But I didn’t. The truth was, I hadn’t seen the results from the Hirsch lab yet.
That older uniform stuck his head in. “Captain! There’s a woman out here who wants to be let in. Says she’s with your witness. A Miss Starr.”
I grinned up at him. “Now’s your chance. Be sure to tell her how her pinups warmed you up through lots of hard nights in the Pacific.”
He flicked a frown at me, but told the uniform, “Show her in here. Be nice.”
Chandler took his fedora off and a few moments later the impossible happened: Maggie Starr had broken her hibernation to come to my aid. She filled the doorway, looking beautiful but businesslike in a white dress with a black jacket, the latter decorated with a jeweled rose appliqué, a small black purse in her white-kid-gloved hands. She wore a small black hat, tilted, and was in full battle-array makeup, big green eyes highlighted and her kiss of a mouth a deep, rich red.
I sometimes forgot how tall she was, until I saw her out in public. But she had a commanding, even charismatic air about her.
“Captain Chandler,” she said, her rich contralto filling the room without trying. “Jack has mentioned you. He seems to have a great deal of respect for you.”
“He’s done a good job of hiding it, just now,” Chandler said on his way over to her, but his tone was friendly. “Jack’s probably told you I’m a big fan. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, despite the circumstances.”
She offered her gloved hand and, after a moment, he took it and shook. What was he trying to do, figure whether to kiss it or not?
“Yes,” she said, stepping past him into the room, “we might have found a better way. But this is the way that we have—do you know who did this, Captain?”
She moved to a new position, not deep into the room, but enough to make him tag after her.
“No,” he said. “Obviously we think it may be related to the Harrison murder, but it’s far too early to say.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You do know that Miss Daily had a number of boyfriends beside Mr. Harrison?”
“No. Actually, we didn’t. Don’t.”
“Ah.” She smiled at him, the way a queen does to a minor underling—a jester, maybe. “Then, based upon what Jack has reported to me . . . about his inquiries? He may have come upon a number of things that you haven’t.”
I was enjoying this, from my perch on the edge of the bed, across the room from them. I had to twist my torso to see it, but it was worth it.
“Yes,” Chandler said, playing awkwardly with his hat in his hands, “Jack and I have been discussing that.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
“By all means!”
“Will you, or your people, be working tomorrow, Sunday, on this case?”
“I probably will be, yes. Certainly my men will be on it. Murder doesn’t get any days off.”
“No. Murder doesn’t stand on ceremony at all.” She flipped a gloved hand. “What I would suggest is that you sit down with Jack, either at our office . . . and Sunday is not a problem for us, we live in the same building as where we work . . . or at the Homicide Bureau. He’ll share everything he’s found.”
He was holding the fedora to his stomach now, as if protecting a wound. “We could do it right now . . .”
“No, Captain Chandler, I think you should run along and conduct this important investigation. You have a dead woman in the other room, after all, and from what the doctor I spoke to—”
“You spoke to what doctor . . . ?”
“I stopped by the Waldorf doctor before I came up. You’ll be speaking to him, I’m sure, since he was the first physician to attend to the body.”
“Yes, we, uh . . .”
“And he said he believed the murder had happened shortly before Jack arrived—within an hour, at the outside. Of course, that’s a preliminary judgment, and your crack people, the coroner’s crew and your forensics team, they’ll put a button on it, I’m sure.”
“Yes. Yes, they will.”
She beamed at him and picked some lint off his left shoulder. “So. With a fresh corpse and a fresh murder scene, why waste your time on Jack, much less me? . . . What has your lab said about that stain in the other room?”
Chandler flashed a look at me. Not angry. More like an animal crossing the road that just heard a big sound that was about to turn out to be a truck. “Well, uh . . . I don’t believe we’ve checked it yet.”
“I realize that’s one whole murder ago, but you might want to. I think the results might be interesting.”
“Yes.” He was gazing at her suspiciously, as if her buried sarcasm had just stuck its head up at him and thumbed its nose. “Well, I will do that.”
