by Matt Forbeck
“Once again, ladies and gentlemen,” Patronus said, looking directly at Sophie. “This is a Tim Bradstreet illustration of the Punisher, made especially for this auction. I’m going to start the bidding at one thousand dollars for this incredible piece by Tim Bradstreet.”
Sophie pretended not to notice Patronus’s words. She leaned over and spoke to Nate. “It’s time,” she said. “He wants me to call Jim Lee for him,” she said.
“Which will set off the bomb,” Nate said with a grim nod.
“Don’t do it!” Hardison said, panic cracking his voice.
“I think we got that part,” Nate said.
“Patronus gave me both his phone and the number,” Sophie said. “We should be safe.”
“Sure,” Hardison said. “Unless he’s memorized the number. And can find another phone.”
Sophie glanced back at Patronus and saw him trying to signal her. She decided that it was better to acknowledge him rather than have him fly into a panic and grab any phone around him. Given how many people carried phones these days, it wouldn’t take much effort. In fact, he might even have a second phone of his own.
“Oh!” she said with a startled jump. She reached into the pocket of her jacket and found Patronus’s phone there right where she’d put it. She fumbled it out and pretended to dial, taking great care that she didn’t accidentally do so. She didn’t want to discover the hard way that Patronus had put Jim Lee on some sort of speed dial.
She held the phone up to her ear then and pretended to be listening to it ring. She stuck a finger in her other ear, as if she was having a hard time listening to something over the roar of the conversations in the exhibit hall. Then her face lit up as if she’d gotten someone.
She spoke clearly into the phone and started to walk around the edge of the crowd of bidders, making her way toward the back of Patronus’s booth again. “Mr. Lee? Mr. Jim Lee? Hello, this is Jess Drew? Yes, sir, I’m a friend of Lorenzo Patronus, the man running the charity auction for the Hero Initiative.”
She stopped as if to concentrate. From the corner of her eye, she spotted Patronus leaving the podium again to approach her. She acknowledged him with a lift of her eyebrows, then turned away, as if she couldn’t quite make out what the person on the other end of the line was saying.
“I’m sorry, what was that? I couldn’t quite make that out.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
“Oh, that’s just too bad, sir. I’m sorry, Jim.
“Yes, of course. Of course, I think he’ll understand. What choice do any of us have, right?”
Patronus reached the inside of his booth then and held out his hand toward Sophie for the phone. She kept ignoring him.
“All right, Jim. Thanks for all your kindness. We’ll see you at that party you mentioned tonight. Good-bye!”
She spun around then, making sure to keep the front of the phone away from Patronus so he couldn’t see that she’d been faking the entire call. She put a pained look of sympathy on her face to brace him for the bad news.
“I’m afraid he’s not coming,” she said. “He had to take care of an emergency out near the airport, and he thought he could make it back in time. Sad to say, he’s stuck in traffic now and won’t be here in time.”
Patronus’s face fell. “Aw, that’s too bad,” he said with a sharp frown. “I was really looking forward to meeting him.”
Sophie’s face lit up. “Well, then, there’s good news on that front. To make up for his absence, he invited us to a party tonight.”
“The Entertainment Weekly bash at the Hard Rock Hotel?” Patronus’s frown transformed into a silly grin. “That’s fantastic! I hear all sorts of celebrities will be there.”
“I believe he also mentioned poker in his suite after hours,” Sophie said, mirroring his grin, as she slipped his phone back into her pocket. He was too happy to notice, but if he called her on it, she was ready to claim absentmindedness over her happiness for him. “Better take care of business here fast. It’s going to be a long night.”
“Yes, it is.” He pumped his fist once and then charged back to the podium, eager to make the most of his scam.
“At least we don’t have to worry about Patronus blowing us up anytime tonight,” Sophie said into her earpiece.
“True,” said Nate, “although that doesn’t rule out anybody else.”
FORTY-NINE
Eliot had wound up wedged halfway in the passenger’s-side door, caught by the edges of his armor’s breastplate. Parker vaulted over his head and out of the van, then knelt down next to him. “Eliot?” she said as she shook him. “Eliot!”
“He’s out cold,” Hardison said. He hoped he was right, that their friend was just unconscious and not dead. If they didn’t find that jammer fast, though, it wouldn’t much matter. “Search him. This is no time to be shy.”
Parker checked over Eliot. He’d lost his helmet in the fight with the thugs. She didn’t think the jammer would have fit inside of that anyhow, and it hadn’t fallen out of the thing when it had split in two. The rest of Eliot’s armor was loose on him, built as it had been for a bigger man. It was possible he’d hidden it under there somehow.
Parker pulled off the breastplate, which turned out to be fastened on with straps made from black Velcro. As she did, she saw how much Eliot had bled down the inside of the plastic, and she gasped. The jammer, though, was not there.
She knew the thing was too big to fit under the armor’s bracers or greaves. It would have been way too bulky and noticeable. That left only one place to look: the armor’s codpiece.
“Sorry about this,” Parker said as she reached down and tried to figure out how to undo the damn thing. It turned out that the codpiece was actually part of an abdominal plate that ran down from the front breastplate to cover the groin, but it had a belt that went over it that had to be removed before Parker could take the plate off.
