by Rick Dakan
"You're making this up," called one of the Crew, a guy named Chris, if Paul remembered correctly. "If it's sealed in plastic, then you can't even read it!"
"Exactly!" said Paul. "That's the beauty of it! As long as it's in the plastic, collectors know exactly how much it's worth. If they take it out to read it, then they've wasted their money on getting it graded and sealed in the first place. Plus, since most comic books get reprinted in book collections these days, they can read it that way. This sealing in plastic thing is only for the hard core collectors."
"So let me get this straight," said Chloe, leaning forward in her seat. "People buy these graded comics that're sealed in fucking plastic and never open them?"
"Exactly."
"Which means that, they have no idea what's actually inside of those plastic cases," she continued.
"Exactly. Except the front and back cover, which of course they can see."
"Which means, if we can figure out a way to fake our own plastic sealing thingamajigs, we can sell 'graded'
comics to folks and they'd never know the difference," said Chloe, making air quotes around graded.
"Exactly!" said Paul. "How would they ever know? They wouldn't want to check, and if we only did comics that'd been collected in another form, they wouldn't even be tempted to read them since they could read them without breaking the seal some other way."
"I have to say," said Chloe, smiling broadly. "That's not a bad little plot for a swabbie like you, Paul." Paul swelled with pride. He was having a blast, especially now that he'd earned Chloe's approval. But there was only one problem with his plan, and fool that he was, he couldn't stop himself from mentioning it.
"There's only one problem," Paul said. "I don't have any idea how they seal these things up. And they're pretty tight-lipped about the process." He hoped that this omission wouldn't sour their good impression of him.
Chloe stood up and came and stood beside Paul, slipping her arm around his waist. "Don't sweat the details right now. Plots and Plans is all about coming up with crazy ideas. You can always worry about the how-to shit later. I, for one, think you've come up with a swell idea - certainly swell enough for a first try." She kissed him on the cheek once more and then turned to the rest of the Crew. "What say you?" she shouted. "Is this a Worthy Plan?"
The assembled crew cheered and most of them rose to their feet. Bee hoisted her glass of champagne and said in a loud voice, "You bet his sweet ass it is!" The rest of the Crew joined in the toast.
And just like that, story time was over and the assembly spun apart into a half-dozen different cliques and conversations. Paul had passed whatever test they'd just thrown at him, a fact that pleased him much more than he'd thought it would. Chloe kissed him a third time, a quick peck on the lips, and said, "Good job, Paul."
"Thanks," he said, his heart pounding in his chest. "I have to admit, that was kind of cool."
Chloe slid her arm around Paul's waist and gave his butt a little squeeze. He jumped a little at her touch. "I told you we'd show you a good time, cowboy! We'll make a Crewman out of you yet."
The rest of the night quickly melted into a blur of the senses for Paul. Several hours and many drinks later, he found himself sitting on the floor between Chloe and Bee while the three of them, along with Kurt, tried to blow each other away on a first person shooter that was being projected onto a big white sheet they'd hung in CHAPTER 8
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front of the book cases. According to the rules, every time you died you either had to drink or take a hit off one of the three or four joints being passed around the room. He held his own for a while until Chloe and Bee started jostling him every time he lined up a kill in his sites.
When he was too drunk to shoot straight, he resorted to grabbing Chloe's controller from her. She jumped on top of him, smothering his face between her breasts as she tried to wrestle it back out of his hands. He enjoyed that quite a bit, at least until he couldn't breathe anymore. Then he rolled over so now he was on top of her, the lower halves of their bodies pressed together. His erection was strong enough to hurt as it strained through his pants against her hip. She smiled knowingly at him and winked, but before he could be embarrassed Bee grabbed his leg and started chortling madly as she yanked him off Chloe.
At that point Raff and Popper stepped in with two others and claimed the game for themselves, banishing Bee, Paul and Chloe to the couch in a giggling heap. Kurt, who'd never stopped playing the game for a moment suddenly threw up his arms in victory and shouted "Yes! I win!" He couldn't quite figure out why everyone started laughing at him.
