Panel 6: Forty minutes have passed. You can hear the staccato synth beats as you push into the club. The DJ is calling your name. Christine? Christine? Where is she? Oh, there she is—she’s walking to the stage, maybe a little out of breath, maybe a little glassy-eyed. She could have had one too many rum and Cokes. Or she’s churning with adrenaline and nausea because she just killed someone. But she still blasts her way through A-ha’s “Take on Me.”
It was a strong sequence, solid. An elegant meld of action and character beats. But there was something wrong. It took me a few minutes of turning it over and over in my mind to realize what it was.
The portfolio in Danny’s hand while he was waiting—was that correct? Because the police never mentioned it, so they didn’t find it, and Danny couldn’t have had it in his hand when he died. And “Ulee-o” didn’t have it in the the bodycam footage, either.
So I was wrong about who the killer was.
Or the killer snatched it and stashed it somewhere before fleeing.
Or some other random person stumbled across it and swiped it after the murder…
But there was one other possibility.
* * *
– – – –
Danny Lieber’s trail of blood ended on the steps of the Sails Pavilion at the San Diego Convention Center—and I was determined to trace it back to where it started. I walked down to the marina and past the row of yachts rented by various entertainment websites. Beneath the sodium lamps, the traces of Danny’s blood were long gone, cleaned away by whoever’s job that was.
I eventually wound up in the back parking lot of the Marriott Marquis. Most every space was occupied by massive trailers belonging to various news and media organizations, which hummed with internally generated power. A few bored Teamsters sat around under tents guarding recharging banks of walkie-talkies and A/V crates with their Sharpie-on-masking-tape labels and banks of monitors. A long narrow alley led from the rear of the lot toward the parking garage and the front entrance of the pool bar. Danny could have gotten here after he left me. At the front of the lot, facing the marina, was a small brick building housing restrooms, with a pair of eucalyptus swaying in the ocean breeze.
Boxwood hedges studded small islands between sets of parking spaces. While I was looking in them, finding nothing more than the usual candy wrappers and cigarette butts, my phone buzzed with a text from Dirtbag:
“Where r u r u & Christine alright”
I could feel myself spinning downward on a crash course. Instead of trying to pull out of it, I had chosen the certainty of control. I leaned hard on the stick, only increasing the death spiral. I insisted on my right to see the ground as it rushed up to meet me. A roar filled my ears and I could feel life racing past, nearing the end of its course, even though I was standing completely still.
The last thing my conscience needed was allowing anyone not already involved in this mess to blunder into my wake and get dragged down with me.
“Dude there are cop cars all around the Bayfront,” Dirtbag texted next. “U can see it from the Midway deck.”
I closed my eyes, exhaled, and returned the phone to my pocket without answering.
I looked across the asphalt expanse, rapidly running out of reasons to cling to my current theory, when my eyes alighted on a small white picket fence that formed a corral smack dab in the center of the lot. A swivel office chair with a missing wheel lay atop a heap of white garbage bags. The Dumpster inside the corral was stuffed to capacity; I’d bet the odds of any garbage truck getting here through teeming comic-con crowds before Monday were all but nonexistent.
The fence gate was secured with a chain and combo lock, but it listed on its hinges wide enough that I was able to squeeze inside without popping off any shirt buttons. I took down the broken office chair and used it as a springboard to vault up to the bin.
My shins immediately sank into amorphous trash and my shoes ruptured plastic, spilling wads of used paper towels, pizza crusts, and bits of broken light bulb. I tried to be subtle but my search rapidly became a race between my arms and my gag reflex. I started picking up bags and chucking them to the ground.
I excavated half a dozen bags and was close to despair until I hit on the idea of searching along the edge of the Dumpster. I ran my hands all the way around, starting at the far end; when I reached the side of the trash container closest to the fence gate, my fingers closed upon a hard plastic handle. I yanked upward and up came Danny Lieber’s sticker-covered portfolio.
I grinned—and then immediately shut my mouth as the overwhelming miasma of used diaper washed over me. I scrambled out as quickly as I could and returned to the darkness of the marina.
