Seduction of the Innocent (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  Finally she admitted, “The man has no real data. Just an opinion that comic books in general—which something like ninety percent of children read these days—set a bad example. In Dr. Frederick’s view, there is violence in comic books, and a lot of so-called juvenile delinquents read comic books, therefore comic books cause juvenile delinquency.”

  We were at a light in midtown. “Isn’t that one of those false syllogisms they taught me about in college, right before I flunked out?”

  H er half-smile was better than a full smile from most females. “Very good, Jack. No, the doctor is just riding the comet of a controversy of his own creation. He has no proof.”

  “You wouldn’t have thought so at that Senate hearing this afternoon.”

  She shrugged. “It’s because the senators, like Dr. Frederick, begin with an anti-comic-book assumption as false as that syllogism. It’s simply bad science.”

  “Isn’t that a comic book Entertaining Funnies publishes —Bad Science?”

  We were moving again.

  She leaned back in her comfy, pleated vinyl bucket seat. “Anyway, everything Dr. Frederick says about comic books is based on undocumented anecdotes.”

  “But he claims Ravage the Lambs is chock full of data.”

  “Sure. Such as, if he runs across a comic book with a gory scene of suicide by hanging, he lines it up with a juvenile suicide in his files. Or if a child or adolescent commits a robbery or assault or even a murder, he finds a similar crime in a comic book.”

  “A comic book that was a favorite of these bad seeds?”

  She shook her head again. “No. Frederick doesn’t bother making that connection, probably because he can’t. Beyond that ‘data,’ it’s just opinion—Wonder Guy uses force to subdue a gangster, Dr. Frederick sees fascism.”

  I grinned at her. “And if Batwing lives with his young ward Sparrow, it’s obviously a homosexual relationship.”

  “Not to mention pedophilia.”

  “I try not.” I honked at a double-parked cab. Guess what good it did. “Then why are you willing to ghost his column for us?”

  She was staring out into the geometric abstraction of New York City at night. “Because I think his heart is in the right place, and—beyond this dead comic-book horse he’s flog-ging—a lot of what he’s done, and is doing, is enormously positive.”

  “And that’s the only reason?”

  She smiled at me, vaguely teasing. “Well...maybe I want to work with the Starr Syndicate so I have an excuse to see you, Jack.”

  I gave her a leer that wasn’t vague at all. “Or maybe you like the sound of that twenty grand Maggie promised you, if Doc Frederick approves of you.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted, with a knowing smirk.

  Man, this chickie was as smart as she was beautiful, and I was just enough of a free-thinking man not to hold that against her. Maybe I should marry her. After all, having an in-house shrink might help keep a guy sane, and the extra income would be no hardship. See? Free-thinking.

  St. Philip’s Episcopal was a massive brown-brick neo-Gothic affair at West 134th Street, just west of Seventh Avenue, well-known as the biggest church in Harlem with some two thousand members, including Adam Clayton Powell. I left the Kaiser-Darrin locked up tight in the parking lot behind the big church, glad to have it off the street, but went in the front way, where the pastor’s secretary pointed us to the nearby parish house whose basement was home to the clinic.

  After the toweringly impressive church, the crumbling brownstone parish house came as a shock. Sole access was down a dingy, garbage-strewn alley. Should I have brought my gun?

  After all these years, I thought, back in a Harlem basement hideaway....

  A white sign bore the black-lettered words LAFARGUE CLINIG—WATCH YOUR STEP, which might have been psychiatric advice or maybe it meant the crumbled-stairs walk-down to a door that was unlocked. I wondered how many winos and armed robbers wandered in here unannounced.

  A colored gent in his thirties greeted us; he wore a lab coat like the one Frederick had worn at the hearing today, and a big smile.

  “You must be Dr. Winters,” he said. He was mustached and wore glasses and if he’d been any more likable, I’d have bust out crying. “And you must be Mr. Starr. I’m Dr. Tweed.”

  We shook hands, and exchanged a few pleasantries. He’d been expecting us, and seemed particularly pleased to be meeting Sylvia, whether because she was a knockout or a fellow shrink, I couldn’t tell you.

