A Killing in Comics

by Max Allan Collins

  Again I said, “It’s suggestive. It speaks to cops, and it speaks to juries.”

  “I suppose.” The big eyes behind glass held me unblinkingly. “But I didn’t do it. And Harry is the kind of guy who walks around an ant hill, if it’s in his way. He’s sweet. A goddamn little kid. And you know it.”

  I sighed. Swigged Coke. Said, “What I know is, there’s no shortage of people who hated Donny Harrison. But maybe you know something, or have an instinct about who might—”

  He gripped my arm with surprising strength. “Listen, Jack—I didn’t hate Donny. What gets lost in the shuffle is how likable he could be. How . . . don’t look at me like that . . . how nice he could be.”

  “Nice. Donny.”

  “Yeah. Donny. He and I had diabetes in common, right, everybody’s making a big deal out of that. But he and I talked about it, sometimes. He was facing the same problems as me. He said he was going to pay for an operation on my eyes. Not take it out of my pay or anything, and when we started making noise about Wonder Boy and getting the Wonder Guy rights back . . . he took me aside and said, ‘No matter how that goes, I gave you my word about that operation, and I stand behind it, pal.’ Pal, he called me.”

  Behind the thick lenses, Moe’s eyes had teared up.

  If he’d ever been on my suspect list, I crossed him off then. When you’re going blind, you don’t bump off the guy who wanted to help you get your eyesight back.

  Otherwise, Moe Shulman would have to do his dreaming like the rest of us—in the dark.

  No one could deny the digs of both Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman were those of successful men. But the real house that Wonder Guy built was on the north shore of Long Island, in the village of Kensington—the Tudor manor of Donny Harrison.

  The Harrisons’ world was one of tennis courts, golf courses, polo fields and yacht clubs, a heaven on earth for anyone with the right kind of money, even the sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants. Here the Harrison family could belong to a country club and attend cocktail parties and go to the synagogue on Old Mill Road.

  I guided the convertible through the Victorian gates into the development, and soon had rolled up in front of the large home, a dozen rooms easy, with the typical Tudor thatched roof, side gables and decorative brown half-timbering on white stucco. Over the three-car garage was a sizeable loft with its own pitched roof—the living quarters chauffeur Hank Morella had mentioned.

  And speaking of Morella, right now he was driving across the endless sloping lawn, and I don’t mean in a car: bare-chested, he and his chinos and work boots were guiding a noisy power mower around, one of those new rotor jobs. The big, tanned, muscular lug might have been the model for Wonder Guy, or anyway the dumber looking knockoff, Marvel Man.

  The walk was a curvy thing, with impeccably trimmed bushes all along (similar ones hugged the house), and I followed it like Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road. I was halfway up when Morella spotted me, shut off his noisemaker and strode over, frowning. His dark eyes were close enough together that this made him look even dumber, something I had until then not thought possible.

  “What do you want around here, Jack?” he demanded, having to lean across the walk’s knee-high hedge to do so. He had broad shoulders and a muscular chest, pearled with sweat and spattered with little grass bits, but he was breathing awful hard for a guy working a power mower.

  “Hello, Hank,” I said pleasantly. “I’m here to see Mrs. Harrison. She’s—”

  “Jesus, have a heart,” he blurted, shoving his face in my face. “Don’t you know she’s grieving?”

  I backed away. “You interrupted me, Hank. I was about to say she was expecting me.”

  “Oh. Really? She didn’t say so.”

  “Are you her secretary, as well as chauffeur and yard boy?”

  He swallowed, took a step back, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. I’m just . . . worried for her and the kids. It’s awful hard on them, Mr. Harrison’s tragedy.”

  By Mr. Harrison’s tragedy, he meant Donny getting himself murdered.

  “Haven’t you been having people drop by a lot,” I asked, “to pay their respects?”

  I didn’t know how religious Mrs. Harrison was, though the funeral had been Orthodox, and she could have been sitting shiva, which meant for seven days family and friends would drop by with food and comfort. Hell, she might have gone the full boat, with mirrors covered and sitting on the floor, and the men not shaving. You now know as much about Judaism as I do, since the major raised me to be about as Jewish as Bing Crosby.

