A Killing in Comics

by Max Allan Collins

  “I’m not slipping the key to my suite in your pocket or anything.”

  “Damn.”

  That got a little laugh, more than it merited. “I’ve watched you . . .”

  “From afar?”

  One corner of her mouth turned up. “Something like that. It’s just that . . . well, you’re the topic of conversation, time to time.”

  I sipped my rum and Coke, minus the rum. “Am I now? Is it my good looks or my rapier wit?”

  “They haven’t come up, your looks and your wit.”

  “Ah.”

  I can do both “Oh” and “Ah,” you see. For years I was on the short list for the Algonquin Round Table.

  She traded her empty martini glass for a full one on a tray a uniformed Waldorf waitress was gliding by with. Across the room Donny was doing the same, except his other hand was on the waitress’s rump.

  “But I have noticed them,” she said. And sipped. “Your good looks.”

  “And my wit.”

  “That, too.” She cocked her head, looked around the room. “Where is your stepmother?”

  “Not here, I’m afraid.”

  “Pity. I would have loved to meet her.”

  “I’m afraid she’s at the office.”

  Her shrug was a little studied. “I would have thought she’d be here . . . that she’d be one of those flamboyant, bigger-than-life people. Filling up a room like this without even trying.”

  “Well,” I admitted, “she would if she were here. But she’s in one of her reclusive phases. Afraid I’m the sole emissary of the Starr Syndicate.”

  Honey frowned and managed not to produce any wrinkles, all eyes and mouth; impressive. “What do you mean, reclusive phase?”

  “It’s kind of personal.”

  “Personal for her, or you?”

  “. . . She’s a little on the vain side. When she thinks she’s too overweight to be seen in public, she hibernates.”

  “Oh my.”

  I’d said too much. I leaned closer. “Listen, she hasn’t porked up or anything. She’s probably twenty pounds over what she describes as her ‘fighting weight,’ and if she were here, she’d still be the best-looking woman in the room. Second best.”

  Honey didn’t pursue that, but the baby blues had a twinkle when she asked, “Your father was in business with Donny, wasn’t he?”

  I nodded. “The major had a printing concern with both Donny and Louis. Started out together printing Yiddish newspapers and worked their way all the way up the ladder to racing forms and smut.”

  “Smut?”

  “Well . . . sleaze, anyway. I wonder how many parents around the country know the publisher of Wonder Guy Comics started out shilling nudie pics of showgirls and strippers.”

  She studied me, her mouth amused but her eyes serious.

  One of the cliques, over near the bar (predictably), was strictly cartoonists—the creators of Wonder Guy, writer Harry Spiegel and artist Moe Shulman, and artist Rod Krane, creator of the other big Americana Comics success, Batwing, a sort of modern-day Zorro with pointy ears.

  Businesslike in a dark suit and dark blue tie, Harry was a little guy with a pie-pan face, gesticulating and loud and laughing too much; Moe was a head bigger, in a slept-in-looking brown suit and brown tie, with a big oblong head and glasses so thick they made his little eyes seem normal size. Krane was in between in height but seemed to loom over both men, a confident, dark-eyed guy with sharp, handsome features in a sharp, handsome dark gray Brooks Brothers with black and gray tie on a gray shirt. He was smoking a cigarette in a holder. Would I kid you?

  We’d both been working on our drinks for a few seconds, just lolling in the chatter and clink and smoke and jazzy piano, when I swung my attention back to Honey because she had asked, “Major?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You refer to your father as ‘the major’?”

  I laughed, once. “Yeah, well . . . we weren’t real close. Everybody called Simon Starr the major. He was a major in the first war, and a major character in life—made Donny look like a wall-flower.”

  She laughed, once. “Well . . . he must have been a good-looking man. Or did you get your looks from your mother?”

  “He was short and fat. Mom was a showgirl. You can work that out yourself.”

  Her smile had a warmth, now. “Do you mind another personal question?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. I was first to get cheeky, wasn’t I? Fire away.”

  “How many times was your father married?”

