by Drew Murray
“You’ve got a job to do there, Parker, and it isn’t to antagonize a prominent local businessman,” Burke cuts me off. “Solve this murder without lighting fires that I need to put out when the Attorney General calls.”
“In fairness that’s not why you really sent me, Director. I’m here for the Fukushima Unicorn.”
“What is it with you people? Decker keeps calling this thing a Unicorn too. It’s a quantum computer. Why can’t you say quantum computer? And yes, that’s why you’re there. And Decker’s there to track down a foreign agent. Quickly. On both counts.”
Burke’s a someone-pissed-in-my-Corn-Flakes kind of guy at the best of times, but he’s especially testy whenever he’s talking to me. Sure, my methods are different, but my close rate is higher than his ever was as an Agent. I know. I looked.
“Farber’s obstructing,” I say. “He won’t let us walk around.”
“He what? He won’t let you? Is this goddamn preschool? To my continued dismay, you’re an FBI Agent, Parker. Start acting like one. You hear me?”
“I do.” The crescendo washes over me.
“Good, so cut out the shenanigans. Play it straight. No more confrontations.”
“Even if he’s a suspect?”
Burke sighs. “Is he a suspect?”
I want to say yes. It would be easy to say yes, and it would take Burke off my back. But in all honesty, I can’t. Not yet.
“No.”
“Then stop lighting him up!” Burke shouts.
There’s a pause while Burke collects himself and I give him the minute. If I let him get it all out, I can get back to finding the Unicorn.
When he speaks again, he’s quieter.
“But if that changes, the moment it changes, let me know,” he says evenly. “I want this case solved. I want to know who killed Caplan, where the quantum computer is, and I want this Chinese hacker found.”
I like Burke and this is why. Despite being an uptight rager, one good blowout away from a coronary, he believes in what he’s doing here. He’s a man with a passion for truth and the consequences that flow from that. In fact, that’s probably why he’s so uptight in the first place. The twin concepts of truth and justice are too often replaced with expediency and compromise in Washington.
“Fine, I …” he says in a fatigued warning.
“Sorry, Assistant Director Burke.”
“Just get it done.”
The call with Burke over, I pull back the curtain to let Dana inside. There’s room for all of us, but it’s tight. With the tarp around us, it feels like we are alone in a small room. Hearing thousands of voices blurring together around us is disconcerting.
I look over Caplan’s stuff for a while.
“What is all this? It looks like junk,” says Decker, pointing at a row of vintage ’80s action figures.
“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, Decker.” Barbarian. I’m staring straight at an original Kenner R2-D2 from 1977.
“It looks old,” he says.
“Not all of it,” says Dana. “These look new.”
She’s leaning in close to a row of bronze sculptures of Star Wars characters. They’re beefy, the size of a loaf of bread or bigger, and all from the original trilogy, no prequels. A blue tag with Japanese writing hangs from each of them, attached with a white ribbon.
“You know,” she continues, moving on to a rack of autographed photos. “I noticed most of the other vendor booths have a particular theme. Like, one place was t-shirts, another was all toys, and one looked like all stuff from a single show, with a blue rectangle on everything.”
“A lot of people find a niche and delve into it.”
“Well, what’s Caplan’s niche? I don’t see anything that ties it all together.”
Frowning, I look around. I see what she means. He’s got action figures, fan art, autographs, and even a few stuffed plush characters. To the inexperienced eye it’s a little of this and a little of that. To an educated eye like mine, there’s a unifying thread.
I point at the row of action figures. “The common theme is quality. Those are original Kenner figures from 1977, and only the rarest characters.”
“If you say so,” interrupts Decker, picking up a Pikachu wearing a blue shirt, “but I see these stuffed animal things all over the place.”
“These stuffed Pokémon are all officially licensed. The one you’re holding is a special edition from the 2014 World Cup. Pikachu was the official Japanese team mascot. He’s wearing the team jersey.”
Decker shrugs and tosses the Pikachu back on the shelf. “They all look the same to me.”
