Seduction of the Innocent (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

My guess was, after six months of strictly maintaining fighting weight due to the Broadway stint, she would fall off the wagon and before long get “fat and sloppy” (you know— maybe 130).

  Right now, though, she was maybe 120 at most, a stunning woman just past forty who might have been thirty. She’d have looked even younger if she didn’t insist on her “full battle array,” which is to say endless fake eyelashes, heavy makeup over her natural girlish freckles, and a red mouth that Marilyn Monroe might say was overdoing it.

  Past all that paint, she was a green-eyed natural beauty with bee-stung lips perfect for the Clara Bow/Betty Boop era of her rise as a teenage ecdysiast from Council Bluffs, Iowa.

  At the moment, while I half-stood, half-sat at a stool at the bar, working on a rum and Coke (without the rum), trying not to wrinkle my gray Botany 500, Maggie was answering a question posed by Harry Barray. Her red hair (its color unknown in nature, unless you considered Lucille Ball nature) was brushing her shoulders, and her midnight-blue gown was clingy with her full bosom nicely on display. Eat your heart out, Faye Emerson.

  They were seated in that corner booth, and you could barely see them past the bulky TV camera. Heavy micro-phones—three of them—were positioned around the linen-covered table, Maggie’s trademark red rose in a vase getting lost in the broadcast trappings. That extra mike indicated a third guest might be joining in.

  But right now it was just Harry and Maggie.

  Six months before, when the program began, the TV station had at its own expense wired the restaurant so that all the patrons—and tonight the Strip Joint was at least at its 150 capacity—could hear Barray and his guests during the live broadcast. These were not tourists, not on a Monday night, rather sophisticated, cliff-dwelling Manhattanites. And I fit right in.

  “Yes,” Maggie said, in a rich, throaty contralto Bacall might well envy, “I’m aware that comic books are a big controversy right now. But I’d remind you, Harry, that I’m in the comic strip business.”

  Barray, a big blond man with once-pleasant features that had assumed the puffy, acromegalic look of the heavy drinker, let out a cloud of cigarette smoke that Maggie politely backed away from. His nose, its redness concealed by pancake, seemed it might explode at any moment.

  “But Maggie,” the disc jockey said, “your syndicate—the Starr Syndicate—aren’t you more closely associated with comic books than any other outfit in your field?”

  He picked up a comic book with a particularly disgusting horror-themed cover from the prop pile resting nearby, and shook it at her like a warrant for her arrest.

  Her smile seemed warm enough but I could feel the ice in those eyes as if it were clinking in my Coke.

  “We syndicate Wonder Guy. The enthusiasm for supermen has faded somewhat, Harry, and not long ago we dropped a couple of the comic-book properties from our roster.”

  He tossed the horror comic back on the pile as if disposing of a dead rat. “Batwing? Amazonia?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Those are two fairly controversial titles.”

  “Are they? We never had any complaints from readers.”

  His mouth was wide and thick-lipped and his smile was wet. “Well, Dr. Werner Frederick has stated...uh, you’re familiar with the good doctor?”

  She nodded.

  “Dr. Frederick, in an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Ravage the Lambs, labels the Batwing strip as perverse, saying there’s an unhealthy relationship between Batwing and Sparrow.”

  She smiled. I knew she was wishing she could ask him to be more specific, and embarrass his ass; but a show biz pro like Maggie knew better than that. You behaved yourself on TV. Otherwise you were blacklisted like all those Commies hiding under Senator McCarthy’s bed.

  She said, “Most parents would find that notion absurd, Harry. Like Wonder Guy, Batwing represents justice and fair play and even patriotism.”

  He flashed a sly smile. “Aren’t you part owner of Americana Comics, Maggie?”

  “My stepson Jack and I have some shares in the company. We wield no editorial influence.”

  “But you get first crack at syndicating comic strip versions of Americana features?”

  “Yes. With Amazonia, like Batwing, we did not have a large enough list of subscribing newspapers to keep it going. I wish we could have, because it’s one comic strip built around a strong, adventurous heroine, and I think young girls enjoy that, for a change.”

