Seduction of the Innocent (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  The S.O.B. was writing his own cover blurbs!

  Despite that thick German accent, his tone was clear and piercing, his voice ringing in the room, and he’d have made a great B-movie scientist, particularly a mad one.

  When he really wanted to make a point, he slowed things way down, phrasing for effect.

  “It is my opinion,” he said, “without any reasonable doubt ...and without any reservation...that comic books...are an important...contributing...factor...in many cases...of juvenile delinquency.”

  “I’ve never seen this guy in person before,” Price whispered to me. His right leg was shaking. “Look at him! He’s so goddamn smug...and sarcastic.”

  “Don’t you be,” I advised.

  The committee let Frederick rail on and on. When asked what kind of child was most likely to be affected by crime comic books, he claimed, “Primarily the normal child. The most morbid children are less affected by comic books because they are wrapped up in their own fantasies.”

  He was good, he was eloquent, but he was also German, and while the U.S. government loved German scientists, the American public didn’t. That much Price had going for him.

  Ironically, prejudice of another sort was what Frederick got into next. He spoke of an EF story that used the word “Spick” and promoted (Frederick claimed) bigotry.

  “I think Hitler is a beginner compared to the comic-book industry,” Frederick said. “They get the children much younger, teach them race hatred at the age of four, before they could read.”

  From the spectator seats behind us, a voice cried out, “You’re a liar! You are a goddamn menace!”

  Will Allison again.

  I hadn’t seen him come in, yet there he was, not in J.D. drag this time, rather a suit and tie, like a kid heading to prom. But his eyes, his hair, his expression, were those of a wild man.

  Hendrickson rapped his gavel. “Guards! Escort that man out!”

  Allison continued to shout his protests as a pair of uniformed guards yanked him bodily from the audience and hauled him struggling out of the chamber.

  Price didn’t have to whisper, because a general murmur of excitement filled the courtroom as he informed me, “Will illustrated the story that creep said was bigoted. It’s an anti-bigotry story, Jack. That bastard Frederick has to know that!”

  “And misrepresented it, to take a cheap shot.”

  “Damn right.” Price’s eyes were tight behind the glasses, and he was shaking that big oblong head. “Well, that’s it— I’m gonna get that bastard.”

  And Price soon got his chance: he was the next up to testify. Once again, Dr. Frederick had warmed up a chair for him. In his loose-fitting, rather bulky pale gray suit, Price looked even heavier than he was, and he was already sweating. He brought a briefcase to the witness table, removed his prepared speech and other notes, and took his seat.

  “Gentleman,” Price said, “I would like to make a short statement.”

  This was allowed, and the comic book publisher gave his name and outlined his credentials, including his certification to teach in New York City public high schools. He reminded them that he was there as a voluntary witness.

  What followed was an admirably well-written, if haltingly delivered history of his father’s beginnings in “the comic magazine” field, a business which Leo Price had “virtually created,” in so doing fostering an industry that employed thousands and gave entertainment to millions. He moved on to his own involvement, after his father’s passing, which included continuing to publish his father’s beloved Bible stories comics.

  (This was something of a white lie: Leo had printed way too many copies of his Bible comics, and all son Bob did was fill from the warehouse the occasional Sunday school orders that came in for them.)

  Then Price opened the door: “I also publish horror comics. I was the first publisher in these United States to publish horror comics. I am responsible. I started them. Some may not like them, but that’s a matter of personal taste.”

  The boldness of that was appealing. In fact, the whole statement was fine, just swell, only he was just reading it, never looking up, occasionally stumbling over his own words, pausing to dab the sweat from his brow with a hanky, and that leg of his was shaking again. More violently now.

  “My father,” he said, “was proud of the comics he published. I am proud of the comics I publish. We use the best writers, the finest artists, and spare nothing to make each magazine, each story, each page a work of art.”

