“Take a look at these, Jack,” he said, and dropped the brown-paper-wrapped package on the desk.
He sat, the wooden leg squeaking a little. With both hands, he arranged his good leg to cross his artificial one.
Hands clasped behind his back, Bryce leaned in and asked, “Mr. Rapp, may I get you anything? We have coffee ready, soft drinks, a fairly complete bar?”
“No, no, thank you, thank you. Too kind, too kind.”
Bryce nodded and exited, without bothering to see if I might be dying of thirst or anything; he was on a major pout.
I was already seated, unwrapping Rapp’s package, and saw—in the twice-up size common with original comic art—samples of two weeks of a daily comic strip labeled Lean Jean. The setting, like Tall Paul, was backwoods, though none of the familiar Catfish Holler characters were present. The art was slightly more realistic than Rapp’s norm, which was explained by a credit box that included both Rapp’s name and that of Lou Roberts, the latter an old pro who been an artist on such established strips as Tarzan and Secret Agent X-9.
“Read!” Rapp insisted, eyes glittering. “Read.”
I read the strips. The “gal” was the opposite of Tall Paul, who hated women; she was a hillbilly lass whose mammy had kept her isolated from men until her eighteenth birthday, and now she was boy crazy, to her mammy’s dismay.
The ponytailed brunette, Lean Jean, was tall but not willowly—she had the same kind of voluptuous pinup shape as the “gals” in Tall Paul
The samples were funny and exciting, Rapp’s patented combination of cornpone humor, social satire and hair-raising adventure. Like Tall Paul in the early days of the famous strip, Lean Jean was heading into the big city; unlike Tall Paul, she was pursuing the man of her dreams, who unbeknownst to her was a multimillionaire, who’d gone hiking incognito in the Ozarks. As the second week of dailies ended, Lean Jean—who had never seen a highway—was crossing one, a cement truck bearing down upon her.
“That’s kind of a specialty of mine,” Rapp said, gesturing, “the innocent in the metropolis. Like Tall Paul, Jean will be a picaresque novel in pictures—Candide in black and white, ha ha ha, and color on Sunday. You are familiar with Voltaire, aren’t you, Jack?”
“He should have kept working with Ginger Rogers,” I said, not giving a damn what high-minded goals Rapp was shooting for in the strip—I knew it was a winner, beautiful women, funny gags, cliffhanger endings and the Hal Rapp imprimatur.
“Well?” Rapp asked, leaning forward, eyes eager. “Do you like it?”
“What’s not to like?” I met his gaze. “Can you deliver another strip? Doesn’t this make three?”
He sat back, shrugging elaborately. “Well, frankly, Jack, that’s my problem, isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Not if we sell this to two hundred papers, which incidentally we could do by a week from today, and you can’t make deadline.”
He pointed to the strips, curling on the desk. “You’re familiar with this boy Roberts’s work, right?”
This “boy” Roberts was maybe five years younger than Rapp.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s pitched in on any number of long-running strips who lost artists. And he’s ghosted lots of big strips. He’s very good. How much would you be involved yourself?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “All the writing. The layouts. I’ll ink the faces—pretty much what I do on Tall Paul except there I do most of the inking of figures, too.”
Pretty standard stuff for a stellar comics feature. More went into the process than most people knew: after scripting, comic strips were drawn in pencil and then inked; the Sunday pages were also done in black and white, with the color applied by the artist or an assistant to a photostat for the printer’s reference.
“Well, it’s a great property,” I said. “Obviously we’re interested.”
Half a smile dug a groove in the famous face; a comma of Tall Paul–esque black hair drooped down his forehead. “Two hundred papers, Jack? Is that all Starr could manage, you think?”
“That’s what I know we could manage.” I sat forward. “You see, any paper already running Tall Paul is unlikely to pick this up.”
“But the competition will!”
Most major cities had at least two papers; plus, some towns had morning and evening papers from the same publisher—Des Moines Register in the morning, for instance, Des Moines Tribune in the afternoon. One might run Tall Paul, the other Lean Jean.
