The Con Artist

by Fred Van Lente

  Around 23:22 on the ticking timestamp, the camera owned by the preacher positioned near the bottom of the staircase that led up to the Sails Pavilion began to register the arrival of the Dante’s Fire cosplayers, gathering for their Guinness World Record photo op. By 23:36 they were completely filling the screen, multiplying in the speeded-up tape like horny rabbits until the Baptist’s-eye view was surrounded and the only thing you could see other than anime characters was the trolley station across Harbor.

  At 23:45, I saw it. “Wait, go back.”

  Tasha froze the images. “What am I looking for?”

  “This guy, this…ninja? See him? As he goes past the camera?” I pointed to a figure heading up the steps; he was clad from head to toe in a plastic arm and a sort of modified black bicycle helmet with fins on it. He was completely ignoring the other cosplayers and plunging up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  “You mean Ulee-o?” Tasha said. “The tall one?”

  “Yeah—oh, whoa, do you recognize that guy? Do you know what his name is?”

  Tasha blinked in surprise. “Yeah, his name is Ulee-o. The archnemesis slash secret love interest of Dante. And I do mean slash, as in inspiring some of the steamiest slash fiction ever masturbated to.”

  “Once again: please assume I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Tasha gasped in horror, as if I’d just confessed to war crimes. “You’ve never seen Dante’s Fire?”

  “I know, I know, I’m history’s greatest monster. Just scroll back, okay? I want to see something.”

  She rolled back the footage. Ulee-o walked backward very quickly down the stairs and through the wall of cosplayers, then through the traffic on Harbor. He made it across the railroad tracks just as the trolley backed up in front of him, paused briefly, then reversed out of frame. Just barely I could see him walking backward, disappearing into the Gaslamp Quarter.

  “Can you freeze just this screen here?”

  “Pffft, don’t insult me.”

  “Okay, great, do that and—let the other ones roll forward at normal speed. He goes up to the Sails Pavilion. Let’s see if he pops up anywhere else.”

  Tasha did as I asked, and neither of us realized we were holding our breath.

  “There,” she said suddenly, rising halfway out of her seat. She paused the cornermost screen that seemed to depict the southeast corner of the convention center, the camera trained on my hotel, the Bayfront, across the street.

  She froze the image on what appeared to be the same Ulee-o running from right to left across the screen, throwing his completely masked head around to look behind him. The listed timestamp was 23:54.

  “Yeah, that looks like him, all right,” I said. Tasha rolled back the image until Ulee-o disappeared out of the frame. She then let it play at regular speed and Ulee-o ran past the camera and disappeared as fast as he could in the direction of the Gaslamp Quarter.

  “Okay, okay, great,” I said. “Now roll that back and freeze it—and give me that other one just as he’s climbing the steps.”

  Tasha nodded. I had my sketchbook in my hand and captured the entire monitor in just a few minutes.

  “You know you could just take a picture of the screen with your cell phone,” Tasha said.

  “I guess. But this is more second nature to me. I’ve been doing this since long before cell phones.”

  “Why is this so important to you?”

  I talked as fast as I drew. “See how this guy shows up—at a run—from the Gaslamp? He goes up the steps and completely ignores the cosplayers. He wants people to think he’s participating in the Dante’s Fire picture, but he doesn’t register with the Guinness judge who’s standing over there in the kilt; he just goes right up to those steps. Those steps lead not just to the Sails Pavilion but to the harbor area that runs all the way along the back of the convention center. He’s looking to waylay this guy—Danny Lieber—you hear about the murdered guy? Kills him, and by the time Danny staggers over to where the cosplayers are, this guy is running around the convention center at the other end, by the Bayfront—see?”

  Tasha looked at me glassy-eyed.

  I lifted my pencil off the page and looked back. “What?”

  “You really are Iron Fist,” she said, and snapped a photo of me with her cell phone.

  * * *

  – – – –

  Dirtbag had been hanging back, watching me in the tent from afar, but texted to let me know he was headed to Petco to get his zombie on. It was just as well because I had to return to the con and be on a Comics to Film panel, where some guy spent the Q&A session chewing me out about the differences between Gut Check the movie and Gut Check the comic, as if I had any real control over the former. After the panel I signed a bunch of autographs and left the hall by a side entrance and that’s when I saw them.

  Down the long hallway, dressed in identical black jeans and leather jackets, came my pursuers from the other night. In the better light of day, the letters MEH in Gothic script stood out more vividly around their necks. They limped shoulder to shoulder—on opposite feet each wore a plastic orthopedic boot that reached to midcalf, protection for injuries I presumed they suffered at the Cell Block Z immersive last night that I may or may not have had something to do with.

  “C’mere,” the one on the left yelled, “we just want to talk.”

  Uh, no thank you. This was just too weird.

  I held up a “not right now” hand and looked for the nearest exit:

  And that’s when I saw her.

  Long blonde ponytail.

  Sunglasses.

  Archeologist khakis.

  It was her.

  The mystery pedicabbie.

  My alibi.

