A Killing in Comics

by Max Allan Collins

  Spoken with great conviction for a guy with liquor on his breath.

  “Could I come in?” I asked. “My uncle lives down the hall, and if spots me, he’ll want a five-spot.”

  Hander shook his head and laughed. “You are a cutup, Jack. You should write a strip for your stepmother.”

  Following him into the room, I said, “I don’t think my sense of humor is ready for public consumption just yet.”

  Neither was Hander’s apartment, if you could call it that.

  One shabby little room, with an unmade single bed, a couple sheets and, folded at the foot, a threadbare blanket. The cracked walls were the color of chocolate, only not at all sweet. The furniture consisted of a cloth-covered wine-color couch and a green easy chair, both of whose cushion springs were making a break for it, and a battered dresser with a few water glasses on it and a smoky mirror over it.

  A window on an alley was open, looking out onto a brick wall, but that was the source of air, which kept the box less than stuffy. In front of this scenic view, a black metal typing stand was set up, with a heavy oak wooden chair that had more scars than an over-the-hill boxer.

  Hander, smiling big but the humiliation coming through, gestured me to the couch, and pulled his heavy typing chair away from the stand, whose two wings were spread, one holding a box of typing paper, the other its lid with script pages in it, another page curling in his portable Underwood.

  We sat. The clunking sound I’d heard was him putting a bottle away, I figured. Judging by his breath, I’d say rye whiskey. And before you dismiss that deduction as one even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t make, remember I was an MP in the war.

  “I thought you lived out in the Bronx,” I said, trying not to make it an accusation.

  He folded his hands in his lap; slumped a little. Grinned like a kid caught playing with himself. “Yeah, I do. But, uh . . . a little family trouble.”

  “Sorry. None of my business . . .”

  “No! No, that’s fine. I got a beautiful wife and a beautiful kid, and sometimes . . . sometimes I fall off the wagon.”

  “I been there.”

  He gestured with open hands. “And Molly said, clean myself up. Looks bad in front of my boy.”

  “Sure.”

  His shrug was too big. “So I just burrowed in up here, to get ahead on some scripts.”

  “Batwing?”

  “Yeah, Batwing and Blue Barracuda and some Wonder Boy. Mortimer likes my stuff. Keeps me alive, God bless him.”

  I shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable. “Not everybody has kind words for Sy or, frankly, any of the higher-ups at Americana.”

  A smaller shrug. “Well, it’s just a writing market for me. I freelance there and a few other places. Just, until . . . you know.”

  “Actually, I don’t. Know what, Will?”

  The half smile that came to the boyish mug was unforced. “Oh, this comics junk is just a means to an end. Just to get enough cash to keep the wife and kid afloat, till my ship comes in.”

  “What ship would that be?”

  He laughed, and it was one of the worst laughs I ever heard. “I’m like every writer—when I get ahead on freelancer work, I’m digging in on the Great American Novel.”

  I smiled. “Ah. Nobody’s got around to writing that one yet, huh?”

  “No, sir.”

  And here my money was on Huckleberry Finn.

  “Not that I’m a snob,” he said. “Some of the pulps, the better pulps, they have really good writing in them. That’s where Chandler started. And Hammett. And lots of people.”

  Again I shifted on the couch, attempting to find an angle where my behind didn’t receive unwanted acupuncture. “You had many pulp sales?”

  “A few. It’s just . . . comic books, that’s a market I lucked into, and it’s been a way to keep head above water.”

  I would question using any form of the word “luck” with a career choice that included this particular writer’s garret. But that’s just me.

  “Having flat feet, being 1-A, was a kind of a break for me. So many in the business off to war, and not a lot of good comics writers around, if there is such a thing.”

  “It’s a craft few can master,” I said, meaning it. I saw the kind of submissions that came into Starr every day.

  “You really think so?” He stood. “Say, can I get you a drink? I’ve been working all day, and I think maybe I could stand to wet my whistle.”

  “No, that’s okay. I swore off the stuff for Lent.”

  He frowned at me, by the dresser now. “Aren’t you Jewish?”

