The Con Job

by Matt Forbeck

  “Naw, the portfolio reviews in the hall. You know, crushing all those dreams.”

  Sophie spoke through Eliot’s earpiece. “I never realized you knew so much about art.”

  “I’m more than just a pretty face, you know,” Eliot said. “You pick up a lot of things on the job.”

  “About anatomy?” Parker said as they strolled up the street, her leading the two men by a few yards. “And perspective?”

  “Helps me know which bones to break and which shots to take.” He shrugged. “Listen, I could convince those people to give up their dreams with a three-minute critique, then they don’t have what it takes anyway. They’re bound to run up against a lot worse than that.”

  “What about that teenage girl you sent away in tears?” Nate asked. “Was that really necessary?”

  “I did her a favor,” Eliot said. “Same favor I did for every one of them. I was honest with her.”

  “You think that’s what she needed?” Sophie said.

  Eliot chuckled. “Either one of two things is going to happen. She’s maybe going to quit and go home, in which case I just saved her years of whining about how life’s not fair. She can go find something else to do that suits her better instead of drawing out her failure.”

  “Or?”

  “Or she’s going to dry her eyes, put on her big girl pants, and prove me wrong. In which case, I just put her on the path to a successful career doing something she loves and is determined to succeed at. Either way, she’s better off.”

  “Which way do you think she’s going to go?” asked Parker.

  “Hell if I know,” Eliot said. “You think I can sum up someone’s life in the course of a three-minute meeting? All I know is that the worst thing I could have done was told her to keep doing what she was doing, which would have added up to constant rejection. I either kicked her in her ass or put her out of her misery. Trust me, I did her a favor.”

  “You gave up, didn’t you?” said Nate.

  Eliot didn’t say a word. Neither did anyone else. He and Hardison strolled along after Parker, moving at the crowd’s laid-back pace.

  “There’s something wrong with Patronus,” Eliot said. “He’s not the guy that hired all that muscle.”

  “What do you mean?” Parker said. “He’s in charge of that booth. They work for him.”

  Eliot shook his head. “He’s a small-time rip-off artist. Auctioning the goods at Comic-Con is a big step up for him, and yet he’s more interested in showing off his portfolio than staying on top of his business. Plus, you don’t need guys like that to watch a booth at a convention. That artwork’s not that valuable.”

  Hardison nodded in agreement. “True. The electronic equipment in any one of the bigger booths is worth a hell of a lot more than most of those pages. Easier to hock too.”

  “True,” said Parker. “And he’s never done anything like this before, far as I know. He always worked alone.”

  “So someone else is behind this?” Sophie said. “But who?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. Hardison? Any way you can figure out who paid for his booth?”

  “I’ll give it a shot. Might require a bit more legwork, though.”

  “Meanwhile, hurry on over here. This place is filling up fast, and people keep asking us for your chairs.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “Don’t you think we should call Patronus?” Hardison said as he sipped at his orange soda. Nate had been right. The Field was packed, despite the fact that it didn’t normally serve his favorite drink. He was glad he’d faked an order for the stuff on behalf of the Field before they’d left for the convention. He’d done the same thing for the Dublin Square over on Fourth Avenue, just in case. He might never have been to San Diego, but he knew the kinds of places where Nate liked to hang out.

  Nate shrugged, and Hardison wasn’t sure how to interpret it. “I mean, we’ve got him on the hook, right? Let’s reel him in.”

  “We chase him, and he’ll run,” said Nate. “It’s a lot easier to have him come to us.”

  “Better for the con too,” Sophie said. “People don’t tend to question their good fortune if they feel like they have to pursue it.”

  Parker and Eliot nodded in agreement. Hardison put up his hands. “All right,” he said. “I just think you gotta take advantage of an open connection when you have it. What if he gets cold feet? Man’s got a lot going on this weekend.”

  “You saw him,” Sophie said with a sly smile. “The look in his eyes? Nothing’s more important to him than this.”

  “But what if he gets too busy with his scam here at the show? We don’t have forever to make this happen. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Sophie’s phone—the no-contract cell phone that Hardison had set her up with for this job—rang. She checked the caller ID. It read Lorenzo Patronus.

