Seduction of the Innocent (4 page)

“What you mean is,” I said, “you like having a TV show you can guest on that’s just a few floors down from your digs.”

“Now you’re calling me lazy.”

“There must be another word for it, but I can’t think of one right now.”

Somebody else was moving toward us—Garson Lehman. She glanced at him as he planted himself before us, wearing what I will delicately term a shit-eating grin.

“I hope you don’t mind a good little intellectual row, Miss Starr,” he said in that nasal whine, which was even more irritating when he was trying to be nice.

“I don’t mind a good give-and-take, Mr. Lehman.”

“Please. Make it Garson.”

She nodded, almost smiled. Then her eyes opened in a “something else I can do for you?” manner.

His smile twitched nervously under the shaggy mustache. “I, uh, just wanted to make sure you hadn’t taken any great offense. I’m really such a huge admirer of yours.”

“You made that clear in your defense of my art, years ago.”

“Yes, I believe I did.” He stuttered a nervous laugh. “I, uh, also...uh...wanted to make an
offer.
A proposal.”

“This is so sudden.” One eyebrow went up a whole quarter inch. Damn.

He raised his palms chest high in surrender. “Obviously— now is not the time or place for business...but it does follow from what we were so spiritedly discussing.”

“Does it?”

He nodded vigorously. “As Mr. Barray said, your newspaper syndicate is closely aligned with the comic book business. In this climate, that’s something of a burden.”

“My shoulders may not be broad, Mr. Lehman, but they can take it.”

“Please—make it ‘Garson.’ And may I call you ‘Maggie’?”

She said nothing.

He swallowed and said, “I believe you know that I have a considerable reputation as a scholar and commentator on the popular arts. I was at the forefront of the anti-comic book controversy—the first to write about the subject, in
The Velvet Fist.
You might say I paved the way for Dr. Frederick.”

“Yes, you might.”

“And the doctor graciously acknowledges that. You know, I helped him on
Ravage the Lambs.”

“Helped him how?”

His smile seemed nervous. “Well, chiefly research. He credits me in the acknowledgments.”

Her eyes were like green marbles, cold, unblinking. “That must be gratifying. What is your point, Mr. Lehman?”

“My point is that if I were to do a weekly column for you ...on the subject of the popular arts...perhaps beginning with a defense of comic
strips
as opposed to comic
books...
it would be
beneficial
to your position.”

Something glittered in Maggie’s green eyes. What was it? Rage? Amusement?

“We’d have the Garson Lehman stamp of approval,” she said.

“Yes! It would be
implied,
but...yes. Might take some of the heat off.”

This was like a guy who just set fire to your house offering you a nice cool glass of water. From your own tap.

“I’ll think about that,” she said.

He already had a business card palmed, it seemed, and he passed it to her, saying, “You can reach me there. That’s my office. It’s in the Village.”

No. Really?

Then he shambled off, smiling, shrugging, even waving.

“What a schlemiel,” I said.

“He researched for Kinsey, too, you know. He’s a letch and a pornographer, using comics as a scapegoat.”

“Everybody needs a hobby.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Germ of something, though.”

“He’s a germ, all right.”

“Not my meaning.”

She turned toward the bar, slipped her perfect fanny onto a stool. Took a healthy sip of her Horse’s Neck. “How long do you need to do a full background check?”

“Local?”

“Local.”

“How full?”

“Thorough but not obsessive.”

I shrugged. “Couple of days.”

“Good. Do one.”

“On who?”

“Whom.”

“Whom, then?”

She sipped her Horse’s Neck and smiled. “Dr. Werner Frederick. Is whom.”

Maggie sat behind that big cherry-wood desk of hers—it was smaller than a fry-cook’s griddle, but just—looking both businesslike and lovely. She wore a white-buttoned charcoal linen frock with a man-tailored top, only a man’s arms wouldn’t be bare. Her red hair was down, brushing her shoulders, her makeup subdued (though her mouth was as red as the rose in a vase near her blotter), and her hands were folded as if saying grace. Her desk, typically, obsessively neat, bore little stacks of letters, comics submissions, color proofs and columnist copy.

