Unfortunately, some of those predators were Big Name Fans and professionals in the field. The people we couldn’t throw out of a convention without cause, so we didn’t. We also didn’t let them give us cause. We usually assigned security people to dog these troublesome adults, and to never, ever let them alone with a child or a teenager. We also made sure these troublesome adults stayed away from the childcare areas and the places where kids went unsupervised, like the gaming wing and the movie room.
“Of course we have the list,” I said. “But believe me, Karnikov isn’t on it. I know. That was the first thing I checked when the concom wanted to book him. If he was on the list, I would have made sure that we had no guarantors for the hotel or the convention site.”
“He should’ve been on the list,” she said.
“He never came to a convention before,” I said. “He’s not on the list because he hasn’t needed our tiny level of money before.”
“Grow up, Spade,” she said. “He’s not coming here because he’s broke. He’s not that broke. He’s got more residuals than you can imagine. He’s coming because he’s running out of venues where he can get his hands on kids.”
My breath caught in my throat. Could she be right? How could I have missed that? “I saw no evidence of that in the press.”
“You’re not dumb, Spade,” she said. “Why do you think the press doesn’t have any of this?”
I grew cold. It was an internal coldness, not caused by my iced coffee or the air-conditioning. I was appalled.
“He bought them off,” I whispered.
“Or threatened suit,” she said. “And those suits can get ugly, especially if the press doesn’t have a lot of evidence.”
“But you do,” I said.
She shrugged one slender shoulder. “I would have evidence, if it weren’t for his damn money.”
I had finished my iced coffee, and somewhere in our conversation, she had finished her final piece of cake. I stood up.
“I’m getting more coffee. Do you want anything?”
“The entire contents of the sweets cabinet,” she said, then raised a hand. “Kidding.”
But she didn’t sound like she was kidding, and I understood stress eating. So I bought her a piece of marble cake and got me another iced coffee. I still had my lemon cake, which I wasn’t sure I could eat—at least not during this conversation.
“Okay, you’ve got to tell me what’s really going on,” I said as I slid the marble cake toward her.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “You’re not going to like this, Spade.”
“I already don’t like it,” I said. “I doubt anything you tell me will be worse than the things my imagination can conjure.”
But it was. Oh, it was.
And I was very glad I hadn’t eaten any of that lemon cake. Paladin ate it, along with her piece of marble cake, and two shortbread cookies that she bought when she refreshed her iced tea.
All the while, she told me things I didn’t want to know and would certainly never forget.
The PG-rated version went like this:
A large part of Paladin’s business came from distraught parents whose kids were missing. These parents had tried everything to find the kids—or conversely, the parents were really famous/upscale/visible and wanted a discreet investigator, someone below the radar to track down the missing kid.
The parents in the second category usually had runaways who were acting out, kids who had trust funds and lots of access to cash, kids who really wanted to get away from Mommy and Daddy. Paladin and I met over a case like that.
But a handful of these kids were last seen in the company of Karnikov. Initially, he met the kids at big celebrity events and invited them to his place for an afternoon, something starstruck parents couldn’t say no to. And by kids, Paladin meant prepubescent teenage boys, aged ten to thirteen. They were all good looking in a teen model sort of way, and they were all Karnikov fans.
Until he spent time alone with them. Then they hated him, and for good reason.
But they often couldn’t leave his house. Paladin rescued two from hotel rooms, five from the house itself, and five more from limos. She prevented half a dozen kids from leaving a public venue with Karnikov.
Since a lot of these events happened in San Francisco, she got one of the district attorneys there to hold grand jury hearings on a group of cases.
The problem was that by the time it came to testify about Karnikov, the kids had either left the country or they wouldn’t talk to her anymore. In all of the cases, she could prove that the parents had come into a large sum of money. But she couldn’t prove where the money had come from, even though she knew.
Until she could prove who was paying off the kids, the D.A. wouldn’t press charges. And with Karnikov, it was his word against theirs.
“Wouldn’t he recognize you?” I asked when she finished.
“No,” she said. “He’s never seen me. And he changes his security people all the time. Some of the older ones would recognize me, but the new ones have no idea who I am.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“I want to set up cameras all over his hotel suite. I want to bug it as well. I want images. I want to catch this bastard in the act.”
She struck her clenched fist on the table, nearly knocking off the stack of dessert plates beside her. I grabbed them, got up, and handed them to the barista.
Then I came back to the table. The movement didn’t help. I still felt profoundly disturbed.
“I don’t want to catch him in the act,” I said softly, “because that means a child gets hurt on our watch, at our convention.”
At my convention.
“I would never allow him to touch anyone,” she said so fiercely that a few people looked over at us in alarm.
“I know,” I said, “but even a hint of an allegation could hurt the child involved. You know that the less scrupulous members of the press will broadcast the kid’s identity. You know that they’ll trash the kid and his parents in any forum they have.”
Her cheeks reddened. It was a lovely color that set off her eyes.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “I was just thinking O.J., you know? They caught O.J. in a hotel with his own words.”
