Seduction of the Innocent (6 page)

“Our lawyers will write up a contract for you to show your lawyers.”

Which would include language banning him from discussing comics, and making the assistant’s salary his responsibility.

“All right,” he said, dazed but smiling.

She reached her hand out and he shook it. He nodded, bid her several goodbyes, did not shake my hand (he’d forgotten all about me), and loped out, with the gait of a man who’d just narrowly missed getting hit by a bus—relieved but unsteady.

Only he
had
been hit by a bus.

I said, “You are a very evil woman, and I admire you for it.”

Pleased with herself, Maggie said, “You are too kind.”

A few moments later, Bryce stuck his head in. “I thought he’d
never
leave!...Look, I’ve got Bob Price out here, hiding in the kitchenette!”

The owner/publisher of Entertaining Funnies.

Maggie snapped, “Did he and Frederick
see
each other?”

“No! But I slipped up and told him Frederick was meeting with you, and it was all I could do, keeping him from running in there and
strangling
that quack!...Should I send him in, or wait till he has a stroke?”

As if exiting a burning building, Robert Price came bounding into the office, brushing past Bryce holding open the door. Bryce shut us in with a heavenward glance as the Entertaining Funnies publisher all but ran to the chair Dr. Frederick had so recently vacated. When he reached it, the big man paused, as if he could see Banquo’s ghost sitting there.

Dark-haired, with a big oblong head, eyes small and bright behind black-rimmed glasses, Price wasn’t much past thirty, a heavyset guy not exactly fat, a six-foot heavyset force of nature even when he wasn’t pissed off, red-and-blue geometric-design tie flapping like the flag of a foreign nation. His tan slacks were flapping, too, like there was a high wind in Maggie’s windowless office. Sans suit coat or sports jacket, in just a short-sleeved white shirt with tie, he might have been a high school chemistry teacher.

Which had been his ambition, till his father died in a boating accident, leaving him Entertaining Funnies to run.

Price’s father Leo had been part of the quartet of entrepreneurs that included the major, Donny Harrison, and Louis Cohn, who developed the first comic books, which had led to Americana Comics, lucrative home of
Wonder Guy
and
Batwing.
They had started out printing Yiddish newspapers, expanded into racing forms and finally smut, the latter nothing so creative as this kid Hefner was currently was turning out—just rags filled with semi-clothed pics of strippers and showgirls, emphasis on the semi.

There was general disagreement over which of the quartet got the idea to format comic-strip submissions into pamphlets for giveaway purposes with various products. But everybody agreed it was Leo Price who had slapped “Ten Cents” stickers on the covers of the extra copies, distributing them to newsstands and accidentally creating the comic-book medium.

Harrison and Cohn came to control Americana Comics, while the major wound up with Starr Syndicate and a piece of Americana. Price sold out his share in the latter to start his own comics line, Entertaining Funnies.

Well, originally it had been Educational Funnies. Leo wanted to class up the comics business, finding Americana’s long-john heroes distasteful. Instead he published comic books illustrating Bible stories, as well as a secondary kiddie line (which is where the “Entertaining” designation came in) with a singularly non-stellar line-up
—Jim Dandy, Animal Tales, Fable Fun.
All of those bled money, and when Leo died, this four-color albatross wound up around his unassuming son Bob’s neck.

Initially Bob Price would just stop by to pick up his paycheck, but when Entertaining Funnies appeared on the verge of bankruptcy, the reluctant funny-book publisher started actually publishing. He brought on talented artist/writer/editor Hal Feldman, fresh off
Archie
knock-offs that had featured big-busted Betty and Veronica imitations (Dr. Frederick liked to call these “headlights” comics). For a year or so, the new team followed comic-book trends, western, romance, crime, before stumbling onto horror out of their mutual love for scary old radio shows like
Lights Out
and
Inner Sanctum.

Feldman assembled some of the best artists in the business, who in grisly detail depicted horrors that radio would consign to its listeners’ imaginations—bloodthirsty vampires, flesh-tearing werewolves, drooling ghouls, and desiccated zombies. Their science fiction comics were variations on the terror theme—grotesque monsters attacking spacemen— and their crime comics dropped “true crime” in favor of greed-and-sex sagas, husbands killing cheating wives, wives killing fat old rich husbands.

And Bob Price had gone from unassuming aspiring high school teacher to enthusiastic, high-energy comic book czar.

That czar was standing there—his tie had settled down but he hadn’t—pointing a finger at the vacant chair next to me.

“He was sitting right there!” Price said, eyes popping behind the glasses, veins standing out on his forehead. “You had that monster sitting right
there!”

“Yeah,” I said. “All warmed up for you.”

“Maggie,” Price said, his voice trembling with hurt, “how
could
you?”

He sounded like the disappointed villainess at the end of
I, the Jury.

Maggie, hands on her desk folded, smiled politely. Now she was the one who seemed like a schoolteacher. “Bob— what a nice surprise, you dropping by. Please sit down.”

“I can’t bring myself to!”

I said, “You want me to go downstairs to the restaurant and get you one of those tissue-paper dealy-bobs they use in public toilets?”

He swung his gaze on me. We were friends, or anyway friendly acquaintances, going back well before he became a comic-book publisher. The major and his father had been business partners, after all.

And my absurdly sarcastic question made him break out into a grin and he started to laugh, and plopped himself down in that accursed chair. He sat forward, though, hands together between splayed legs.

“But come on, Maggie,” he said, shaking his big head. “What were you doing fraternizing with the enemy?”

“I’m trying to make him
less
an adversary,” she said. She pointedly avoided calling Dr. Frederick “the enemy.”

His eyebrows climbed. “How is that
possible?”

I glanced at Maggie and she nodded, and I said, “We offered him a syndicated column with Starr.”

