Con Job

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  “I do the girl characters,” she said with a wave.

  Because “female” is a character class, rang Jessica’s indignant voice in Sam’s head, and she smiled a little.

  “Okay, are we ready to get started? For the audience, this is how it’s going to work: we’ll call a contestant into the booth. We’ll close the curtain for sound quality, since we are recording these for TruCast, but you see the camera over the top here? Everything will be projected live onto the giant screens behind me. So you’ll get to see every facial contortion, every blush, every tic these guys have to offer.”

  The crowd chuckled.

  “We’ll give them a character profile and a line, and they’ll each have several characters to read. Our professionals will comment, but you the audience are encouraged to scream and cheer for what you like, okay?”

  Katnak was called first. He went up to the booth, his multi-colored antenna bobbing as he walked. This is the only job interview where it doesn’t matter at all what you look like, mused Sam with a private laugh.

  Katnak took the page of lines and went into the curtained booth. The interior was projected onto the giant screens, and he waved at the camera.

  “Okay,” said the MC, “your first role is… You are a high school student who has just discovered that you possess a superpower.”

  Katnak looked at the sheet and laughed.

  “Give it to us when you’re ready.”

  Katnak took a breath, leaned toward the mic, and breathed in a perfect Keanu Reeves impression, “Whoa.”

  The audience laughed and clapped.

  “Okay, good! For your next line, you’re a mad scientist, just about to complete your world domination project when suddenly the doorbell rings. Play it for laughs.”

  Katnak nodded, studying the page. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then he unleashed on the mic, one arm holding the page and the other gesticulating as he shouted. “What, what? Seriously, what now? Why do I even have a doorbell on a remote mountain stronghold? Memo, disable that thing.”

  The audience liked this one, too. Sam clapped, trying to still the tendril of anxiety stirring within her.

  “Nice, nice. Now, last one: you’re a Marine, and the helicopter carrying your childhood friend who signed up with you has just been shot down. You’re watching it fall and running toward the crash site.”

  Sam tightened her fists. This was the hard stuff.

  On the screens and inside the booth, Katnak appeared similarly anxious. “Okay,” he said, almost to himself, as he stared at the script page. He tested the words, running through them silently, and then he took a deep breath and licked his lips. “Nooooooooooo! Sam! Hold on, Sammy, I’m coming! I’m coming!”

  It wasn’t great scripting, but that wasn’t Katnak’s fault, and his delivery had a rawness to it that appealed. The crowd cheered, Sam included.

  Katnak exited the booth and waved to everyone, and then he went up to the stage to hear the panelists’ impressions.

  They were brief. “Your first two, there was nothing really wrong with them,” said Mickey, “but they were a bit derivative.”

  “That’s good when a director wants a riff on something,” said Ryan, “but you want to try for originality more.”

  “But your third one,” Sandra said, “that had some potential. It wasn’t a great line, but you put a lot into it.”

  The others nodded. “Third was your best, definitely.”

  “Thank you,” said Katnak. “I appreciate your thoughts.”

  He returned to sit beside Sam. “Sorry for screaming your name like that,” he whispered. “Especially as we’ve only just met.”

  She cast a darkly incredulous look at him and turned back to the stage.

  “Sorry,” he said again, “that was uncalled for. Really.”

  “You’re right,” she said, “but apologizing helps.”

  “Nervous energy,” he said. “I always get the shakes right after I get off a stage or something. Worse after than before. It’s weird.”

  The next contestant entered the booth and was given the role of a cheery alien observing human children at play.

  “I freak out before,” Sam said, “and then I spend three hours afterward rehashing everything I should have done differently.”

  He laughed.

  The reading contestant giggled through two of her three lines, and for the third, a parent looking down at a child’s grave, she broke off laughing and said she couldn’t do it. The next contestant, however, was pretty good, and the audience cheered her as she exited the booth.

  Sam’s name was called about halfway through, by which time her hands were sweaty and her breath shortening. That was bad for voice work, and she tried to take slow, deep breaths as she approached the booth.

