“Thanks.” We shared a manly one-armed hug.
Allan shook his head. “These things come in threes. I’m waiting for the next shoe to drop.”
“What do you mean?”
“First Ben K, then Danny last night. Deaths, they’re like waiting for a bus. Nothing comes forever, then wham—a bunch show up at once.”
Anger welled up inside me at the thought that the tragic passing of Ben K, who was one of the most generous, gifted men I had ever known, would now be forever intertwined with the random killing of my archnemesis Danny Lieber, who was, um, not.
I had to figure out some way to change the subject before I said something I’d regret. I nodded at the projections on the opposite building. “I had no idea Ben was one of the people you were helping.”
“Yeah, well…” Allan cast a conspiratorial eye around the terrace then leaned in close. “We weren’t until very recently. I don’t need to tell you Atlas is one of our bigger corporate sponsors. I’m ashamed to say out loud what percentage of our annual operating budget comes directly from them.”
“You mean so you can help out the freelancers who don’t get a pension or retirement benefits from them? Yeah, they’re great humanitarians.”
Allan rolled his shoulders. “It is what it is. And you know, Ben K was suing them to get the rights to Mister Mystery back.”
“I had heard that, yeah. Well, now I guess Becca will have to decide whether or not to continue with the suit.”
Allan frowned. “You don’t know?”
“I doubt it. I’ve been trying to get her on the phone, but it’s been impossible to get through.”
“You didn’t hear it from me, but they settled.”
“No! Really? Out of court? Ben K didn’t get the rights back, did he?”
“Hell, no. Ira Pearl would give up his left nut first. But supposedly—I mean, what Ben K told me was that Atlas would actively help him recover his stolen artwork.”
“Stolen artwork?”
“Yeah, he must have told you about it sometime. All those original Mister Mystery pages, I mean the seminal stories—the Atlas executives, they would just give them away. To licensors, you know like toy company guys, foreign rights holders, producers who maybe might make a movie. Anybody who dropped by the offices in New York. A lot of them started popping up on the art market in the past year or two, and Ben caught wind of it. Atlas said they’d do their best to help him get that art back if he dropped the suit. I mean, it’s not like paying his lawyers hadn’t completely ruined him in the first place. Getting his art back and selling it would have gone a long way to building a nest egg.”
“I just…” I blinked. “I had no idea he was in so much financial trouble. I just wish…” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say “I wish he had come to me” out loud.
Allan patted me on the shoulder. “Keep your chin up, man. He is in a better place. I do know that. Buy a raffle ticket! Buy ten!”
“Okay, okay, sure,” I said, but I was already lost in thought as Allan peeled away to join another conversation. Why did Ben K have to reach out to me? Why couldn’t I be the one calling, checking in? This was a direct result of my vagabond ways. I had cut myself off from not only the pain of my past but all the good I could do in the present as well. I almost wanted to cry.
I turned toward the raffle sales table, but then another big-time writer—and, again, I’d rather not say who—patted me on the shoulder and whispered, “Good going, killer.”
Killer? Damn. Danny Lieber was clearly well-loved in the artistic community. I was actually starting to feel sorry for him. He was just a hatchet man for Atlas, really. It’s not like he woke up every morning plotting new ways to backstab his coworkers.
More disconcerting was the idea that everyone naturally assumed I was the one who did him in, as payback for the Christine Incident. Were the cops assuming this too? I no longer felt so sanguine about the decisions I had made today. My head throbbed in irritation.
Then I spotted Sebastian Mod hanging out on the other side of the pool, and the throbbing only increased. He wore a purple suit, purple shirt, purple shoes. His perfectly round bald head gleamed like a snowball. He was talking to a group of artists that had twenty-eight Kirby Awards between the five of them.
I strode over and tapped Sebastian on the shoulder. “Where were you last night? I waited for you at the Marriott for hours but you never showed.”
He shook off my complaint as a parent would a child’s. “You know how the con hours ebb and flow. I got caught up in the whitewater rapids of confluence and wound up at Christine’s karaoke birthday thing. I was a little surprised not to find you there, to be honest.”
I summoned all the strength I could to keep my voice down. “I don’t know why you would be surprised at that. Because you told me to meet you at the Marquis.”
“My friend.” He clapped both hands on my shoulders. “Learn to live in the moment, huh? You have to let the universe provide, you’ll be a lot happier. Stress is a side effect of resisting destiny. You’re here now, I’m here now, so let’s talk now. Step into my office.”
He led me to an empty corner of the terrace that looked down on the yawning expanse of Petco Park below. The Padres never played in their downtown stadium during Comic-Con at the pleading of every traffic cop in San Diego County, and this weekend the ballpark had been taken over by an obstacle course sponsored by Cell Block Z, the popular cable show about attractive rapists and murderers trading witty banter while fending off a zombie apocalypse inside a surprisingly well-lit maximum security prison. Constructed below on what was usually a baseball diamond was a sprawling jungle gym that sort of looked like a prison, where gnats were chased around by groaning, clawing gnats dressed like zombies.