“Take another look,” I say, walking over to the sculptures by Dana. “These pieces are hand-crafted, original works of art. The proportions are perfect. Museum quality.”
Taking out one of my nitrile gloves, I use it to pick up one of the sculptures. A magnificent, and heavy, Jabba the Hutt. His tongue sticks out and his bulging eyes seem to look right at me. I flip the tag over.
“What I thought, Japanese.” I point out the writing on the tag.
Decker leans over for a closer look. “I wonder what it says.”
“It’s the artist’s name, ‘Tokyo, 2015,’ and then ‘Sail Barge Jabba’ at the end. $500.” I lower the tag and reexamine Jabba’s head. “Oh yeah, look at that, there’s the chain around his neck.”
“You read Japanese?” Decker asks.
“I spent a lot of time there when I was young,” I answer.
Decker grunts and turns his attention to Dana. He’s getting restless. It’s tight quarters, and he’s the biggest person in here. “Have your people canvassed the other vendors around here? Talked to them about our victim?”
“Not yet,” she answers, shaking her head. “Farber wouldn’t let us set up checkpoints for people coming in. You saw it, he wouldn’t let any uniforms in here. I talked to a few people. No one saw or heard anything unusual.”
“Video surveillance?” he asks.
“None in the bathroom, obviously. For the rest of the building, we’ve been waiting for a supervisor to get here with the playback password.” She looks at her Fitbit. “They should be here by now.”
“The guard from last night?” Decker asks, tugging at his collar.
“Told a uniform he didn’t see anything.”
“You take his word for it?” I ask.
“No. That’s why he’s still here. We made him wait.”
“Now we’re talking,” says Decker. “I’ll go check out the security office. You two go talk to the weirdness peddlers around here.”
He doesn’t wait for a response before slipping out of the booth. I hear him take a deep breath once he’s past the curtain.
“He really doesn’t like small spaces, does he?” asks Dana.
“You noticed that, too.”
“Hard to miss.”
As much as I appreciate the opportunity to dig on Decker, something else has caught my attention. Peeking above the top shelf of Caplan’s booth, on the other side of the wall, is a white plastic cylinder with a black glass circle on the front.
“Know what that is?” I ask, pointing at it.
“Yeah. It’s a camera,” she says. The “duh” at the end was silent, but I picked up on it. I’m good like that.
One successful internet security camera campaign on Kickstarter spawned an industry of copycats. They all look similar, a blob in white or black plastic, with a couple of lenses.
The one’s pointed right at the victim’s space. And since it’s a good bet that Caplan came here last night, it’s bound to have seen something important.
“Let’s take a walk.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The vendor with the security camera turns out to be a guy named Gordon Webb, proprietor of “Spider Webb’s.”
Where Caplan’s booth was precisely ordered, Webb’s is a hot mess. As I poke around the stuff stacked everywhere, Webb’s common theme seems to be “whatever struck his fancy that day.” Ther
e are vintage Star Trek phasers from the ’80s, and current, BBC-licensed Sonic Screwdrivers next to a handful of humorous t-shirts, polyhedral dice, and Christmas Vacation eggnog mugs in the shape of cartoon moose’s heads. Boxes of even more stuff peek out from under the tables.
Webb himself is hirsute to the point of a roly-poly bear. His graying-brown hair is curly and wild, surrounding his head like a soft halo. His bird’s nest of a beard is an extension of his mane. The frames of his glasses are enormous, drawing attention to his dark blue eyes. He’s clean though, well groomed, which isn’t always the case at these things.
“Listen, Farber’s got Chief Wilmont’s number on speed dial,” says Dana. “If we go in there and ask questions about a murder, the word is going to get around, and we’re going to get more calls. We’re investigating a theft.”
“Go ahead.” I shrug. “I want to take a look around the place first anyway.”