  Maybe it was a good thing Price was looking down at those typewritten pages: he was spared the skeptical expressions the senators at the bench exchanged, some glancing back at the looming grotesque comic-book cover blow-ups.

  “Reading for entertainment has never harmed anyone,” Price was saying. “Our American children are for the most part normal and bright. But those adults who would prohibit comic magazines see our kids as dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action. Are we afraid of our own children? Are they so evil, so simple-minded, that all it takes is a story of murder to convince them to murder? A story of robbery to inspire them to robbery?”

  Finally, he set down his papers and began to speak from his head and his heart—perhaps not a wise move, but even as well-crafted as his prepared statement was, I was pleased to see him stop reading and just talk to the panel.

  “I need to point out that when Dr. Frederick spoke of one of our magazines preaching racial intolerance, he was indulging in an outrageous half-truth. Yes, the word ‘Spick’ appears in it. But the doctor neglected to tell you what the plot of the story was—that it was one of a series of stories designed to show the evils of race prejudice and mob violence, in this case against Mexican Catholics. Previous stories have dealt with anti-Semitism, anti-Negro feelings, as well as the evils of dope addiction and the development of juvenile delinquents. And I am very proud of that.”

  A good off-the-cuff response, I thought, but it soon degenerated into a back-and-forth between Price and the committee’s junior counsel over the inconsistency of the publisher claiming comics were merely entertainment that made no impact upon young readers, when these social-comment tales were obviously designed to make just such an impact.

  This seemed to rattle Price, who—caught in a defensible inconsistency—just couldn’t handle himself under questioning. He might have, and probably could have, if he hadn’t been fading.

  But fading he was.

  That Dexie high of his was descending into its inevitable limp-rag aftermath. He just sat there getting pummeled, like a punch-drunk boxer, head down, sweat drops flying, just taking it. At least his leg wasn’t shaking anymore.

  Then star performer Kefauver got into the act. The senator was a lanky road company Lincoln with sharp eyes behind tortoise-shell glasses. He was not wearing his famous coonskin hat, if you’re wondering.

  “Mr. Price, let me get the limits as far as what you will put in one of your magazines.” He had a cornpone drawl that you mistook for easygoing at your own peril.

  “Certainly,” Price said.

  “Do you think a child can be hurt by something he reads or sees?”

  “I don’t believe so, no.”

  “Is the sole test of what you publish, then, based on whether or not it sells? Is there any limit to your, ah, entertainment?”

  Price’s chin was up, but his eyes looked tired. “My only limits are the bounds of good taste. What I consider good taste.”

  “Your own good taste, then, and the sales potential of your product?”

  “Yes.”

  Kefauver held up a copy of a Suspense Crime Stories comic book whose cover depicted a terrified woman in midair, having fallen from a window where the silhouetted hands of her assailant could still be seen in push mode. The woman was screaming, staring wide-eyed at us as she looked through us at the oncoming (off-camera) pavement. Terror-struck, screaming or not, she was very attractive, in a skimpy nightgown, that showed off her shapely legs
and, of course, her...headlights.

  “Do you think this is in good taste, Mr. Price?”

  “Yes, sir, I do, for the cover of a crime comic.”

  “What might constitute bad taste here?”

  “Well, we could have depicted her after she’d fallen.”

  “You mean her body on the pavement?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that would be worse?”

  “Yes. Showing her twisted corpse, blood everywhere, bones sticking out of her shattered limbs, that would be a cover in bad taste.”

  Kefauver’s drawl was so folksy, it was like Tennessee Ernie Ford giving you the third degree. “And you decided against that. In a display of eminent good taste, your artist depicted a scantily clad female screaming in terror as she falls from a great height, with her life about to end?”

  “Yes.”

  Bob Price saw nothing wrong. And the reporters and the cameras saw him seeing that.

  Me, I just sat there watching the spectacle of a guy falling from a great height without even screaming. Without even a shove.