  “Not very, but that was an attempt at a joke.”

  Now that my remark had been properly categorized, he laughed heartily, and opened a drawer and got out the rye whiskey bottle—I will pause for you to be impressed by my deductive skills—and filled one of the water glasses, halfway.

  Dark bronze liquid sloshing in the glass (and probably in his stomach, too), Hander returned to the heavy, heavily scarred-up chair and sat. He sipped, obviously wishing for a gulp. Impressive self-control.

  His smile turned serene. “What brings you around, Jack?”

  “Missed you at Donny’s funeral.”

  And now, finally, his expression darkened. “Yeah, well . . . I didn’t suppose I was on the guest list.”

  “Not many artists or writers were there. Harry and Moe took a pass, too.”

  He was shaking his head. “I didn’t hate the guy. I didn’t wish him dead.”

  “Somebody did. Somebody who made that wish come true.”

  He’d been in the process of raising his whiskey glass to his lips when I said that, and my words actually interrupted that process. “You’re not . . . looking into it, are you, Jack?”

  “I am.”

  He looked at me like I’d just insisted the world was flat. “But the cops are doing that, aren’t they?”

  “Why, have you talked to Captain Chandler of the Homicide Bureau?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I guess he went looking for me, all the way to the Bronx. I talked to Molly on the phone this morning, and she told me. But she hadn’t given my address to him.”

  “To protect you?”

  His previously chipper expression, however forced, had melted into hangdog despair. “No. So she wouldn’t be embarrassed, when he saw where I . . . where I was staying, temporarily.”

  “Did she invite you back, then?”

  His face bore the kind of sadness that tears just didn’t do the trick for. “No. No, she’s got it in her head that my drinking is out of control.” His forehead tensed. “Jack, this is the first drink I’ve had, all day. I swear on my kid’s head.”

  “Not my business, Will.”

  He sat forward, eyes glittering. “I mean, could a drunk turn out the scripts I do?”

  Having read Hander’s Batwing stuff—outrageous death traps and acrobatic fights interspersed with lunatic wisecracks often set in fun house-type settings with huge oversized props and looming grotesque faces—I’d have to say . . . hell, yes.

  “No,” I said. “Certainly not. But I heard you were trying to get some credit from Donny, for Batwing.”

  He held his free hand up, palm out, like he was swearing in, in court. “Look, I don’t really give a damn about credit. Who cares if my name is on this crummy kid stuff? It’ll only hurt me, right, when I’m doing serious novels? I want to protect my name, save my byline for when it really counts.”

  Yeah, and I heard Thomas Wolfe did all his comics stories anonymously, too. That, and as Tommy Fox.

  I shifted again; come Monday, I was going to need a tetanus shot. “Then what had you been bugging Donny about, Will?”

  “Money! Let Rod have his name all over the goddamn thing! Do I want my next-door neighbors, out in the Bronx, knowing I created Sparrow and that stupid Harlequin? No way in hell . . . but I do want the dough I got coming to me. Did you know there’s gonna be another serial! And all those toys. . . . Jack, do you realiz
e I get standard freelancer money, same as anybody else, and it’s me who created this garbage?”

  Yes, his sense of pride was palpable.

  I asked, “Why don’t you talk to Krane about it?”

  His face fell; shoulders, too. “I . . . I have, but . . . I have to be careful.”

  “Why?”

  His expression was a frightened child’s. “If I made Rod mad at me, really got on his bad side, don’t you know what would happen? He’d stop using me as a writer. He’d pressure Americana not to use me. And, Jack, I got a family to support! Bills to pay!”

  From these cracked-wall rat-trap surroundings, you’d have thought he had no more responsibility in life than the other alkies.

  “So,” I said, “you went to Donny.”

  “Right. Over and over again, I’d plead my case. And over and over again, he’d turn a deaf ear.”

  I frowned. “How’d you react to that?”

  “Well . . . I didn’t get mad. What good would that do? I understand that to a guy like Donny, business is business. I thought maybe I could wear him down. See, I was trying to appeal to his, you know, sense of fairness. Americana is the Wonder Guy company, right? Truth and justice and the American flag?”