Webb smiles broadly when Dana approaches, inviting her to call him “Gordo.” At first, he’s happy to talk to her. She flashes him a wide smile, showing off the product of some top-notch dental work. His eyes dart over her figure, and I swear I see him lick his lips before he invites her to look around his booth.
When she produces her badge, and asks where he was last night, his eager-to-please attitude dries up like a snail in the sun. His eyes narrow behind the substantial lenses.
“I was at Klingon Karaoke, of course.”
“Excuse me? What’s that?” Dana asks.
“I would think it’s obvious,” he says with a sigh. “Karaoke facilitated by members of the Klingon Empire.”
She shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders with a look that says, “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“Karaoke where people dress up in costumes,” he says with an exasperated sigh.
“Right,” says Dana. “Do you wear a costume?”
“Of course, I have a vintage screen-ready Starfleet uniform from The Wrath of Khan.”
“Sounds impressive.”
“It is. The ladies, especially, admire a man in uniform.”
“Is that so?” says Dana, with a tone that says Absolutely not. “Can anyone confirm you were there?”
“Ask around. I’m known as The Commander.”
“What time did you leave?”
“I don’t remember. Talk to the organizers if you’re interested in what happened at the Karaoke.”
“I’m more interested in what happened here last night.”
“Does that mean you caught him?” Webb asks, crossing his arms and resting them on his generous belly.
“Caught who?” says Dana.
“The thief. It’s about time.”
Dana catches my eye over Webb’s shoulder, frowning. That was supposed to be our line. This is the first we’re hearing of a theft. How many people were in here last night?
“What thief is that?” Dana asks taking out a black notebook. An actual, paper, cop notebook. Cool. I wonder if she uses shorthand.
“The one who’s been stealing from the vendor booths overnight, of course. That is what you’re here for, isn’t it? There’s losses at every show, but this Con is the worst. Every year a whole bunch of us get hit, and every year we complain about it. I told Farber if it doesn’t stop, I may not be back again. I think he’s finally listening to me.” Webb waggles his finger at Dana as if she were Farber standing there in front of him.
“What can you tell me about Roger Caplan?” Dana asks, ignoring Webb’s gesticulations.
“Roger? He’s the thief?”
“Why would you say that?” Dana asks.
“Everyone knows how he is.”
“I’m new, why don’t you explain it to me?”
Webb thinks about it for a second and shifts his weight from one foot to another. His eyes dart up and to the left.
“How should I say it? Greedy? Maybe that’s too strong. He sure doesn’t cooperate with the rest of us. He knows what we’ve got. We go to the same Cons. But if he doesn’t have what a fan is looking for, he won’t send them over to us. More likely he’d buy it from us on the cheap and sell it to the fan for more.”
“How is that not greedy?”
She hits him an open question. Rita Kapinsky, an instructor at Quantico, once told me an interrogation is just a conversation with a purpose. Dana’s keeping this conversation flowing well.
“Well,” says Webb pulling his glasses forward and looking over the top. He’s going for professorial, but coming off as awkwardly shortsighted. “Greed is really about intent, isn’t it? And I don’t think Roger’s intent is to harm anyone. He’s in a bad way. Ex-wife.” He pushes his glasses back up and nods sagely.
Dana perks up. Stats say the majority of violent crime is perpetrated by someone known to the victim, and as the probability of being the doer increases, the closer the relationship gets. Spouses are always number one on the list.
“So, you know him pretty well?”
“Not really, but when you’re on the circuit, you tend to run into the same faces city to city.”
“How long’s he been divorced?”
“A few years now, I think.”
“Does she come to these things? Is she on the circuit, too?”
“His ex? No. Never. All she wants to do is bleed him dry.”
Webb lunges suddenly to his left, his face twisting in anger. Dana shoves her left hand out in front of her, reaching instinctively with her right for her hip. She’s too close, she won’t be able to draw in time. I fumble under my blazer for the Glock at the small of my back. But it doesn’t matter. Webb isn’t even looking at her. He’s got eyes on a kid at one of his tables, holding up a Pop figure of Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead.
