Seduction of the Innocent (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

“I figure,” I said, “he’s scurried off to his apartment to patch himself up and maybe sober himself up.”

  “I’ll send a patrol car over to pick him up. You think Pine’s a good suspect?”

  I touched my temple where he’d belted me. “Oh, yeah. Warn the boys you dispatch that he’s a scrapper. If he’s not home, check the bars in his neighborhood. Or the bars in the Village—he may not have got any farther than that.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” Chandler said, and hung up.

  When I got back into the living room, the beret had disappeared but the black silk gown had come out of hiding. She was sitting on the couch now, a leg crossed, a lovely white limb exposed to remind me what lay beneath the silk.

  I sat beside her.

  I asked, “Why is it you know that the doc lived at the Waldorf? I don’t figure that for common knowledge.”

  “I was a patient of his.”

  “What?”

  She was as matter-of-fact about this information as she’d been lolling around in the altogether.

  “I was a patient of his,” she said, “for just a short while. He had no idea that I worked in the comic book field. I went to him out of a kind of...perverse curiosity. I told him I was an artist, that I often dealt with images of violence and sexuality, and I wanted to know if something was wrong with me.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what was his diagnosis?”

  “That was why I stopped going to him. I felt he was...not so much a hypocrite as a shallow thinker. Because I presented myself as a fine artist, whose work appeared in galleries, he saw nothing wrong with my subject matter. I once asked him casually about comic books, and he obviously had a fixation on them, on all of the popular arts. He was that typical pompous upper-class intellectual who wasn’t worried about what he and other refined types read or saw, but only what the lesser folk read or saw.”

  I frowned at her. “You knowing Frederick, that may come back to haunt you.”

  “Why is that, Jack?”

  “You’re a comic book artist. You went to see him under false pretenses. You knew where he lived, were someone he would likely open the door for. Sweetie, you’re a suspect.”

  She shook her head, all those black curls shimmering. “I didn’t do it.”

  “Didn’t say you did. Don’t think you did. But the cops will want to talk to you.”

  “Well...they would have anyway.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She smirked humorlessly. “That was why Pete and I were fighting. He wanted me to say I’d been with him, holed up here, for the last two days. Working, drinking, whatever, but here, with him.”

  “He wanted you to provide him an alibi.”

  The Oriental eyes flared wide. “Now I realize that. He didn’t say why he wanted me to lie for him. My wanting to know why just made him madder. Like you said, Jack, he’s a psychopath.”

  I put a hand on her silk-clad shoulder. “I’ll put in a good word for you with Captain Chandler. He’s the Homicide dick in charge. Friend of mine.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Jack.” She played with my hair. “What’s wrong with me, anyway? Why don’t I go after nice guys like you?”

  “Oh, I used to be a drunk myself. Probably damn near as ugly a one as Pete. But I never hit a woman in my life.”

  She slipped her arm around me and her face came toward mine and, bruised or not, hers was as lovely a face as I ever saw. Her lips found mine and lingered, hot, moist, sticky with lipstick, her tongue darting, and she whispered, “I like you, anyway.”

  This time her nakedness was my fault, because I slipped the robe off her shoulders, and filled my hands with those breasts and then reached down to cup one luscious cheek of her bottom. No, her ass. We necked and grabbed each other in various interesting places for a while and it was getting hot and heavy when I stupidly asked, “What did you see in that shrimp anyway?”

  “Oh, that’s easy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s hung like a horse.”

  Well, that broke the mood. Don’t think it was my lack of confidence in being able to compete, but I just suddenly felt I had to get the hell out of that pad with its black wall and Spanish furniture and naked hostess.

  I did give her another kiss before leaving, saying, “Maybe another time.”

  She was still on the couch, nude and confused when I went. I wasn’t in the mood to play. She would just have to find some other innocent jerk to seduce.

  Around three-thirty that afternoon, a cab dropped me at the Starr Building. From the street I went into the postage-stamp entry area adjacent to the Strip Joint. We were still using an elevator man, for security if nothing else, and he took me up to the third floor. The small pale-walled, brown-carpeted landing offered two doors, one to a fire exit, the other my apartment.