  “I need to take this,” she said with a smile, flashing others the name.

  “Maybe you should just let it go to voice mail,” Eliot said. “Let that man dangle on the end of your hook for a while.”

  Sophie glanced at Nate, who shook his head. It was tempting, and if they were working a long con, Nate might have gone that route. People suspect less treachery from those they have to chase, after all, but Hardison was right. They just didn’t have that much time to play around with this guy.

  Sophie cleared her throat and slipped back into her New York accent. “Hey, Lorenzo!” she said as she answered the phone. She kept her tone casual but enthusiastic. “How you doing?”

  “Just wanted to check in and see what our next step is with Warren Ellis,” he said. “I’m pretty excited about this.”

  “And I don’t blame you,” Sophie said. “That went about as well as can be expected. I have to warn you, though. I think we need to strike while the iron’s hot. Warren, he tends to get all excited at a show like this and then fall off the face of the earth once he gets back home. I mean, it’s a long trip, who can blame him? But I’d feel a lot better if we could nail this down fast.”

  “I’m totally on board with you about that, Jess,” Patronus said. “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner, the better. Better we get this all signed and sealed before he discovers someone better than me here at the show.”

  “Oh, he’s not going to do that.” Sophie laughed. “Still, let’s get moving on this. First thing we need to do is have you sign an agent agreement. That makes everything official so I can go ahead and start negotiating with Warren on your behalf. Until that happens, we’re at a standstill.”

  “Then when can we meet?”

  Sophie indulged herself in a smile. She knew that the answer the man wanted to hear was “right now.” She didn’t want to appear too eager, though.

  “How about lunch tomorrow, at the Tin Fish? It’s right across the street from the convention center, at the corner of Sixth and L.”

  “I know right where it is. Can we meet early and beat the rush?”

  “Afraid I have another meeting that morning. How about one thirty?”

  “All right.” Sophie could hear him forcing a chipper attitude into his voice. “One thirty it is. Can’t wait to see you.”

  “I’m looking forward to it too. We’re going to make great art together.”

  Sophie disconnected and slipped the phone back into her pocket. “Consider the hook set.”

  “Good work.” Nate reached over and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “We should celebrate.” He raised his hand to signal the waitress to bring them another round of drinks.

  Hardison laughed. “Hell, yeah! BOOM! Studios is having a drink-up over at the Hyatt, and I got a personal invitation to the IDW party by none other than Ted Adams himself. Time to get my geek on.”

  “We ain’t done here,” Eliot said, putting a damper on that burst of enthusiasm. “You figure out who’s the moneyman behind Patronus yet?”

  “Aw, that can wait for a little bit, right?” Hardison said. He pulled out his smartphone and waved it in front of them. “Hel
l, I’ll get on it while we’re waiting for our food to show up.”

  “You need to take this seriously,” Eliot said. “There’s something fishy about all this. I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t like anything,” Hardison said. “How do you parse something like this out from the rest?”

  “Are you going to look into this or not?”

  “Hey, it’s w00tstock tonight too. I’m not going to miss that.”

  “I thought you said that sold out months ago,” Parker said.

  Hardison shrugged. “I mean, sure, I don’t have tickets yet, but these problems can be solved. It’s Wil Wheaton, and Paul and Storm, and Adam Savage! You know, from MythBusters?”

  “How about the myth that hackers lack a decent work ethic?” Eliot said. “You want to bust that?”

  “Hey, you can’t keep a good geek down!”

  Nate gave the hacker a hard look. “Hardison?”

  The young man scowled. “I’m on it. Like I said, I’ll have something for you before the food shows up.”

  “Ha!” said a voice emanating from the stairs leading up to the dining room. “Want to race?”

  Hardison and the others turned to see who was coming to join them. They’d been pretty sure they’d been careful about letting anyone who might recognize them know they were there. Sure, there were a hundred and fifty thousand visitors in town, so someone out there had to know someone in the crew, just by the law of averages. But that’s why Nate had chosen the dining loft at the Field. Sitting in a tiny, sheltered room shielded from any view of the street cut down on the possibility of coincidences.