He had the shocked expression of a kid who just read the last panel of a
Tales from the Vault
horror yarn.

“We offered him an advice column,” she said. “A psychiatric spin on
Dear Abby.
And he has said yes, at least tentatively.”

Price’s eyes brightened, like a jack-o-lantern whose candle had just been lit, and he began to smile. The effect was not unlike a jack-o-lantern, either. He pointed a waggling finger at her. “You are a
genius,
Maggie Starr. An outright goddamn genius. You appealed to that outsize ego of his, and bought the son of a bitch off, without him even knowing it!”

She raised a cautionary hand. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way...”

“Of
course
you wouldn’t!”

“...but it does potentially put the good doctor in an awkward position. He will find himself working for a firm that is financially tied to Americana Comics, and of course Starr has a history with you and your family as well, so...there are those who would interpret him as, I believe the Madison Avenue term is, selling out.”

Bob was laughing now, so hard he was crying. He dug out a hanky and dabbed his eyes with it and blew his nose with a honk.

I said, “It’s going to be in his contract that he can’t discuss comic books or even comic strips in his column.”

Still laughing, Price put the hanky away and said, “Beautiful. So beautifully played. You’ll show everybody what a
hypocrite
he is.”

Maggie frowned thoughtfully.
“Is
he a hypocrite? He appears sincere.”

Price pawed the air. “Oh, he’s a hypocrite, all right. I’ve just come from my lawyers. We got an advance copy of this anti-comics
Mein Kampf
of his
—Ravage the Lambs?
He fills it with examples of panels from the comic books he criticizes, the most extreme and outlandish out-of-context stuff he could find. You know that story we ran about the midnight football team?”

“I missed that one,” I said.

“Well, the last panel reveals that they’ve been playing not with a football, but with their hated coach’s head.”

“Ah. And that final panel is what Frederick used.”

“That’s right. Wholly out of context! One of Craig Johnson’s
Postman Always Rings Twice
variations, where the husband strangles the wife? Guess what panel that bastard uses!”

“Where the husband,” I said, “is strangling his wife?”

“Bingo! Fills this ‘anti-violence’ book of his with the most violent images he can lay his grubby hands on. He’s exploiting comics to make a buck, far more than any comic book ever exploited anything or anybody!”

Maggie said, “Why were you at your lawyers, Bob?”

His grin was again Halloween-worthy. “That dippy doc never bothered getting permission to excerpt those panels. That’s copyrighted material, Maggie! I’m gonna sue his pants off. Then I’m gonna sue his
ass
off.”

Thoughtfully, Maggie said, “Because it’s a scientific work, those examples from your publications
may
be fair use.”

He pawed at the air. “That’s what my legal guys are looking into. But they think we may have a case, because this isn’t
really
a scientific work, not the way he’s promoting it on radio and TV, and selling excerpts to
Reader’s Digest, Parents
and
Ladies’ Home Journal.”

I glanced at Maggie. “Bob has a point. The doc’s going the pop psychology route. I mean, most scientific treatises aren’t called
Ravage the Lambs.”

She didn’t react to that, turning to her guest, moving on to a new topic. “Bob, why did you stop by? You didn’t come to complain about Frederick coming to see us—you didn’t even know about it.”

The big man leaned back in the chair and loosened his tie; it wasn’t particularly warm in the office but he was perspiring, and his white shirt had the sweat circles to prove it.

“You’re right,” he said, “but this
is
about Frederick, partly. You know tomorrow’s the first day of the Senate hearing over at the Foley Square Courthouse.”

Maggie and I nodded. The papers had been giving this investigation into juvenile delinquency and comic books a lot of play.

“Well,” Price went on, “Frederick is the first witness scheduled, and guess who the
second
witness is?”

Maggie winced. “You were
subpoenaed?”

“No! I volunteered.”

I winced. “Why the hell?”

He threw his hands up. “To state my
side
of it. I’ve been up for two days and nights working on my opening statement.”

He did seem wired. Dexies?

In any case, his eyes were as wide and wild as Caligula asking his sister out for a date. “I’m going to put that hypocritical head-shrinker in his goddamn place! And I’m going to educate those so-called lawmakers on the ins and outs of the great American right of free speech.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That worked out swell for the Hollywood Ten.”

“I’m no communist!”

“No, Bob,” I said, “you’re worse. You’re despoiling America’s beloved boys and girls. You’re the comic-book equivalent of the pervert offering candy to kids at the schoolyard fence, next to the guy selling them dope.”

He was shaking his head. “I know all about the garbage that prudes like Frederick and Lehman have been stirring up about me. That’s why I’m taking the stand. When I’m finished, everyone will know what I am.”

A fool?

“I am a
publisher.”
His chin jutted.

Probably the guy who said he regretted having only one life to give for his country had a chin that jutted just like that—made it easier to slip the rope around.

“My opening statement will be a masterpiece. I need to work on it some more, but...it’s going to turn this
whole
thing around.”

Maggie said, “You volunteered to be a witness. Can you get out of it?”

“I don’t
want
to get out of it!”

“You should,” she said sternly. “I can arrange for some major newspaper to interview you, maybe get you on a television show more friendly to the Bill of Rights than
The Barray Soiree.
Steve Allen, possibly. You can get your side of it out much better that way.”

“No! The battle lines are drawn. It’s me against them, and they don’t stand a chance.”

“Ever hear of the Alamo, Bob?” I asked.

“In the
end,
the Forces of Right won, didn’t they?”

“If you mean the Mexicans, yeah.”

But he wasn’t having any of it. He shook his big head rather woefully, sweat flecking off his Brylcreemed locks. “Look, I
know
this is dangerous.”

Dangerous—the word Dr. Frederick so often used about comic books like the ones Bob published
....