  “Well, Dr. Frederick doesn’t agree.” Barray’s sly smile dissolved into a concerned fold in his pious mask. “He finds ...and I apologize to my audience for my frankness, but the doctor is a scientist...sado-masochistic elements in Amazonia.”

  There were whips and chains in that strip, all right. Man, you did not want to get on the wrong side of that Amazonia doll.

  “Harry, have you heard about the psychiatrist who was showing ink blot pictures to a patient, but when the psychiatrist asked the patient to tell him what he saw in those ink blots, the patient refused. ‘Is there something wrong?’ the psychiatrist asked. ‘Don’t look at me, doc!’ the patient said. ‘You’re the one showing the dirty pictures!’”

  This got a nice laugh from the Strip Joint audience, and even the bloated Barray flashed a grin. Too bad Barray hadn’t done his homework—Amazonia had been created by a shrink. That might’ve provided him with a nice comeback.

  But all he could muster was, “Maybe some of the dangers the critics see in these comics are in the eye of the beholder. But you can’t deny that this new trend of crime and horror is a disturbing one.”

  “Is it?”

  “Is it disturbing, you mean?”

  “No. Is it new? I seem to recall, as a young girl, going to see Boris Karloff in Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi in Dracula ...but I turned out all right, I think.”

  This might not have been the best argument, since she’d also been stripping at Minsky’s when she was a “young girl.”

  “And they teach Edgar Allan Poe in schools,” she reminded the disc jockey. “James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson are both still livening up our movie screens, and no one’s complaining. And isn’t Dragnet on NBC?”

  Letting out more cigarette smoke as if emitting steam, Barray said, “Dr. Frederick says these so-called ‘crime doesn’t pay’ books use the capture or downfall of criminals as a means of glorifying violence and depravity.”

  Now Maggie frowned, a rarity because she fought wrinkles as hard as she did pounds.

  “I’d rather not have to defend those books,” she said, “or condemn them, either. It’s outside the realm of the Starr Syndicate.”

  “Is it? Don’t you syndicate Crime Fighter to a growing list of papers?”

  This was starting to feel less like a friendly chat at the Strip Club—a soiree, remember—and more like an ambush. But Maggie didn’t ambush easily.

  “We do distribute Crime Fighter,” she said. “The hero is a costumed character not unlike Batwing...but, Dr. Frederick will be pleased to learn, without a young male companion.”

  “Crime Fighter’s sidekick is a monkey.”

  “That’s right.” She gave him a smile that was both wicked and flirtatious. “And if you find that objectionable, Harry, then maybe you’re the one showing the dirty pictures.”

  What could Barray do but laugh good-naturedly at that?

  But he seemed relieved to be able to tell the audience at home that he’d be “right back with Maggie Starr and another special guest,” after the commercial.

  I went over, moving past a light on a tripod and around the massive camera, managing not to bump into the crew or stumble over the heavy cables. I leaned in and spoke to Maggie while a young male production assistant used a soft cloth to dab away the disc jockey’s sweat, a makeup girl waiting anxiously to touch up his makeup.

  Whispering, I said, “You’re gonna take this bout on points.”

  Barely audible, her smile frozen, she whispered back, “I wouldn’t mind scoring a knockout. I’ve been
set up.”

  “You’re doing fine. You don’t seem defensive at all.”

  “How do I look? Nobody’s touching up my makeup.”

  “Naw, you’re on your own. But you look swell. I liked that shrink joke. Nice job, cleaning it up.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Keep it light now.”

  She gave my hand a rare squeeze and I made my way back to the bar, where Benny the bartender had held my ringside stool for me.

  Meanwhile, the “special guest” Barray had referred to was being escorted through the tangle of cables into the waiting seat in the booth next to Maggie. He was a little guy with full head of dark hair parted in the middle, making two swooping wings out of the halves. He had an untrimmed mustache and tweedy sportcoat over a sweater and shirt— he’d pay for that under those lights—and carried the vaguely rumpled, absentminded demeanor of a Greenwich Village intellectual.