The way the portfolio had been shoved sideways at the edge of the bin suggested that whoever put it there meant to come back later and retrieve it. The obvious image sketched in my mind was of Danny, nervous, still sweating from a near-fight with me, emerging from the garden alley, looking around, not seeing his rendezvous anywhere, and, making sure he wasn’t being watched, shoving the portfolio into the Dumpster. He clearly thought some negotiating would be going on: for guys like Danny, there was always a negotiation. He wanted something from the person he was meeting before he would turn over the desired goods. He thought the meeting was about the one thing when really it was about the other thing. Or perhaps the killer was interested in both things, but the murdering part was more important; she had not allotted enough time to search for the portfolio, so she had to return to the Gaslighter empty-handed, a partial failure.
I walked to Seaport Village and found a park bench beneath a coral tree, its muscular trunks corded like anatomical drawings of severed limbs. I sat down, put the portfolio in my lap, and unzipped it.
“Of course,” I said out loud.
SUNDAY
lutching the cheap plastic handle of Danny Lieber’s portfolio in my cold, clammy palm, I queued up to enter the Rule 34 Nerdlesque Club. The line snaked around the corner of Fifth Avenue and Market, comprising a healthy gender mix of con-goers in Pikachu hats and Link caps, waving Harry Potter wands and Sonic Screwdrivers.
I could see the spinning police lights bathe the stories-tall Mister Mystery on the front of the Bayfront in a red and blue strobe. Standing out on the sidewalk, watching my pursuers without them being able to see me, I felt weirdly comforted. A bicycle cop in his dark blue uniform and almost-black helmet coasted down the street. I met his eyes with a level gaze and no fear. He looked away without comment and disappeared into the honking, shouting night.
What’s funny—not ha-ha funny but the other kind—is that this was the first time I had ever waited in a line to see anything at Comic-Con. I was experiencing the event the way the majority of con-goers did, the way I was watching them now: reading the books and comics they’d scored that day, arguing with friends, raving about the movie clips they’d seen.
“Top Five MCU movies. Go.”
“Man, I have so many shows in my DVR queue right now, it’s honestly contributing to my anxiety. I should just wipe the slate clean and start fresh, but that makes me anxious too.”
“I hate it when they dress like just one part of the character and then they expect you to know who it is.”
“Well if I knew where Lou Ferrigno was signing we’d be there right now!”
“Anakin! Come back here!” A red-haired mom chased a three-year-old escapee down the sidewalk.
At twenty minutes past midnight the queue shambled forward, slouching toward a storefront in the middle of the block that had been transformed into a temporary DIY nightclub. In the large window where the shop’s wares had once been displayed was an easel bearing a blown-up version of the Dominatrix Leia from the club flyer. How many times had I walked past this sign over the weekend without recognizing my mystery woman in a different costume? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
The bouncer was a huge white dude with the body of an eg
gplant and Gene Simmons’s haircut. He wore a black T-shirt that said ASK ME ABOUT MY FEMINIST AGENDA in big white letters. He was checking driver’s licenses with a handheld light, then wrapping pink wristbands on those who qualified for booze.
When I handed over my I.D., I asked, “Do you know if there’s an outlet in there I might be able to hook my phone up to?”
“No,” the bouncer said.
“No you don’t know if there’s an outlet, or no there isn’t one?”
“No,” the bouncer said, beckoning the woman in cheetah facepaint behind me, “because this conversation is already over.”
The waitresses were all in Harley Quinn facepaint and PROPERTY OF JOKER half-jackets. As each new patron shuffled inside, we were directed to sit at the nearest tall bar seat beside tiny circular tables facing the stage. There was a two-drink minimum. I absentmindedly ordered a Blue Moon and wondered how I was going to figure out if the pedicabbie was even here. But that was a problem for after the show, and at present I was living minute to minute.
I pulled out my sketchbook and roughed in the scene of Christine’s murder as it had been laser-etched into my brain. Physically drained and emotionally spent, I was becoming anesthetized to horrors; previous methods of coping were no longer useful. When I drew the last line, the image remained as vivid as it had been before I started drawing. Defiantly unpurged, the drawing was a Dorian Gray–like reflection of the torment in my psyche.
