by Matt Forbeck
“We can’t just do nothing,” Sophie said.
“Of course not,” said Nate. “But we’ll need to split up. Sophie and I will go scout out Patronus’s booth to see if we can spot any of his people still trying to slip things out of the booth.”
“You think they’re already done?” asked Eliot.
“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, that’s our best place to start.” Nate checked his watch. “The auction’s going to start soon, and Patronus already expects Sophie and me to be there, so that’s perfect.”
“What about us?” Parker fidgeted, even while standing in one spot. Nate wasn’t sure how she managed that, but he knew she needed something to do. “You can’t expect us to just sit out here and wait.”
“No, I need the two of you ready to follow anyone that Sophie and I put you after. If we try to tail one of Kanabe’s men, we’ll call attention to ourselves. Then they’ll never lead us to wherever they’re taking the goods. That’s your job: to go after them and make sure they don’t spot you.”
Eliot nodded. “Once they get where they’re going, though, they’re fair game, right?”
“They might know what happened to Hardison, and I’ll trust you to extract that information from them.” Nate didn’t want Eliot to torture anyone—and certainly not to kill them—but if the people who’d grabbed Hardison sustained a few bruises and even multiple fractures in the course of the crew’s saving their friend, he wouldn’t lose sleep over it.
“Got it.”
Nate glanced at each of the others in turn. “Time is important here. Once the auction’s over, whatever Kanabe plans to do to destroy the artwork in his booth could happen at any moment. At that point, they’re likely to be extremely nervous about making their plan work, and they’ll start looking to tie up loose ends. For Hardison’s sake, we need to find him before that happens.”
Most of the time running cons with the crew was fun, Nate had to admit. They got to experience the thrill of breaking the law and ripping people off while doing some good for the world. This, though, was deadly serious. If they blew it, they might lose one of their own, and they all knew it.
“We good to go?” he asked.
They all nodded.
“Oh,” Nate said, looking down at his hand. He was still carrying the jammer and Hardison’s earpiece. He handed the earpiece to Parker and the jammer to Eliot. “With luck, you’ll see him first.”
“Bet on it,” said Eliot.
Nate turned with Sophie and entered the convention hall, leaving Eliot and Parker on their own. They’d find another way into the hall, he knew. They’d already spent too much time together, just there on the balcony and the wharf, risking others—besides Cha0s—seeing them together. They all had their jobs to do now. He just had to hope that if they did them right they’d find Hardison alive and well.
As they entered the exhibit hall, Sophie took Nate by the crook of his arm to slow him down. “You’re upset,” she said. “You can’t let Patronus see that.”
Nate started to object, to tell Sophie she was wrong, but he knew she’d see right through it. “I just—” He frowned and consciously slowed his pace to match her leisurely stroll. “I just feel so responsible.”
“For what?” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “Hardison? He’s a grown man. He made his own mistakes here. He’s just lucky we’re here to help fish him out of whatever well he’s been thrown into.”
Nate gave her a wry look, and after a moment she relented. “All right,” she said. “I feel a little responsible too. Perhaps if we hadn’t taken a break from it all last night, we might have been listening when he started talking to Cha0s. Maybe we could have stopped any of it from happening.”
“Probably not.” Nate patted her hand on his arm. “But I sure would like to think so.”
When they got to Patronus’s booth, they saw that its interior had been roped off, and the large men working for him had started to rearrange the front of it by moving a few of the cases to the sides. A pair of them were unfolding a small, low, collapsible stage, while another wheeled in a narrow podium, complete with microphone and built-in speaker. The transformation from a display booth to a live auction site seemed well under way.
To one side, a woman stood with an iPad in her hand, registering people for the auction. She had the disinterested but pleasant look of a local model who’d been hired to work in the booth for the weekend. She obviously didn’t care about what she was selling but seemed determined to do a good job despite that. As she completed each registration, taking down not only personal information but payment details, she directed the prospective bidders over to another woman, who handed them each a numbered paddle assigned to their account.
Nate guided Sophie over to stand in the line to register for a paddle. Sophie had taken her hand off of his arm before they were in sight of the booth, and standing next to her now, he found he missed it. He wanted the comfort of her touch at that moment, but the identities they’d set up for themselves didn’t allow for it. They might have been able to sell Patronus on the fact that Jess and Jeff were more than just business partners, but Nate didn’t want to give the man any reason to think about them much. The more he saw them simply as uncomplicated people who could make him rich, the better.
So they stood apart and pretended to be business associates and nothing more.
As they waited in the registration line, Nate and Sophie scanned the rest of the booth, looking for signs of the original artwork that Patronus had removed from the display cases. At first, Nate didn’t see anything unusual. Then Sophie nudged him with her elbow and gestured with her head toward one of the small tables that sat between the some of the display cases.