  He was a shambling wreck when, an hour later, they had finally finished wringing out every ounce of humiliation from him (“So this decapitated head held by a man also holding a bloody axe, that would be in bad taste if you showed more blood?”), and sent him along on what they clearly considered to be his vile business. His loose-fitting suit was soaked with sweat now, the flesh on his face hanging like a balloon that had lost maybe a third of its air. He had done everything wrong, stopping short only of rolling ball bearings in his fingers like Captain Queeg.

  The reporters were on us like kids swarming Martin and Lewis, only this bunch didn’t want a signed picture. They were yelling questions.

  “Hey Bob! Do you really think horror comics are in ‘good taste’?”

  “Bob, over here! How much blood is okay for a comic cover?”

  “What will you do if Congress bans horror comics?”

  I was escorting him through the crowd, grateful that he wasn’t answering any of the questions, keeping his head down. At least he didn’t cover his face like a criminal, though clearly that’s how he was being treated by the press boys.

  But then that was how he’d been treated by those patriotic Congressmen as well, hadn’t he?

  Suddenly—and whether planned or accidental, I couldn’t tell you—we were facing Dr. Werner Frederick, pristine in his white jacket, like he’d arrived to haul Price and me off to the loony bin. He’d stepped out from behind a pillar like that doctor who shot Huey Long.

  “Mr. Price,” Frederick said with nasty pleasantness, “I just want to tell you in person that I find reprehensible what you’re doing to today’s youth.”

  The sight of the doctor and the sound of his German-inflected condemnation broke through the torpor of the Dexie crash, and Bob Price came alive. It was as if that other doctor, Frankenstein, had thrown a switch and sent electricity pulsing through the publisher’s dead flesh, reanimating it.

  “You lied, you son of a bitch,” Price spat at him.

  “I would expect that kind of language from a peddler of filth,” the psychiatrist said, sneering.

  “You bastard...”

  I was tugging Price along, but he was fighting me.

  Frederick, raising his voice, reporters circling like the vultures they were, said, “My book Ravage the Lambs is about to appear, gentlemen, and perhaps you aren’t aware that it’s been chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection.”

  Price snarled, “You used artwork from my comics without permission! I’m going to sue you. I’ll get an injunction!”

  “Gentlemen,” Frederick said to the reporters, “you are my witnesses! This is the sinister hand of a corrupter of children threatening to prevent the distribution of my book... because it exposes him as the father of juvenile delinquents across our great nation.”

  Price was doing his best to squirm out of my grasp. “I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll kill you, so help me God!”

  But before Price could strangle the smirking shrink in front of dozens of witnesses, I regained my purchase on his arm and dragged him through the crowd and outside. His energy was soon drained and when I got him into the convertible, he quickly fell asleep.

  Not a restful sleep on our drive back to Lafayette Street, no. Filled with nightmares.

  Monsters, no doubt. With German accents and white lab coats.

  Early evening and it seemed like everybody and his dog was on the street in Harlem, from “high-yaller” whore to good church-going lady, from bow-tie businessman to toothless derelict. Raucous music bled from bars and clubs, and the smell of fried food wafted. Laughter, high and hearty, cut across traffic sounds, but so did angry yells. This was that big multi-colored neon-washed canvas called Harlem—110th, 116th, 125th, and 135th Streets, Seventh Avenue, Lenox Avenue, the west side of Fifth Avenue from 110th up— bustling, pulsing, threatening, vulgar, poetic.

  Time was when a downtown “ofay” like me came up here to dig the jazz at Birdland or maybe dance at the Savoy. That was back when side-street after-hours joints flourished by ignoring New York’s candy-ass legal closing time of four A.M. If I were so inclined, I could tell you of wild nights that ended with me and a date stumbling out of a smoke-filled basement hideaway into unforgiving sunlight.

  No more.