  Which was exactly what he was. That and a minor celebrity locally, a professional expert who turned up on radio and TV, his specialty “the popular arts.” He would opine on the profundity of Krazy Kat, declare John Ford a “modern folklorist,” and Benny Goodman a musical genius.

  Didn’t disagree with those views, but Lehman’s pomposity made irritating stuff out of them.

  “Your book The Velvet Fist came out last year,” Barray (back on the air) was saying after introducing his new guest, “and you raised a lot of eyebrows.”

  “Yes,” Lehman said, in a pinched, nasal voice, “and I even fought successfully against the United States Postal Service in court, to protect my rights as a citizen and scholar.”

  “What was the fuss over, Garson?”

  “My central thesis was the ‘fuss’—that graphic violence in the popular arts runs rampant while governmental censorship focuses exclusively on the depiction of natural, biological activities.”

  Lehman knew not to use the word “sex” on the air.

  Maggie, who was expected to just sit there and look swell and not interrupt, asked, “Are you recommending more censorship or less censorship?”

  She seemed genuinely confused.

  This threw the little man, and Barray had to pick up the slack, saying, “Well, now, Maggie, that may be a moot point ...two separate bills—one designed to ban crime and horror comic books, the other to regulate their contents prior to publication—have already been passed by the New York legislature.”

  “That’s right,” Maggie said in her low purr, “and Governor Dewey vetoed both. He knew they were unconstitutional.”

  Finally Lehman chimed in: “Even so, a United States Senate hearing on comic books, as they relate to juvenile delinquency, is scheduled to begin later this week, right here in New York City, if you didn’t know.”

  Maggie was shaking her head, casting the pair an I-pity-you-in-your-stupidity smile that I knew all too well.

  “Really, gentleman,” she said, “don’t you realize that opening this door will invite censorship into all forms of entertainment?”

  “Personally,” Barray said, in his gravest radio-announcer voice, “I believe no man should be told by another what he is allowed to see.”

  Lehman seemed to take the host’s pompous pronouncement as a betrayal, bristling. “Tell that to those who consistently ban material relating to human...”

  He almost said “sexuality.”

  “...biology.”

  “With all due respect, Garson,” the disc jockey said, “Dr. Kinsey’s favorite subject is not the issue here.” He plucked the horror comic off the pile again and waved it like a flag. “It’s the violent garbage being foisted upon the youth of our nation.”

  Now Lehman was back on board. “Absolutely! These periodicals are the worst kind of swill—a garish hodgepodge of clashing colors, atrocious artwork, moronic writing, all printed on the cheapest pulp paper pennies can buy—a very celebration of violence.”

  I bet he wanted to say “orgy.”

  Calm as still waters, Maggie said to Lehman, “And you would censor that?”

  “Well, something must be done.”

  “Yet you fought the post office over censoring your book.”

  He stuck his nose in the air and it twitched like a rabbit’s. “My book was not cheap violent trash, glorifying crime and killing.”

  Wasn’t killing a crime?

  “Mr. Lehman,” Maggie was saying, with a gracious veneer, “I seem to recall you writing a letter on my behalf some years ago.”

  The shaggy-haired intellectual swallowed, and his neck reddened. He was lucky this new color TV hadn’t hit the local broadcasts.

  “I, uh, am afraid I don’t recall,” he said.

  She gestured to her lovely decolletage. “When I was arrested, a, uh...few years ago...when Mayor LaGuardia shut down the burlesque houses and made my act illegal...you wrote a spirited defense of my art that appeared in several local papers...and, in greater detail, in an arts magazine you edited called Erotique.”

  The little guy’s face was bright red now—sort of like Yosemite Sam after Daffy Duck really got his goat.

  Before his guest could have a stroke, however, Barray got back on track: “We have laws that forbid the sale of tobacco to minors. Why then can’t newsstand or candy store proprietors be held to a similar standard with these foul comic books? They should be stamped ‘adult.’”

  Maggie said, “Is that where you’d keep Mother Goose— under the counter? In the nursery rhyme, the farmer’s wife cuts off the rat’s tail with a butcher knife. That’s fairly grisly. So is an old woman putting children in an oven.”

  “She’s right!” a voice from the audience cried out.

