“They never actually ended up running this ad,” I said, “so I don’t know if that will affect the price. But they did get Ben K to pencil the only Hostess ad featuring his most famous creation, so that’s gotta be worth something.”
“Hell, yeah,” Terry said. He was practically drooling.
“I know who Mister Mystery is,” Torque said, “but who’s the chick in all the bandages he’s fighting.”
“Oh,” I said, “that’s Disco Mummy.”
Terry and one of his lieutenants exchanged delighted looks. To fans and creators there was the dream of creation and the art that made it at least partially real, and then there was the money that allowed for the transition between the two. Guys like Terry didn’t see the dream or the art, or didn’t care about them. All they saw was the money. Or maybe for them making money was both art and dream. They would have been equally happy selling meth or Toyotas or child pornography. The widget, whatever it was, was irrelevant. Organized crime was a giant sucking chest wound and what it sucked in was profit, and that wound would never and could never be healed. Each poor mope up the food chain had to answer to the one above him. It wasn’t that much different from regular capitalism, really, except it was disreputable because the exploitation was so much harder to hide. Crime doesn’t have the common decency to lie.
“Perfect,” Terry said. “One of our clients—you know Kevin Dumont, the Warriors star? This kid, he’s his cousin and he’s got money to burn. He’s soft in the head and has a hard-on for this Disco Mummy chick. He will absolutely lose his mind when he sees this. We can spear him for some serious, serious bank.”
Torque shot me a suspicious look. “And Pigpen can confirm this is legit?”
“Dirtbag. And I wouldn’t have brought him here if he couldn’t.”
“Fantastic. Fantastic.” Terry looked down into the empty portfolio. He blinked. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “That’s all there is.”
“Fuck that,” Terry said, handing Torque the art board I had spent all afternoon drawing so he could swivel the full might of his pectoral muscles in my direction. “Two weeks ago Christine said she’d have half a dozen pieces ready to roll. I already started lining up buyers. You’re gonna make me look like an asshole.”
There were so many things I could say to that, but I stuck with, “This is all I’ve got right now.”
The Branders, absorbing and enhancing the increasing agitation of their leader, began to circle me with hard looks. The armor of anger and bravado I had constructed around my fear was beginning to crack.
“This,” Terry said, “is bullshit.” He pulled out a largish Android and began dialing. “I smelled a rat as soon as you showed your ugly fucking face. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this or you’re going to the bottom of the goddamn harbor.”
The phone in my pocket, the pocket I thought it would be unwise to make a sudden move for, began to ring—Christine’s phone, that is.
Terry heard the ring, looked at his own phone, and then pulled a revolver out of his waistband and pointed it in my face.
“What? The? Fuck? What are you up to, man? Start talking or start dying!”
When the shot rang out, I stumbled back a few feet and almost fell over in the somatic assumption that it had been aimed at me. A couple skinheads hit the deck, literally, hands over their heads. But it was Terry who dropped his pistol, his knees giving way under him, his eyes wide with shock.
“Nobody move, motherfuckers!” Standing in the doorway leading to the cabin was a glassy-eyed Dirtbag, holding something that didn’t look anything at all like a gun. But when Torque went for his pistol, the white plastic cylinder kicked back and so did Torque, in the opposite direction, clutching his chest as he cried out an incoherent curse.
Dirtbag moved closer into the fray, pointing his weapon at the Branders. “Nobody on your knees! I mean—wait—nobody move and—I mean everybody—on your knees! Let’s go!”
I started to lower to my haunches with the others, but Dirtbag yelled at me, “No, man, you get the money!”
I blinked, not comprehending. Money? What was this abstract concept called money? It wasn’t until Dirtbag kicked something across the deck—the gym bag that had been lying where Terry once stood—that it clicked what he wanted. I grabbed it by both straps.
“To the boat! To the boat, man! Go!” Dirtbag followed me as I jumped down into the speedboat. He turned and pointed the gun to each kneeling Nazi as he went.
Clutching his shoulder, Terry screamed out, “You know who you’re stealing from? You are the dumbest motherfucker who ever lived!”
“And you just got robbed by him!” Dirtbag yelled back, and then he let out a crazed, high-pitched laugh. “So what does that make you?”
He jumped in next to me and took the wheel. “Here, point this at them.”
Dirtbag handed me what looked like a starter pistol but was in fact a completely solid white piece on one end with what seemed to be a metal handle. It was so scaldingly hot I could barely wrap my hand around it. “I don’t know how to fire this.”
The speedboat roared away from Valhalla and Dirtbag had to yell over the engine to be heard. “Don’t worry about it, I doubt it fires anymore. I’m surprised I got two shots off, even though it’s got a couple metal parts. There’s no way the rest of the thermoplastics aren’t melted by now. Just point and wave—and Jesus, keep your head low.”
I saw a couple Nazis popping over the rail of the yacht and I crouched low, pointing the pseudo-pistol in their direction. The hairless heads quickly disappeared.
I remembered the small Millennium Falcon box that had been in Dirtbag’s pocket. “Dude, did you seriously make a gun out of LEGOs?”
