterday until now, like I asked in the first place. Or we could go down to our offices, which I would really rather not do, because, frankly, the cushions there are lumpy as shit.”

  I didn’t need to think about it long.

  “Sure. Just let me get some coffee.”

  Sam and Twitch didn’t say anything as I stood up and walked over to the array of thermoses on a marble countertop to one side of the front desk. Wonder Clerk didn’t look up from her computer. Nor did the security guard from his phone. The cops watched me the way a house cat on a windowsill watches a robin hopping across the front lawn.

  But they looked up when I pressed on the plunger of the Space Thermos and out hissed a thin stream of brownish water, as if milked from the barren udders of the world’s oldest cow. My efforts barely yielded enough alleged coffee to cover my thumbnail.

  Yet somehow this puddle of caffeine represented the last remnants of my autonomy and dignity and I clung to it like a cherished heirloom. I very deliberately walked over to Wonder Clerk. She looked up long before I got there because my bare feet went slap-suck-slap-suck on the marble.

  “Your coffee needs refilling,” I said.

  “At six,” Wonder Clerk said.

  “Good,” I said, but didn’t know why.

  And then I walked back to the couch and sat across from the detectives.

  * * *

  – – – –

  The Space Janitor showed up to replace the Space Lobby’s Space Coffee just as the night sky filled with light and I wrapped up with the cops. I went back to my hotel room, which was still dark except for the narrow sliver of dawn where the curtains didn’t quite overlap.

  I kic
ked my jeans off and got under the covers and laid my head on the pillow and didn’t sleep. I was frightened and anxious and depressed and angry all at the same time. Once I was relatively confident they weren’t going to arrest me on the spot, I was able calm down a bit and outlined my movements as best I could. I know they say never talk to the cops without a lawyer present, but I did it for the same reason everyone else does: it was the quickest way to get rid of them. Any more tactical misfires and I would have spent the better part of the first day of Comic-Con in the police station, and the first day of Comic-Con was when I filled up my commission list and made most of my money. There was no way I was going to miss that.

  I did not hold anything back. I told them about going to wait for Sebastian Mod in lieu of going to Christine’s karaoke party. I told them about spotting Danny Lieber and our non-fight and me getting thrown out of the Marquis. After that I had no one to back up my story except the faux archeologist pedicab driver and the half-coherent homeless people we passed along the waterfront on our way to Embracing Peace.

  Sam and Twitch looked like they believed me. But I bet they were old hands at looking like they believed people.

  They left without taking me with them, so I had that going for me at least. They took my cell phone number and gave me their business cards and told me to contact them if I thought of or learned anything else that might be relevant to the case. (They didn’t say “case,” they said “incident,” but I had seen too many TV shows to not think of it as a “case.”)

  They asked the time and flight number for my plane out of town, which was to Austin on Monday, where I was supposed to attend the Lone Star Comic Con starting on Friday. Every answer I gave, including that one, was probably preceded by a hesitation, as I subconsciously considered lying, but in the end I was completely earnest with them.

  I jokingly asked, as they left, if I was going to make my flight, and they did not laugh back. I got the distinct impression I was still under suspicion, if not under arrest. Yet.

  The con floor didn’t open for another four hours. Because I had nothing else better to do, and I wanted to purge my mind of the image, I gave up on sleeping and got out of bed and opened the curtains to let in the dead-channel early-morning Southern California sky.

  I sat at the writing desk with my sketchbook and pencil and roughed out the scene of the crime as best as I understood it from the cops’ description. They answered only a third or so of my questions about the murder—mostly, I imagined, because they were in the information-gathering business, not the information-sharing business. If I was the killer, they wouldn’t want me to know how much they knew.

  But I knew enough to know this:

  The Dante’s Fire cosplayers gathered to take their photo at a few minutes before midnight, with an iPad-wielding Official Observer from the Guinness Book of World Records standing close at hand. This allowed for the cops’ timetable to be unusually exact for what transpired.

  The primary character they were dressed as was Ulee-o, a kind of steampunk stealth pilot in a full-body helmet and goggles, with lots of patches and weapons and things all over his costume. The guy with the clipboard who had accosted me outside the convention center was dressed the same way. This was the most beloved character in the series, cosplayed as often by women as men. There would be other major Dante’s Fire characters in the record-breaking picture, a smattering of Dantes and Fergies, but mostly one would see Ulee-os of all the genders, fat Ulee-os, black Ulee-os, Asian Ulee-os, immigrant Ulee-os, Ulee-os in wheelchairs, Ulee-os with service dogs, mommy Ulee-os carrying baby Ulee-os in Babybjörns strapped to their chests.

  Near midnight the horde of Ulee-os gathered in the middle of the San Diego Convention Center, where a long row of steps leads to the Sails Pavilion. The kilt-wearing judge made the final count and the photographer’s tripod was set up and he began to take pictures.

  But then the top row of Ulee-os stopped looking at the camera; they looked up instead, at the Sails Pavilion, the white circus-tent upper terrace running across the top of the convention center. A figure emerged, staggering, uncertain, assumed to be drunk at first. But after the figure pitched forward and half the Ulee-os cried out in surprise and shock, he skidded face-first down the stairs and finally slid to a halt in the erupting, screaming mass. The snail trail of crimson he left behind was clearly visible.