Former football star O.J. Simpson, who later confessed to murdering his wife, got brought down by his own voice on a digital recorder, threatening a man he wanted to do business with.
It was a good model, but not good enough. People didn’t hate Karnikov as much as they hated Simpson. And this time, there were minors involved.
Not to mention the reputation of all of Fandom. We have perverts and creeps, just like any gathering of adults. We probably have them in fewer numbers than most places, just because our group is so uniformly shy. And we have arranged for the arrest of several, including a former SMoF who, last I heard, was serving a decades-long sentence. Those we can’t arrest, we monitor.
All the time.
But Paladin was right; Karnikov was different. He had more money than anyone who had ever been the guest of honor at a convention and he had more fans—the loony kind, who believed everything he did was all right, even when it wasn’t.
Even if Paladin’s plan occurred, and even if the kid wasn’t harmed, the kid and his family would be destroyed. CelebCon would be ruined, and Fandom might never be the same.
I shook my head. “I can’t let you work security, Paladin.”
“Okay, Spade, at least let me go after Karnikov,” she said. “This is my best chance.”
“No.” I used my firmest voice. “I don’t even think you should come to the convention.”
She looked startled, then hurt. “Spade, I can buy a damn membership if I want.”
“And I can block it,” I said.
“You’d protect a man like Karnikov just because he’s your guest of honor?”
That hurt me, but I let it slide because I knew how angry she was.
; “No,” I said. “I think you’re going at this like a bulldozer. And right now, what you need is a little finesse.”
She paused. The anger left her face, replaced by a puzzled frown.
“What’re you thinking?” she asked.
“I’m thinking you were on the right track with the district attorney,” I said. “You just didn’t take it far enough.”
“I took it as far as I could,” she said.
“But you need a forensic accountant,” I said.
“A what?”
“Me,” I said. “You need someone like me.”
It took some finagling. First I had to explain to the San Francisco district attorney that I am a certified forensic accountant in California, even though my residence is in Washington State.
Over the years, I’ve gotten certification in every state that offers it. I’m licensed in all but Hawaii because I’ve never run a convention there.
I make sure I can testify in court, which means getting whatever each state needs to make me a legitimate witness.
Mostly, though, I’m so well known in the fannish community that any time a con committee hears I’m investigating their finances, they panic and tell me everything they know.
I haven’t lost a case yet.
Paladin knew that Karnikov was bribing the parents of these kids he hurt. She just couldn’t prove it. The district attorney couldn’t afford the money to fight and track down all of Karnikov’s financial dealings.
But I could. Mostly because I could do it myself—so long as we had the proper warrants, which I left to the D.A.
I had Paladin supply me with pizza, Chinese take-out, huge breakfasts, and lots of donuts, as well as coffee, iced coffee, and the occasional bottle of water (but only because she insisted).
I locked myself in my hotel room with my bank of computers and went to work.
But not before I talked to the other SMoFs. Because my actions were about to make CelebCon a disaster.
We were going to time Karnikov’s arrest so that he would be in jail instead of attending CelebCon. Which meant that the convention would either have to shut down or have some kind of equivalent guest.
Which we couldn’t find. Not ever, not because of the short notice, but because celebrities of Karnikov’s stature—megacelebrities, the press calls them—don’t go to Comic-Con, let alone to an upstart convention like CelebCon.
But the SMoFs called in every chit they had, pulling in some of the lesser celebrities who had initially left the convention, offering signing bonuses, all kinds of perks that a con never normally offered.
The idea was to salvage at least a small percentage of the attendees, so that CelebCon would at least make its nut.
And if we timed Karnikov’s arrest to the very last minute, then CelebCon wouldn’t be blamed for his absence, or for demanding our money back, since everything was based on his actual appearance.
But all of that meant I had to work hard and fast, and most importantly, accurately. I needed to document everything, and because we were doing this on the QT, I couldn’t have help.
Which meant that I couldn’t have sleep.
I got crankier and crankier as time went on, so cranky that I didn’t even care if I snapped at Paladin. She was doing her best to keep me upright, hydrated, and thinking clearly.
She also, bless her, never once asked me how I was doing.
Because it was pretty clear that I was doing poorly.
Karnikov had some good money managers, and it took me five days to realize that money managers were human, and could be bought like everyone else. I sent Paladin to the manager who hadn’t handled Karnikov’s most recent transactions. I figured two things: Karnikov had probably fired the guy, and in that circumstance a bulldozer might be exactly what we needed.
Especially a beautiful bulldozer with a killer smile.
What I wanted from the manager seemed small enough: the names of the dummy corporations that Karnikov used or, failing that, the names of the offshore banks where he kept his accounts.
Paladin got both things, but wouldn’t tell me how. She did shudder when she handed me the disk with the information. Then she took a long hot shower.
It was only later I realized that she’d bullied the guy into letting her drive him to San Francisco to make a deal with the district attorney. She said being alone with the creep in the car was more than enough to make her feel slimy.