  When Colin Mason—the hacker known as Cha0s—stuck his head up over the stairway’s railing, though, Nate knew this could be no coincidence.

  NINETEEN

  “Well, hi, friends,” Cha0s said as he emerged into the dining room right next to them. “Long time no see.”

  The hacker’s false friendliness grated on Nate, but he knew how much more irritating it must be for Hardison. The two of them had a not-so-friendly rivalry going that had wound up with Cha0s behind bars, at least for a while. The two men were at the top of their respective games, two of the top hacking whizzes in the world, and they both had a competitive streak to boot.

  While Hardison had given up his old ways to take up with Nate and the rest of the crew to help innocent people, though, Cha0s was the worst kind of black-hat hacker. He wasn’t above trying to kill someone who got in his way, if he thought it would be the most efficient way to deal with a particular situation. He’d nearly killed Sophie with a tricky bomb at one point, and it wasn’t for lack of trying that he’d failed.

  Whereas Hardison cultivated an air of coolness, Cha0s embraced his geekiness. Thin and bearded, he often wore the kind of semicasual clothes that you’d see on any programmer in any office in America. Today—likely because he wasn’t on the job—he wore a pair of khaki shorts and a gray T-shirt that featured a handful of bright red gamers’ dice spinning around a twenty-sided die like electrons around a nucleus.

  “So good to see you all here.” Cha0s gave them a smarmy smile. “Did you all lose a bet with Hardison about where you should go on your family vacation this summer?”

  “Beat it, Cha0s,” Nate said. “We don’t have time for you.”

  “Why?” Cha0s pulled up the only empty chair at the crew’s table, spun it around, and sat down on it backward, his arms folded against the top of the chair’s back. “Are you kids on a job here? Don’t tell me you’re mixing business with pleasure.”

  “It was all pleasure here until you showed up,” Hardison said. “How’d you get out of prison this time?”

  “Do you really need to ask?” He leaned back, knitted his fingers together, then stretched them forward, cracking them all at once. “It’s really not that hard once you know how it’s done, right, Nate?”

  Nate knew that Cha0s was referring to the time that Nate had been forced to break out of prison himself. There weren’t any circumstances under which he wouldn’t have called his experience hard, though.

  “You pled out, didn’t you?” said Nate. “The feds put you in a witness protection program, and you took off out of it the first chance you got.”

  “Close, but no cigar,” Cha0s said with the kind of grin Nate wanted to wipe off the man’s face with his knuckles. “You get to go home with one of our lovely parting gifts.”

  Nate glanced at Eliot. Cha0s had always been terrified of the man. “You got it half right, Nate,” Eliot said with a snarl that made Cha0s almost leap out of his chair. “My bet is he’s still under the witness protection program.”

  “Bing-bing-bing! We have a winner!” Cha0s said. “Why would I want to leave something like that behind? The government does a hell of a job setting up new and fresh and perfectly legal identities for people it likes. I’m happy to take advantage of that for as long as I can manage it.”

  “What are you doing here?” Sophie asked, a hard edge in her voice. Cha0s might have long since given up on trying to kill her, but Nate knew she’d never forget that he’d tried.

  “I’ve got tickets to w00tstock tonight, and I was wondering if one of you lovely ladies might care to join me as my date?” Cha0s produced a pair of tickets and grinned at both Parker and Sophie in a way that dared them to accept his offer.

  “Can’t decide which one of you should go?” He fanned the tickets in his hand a bit wider to show that he actually had three. “How about you both? No need to fight over me. At least not until later, you know, after the show.”

  Hardison stood up on one side of the table, and Eliot mirrored him from the other. They didn’t say a word, just glared at him, daring him to say something else to provoke them. He took a step back and slipped the tickets back into his pocket.

  “Hey, boys, I only have three tickets, I’m afraid, and I think the ladies would be much better company. I mean, I’m sure you’re good-looking gentlemen—I don’t really pay attention to that kind of thing—but you’re not really my flavor.”