“Hey!” he shouts at the kid, his face immediately shifting to crimson. “You want to buy that? No? Then don’t open it. You open it, you bought it.”
The kid drops the Pop figure and walks away. I’m getting a gut feeling that Webb isn’t the most successful entrepreneur. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe yelling at your customers is the way to go?
“These damn thieves,” Webb continues, watching the kid wander off. “And he’s here every year. To tell the truth, with what he had at home, I think he liked going on the road.”
“Who, the thief or Caplan?” asks Dana.
“Yeah, Roger.”
“You’re here every year, too?”
“Me? What? Are you calling me a thief?” Webb puffs up like some kind of hairy blowfish. His shoulders square and he puts his hands roughly where his hips would be if his girth didn’t keep him from finding them.
“Are you a thief?” Dana looks him in the eye, pen poised over her notebook.
“No!” Webb says, turning red in the cheeks.
He starts to list off all the stuff that he’s had stolen. Sounds pretty petty, actually. Small stuff, bright shiny things that look like jewelry. A time turner from Harry Potter. Or an amulet from Supernatural. Flashy but worthless.
As he continues to prattle off the list, I make my way behind him to the back of the booth, directly below the security camera. Perched next to it, out of reach of the casual browser is a bronze sculpture of Han Solo encased in carbonite from The Empire Strikes Back. It’s a tall rectangle with the smuggler’s well-known pose: face rising out of the solid material, mouth open in shock, or maybe agony, hands held up defensively—even though he went into the chamber with his hands bound, but the final prop is so cool everyone forgives that. This sculpture’s the size of a bookshelf speaker, and being made of metal, it must weigh a ton.
There’s a tag on it. I reach up and flip it over to discover the same Japanese writing as the metal sculptures in Caplan’s booth.
“That’s not for sale!” Webb bellows behind me.
I turn around to find him waggling one chubby finger at the Han Solo sculpture. His face has become an alarming shade of crimson. His breathing comes in puffs as he waddles over.
“This is my associate,” sa
ys Dana. “Will Parker, FBI.”
“Oh, uh, I thought you were looking to buy that.”
“No, but it’s a great piece,” I say.
“Yes, it is. Handmade by an artist in Japan. He makes a small run of a single design each year. Very rarely seen in North America.”
“Roger Caplan had some other pieces by the same artist, I think.” I twirl the tag with my fingers. It’s clear that this is some prized possession to Webb, so I keep touching it, which is stressing him out.
“Did he?”
“If it’s not for sale, why is it on display?” Dana asks.
“Because I like to look at it.” Webb crosses his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits, and shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve got more Solo stuff. It doesn’t hurt to leave a showstopper piece like this on display. Drives the prices up. Making money in rare collectibles is all about timing. I’ll wait until interest in Han is at a peak, and maybe I’ll sell it then for top dollar.”
And he says Caplan was greedy? Jeez. Looking around Webb’s booth, I didn’t see anything rare enough to fall into the “command the top dollar category” except for the statue. Not like Caplan’s booth where everything was a quality item.
“Tell me about that camera,” I demand, changing the subject.
“The which?” says Webb, still flustered by my touching the sculpture. I drop the tag and point at the white cylindrical web camera.
“Oh that,” he continues. “It doesn’t work. I mean, it does work when I plug it in, but I don’t plug it in here.”
“Why not?”
“Too much hassle. The Wi-Fi isn’t reliable in the Convention Center, so you’d need to connect it to a laptop. And for a laptop you should have a power source, which they don’t give us here.”
“So then why put it up there?” asks Dana.
“Well, it’s like those plastic owls you buy for your balcony.”
“I wouldn’t know, I live in a townhouse,” says Dana.
“You know, to scare away birds,” says Webb, looking at me for agreement.
“I don’t have a balcony either. I live in a mansion on the beach.”
Webb just looks at me, trying to figure out if I’m joking and why. I glance over at Dana who rolls her eyes. I shrug. What? It’s true.