During the rest of the show, these tables had featured stacks of catalogs of the goods to be auctioned, along with brochures from the Hero Initiative. Nate hadn’t given them much thought. Their tops were covered with thin white sheets of vinyl, the cheap kind of stuff that could be torn off and replaced with a new sheet and a staple gun within minutes. The most important detail, though, was that each of the tables also featured a long run of black polyester skirting that ran all the way around them and from the top edge of the table to the floor. This provided a good deal of space under which the people in the booth could hide things.
The man installing the podium got it into place and went searching for an electrical outlet into which he could plug the podium’s onboard sound system. He got onto his knees and pulled back the curtain under one of the tables to find the outlet. He also revealed several cardboard boxes and shipping tubes that had been taped back up.
“I think that’s where our missing goods went,” Sophie said softly.
Nate nodded. “Good. If they still have some of it here, then there’s still a chance for us to follow them back to wherever they’re storing it. All we need to do is wait for one of Kanabe’s thugs here to make a pickup.”
“Hey!” a familiar voice came from behind them. “It’s two of my favorite people. What are you folks doing here?”
Nate and Sophie turned around to see Patronus walking up to them, a huge grin on his face. The man just seemed to be growing happier and happier with every passing hour. Nate didn’t wonder why. After all, he thought all his plans were about to come to fruition and that he’d realize his dream in the bargain.
“Oh, well, we just thought we’d offer some financial support to go along with our moral support,” Nate said. “After all, we’re business partners now, right?”
“Right!” Patronus said, grinning. “But you don’t have to do that. After all, I haven’t put everything up here, right?” He leaned in and spoke in a confidential tone. “Once this is all over, I’ll let you two get first crack at my private collection. Just wait until you see what I’ve held back from this.”
“Really?” Sophie said with ginned-up enthusiasm. “I can hardly imagine. You have so many great pieces on display here already. I’d think this would be impossible to top.”
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p; Patronus clapped her on the shoulder. “That’s one of the dirty secrets of this industry. There are lots and lots of great artists in it, and you know what? They keep making more! I could hold an auction like this every month and still barely put a dent in all the great stuff circulating around out there.”
“Interesting,” Nate said with a weak smile. “I have to admit, I don’t know anything about this side of the business. I’m an attorney. I understand publishing, intellectual rights, contracts, those sorts of things. When it comes to collectibles, though, I’m clueless.”
“It’s all about supply and demand,” Patronus said. “The lower the supply, the higher the demand, and the more you can charge for any individual piece. That’s why the prices for dead artists always skyrocket. The supply’s cut off, permanently. Done. No more. Changes the market for the work entirely.”
Nate thought of Simon Curtiss lying in his hospital bed, Susan sitting next to him, holding his hand, wondering if he’d ever fully recover. It didn’t seem beyond Patronus to have actively tried to herd the man closer to death. After all, what else would cause the value of the works he’d stolen from Simon to skyrocket?
Nate wanted to punch the man out. Instead, he reached over and tapped Patronus on his temple. “Sharp,” he said. “Damn sharp.”
“In any case, don’t made bids just on my account,” Patronus said. “If you see something you want, then sure, by all means, of course, bid it up as high as you like. But after this is all over, I’m going to write you a big, fat check either way.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that you will, Lorenzo.” Nate patted the man on the back. “I have no doubt about that at all.”
FORTY
Parker and Eliot veered away from Nate and Sophie as they entered the building. They walked a hundred yards north and then used the next entrances they could find into the building. From there they made their way back down into the exhibit hall to wait for word from Nate and Sophie.
They hung out in the aisle at the rear of the hall, nearby the entrance to a set of bathrooms. Parker liked the spot; it was quieter and a bit darker. She did her best thinking in places that were dark and quiet.
If anything, the traffic in the hall had only gotten busier during the day. More and more people had streamed into the place, hoping to find the latest and coolest things in comics, games, toys, film, and television and bring them home to enjoy and maybe brag about to their friends. Some of them had come to meet their favorite creators—artists, writers, actors—and maybe get their autographs. Others had shown up in costumes, hoping to insert themselves into the event and play their own role in the grand spectacle.
“We need to find some kind of disguise,” Parker said as a group of girls in Merlotte’s waitress uniforms passed, followed by a band of cosplayers dressed as the nine heroes from The Fellowship of the Ring. These included four children made up as hobbits—wearing shoes that looked like hairy feet—and a person whom Parker guessed was a petite woman in a fake beard, done up as Gimli the dwarf.
“No.” Eliot’s tone told Parker that this was the end of that particular conversation. He didn’t care to argue it with her, no matter how sound her reasons. She’d said her piece, and he’d said his, and that was the end of it.
She decided to ignore him. “What if Patronus comes back here with the guys moving his stuff? They’ll recognize me for sure.”
Eliot looked her up and down. “So what? Hang back, and you’ll be fine.”
Parker shrugged. “I don’t know. This is a big place with a lot of people. A lot of traffic. Kind of easy to lose someone here, even if you know what you’re doing.”
“He doesn’t know what I look like,” Eliot said. “I’ll follow him just fine.”
“But what if they see you with me?” Parker frowned. “Then they might be suspicious of you too.”