  Someone was cheering from the audience, and she turned to see Lydia with her hands funneling a whoop. She smiled and waved. To the side, Zach and Jessica were clapping and shouting encouragement too.

  Surely the script would grow damp and saggy in her wet hands. She took the page without looking at the MC and went into the booth.

  She did most of her voice practice in her car as she drove, private and ever available. The makeshift booth wasn’t too different in size. Sam drew a deep breath, letting her diaphragm and lower abdomen expand.

  “Okay, first up, you’re surprised by the appearance of your explorer friend who has been missing for months.”

  Sam looked at the script. Seriously? How could anyone work with this clunker of a line?

  But silence stretched outside the booth. She curled her fingers. “Tell us how you escaped from Devil’s Island, Randolph.”

  There wasn’t much sound from the audience outside. She wasn’t sure if that meant that they didn’t like it, or if she wasn’t supposed to hear much of them inside the deadening curtains. But how could they have liked a line like that, no matter how it was read?

  “Okay. Next up, you’re a successful actress, about forty, talking to a friend about your divorce.”

  This one had more possibilities. Sam thought a moment, tested a breezy tone in her mind, and then loftily said, “Oh, Doug, I'm far too busy to be upset. I have my broadcasts, my fan mail, my detailed plans for how to dispose of Jeff's body….”

  The audience liked this one, she could hear. She smiled and gave the camera a thumbs-up. They liked that, too.

  “Very good! Now, for your final role, you are a parent who has just heard your child having a horrific nightmare. Come in and gently wake him.”

  Sam’s stomach clenched. She had done lots of heroic voices in her car, lots of challenges, lots of sarcasm and snark. She hadn’t practiced much maternal.

  She stared at the page, her thumb marking the third set of lines. Come on, Sam. Think gentle. The camera stared at her, waiting. Who could be a touchstone for this? Who had a kind, child-friendly voice, that wouldn’t sound all creepy and predatory?

  Mr. Rogers. There was no one kinder and friendlier and more soothing than Mr. Rogers, and if they didn’t like it, well, she didn’t want to work in an industry which rejected Fred Rogers.

  She closed her eyes against the camera and thought of a gentle man in a sweater. She opened her eyes and found the words marked by her thumb. “Wait, little one, hush. It’s all right; there’s nothing in the dark. Only me, and I’m here to sit with you and watch the night go by.”

  It wasn’t the kind of monologue to inspire wild cheering, but they cheered anyway, if politely. Sam exhaled and opened the curtain, heading to the stage to hear the voice actors’ feedback.

  Mickey spoke first. “Man, that first line, I felt for you. Who wrote this stuff? I’m sorry. But you did the best you could with it.”

  “It’s totally a female line,” Sandra stage-whispered, and they all laughed. “Like, Ooh, hero-guy, tell me how you were amazing so I can be amazed.”

  “I guess you could put a lot of sarcasm into it,” mused Ryan. “Lots of eye-rolling? Would that help?”

  �
�Not really,” said Mickey. “But you pulled it through — what’s your name?”

  “Sam.”

  “Sam. You gave it what you had, which is all anyone can ask. After that….”

  “After that is when she brought the snark,” said Sandra. “Which was good.”

  “And it was at the opposite end of the spectrum from the last line, which was all warm and fuzzy,” Mickey said. “So that’s good range.”

  “Good job,” Ryan summed up. “Keep working.”

  “Thank you,” said Sam, and as she returned to her seat she wondered if she should have said more. It seemed kind of flat.

  When she sat down, though, Katnak gave her a big grin. “I should probably hate you,” he said, “but that was pretty good.”

  “Hate me?”

  “Because I was figuring it was going to be me and that guy who did the goat-man, and now I’ve got to beat him if I want to be in the top two.”

  Sam felt her face pull into a wide smile. “I don’t think it was quite that definitive, but thanks.”