  I held my fingers up in the Boy Scout salute. “Three. My mother died bringing me into the world. It’s up to the world whether that was a fair trade.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry . . . .”

  “It was twenty-eight years ago. I’m pretty well over it. I remember his second wife, vaguely. She was a star in George White’s Broadway Scandals of ’37. Then there was a Hollywood scandal in ’39, when she and a married cowboy actor got roped in a motel by a divorce dick with a flash camera.”

  She said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” again, but was laughing a little this time. “Was your . . . your mother a star?”

  “No. She was in the Follies of ’28 or ’29 or something. Chorus gal—second from the end. Very pretty, though. I met her sister, my aunt—a housewife in Ohio. If my mother was like her, my dad did all right.”

  Honey had been building up to something. “Your father . . . the major . . . he married only showgirls, then.”

  “That’s right. Same kind of talent he and Donny and Louie were putting in their Spicy Models magazine. Just seemed to be the circle he was moving in. Of course marrying Maggie Starr was moving up in the world.”

  Honey nodded. “She was a real star . . . even in the movies, wasn’t she?”

  “Maggie made a few flicks.”

  She cocked her head, RCA Victor doggie-style. “But I’m confused about something.”

  “I am here but to clarify.”

  “Wasn’t her name already Starr when she married your father?”

  “It was indeed. Her stage name, anyway. Her real last name is Spillman. But already having Starr on all her luggage and so on was a plus in the deal, I suppose.”

  She had finally gotten around to eating the olive off the toothpick in her latest martini. It was fun to watch.

  Then she said, with a delicacy that was almost too much, “What’s it like, having Maggie Starr for a stepmother?”

  “I don’t think of her that way,” I said, truthfully.

  “But she’s . . . beautiful. Probably, next to Gypsy Rose Lee, the most famous . . . famous . . .”

  “If you’re trying to remember the polite word, it’s ecdysiast. But regular joes like me just say stripper.”

  She shook her head and the blonde locks shimmered under the suite’s subdued lighting. “That doesn’t do her justice, does it? She spoofed striptease. Made a joke out of it.”

  “Yeah, but she still took her clothes off. Otherwise Minksy wouldn’t’ve paid her.”

  The big blue eyes narrowed; the long lashes quivered as she thought about that. Then she asked, “She’s stopped, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes. When she inherited the family business, that was the end of one kind of stripping . . . and the beginning of another.”

  Her laughter tinkled, counterpointing the piano player’s tinkling of “I Get a Kick Out of You.” “You mean, she syndicates comic strips.”

  “That’s right. She still considers herself a stripper of sorts.”

  “She sounds wonderful.”

  “She can be.”

  “That sounds . . . guarded.”

  “Well . . . she is my boss.”

  The eyes narrowed again. “Why didn’t your father put you in charge of the business?”

  “Yeah, why didn’t he? . . . I need to freshen my drink. Care to come along?”

  She took my arm and accompanied me. We were halfway to the little portable bar the Waldorf had provided, along with a uniformed bartender, when Donny tr
undled up, his Wonder Guy costume soaking with sweat. He was between cigars and bourbons, for which small blessing I was grateful.

  He grinned at me, his bulging features friendly but the hand he laid on my shoulder squeezing a little too hard. “You ain’t trying to steal my private secretary, are ya, kid?”

  “No, Donny. I was just getting to know her. We’ve never met. Somehow she was never around the office when I dropped by.”

  He just smiled at that, flashing his big fake choppers. My God, he was perspiring, even for Donny. Then he whispered in my shell-like ear.

  “You’re not up to something, are you, kid?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t mean with Honey, here. You’re not that dumb. I mean with the boys.”

  He meant Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman.

  “I don’t follow you, Donny.”

  “Don’t you and Maggie get cute, is all I’m saying.”

  I turned to look at him, close enough to kiss him, which I chose not to. “Maggie’s gorgeous and I’m a handsome devil. Cute doesn’t come into it.”

  That made him laugh; his breath was everything tobacco and booze could accomplish in one mouth. He patted my cheek, a little too hard to be affectionate.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said with good-natured menace, and bounded off, cape flapping. He was heading toward the table with the big sheet cake and mints and nuts, like at a wedding. A spread of hors d’oeuvres was at another table in the dining room adjacent—Donny was feeling in a generous birthday mood.