“Good.”
He grinned at her, a pretty “aw shucks” expression for such a hard-boiled Manhattan dick. “And, really, Miss Starr, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“I know. . . . Do you mind if I sit with Jack for a moment? We’ll clear out very soon. Long before you get around to checking this room out.”
“Yeah. Uh, sure. Go ahead. Try to be out of here in . . . fifteen minutes?”
She beamed at him again and touched his arm. “Less. . . . Now get to work! You have a killer to catch.”
He grinned like a kid and went out and for a minute I thought she might give his butt a paddle.
She shut the door and came over and sat beside me. She slipped an arm around me. She’d never done that before.
“Are you all right?”
My nostrils took in her perfume, one of her favorites: My Sin. “I guess I’ve been better. Kind of in shock.”
She glanced toward the door. “Captain Chandler seems all right. Civil servants aren’t the most imaginative people in the world, and he was a little flummoxed at meeting me.” Her laugh was a throaty purr. “You know, if these little boys have played with themselves, while thinking of you? You can get anything you want out of them.”
I gave her a horrified sideways look. “I really didn’t need to know that, Maggie.”
She shrugged. “New information. Having new information, more information, is always beneficial . . . which is something the good captain hasn’t grasped yet.”
“You know, don’t you?” I said.
“Yes.”
“So you get why I blame myself, then.”
“I do.” She shook her head. “But it’s a load. The blame is the killer’s, and the killer’s alone.”
I shook my head. “But how could you know? When I finally, stupidly, put it together, hell . . . it was after a full day of interviews, and—”
She slipped a gloved hand over my mouth to silence me.
Then she got into the little black clutch purse and took out a folded piece of green paper. Handed it to me.
I had a look: the results from the Hirsch lab.
“Leo Hirsh,” she said, “ran it over to me this afternoon. They work Saturday mornings, you know. And I think he saw this as his chance to get an autographed picture. And I gave him a good one. More skin than I usually serve up.”
“Please,” I said irritably, as I read the thing over. “There were traces of perspiration, but . . . Maggie, that stain out there, it’s soaked with that stuff, that organophosphate jazz.”
She made an affirmative hum and smiled doing it. Then: “How does that fit in with your thinking?”
“It turns it around a little . . . but still a perfect fit. Forgive the pun.”
Not much of a pun, but if you understand it, you know who the killer is.
She smiled some more. “I like puns. You never have to ask me for forgiveness for a good pun. Where would the monologue I did, with my striptease, be without some choice double entendres?”
I was gaping at her. “So what do we do? Do we give this to Chandler?”
She waved at the air with a gloved hand. “Christ, we already have. You and I both did everything but bend him over that stain and rub his face in it.”
I studied her but it didn’t get me anywhere. �
�What do you have in mind, Maggie?”
“Something.” Her free hand clasped mine; despite the glove, it was a startlingly personal gesture, and another first. “Jack, my only fear is what you might do if you got your hands on that. . . . Will you promise me you won’t do anything rash?”
“Why?”
Her mouth smiled but her eyes frowned. “Normally when you ask someone not to do something rash, Jack, the response isn’t ‘why.’ I don’t want any vigilante nonsense. Understood?”
“Understood.”
She turned toward the draped window and stared, thoughtfully. “But I think I would take great satisfaction in bringing this person to justice. How about you?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Good. Then we’re in agreement.”
I was shaking my head. “But Chandler is talking pretty tough, Maggie. Withholding evidence, stripping me of my license, me or even us getting jailed as material witnesses. . . .”
She held up a white-gloved hand: stop. “We won’t withhold anything. We can even tell him who our suspect is.”
“Suspect! Not a suspect, there’s no doubt that—”
“No, but there may not be enough evidence for Chandler to make an arrest. I propose we cooperate with him, and give him, oh . . . all the way to Monday evening to make an arrest. If he hasn’t managed that, then we will have to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Like,” she said, shrugging, “get a confession.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN THE KILLER’S SECRET IDENTITY IS...