“So my friend, I hear you’re still walking the Earth like Kung Fu. You have to come in from the cold sometime, though. As a wise man once said, home is where you have to be taken in.”
“I think that quote’s the other way around.”
Sebastian looked genuinely wounded. “What do you mean? That was from my Earth 2 Black Canary OGN. You know it’s become a feminist bible.”
“Really? Do they give out a Kirby Award for mansplaining?”
“Just hear me out,” he said, not so much ignoring the insult whistling over his head as the fact that someone other than him had said something. “I think I have just the project for you to make your triumphant return to monthly comics.”
“I can’t wait to hear it,” I said, and despite my best efforts, that was actually true.
“So Atlas flew me up to Comics Pro, that’s the retailers thing in Portland? Every single shop owner was talking about how we need to get more big name teams on big name books. That sound you hear is Comics Twitter collectively jizzing when it is announced that you and Sebastian Mod are teaming up for a twelve-issue maxi-run on…
“Wait for it…
“…Mister Mystery.”
I blinked. “Mister Mystery?”
Sebastian wagged his pale blonde eyebrows. “I know. Genius, right?”
“Sebastian…I already pencilled Mister Mystery for three years.”
“I know, that’s why it’s genius. Make your triumphant return, like Frank Miller when he came back to do ‘Born Again’ in Daredevil. Bring back those lapsed readers. I’ve already pitched this idea to Atlas and they creamed their jeans. Heidi Macdonald at The Beat has already promised me an exclusive interview. Don’t quote me but I bet you could name your rate.”
“Isn’t that Katie Poole’s regular gig?”
“Not for long.” Sebastian thew up his hands. “You didn’t hear it from me. And for God’s sake, don’t leak it to Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool. I’m going to do that on Tuesday.”
“She’s leaving?”
“Not voluntarily.” I must have visibly paled because Sebastian added quic
kly, “She’s just not working out, it’s really a shame. She’s not ready for prime time. Circ has dropped by twelve, thirteen percent since she came on board.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, but…” The gravity of the month-to-month circulation of serialized comic books was as constant and inexorable as the gravity between planets and stars. Even on the most successful series, you’d hope to bottom out at a two to four percent monthly negative drop rate. What Sebastian was describing was unusual, but well at the high end of normal parameters, and couldn’t necessarily be attributed to one specific factor.
Which was why when I said, “…correlation versus causation, man,” Sebastian knew exactly what I meant.
“No, no, I have a feel for these things,” he said. He pointed at the elderly faces projected on the building next to us. “You know how we don’t wind up like those poor penniless schlubs up there, begging for fans to pay for our hip replacements? You stay one step ahead of everybody else. The editors, the retailers, the fans, everybody. That is the one thing that has kept my head above water in this business: I can sense vibrations. Like a small animal that starts running from the earthquake hours before it hits.”
“Is that like a Spider-Sense type of deal or do you have the Shining?”
Sebastian jerked his head at Katie, who held a Sprite in her hand and was chatting with some people by the bar. “I mean, clearly she’s sweating it. Don’t take my word for it, look at how much weight she’s gained.”
“Dude, she’s pregnant.”
“It’s rude to just assume that.”
“She is, she’s like seven months along.”
“You can’t tell that just by looking at her.”
“I’m…” I closed my eyes, mustering patience. “Sebastian, she told me to my face. Because I am psychologically capable of having a conversation that’s not about myself.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Sebastian snapped. He got a far-off look. “Okay, okay. This could work in our favor. They’re going to need a fill-in artist for at least two issues; it’s not like she’s going to go into labor and then start roughing out thumbnails the next day. So we bring you on to fill in, make a big deal of it. Atlas maybe can even get us on one of those morning talk shows the network owns, put some asses in seats. And then, you know, you just don’t leave. This could be a killer strategy. Danny could never get rid of her himself, you know, politically, because she made up that bullshit sexual harassment story a couple years back. Optics of that would have been terrible. But this…Everyone’s happy.”
“Everyone except Katie.”
“I know, it’s awful, it’s unfair. She’s great, I’m a huge fan of hers, but the market, you know? In the world I want to live in, Martin Luther King and John Lennon would have died in their beds. I would have taken the bullets for them both. But that’s not the world we live in.” He spread his hands. “The market isn’t responding to her.”
The great god Market, to whom all the petty, selfish acts of Man are offerings.
“Even setting Katie aside for a second, I don’t think I’m ready to get back into the monthly grind. I did that for seven years, it wore me down to a nub and basically ruined my marriage.”
“I bet you’re going nuts, sitting on the sidelines. C’mon, what do you say? Are you in or out?”
“Out.”
“Stop screwing around. You joining this Round Table of Knights of Totally Fucking Awesome or not?”
“Not.”
“Final offer, take it or leave it.”
“I’m leaving it.”
Sebastian looked unblinking at me for a second.
Then he held up a hand. “What if—”
“Sebastian, I’m not drawing your book, okay?”
He pointed a finger at me. “Don’t think I’m giving up this easy.” And then he walked away.
I was about to leave too, but when I turned around I found myself looking at Christine Black for the first time in three years.