  “There have been a lot of callers,” he said. “I didn’t know you were paying your respects. I thought you were still nosing around about the, uh . . . you know.”

  I arched an eyebrow; somebody had to. “You don’t think Mrs. Harrison might want to see her husband’s killer caught, Hank?”

  “I didn’t say that! Look, I jumped the gun on you. I apologize. Go on up and knock. Her son and daughter are home—one of them will answer.”

  I held up a palm. “No offense taken, none meant. I know you and the family are close. You’re staying on, then?”

  “Sure. Of course . . . . Hey, I’m sorry, Jack. I’m on edge myself. If there’s any way I can help with what you’re trying to do, just, you know, say the word.”

  Something came immediately to mind.

  “Actually there is,” I said. I curled a finger and he came closer, and I damn near whispered. “Do you think Donny was aware that Miss Daily saw other men?”

  “No! I don’t think he had any idea.”

  “That sounds like you did know.”

  “Well . . . I heard things.”

  “Things like . . . names? I know Rod Krane and Honey were having an affair, until just recently. And I hear some bigwig at Americana was, too.”

  He was shaking his head; for the record, nothing rattled. “I can’t imagine that. Mr. Cohn never fools around, and anyway, he and Mrs. Harrison are close friends; he would never betray her.”

  “I see.”

  “And I can’t imagine Miss Daily wanting anything to do with Sy Mortimer.”

  “Me either.” I ran through the names of some other top editors at Americana, and Hank shook his head at every one.

  “Sorry, Jack. Wish I could be some help. And, uh . . . sorry about trying to give you the bum’s rush. I was out of line.”

  I shrugged. “You’re protective where the Harrisons are concerned. I respect that.” I didn’t really, but he seemed to like hearing it.

  He went back to mowing.

  The son answered the door—he was a short, slender if round-faced kid of maybe sixteen with more of his mom in his mug than his dad, and he wore a white shirt with a dark blue tie and light blue gabardine pleated slacks. The getup indicated he was the appointed doorman for those paying their respects. He didn’t seem to be growing a mourning beard, but I wasn’t sure he could have if he tried.

  He ushered me through past some stairs—I glimpsed a very nicely appointed house in the French Provincial style, and noticed no covered mirrors—through a big white modern kitchen and out onto a brick patio.

  Her round, nicely featured face a touch over madeup, Mrs. Harrison—in a loose black dress with white collar and cuffs—sat at a white round metal table on one of several white wire-metal chairs.

  She smiled as I approached—the boy had disappeared—and started to get up, but I gestured for her to keep her place.

  The handsome if stout woman was drinking lemonade, and a glass pitcher of the liquid and melting ice rested on a tray with half a dozen glasses awaiting drop-by guests like me. She poured a glass for me, and for several minutes—between sips—I paid my condolences, and spoke of how nice the service was, and heard about how a brother of Donny’s had insisted on the Orthodox service, and she hadn’t seen any reason why not.

  “The major,” I said, “thought the world of your husband.”

  She turned the dark blue eyes on me and, despite their expected filigree of red, th
ey twinkled. “We spoke of the major, the last time I saw you.”

  “Yes.” At the party. Right before Donny dove onto the cake knife.

  “I sense that you . . .” She gave me a smile that granted forgiveness in advance. “. . . didn’t share the major’s view of Donny.”

  “Honestly, I didn’t know him that well.”

  She gazed out into the yard, a beautifully manicured expanse of elaborate bushes with trees along either periphery. Not far from where we sat bloomed a flower bed of colorful perennials; a lattice gazebo perched halfway out. Birds, not informed Mrs. Harrison was in mourning, were chirping.

  “He was not perfect, my Donny. But no man is. No woman, either. What do you think of Louie Cohn?”

  “A cold fish,” I said frankly. “But a hell of a businessman.”