“Yes,” I admitted, “but are you prepared to piss off some current clients? Take Chicago—you think the Sun Times, running Tall Paul, would love you for giving the Tribune Lean Jean?”
He shrugged grandly. “That’s Unique Features s problem, isn’t it, Jack? And, ha ha ha, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of thieves”
I did wish Maggie were here; I was out of my depth. “Is this new strip designed to get back at Unique? You’re . . . unhappy there?”
With both hands, he uncrossed the leg and he sat forward and the normally smiling face now wore a scowl that I’d last seen on a villain in Tall Paul.
“Jack,” he said, “I’ve been screwed by those bastards for almost twenty years, and I’ve had my goddamn fill. They could at least, ha ha ha, offer me a postcoital smoke now and then!”
I squinted at him, as if that would improve my understanding of this situation. “What’s your complaint with Unique?”
“For all these years I’ve had the, ha ha ha, same lousy terms I negotiated when I was a wet-behind-the-ears kid. It’s a fifty/fifty split, which I know, I know, is standard. But it’s a net split, Jack, not gross, although it is grossly unfair, as they’ve been killing from the start on the expenses they levy against Tall Paul and me.”
“What about licensing?”
That meant comic books, toys, radio, movies, whatever— including the musical Maggie was costarring in. (God! Don’t tell her I said “costarring.”)
“They get half of that, too” he said, and shook his head bitterly. “But they can’t screw me in the accounting as easily in that department, ha ha ha, and we’ve been very lucky on that end of things. We had a motion picture in the ‘40s, you’ll recall, terrible, terrible, but profitable, profitable, and a radio show and all sorts of comic books and games and puzzles. And I won’t lie to you: I made a fortune off the Shlomozel.”
The Shlomozel was a mystical little wish-granting banjo-shaped critter that had first appeared in Tall Paul about five years ago, and had taken the country by storm—generating dolls and clocks and soap and just about anything you could imagine. (The actual continuity in the strip had ended with typical Rapp dark satire, however, with the Shlomocide Squad shooting the generous little critters for fouling up capitalism.)
“Then why spit in Unique’s eye?” I asked. “They’ve made money, but so have you.”
He grinned and it was devilish, eyes sparkling. “They made one mistake, twenty years ago, when they signed me. Like any fool in my position, I sold the strip to them, lock, stock and barrel. But when they tried to sign me to a lifetime contract to write and draw it, like they offered Faust, ha ha ha, I dodged the bullet. Jack—my contract is up next year.”
The back of my neck began to tingle. “Meaning . . . ?”
“Let’s put it this way,” he said, with cosmic smugness, “Unique Features owning Tall Paul without having me under contract, ha ha ha, is like CBS having the rights to do the I Love Lucy show, without Lucille Ball or Desi Arnaz.”
“Unique could find a ghost. . . .”
He nodded emphatically. “They can find people who can draw the thing—they could hire my own assistants, if they, ha ha ha, waved enough money around. But who could write it?”
“Terry and the Pirates is doing okay without Milton Caniff,” I said, referring to a similar situation where an artist had walked, leaving his famous creation behind him.
“Yes,” Rapp granted. “An adventure strip that’s being adequately continued. But consider two things—Milton is d
oing better with his new strip, Steve Canyon, than his old syndicate’s doing with its pale-shadow Terry.”
“True. What’s the other thing?”
He beamed with sinister confidence, gesturing to himself with both hands. “Hal Rapp is Tall Paul. Could you imagine Krazy Kat continuing without George Herriman?”
“No.” In fact it had folded, a classic strip that was uniquely the creation of a singular artistic vision.
“How about Pogo without Walt Kelly? Dick Tracy without Chester Gould, Annie without Harold Gray? This kid Schulz— already you can tell this Peanuts is his alone. A handful of us are so ingrained with our creations, our personalities so interwoven, that those creations cannot breathe without us. Fm the brain of that strip, and its beating heart, and Unique knows it.”
He was right.
I asked, “So what are you going to do?”
Now Rapp’s smile took on a pixieish cast, the eyes sparkling. “If you’ll help me, I’ll hedge my bets”
“How?”