  “We only have these two rooms,” he said in a resonant baritone, gesturing around him. “We do our best to keep the moisture out, but it’s a losing battle.”

  Never mind keeping the moisture out—how about the rats?

  But they’d done their best to transform the uninviting space into something pleasant, painting the cement walls white, doing the same with the open wooden rafters, putting down some linoleum. The larger of the two rooms had various play areas for younger children, tables, chairs, toys— blocks, pick-up sticks and dolls for the younger ones, Mr. Potato Head, sliding number puzzles and Matchbox cars for the older ones. Reading material was scattered around, Little Golden Books, Highlights magazine, but no comic books, not on your life, not even a Donald damn Duck.

  Half a dozen men and women in lab coats supervised— several Negroes, mostly white folks—kneeling to talk to individual children, strictly colored. In one corner, half a dozen teens sat talking with a white shrink, in what appeared to be an informal group session. The smaller room down at the end of the space was for private conferences.

  Dr. Frederick was in one of those now.

  “So this is a free clinic?” I asked, really just making conversation.

  “Essentially,” Dr. Tweed said. “We charge twenty-five cents, unless a patient doesn’t have it, in which case we are a free clinic. We charge fifty cents if we need to make a court appearance.”

  “Nobody’s getting rich from rates like that.”

  “We only charge what we do to give our patients, usually their parents, a sense of worth. It goes for coffee, juice, snacks, for the kids and the staff.”

  Sylvia, hands fig-leafed before her, asked, “How often are you open?”

  “Two evenings a week. It’s all volunteer—we’re up to eleven staffers now.” He cast her a big smile. “But we could always use one more, Dr. Winters.”

  She returned the smile. “It does look like you’re doing good work here.”

  “You know, Dr. Frederick is a great man. Most white psychiatrists won’t even take on a Negro patient, let alone run a whole clinic for them.”

  “I have three Negro patients,” Sylvia said, casually, not bragging. “But then I’m in the Village—most of my practice is people in the arts.”

  Dr. Frederick emerged from the smaller, glassed-in private-session room, holding the door open for a girl of about twelve. She, like the other kids, was dressed in nice if not fancy clothing, faded but not threadbare. School clothes.

  I’ll say one thing for Dr. Frederick—in that white lab coat, he looked like a goddamn doctor. Like the ones on TV who pitched toothpaste or spoke of the health benefits of smoking filter cigarettes. Moving with quick assurance, he came over and greeted us, shaking hands with Sylvia but only granting me a perfunctory nod.

  “I’ve been checking up on you,” Frederick said to her. It had a little unintended menace in it, thanks to that Eric von Stroheim accent of his.

  “Nothing too damaging’s turned up, I hope,” she said, smiling but not overdoing.

  “You’ve published some interesting papers,” he said, “so obviously have you have writing skills. Your colleagues, your professors, say good things.”

  “You’ve been busy, Doctor.” She seemed a little taken aback. “I thought you were testifying today.”

  “I have my researchers. You are an impressive young woman.” The eyes behind the glasses were big as he said that, again imparting an unintentional menace—he meant her credentials, but from that expr
ession on his narrow mug, he might have meant her...credentials.

  “I would be honored to work with you,” she said.

  He raised a gently lecturing forefinger. “The emphasis will be on children, you understand. Advice to parents with so-called ‘problem’ children. That, of course, is not the nature of your practice.”

  “No,” she admitted, “but I studied heavily in that field. My degree qualifies me to be a child psychologist, which is an area I hope to go into eventually.”

  That clearly pleased him. “Good. Good.”

  She risked a smile. “You know, my practice is in the Village, and most of the ‘children’ there are over twenty-one.”

  That got a chuckle out of him. “Has Dr. Tweed given you the tour? I’m afraid it’s not the largest or best-appointed mental health clinic in New York.”

  “He has,” she said, nodding toward Tweed, who was back working with some younger children. “Doctor, not meaning to sound obsequious, I do want you to know I admire your work here, and your work in general helping troubled young Negroes.”

