A Killing in Comics (3 page)

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 trundled 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.

None of this had stopped me from half-loving Honey Daily, however; in the days to come, I’d find out just how many men had fallen for her.

But right now I was making small talk with Selma, asking about their two children, a daughter in junior high, a son in high school (neither present, thankfully).

Then, out of nowhere, she said, “I liked the major very much.”

“My father? Well . . . thanks.”

“Were you close?”

“Yes and no.”

Louis Cohn—tall and dark and mustached, thinning hair combed back, looking severe in his tux and bow tie—said, “That’s a hell of a thing to say, Jack. What do you mean?”

“We weren’t close like some fathers and sons. He was gone a lot, on the road—you know what his business was like, Louie.”

Cohn’s chin went up defensively; he seemed to think we were arguing. “He built the Starr Syndicate from scratch.”

I nodded. “He had a knack for the common man’s tastes—when he picked up
Mug O’Malley
, every syndicate in the country had already turned it down.”

Sam Fizer’s
Mug O’Malley
, the boxing strip, was one of the nation’s top features, fifteen years later.

Cohn was nodding now, not frowning, which was about as affable as he got. “Your father had an eye for talent.”

And the ladies, but that was another story.

I said, “He made a point out of spending one week a year with me. For that week, we’d be close.”

Selma, her dark blue eyes sparking with interest, asked, “What would you do?”

“All sorts of things. We tried hunting one year, fishing another—he wasn’t an outdoorsman, and neither am I, so it was always a comedy of errors. But we had great fun together. Couple times, we spent a week going to one Broadway show after another. One year we went to Hollywood, and he used his contacts there to introduce me to all my favorite movie stars. Visited soundstages, got glossies hand-signed to me, the works. More than once we went to the World Series together. He was a great father.”