“No, dummy, I 3D-printed a gun and put the parts in the LEGO box. The metal parts and bullets are small enough that I palmed them along with my keys when he wanded us. I assembled it in the can as soon as I got my hands to stop shaking.”
I tested the trigger of the plastic gun and it just snapped off and fell into the water. “You just ripped off the largest white supremacist prison gang in the country with what is essentially a toy.”
“I know.” Dirtbag grinned. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It’s bananas, is what it is.”
“What? C’mon. They’re Nazis. It’s practically a moral imperative to rip them off.”
* * *
– – – –
Dirtbag pointed the speedboat back the way we came. I couldn’t help feeling like the U.S. Navy warships lining the bay were watching us. Apparently no one heard the gunshots because we arrived at the Seaport Village dock without being waylaid by SEAL Team 6. I didn’t see the Valhalla following us; perhaps the Branders determined the wiser move was to take Terry and Torque to the hospital.
We brought the boat up to our still-vacated spot on the dock. Dirtbag grabbed the duffel bag and then we fled through the gate to the parking lot where his Dadmobile was parked.
Once we were safely seated inside, seatbelts clicked, Dirtbag erupted in a high-pitched yell and high-fived me. “Fucking-A, man! Am I right? That was badass. Like something out of Grand Theft Auto.” He drove out of the lot. “And it was so easy too, that’s the craziest part, right?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “The craziest part is…”
“What?”
“I feel like you knew the money was going to be there.”
“What do you mean? I saw the bag lying right there on the deck. It was logical what was in it.”
“Yeah, but you planned ahead. And life planning is not what you’re really known for.”
Dirtbag said nothing for a bit, then chuckled, shaking his head at the road in front us. “You know what, man? Fuck you.”
“Fuck me?”
“Yeah, you always thought I was a loser.”
“No.”
“Yeah, you went on to be a big swinging dick, a Wizard magazine Top Ten kind of guy, one of the hot artists, the ones who always got a Kirby nomination, a movie deal, you’re practically a brand name.”
“Give me a break. I’m comics-famous. That’s like being the world’s smartest cockroach.”
“It’s more than I ever got. I studied with Ben K, just like you. I got torn a new asshole by him, just like you. Except I never grew beyond his shadow. I could ghost him and swipe him to the point where no one could tell us apart. But you took the foundation and you built on it. While I toiled away in the bullpen, touching up crappy inkers’ lines and fixing typos in the lettering until Adobe Creative Suite replaced me.”
“There’s another thing that bothers me.”
“Sure, sure, let it all hang out. Open up the heavens and let the shitstorm rain down on top of ol’ D-Bag, go right ahead.”
“You never asked me what was in the portfolio.”
“What? Sure I did. You said it was, uh…”
“Go ahead.”
“How the hell should I know what was in Danny’s portfolio?”
“Yeah, how the hell should you?”
“Man.” Dirtbag shook his head. “You expect me to keep chasing you in this merry-go-round of a conversation? Or you ever gonna find your own way off?”
“I texted Katie Poole. I asked her who said she was getting fired off Mister Mystery.”
Dirtbag stiffened.
“She wouldn’t tell me. But guess what? She would tell a girlfriend. So I texted her from Christine’s phone.”
Dirtbag’s expression didn’t change. “So what, man?”
“So you told her on the Midway, sending her to me, thinking it’d be a pretty good bet I’d get hot enough to go after Sebastian. Then you could finally corner Christine, alone, in my room.
“Problem is, I don’t know if it fell out of your pocket or what, but that photocopy I gave you of pedicab places in the Yellow Pages, it was there in the room. I didn’t notice it until I looked at my sketch of the scene, but you were there, Dirtbag. Weren’t you?”
We were stopped at a light, which turned green, but the Dadmobile didn’t move. The streets of San Diego were deserted. Comic-Con had been over for only five or six hours, but reality had returned to the city—dull, everyday life, same after same, like water filling a broken boat when you stop bailing it, like gravity once you let go of the edge of the cliff.
“She was no good, man,” Dirtbag said.
“You really think you’re the best judge of that?”
“She killed Danny.”
“I know.”
“She set the whole thing up with Meatwall. I mean, she met them through Danny because they used to do security for the Atlas parties and they’d show up with their actor clients and everything, so he was the go-between. But using them as the dealers of Ben K’s artwork, that was all her, man, from the very beginning.”
I bit my lower lip. “I think I believe you.”
“It’s the truth, man! I didn’t mean to…” Dirtbag licked his lips. “She just really pissed me off. She didn’t tell me that she was planning on getting rid of Danny. She didn’t ask my input at all. She just fucking did it! I mean, we both knew Danny was talking about backing out, he was starting to get cold feet.”
“Because of the lawsuit, right?”
“Right, the Eye of fucking Sauron that is Ira Pearl all of a sudden gave a shit where Ben K’s stolen artwork was, and Danny was basically a company man at heart. All he’s good at is defending his own job anyway. His position at Atlas is literally all he’s got. He and Christine had really been fighting like cats and dogs about it. This drop-off, this was going to be the last one and he was out.”