  “And how’d that work out?”

  He shrugged, holding his hands palms up. “Look around you. And now I’m left with Louie Cohn, who is about as compassionate as Himmler on a bad day. Let’s face it, I made a lousy business deal, and I’m stuck with it.”

  I nodded. “Were you invited to Donny’s birthday party?”

  His face froze in a ghastly smile. “Me? No. Are you kidding? Maybe before I’d started making his life miserable with my requests.”

  Not demands. Requests.

  “Did you know about Donny’s diabetes?”

  “Did Donny have diabetes?”

  I tried another tack. “The party, it was held in his mistress’s suite at the Waldorf. With his wife there.”

  “Ouch. Donny had a mistress, huh?”

  “You really didn’t know that?”

  “No. Not that I’m surprised. Look, artists work up at Americana, sometimes—in the bullpen? Writers are just stuck in apartments and houses and what-have-you, sending in their scripts, getting their checks in the mail. I went up to Americana to see Donny, to try to get a fair shake out of him for Batwing, maybe half a dozen times over the years. Otherwise I never set foot.”

  I stood. “I better let you get back to it. Great American Novel and all that.”

  He stood, grinned sheepishly toward the sheet of typing paper curled in the Underwood. “I’m afraid, more like Tuxedo kidnapping Batwing’s faithful valet, George, and sticking him on top of a giant wedding cake next to Feline. How it resolves, I have no idea.”

  “Ah. Well, finish your one drink of the day, and it may come to you.”

  He offered a hand to shake, and it was firm for a guy who refused to stick up for himself.

  When I was down on the street, I was thinking what a good murder suspect Hander would have made, if only Rod Krane had been the victim.

  Dusk had fallen—actually more than fallen, more like collapsed into night. Neons were painting the old gal that was Dream Street with their smeary rouge, and I guess I was distracted by the thought that I might have winded up in one of these doorways, myself, if I hadn’t got off the sauce in the service, when the ham-size hand landed on my shoulder.

  I was just starting to turn to see who it was when another big hand gripped my arm, and before I could say, “Pardon me,” two guys had swept me off my feet and it wasn’t love, ushering me into the nearby alley. The meager light from the street did nothing but wink off a few garbage cans, and I think I heard the scurry of rat feet when the two bigger rats slammed me against the brick wall and one of them stuck his face so close to mine, I could smell his Old Spice, though I doubted he was a sailor.

  “Stay out of it,” he growled. And it was a growl, an affectation really, and I wouldn’t have been impressed if the other hadn’t slammed a fist into my breadbasket.

  That doubled me over, but I didn’t throw up, and the hand on my left arm and another on my chest raised me back up against the brick, hard enough to rattle my teeth. The dimness of the alley kept them shapes, mostly, like fedora-sporting silhouettes in Dick Tracy, and everything about it was surreal, except the pain in my gut, which was very realistic indeed.

  The other face got in mine and spat, “And stay away from her!”

  Really spat, spittle all over my face, and somehow I anticipated the knee meant for my groin by lifting my own, my leg taking the brunt.

  Then the other silhouette slammed a fist into my belly, but I was tensed this time, and I managed to slip my right hand in my suit jacket pocket and clutched the roll of quarters.

  The guy at right let loose of my arm, maybe to work me over two-handed, and that was all the opening I needed. I punched him in the puss with the fist wrapped around the roll of coins, and damn near broke my hand, and certainly broke his nose.

  He stumbled back into a shaft of light from the street and I could see twin streams of blood coming down from his nostrils; then I swung the same fist into the other one’s gut to let him see how he liked it, which he didn’t—he doubled over, lost his lunch, or maybe supper, and I took the opportunity to kick him in the ass. He threw an unintentional block into his buddy, who had staggered back to hold on to his bleeding face, and now went all the way down, with a whump.