He flipped a hand. “We’ll start with Starr syndicating Lean Jean. I won’t wait a year like Milton did with Canyon—I’ll have my replacement strip, ha ha ha, already running in hundreds of papers.”
“All right. . .”
He flipped the other hand. “Then when my contract is up with Unique . . . I’ll refuse to sign.”
I thought about that. “What would happen then?”
“One of several things—Unique could offer a new contract, extremely favorable to me, giving me ownership of Tall Paul, granting them, perhaps, another, ha ha ha, ten years.”
That was unlikely. Syndicates just didn’t make deals like that. We were small enough that we might have considered it, but the big boys like Unique and King Features and the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate? Not a chance.
“Another possibility,” he said, his tone falsely light, “is that they continue without me, and fail dismally, ha ha ha . . . while you sell Lean Jean, the genuine Rapp article, to every paper dropping the cheap imitation.”
I nodded, liking the sound of that.
But he wasn’t finished. “Then, when Tall Paul is in enough trouble,” he said, “I’ll do what I always do, ha ha ha—get him out of it. I, or you, or we, will go to Unique and buy the property back . . . and Starr will syndicate it.”
That I loved the sound of. “What about Lean Jean?”
“What about her? You’ll have two top strips, and I’ll have an income, ha ha ha, that would make Croesus green with envy.”
I was thinking of somebody who would be green with envy, all right, but his name wasn’t Croesus.
“Hal,” I said, gently, “you have to’ve noticed there’s an elephant in the room.”
He shrugged like an Arabian carpet seller making a concession at a bazaar. “Sure. A short, fat, obnoxious one named Sam Fizer.”
I sighed. “The Starr Syndicate goes back almost to its beginnings with Sam and Mug O’Malley. The major bought that strip, after Fizer himself went out and sold it to thirty papers, and it practically made the syndicate. We’re not without a certain sense of loyalty.”
“Understood.” He arched a cartoonish black eyebrow. “But hasn’t Sam’s strip slipped?”
“Somewhat,” I allowed. “This anti-Communist tear he’s off on doesn’t sit with the more liberal editors, and he’s been dropped here and there.”
Rapp grunted. “Over a hundred heres and theres, I hear.”
“But that still leaves a list of five hundred dailies and three hundred Sundays. It’s a big strip. Still our biggest. We can’t afford to antagonize him.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “You’d let Sam Fizer reject my strip?”
“No. I think a relationship with you would be healthy for Starr Syndicate, Hal—I believe Lean Jean could do very well, and the prospect of winding up with Tall Paul, down the road . . .”
“Currently in eight hundred dailies and five hundred Sundays.”
“I know. I know. But I need to talk to Maggie, and I’m sure she . . . we . . . will want to talk to Sam. I don’t want him hearing about this from anybody but us—not you, Hal, not Winchell or Ed Sullivan or even Eiful. That would be a deal breaker. Understood?”
He nodded with enthusiasm. “Understood. Business is business.” Then he shrugged. “But you and Maggie should know something—Sam Fizer is not a stable man.”
“Hal. . .”
“This isn’t the twenty-five-dollar-a-week assistant that monster treated like a slave talking—it’s a cartoonist who has some inside information that you don’t.”
I studied him. “You’re saying you have inside info about Fizer’s mental health?”
Describing that smile as smug was like saying the Mona Lisa was a pretty fair painting. “Let’s just say he’s not the horse you want to back in this race. I can’t say more. I have to be discreet”
I shifted in Maggie’s chair. “Look . . . I understand your bitterness. Everybody in the business knows Fizer’s been going around bad-mouthing you to editors—”
His eyes and nostrils flared. “More than editors,” He’s been showing selected panels from my strip to legislators—this New York state legislative inquiry into comics and juvenile delinquence, you know about that, Jack? Telling them Tall Paul is smut, and . . . well, I’m just giving you a word to the, ha ha ha, wise— he’s dug himself a hell of a hole”
“Comics are coming under fire,” I said, gesturing with open palms. “Obviously. But it’s mostly comic books, not strips, getting the slam. Still, nobody in this business appreciates Sam going around denigrating another cartoonist and his strip, no matter what bad blood may be between them.”