  The apartment, by the way, was a box-car affair with a windowless living room outfitted with Bauhaus-type modern furniture. The off-white walls were arrayed with framed original comic-strip art, black-and-white Sunday pages— Gould’s Dick Tracy, Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Sterrett’s Polly and Her Pals, with a sprinkling of Starr Syndicate stuff, including Wonder Guy and Batwing. Maybe I should have asked Lyla for a Miss Fortune, but the timing hadn’t been right.

  Now and then visitors to my bachelor pad found my preferred artwork odd, although everyone was impressed by the size of things, which were drawn twice-up before reproduction. The major used to say that the best comic-strip art was at least as good as anything the modern-art crowd ever whipped up, and even if he was wrong, I couldn’t exactly afford a Chagall or Picasso. Getting a great comic-art piece was a snap—all I had to do was ask the artist for one. I was in the business, after all, so complying was a courtesy. And the artists always felt complimented.

  The bedroom beyond did have a couple of non-comics, ersatz modern masterpieces I’d picked up in the Village. Another windowless room, this was home to yellow walls, Heywood-Wakefield furnishings, a small desk with a phone, and the bed, a double (ever the optimist).

  Next in the chain was the kitchen, modern and white and too big for a bachelor, though it served as decent space for the weekly poker games I threw for newspaper and show biz buddies. This was where I headed, as I hadn’t managed to eat anything yet today, and made good on half a pastrami and Swiss cheese sandwich with half-eaten dill that I’d brought home the other day from Lindy’s. I had a third of a bag of potato chips handy, so I grabbed a Coke and sat at my Formica-topped table, quietly enjoying the food, my aches and pains taking a back seat.

  Still, I was hurting. The scrap with Pete Pine up and down those stairs had resulted in no broken bones, but I had bumps and bruises to spare—even a naked nurse like Lyla Lamont offering a soothing damp cloth, among other soothing damp things, couldn’t make those disappear.

  I had a date with Sylvia tonight, for supper, and I decided that I’d done enough work for one day. Dr. Frederick would likely still be dead tomorrow. I could pick up then.

  My intention had been to clean up a little and go upstairs and report in to Maggie, but as I sat there chowing down, I noticed that my suit coat sleeve was torn (goddamnit) and the breast pocket had some stains that might have been ketchup but weren’t. I would need to change.

  This led to a shower, which turned into something long and luxurious, the hot needles feeling so very good on the sore spots. I leaned both hands against the shower stall wall with my back to the spray and just let the heat have at me.

  The bathroom was just off the bedroom, so when I was toweled off, the first thing I saw was the bed, and I forgot about checking in with Maggie and just flopped there, nude as a grape. Nuder. Nude as Lyla Lamont.

  Took quite a while to fall asleep, maybe fifteen seconds, and the last thing I remember thinking was how I really ought to set the alarm, to keep from being late for my date with Sylvia.

  When the phone rang, I sat up like a cannon had gone off, figuring that it was Sylvia calling, and that I’d slept through supper. I scrambled
over to the phone at my desk and plopped down there, working up an excuse and an apology (which would not include anything about jaybird Lyla trying to seduce me). Without windows in the place, I had no context other than the nightstand clock...

  ...which said four.

  This I assumed to be four in the morning. So it wouldn’t be Sylvia, not at that hour. Maggie maybe, with some other crazy development in the case?

  It was Captain Chandler.

  I asked, “What the hell are you doing on the job at four A.M.?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s four in the afternoon. You finally fall off the wagon?”

  I had slept maybe fifteen minutes.

  “We picked up that Pine character,” he said without waiting for a response.

  Fifteen minutes or not, my mind and mouth were sleep-fuzzy. But I managed to say, “Good. What’s he got to say for himself?”

  “Not much. He was drunk and abusive. He took swings at the uniformed men who picked him up, and he may do some time for it. We frown on people throwing punches at police.”