Chloe took a joint as it was passed around and announced loudly that she was claiming it for the People's Republic of the Couch. She took a long toke and passed it to Paul. He was getting really, really fucked up.
Really too fucked up to even think straight, which was fine as far as he was concerned. Except maybe in so far as it might negatively impact his plan to seduce Chloe later.
Right this moment everything was totally, absolutely fine. He sprawled across the crouch and Chloe sprawled across him as they watched the other guys play video games. He idly stroked her arm and this seemed fine, although the one time his hand brushed the tip of her breast, she shifted position to make sure it wouldn't happen again. He took the hint. For her part, Bee had curled up at the other end of the couch and fallen asleep.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd been to a party like this, a party this fun. Most of the social life he'd had revolved around friends from work. Conversation at such events inevitably focused on work as well. But these people, Chloe and her friends, they were totally free, totally in the moment. They didn't even talk about what they'd done for him earlier that day. No work talk here...
Chloe shifted atop him, snuggling her head into his shoulder. He smelled her hair, which despite its bubblegum tint, gave off the faintest scent of fresh apples. A wave of guilt passed down through him, as he remembered how he'd kicked her out of his car earlier that day. He didn't understand why they hadn't asked for any of his money, and he knew that it didn't make sense. But these people weren't like anyone else he'd ever met before in his life. They had welcomed him into their home and helped him in his time of need. As he drifted to sleep, Chloe snoring lightly in his lap, he sighed. This is all right, he thought. I could learn to live like this.
But that might've just been the pot talking.
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CHAPTER 9
Paul heard thumping. Not the regular thumping of music. Not even the regular thumping of a hammer. This was occasional thumping. There would be nothing for a while and then a muffled thump. Something heavy being dropped onto a carpeted floor. Thump. He squeezed his eyes as if he could close them more than they already were, and then tried to bury his head in the couch to make the thumping stop. The couch. Ok, he was on a couch. Chloe's couch. His head hurt. Maybe the thumping was all in his head?
No. There it was again. THUMP. This time it was close enough to where he lay that he felt the vibrations.
Some damn fool was dropping heavy things on the floor. Bowling balls maybe? He didn't want to know. He heard a door open. Traffic noises from outside. People talking in whispers. Why would they whisper and yet not seem at all bothered about making those horrible thumping noises?!?! Footsteps on carpet? Or was he imagining - THUMP - no, there it was again.
He obviously wasn't going to be allowed to go back to sleep. He let himself become more aware of his situation. He was on the couch in Chloe's house. Ok. He'd been here with Chloe who as far as he could tell, was gone. Yes. He remembered her leaving. A quick kiss on his forehead as he drifted off to sleep. Someone had put a blanket over him, which was good, because he just realized he wasn't wearing any pants. He still had his shirt and socks on, but damned if he new where his pants and underwear went to. There was a dim image of being half asleep and very drunk and complaining loudly about being hot or uncomfortable. Something.
He felt around with his foot a
nd found what he thought might be jeans, bunched up and stuffed in between the couch cushions. That's good. Assuming they're not Chloe's. No. She'd taken her clothes. She'd been wearing her clothes even. She'd been wearing her clothes and her clothes were a skirt. They were probably his. Good.
THUMP. Ok, they're not done dropping bowling balls yet. Why would they need so many goddamned bowling balls?!?! Fuck! Of course, they might be something besides bowling balls. He'd have to open his eyes to know for sure. THUMP. Ok, ok, he got the point.
Paul squinted against the light as he opened his eyes. His contacts felt sticky. He usually took them out before he went to sleep. He had to gingerly rub his eyes for a moment before anything would actually come into focus. He made the waking man's moan as he stretched and rubbed, letting the whole world know he was awake and not necessarily pleased about it. Someone was walking over towards him. It was Chloe.