I had settled into the wine-colored leather chair across from her maybe thirty seconds ago, crossing my legs, angling myself casually, careful not to wrinkle my light Navy tropical suit with pale yellow shirt and blue-and-yellow patterned tie. We were waiting for her assistant Bryce to bring our standard Coke-on-ice for me and cream-laden coffee for Maggie. It was after lunch, about two o’clock, on Wednesday.

A quick geography lesson—the office had an Old Boys’ Club look with dark rich wood paneling that hadn’t been changed since the major remodeled in 1932. A parquet floor peeked out around an Oriental rug, a wall of bookshelves at left brimming with unread leather-bound classics that glowered snobbishly across at the opposite wall’s tasteless array of big framed posters of Maggie’s 1941 Broadway show
(Starr in Garters),
her three movies, and some gaudy burlesque placards, one with her billed over Abbott and Costello.

Various dark wood, seat-padded chairs lined either wall, for when her two visitor’s chairs couldn’t accommodate the traffic. Wooden filing cabinets jutted from the rear wall, overseen by a portrait of the major by James Montgomery Flagg, which stared across the long, narrow space at the full-figure pastel portrait of Herself in feathers-and-glitter by Rolf Armstrong that loomed over her behind the desk.

“Tell me about Dr. Frederick,” she said, her hands still folded. She rarely took notes. Like me, she had a good memory.

“First,” I said, “I’d like to know why you want to know about that joker.”

Nothing registered on that pretty puss. “Does it matter?”

“You mean, you’re the boss, so if you say jump, I say how high? No. You say jump, I say yeah, why? I mean, I’m probably gonna jump, but I am a partner in this enterprise.”

The green eyes were hooded. “You are at that. With a specified role.”

“Right. Which is help out with investigatory stuff when our syndicate faces lawsuit trouble, or other jams our talent gets into, or run background checks on potential new talent before signing ’em on.”

“That describes your role well.”

“It does, and checking on Dr. Frederick’s background doesn’t fit any of those...unless he’s suing us. You sure as hell aren’t considering hiring him to write a comic strip.”

“You never know.” She checked her wristwatch, a little silver thing with diamonds that cost her about what my Kaiser-Darrin convertible set me back. “After all, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” She smiled sweetly. Or anyway, that was her imitation of a sweet smile.

I jerked a thumb toward the chair next to me. “Dr. Werner Frederick? Will have his pinched butt right here next to me?”

“Unless he doesn’t show. Tell me about him.”

What the hell was she up to?

Well, she’d said jump, so I jumped.

“He’s a German, born in Cologne a little before the turn of the century, naturalized as an American in ’29. Studied medicine in Germany and knew Freud. He makes it sound like they worked together, but I didn’t get any confirmation of that. But they knew each other.”

She nodded. “His specialty, psychiatry.”

“Yeah. Guess I skipped that. He’s one of those guys showing the dirty ink-blot pictures. Anyway, he joined the staff of the psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In the early thirties, he directed the New York Court of General Sessions’ psychiatric clinic, where all the nasty crooks got their heads shrunk courtesy of the taxpayers. He testified in court a lot, usually for the prosecution, obviously ...but after he testified for Albert Fish’s defense team, he either got fired or just moved on, into private practice.”

“Albert Fish,” she said distantly. “There’s a noteworthy case.”

“Yeah. The Brooklyn Vampire. Child rapist, mass murderer, cannibal, perfect for the crime comic books. Interesting that the doc stuck up for Fish, but wants the comics killed.”

“But they executed Fish, anyway.”

“Sing Sing. Regular Friday night Fish fry.”

That got neither a smile nor disgust out of her. Can’t blame a guy for trying.

“So,” I said, “he went into private practice. He’s a widower, no kids. He lives in the Waldorf Towers, practices out of an office in his suite, and as you might expect has a pretty high-class clientele.”