  In this small section of the city, a population of 700,000, largely colored, made up what one Broadway columnist called “a concentration camp surrounded by the barbed-wire fence of ironclad prejudice.” Scant new housing had been built here in decades, and the deteriorating firetraps where so many lived in squalor and discomfort were largely owned by white millionaires to whom the notion of improving sanitation was almost as funny as the high rents they squeezed out of their piss-poor tenants.

  Those who could afford to had long since moved to the Sugar Hill area, or to one of the quiet, respectable tree-shaded streets away from Harlem’s business district, if by business you mean robbery, murder, rape, mugging, prostitution and dope-peddling.

  Not that there weren’t respectable merchants and other businesses in Harlem. But the cops shrugged off complaints, and cast a blind eye toward misdemeanors and felonies they personally witnessed. And the newspapers rarely bothered publishing anything about Harlem crime, spiking most items with that address.

  A fair share of all that ignored criminal activity was perpetrated by teen gangs, like the Sabers, the Barons, the Chancellors, among others. Such gangs often fought each other for the sheer hell of it—those “rumbles” you’ve heard about—but their life’s blood was robbery, whether purse-snatching or armed hold-ups.

  These gangs offered protection, a sense of belonging, walking around money, and in-house “debs,” girls of twelve and up, who kept the boys happy. The temptation for a Harlem youth to join, not to mention the peer pressure, was as overwhelming as Harlem itself.

  That’s what Dr. Frederick was up against with his free clinic for troubled kids, operating out of St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church of Harlem.

  “As much as I might disagree with his attack on comic books,” Sylvia Winters told me, from the rider’s seat of my convertible, “I admire his overall effort to bring mental health care to the underprivileged.”

  I had picked Sylvia up at her apartment and we had plenty of time to talk on the way, between traffic and the scores of blocks between the Village and St. Phillip’s.

  The overcast day never paid off with rain, but the evening remained cool, so I kept the top up. Anyway, you have to shout in a top-down convertible, to hold a decent conversation, and I wanted to explore Sylvia’s feelings and opinions about Dr. Frederick before we signed her up to ghost his column.

  “Well,” I said, “the doc specifically wanted to meet you up at his free clinic. I’m not sure why.”

  “I think I know,” she said.

  “Why so?”

  She was in another of her bulky sweater and slacks combos, this one a dark blue that hit
her eye color dead bang. That platinum hair of hers, in that shortish cut, showed no roots at all. I wondered if she was naturally platinum blonde. I wondered if I’d find out....

  “Couple of things,” she said. “Dr. Frederick probably wants to make sure I’m comfortable coming to see him in Harlem—it’s not the friendliest area to a young white woman, you know.”

  “Actually,” I said, “it can be way too friendly.”

  She nodded with a humorless half-smile. “If the doctor and I are working together, I may have to come up there from time to time. He also may hope to enlist me as a parttime volunteer—none of his staff is paid, I understand, and I have a degree, after all.”

  “Is that everything?”

  She shook her head. “He may be showing off a little. Letting me know Dr. Werner Frederick is more than just a pop psychiatrist who likes to get in the papers and magazines and on TV and radio.”

  I grunted a laugh. “That he’s a real, dedicated professional.”

  Her expression was thoughtful. “And I think he is. But when he was working as a forensic psychiatrist for the New York courts, he came in contact with a bunch of juvenile offenders, who liked to read comic books.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “He took a look at some of the more violent comic books, and all that blood on pulp paper was like blood in the water to him.”

  “How so?”

  “He smelled a subject, a controversy, all his own. And that’s another reason for him to establish his credibility with me.”

  “Yeah?”

  And another nod. “He knows a good number of mental-health care professionals think he’s as full of crap as a Christmas goose, where funny books are concerned. That his thinking is simplistic, and that his research is...I don’t know how else to say this, Jack...shoddy.”

  “How is it shitty?”

  “I said ‘shoddy.’”

  That had made her smile, but now she hesitated, obviously reluctant to criticize a fellow “mental-health care professional.”