The Con Artist

by Fred Van Lente

“Terry.”

  One past text in her old queue, from him:

  “Hit me back once you have it in hand, darling.”

  Whoop, there it is, etc.

  On Christina’s phone, I texted Terry:

  “I’ve got it.”

  On my phone, I texted Dirtbag:

  “Sorry for radio silence. Things got bad.”

  Terry wrote back:

  “Finally. thought maybe was never gonna hear from you girl”

  Dirtbag wrote back:

  “Where u at bro”

  I wrote back to Terry, as Christine:

  “Complications. You heard about Danny”

  “You heard about Christine,” Dirtbag texted.

  Terry texted, “Yeah thats fucked up. Almost makes me want to call it off”

  “I’ve got the portfolio,” I texted to Dirtbag.

  “WTF get out where,” Dirtbag texted back.

  “You want or not,” Christine’s phone texted to Terry.

  “Dumpster behind Marriott,” my phone texted to Dirtbag.

  “Yeah girl let’s meet tonite after the show alrite,” Terry said.

  “Holy shit your fucking kidding me,” Dirtbag said.

  “I’m gonna need your help for this last part,” I texted back.

  “When and where,” I texted Terry.

  “When and where,” Dirtbag texted me.

  “Get you at the marina, tiki bar in Seaport Village, 9pm sound good?” Terry texted to Christine.

  “Seaport Village marina, there’s a tiki bar there, 8:30 sound good?” I texted to Dirtbag.

  “You got it,” I texted to Terry.

  “You got it,” Dirtbag texted to me.

  The clock on the top of my phone screen read 1:35 PM.

  I had seven hours to finish my personal commission.

  * * *

  – – – –

  Dirtbag met me at the bar of this cute Hawaiian-themed restaurant with Beach Boys–era posters and albums lining the walls, featuring blonde white people running toward the surf, boards under their arms, ivory smiles unburdened by doubt. I told D-Bag what I planned and to his credit he didn’t immediately stand up and walk out the door, which I found slightly heartening except for the fact that he was the one person I knew who was more irresponsible than I was.

  Around nine we left the joint. It was just a few short steps to the marina entrance. A big metal gate blocked the dock; you couldn’t get through it without a key card. We’d been waiting only a few minutes when the gate creaked open; it was held by a short, older white guy in a black T-shirt and jeans who didn’t seem so much a skinhead as just plain bald. He did have more tattoos than visible skin, one of which was the second most popular Aryan Brand tat, a red-hot dagger carving out a reverse SS symbol. Around his neck in florid Teutonic calligraphy was “Meine Ehre Heisst Treue.” This guy was perfectly happy with all his life choices.

  When the Brand member saw me and Dirtbag, he did the aggro short guy thing of marching right up to D-Bag, stopping just short of bumping into him, and jutting his chin upward like the tip of a spear.

  “I was expecting a lady person. Alone.”

  I tried to step between them, but only got one foot in. “Yeah, sorry, Christine can’t make it. I’m her husband.” I held out my hand, which the Nazi made a great show of ignoring. “She said she texted Terry and he was cool with it.” This was true in the sense that I had texted Terry from Christine’s phone forty minutes before arriving and got an affirmative response back.

  “Who’s your boyfriend?”

  “Moral support.”

  “You scared of us?” The Brander actually looked offended. I was beginning to think that white supremacists were a much more sensitive bunch than I had previously been led to believe.

  “Should I be?”

  “Nah. We’re adorable.” The skinhead looked at both of us again. “This wasn’t the plan. I don’t like it.”

  I shrugged and raised the portfolio. “I brought the stuff. Tell Terry. He’ll want to see us.”

  The Aryan Brander pointed a finger at us. “Stay.”

  “Woof woof,” Dirtbag said.

  The sentry walked down to the end of the slip, where a yellow speedboat with a stylized marlin on the side was waiting. He hunt-and-pecked a text message into his flip-phone’s keypad. It only took a minute to receive what must have been a favorable response. He reached into his vessel, removed a metal detecting wand, and walked back to us.

  “Up with the hands,” he said. He wanded me and then patted down my pockets and checked my waistband. When the wand buzzed around my jacket, he made me take out and hold my wallet and phone and then buzzed them again. He did the same thing to Dirtbag.

