San Diego Noir

Had she been a looker, a lie would have been called for. But for this sad sister, the truth was good enough. “No, frankly, I don’t.”

She offered the odd smile again. “Jennifer Alcott. I was a student of yours once. ‘Writing the Can’t-Miss Screenplay,’ class of winter ’96.”

Oh shit, Fenderson thought. One of those.

For two years, back in the mid-’90s, he had taught a beginner’s screenwriting class at the Learning Bridge, a low-rent extension-course outfit in the San Fernando Valley that no longer existed. The pay had been shit and the students had been worse, retirees and wannabes from all walks of life who laughingly thought they had the chops to become the next big A-list Hollywood scribe. None of them could write their way out of a paper bag, and it was all Fenderson could do to read their stuff week after week without retching all over the page.

“Oh. Hey,” Fenderson said. The name Jennifer Alcott rang a very dim bell, but the face meant nothing to him.

“It’s such a surprise to see you. What are you doing here?” Alcott asked, not appearing to be pleasantly surprised at all.

“Actually, I’m looking for an artist. For a graphic novel I’m doing for Dark Horse.” He’d read somewhere that Dark Horse was one of the top publishers in the graphic novel arena, and implying he already had a deal in place there was a lie he was prepared to tell at the Con all weekend long.

“An artist? Really.” Fenderson thought she would flash that bizarre smile of hers again, but this time all she did was nod. “Well, what a coincidence.”

“Coincidence?”

“That’s what I am now. A comics illustrator.” She gestured with the portfolio under her right arm, bringing his attention to it for the first time.

“No kidding,” Fenderson said, searching for the nearest exit. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Alcott had to be as lousy an illustrator as she had been a screenwriter, even if he couldn’t remember, exactly, just how lousy a screenwriter she was.

“Maybe you’d like to see my work.”

“Uh …”

“Just for old times’ sake? You never know. I might be exactly what you’re looking for.”

Fenderson figured there was zero chance of that, yet he couldn’t bring himself to blow Alcott off. It bothered him that she was such a blank page to him; her name was familiar, so why wasn’t her face?

“Well, okay,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

“Here?” Alcott looked around, scrunching up her nose at all the bodies flying by them. “I’d rather we found a place to sit down. Maybe have some tea or something.”

Tea. Right, Fenderson thought. “Okay. But finding a seat in this zoo—”

“Not here at the Con. Somewhere else. I’ll drive, if you want. I know just the place.”

Fenderson couldn’t imagine why he should go anywhere with this cow. He tried to retreat. “Gee, I don’t know, Jen. I’ve got a couple of meetings to take later, I wouldn’t want to be late.”

“I understand. You don’t want to waste your time on somebody who can’t deliver the goods. And all you’ve got so far is my word that my stuff’s decent, right?”

That was exactly what Fenderson was thinking. “No, no. It’s just …”

“Here. I’ll give you a small peek.” She unzipped a corner of her portfolio and peeled it open for him.

Fenderson leaned in, squinting. What he could see of the artwork inside was pretty damn impressive: crisp, bold, even slightly cinematic. It wasn’t as dynamic as the stuff the big man in the Luke Skywalker outfit had been hawking earlier, but it was close. Maybe even close enough.

“Not bad, huh?” Alcott said. “Some people tell me that my work reminds them of Jack Kirby.”

Fenderson had no clue who Jack Kirby was, but if he could draw like Jennifer Alcott apparently could, he’d probably go far in the comics business.

“So,” Alcott said, zipping the portfolio back up before Fenderson could ask to see more of what it contained, “shall we go?”

Fenderson wanted to say no. He’d been hoping to partner up with somebody who was more than just another face at the Con, maybe one of the superstars sitting in on a panel or signing books for a line of people winding through the hall like an endless snake. But that hope was a long shot and Alcott was a bird in the hand. If the lady was as good as the sample she’d let him see, and she could be bought for next to nothing, he could avoid all the hassles of negotiating with a stranger by cutting a deal with her instead. Rather than a pain-in-the-ass distraction he could have done without, maybe running into Alcott like this had been a genuine stroke of luck. The kind of luck, he knew, that only came to people destined for greatness.

“Sure. Lead the way,” Fenderson said.

She drove an old shitbox Honda that would have had him laughing out loud had it not been a big step up from the ancient Toyota he’d driven down to San Diego at a crawl. The A/C was on the fritz so they had to ride around with all the windows down, Alcott’s hair blowing in her face like a damn sheep dog.