Business at the Strip Joint on Mondays was almost always slow, and Maggie and Felix, the manager, had been kicking around staying open Sundays instead. So it was no great sacrifice for Maggie to close the restaurant for a private party, though I’m sure the guests were startled to find the restaurant empty but for a handful of waiters and waitresses.
The group had been invited, each by a personal phone call from Maggie Sunday evening, to attend a business dinner Monday night, which would be on the Starr Syndicate’s tab. She had invited nine, and only one—attorney Bert Zelman—had a conflict that couldn’t be broken. That was okay, because he wasn’t really a suspect.
Not that the other guests had any idea that they were attending as suspects—all the invitees had at least a tenuous tie to the Starr Syndicate, enough to make a business dinner invite like this one credible.
Three smaller tables had been arranged into one long one, fairly close to the wall on which numerous comic strip characters had been drawn (and colored) in grease pencils. This particular stretch of the wall was mostly Starr Syndicate properties, and was no doubt why Maggie had instructed the Strip staff to set the banquet-style seating up here, so that Wonder Guy (a large drawing in full flight) and Batwing (a crude but recognizable sketch actually drawn by Krane himself) would loom over us.
I say us, but I was not at the table. I sat on a stool at the end of the bar, just a trifle kitty-corner from the table, though well in earshot. Next to me sat chauffeur Hank Morella, who Maggie had invited inside rather than have him wait at the curb for Selma Harrison.
Hank was back in his chauffeur livery, gray, not green this time, with the cap on the bar; he was having a beer and I was having a Coke on ice. Or a rum and Coke, no rum, as I’d described it to Honey Daily, what seemed a thousand years ago and was only four days.
Everybody was drinking, the Strip Joint barmaids (in their white shirts, black bow ties and tuxedo pants) keeping everyone’s glass full. No actual food, not even a snack had been served, and the guests looked like they might any time start eating the red-cloth rose arrangements in two good-size centerpieces. The distinctive and decidedly pleasant aromas of the restaurant’s kitchen provided convincing evidence that food would, eventually, be served.
On the far side of the table—with Wonder Guy and Batwing drawings looking over their shoulders—were, left to right: Will Hander, in a brown suit with a brown-and-yellow tie, shaved, not looking like a guy who lived in a flophouse, rye whiskey, no rocks; Sy Mortimer, in an off-the-rack blue suit with a red bow tie, beer; Louie Cohn, in a black suit with a black bow tie, looking like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be a maitre d’ or an undertaker when he grew up, gin fizz; and Selma Harrison, in a black-and-white print dress with a white collar, like she was gradually moving out of mourning, Chablis.
The three on the other side—Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman, in off-the-rack brown suits, drinking beer, and Rod Krane, again with the white dinner jacket, martini—would’ve had their backs to me, but I had profile views: their chairs were angled to face the head of the table, the end closest to me, where Maggie right now was standing to address the group.
She was in full battle array now, all right. Her makeup stopped short of being more appropriate for the stage than real life, her green eyes longer-lashed than God intended, her freckles hiding under face powder, her lips a scarlet red, with a beauty mark on her right cheek that also wasn’t the Almighty’s idea.
Her dress was striking, a Maggy Rouff design from her most recent London trip—pale smoke-gray crepe with pushed-up sleeves and a double-pointed peblum with a darker gray big-buckled belt. She wore black gloves that went halfway to her elbows, like something D’Artagnan misplaced. Her red hair was full and to her shoulders (a wig but a damn fine one), no hat, with a small jeweled broach depicting her trademark red roses. Definitely at her fighting weight, she looked elegant and sexy and—despite the friendly smiles and warm comments she was tossing like a flower girl dispensing petals at a wedding—dangerous.
Maggie was drinking, too, of course—a Horse’s Neck. Or that’s what she would be drinking, if she ever got around to it. I noticed the glass had not yet touched her lips.