“Look, Parker,” Eliot said. “I don’t care how many reasons you come up with. I don’t care how cool you think some of these costumes are. There’s no way you’re getting me to climb into one. Posing as Warren Ellis was bad enough for one weekend.”
Parker kept her mouth shut for a short while. She had a little bit of time left. Not much, sure, but she could be patient, right?
Eliot stood there, enjoying the silence, or at least the dull background roar of more than a hundred thousand voices joined in tens of thousands of conversations. For the most part, that’s how he liked things: quiet. Parker understood that, sure, but she couldn’t let it last. Not when Hardison’s life was on the line.
“I know how you feel,” she said. “I mean, it’s not like I like to dress up at all. Except, you know, in my work gear, but I only wear that when I’m on the job. Like on top of a building. At night.”
Eliot’s eye twitched as she spoke. She knew he was trying to control himself, refusing to respond, but she also knew it was a battle he would lose. It wouldn’t take much for her to push him over the edge.
She’d have to be subtle about it, though. If she blew it, the bad guys might spot them, and then she and Eliot might not be able to follow them, and then they might kill Hardison. If he wasn’t already dead.
“I guess you never did like Hardison all that much,” she said.
Eliot’s knees sagged, and he slumped against the wall behind him. “Ow,” he said. “What the hell was that for? Where did that come from?”
Parker gave him what she hoped looked like an innocent shrug. “Well, you don’t seem too worried about him being killed.”
“He’s not dead, Parker.” He clenched his jaw so hard she could see the muscles working in it.
“Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”
“No,” he said. “I’m saying it to make myself feel better.”
He turned to face her. “Of course he might be dead. But if he is, there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years, Parker. Good men. Good women too.”
“So you just don’t care?”
“Of course I care!” Eliot winced at his own outburst, then continued in a lower tone. “If he’s dead, I’ll hunt down every one of the people who hurt him, and I’ll make them pay. I’ll make them wish they’d turned themselves in right after they did it, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with me.”
Parker gave him a sober, understanding nod. “Do you really think he’s dead?”
Eliot shook his head in frustration. “Honestly? I don’t know. There’s no way to know. But I think Nate’s got this right. We work at this as if he’s alive and waiting for us to rescue him. Even if it turns out to be a waste of time—and I hope to God it’s not—it’ll get us closer to the people who grabbed him. And if it’s not, then we just might save him.”
Parker considered that for a moment. “That sounds right,” she said. “But if that’s so, then why take any more risks? Why not just—”
“All right, Parker!” Eliot cut her off. “I’ll wear a damn costume. Just go ahead and pick one out for me. I’ll even be one of your damn bronies if that’s what it takes.”
That made Parker so happy that she couldn’t help it. She leaned over and gave Eliot a peck on his cheek. She stepped back, a wide, relieved smile on her face, and started to scan the crowd.
“All right,” she said. “Who do you want to be?”
Eliot winced again. “I’m perfectly happy as myself. And what are you doing looking at all these people walking by? We’re not going to mug them for their outfits, are we?” He stared hard at Parker when she didn’t answer. “Are we?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I was just looking for some inspiration. And maybe some guidance.”
“We don’t have a lot of time here, Parker. If we’re going to do this, we have to move on it now. And you realize that if Nate and Sophie tell us that someone’s coming our way, we’ll have to abort and just wing it in our own clothes, right?”
“Right,” Nate said through the earpiece.
“At the moment we’re still looking,” Sophie said. “
You should have plenty of time—if you move fast.”
Eliot made a dramatic gesture for Parker to proceed. She ignored him and kept scanning the crowd for costume ideas. She had to find a disguise that she could wear—and that Eliot would wear too.
Most of the costumes were just too complicated or too silly or flat-out impractical. If it involved face paint—like the excellent Joker and Harley Quinn couple that just roamed by—it would take too long to pull it off. If it looked too much like street clothes—like that other couple dressed as Bella and Edward from Twilight—then it was no good either. They needed something that either covered their faces or was so outlandish that no one would be looking at their faces.
Then she found it.
A Star Wars stormtrooper sauntered by with a woman dressed up as Princess Leia in a bikini, complete with a golden hairpiece and brunette wig with a long braid that hung down her back, the outfit she’d worn in Return of the Jedi when she was a slave in Jabba’s palace. Parker leaped off of the wall she’d been leaning against and reached out to get the couple’s attention. “Hey,” she said. “Where’d you get those fantastic costumes?”
The couple stopped, and the woman dressed as Leia smiled at them. Maybe the man did too, but Parker couldn’t see his face beneath his helmet. “We made them,” the woman said. “Would you like to take a photo?”
“You mean there’s nowhere in this entire, humongous hall where I can buy those?” Parker said. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely,” the stormtrooper said in an amplified voice that made Parker jump in surprise.
“Oh, wow!” she said. “You sound just like the guys in the movies.”
“Integrated speaker system,” the stormtrooper said. Even with the helmet obscuring his face, his pride was evident. “Top-of-the-line stuff.”