  “Louie may think he’s better off without Donny. He may consider Donny and Donny’s style a thing of the past. But he’s wrong. They were a team, a perfect team, and Louie will be half as effective without Donny.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “Donny was quick, clever, lot of people liked him. Louie’s the hardheaded, self-controlled partner.”

  “Yes. They were a perfect pair. Everybody loved Donny. Nobody loves Louie.”

  I guess I could have argued that somebody didn’t love Donny, else he wouldn’t have been murdered. But that might have lacked tact.

  “Mrs. Harrison,” I began.

  She corrected me: “Selma.”

  “Selma. I know this is a very tough time for you. But I’m here for more than just expressing my sympathy.”

  She sipped lemonade. Raised one eyebrow, slightly. “Oh?”

  “Maggie has me looking into Donny’s death. His . . . I have to say it . . . murder.”

  She frowned, not critically, more in confusion. “Surely, that’s a job for . . .”

  “Wonder Guy?” I said with a smile. “No, not him, and not just the police. The man in charge, who you may have spoken to, Captain Chandler . . . ?”

  “Yes. I spoke to him briefly, once on the phone, once here. He seems perfectly capable.”

  “I’m sure he is.” I gestured with an open hand. “But the Starr Syndicate has business concerns at stake, and I know the people and the industry better than any Homicide Bureau cop. Maggie wants to make sure your husband’s killer is brought to justice . . . and also wants to make sure no injustices are done.”

  “Injustices . . . such as?”

  “Chandler is looking hard at the boys—Spiegel and Shulman. Moe is a diabetic, you know. Did Captain Chandler tell you . . . ?”

  She nodded. “He explained that Donny’s insulin was very likely tampered with. His people took bottles from our refrigerator in the kitchen, where you walked through.”

  “Yes.” I drank lemonade; unlike the iced tea at the Spiegel apartment, this was just sweet enough. “With your permission, I need to bring up something painful.”

  Her smile was a knowing crease of amusement. “More painful than my husband’s murder?”

  “Possibly. May I proceed?”

  “You may.”

  “His infidelity.”

  “You mean that Daily woman.”

  I wasn’t surprised she knew: after all, she’d sent yard boy Hank over to pick up her hubby’s things. And Honey insisted the other woman was aware.

  “I do mean her,” I said. “You’ve known a while?”

  “For years.”

  “Did you . . . discuss it with Donny?”

  “Never.”

  “When he announced he was having his birthday party at her suite, surely that must have . . . have . . .”

  “Rankled?” An eyebrow went way up, but otherwise her expression remained impassive. “It was an indignity I had to bear. I told you, Donny wasn’t perfect. He was a man. He traveled a lot, and there were many women. But only one wife. And he was a good husband. And a fine father.”

  I didn’t know what else to ask. Surely she knew she was at least as prime a suspect as Spiegel and Shulman. Donny’s insulin was in her kitchen, and he had died in his mistress’s living room with his wife watching. Which most humiliated wives would find a perfect way to watch a cheating husband die.

  So I asked the only question I had left: “Donny had more than his share of enemies, Selma. But do you suspect any one of them, in particular?”

  She frowned at me, as if in shock. “Enemies? Donny didn’t have an enemy in the world. If you’re going to say mean things like that, Jack, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  CHAPTER NINE COMIC BOOKS ARE A BAD INFLUENCE!

  Damon Runyon called it Dream Street, a block’s worth of Forty-seventh Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues; but these days, nightmare was more like it. Two hundred yards of ratty hotels and ramshackle rooming houses where the owners of dreams-turned-to-dregs resided—grifters, horse players, dope addicts, pickpockets, washed-up vaudevillians, actors on the way down who were never very far up.

  I made a point of calling on Will Hander, who roomed in this negative Valhalla, while the sun was still up, if barely. Not that you couldn’t walk Dream Street at any hour—Broadway was just around the corner, the mink and pearls of Fifth Avenue one block east. The poor souls you encountered, in sunshine or neon, were no threat—peroxided old women walking their mutts; a panhandler seeking a quarter for “coffee”; a skinny streetwalker whose charms promised pleasure but boded penicillin. Here a bearded bum studied a scratch sheet on church steps; there a dipso sat in a doorway, shivering with something that wasn’t cold, not on a late Saturday afternoon in July.