  And I let her walk just past me in the direction of the bikers, to whom she handed out a small, square flier like she was handing everyone else. The human juggernauts just ignored her and kept their beady eyes fixated on me.

  I put my advantage of two functioning ankles to good use, skipping around the MEH twins as they tried to lunge for me. I called out to the back of the driver’s head, “Hey—uh—stop!” But in the glass cavern of the upstairs meeting room every noise echoed into incoherence and she didn’t budge or turn her braided head.

  At that moment a pair of ceiling-high double doors opened and disgorged a torrent of humanity dressed as wolves—a wolf in a polka-dot bikini, a wolf in green fairy wings, a wolf in a monocle and top hat—with quite a number of young women, and one or two men, in crimson capes and scarlet fishnets. Using my keen powers of deduction, I reasoned that the Red Riding Hood: Werewolf Hunter YA novel trilogy/Freeform show/Telltale Games series/Dynamite comic book/scented candles/protein bar panel had just let out of Hall H, and I was now trapped in the outflow.

  I wasn’t the only one. The driver was embedded a bit farther down the slow-moving mass. I tried to push my way through the horde of furries to get to her, but it was like drowning in a bead of mercury: wolves and hoods kept shifting to block any avenue I might have to advance.

  I looked behind me and my heart sank. The bikers plowed directly into the mob, whatever disadvantage they had from their giant boots now completely removed. They were able to cleave the crowd like a snowplow, elbowing nerds without even raising their elbows, just batting them aside with the meat bumpers that were their corded arms.

  We minced as a group to the escalators and the pedicabbie got funneled downstairs, with me and the bikers right behind her, albeit behind by ten or so werewolves each. The bikers tried to push their way down the stairs but even they realized that any rough stuff would send quite a few Big Bad Wolves and not-so-little Red Riding Hoods flipping over the railings for a long drop with a short stop. Their advance stopped to a crawl.

  I could see the lobby floor of the main convention center, similarly crammed with humanity. The pedicabbie got off
the escalator long before me, and the bikers were still inching in my direction; they would catch up to me long before I caught up to her. I was getting desperate as they squeezed down, a drip-drip-drip of fleshy white dude.

  Jesus. This was History’s Slowest Chase Scene.

  At the very bottom of the escalator passed a half dozen cosplayers, with a clever theme: they were all dressed in black suits and ties like Reservoir Dogs but wore different colored Spider-Man masks: Original Flavor, Venom, Carnage, Scarlet Spider, Spider-Man 2099, and Spider-Man Noir.

  The bikers were just one or two steps above me, reaching for the back of my shirt.

  That’s when inspiration hit.

  “Wow, you guys look great,” I cried as soon as I stepped off the escalator, pulling out my phone. “Can I take a picture?”

  “Absolutely,” Venom said. They all immediately stopped in their tracks and vogued, Charlie’s Angels style, web-shooters pointing in various directions, as I held my phone to my face. Half the fans around me oohed and aahed and stopped dead in their tracks too.

  Unfortunately, they stopped right in front of the escalator, and every human being on it was fed directly into them, including the bikers. Soon they were all on top of one another in a cursing, yelling mass on the floor.

  Sometimes I impress me.

  I put down my phone and dashed into the crowd. The downstairs lobby was much more spacious than the halls above, and I was able to duck and weave around eight girls dressed in Japanese schoolboys’ uniforms sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor for no discernible reason. I finally made it to the pedicabbie and I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  Surprised, she quickly pulled her shoulder out from under my hand and whirled around. I found myself looking at a tall, skinny Filipina wearing sunglasses and a braided blonde wig.

  “Great,” she said cheerily and handed me a flier. “Hope to see you on Saturday!”

  She vanished back into the crowd.

  I looked back at the escalator and made sure the peg-legging bikers were trapped underneath the Reservoir Spideys before losing my own damn self in the crowd.

  Heading out to my hotel to get changed before the Kirbys, I was once again steeped in a flow of human molasses, so I looked at the flier the not-pedicabbie had handed me: It depicted a Slave Leia, chin cocked sneeringly at the camera, holding Jabba the Hut’s severed head on a platter in her left hand and her own chain in her right. The metal leash snaked down and around the neck of a hunky Han Solo kneeling at her side; he was clad in nothing but his black vest, pleading like an S&M client with his dick tucked tastefully between his thighs. “RULE 34 GEEK BURLESQUE,” it said over the top. “Sex-Positive * All Genders/Orientations Welcome * Pop-Up This Saturday Night Only Midnight.”

  There was something strange about the flyer that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  Until I realized that the woman dressed as Slave Leia was my mysterious pedicabbie.

  * * *

  – – – –

  I was happy to finally have a lead on my alibi, but pursuing it would have to wait. Tonight was the Kirby Awards ceremony, the whole reason I came to this con in the first place: to give a now dead man a lifetime achievement award. I went back to my room and changed into a nice pink button-down shirt, then headed over to the Hyatt. The doors opened to the voluminous marble lobby, revealing Sam and Twitch standing there waiting for me.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said.

  “Your name is on the website as a presenter,” Twitch said.

  “We have a few quick follow-up questions, if you wouldn’t mind,” Sam said.