  At this point he was surrounded by a pandemonium of Ulee-os, some trying to help until discovering he was beyond help. The Guinness judge held down his kilt demurely as he ran across the trolley tracks to a pair of uniformed SDPD, their attention drawn to the eruption of cries and wondering whether it was something or just a bunch of adolescents freaking out for no comprehensible reason, which happens during Comic-Con every ten minutes.

  It was Danny Lieber. He had been shot in the chest and once in the back for good measure. The blood trail suggested he had been attacked somewhere between the rear of the convention center and the Marquis and somehow managed to make it up the stairs at the rear of the building and across the Sails Pavilion to the steps on the other side before running out of life.

  I finished my rendering of the scene and set my pencil aside. I often found I could purge emotions by setting their cause down on paper, but a dull ache in my heart remained. I had little love for Danny Lieber. But still. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit guilty about his death. Though I didn’t actually kill him, was it possible my hatred for him caused the karmic climate that allowed him to be killed?

  I was even guiltier for being angry that Danny Lieber had, in going out and getting himself murdered on the first day of Comic-Con, managed to screw over an artist, me, while doing so, like he had screwed over artists every day of his miserable life. How appropriate. He was like a bee, lancing a fatal sting with his last breath.

  But I was innocent. The cops wouldn’t find any evidence that I did do it, so I was in the clear, right?

  Right?

  * * *

  – – – –

  Fittingly for Comic-Con, the first thing I saw when I walked out of the airlock of my Space Hotel was a line. It stretched all the way from the convention center across the street to the front doors of the hotel and curved around to the edge of the harbor and followed the water along the marina as far as I could see, behind the enormous big-topped concrete building. Most line-goers had prepared for the merciless Southern California sun, holding umbrellas and sitting in nylon folding chairs or hiding beneath tents or blue lean-tos on stilts. Encamped like refugees waiting for safe passage, they mingled with the actual homeless who passed out on the lawns between the snaking queues, clothes faded from the sun, skin baked to the color of orange brick.

  A steampunk alchemist whose breasts peered over the uppermost edge of her lung-constricting corset walked up to a blood-soaked Ash standing in line. He was looking at his chain-saw arm as if trying to figure out how to scratch his nose with it.

  “What are you in line for?” she asked him.

  “Hasbro booth. Comic-Con exclusive figure.”

  “What is it this year?”

  Ash looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Who cares?”

  I waited patiently, one amongst the horde, for the SDPD traffic cop to let us ooze relentlessly across the street to the convention center. Six or seven massive high-arched white tents had been erected on the narrow lawn out front. I wasn’t sure if this was the same line in front of the Bayfront or another one, with an army of fans of all ages and races waiting droop-shouldered for their anointed hour. Others sat crosslegged on the sidewalk and played Uno or Magic: The Gathering. I passed a pony-tailed woman in thick glasses arguing with a yellow-T-shirted Eastboro Baptist megaphoner. They grinned contemptuous smiles at each other as one waited for the other to stop talking so they could start, neither one listening to a word the other said.

  Violent Violet was waiting for me at my table when I arrived. She bent her rig
ht arm and was pushing her hand into the end of her left stump. I wasn’t sure if this was an isometric strength exercise or simply her way of “crossing” her arms, but I was pretty sure it’d be rude to ask. She had added a purple con-volunteer oxford and a four-day badge to her postapocalypse warrior woman’s ensemble.

  “Good morning!” she cried. “I brought your things from your storage unit; sorry I couldn’t make it back last night. I had, uh, stuff. How was your night?”

  “Uh…” I blinked. “Ask a different question.”

  The first thing I did was unzip the carrier and take out my banner. It was rolled up inside its stand, with its collapsible stake inside. I pulled it up and held it aloft. Like most artists’ banners, mine featured the two characters I was most associated with: Mister Mystery and good ol’ Gut Check, duking it out with killer robots and ninjas, with my name emblazoned over the top.

  I removed a black felt dropcloth from my knapsack and draped it over the tabletop. I laid out my prints on the table, also mostly of Mister Mystery and Gut Check, but there was a Boba Fett I particularly liked as well as a Supergirl.

  “Do you need anything? Water? Food? Do you want me to sit at your table so you can use the men’s room?”

  The throb of my hangover lanced through the dull ache of my general depression, demanding tribute. “Actually, if you could find me some Tylenol, you would become my personal superhero.”

  “On it,” Violent Violet said with an intensity usually reserved for ’80s action-movie heroes. In her zeal to execute her mission, she nearly knocked over the Donnie Darko bunny shambling down the aisle.

  “What’s her deal?” Katie asked from the next table. “The con didn’t assign me a valet. Why are you so special?”

  I just shrugged, wincing because it made my head ache. “Miss Poole, I live my life by what I call the Ghostbusters principle: if someone asks if you are a god, always say yes.”

  * * *

  – – – –

  There are various types you always see at every con, no matter where in the country, or the world, the show is being held. The vast majority of fans are the nicest people you could ever meet; they just want to come up to your table, shake your hand, get some comics signed, buy some new ones, take a picture with you, tell you how much your work means to them, ask you about why you made this or that choice in a story, ask you what you’re working on next, and so on. A lot of pros grumble about going to conventions but I figure if you have a problem with sitting behind a table for a weekend letting people tell you how great you are, the problem isn’t with cons, it’s with you.