The Harley Quinns had deposited a guy in a ponytail and a ThunderCats shirt on the seat next to me. When he happened to glance down at the image in my sketchbook, he scootched his chair a couple inches farther away.
An emcee in a soul patch and a suit made entirely of laminated comic book pages bounded onstage and announced himself as Daddy Longboxes. After some mercifully brief pseudo-stand-up, made up mostly of rapid-fire geek culture references and bad sexual double entendres that really made you appreciate the comedy stylings of a true professional like Dante Dupree, he quit the stage so the real show could begin.
The lights dimmed briefly, then came up white-hot on the rear curtains, which parted with a hydraulic hiss on the speakers and an ankle-deep outpouring from a fog machine.
I closed my sketchbook and looked up when the cheering crowd practically rose to its feet. Clomping out of the dry-ice cloud, looming like a giant shadow, its thunderous footsteps provided by a prerecorded soundtrack, was an enormous cardboard and PVC exoskeleton painted Caterpillar yellow streaked with the mud and rust highlights of a working bulldozer. The operator was visible only in silhouette, her identity shrouded by backlights. She stood at the edge of the stage for just a second, claw arms outstretched as if preparing for an embrace, to allow the crowd to properly scream homage.
Then a familiar guitar and violin riff began to thrum and the audience clapped along with it. With a whir of pistons and gears, the exoskeleton extended its left arm; then with a similar grinding and clanking its right claw stretched out and mechanically yanked off the left claw, letting it drop to the stage in a crumple of papier-mâché and cardboard paper-towel tubes. The claw then flew out to the right, the exposed human left hand reached out, and with the clanking of a turned ratchet on the soundtrack it pulled off the right claw too in the precise industrial movements one would expect from a robo-stripper.
Off came the legs and the PVC helmet encompassing the operator’s head, the crowd clapping encouragement and two Swedish blondes on the soundtrack from the seventies phonetically chanting “Gimme gimme gimme a man (after midnight).” Ultimately, out of the shell emerged a curly-haired brunette in a beige jumpsuit with RIPLEY stitched over her heart.
The audience went bananas. I felt my mouth widen into a grin despite myself and I started clapping rhythmically along with the audience as Ripley jumped and danced around the stage. She did a split in the center, unzipping the front of her space onesie and revealing a white tank top beneath. Behind her you could see where the back curtains had been replaced by a round aperture, some kind of porthole to the stars.
When her butt hit the ground, a shiny black dildo-shaped mass flashed past the opening. The audience gasped. Hearing something, Ripley cocked her head, but when she looked behind her the intruder was gone. She scissored off the floor and out of the jumpsuit at the same time, ending up in a tank top and white panties. The crowd hooted and yeahed their appreciation.
Ripley made a great show of crossing her hands and gripping the hem of her tank top. She was starting to pull it up when the Xenomorph alien dashed behind her in all its spiny, scuttling majesty, and the crowd screamed and laughed.
Ripley stopped, and turned, and looked around, and saw nothing. She turned her back to the audience, grabbed the hem again, and started to pull the tank up, her foot pumping and butt wriggling, keeping time with ABBA. Just as she pulled it over her breasts, the alien ran across the stage again—this time in front of her. The audience yelped and she dropped her shirt; but when she turned to look for the source of the noise, nothing was to be seen.
Once again Ripley wriggled the tank top up her chest, and the audience started yelling “Go! Go! Go!” and I found myself yelling too. The third time was the charm—she whipped off the top and threw it to the stage, the crowd roaring.
Ripley whirled around to reveal little crablike Facehugger alien pasties over her nipples, and lo, how the people cheered. She rolled her shoulders and made the tassles twirl in the air, which sufficiently distracted the audience from the Xenomorph’s reappearance at the edge of the stage. It remained there, unseen, camouflaged among the pipes and lights and microphone stands, until a spotlight pointed it out with a music sting and a hiss of dry ice, and I genuinely yelped out loud in surprise.