“The Waldorf allows him to conduct business out of there?”

“Yeah. It’s not like he’s selling hot dogs or motorboats.”

“Did you get a sense of his character?”

I shrugged. “He’s something of a publicity hound—a lot of radio, TV, magazine stuff, relating to this forthcoming screed on comics. This
Ravage the Lambs
thing. A big excerpt ran in the
Ladies’ Home Journal
and attracted a lot of attention, mostly positive. Parents are always glad to have something or somebody to blame for why their brats are brats.”

She thought about that. Her green eyes, damn near unblinking, were staring past me. At the major, maybe.

Then she said, “So he’s famous? Household-name famous?”

“Close to it, at the moment anyway.” I shifted in my seat. “Why
doesn’t
he do a strip for us? He can psychoanalyze Mug O’Malley and Wonder Guy, right on the funny pages.”

“You think he’s a crank.”

“He’s one of those stuffed-shirt do-gooders who come along every now then—goes all the way back to Anthony Comstock, doesn’t it?—who tries to control what other people can publish or read. And he’s making a buck at it. Lots of bucks. Pop psychology trash.”

“Don’t hold back, Jack.”

“Look, he does do some good work. He works pro bono with poor kids at a Harlem clinic, for example. He testified recently in that Brown versus Board of Education thing, talking about the negative impact segregation has on Negro youths. He’s not all bad. But he’s dangerous.”

“To society?”

“To us!” I sat forward. “Maggie, two of the comic book outfits he’s targeting are tied at the hip to Starr—Levinson Publications, with the
Crime Fighter
comic strip, and don’t forget, we are just about to climb in bed with Entertaining Funnies, his favorite whipping boy.”

We were in negotiations right now with EF’s owner/publisher, Robert Price, to syndicate a strip based on his new, very successful comic book,
Craze,
which lampooned TV shows, comics and movies. The idea for the strip version was to do a color Sunday-only page that lampooned other comic strips, the way Hal Rapp took
Dick Tracy
on in his strip-within-a-strip,
Hawknose Harry.
Our sales force, feeling out prospective clients, considered it sure-fire.

The door at the rear of the office opened and a slender male figure in black turtleneck and slacks entered with a tray in hand bearing the Coke and coffee. This was Bryce, a handsome, trimly bearded former Broadway dancer of perhaps thirty, who ruled the little world of the reception area with its tucked-away kitchenette. When a busted ankle had ended his stage career, he got hired on by Maggie as her major domo, and was as loyal to Maggie as Tonto to the Lone Ranger.

He was also unashamedly flaming. Maybe he’d been reading those Batwing-and-Sparrow comic books.

He delivered the coffee to Maggie, waited for her to taste and test the warmth and cream content, got a nod from her when she had, then he placed the Coke glass on the waiting coaster, uninterested in any review from me on my beverage, then stood there vaguely petulant, like he was waiting for either a tip or an apology.

“What?” Maggie asked.

He spoke in a melodic second tenor; the melody at the moment was in a minor key. “That Dr. Frederick character is in the waiting area. He is, I believe, ten minutes early. Someone should inform him that being ten minutes
early
is as offensive as being ten minutes late.”

I said, “Maybe you could wrangle a quickie shrink session out of him. Just ask him a few innocent questions and he’ll never know he’s been had.”

Bryce’s chin jerked upward. “He’s the
last
person I’d allow inside here,” he said, tapping his cranium. “He believes people like me are sick. That we are twisted perverts and should either be cured or institutionalized.”

I shrugged. “What do you expect from a Nazi?”

That actually made Maggie smile a little, but she said to me, “Don’t egg him on.” Then to Bryce she said, “We’ll take him off your hands. Send him in.”

Bryce went out with his head still high, and his walk was similar to the bathing-suit competition contestants at the Miss America pageant, only more graceful.

“Would have been fun,” I said, “to let those two spend a little more time together.”

“You’re mean,” she said. But she was still smiling.