  Startled, Barray looked past the lights into the relative darkness of the restaurant as a figure in a black-leather jacket, t-shirt and jeans moved through like a shark in choppy waters.

  I could see Barray thinking quickly—do I have this guy tossed out? Or make him part of the circus?

  “We seem to have an opposing opinion,” Barray said. “Speak up, sir, so our audience at home can hear you!”

  Just beyond the cameras, the young guy—he was maybe twenty—stopped, breathing heavily. He clearly hadn’t expected an invitation to speak. He had a hair-creamed black pompadour with sideburns, and was slender, almost skinny, the leather jacket giving him what little heft he had. But he was almost six foot and damn near as handsome as Brando in The Wild One, whose kid brother he might have been.

  “I’m in the business! I’m an artist! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Why don’t you come on over and join us,” the disc jockey said, his voice genial but with an edge. “I’m sure we’d like to be corrected if we’re wrong.”

  Barray looked at Lehman, and said, “If you’d step out of the booth for a moment, Garson, we’ll make room for this representative of the comic book trade.”

  Soon the artist who looked like a young hoodlum had taken Lehman’s place, the little intellectual standing just off-camera, looking annoyed and almost hurt to have been trumped by an interloper.

  “First, your name, sir?” Barray asked his sudden guest. “And what comic book company do you work for?”

  “Will Allison,” he said, suddenly shy on camera. If he’d spoken any softer, the microphones would’ve been out of luck. “I draw science-fiction stories for EF.”

  “Entertaining Funnies!” the host erupted, eyes glittering with the gold he’d struck.

  “That’s right,” Allison said, sullen, defensive.

  “Such a charming, wholesome name for a comic book line that includes...” And he reached for a fresh example from the stack nearby. “...Tales from the Vault, with a young woman being strangled by a walking, rotting corpse, and Suspense Crime Stories, which depicts a hanged man with his neck broken and...ladies and gentleman...”

  He addressed the camera.

  “...I can’t show these to you in close-up. They are simply too disgusting.”

  Nervous, the young artist said, “I didn�
�t draw those!”

  “Oh, but the company you work for did publish them.”

  “Yes. But those are not intended for little kids.”

  “Big kids, then?”

  “We have tons of older readers like that, working stiffs, and college kids, too.”

  “Really?” Barray shook the comic book as if trying to dispel dirt. “How heartening to know the leaders of tomorrow enjoy ...literature. What do you draw, young man?”

  “I adapted a series of Ray Bradbury stories for Weird Fantastic Science. He’s a respected writer of science fiction!”

  Maggie said, “Mr. Bradbury is indeed a very respected author. And I’m familiar with this young man’s work, as well. He’s a gifted illustrator.”

  “If so,” Barray said, “then Mr. Allison is prostituting his talents working for Entertaining Funnies—perhaps the most reviled of all these comic book vultures. I risk no slander or libel in making that statement—I base it on the words of a scientist...Dr. Werner Frederick, in his new book, Ravage the Lambs.”

  Then the show was over, and Barray was all smiles where Maggie was concerned, ignoring the Allison kid, who shuffled away from the booth, stepping over cables and around the cameras, looking lost, and like he might cry.

  He was walking right past me and I said, “Hey, Will.”

  The handsome kid paused and frowned at me. “Do I know you?”

  I held out my hand. “Jack Starr. With the Starr Syndicate. That’s my good-looking boss you were sitting next to.”

  Right now, in front of the booth, Maggie was having a discussion with Barray, and she was doing all the talking. My stepmother looked placid but I could tell she was taking that clown to the woodshed.

  “I’ve heard of you,” Allison said, shaking my hand, smiling shyly. Then he jerked a thumb toward the booth where technicians were tearing down. “It was nice of Mrs. Starr, defending me.”

  “Call her ‘Miss Starr,’ if you ever want any more favors out of her.” I patted his shoulder. “You did all right up there, kid.” That was a lie.

  “Thanks. Somebody had to stick up for what we do.”

  “Comics are just the latest whipping boy. Used to be dime novels. Then it was pulp magazines. It’ll be something else soon enough.”