  Her phone buzzed with texts from Lydia and Jessica. Awesome, you rocked it, and, Sweet pipes, girlfriend.

  She didn’t hear the next couple of contestants, as she was replaying her lines over and over in her mind. Leave it alone, she told herself. Nothing you can change about it now. Just wait for it. But her internal playback kept going.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Got the toxicology analysis back on that powder,” Detective Martin announced as she entered the staff suite. “Initial, anyway, it was a rush job. It’s definitely some sort of arsenate or — oh, hold on.” She withdrew her phone and read aloud, “Consistent with lead hydrogen arsenate.”

  “So it’s arsenic,” Daniel said. “We really are back in the days of Agatha Christie and inheritance powder. But what’s lead hydrogen arsenic?”

  “Arsenate,” corrected Detective Martin mildly. “Apparently it’s a pesticide, or was.”

  Jacob pulled out his phone. “The internet to the rescue,” he said. “Lead hydrogen arsenate, right? Wow, it’s kind of a hot topic online….”

  “I don’t really care about what 4chan has to say about it,” Daniel interrupted. “We’ve got a homicide involving it. Two homicides.”

  “We’ll know more when they’ve got a final analysis,” Detective Martin said. “In the meanwhile, it’s creepy enough. How did a bag of it get into the kitchen? Was it supposed to go into the food for everyone?”

  “Hold on,” Jacob said. “Here’s a petition to the FDA to stop import of Chinese apples and apple concentrate for juices, due to high arsenic content.”

  “You think that’s relevant?” asked Daniel.

  “It might be,” Jacob said. “The petition site says that arsenic pesticides are mostly illegal in the US but are still used in China. And wasn’t there somebody who just got back from China?”

  Daniel looked at Jacob. “And you’re suggesting that he bought an illegal pesticide there and brought it back to use as a murder weapon?”

  Jacob hesitated. “Well, when you say it that way….”

  “It’s worth making a note of,” Daniel said, surprising Jacob. “Weirder things have happened.”

  “Who just got back from China?” Detective Martin ran a search on her phone. “Oh, right, that’s Hammer. Greg Hammer.”

  Jacob stared. “Greg Hammer? But… why would he?”

  “He did have a connection with the victim,” Detective Martin said. “Not close, but there was a business relationship.”

  “No way,” Jacob said. “Hammer has fame and fortune already. What would be his motive?”

  “Money and passion, that’s the standard line,” said Daniel. “But there can be other things, too.”

  Jacob screwed up his face. “Passion with Valerie Kimberton? I mean, yeah, she wasn’t bad-looking, but….”

  “But sometimes she might talk out loud and ruin the effect,” Daniel said. “Still, no accounting for taste.”

  “Not Greg Hammer. He’s an artist. A really good artist.”

  “Really good artists have weird quirks.”

  Jacob looked bleakly at the schedule on the wall. Not Greg Hammer. “Still, I think we ought to know more about it first.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Do you happen to have an expert handy on toxic pesticides in the food supply?”

  Jacob blew out his breath. “No, but — hold on, yes, I might.” He drew out his phone. “Let me text my favorite social justice warrior.”

  Jessica might not know much about arsenic and pesticides, but she would certainly know who would.

  It was nearing the end of the allotted time for the voice acting contest, and they had two participants left to go. Sam kept glancing at the clock on her phone. Would they have time to review and declare winners? They had all the participants’ email addresses, but if they had to wait….

  The last contestant was a girl in her mid-teens. She was good, with a solid classic horror scream which probably turned some heads in the corridor outside. But Sam wondered if she were too young to be able to take advantage of the TruCast offer. And she sounded young, not much vocal range yet.

  “And that’s our last entry,” announced the MC. “I think our judges have been making notes as we went, so we’ll just give them a few minutes….”

  Beside Sam, Katnak crossed his fingers and gave her a grin. “You and me. Then goat-man. But you and me first.”