“Hey, you,” I said, eloquently.
* * *
– – – –
“Hey, you.” She looked incredible, which she always did, which I couldn’t help but take personally now. Her bangs were cut à la Clara Bow while her hair went long in the back. She was in a black and gray cocktail dress and high heels, with minimal makeup. She was half German and half Japanese, which prompted me to call her “The Axis” in the first few weeks of our relationship until she made it clear how unfunny she thought that joke was.
She was smiling at me now, though, which was relatively unique in our recent history.
“The cops chat with you too?” she asked.
“Yeah. You—they talked to you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Someone at the Marquis must have told them about the, uh, incident. Three years ago. These two detectives asked me where I was at the time of the murder. Just like in the movies.”
“You have a pretty good alibi.”
“Yeah, surrounded by twenty people in a karaoke bar will do that. Mostly they wanted to talk about you, though.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah, whether you beat me, whether you were always homeless, that sort of thing.”
“And of course you told them yes.”
Her eyes twinkled. “It was tempting. Maybe. Just a little. But no. I told them you weren’t really the crime of passion type.” She took a sip of her vodka tonic. “Or the legal acts of passion type, for that matter.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I’m here for you.”
“You…I mean, did you get the impression that they think I did it? Everyone else here does.”
The ice in Christine’s glass tinkled when she shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. They asked me a whole bunch of general questions too. If you put a gun to my head I’d say they have no clue who did it and they’re just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks.”
“They searched my hotel room too. Jesus. I just don’t know what to do…”
Christine looked down at her feet. “I don’t want to add to your worries, but I don’t want you to hear it secondhand. This business is so small, the gossip travels faster than at an old folks’ home.” She took a deep breath and looked at me. “Sebastian and I are…together.”
I knew the meaning of all those words, but they didn’t mean anything to me strung together. “Sebastian? You mean—Sebastian Mod Sebastian?”
“Yeah. You know we were pals from the old Warren Ellis message boards, and I’d moved to L.A., and, you know. You know.”
“Do I?”
She looked into her glass. “I didn’t know if he had already told you when you were out last night, but, before it slips out of nowhere, you know how he is…”
“He and I didn’t meet last night. He went to your karaoke thing instead.”
Christine frowned, puzzled. “Okay. Well when he showed up late to my party he said he had been at the Marriott. With you.”
“Trust,” I said cheerily. “It’s a two-way street.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “Well, fuck you too, then. Okay, I just came over to tell you that and say I’m glad you’re not in prison, and I hope you remain that way. Oh, and there are divorce papers waiting for you in your mail drop in New Jersey whenever you want to stop playing wandering ronin and go back to get them. My lawyer wanted to serve you as you stepped off a plane or something, but I thought that was a bit aggressive.” She blinked through wet eyes. “My bad. I shouldn’t have come over here. We really should only talk through the lawyers.”
Like all our fights, this one seemed to spring up from nowhere. As always the rumblings had been on the horizon, ignored as nasty jokes were traded until one actually landed, followed by a flash flood of invective. “No, I’m sorry. It’s cool. It’s—”
“No. No, it’s really not.” She trott
ed off toward the ladies’ room, head bowed.
I could feel my heart dissolving into a mixture of black bile and ash, melting away into a bottomless cavity that had opened up in my chest.
I had to leave this party right now—even if it meant jumping off the roof to do it.
* * *
– – – –
Anger made me deaf, dumb, and blind for the whole elevator ride back down. It wasn’t until I was halfway to the door that I snapped back to reality, which in this instance was the two huge dudes who had chased me into the lobby, and about whom I had completely forgotten, barreling toward me like runaway trains with “MEH” tattoos.
“Wait right there!” one roared in a tone that inclined me to do the opposite. I was already almost to the front door anyway, so I sprinted outside and tore down the sidewalk.
At the end of the block loomed the colossal bulk of Petco Park. A pair of teenage workers in prison guard uniforms patrolled the gates with plastic truncheons. “Last call,” one of them yelled. “Last call for the Cell Block Z: Dead Men Running!”
I turned to look behind me and saw the big dudes tearing down the street in my direction. I leaped onto a parked car and slid across so I’d have the straightest beeline into the ballpark. I was able to jump onto and swing my legs across the fold-out table where more security guards were checking bags. It was late and the employees were tired and looking everywhere but at me, so I was able to push through the turnstiles and into the park before anyone could stop me.
Just beyond the gate the last stragglers of the evening, con-goers squealing in anticipatory fear, boarded a bus blocking the field. Steel grating covered the windows. As we filed on board, speakers growled: “Your crimes have been deemed severe enough that you have been sentenced to the highest-security facility in the federal prison system, San Lazarus Penitentiary, for the rest of your natural lives.” We entered on the driver’s side and were supposed to walk down the aisle until we reached the open rear door at the opposite end. Plexiglas barriers prevented anyone from sitting in the empty seats.
I tried to look through the window screens, but it was impossible to see if the bikers had followed me. I was going to pause for a second longer but a teenage boy bumped into me and the whole bus shook violently, causing everyone inside, including me, to jump and scream.
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