  “You’ve always been a stickler. You got him downstairs in the drunk tank?”

  “No. This boy’s a champion nutcase. I had him shipped to Bellevue for observation, not to mention drying out.”

  “So you won’t be questioning him till tomorrow?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, he’s not going to have an alibi,” I said, “unless he finds one in the nuthouse.” And I filled him in on Pine’s reported attempt to threaten Lyla Lamont into covering for him.

  “Maybe he’s our man,” Chandler said.

  “I would love that, I really would. He’s a nasty piece of business, and someday he may really kill somebody.”

  “What do you mean...‘really’ kill somebody?”

  I sighed. “I just don’t think he’s smart enough to try all that cute stuff at the doc’s suite, the ice, the fake suicide, the funny book with the ice-block minute mystery.”

  “He’s a writer, isn’t he?”

  “Artist. A mediocre one, but professional enough. But let’s assume Pine is smart enough to pull that muddy-the-water crapola at the crime scene. Smart enough to do that drunk on his ass? He’s been on a bender for days.”

  A long pause preceded Chandler saying, “I hate it when you’re right. But he’s still a suspect. We know he threatened the life of the victim several times, he has no alibi, and he’s violent.”

  I touched my chest where Pine had pummeled me with his hard little fists. “He is at that. What about that Negro kid—Ennis Williams?”

  “I already shook him loose.” Weariness fought frustration for control of Chandler’s voice. “The kid’s mother said she sent him to the Waldorf to apologize to the doc, like her son says. She says Ennis came home right after.”

  “Of course, she’s his mother....”

  “A neighbor saw him leave, and get back. There remains the possibility that he sneaked out in the night and returned to the Waldorf, but that’s pretty thin.”

  “What does the coroner say about time of death?”

  “Nothing final, but indications are the killer did manage to screw that up to where we have an awfully big window for the murder. That ice, depending on the size of the block or the amount of ice cubes, could take anywhere from four to six hours to melt, the coroner says. Jack, we’re not much farther along this afternoon than we were this morning.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I’m heading over to Entertaining Funnies. I called ahead and warned them to stay put—I mean, it’s Friday, they might knock off early for home otherwise.”

  “They’re still there?”

  “Still there. I’m planning to leave for there as soon as I hang up.”

  I thought about that. “Listen, why don’t you find something else to do for half an hour or maybe forty minutes?”

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to head over myself and talk to Bob Price before you do.”

  “Oh, you would?”

  “Remember how we’re working together? On separate investigatory tracks, because I’m part of this funny-book world, which gives me access and insights you do not possess?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, “I remember something like that.”

  “Let me talk to Bob and his pal Feldman—Feldman’s still there?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Chandler admitted. “It’s Price who’s the suspect, but I did say nobody was to leave.”

  “Well, Price and Feldman are tied at the hip. Feldman will likely be on deck. Let me talk to them both. I may get things out of them you can’t. Then you show up, maybe haul them in for a less friendly questioning, and working both ends we might just get somewhere.”

  “But you’d like to clear Price, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not if he’s guilty. What I want to ‘clear,’ Captain? Is I want to clear this up. Fast. It’s bad for the comics business overall, and it stinks for the Starr Syndicate.”

  “And here I thought you were just being a good citizen,” Chandler said.

  “Well?”

  “If I let you do this, you can’t let Price or anybody know any details about the crime scene. We’ve kept a lid on that— it’s a ‘suspicious death.’”

  “Understood.”

  “Nothing about faked suicide or blocks of ice or anything. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Another very long sigh. “I have paperwork that could stand doing. I’ll leave here in forty-five minutes. With travel, you should have a good half hour with Price, and Feldman, if he’s there.”

  “I appreciate this,” I said.

  “Did I mention it was Friday? And that I get off at six? And that you’re adding forty-five minutes to my day?”

  “Your good-looking wife will understand.”

  “I hope so.”

  “She will,” I assured him.