  I moved in on them, and slammed my fist into the puking one’s side, and sent him down hard on the alley floor, and charged the guy with the bleeding face, who was on his feet again and backing up, mumbling for mercy but instead got clipped on the chin so hard that he tripped on his own feet and slammed into the opposite alley wall and slid down it to a sitting position, even as the roll of quarters burst and rained money on the pavement, little ting ting ting ting ting’s, like a slot machine had paid off.

  “Keep the change,” I said, and got the hell out of there before they recovered.

  I ran to Broadway and caught a cab and when the hackie asked, “Where to, bud? . . . Are you okay?” I said, “The Waldorf . . . never better.”

  The latter was a lie or at least an exaggeration, and the former was something my subconscious put in my mouth. I’d been busy just fighting back and surviving and triumphing and fleeing to think anything through, at least on the first floor of my brain.

  But somewhere, the basement maybe, the gray matter had recognized those two, in the flashes of light from the street during the fight that had made them more than just silhouettes—they were goons with the Calabria outfit, Anthony something (they called him the Ant) and Carlo something (they called him Carlo).

  And I knew that Frank Calabria often spent Saturday nights at the Waldorf, this time of year, when his wife was at their summer place and he was pretending he had business in town. Not every Saturday night, but a lot of them. I even knew where, if that were the case on this Saturday night, he’d have taken his sweetie.

  In retrospect, you could argue I should have been paying more attention to the first floor than the basement. I didn’t even go back to my apartment at the Starr Building to get the major’s .45. And maybe I should have frisked those mugs and got their own guns off them, and questioned them, and taken their firearms and information away with me.

  But I hadn’t.

  My instinct had been to run, and rarely when a human being has the instinct to run does it prove to be Mother Nature giving bad advice. Even on that stretch of Forty-seventh, cops would have soon entered the fray; and I was in no mood for cops. I wasn’t sure what I was in the mood for, but it sure as hell wasn’t for cops.

  I wanted to beard that bastard Calabria in his den, for sending his goons to work me over, trying to scare me off the case. And if I was right about where he’d be right now, the prime minister of the New York underworld would be at his most vulnerable.

  In the back of the cab, I checked myself over. My suit looke
d fine, no stains from the alley, neither garbage nor blood. My gut had taken the most punishment, and I was sore, but not as sore as I was in general about what Calabria had pulled. The only thing really scuffed up was my knuckles, which were skinned and bloody, and I held a handkerchief over them. By the time I got dropped at the Park Avenue entrance of the Waldorf, the bleeding had let up.

  Big Jim and his putty-faced pal were seated in the lobby again, but I made sure they didn’t see me as I took a circuitous, periphery-hugging route to the special elevators to the Starlight Roof.

  I moved quickly through the biggest, most exclusive room in the city, so as not to be stopped with such embarrassing questions as Do you have a reservation, sir? or Where do you thinking you’re going? The exquisite chamber, with its vast grill-like ceiling and large, gleaming sky-blue stars, was a blur—the bandstand with Cugat in white dinner jacket and orchestra in gold-trimmed royal blue, the couples in evening dress on the endless dance floor doing the samba, columns and pilasters, stair railings displaying boxed flowers, huge antique gold mirrors making the big room huge, mosaic walls of forest creatures including a bird of paradise. . . .

  Calabria was up a level from the dance floor, tucked away between pillars, at a table for two with his brunette mistress, a former showgirl who at thirty was still an eyeful. They had apparently already eaten, as they were drinking the Starlight Roof’s fifty-cent coffee and sharing a plate of the buck-fifty cheesecake. Even the criminals were getting robbed at those prices.

  His first response was to smile in surprise on seeing me, which I admit threw me a little. That somehow not unattractive reptilian pan of his should have frowned or even flinched, however barely. Could Calabria be that cold-blooded? Could a guy he’d just fingered for a beating walk in, and still raise from him the perfect calculated, calibrated reaction?

  I took a spare chair from a nearby table and diners with big eyes and outraged expressions were staring and waiters in white livery were closing in on me like the cops on Bonnie and Clyde, when Calabria—he was in a black pin-striped suit with a dark blue tie against a pale blue shirt, very dapper—held up a benign hand, a traffic cop signaling stop, still smiling but thoughtful now.