  A mini-reel sent in from a winner, even a minor winner, would stand out from the dozens or hundreds of submissions TruCast received each week. She was good, she knew she was. She just needed that tiny boost to catch someone’s eye and prove it….

  Two men in jeans and black t-shirts appeared to bend over the voice actors’ table, pushing a sheet of paper back and forth. Sandra and Ryan seemed to disagree on something, and then Mickey whispered and they all laughed.

  “Are we ready?” prompted the MC. “Do we have our winners?”

  One of the black t-shirt men nodded.

  “Let me just remind our audience that these contestants are competing not only against each other for fame and glory, but against contestants at other conventions for a chance to be considered for an actual voice role by TruCast,” he said with artificial excitement. “So, whose recording gets sent?”

  They pushed the sheet at Mickey, who looked surprised and then leaned toward his microphone. “Um, we have our two winners. They are, Gary ‘Katnak’ Osterman, and Juan Diaz.”

  Katnak pumped his fist and hissed, “Yes!” In the next row, the man who’d done the goat-man impression leapt to his feet and cheered.

  Sam swallowed and offered Katnak a hand. “Congratulations.”

  He shook it. “Man, I’m sorry. You were good.”

  “Thanks.”

  Katnak and the other winner went forward to claim their certificates and take care of the TruCast paperwork, and Sam rose and started back to the doors. Jessica and Zach met her in the aisle. “Robbed,” Zach declared. “Totally robbed.”

  “Don’t be unfair,” she told him. “Those guys were pretty good, too.”

  “It’s because there were four men and only one woman judging,” Jessica said. “You got pushed aside.”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened.” Sam sighed. “That first line… I should have done something to jazz it up somehow. Nobody writes something that flat without hanging a lampshade on it. I should have played it for laughs.”

  “You did fine,” Zach said. “Don’t beat yourself up over nothing.”

  Lydia worked her way through the exiting crowd and threw an arm about Sam. “You were awesome. And robbed. And awesome.”

  “Told you,” said Zach.

  “You okay?” asked Jessica. “Need some frozen yogurt or anything?”

  Sam laughed. “I didn’t win a contest,” she said. “It’s not like I failed a class or found a breakup note. It’s cool.”

  “I ran out on Jacob, so I’m going to check in with him,” Lydia said
. “But you were great.” She headed down the hallway.

  “We’re heading to a Marvel Cinematic Universe versus comics panel,” Zach said. “Want to come?”

  “Nah, I was thinking about the Ubisoft preview,” Sam said. “Catch you later.”

  She hadn’t gone far when someone caught up to walk beside her, and she recognized Ryan Brazil in his tight green polo shirt. “Excuse me,” he said, “what was your name?”

  “I’m Sam.”

  “Sam, I thought you were fantastic,” he said. “It was that clunker of a first line that really sold you, I think. You gave it all you had, really professional.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You looked pretty intense in there. Are you serious about voice acting?”

  She shrugged. “I guess. If you count that I’ve wanted to be a voice actress since I was eight.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, you’re serious. Listen,” he continued, “I really wanted to pick you, but I got outvoted. But I’m willing to speak for you, Sam. I think you’ve got talent.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And if I get a chance to mention someone for an unfilled part, I’d be happy to put your name in — if that’s all right.”

  “Sure,” Sam said, trying not to grin stupidly. A personal recommendation from an established actor would go much further than a minor contest win. “Sure, that’d be fine. Actually, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Great. I don’t suppose you have a card?” He shook his head. “No, probably not. Not yet, anyway. But here.” He drew out his phone. “You can just friend me on Facebook and we’ll be able to stay in touch that way. Ryan Brazil, see like this.” He tilted his phone so that she could see the screen.

  “Sure, thanks.” She pulled out her own phone from her messenger bag and searched for him in Facebook. “Here, I’m liking your page.”

  “No, not the fan page — my personal page. So we can actually talk.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks. Here you are, sending friend request now.”

  He refreshed and tapped the screen. “And, friends!”

  “Great. Thank you. Really, thank you.”