“This is a much more complicated costume than mine,” she said. Of course, she was wearing only a bikini and a skirt—well, and the wig and the arm bracelet and the shoes and—whatever.
“What’s taking so long?” Hardison said.
“Only place left to check is his underwear,” Parker said as she worked. “But I have to get his belt off first.”
“Wish I hadn’t asked.”
Parker yanked the belt off Eliot, then grabbed the abdominal plate and pulled as hard as she could. The Velcro straps gave, and she flung the plastic piece aside. There sat the jammer, tucked into the waistband of his long, black underpants.
Parker plucked the device free and held it up into the air in triumph. “Got it!” she said. “How does it work?”
“Hardison?” said Nate.
“It’s damn simple,” Hardison said. “You turn it on, and you get it as close to the cell phone as you possibly can.”
“Is there any kind of danger of the jammer accidentally setting off the phone?”
“Supposedly not,” Hardison said. “For sure it’s no more dangerous than not turning it on and hoping that Kanabe doesn’t get too impatient and call in the bombing run himself.”
“Good point,” Parker said as she crawled over Eliot and back into the van. Once there, she found the switch on the side of the jammer, and she turned it on.
“Great,” Hardison said. “Now hold it up to me for a second.”
Parker did as he asked, and he checked out the readouts on the device’s display. He glared at them hard for a moment, then gave Parker a firm nod. “It’s all good,” he said. “Now that thing has a damn short range on it. Put it down right there next to the detonator, as close as you can reasonably get without touching it.”
“All right.” Parker did just as he asked. It didn’t seem like it had any effect at all on the cell phone, which she supposed was the point. As long as the little box kept any signals from coming in to the cell phone attached to the detonator, they’d be okay.
“Thank you, girl,” Hardison said. “Now, can you figure out a way
to get me free? There’s got to be a box cutter around here somewhere. Or on one of those bruisers out there.”
“I’m on it,” Parker said.
“And, hey, look for some keys while you’re at it. We’re going to need a ride out of here. We need to get Eliot to a doctor, fast.”
“Already on it,” Sophie said over the earpiece. “I just so happen to know a vet who works out at the San Diego Zoo.”
“And how is that supposed to help Eliot?” Hardison said.
“This man has stitched up plenty of gunshot wounds in his life,” Sophie said. “And vets aren’t required by law to report gunshots, the way every hospital in America must.”
“Hey,” Parker said. “That thing runs on batteries, right?”
“You mean the jammer?” Hardison said. “Yes it does. Why?”
“And how long do you suspect those batteries might last?”
“Two hours,” Hardison said, “tops.”
Parker didn’t like the way this conversation was going. “Any idea how much charge might have been left in that thing?”
For a long moment Hardison didn’t say a word. Parker didn’t let that slow her down. She found the keys for the other van in its ignition, and there was a box cutter on the floor between the seats. She snatched it up.
“All I can say is that we’d better get moving,” Hardison said. “As fast as we damn well can.”
FIFTY
Lorenzo Patronus had never had such a great day in his life. He’d pulled off the greatest scam of his scummy little career, and he’d gotten to rub shoulders with countless comic-book celebrities as he did it. Every time he thought about his good luck, he just couldn’t help but smile.
He almost felt bad for those old coots he’d conned out of all their artwork, but hey, it hadn’t been him who’d screwed them all over. They’d done it to themselves by signing rotten work-for-hire contracts with the comic-book publishers, agreements that paid them for their services creating stories and artwork that entertained and inspired millions of kids, from nine to ninety, but didn’t give them even the tiniest sliver of the action. They should have known better than that, right? Even if most of those old fogies had started their careers long before anyone had ever thought of comics as anything more than disposable stories for children and men who never grew up.
When the auction was over, Patronus hadn’t even wanted to total up all the money they’d earned. There would be time enough for that later. He’d turned a huge profit on this venture one way or the other.
After all, he hadn’t put a dime into the booth or the staff or the rental of all the furniture and display cases. Mr. Kanabe had put up all the cash. Kanabe liked to think of himself as Patronus’s partner, but Patronus saw him as an investor, someone who had put money into the venture with a reasonable expectation of a decent return.
Kanabe didn’t know that Patronus planned to stiff him too. After all, he’d taken the artwork from those legendary artists. Why should he share it with some talentless thug? He was about to walk off with the money from auctioning off all those goods, plus the fantastic pieces all those younger artists had contributed to the auction to benefit the Hero Initiative.
Kanabe liked to think he was a dangerous man, but Patronus knew a blowhard when he saw one. Throwing around money to hire all sorts of muscle didn’t impress him. He’d seen plenty of guys like that with enough steroids in their veins to cut off the flow of blood to their brains.
Besides, those guys all listened to him instead of Kanabe, right? They took orders just fine either way, never asking any questions. He liked that about them at least. Maybe steroids didn’t make you deaf.