  “What if I did mind?”

  “The questions, they would remain,” Twitch said and spread his hands.

  “That’s what I thought. Let’s find a place to talk.”

  The ground floor of the Hyatt was a labyrinth of high-ceilinged stores, coffee shops, and bars, similar to what you’d find inside a casino. We sat down at an empty table against the wall of one generically fancy drinkery, all mahogany paneling and those low-backed plush armchairs that made you feel like you were slumping no matter how you tried not to.

  “Are you familiar with an individual named Pilar Hernandez?” Sam asked once we’d settled.

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re sure she doesn’t follow you on Facebook?” Twitch said.

  “And Twitter?” Sam said.

  “It’s possible. I have thirty-five thousand Twitter followers and maxed out my Facebook friends last year. I don’t know the name of every single person who follows me.”

  “Uh-huh.” Twitch scratched a few words in the Book of Special Thoughts. “She follows you on both those services, just so you know.”

  “If you say so.”

  “We say so,” Sam said.

  “And you haven’t had any personal contact with Pilar Hernandez since you’ve been here in San Diego?” Twitch said.

  “To my knowledge I’ve never had any personal contact with Pilar Hernandez, period,” I said.

  “To your knowledge,” Sam said.

  “Yes,” I said, my jaw clenching. “I do not know a single thing outside my knowledge.”

  “You don’t remember her tagging you on a Facebook post seven months ago?” Twitch said.

  I cast my memory memory as far back as I could but came up empty. “No, what post?”

  “This one,” Sam said. He produced a large Android phone and turned it toward me. On the screen was a young woman with purple-streaked hair leaning too far into the computer’s mounted camera. Behind her could be seen partial elements of the rest of the room: the corner of an unmade bed, blinds covering a window, a faux travel poster for Hogwarts.

  “This is a message for Danny Lieber and all the smug know-nothings at Atlas Comics,” she said into the camera. “Here’s my latest review of the current arc of Mister Mystery.”

  She stood up, wielding a large dull-gray automatic pistol, and walked out of the room.

  “Holy shit,” I croaked.

  That was it, that was the whole video. But it wasn’t really the gun I was reacting to.

  “Ring any bells?” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” I said, and had to force a swallow down my dry throat before continuing. “She picked me up at the airport. She’s been…volunteering at the con. She said her name was Violet.”

  * * *

  – – – –

  Sam and Twitch were understandably aroused by this comment and grilled me thoroughly over every interaction I’d had with Violent Violet slash Pilar Hernandez since my arrival in San Diego. I told them everything I could think of.

  “It’s just…the time I have spent with her…I have a hard time believing she was doing anything other than blowing off steam,” I said. “Was she really serious?”

  “Atlas Entertainment seemed to think so,” Twitch said. “They took it pretty seriously. They didn’t tell you about it?”

  “No…Maybe the video got taken down before I could see it.”

  “This a pretty common thing for you—death threats?” Sam said.

  “Death threats are uncommon but not unheard of. There’s not a comics fan alive who doesn’t think he can do his favorite characters better than the professionals. Some of them are more strident than others. I guess Violet—uh, Pilar—is reacting to a storyline Katie and Mod did where Mister Mystery gets brainwashed by the villains into becoming a fascist, and his longtime love interest gets knocked off. There was a big sales spike for a hot second. Happens all the time in comics. But then next year they’ll bring her back and everyone will go nuts again and sales will go up one month. Why some fans act like it’s the end of the freaking world every single time they temporarily change or kill off a character I’ll never understand. But then I guess if they weren’t emotional a
bout it, they wouldn’t be fans, right?”

  “You’re saying this is normal?” Sam said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Reviewing a comic book series with a handgun? There is nowhere on Earth that would be normal. No way. Have you been able to find her?”

  “Frankly, if we had Ms. Hernandez in our pocket we wouldn’t be talking to you,” Twitch said. “I don’t think she is a real volunteer. If she has a badge and a volunteer shirt, we’ll have to figure out where she got them.”

  “So if she contacts you or you spot her, call us immediately,” Sam said, handing me his card again.

  “Absolutely. And you’re gonna warn Katie Poole too, right?” I said.

  “And Mr., uh, Mod, yes.”

  “Oh, yeah, him. Yeah, I guess you should warn him too.”

  * * *

  – – – –

  By this point my brain had been pummeled by more shocks and reversals than I’d experienced in my entire life. I staggered into the Kirby Awards banquet in the main Hyatt ballroom and in something of a daze took my seat at my designated table of comics luminaries and publishing employees.

  Which was maybe for the best. Fifteen years in the business have corroded my interest in industry awards; for one thing, there are so damn many of them, given out by every manner of institution and organization, that it’s hard to keep track of who’s up for what; and that kind of amortizes the value of each individual trophy. Furthermore, the same handful of currently popular It-Boys and -Girls won the vast bulk of them every year anyway. All the better-known awards were voted on by comics creators, who always went for their friends and their friends’ books; most comics creators I know, myself included, don’t have the time to actually read many comics anyway, so in categories where no friends are nominated they just vote for the most recognized title.