No need for her to ping a water glass to get attention—once she’d risen in her full glory the guests turned to her, hushed. They were smiling. She was, after all, a celebrity, and being in her presence felt special.
Tonight it should feel particularly special.
As she stood beaming out over grateful subjects, as if they were a particularly responsive first-night audience, she said, “First I want to thank you all for coming at such short notice. But I must admit I’ve gathered you together on something of a false pretense . . .”
Guests exchanged glances; then murmuring was halted by her raised black-gloved palm.
“. . . but you needn’t worry. You will be rewarded with the finest strip steak in New York, and at the expense of the Starr Syndicate, in gratitude for your presence, and your continued efforts on the behalf of the comics business.”
A leering Rod Krane said, “You’re not trying to get me liquored up again, are you, Maggie?”
“No. I find you rarely need encouragement, Rod.”
This got an appreciative laugh from most of the group, though you had the feeling Will Hander, staring blankly at his Batwing co-creator, didn’t find anything about Rod Krane all that amusing.
Harry Spiegel, fidgeting like a kid in the backseat on a car trip waiting for the next bathroom stop, almost shouted, “Freelancers like us don’t mind a free meal, Maggie—but what’s this about, anyway?”
Her smile remained but had lessened its voltage; her eyes traveled from face to face. “Some of you . . . certainly one of you . . . have already guessed. The business of this meeting is not comics. It’s murder.”
A symphony of chair squeaks and clothing rustle and whispers followed, and she raised high a hand that might have been in benediction, but wasn’t.
“You’ve all seen the papers,” she said. “It’s taken till today, but the coverage has finally gotten brutal. Another murder will do that, particularly when . . . meaning no disrespect, Selma, not wanting you to be uncomfortable, dear . . . when the second victim was the mistress of the first victim.”
Indeed the headlines today had screamed (except for the Times, which merely insisted) that Wonder Guy publisher Donny Harrison’s death by poisoning had been confirmed by “officials” as a murder; a
nd that the strangulation slaying of Honey Daily, Harrison’s “kept woman,” was believed by the police to be related.
The papers had nothing about any significant developments in the case (or cases), but that wasn’t bad reporting, simply Captain Chandler and the rest of the Homicide Bureau not getting anywhere. I had spent three hours back in Chandler’s office, tearing the heart out of a lovely Sunday afternoon, telling him everything I knew, including who I suspected.
And Chandler had agreed with my (and Maggie’s) conclusions, but did not have enough physical evidence to support taking the theory to the district attorney.
At the head of the table, my tall lovely stepmother hovered over her guests and now no trace of smile remained; her arms were folded, and she might well have been the bailiff in a courtroom, or at least in a courtroom in a Minsky’s sketch.
“From the start,” she said, “Donny’s murder seemed directly related to the comic-book business—he even died wearing a Wonder Guy costume. . . . By the by, Selma, how many of those did Donny have?”
Startled, the plump, pretty widow said, “Why . . . just the one. He had a few Wonder Guy T-shirts he would wear . . . he liked to unbutton his shirt at parties and say, ‘This looks like work for Wonder Guy!’”
A real cutup, our Donny.
“But,” Selma was saying, “he just had that one special costume that he wore at events like conventions and big sales meetings and, you know, things.”
“Of course,” Maggie said, not unkindly, “you had a reason for resenting your husband that really had nothing to do with comics. He was unfaithful and . . . excuse me . . . he did flaunt that unfaithfulness in a way few wives would put up with.”
Selma, flushed with irritation, said, “That’s nonsense!”
“I don’t think so,” Maggie said. “It was a slap in your face, your husband having that party at Miss Daily’s suite.”
Louie Cohn was starting to rise. “You don’t have to listen to this tommyrot, Selma. We were indeed lured here under false pretenses . . .”
Krane was on his feet, too. “I agree with Louie. I like a free steak as much as the next starving artist; but, Maggie, you go too far!”
A Killing in Comics Page 18