  While Dirtbag took his keys and cell phone out of his pockets and held them in his fists, the Nazi found something lumpy in the left cargo pocket of his shorts. “What’s this? Take it out.”

  Dirtbag produced a box for a Millennium Falcon LEGO mini-kit just bigger than his hand. “Comic-Con exclusive,” he said. “For my kid,” he added unconvincingly.

  “Uh-huh. Sure it is. Get in the boat, nerds.”

  The three of us boarded the boat. Dirtbag and I sat while the bullet-headed Nazi commandeered the throttle and roared away from the dock. We just kind of kept going, out of the bay, past the moored warships, beyond the dozens of small sails bobbing like floating petals, beneath the high roller-coaster swoosh of the Coronado Bridge. Well out of range of the Navy’s channel a few large pleasure boats rocked in an endless swath of ocean. I’d heard Hollywood types had resorted to living offshore during Comic-Con once hotel rooms in San Diego became a more precious resource than unobtainium.

  The aging skinhead eased off the throttle as a triple-decker yacht cruised closer and closer. “VALHALLA • Bodega Bay” declared the bow. It was the exact same model, as far as I could tell, as the boat Christine had rented for our wedding reception. After we’d exchanged vows on the parade grounds of Governors Island, we all piled on the yacht at Yankee Pier and sailed it around Manhattan. It began to rain, so we had to retreat inside for the dancing, but the sight of the Statue of Liberty looming nearby, torchlight refracting through the rivulets of water on the window glass, made the droplets sparkle.

  With the fresh reminder of what I’d lost, my mouth set into a grim line. By the time we boarded the bigger boat, where we found ourselves surrounded by biker-looking Aryan Brand members drinking beer and listening to the banal synthetic twang of country pop, I could return their hard looks with one of my own. I scanned around and didn’t see my friends from the TARDIS, which made things a little easier. It stood to reason they wouldn’t be here—getting in and out of boats couldn’t be the easiest thing in orthopedic boots.

  Terry, their leader, rose off the divan. The sides of his skull had been shaved and the landing strip of hair across his scalp was swept back into a long braided ponytail that didn’t stop until the small of his back. He wore leather pants and a leather vest and leather wrist bands and I guessed a leather thong, currently not visible. “M-E” was tattooed on his neck. He must have been further along on the public rehabilitation front than anyone else. As he stepped closer, I saw little pewter skull-shaped beads tied at the ends of his red beard.

  “Terry, right?” I shook his hand. It didn’t so much crush mine as apply just enough pressure to make it clear it could totally crush mine if I gave him half an excuse.

  “Yeah. Christine’s old man, right? She feeling better? She said she was under the weather.”

  “Nah.” My expression didn’t change. “She’s the same.”

  “That’s too bad. Do you and your friend—”

  “Dirtbag.”

  Terry’s eyes twinkled. “Now that sounds like an earned nickname. Respect. You and Dirtbag want a beer?”

  “No, thanks,” D
irtbag said, his voice cracking. At the same time I said, “Absolutely.”

  “Awesome. Let’s party.” Terry nodded to one of his underlings, who busted out two Coors Light tallboys from a voluminous ice-filled cooler.

  When I set down Danny’s portfolio to accept the beer and pop open the can, Terry’s eyes were drawn to it as though it glittered. “Gotta say, when I heard Danny got greased, I assumed that was the end of our arrangement. Too bad about him. He a friend of yours?”

  “You could say that.”

  “This used to be a nice town till the left let the goddamn mud people run wild,” said one of the Nazis, and the others bobbed their heads at this sage wisdom. “They’ll carve your ass for a ham sandwich.”

  “We don’t need to build a wall, we need a tactical nuclear strike,” one of the women said. Then she looked at me as if daring me to disagree with her, testing me to see if I was One of the Good Ones.

  I sipped my beer and didn’t say anything, hazarding a sideways glance at Dirtbag. His eyes were as wide as Pepe the Frog’s and his skin the same color. I was beginning to worry more about him than the Branders.

  “Well, he was still a Jewboy, so let’s not go too crazy with the crocodile tears,” Terry said, and the two Branders who spoke up found other directions to point their eyes. “He probably died trying to hold on to his last nickel.” Terry turned his attention back to me. “But he was our Jew, our middleman, and his untimely demise leaves us in something of a bind.”