  “Why, thank you, Dr. Winters.”

  The doc flicked a glance my way; he was irritated with me. I figured I knew why.

  He was saying to her, “You understand that the topic of comic books will be off-limits in the column.”

  “Yes.”

  “That has to do with a conflict of interest we might have with the Starr Syndicate, which has ties to the so-called comic-book industry.”

  “Yes, I understand that limitation.”

  She didn’t use this opening to mention her disagreement with his comic book theories, but I couldn’t blame her. You don’t go to the Twinkie factory for a job interview and mention that sugar rots the teeth.

  “And you, young Mr. Starr,” he said, turning a rather nasty smile on me. The place was lighted with florescent tubes that gave his pale pallor a ghostly glow.

  “What about me?” I said pleasantly.

  “We didn’t have a chance to speak this afternoon. How is it that you were accompanying Mr. Price to the Senate hearing?”

  Told you. I knew this was coming.

  “His father and my father were friends and business partners,” I said. “I’ve known Bob for years.”

  “Really? Mr. Price is enough of a friend for you to accompany him to Foley Square?”

  I shrugged. “Bob’s been getting death threats, for some reason, and he was also concerned about getting swamped by unfriendly press. I guess you know that wasn’t just paranoia on his part...if you’ll forgive the layman’s use of the term.”

  His upper lip curled in that ghastly smile. “Well, Mr. Price is lucky to have such a good friend.”

  This didn’t sound quite like sarcasm. Not quite.

  “Well, there’s a business connection, too,” I said. “You should know, Doctor, before you sign with Starr Syndicate, that we are contemplating doing business with Mr. Price.”

  Maggie and I had discussed this. We felt full disclosure was both wise and ethical. We didn’t need the doc to feel he’d been snookered, even if on some level we were in fact snookering him.

  “What sort of business?” he asked, too casually, folding his arms.

  “He publishes a humor comic book called Craze. You may be familiar with it.”

  He nodded. “In execrable taste, but likely the least offensive of his publications.”

  “Well, it’s very popular. We’re considering syndicating a Sunday page version of it—a comic strip spoofing other comic strips.”

  He thought about that. Here’s what he had to be thinking: Should he walk indignantly away from the Starr Syndicate offer, like an idiot, or should he pick up a big paycheck for lending his name to a column that the lovely Dr. Winters would largely write?

  Turned out he wasn’t an idiot.

  He said, “Business is business. I contemplated our arrangement with my eyes open, well understanding that the Starr Syndicate distributes comic strips. And I have no axe to grind where newspaper strips are concerned, for reasons you and your stepmother and I discussed.”

  And now, very belatedly, he offered his hand and I shook it.

  “Do you mind my asking, Dr. Frederick,” I said, “whether you did most of your research on Ravage the Lambs here at this clinic?”

  His gesture around him was oddly dismissive. “We didn’t set up shop here to research—we are providing our patients with psychiatric care. But of course in the process of that we do do research, just the same.”

  Sylvia probably thought I was baiting the guy, but I was really curious when I asked, “Did you find comic books contributed to any bad behavior with the kids you dealt with here?”

  He nodded three or four times, emphatically. “Oh yes. For example, I had a twelve-year-old boy here tell me he admired ‘tough guys.’ I asked him, what’s a tough guy? And he replied, ‘A tough guy is a man who slaps a girl.’”

  “And he saw that in a comic book?”

  “He was a voracious reader of violent comic books.”

  I glanced at Sylvia but she pretended not to notice. But she knew, like I knew, that the kid in question very well could have seen his pop slap his mom.

  The doctor gestured to the children, who were in the various play areas or over in that session of teens with a shrink. He kept his voice low but his words cut like a blade: “Virtually all of these troubled children read comic books.”

  Virtually every kid in America read comic books. But never mind.

  “I wanted you to see firsthand what we were doing here at the Lafargue Clinic,” he told Sylvia. “And perhaps interest you in lending a hand here one evening a week.”

  She’d been hit up for that twice already and we hadn’t been here half an hour.