  At the bar I got a fresh glass of Coke on the rocks and Honey noticed I was more a Shirley Temple than martini kind of guy.

  “You aren’t on the job, are you?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well . . . my understanding is, you’re kind of a troubleshooter for the Starr Syndicate.”

  “My official title is vice president.”

  A single eyebrow rose. “I was thinking of your duties. If there’s a lawsuit, or if one of the cartoonists or columnists gets in a jam, don’t you . . . step in?”

  “You might say that.”

  Now both eyebrows hiked. Still no wrinkles. “Then you’re not . . . an editor or anything.”

  I shrugged. “I offer an opinion, when asked.”

  “Are you asked?”

  “Time to time. What are you getting at?”

  “I don’t know. I just noticed you were drinking, uh . . .”

  “Rum and Coke, minus the rum?”

  She smiled. She had lovely teeth. Much nicer than Donny’s, even if he had paid top dollar for his. “I thought . . . I thought maybe Donny had . . . nothing. Sorry.”

  She hadn’t heard any of what her charming part-time room-mate had whispered to me.

  “Oh,” I said. “You thought Donny had asked my . . . stepmother to send me over as a sort of . . . bodyguard. Security person? Because of certain . . . tensions.”

  Tensions like Mrs. Harrison being present. Tensions like the storm brewing between Americana Comics and the team who created Wonder Guy.

  “Something like that,” she admitted.

  “Nothing like that. That’s not a gun in my pocket, I’m just glad to see you. It’s just . . . I don’t drink spirits.”

  “Oh.”

  “I used to.”

  “. . . Oh.”

  “I majored in drinking in college and they flunked me out for doing such a good job. Then when I was in the service, I was in position to see, well . . . the results of overambitious drinking, let’s say.”

  She cocked her head again. I liked the way her blonde locks fell when she did that. I liked the intelligence in those big light blue eyes, too. If I had been drinking spirits, I would have been in love with her by now, instead of only halfway there.

  I answered her unposed question. “I was stateside, during the war. I was in the military police. I put a lot of drunk kids in the stockade. It . . . sobered me up.”

  “That’s . . . that’s admirable.”

  “Yeah, I was up for sainthood, till the Catholics found out about my heritage. Not that many Jewish saints.”

  She chuckled, then sipped. “I’m Jewish, too . . . nonpracticing.”

  “Yeah, I’m way out of practice, too. Listen, I don’t have a secretary.”

  Her eyes got large and so did her smile. “You don’t? A great big vice president like you?”

  “No, I’m on the road a lot. Troubleshooting? And there’s a secretarial pool at work I can dive into, when I want.”

  Her smile got kiss-puckery, again. “I bet you do.”

  “Anyway . . . if you ever, uh . . . need a new position . . .”

  She grinned. “Well, doesn’t that sound dirty.”

  “I didn’t mean it to. It’s the rum and Coke.”

  “Minus the rum.”

  “Yeah.” I risked putting the tip of my finger under the cute cleft chin. “Anyway, if you should ever get tired of that fat bastard in the cape over there, give me a jingle.”

  Her smile was crooked now and she arched the other eyebrow—ambidextrous with brows, this one. “I happen to like that fat bastard in the cape.”

  “I’m sure you do. But I notice you said ‘like.’ That gives me hope.”

  And I toasted her with my glass, said excuse me and wandered over to the clique of cartoonists.

  Harry Spiegel’s dark, close-set eyes lighted up when I entered the artists’ circle.

  “Well, it’s the Starr of the syndicate! Jackie boy, you look like a million dollars!” Harry gestured to me and grinned at his partner Moe, who smiled and nodded at me, a gentle smile, a gentle nod, while Rod Krane regarded me with his own smile, not so gentle, more on the suspicious side, or maybe it was the cigarette holder.

  I put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I hope you’re not trying to butter me up, guys,” I said to them both, ignoring Krane. “I don’t make the decisions on new strips, you know.”