I figured Rapp would take the bait, but he was frowning and shaking his head. “I can’t say any more about the subject. I’d love to, ha ha ha, believe me! But I just can’t.”
I sat up. “Listen, maybe Maggie can make peace between you two. I know, after all these years, it might seem—”
“Too late for that.”
I tried again: “What if Maggie and I meet with him, discourage him from these attacks on you and your good name and—”
He raised a traffic cop’s palm. “I appreciate the thought, Jack. But you really don’t need to bother. Sam Fizer isn’t going to be a problem much longer.”
No smug, self-satisfied “ha ha has” had interrupted those words, surprisingly.
I asked, “No problem for you?”
“No problem for anybody “ He smiled in a friendly if businesslike manner. “So, Jack—are you interested in the new strip?”
“Sure. Of course. I’ll show it to Maggie right away.”
He tilted his head, raised a hand. “I can walk it over to King Features—”
“We are interested. You’ll have a decision this week.”
“Good.” He grinned, eyes twinkling. “Could make a nice publicity splash, ha ha ha, around the opening of the musical.”
“Sure could.”
We chatted awhile about the show, and he said many complimentary things about Maggie, most of them vaguely suggestive, and finally he got himself to his feet, or foot anyway, and we shook hands. His grasp was firm. I may never have met anybody more confident.
After Rapp had gone, Bryce came in and stood before my desk like a bearded Greek chorus of one, to let me know what was really going on.
“He’s a loathsome creature,” Bryce said.
“I rather like him,” I said. “But I don’t disagree, really. A guy like that, so talented but with such a handicap . . .”
“You mean,” Bryce said dryly, “his inflated ego?”
“I mean he lost his leg when was a kid. All that confidence, that nervous laughter . . . he tries a little too hard to make up for it.”
“Now there’s an idea.”
“What?”
He placed a finger alongside a bearded cheek. “A new column for the Starr Syndicate to distribute, all across this great land— Dime-Store Psychology, by Dr. Jack Starr. You c
an buy a doctorate over on Broadway, you know—next door to the flea circus.”
I suggested that Bryce do something physically impossible, though he seemed to be considering it as he went out.
Then I just sat there at Maggie’s desk, with her picture looking over my shoulder, as I wondered how Hal Rapp could be so sure his longtime enemy, Sam Fizer—one of America’s most popular comic strip artists—would soon no longer be a problem.
To Rapp.
Or anybody.
CHAPTER THREE
THAT’S HITTING BELOW THE BELT!
Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant on the west side of Broadway between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth streets was touted as the “Meeting Place of the World.” And this was where comic strip boxer Mug O’Malley’s papa, Sam Fizer, had wanted us to meet for lunch, when I called asking, a day after Hal Rapp had made his Lean Jean pitch.
Even though the Strip Joint was just downstairs from my office, and I could just sign for whatever chow and drinks we blew through, I said yes to Fizer’s request. I knew he took real pleasure eating at Dempsey’s, where he could play the boxing world star.
I got there first, stepping in from the crisp October weather, and was greeted by Dempsey himself, who rose from his window booth at the left as you came in, to extend a hand the size of a frying pan.
“Hiya, pally!” he said in that familiar, squeaky tenor so at odds with his intimidating physique.
“Good to see you, Jack.”
He and the major had been friends; I’d been Dempsey’s “pally” since I was shorter than a fire hydrant. In his late fifties now, the champ still had his blue-black hair, and the dark blue eyes had no punch-drunk film over them, set as they were in the high cheekbones and under thick, arching eyebrows.
No maitre d’ at Dempsey’s—a good enough restaurant, but not that kind of place. If anybody sat you, it was the champ himself, looking quietly dapper today in a blue suit and blue-and-red-striped tie; but he didn’t necessarily have to know you, as he had me and my father, to do so—you might just be a teenager whose grandpa saw Dempsey fight Gibbons in Shelby, Montana, or an old boy from Dallas who’d heard the first Tunney fight on the radio.
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