“Of the portfolio, you mean.”
“Yeah, and she wouldn’t even tell me what she did with it. She said she was out too. Whole thing had gotten too hot, she said, it was time for all of us to walk away. She was just so smug and matter-of-fact about it. The look on her face…just like yours now, man. Like she was so much better than me. And she wouldn’t tell me shit. Like it wasn’t important. I grabbed your Kirby off the table and waved it in her face and she just smirked at me, like I didn’t have the balls.
“You know, now that I think of it, she still had that look on her face when I smacked her the first time. She didn’t even lose it until I hit her a few more times, like the idea of being wrong about something was so fucking impossible for her to fathom. But by then I was cranked up and I couldn’t even stop myself. Not until she didn’t have no more face at all.”
My throat clenched. My extremities felt all numb and tingly. I had no word for the emotion I was feeling, if it was an emotion at all, or just some kind of vacuum where emotions would ordinarily be.
“Did Danny know?”
“Did Danny know what?”
“That the Ben Ks were fake. That you were the one who drew them.”
Dirtbag blinked, breathing heavily, like he had just been awakened from a dream. “Yeah. He knew.”
“But Danny didn’t know that Meatwall is essentially a money-laundering front for the Aryan Brand. And if he told Ira and McCool and Atlas Entertainment that the Ben Ks were fake to save his own ass, the Aryan Brand would find out Christine had ripped them off and her life wouldn’t be worth shit, particularly if her ass went to jail for fraud. So she cleaned up the mess. You take out Danny, he was the weak link. Now nobody can trace the fakes back to her. She was always really good at that. Hyper Competent.”
Dirtbag rubbed his face. “Aw, man. You—you left the portfolio on the Meatwall boat didn’t you?”
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
“Fine? You think it’s fine? Do you know what’s in that portfolio?”
“Yes, a fake Ben K that I drew myself. I may not be as good at aping his style as you, but I can still copy the Great One pretty well when I have to. I made up a Hostess ad with Disco Mummy.”
“With who?”
“A villain from the 1979 Filmation Plastic Man cartoon I’ve been kind of obsessed with lately. But don’t worry about that, it’s not important. Honestly, I just had to make sure my theories were right. They mostly were.”
“So…you have the rest of it.”
I exhaled before answering. “Yeah. It’s in a safe place.”
Dirtbag sat straight up. “Which is where?”
“I’m not really inclined to tell the murderer of my wife jack shit about anything.”
During our conversation the Dadmobile was still sitting at the light, which continued to cycle from red to green to red.
When it turned green again, somebody behind us finally honked. Startled, I turned to see a Mini Coop roar around us, its driver giving us the finger. When I looked back, Dirtbag had pulled out a revolver from under his seat. In the dim light it shone like a dull star. He held the gun but rested it on one knee.
“What?” he said on seeing my expression. “I live in a shitty neighborhood. Now. Please tell me where what was in Danny Lieber’s portfolio is.”
I met his stare and somehow didn’t stare at the gun.
“Okay,” I said.
* * *
– – – –
The TV-show immersive environments had been taken down and boxed up; the stars had flown private jets back to their celebrity compounds, walled up and gated away from the masses; the playful second skins on the buildings had been stripped away, leaving behind the brutal truth of glass and steel. The middle finger of reality raised high in gloating vengeance: Suck it, nerds. Playtime’s over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming of a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying yadda yadda yadda.
The A1 U-Store facility, just off the exit before the airport, was almost cruelly real, a labyrinth of low concrete not-garages wi
th corrugated doors. The staff had long since gone home on a Sunday night, but as a customer I had the four-digit code to unlock the front gate. I rented storage units in half a dozen locations around the country, which allowed me to travel light; I just swung by and grabbed extra prints and clothes from my cache whenever I needed them.
The Dadmobile crawled through the aisles, headlights peering for my unit. Dirtbag had one hand on the wheel and one hand on the gun and would not stop fucking talking.
“Christine, she overreacted. I can still do this. Now that Ben’s dead, the price of his stuff is gonna go through the roof. That Meatwall guy is a racist dick, but that doesn’t make him wrong. I can still ghost Ben K like nobody’s business. I think maybe you’re right, maybe people will figure out the pages are fake, but I can still turn around a few more first, make something in the low sixes. But first I need what’s in that portfolio. I knew Christine screwed me as soon as I heard Danny had been killed, but she stopped answering her phone, I didn’t know where she was, so I started following you around San Diego on Thursday, thinking maybe you could lead me to her. It was a stroke of luck you dove into Petco that night, where I had that crappy part-time zombie job. Easiest way to keep tabs on your quote-unquote ‘investigation’ was become a part of it.”
I had stopped listening to him long before we came upon number 616, my unit. Dirtbag parked the car but left the brights on, pointed at the door. He made sure we got out of the car at the same time, revolver in hand.
“Look, I know you got every right to be mad at me.”
“Gee, thanks for validating my feelings.”
“But what’s done is done. I’m not proud of it, but I got responsibilities. I got kids. I got to think about them—”
The Con Artist Page 22