  The danger, particularly after dark, was upstairs in the dismal, shabby buildings, in the ancient cubicles that passed for rooms, where vice of every stripe was available, from watered-down whiskey to hypos of H, from con games to crap games, from adulterous quickies to assorted versions of the Old Army game for sailors on leave of their senses.

  Maggie had provided the address, and suggested I carry my gun. Unfortunately, “my” gun was the major’s bulky Colt .45, brought home from the war before the last one; and none of my suits were cut to conceal it. And since my troubleshooter role had only recently gone private eye on me, I—unlike Bogart or Alan Ladd—had not got round to getting fitted for a shoulder holster.

  So I went armed only with a sharp wit and the confidence of youth . . . and a roll of quarters, which made a nasty lump in the pocket of my lightweight suit jacket, but then could also make a nasty lump on anybody who gave me a problem, so call it a fair trade.

  The stairs and walls hadn’t seen paint since George M. Cohan was Broadway’s fresh new face; they hadn’t seen disinfectant, either, judging by the smell of urine, which was delicately laced with the bouquet of hotplate hash. But Hander was only three flights up, and I encountered no one on my climb. You might have thought the (what we’ll charitably call) residential hotel was empty, if not for sounds behind closed doors, ranging from noisy bedsprings to hysterical laughter, with a shout of “Baby needs a new pair of shoes!” counterpointing the wail of an actual crying baby, to make the experience wholesome for the entire family.

  I had tried to call Hander, but the only number Maggie had on the Batwing writer was a general one for the flophouse, and the three times I tried (right in a row), I got three different people who uttered three different expletives and hung up on me. None of them, apparently, Hander.

  So once again I was dropping in unannounced. But on the third floor I realized I was in trouble—not danger, trouble. Hander was in Room 307, according to Maggie’s info; but none of the doors had numbers. Well, some had numbers—for example, one said 6, another said 09 and another said 30, the remnants of once-proud three-digit designations fallen away like the sands of time (and flakes of paint).

  I could really have used the help of a detective.

  Anyway, I resorted to math, which I admit had been my worst subject, although considering the kind of all-around grades I racked up, the best wouldn’t have been that encouraging, either. But figu
ring out that 09 had once been 309, and 6 had likely been 306, I thought Hander likely lived one door to the right of the latter.

  This brilliant deduction was underscored by noise coming from behind that numeral-less door: typing.

  A sound a writer makes. I smiled. Finally I had made my math teachers proud. . . .

  I knocked and set free half a dozen or more little green chips of what a stickler would still call paint.

  The typing continued.

  I knocked again and dislodged more green dandruff.

  The typing stopped.

  “Will!” I said to the door. “It’s Jack Starr—from the Starr Syndicate. Need a word!”

  I heard a wooden chair squeal on a wooden floor, and hurried footsteps, then what I thought to be a drawer opening, and finally something glass go clunk. And a drawer slam shut?

  Then the door opened and a guy who was maybe two steps above the bums on Dream Street below filled the space.

  “Jack,” he said, and grinned at me, like an old friend had just blown in. We’d met maybe three times.

  Lanky, loose-limbed, Will Hander had a boyish face, despite the couple days’ growth of beard, and a musical tenor. He looked forty breathing down fifty’s neck, and was maybe thirty. His jet-black hair was curly, a full unruly head of it, and his bloodshot eyes added up to a patriotic red, white and blue. He was in a sweat-circled white shirt, sleeves rolled up, open at the throat showing black curly chest hair. His pants were lightweight and brown, and he was in his stocking feet. Something about him said he’d been an athlete once.

  “Jack,” he said. The smile took on an embarrassed edge. “You should’ve called.”

  “I tried. I talked to three of your secretaries, who all had physically impossible suggestions for me.”

  He laughed, a little too loud. “Yeah, this is a dump, and the clientele’s a bunch of rummies.”