Kanabe had already washed out of the comic-book industry once. That’s why he needed Patronus as his front. He couldn’t get back in on his own, but once the auction was over, Kanabe planned to quietly release the fact that he had been the moneyman behind it. He thought that would buy him the respectability he craved so much, but he didn’t realize that Patronus’s real plan would ruin that for him too.
That must be why Kanabe had been so angry about that hacker going in and finding his secret Web site with all that obscene manga on it. Just when he thought he was back on the brink of respectability, that scandal came and hauled him back. He might never live it down.
It was one thing to have a business like Kanabe’s manga publishing fail. That happened all the time. But to be outed as the premier supplier of Asian smut comics? That wasn’t going to wash away anytime soon.
Patronus shook his head. He would hate to be that hacker if Kanabe ever got his hands on him. Kanabe might be mostly harmless, but push any man into a corner like that and you never knew what the results might be.
Patronus thanked the booth babes for all their help. He’d tried to get personal phone numbers from a few of them on the pretense that he might have some after-hours work, but they’d all been firm about sticking to their agency’s policy of zero fraternization with clients. He didn’t understand why they wouldn’t make an exception for a guy like him, but that was their loss, right?
As he closed down the rest of the booth for the night, Patronus wondered where all his men had disappeared. Maybe they’d misunderstood his directions and decided to wait for him in the parking structure rather than come back up here to escort him and the cash box to the van. They weren’t the sharpest blades in the razor.
He hated the idea of having to walk down to the parking structure with so much money on him without any kind of guard, but he didn’t see that he had much choice. He decided to call the main guy in charge of security—Mike, he thought the name was—but when he reached for his phone, he discovered it was gone. The last time he’d seen it, he’d given it to Jess. Had he forgotten to ask for it back in all the excitement?
That didn’t matter. He supposed he’d see her at the party tonight.
That put a grin on his face. He’d be drinking with Jim Lee! And who knew how many other celebrities? Warner owned DC Comics, which meant all sorts of people might be there: film and TV stars, singers, models. And since Entertainment Weekly was hosting the party, there would be all sorts of A-listers competing for the limelight.
Unable to call Mike or whatever his name was, Patronus decided he had no choice but to walk the cash box down to the van himself. It wasn’t like he could just leave it at the booth.
Tomorrow morning, he planned on meeting with Jeff Mace to turn over an even million dollars. Later in the day, he’d be in the booth, giving the winning bidders their counterfeit art. His van, containing all of the merchandise he’d supposedly auctioned off, would be safely parked in a secure lot in La Jolla. Originally, he’d intended to take the money, the art, and himself to some tropical paradise that had no extradition arrangements with the United States. Now, though, he had to find a way to stick around, to reinvent himself as a hot new artist just discovered by Warren Ellis.
He’d done a fine job with the forgeries, if he did say so himself. He knew they’d never hold up under close inspection, but in the craze of the last day of the show, he doubted that anyone would notice. Later, though, there’d be a hue and cry.
But Patronus had a plan for that. It might take some fancy footwork, but he intended to see that Kanabe took the fall. The first step would be to direct attention toward him as the moneyman behind the venture. He intended to talk a lot about that at the party.
Patronus tucked the cash box under his arm and headed for the back aisle. As he did, a tall man with shoulder-length sandy hair, wire-rim glasses, and a thin goatee approached him. Patronus tried to veer away from him, but the man came right at him anyway. He wore a press badge.
“Mr. Patronus?” the man said in a British accent. “Rich Johnston of BleedingCool.com. I wonder if I might have a word with you about the auction?”
Patronus stiffened for a moment at the idea of speaking to a reporter of any kind—especially a muckraker like Johnston, whose work he knew all too well—but then he warmed to the idea in an instant. This
chat could come in very handy.
“Can we walk and talk?”
“Certainly.” Johnston fell into step behind him, pulled a small digital voice recorder out of his pocket, and thumbed it on. “So, I heard the auction did extremely well for you. Any estimate of how much you brought in?”
Patronus shrugged. “I don’t have the final figures yet. I won’t until I get back to my hotel room and count it all up. All told, though, I’m sure that we raked in well over a million dollars.”
“Excellent,” Johnston said. “And just how much of that will be going to the Hero Initiative in the end?”
“That’s an even tougher question to answer. Of the lots I supplied for the auction myself, at least ten percent goes to the Hero Initiative. More in some cases. When it comes to the donated pieces, though, all of the funds from those bits go to the cause.”
“Understood. And can I ask how you managed to get all of that artwork lined up for the show? It seems like you managed to pull in pieces from an astounding number of Golden Age legends.”
“Just hard work and good luck, I guess.” The question made Patronus a little uneasy, though, and he tried to switch the subject. “I couldn’t have possibly managed it without the help of Daichi Kanabe, though. He put up all the money for the booth as a donation to the cause and even let us use his booth priority from the previous years when his old company had a presence here at the show.”
“Kanabe of MangaWorks? I remember interviewing him a few years back. Quite a spectacular meltdown the company had. I’d thought he’d gotten out of the business entirely.”
“He had,” Patronus said, “up until this weekend. Honestly, he was a godsend.” He patted the cash box. “None of this could have happened without him.”