Seduction of the Innocent (15 page)

So she checked with him by phone and why of course he would be glad to see his pal Jack. Ginny and I traded sighs and long-suffering looks, and I went over and opened the door whose pebbled glass said
CHARLES BARDWELL
,
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
. Who did he think he was, goddamn Perry White?

The office was less than spacious, but it was half-again the size of the reception area, with nice windows onto the city. The plaster walls were pale green with occasional bulletin boards with various paperwork pinned there, printing schedules, cover proofs in black-and-white, full-color printer’s proofs; overflow proofs were Scotch-taped to the plaster. File cabinets were stacked with portfolios and loose original art, and stacks of printed comic books were here and there. To that extent it was a typical comic-book editor’s office.

The odor that always greeted you upon entering Bardwell’s domain, however, was something unique, if peculiarly so, even in this city of smells good, bad, indifferent. This was the middle one. Part of it was cigars. Another part was perspiration. But the secret ingredient, as the ad boys put it, was monkey shit.

I will pause for you to process that information, and assure yourself that you did not stumble upon a bizarre typo.

Against a wall, between wooden filing cabinets, was a steamer-trunk-size cage. Within it were water and food bowls and, on the newspaper lining the bottom of the cage, monkey shit. But no monkey was in the cage, because the creature in question was perched on the shoulder of big, brawny Charley Bardwell, whose back was to me as I came in.

Looking around at me, the monkey was small, scrawny, unhappy, but not making any noise. What variety of monkey this was, I have no idea—organ-grinder type is the best I can do, although it wore no cute little hat nor pants either.

On the wall behind Bardwell’s desk was a big color painting by someone other than him (though signed by him) of his character Crime Fighter, a teenager like Batwing’s ward Sparrow, who had a pet monkey just like Bardwell’s. I had never asked which came first, the comic-book monkey or the shoulder-perched pet. Some questions just can’t be answered, like the chicken or the egg, and how the hell did Ed Sullivan ever get a TV show.

As for Bardwell, the big broad-shouldered man—he was six-four, his build athletic—was seated at his drawing board doing rough pencils for a true-crime cover. He was in a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, sweat circles, and suspenders.

The monkey showed me its teeth and its wild eyes, but remained relatively silent. Sometimes when you came to visit Bardwell, the monkey was leashed to a leg of the drawing board; if the animal seemed content, everything was fine—but if the animal was nervous, Bardwell was in one of his moods.

Today, the ruddy-cheeked Bardwell appeared in high spirits. He grinned at me over his shoulder, which put his face beside the monkey’s (also grinning), and said, “How the hell are you, Jack? Has our strip picked up any new papers?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “No new clients but our list is holding strong.”

He swiveled toward me, the monkey holding on for dear life, chattering a little (the monkey, not Bardwell). The editor had an oval face with a high forehead and small dark eyes that angled weirdly at the outer corners, giving him a permanent scowl despite frequent toothy smiles. His dark hair was combed carefully to conceal thinning. His nose was a formless lump of clay applied by a careless sculptor.

I sat on the edge of his desk, facing him at the drawing board. I could see past him to his artwork, which was sketchy and fairly terrible. Word was he only did rough layouts and other artists finished the pencils and inks. Like Walt Disney, Bardwell was only good at one thing—his flourish of a signature, which appeared on every cover and the title page of every story he “drew” and “wrote” (a woman supposedly ghosted his scripts).

“I hear you were at that dumb-ass travesty of a hearing yesterday,” he said, lighting up a fat cigar with a Zippo. The monkey reacted to the flame about as well as King Kong did to flashbulbs.

“Easy, Buster,” he told it.

Buster looked like he (or she) might cry. I thought I might cry myself, thanks to the bouquet of cigar smoke and monkey dung.

“Yeah, I was over at Foley Square,” I said, my hat in my hands.

Bardwell wouldn’t know about Dr. Frederick’s demise yet—way too early for it to have made the radio or TV.

I went on: “They really took poor Bob Price to the woodshed.”

“Ha! I’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such a goddamn thief.”