He looked up at her and smiled sheepishly. "I must've passed out," he said. "Sorry."
"No worries. You're welcome to the couch anytime." She was wearing black cutoffs and a white tank top with a black bra. He felt a familiar stirring down below. Crap! Not what he needed right now. What he needed was his pants on.
"What's going on?" Paul asked. "What time is it?"
"It's about one in the afternoon," she said. "As for what's going on, well - it's your plan in action!" She gestured to the boxes that now littered the room. Boxes. Not bowling balls at all. That made more sense. And they weren't just any kind of boxes. They were long, rectangular boxes designed specifically to hold comic books. There were at least a dozen comics boxes stacked willy-nilly around the room.
"Are those comics?" he asked.
"Yep."
"Whose? Are those mine?"
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"Nope, I guess they're mine," she said. "Or rather ours. The crew's. We bought them today."
"What?"
"We bought them today so we could carry out your plot."
Paul sat up, clutching the blanket around his waist. Chloe was talking about the fake comic book scheme he'd dreamed up last night. Were they crazy? "Are you crazy?" he asked. "That plan was idiotic. I should know, I came up with it."
"I guess you don't realize your own genius then. We all thought it was a pretty good plan ourselves. So we started looking into it. Then Raff and I went out and got a bunch of quarter and dime comics from some local comic shops, which is what you see here before you." Paul just looked at the assembled boxes in confusion.
Were they serious?
"Come on," said Chloe. "Put your pants on and get up. I'll fix you a sandwich and fill you in on your part."
Paul blushed as he realized that there hadn't been a blanket last night when he'd passed out. Someone had no doubt brought one out to cover him up and that someone was probably Chloe. Thankfully, Chloe has gone into the kitchen already, either tactful or disinterested enough to give him a moment to put his clothes on in privacy. He pulled his pants from between the cushions. He still didn't see his underwear, but he pulled the pants on without them. Then he went into the kitchen to find Chloe making peanut butter sandwiches again.
"Did you sleep ok?" she asked.
"I must have," said Paul. "I haven't slept past noon in years."
"Well, you had a busy day."
"Yeah," he said, sitting down at the kitchen table. "So, what's with all the comics?"
"I told you," she replied. "We're following up on your plan."
"But why do you need all these old, crappy comics?"
"I thought about it some, and we can probably pull off counterfeits of the covers and what not, but I didn't see why we should bother going through all the trouble of counterfeiting the whole thing. So we're going to take the covers off of these here and put our fake ones on them. We just bought up all the cheap ones we could find so we'd have plenty to choose from when it came to matching size and age and condition or whatever." This line of reasoning made a lot of sense to Paul, although he still didn't really believe they were going to go through with it.
"The first thing we need from you," she continued, "Is to have you pick out some choice candidates for counterfeiting. The way I figure it, we don't want to do anything too famous or high profile, like Superman number one or whatever. Anything really well known like that and it's going to attract a lot of unwanted attention. Instead, I'm counting on you to pick out comic books that're worth, you know, between $100 and $300 each. I bet there's a ton of those out there, right?"
"Sure," he said. "A ton. It shouldn't be that much of a problem. I just need a price guide and I can go through and pick out however many of those you need." Already he was agreeing to help! Last night he'd wanted to leave, but now he felt guilty. He felt like he'd somehow betrayed Chloe by kicking her out of his car, which made no sense at all, since it was probably the only smart thing he'd done yesterday. Plus, Chloe seemed totally cool about it. Or maybe she was just playing it cool and inside she was really pissed or disgusted or CHAPTER 9
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annoyed. Paul didn't know, but he did know that, for whatever reason, he didn't want to let her down. She was counting on him. "I've got some good candidates in mind already," he assured her.
She'd finished the sandwiches and brought them over to the table along with a glass of water and two aspirin for Paul. "Thanks," he said. He swallowed the two pills with a gulp of water. He wasn't really hungry though, so he let the sandwich be for the moment. "But how are you going to fake the plastic seals the grading company uses?"