  Eliot took a half step toward Cha0s and smiled as the man flinched. “Get out of here,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “You can leave by the window or the stairs. Your choice.”

  Cha0s put up his hands. “Fine. I just wanted to come by and make a peace offering, but I can see that you’re all busy.” He started to turn away, then clapped a hand over his mouth in mock surprise.

  “Wait,” he said. “You are here on a job, aren’t you? So that’s what it gets to bring the high-and-mighty Hardison to finally come down to Comic-Con and let his geek pride flag fly? A job?” He grimaced at his rival hacker. “I can’t tell you know disappointing that is. I thought you’d finally given up trying to pretend you’re not a geek and were embracing your true nature.”

  “Hey, I’m as much a geek as anyone.” Hardison stabbed an accusatory finger at Cha0s.

  Eliot chuckled. “I think we can all vouch for that.”

  Hardison listed off some of his geek credentials, his voice rising with every point. “I can code in binary. I have a complete run of Spidey Super Stories, the ones they did with The Electric Company. I hacked my GameCube when I was nine. I won a Magic: The Gathering pro tournament. I. Have. Been. To. Gen Con!”

  Cha0s shrugged, unimpressed. “Good for you. Maybe someday you’ll be comfortable enough with your geekiness to step out on your own around here, unencumbered by your, ah, mundane pals. Might even level up.”

  “You think I don’t see the D&D jokes in there?” Hardison said. “Get out of here before I have Eliot take ten on giving you a beating.”

  “Have it your way,” Cha0s said as he headed for the stairs. “Whatever it is you’re working on, I hope you stop the bad guys.” Halfway down the stairs, he peeked over the railing. “Unless, that is, you’re the bad guys. I can never keep all this straight.”

  Quick as a striking cobra, Eliot threw a steak knife at him. It stuck point first in the railing, juddering right before his eyes. The hacker goggled a
t it for an instant, then ducked away and disappeared.

  “Good thing you missed him,” Parker said to Eliot once Hardison had peered over the railing and given them the all clear. “That would have made a big mess of this place.”

  “I hit what I was aiming for,” Eliot said. “Next time, I might aim a little higher.”

  TWENTY

  “Are we sure there’s not a better way?” Nate said into Parker’s earpiece as she worked her way up onto the roof of the San Diego Convention Center.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But there’s not a more fun way.”

  Parker wasn’t going to argue for turning back at this point. She’d been itching to take on this building since she’d first seen it from the plane’s window, and it turned out to be even more fun than she’d imagined. She didn’t know who the architect was, but if she ever met him, she wanted to thank him. He’d incorporated so many different shapes and angles in his design that he’d provided plenty of shadows for her to hide in.

  Sure, much of the building’s facade was lit up with spotlights, both from within and without, but the triangular struts made for stark patches of darkness in which she—dressed in her basic black work clothes—could hide. She probably could have taken an easier way in, but where was the excitement in that. Besides, thousands of people were still milling about inside, even at this time of night, and there were cameras trained on them from all sorts of directions. Coming into the building via the roof would be, she was sure, the easier and cleaner path.

  She’d been surprised to find that the center of the roof of the building wasn’t flat. Instead, the north end of the building featured a number of tennis courts. They weren’t being used during the convention, but Parker couldn’t help but imagine a few of the stormtroopers from the 501st squaring off against one another in a mixed doubles match. She ignored these and headed south until she ran into the Sails Pavilion, the part of the building that was roofed with stretched canvases.

  She envisioned using a crossbow that would fire a cable up to the top of the roof and then haul her up there on a set of micromotors. No matter how much fun that might be, though, she wasn’t confident that the canvas would hold her weight well or that anyone standing below might not hear and see her trying to scramble across the slippery surface. Instead, she slipped down to the side of the pavilion and skirted it by stalking along the curved glass roof that looked down over the empty mezzanine level. She knew it wasn’t much safer, but at least by taking this path she stood a hope of seeing someone below before they could see her. Thick vines covered the glass and provided her with a little bit of cover.