I didn’t respond to that. I knew Bardwell considered the Ghoul character who introduced EF’s horror stories to be a lift of his own ghostly Mr. Murder character, the narrator in
Fighting Crime.

“But that Frederick bum,” he said, shaking his head, frowning. The monkey also shook its head and frowned. “That quack is a goddamn menace. A rat bastard and a public enemy. Bad enough he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, he has to make trouble for a bunch of hard-working Joes and Janes! Doesn’t he know there’s an entire industry out here whose livelihood he’s threatening? You should talk to
Pete
on the subject!”

“Yeah? Not a fan of Dr. Frederick?”

“No!”
He began laughing, loud and hearty, the monkey looking at him aghast. “Boy, would I like to see Petey get his hands on
that
puffed-up windbag. Little wild man would tear him apart!
That
would be
funny
as hell.”

“Pete feels the same way you do about the doc?”

“Oh, God, yes!” He laughed from his gut, rocking his chair; the monkey held on for dear life. “Just the other day? Why, Petey was up here ranting and raving, buckin’ for a straitjacket. Saying as how he was gonna toss that clown out a window or tear him limb from limb or some craziness.” He shook his head, the permanent scowl fighting his big grin. “You know that cut-up Petey! He’s a looney tune, a certified zany.”

“I know Pete.”

Bardwell gestured with the cigar, the monkey clinging to a suspender. “He says, ‘I’ll go over to his ritzy office and shove his goddamn couch up his ass!’” This Bardwell found hilarious, and Buster joined in with the laughter.

“When was this, Charley?”

“Yesterday, no, day before yesterday.” The big man gestured toward his crude drawing with a thick-fingered, clumsy-looking hand. “It’s all a blur, the hours we put in, these crazy deadlines we artists put up with.”

As top editor, of course, he set those deadlines.

“So Pine really lost his temper, huh?”

“Oh, God, did he. Standing right there, between where we sit, stomping around like an Indian doing a war dance. But come on, Jack! Don’t give me that look. Pete’s a proud little guy. He come up from nothing, like me. Really cares about his work. You probably think of him as this roughneck who likes a drink now and then...”

Now and then.

“...but he’s an
artist,
man, and all us artists are Bohemians at heart. If you knew him better, Jack, you’d know he’s really just a good-hearted lug. Just another sentimental slob like yourself truly.”

Bardwell had been penciling a cover on which a wild-eyed maniac was thrusting the face of a screaming woman, her hair already on fire, into the gas burner of a kitchen stove.

“So you didn’t take Pete seriously?”

He made a farting sound with his lips; the monkey seemed offended. “Are you kidding? The little squirt was just blowing off steam. Spouting a bunch of b.s.”

“Such as?”

“Jack, take it easy. Pete’d had a snootful,
I’d
had a snootful, and we were discussing the man everybody in comics loves to hate.” The cigar-in-hand waved at me. “I know, I know, with the comic strip and all, how important Pete Pine is to Starr right now. And if you’re worried about him keeping deadline, cause he’s off on a bender, well, don’t. He has plenty of help on that strip.”

I had doubts Pine was drawing
any
of the
Crime Fighter
strip. He was editing three comic books and drawing two more, every month. Though he was a better artist than Bardwell— Faint Praise Department, as
Craze
would say—I suspected he, like his buddy Charley, was mostly just signing the strip.

“Humor me,” I said. “What kind of b.s. was Pete spouting?”

Bardwell painted the air with blue cigar smoke. The monkey and I listened.

“Silly, ridiculous horseflop,” he said, laughing again, not so loud, but laughing, “about how he was going to go and find that son of a bitch Frederick, and strangle him with his bare hands.”

I said nothing.

Bardwell frowned at me. So did the monkey. “What is it, Jack?”

“Somebody killed Werner Frederick.”

“Huh?”

“Killed him. Probably last night or early this morning.”

He whitened, the cigar dangling from his lips. “Jesus. Hell. First I heard.”

The monkey nodded.