"That, my friend, is the hard part. We're still working on that angle. Raff's out doing some research on these Comics Rating Group guys. Apparently they're based out of LA, so we might have to take a drive down there tomorrow and check them out. Have you ever had any contact with them before?"
"No," said Paul. "I was never much of a collector. I just like to read and draw them, so I never felt the need to seal anything up. Besides, I mostly read indie press comics that aren't worth much. Not to a collector anyway."
"Ok," she said. "Well, Raff'll turn up some good solid info. He always does. When he gets back we can plan our next move from there. Hey, are you going to eat that?" She nodded towards the sandwich. He shook his head and she took half for herself. He scarcely noticed; his thoughts had already turned to choosing comics.
After lunch Paul helped Chloe sort through the boxes of comics, just to make sure there weren't any hidden gems in there that were actually worth money already. There weren't - it was pretty rare for a store to make that kind of mistake these days. Paul suggested they might try garage sales this weekend - they don't often have comics for sale, but when they do, you can occasionally find some goodies. He pulled out some of the better-preserved issues, especially if they were from the seventies or early eighties, figuring that this would be the period where most of their counterfeits would come from. After a few hours, Paul had collected a good pile of about fifty issues ready to donate their insides to fraud.
Raff showed up around seven, and he had a bucket of fried chicken with him. "Chow time!" he said, as he came through the door. Bee suddenly appeared from one of the back rooms, much to Paul's surprise. He hadn't even known she was in the house. She must have been hidden away in one of the bedrooms, no doubt engrossed in some technical project or on the computer doing something. The four of them sat down to dinner with chicken and beer. Raff tucked a paper towel into the neck of his black polo shirt, covering up the Cisco logo, and then filled them in on what he'd found.
"Ok, here's the deal with the Comics Rating Group." Raff said between bites of chicken. "They're based down in San-something or another, one of those suburbs in the LA area. Normally they don't take submissions directly, you have to give your comics to a normal comic book store and then they send them on to CRG to be graded and sealed. But, they do make exceptions for big-time clients. If you've got a huge collection of valuable comics that you want graded, they'll let you come in person. Just like any business,
the big whales get special treatment. Most people are only having one or two books graded at a time - remember is costs $30
per book. But someone comes in and says they've got 500 or 1000 rare comics they want rated and sealed, well, now we're talking real money. So I think that's got to be our in."
"Makes sense," said Chloe. "We send in a face to play the big shot. That gets us in the door and into their system."
"Ok," said Paul, "But why do you want to get in the door? Can't you hack their computers from the outside?"
"Well," replied Chloe, "We want to figure out how they do the sealing process so we can fake it ourselves.
And yes, we do want to get into their network, but that's a lot easier to do if we can get into the building."
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"It's important that we make sure the finished product looks just like the real thing," Raff chimed in. "So ideally we'll order our supplies from the same place they do and have their every move down exactly."
"You guys are really going to do this, aren't you?" asked Paul. Raff gave him a look that was somewhere between annoyed and surprised. Having Raff and Bee around had at least partially broken the spell he'd been under when it was just him and Chloe. He liked Bee and Raff well enough, but as a group it all seemed much more sordid. The past six hours had been a fun diversion. He'd spent the afternoon in a room full of comic books and a beautiful woman - every geek's dream. But now he was starting to wake up.
"Hey Paul, listen a minute," said Chloe. "We're not asking you to do anything illegal here. We're really not.
This is just what we do for fun, ok? I'd like you to help us out with some of the prep-work because, well, we don't know anything about comics. Your idea sounded good, but we don't have an expert like you. Sure, I mean, we've all read a ton of comics and stuff, but you were actually in the business. You know that side of things. If you can help us get through this, I'd really appreciate it."
Paul wasn't sure what to do. He did owe them. Certainly from their perspective he owed them. He bluffed for time. "I'm just surprised is all. I mean, is there really that much money in this? Why go to all this effort?"