  I just sucked on my beer. After the silence continued for a second or two, I cocked my head. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

  Terry cracked a slight smile. “Danny wasn’t just the guy giving us the pages Atlas Comics stole from Ben K, he was the guy verifying the shit was authentic. We’ve been turning this shit around at the high fours, low fives. But now that Ben K has gone to Hebe Heaven, we’re gonna be able to triple, quadruple our prices. And you know Meatwall knows the high rollers. We know where to find the money. But our whales aren’t completely stupid. They know the shit is hot but they’re willing to overlook that part in order to get their hands on a piece of history. They do need some assurances what they’re buying is the real deal, and what the standard market prices might be.”

  Then he held up a finger. “I only needed to explain this to your old lady once, but in case she didn’t pass it along I’m gonna tell you too. The big spenders trust Meatwall because they know who’s behind us. Bitches who try and fuck us over know who they have to answer to. The people above me? They know how to deal with cucks and potheads who try to get smart with the money they’re owed. Am I making myself clear?”

  I could feel Dirtbag tensing beside me, straining to say something, so I quickly cut in:

  “Crystal. And your concerns, they’re totally valid. Believe me. So I’ve got good news for you: when it comes to appraising Ben K art, you’ve actually leveled up.”

  Terry crossed his arms over his prodigious chest. “Convince me.”

  “The reason I brought Dirtbag with me,” I said, nodding at my friend, “is because he wasn’t just the main Atlas Comics production artist for many years. He started out as Ben K’s art assistant.”

  “Is that right?” Terry nodded appreciatively. “No shit?”

  “Yes shit,” I said, even though Dirtbag blinked WTF at me in Morse Code. He clearly didn’t appreciate that I hadn’t bothered to warn him about this wrinkle in our cover story. I would have happily done so if I hadn’t come up with the idea halfway through Terry’s monologue of threats. “So you see, we’re sitting pretty in that regard, even though Mr. Lieber, may he rest in peace, is no longer with us.”

  “Well, then.” Terry clapped Dirtbag heartily on the shoulder, staggering him a bit. “Welcome to the team, amigo.”

  “Thanks,” Dirtbag said, and attempted a smile for the first time since stepping onto the yacht. “Can I use your bathroom? I, uh…”

  “Haven’t quite got your sea legs, huh?”

  “Yeah, no, I should’ve taken something before coming to the docks. Stupid.”

  “Nah, happens to a bunch of guys. Doesn’t mean you’re a total pussy or anything.” Terry grinned and winked at his gaggle of scumbags to make it clear he absolutely believed that it did. They didn’t bother to conceal their smiles. “Torque, show our new appraiser to the head and give ’im some of those anti-seasick pills or patches or whatever from the first aid kit.”

  “Sure thing.” Torque turned out to be the little bullet-headed dude who fetched us from the docks. “Follow me.” Swaying on uncertain feet, Dirtbag followed Torque inside the main cabin. I wondered if Dirtbag’s problem was the seasickness drugs he didn’t take or the recreational drugs he did take before he got here.

  “Armond renting this boat is the smartest thing he ever did for us,” Terry said. “He used to try and get us rooms just outside the Gaslamp but we can party a little loud for the locals.”

  “Trying to deal with the Comic-Con hotel website is a nightmare, right?” I said.

  “Tell me about it! It crashes constantly. That’s why the hashtag is #hotelpocalypse.”

  “Preach it, brother.” I held up Lieber’s portfolio. “Would you like to inspect the merchandise?”

  “Absolutely.” Terry rubbed his hands together. “Show me what you got, Hoss.”

  I unzipped the case. “Does big-time TV star Armond Delaine know he’s in a business partnership with the Aryan Brand?”

  My question did not spoil Terry’s good mood. “Armond Delaine is not in a business partnership with the Aryan Brand. Armond Delaine is in a business partnership with me. He is helping out ex-cons, which is a very good thing for society and the world and blah blah blah. Believe me, a lot of ex-cons, not to mention a shit-ton of current cons, love Cell Block Z. I mean, it really tries to show what life would be like in a maximum-security prison during the zombie apocalypse.”