Leave it to my prurient imagination that she had done more to get the information. I blamed my lapse on lack of sleep, and that damned attraction I had for her.
Two more days, one illegal maneuver that I would have to cover with a legitimate one before we went to court, and I finally had the information we needed: Karnikov had indeed paid off the families. All of them.
And from the same numbered offshore account.
After a short argument (“But I can drive!” “You’re in no shape to walk, let alone drive!”), Paladin drove me to San Francisco to present the evidence to the district attorney myself. I slept the whole way—and had nightmare after nightmare of Karnikov trolling the halls at CelebCon, searching for victims.
I woke up in a cold sweat, ready to nail the bastard to the wall.
The arrest made international news. In fact, it fed the twenty-four-hour news cycle for weeks and got revived every time there was a legal action. The trial had a little more dignity than I would have expected, only because it was held in San Francisco, and not in Los Angeles, home of the celebrity nutball trials.
CelebCon didn’t lose as much money as I thought it would. Everyone there spent the weekend discussing Karnikov anyway. His fans needed a place to gather, and they had already paid for this one. We only gave back five percent in refunds which, considering I was expecting seventy-five percent, was pretty damn good.
My I-told-you-so’s weren’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped they’d be. Mostly because I kept thinking about how close we really had come to megadisaster.
If I hadn’t stayed, then Karnikov would’ve preyed on kids throughout the convention.
If Paladin hadn’t tried to bulldoze her way into security, we might’ve been facing lawsuits ourselves for fostering the wrong kind of atmosphere for children, something the fen never-ever-ever wanted to do.
As disasters went, this one was not nearly as bad as it could’ve been.
It could’ve been the end of the fannish world.
But it wasn’t.
And as Paladin said to me one giddy afternoon before I gave my eighty-fifth deposition (actually just my third, but it seemed like eighty-five at that point), we’d also taken a major predator off the streets.
“You did it,” she said, clutching at my arm. “You’re a genius.”
I shook my head. I usually accept the genius label, but not this time. This time, I still felt like a chump who should’ve fought harder to keep Karnikov away from my beloved conventions.
“I’m not a genius,” I said.
“Oh, but you are,” she said. “You’re the Eliot Ness of science fiction.”
I frowned at her. I’d been called a lot of things, but never that. “How so?”
“Al Capone,” she said. “They got him on tax fraud, not for all the murders and stuff. But he still went away forever.”
Bribery. Buying off witnesses. Interfering with court cases. Certainly not the same league of felony as the charges of child sex abuse that Karnikov could’ve faced.
But, as my beautiful bulldozer pointed out, those charges were alleged anyway. Mine could be proven.
“And,” she said in that same joyful tone. “We all know how well child abusers fare in prison.”
We did know that. Just like we knew that meeting our idols wasn’t always a great idea. They didn’t all turn out as bad as Karnikov, but they rarely lived up to our ideals either.
As we went into the last day of CelebCon, I was actually thinking of no longer running conventions. I had done enough. I thought I might even take a vacation from Fa
ndom, go live in the real world for a while.
Then I ran into Doris Xavier, the head of security, outside closing ceremonies. Doris was a muscular woman the size of The Rock, and she always spoke her mind, even if you didn’t want to hear it.
“That Paladin is something,” she said. “Think of all the kids she’s rescued. She’s risked her life dozens of times. Now, she’s a true hero—and we don’t even know her name. Just like the real Paladin.”
I almost corrected Doris. First, there was no “real” Paladin. He was a fictional character, and we did know his name.
But Doris was right. You could look at the worst side of human nature, or you could look at the best of it. Karnikov was the worst.
Paladin was the best.
And she came to me when she needed help. Which was better than any I-told-you-so.
It was enough to restore your faith in human nature. Or at least to restore mine.
I’m still working finances at too many conventions per year. I had to take some time out to testify. I could’ve become a celebrity in my own right, but I didn’t think I’d be a good interview, no matter what the producers on CNBC’s various money shows told me.
Instead, I’ve been going to panels in my spare time, participating in fannish discussions—the kind that got me into the field in the first place—and I’ve decided to trust my instincts.
If I think a guest is going to be bad for a convention, I’m going to make sure that guest never ever attends.
I’ll play the Karnikov card.
And considering how long fannish memory is, playing it once should be more than enough.
Copyright © 2010 Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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Fiction
THE ALCHEMIST
R. T. LAWTON
They said they would pay me to bring the old man to them after nightfall. It wasn’t to be a lot of money but enough to get my interest, especially since I needed to eat, yet my criminal talents on the streets of Paris were still, shall we say, developing. Of course, some folk in our community of outcasts argued that my sleight of hand skills were so raw as to border on incompetent and there was no developing them. But, what did those people really expect from a young orphan recently graduated from Mother Margot’s School for Pickpockets? I merely needed a little more time to settle into my new profession.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 01/01/11 Page 13