  The team behind Wonder Guy had submitted a new comic strip to the Starr Syndicate. I was fairly certain Maggie had decided to take it on, but it wasn’t my place to say.

  Krane, whose voice was resonant but edged with sarcasm, said, “She knows all about stripping, right, Jack?”

  This was Krane’s idea of wit. Try to imagine how many jokes I’d already heard about the famous striptease artist who now ran a comic-strip syndicate.

  Harry frowned—he basically had two expressions, too happy and too irritated, and this was the latter. “Can you even stand it? Can you even stomach it?”

  “I’ll bite, Harry,” I said. “Stand what? Stomach what?”

  “That fat son of a bitch parading around in that Wonder Guy suit! It’s a desecration of the costume. It’s a travesty!”

  Moe Shulman said, “Doesn’t hurt anything.”

  His partner glared at him. “How can you say that? Wonder Guy stands for honesty, equity and the patriotic way!”

  “I know, Harry,” Moe said. The amplified eyes behind the thick glasses were glazed. And sad.

  Krane said, “I think the co-creator of Wonder Guy knows what his character stands for, Harry. They say it at the start of every episode of the radio show, don’t they?”

  “For which we don’t get a blessed cent!” Harry sputtered, spittle flying.

  Other little groups of cocktail-party attendees were stealing glances at us.

  I asked, “Harry, why did you come, if it upsets you?”

  Harry’s features were clenched like a fist. “Because it’s the first time Donny Harrison ever deigned to invite us to one of his affairs! We were always second-class citizens . . . weren’t we, Moe? Rod?”

  Moe nodded. Krane shrugged and nodded; he was working on a martini, in between cigarette-in-holder puffs, looking like he stepped out of an Esquire fashion layout.

  “He only invited us,” Harry said, “to rub it in. This clown traipses all over the country, telling reporters and wholesalers and God and everybody that he’s the guy behind Wonder Guy!
”

  Moe said, softly, “I don’t think that’s why we’re here, Harry. For Donny to rub it in.”

  “Why, then?”

  “I think this is Donny’s idea of being nice to us. He’s the one buttering us up, not Jack, here. Donny’s the one that knows our ten-year contract’ll be up soon, and then what?”

  “Listen to Moe,” Krane advised Harry, trading an empty glass for a fresh martini off a passing tray. “Three of us are gonna be in the cat-bird seat, before you know it.”

  Krane’s ten-year contract was also about to expire.

  The Batwing cartoonist was saying to his colleagues, “Donny wants to make nice, let him. Stay calm. Like the jazz cats say, don’t lose your cool.”

  “I’m cool,” Harry sputtered, “I’m cool.”

  I patted his shoulder. “Rod’s right. You guys are still the talent behind the feature. With the new contract, you’ve got the perfect opportunity to feather your nests.”

  Harry brightened, like a kid who just heard about Christmas for the first time. “You think so, Jack? You really think so?”

  “You bet.”

  That was when I noticed what Harry and Moe were drinking: beers. Everybody else had cocktails, but the creators of Wonder Guy, the makers of the feast, had made a workingman’s, blue-collar choice.

  I wandered over to pay my respects to Louis Cohn and Donny’s wife, Selma. I knew Louis well—he was the only man here in a tuxedo and might have been taken for a head waiter, by the uninitiated—but had only met Selma a few times, most memorably ten years before at her and Donny’s twentieth wedding anniversary party, also held here at the Waldorf. But not in Donny’s mistress’s digs.

  “Mrs. Harrison,” I said, nodding and smiling, “lovely to see you. Wonderful party.”

  “I’m Selma, Jack.” Her voice was a musical alto touched by the remainder of a lower east side accent. “Surely we know each other well enough by now for first names.”

  We didn’t, really, but that was fine by me.

  She had very nice features; I had a feeling she’d been fetching, as a girl. Rounded out, she was a fairly typical housewife—right now, a housewife trying too hard, wearing a little too much makeup, her hair a nest of brown curls under the little white hat. Looking at her, I could have cried; or punched Donny for being such a lout, having his stupid party, here.