  “Well, somebody has to.” Prison inmates like shows where prison inmates are the heroes; one-armed women like Pilar Hernandez like Violent Violet; big bearlike dudes like Marvel’s Hercules or Valiant’s Armstrong; Muslim kids like Ms. Marvel; people in wheelchairs like Oracle; black women like Storm; white guys like everything because everything is made for white guys. The emotional politics of identification and representation ain’t rocket science.

  But even though I’ve never seen Cell Block Z, I highly doubt it is a white supremacist jeremiad, yet these dunderheads accept it with open prison-tatted arms. Fans devour comics about superheroes selflessly devoting their lives to helping others but have no problem bullying women and POC creators online. Fandom has a nasty tendency to absorb the surface appearances of a thing without ever bothering to internalize its underlying message.

  Huh. I guess it is just like religion.

  Terry continued, “But here’s something my good friend Armond Delaine can’t really appreciate: when you join the Aryan Brand, it’s for life. They keep your head above water in the human sewer that is the American penal system, and if you somehow do make it back out into the real world, you owe them. You owe the Brand the remainder of your days because you would not otherwise have them. So they expect their cut, outside as well as inside the stir. If they don’t get that, what the fuck reason did they keep you alive for in the first place?

  “But to answer your question, no, my friend Armond does not know this. He does not need to know this, because it’s got nothing to do with him.” Terry grabbed my shoulder with the meat claw he called a hand and made sure I looked him right in the eye:

  “And if anyone tells him, I’ll kill ’em myself.”

  “Fair enough,” I said cheerily, then opened the portfolio on the table in front of him.

  “Yeah, yeah, show me what you got,” he said, and then leaned over the single pencilled page he found inside.

  “Holy crap,” he said, eyes dancing. “Is that what I t
hink it is?”

  “I believe it is,” I said.

  “Amazing,” Terry breathed, reaching out to pick up the page. The other Nazis gathered around, all ooh-ing and ahh-ing. One graying Brander said, “I totally remember these from when I was a kid.” Even these, the hardest of hard cases, were carried back on the tides of nostalgia along the sea of time.

  “Um…” Miss Nuclear Strike, who couldn’t have been a day older than twenty-five, squinted at the page with a blank look of non-understanding. “What are you dummies all jizzing over? I don’t get it.”

  “Of course you don’t, Barb, you dumb bitch,” Terry said. “You’re so young you barely know you’re alive. I remember these like it was yesterday.”

  Torque had wandered over to admire the page, leaving his post guarding the bathroom that Dirtbag had disappeared into. “Christ on a crutch. Is that a Mister Mystery Hostess Fruit Pie ad?”

  “That it is,” I said.

  Beginning in 1977, the Hostess company, proud makers of such fine shrink-wrapped baked treats as Twinkies, Cup-Cakes, Ding Dongs, Sno Balls, Fruit Pies, Ho Hos, and the oft-neglected Suzy Qs, began running single-page ads in superhero comic books that took the form of comics pages themselves. In these short strips, a marquee superhero such as a Batman or a Spider-Man would be confronted by some unstoppable villain, alien, monster, or giant robot that, all other options having been exhausted, had its mission of rapine and destruction halted by the hero throwing a Twinkie or a Ho Ho in its path. The miscreant would be so enraptured by the taste of the Hostess product that it was then easily apprehended by the superhero and turned over to the authorities.

  On this particular board—drawn on the old Atlas Comics paper with the stylized big-A logo stamped in the corner, just like the other Ben K originals I’d seen on the show floor—Mister Mystery looked down through the skylight into a museum where a villainess sat upon an Aztec throne, having liberated an ancient scepter of vast Mesoamerican magicks she would use for world domination.

  Fortuitously, Mister Mystery never went on patrol without a healthy supply of Hostess Fruit Pies stuffed in his trenchcoat pockets to satisfy those inconvenient midnight cravings. The mere sight of the flaky sugar-coated packets injected with apple-flavored goo dangling on the end of a fishing line made the villainess forget all about her nefarious plans as well as basic common sense. She leapt off the throne, throwing the rod of power aside, and grasped at said fruit pie—and that’s when Mister Mystery lowered the boom.