ABBA faded to silence and in its place the tense piano lead-in from James Horner’s Aliens soundtrack began to build—the omnipresent trailer theme of “Bishop’s Countdown”—as Ripley retreated into a defensive crouch on the other side of the stage. The Xenomorph pursued her warily, hissing and drooling.
Suddenly the alien stopped—it turned toward the audience and ripped off its vinyl bodice, revealing a black leather bikini top and assless chaps beneath. The crowd went absolutely bat-shit crazy.
Ripley and the alien did a dance together, spinning around and taking turns dipping each other while the audience hummed along to “Bishop’s Countdown” until the act ended. It was ridiculous and sexy and subversive and creative and fun and cool and amateurish and weirdly vulnerable but fearless all at once. Ripley and the Xenomorph clasped hands and took their bows. She gestured at the alien and took off her giant phallic mask, underneath which, I now saw, was the pedicab driver from Wednesday night.
The two dancers disappeared behind the back curtain. I couldn’t help noticing that more and more faces around me were turning away from the stage and to the entrance behind us. Daddy Longboxes mounted the stage but didn’t speak right away because he too was trying to get a look at whatever was happening behind us.
I turned toward the doorway and my mouth went dry. Outside were Sam and Twitch and two or three uniformed police officers arguing with the bouncer, who had planted his bulk solidly in front of the entrance. While many people stood around in timid confusion, at least a third of the crowd surged in the direction of the San Diego PD to make their displeasure known.
“Ghuy’cha’!” yelled the ponytailed ThunderCats dude to my left. “It’s a raid! They’re trying to shut us down!”
“This is bullshit!” A large woman with a lime-green diamond rising out of a spring attached to her head rose to her feet and shook her fist at the cops. “Anti-sex bullshit!”
“Stonewall!” somebody yelled, apropos of nothing, and soon the chant rose up from the crowd:
“WE’RE GEEK! AND WE’RE PROUD! WE’RE GEEK! AND WE’RE—”
“Hey—hey, guys?” Daddy Longboxes tried to call from the stage, but even through the microphone his voice couldn’t b
e heard over the din. “Maybe we should just chill out. When you block the aisles like that, it’s a fire hazard…”
Enough of the crowd had relocated near the entrance that I had a clear path to the stage. Daddy Longboxes had hopped off to move to the front of the throng and try to disperse it. I dashed past him, leapt onstage, and pushed through the curtain. Four dancers in skin-tight costumes who had been peering out to the main room stumbled back as I blundered in. They were dressed as Poison Ivy, Scarlet Witch, some kind of sexy archer elf, and the segmented blue neck-to-toes leotard of Metroid’s Samus.
“You’re not supposed to be back here,” Samus said.
“I know, sorry.” The backstage area was a hastily jumbled collection of painted foamcore backdrops—the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, Castle Grayskull, et cetera—and freestanding wheeled racks of hanging costumes. A makeshift screen made from several safety-pinned bedsheets bisected the space; judging by the hourglass shadows cast against it from light on the other side, it appeared to be the changing area.
“Hell’s going on out there?” asked a Rule 63 (google it) Punisher whose black bikini top formed the eye sockets of the skull emblem on her chest. “Are we really getting busted?”
“No way, Preston said he got all the permits,” Poison Ivy said.
“Oh, like that would be the first thing he’s ever fucked up?”
Samus held a large hand-cannon prop and pressed it against my chest. “Dude, you gotta get out of here. Rules are rules.”
“I know, I’ll be quick, I’m just looking for—” A tiny green light emerging from behind the changing room partition caught my eye. The pedicab driver appeared, sucking on an e-cigarette. She had changed into a gunmetal-gray hoodie and black hose.
“Hey! Hey!” I started waving my arms and pushing through the dancers, nearly clocking Samus in the head with Lieber’s portfolio. The pedicabbie didn’t move an inch as I stumbled over; she just looked at me from beneath her eyebrows. “Do you remember me?”
The Con Artist Page 19