  “I’d be interested in talking about that,” she said, not quite committing.

  “Good,” Frederick said, beaming. “And I would be interested in talking to you about assisting me on my column. Could you and Mr. Starr drop by my suite at the Waldorf tomorrow morning?”

  “Certainly,” she said, then thought to look at me, and I nodded.

  Frederick took her hand in his and patted it; nothing sexual seemed to be in the gesture, but I found it creepy just the same.

  He said, “Is eleven satisfactory? Afterward, I could treat you and Mr. Starr to lunch. My patient appointments don’t start till one.”

  We agreed to all that, and were almost out the door when a young Negro kid in t-shirt and ragged jeans, maybe fourteen, came pushing past us. He did not say “Excuse me.”

  What he did do was get right in Frederick’s face and start yelling. Faces all around, kid faces, shrink faces, turned toward the confrontation with alarm.

  Sylvia glanced at me, and I glanced back—was this any of our business?

  “You told my mom!” the kid was saying. “You told my mom!”

  “Ennis,” the doctor said, keeping his cool, “I told your mother nothing. We have what’s called a doctor and patient relationship, which is confidential.”

  “Confidential’s a damn magazine! You ratted me out, old man! Told her I stole that money she hid!”

  “Did she tell you that, Ennis? Because it’s not true. I did not betray you.”

  “I says you did. Now my old man’s gonna whup my ass, thanks to you. Well, maybe I’ll do somethin’ where I gets put away and the old man can’t touch me.”

  Where the knife came from, I couldn’t hazard a guess. But first it was like the kid was shaking a fist at the doctor, then there was a snik and a long blade was thrust in that Germanic puss, like this patient might give the doc an impromptu nose job.

  “Suppose I cuts you? I’m jes’ a crazy nigger, right, doc? They puts me in Bellevue and the old man can’t touch me!”

  The kid didn’t know I was alive, or anyway he didn’t before I latched onto his wrist, from behind, and yanked down his arm and twisted, hard, until the switchblade clattered to the linoleum.

  I heard Sylvia gasp as the kid whirled a
nd glared at me with eyes and nostrils flared, but that slowed down his punch, and I doubled him over with a right hand to the gut that kept his punch from even landing.

  When he came back upright, faster than I thought he would, he shoved me, pushed past Sylvia, and rushed into the night.

  The room was abuzz, but Frederick said nothing. He knelt, picked up the switchblade, which he knew enough about to retract the blade, and dropped it in his lab coat pocket, as if a candy wrapper he’d discard later.

  He looked more disappointed than shaken or afraid. “Thank you, Mr. Starr.”

  “Patient of yours, doc?”

  He nodded gravely. “Very troubled boy.” He frowned at me. “Would you be surprised to learn he’s a comic book reader?”

  No, and I wasn’t surprised the doc had brought it up, either.

  I said, “Where’s the phone? I got a cop friend I can call.”

  “No! No. Let it go.”

  “Let it go? Are you kidding? He’d have cut you if I hadn’t taken that blade away from him.”

  “We can’t know that.”

  I glanced at Sylvia. She looked dazed and said nothing. I wondered if she might not be having second thoughts about helping out here.

  “Well,” I said, shrugging, “it’s your clinic, and your life. See you tomorrow morning, I guess.”

  He nodded, preoccupied. Dr. Tweed was coming over to consult with his boss when I took Sylvia by the arm and ushered her into the darkness of the alley.

  As rats scuttled by us into the garbage, I said, “Yeah. Comic books.”

  “Huh?”

  “All those kids, Syl. Living in poverty and violence and despair, that’s where all their problems come from, right? Comic books.”

  I drove her back to the Village.

  Sylvia was set to drop by the Starr Syndicate office to briefly meet with Maggie at ten o’clock before we went over to Dr. Frederick’s suite at the Waldorf at eleven. Fifteen minutes early, I came up the rear private elevator, which took me to the gym behind Maggie’s office. As I walked across the padded-mat floor, straightening my tie, smoothing my Botany 500 suit coat, I heard a male voice, the door to Maggie’s inner chamber ajar.