“It was murder,” I said, “right there in Frederick’s suite at the Waldorf. Somebody choked him to death, whether strangled him with ‘bare hands’ or using a ligature, I don’t know. Then whoever it was rigged up a rope and left the old boy hanging. Fake suicide. Took the homicide dick maybe two seconds to see through it.”

Bardwell shook his head and Buster mimicked him. “You don’t think
Pete
....”

“Pete was at the Waldorf night before last. In a drunken rage, pounding on Frederick’s door, yelling out threats.”

“Oh Christ....”

“The staff didn’t call the cops, just tossed his ass out...but the cops know. The house dick keeps a record of stuff like that.”

He made himself smile; it looked sick. “Come on, Jack. You know Pete’s all talk.”

“No. He isn’t. I’ve exchanged blows with that shrimp myself, trying to help him. While you stood on the sidelines and laughed your butt off, by the way. Where is he, Charley?”

He frowned in thought, then his tiny eyes blazed. “You want to
warn
him? That’s
great,
Jack. Should I round up some dough for him? Should we get him out of town? I’ll do anything—I love that little guy like a brother.”

It occurred to me then that Bardwell always needed a sidekick. Either the monkey on his shoulder or the one he went carousing with.

I climbed off the desk, put on my hat. “I’m helping the cops out on this. Maggie wants me to help clear it up fast as possible, to limit the damage. If I get to Pete first, I can maybe sober him up, and get him to turn himself in.”

Bardwell and the monkey thought that over.

I said, “It’ll score Pete a few points.”

“Well,” the cartoonist said softly, “he’s probably at his apartment, his studio.”

“I’ll check there, but I tried his number from the Waldorf. No answer. Where else would he be?”

“...He’s been seeing Lyla.”

“Lyla Lamont?”

He nodded.

Lyla was a gifted cartoonist, better than Bardwell and Pine put together. But she lived pretty wild herself, down in the Village, and had even lost a syndicated strip over missing deadlines.

That strip had been for Starr, so I knew where to find her.

“Don’t call over there and warn him,” I said, going out. “I’m going to handle this in the best way possible.”

He nodded glumly, but the monkey grinned.

It was pretty funny at that.

A quick cab ride down Lexington brought me to the moderately dingy building where Pete Pine had a second-floor apartment above a drugstore. I pounded on Pine’s door but got no response, and—putting my ear close to the paint-peeling wood—could hear nothing beyond.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t in there—he might be sleeping it off, or ducking loan-shark enforcers or gamblers’ goons looking to shake money out of him. I’d seen him wearing their bruises many times before.

So I tried the drugstore downstairs, where the druggist, the soda jerk and the cashier all knew him, though only the cashier (a pretty brunette) seemed to like him at all. He was a regular customer, particularly at lunchtime, often had sandwiches at the counter, but hadn’t done so today. Hadn’t yesterday or the day before, either.

That cashier was a case in point: women liked the guy. Pete Pine was small but handsome, or anyway handsome enough, with dark curly hair. Whereas his organ-grinder buddy Bardwell had little squinty eyes, Pine had big dark, long-lashed Robert Taylor eyes. When it came to build, he was more Alan Ladd, slight but wiry, and when he wasn’t drinking, he seemed shy, quiet, even gentlemanly.

But after a woman became acquainted with Pete Pine, she was as liable to get punched as kissed.

Which was why I disliked the son of a bitch so much. I just don’t like men who knock women around. Call me old-fashioned.

Even the cockiest cabbie will admit that the odd-angled streets of Greenwich Village confound him; local residents claim to have no trouble navigating, but the rest of New York remains bewildered.

So my next cab deposited me to fend for myself on Eighth Street, near the Village Barn, a tourist trap, and soon I was walking among coffee shops and bookstores and sidewalk art displays, past females in black tights and bearded males in striped shirts, often paired off, though not necessarily with the opposite sex. We had another overcast, cool day, but everybody wore sunglasses anyway. A lot of dogs got walked down here, so you watched your step, and I was happy to be one of the few sidewalk-trodders not wearing sandals. At least it wasn’t monkey shit.