  No sarcasm, no wisecracks. Chandler was doing me a favor. And probably himself, but he couldn’t be sure.

  I put a blue blazer on over a light blue Banlon shirt and gray slacks, anticipating my night in the Village with Sylvia, grabbed my hat, and headed back down to the street.

  No cab this time. I got the convertible out of the parking garage on 44th and headed over to 225 Lafayette Street and the offices of Entertaining Funnies. The outside of the building, a Greek Revival number, was impressive enough, and the gilded, high-ceilinged lobby, too. But the ten floors above were strictly wood-and-glass office space.

  I took the elevator to the seventh floor and moved quickly down the long hall to the far-end suite where a pebbled glass door bore the familiar circle logo with EF within, under which were the words ROBERT PRICE, PUBLISHER.

  The receptionist, Betty, a pretty brunette who was engaged to Bob—a rather more aboveboard arrangement than Ginny’s with her boss Bardwell back at Levinson Publications—sat at a desk in a small undecorated reception area.

  She smiled upon seeing me, blurting, “Jack!”

  But that smile disappeared and her expression turned glum as I approached her desk. She stood and came around to offer me her hand, which I took. She wore a pale yellow short-sleeve sweater and a dark green skirt.

  She said, “We’re all just sick around here about the news.”

  “The news?”

  “Yes. About Dr. Frederick’s passing.”

  She seemed genuinely saddened. You would have thought Frederick was the family doctor or maybe her uncle, not an egotistical bluenose who had made miserable the lives of everyone at Entertaining Funnies. Including and especially her fiancé.

  “That’s why I’m here.” I said. “I want to talk to Bob about it. I know this is late on a Friday, and Hal may be gone, but—”

  “No, Mr. Feldman is still here. He and Bob are in the lounge. They’re waiting...” She lowered her voice, keeping things confidential though no one else was in the small reception area. “...waiting for the police to come. We had a call. A Captain Chandler is on his way, I guess to question them. It
’s so terrible, so disturbing.”

  She looked on the verge of tears, but apparently was too professional to succumb.

  I gave her a small, encouraging smile. “Chandler’s a good man. Friend of mine. Nothing to worry about. Lounge is through here, right?”

  She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Right.”

  Cute kid. Busty blonde Ginny had her points, and so did Lyla Lamont for that matter; but give me a smart cookie like Betty any day.

  Bob Price and Hal Feldman were sitting on a secondhand couch in the small lounge. Both were smoking. Paper cups of coffee shared space with overflowing ashtrays on the scarred-up coffee table before them. The room was a warm, friendly, funky space, with racy, unprintable in-house cartoons plastered to the wall, all caricaturing Price, Feldman and their regular artists. On the wall behind the couch was a big blow-up of a Craze cover. A life-size poster of Marilyn Monroe spilling from a bikini was nailed up with a caricature of artist Craig Johnson peeking over her shoulder lasciviously. Several wire racks of the latest EF Comics were here and there, as was lots of secondhand furniture. What came to mind immediately was a faculty lounge at a smalltown junior college.

  And once-and-maybe-future science teacher Bob Price, in a white short-sleeve shirt with bow tie and baggy brown trousers, looked like the students had been giving him a particularly bad day.

  “Jack,” Feldman said, smiling, putting out his cigarette in an ashtray despite its overflow. “Nice to see you. Come in. Sit down!”

  Price’s second-in-command was snappily dressed as usual, gray suit with flecks of black, black-and-white-and-gray patterned tie. He was the kind of guy who’d be jaunty on the deck of a sinking ship, helping the women and children into the lifeboats.

  I sank into a comfy if threadbare armchair facing them. “Betty says you fellas know about Dr. Frederick.”

  Feldman said, “Just that he’s dead. That he died under suspicious circumstances.”

  “Newscaster said,” Price put in, “it might be suicide. God, I don’t even know what to think.”

  “You don’t?”

  He gestured with open hands. “Is this a good thing for us? Or a bad thing?”

  “Well, it’s a bad thing for Frederick.”