Seduction of the Innocent (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  Savor, why don’t you, the irony that the two major distributors of the comic books featuring strong-jawed all-American heroes like Wonder Guy, Batwing and Crime Fighter were run in part or in whole by gangsters like Frank Calabria and Vince Sarola. Comic books in which the bad guys the good guys slugged and jugged were thugs not unlike the ones standing behind me right now....

  “Been a long time, Jack,” Sarola said in his rich baritone.

  We were not old pals. I’d encountered him maybe half a dozen times in twenty years. But Sarola had at one time been a partner of the major’s, and one of Frank Calabria’s top men, who had broken off in the early ’40s to start his own rival firm. Calabria, who was a silent partner but a key one in Newsstand Distribution, had allowed this because Sarola was dealing with lower-end, more questionable material that ND did not care to carry.

  If you’re wondering why gangsters would be involved in magazine distribution, here’s a brief history lesson: Calabria became involved as a silent partner in many periodical firms when, during Prohibition, those firms decided to buy their paper in Canada. Got it?

  “Mr. Sarola, a pleasure,” I said. “The major thought the world of you.”

  The major despised Sarola.

  “The major was a grand old guy,” Sarola said. “The business is much the lesser without him.”

  Sarola despised the major.

  “If I’m not out of line saying,” I said, “all it would’ve taken to get me here was a phone call. Or you could come see us at the office, any time. I’m sure Maggie would be delighted to see you again.”

  Maggie despised Sarola.

  “Well,” the gangster said smoothly (and he was smooth, no accent, more than passable grammar), “much as I would enjoy that...”

  Sarola didn’t despise Maggie. He liked strippers.

  “...we have a situation here, a problem here, that makes such niceties impossible. A situation, Jack, that is getting worse by the minute. By the second.”

  “What situation is that, Mr. Sarola?”

  “Come on, Jack. It’s Vince.” The brutal face split with a smile. His teeth were perfect—they should have been, for what they cost him. “You’re the major’s kid, for Chrissake. We go back forever, you and me.”

  “We do at that, Vince.”

  Still smiling like a greenish jack-o-lantern, he opened a drawer and got out two water glasses and a bottle of bourbon. “How about a snort, kiddo?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh, that’s right! You don’t drink, do you? I admire that. That’s rare, a guy who can’t handle the sauce has the presence of mind, the goddamn will power, to put it aside.... Lou! Get Jack a Coca-Cola from the machine.”

  Sarola flipped a nickel to Lou, the flat-faced guy, who trundled off somewhere, slipping between walls of bundles and boxes.

  “Coca-Cola all right, Jack? We got Seven-Up, too.”

  “Coke is fine.”

  He poured himself three fingers of bourbon. Jim Beam. He had a sip. If he thought that would bother me, he was wrong. True, I was trembling just a little, but it had nothing to do with bourbon.

  Then, gesturing magnanimously, he said, “I invited you over to see me, after hours, in private like this...” As if the warehouse were a magnificent mansion. “...because I want you to...clarify a couple of things for me.”

  “Glad to.”

  He sipped bourbon. “You’re buddies with Bob Price at Entertaining Funnies, right? I’m not wrong about that, am I?”

  I shrugged. “We’re friendly. We’re considering doing business with him. Looking at syndicating a Craze Sunday page.”

  His eyes flared and the wide grin flashed. “There’s a successful book! One million copies a month in a market that’s, I won’t shit you, Jack, fallen off lately.” He sipped more bourbon. “You even went along to that dog-and-pony show with Price, over at Foley Square, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “What, just as a friend?”

  “Sort of a bodyguard. He’s had death threats, and the press can be a pain in the ass.”

  “Can’t they, though!” He swirled the deep amber liquid in the glass, stared at it as if reading tea leaves. Almost absently, he said, “Entertaining Funnies is one of ours, you know. So that makes us allies of a sort.”

  “Of a sort,” I granted.

  His forehead frowned though he continued to smile. “Then why is it you’re giving some of our other friends a hard time?”

  “What friends?”

  He raised a hand and his expression seemed embarrassed, though I didn’t buy it. “Afraid I get ahead of myself sometimes, Jack. When I care about something, really care deeply, I do that. You’ll have to forgive me.”

  The flat-faced thug was walking over toward us, his footsteps like gunshots echoing off the cement. He handed me the Coke, which wasn’t terribly cold. I thanked him. He said nothing and moved back behind me.

  “We dodged a bullet, you might say,” Sarola went on, “over at Foley Square. Did you know Bert Levinson went to Europe, just to duck subpoenas? Hell, I thought about doing the same thing myself. I mean, if Kefauver had got wind of my part in this business? Or your friend Frank’s?” He meant Frank Calabria, of course. “Why, we’d be up to our ass in federal alligators, get hit with a whole new round of crime hearings, wouldn’t that be the shits? And if you think funny books got a bad name now, well...” He waved this dismal thought away.

  I was still wondering what this had to do with me.

  I said, “Well, those senators didn’t dig into the distribution end. Probably because it really was just a dog-and-pony show. The Republicans have Commies for a whipping boy, the Democrats have comic books. It’ll blow over.”

  “Maybe it would have,” he said, big eyes small now under the slashes of black. A thick finger pointed at me, like this was my fault, whatever it was that had brought me here. “But now that this Dr. Frederick bastard’s been bumped, who knows what merry hell’s gonna get stirred up.”

  I frowned, trying to follow him. “You think Frederick dying is a bad thing?”

  “If it was suicide, it would be a beautiful thing. If it’s murder, everybody in the business stands to be screwed over.”

  “That depends on who did it.”

  His eyes seemed to see me for the first time, as if up to now he’d been talking to himself. “What do you mean by that, Jack?”

  “I mean, if you hired it done, Vince...by way of some fancy contract killer who got way too cute in staging the thing...that would be bad for business. If it came to light.”

  His thick upper lip curled into a sneer. “Is that what you think, Jack? That I hired it done?”

  “No. I don’t. It doesn’t smell like mob, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

  His head tilted back and he looked down that considerable nose at me. “You’re saying I’m a mobster now? Why would you slander a legitimate businessman like Vince Sarola?”

  Oh Christ. Now he was talking about himself in the third person. Never a good sign.

  I said, “I’m saying you didn’t have this done. It causes you more trouble in the long run than anything it saves you in the short term. You’re right—Dr. Frederick, murdered, could stir things up. He could become a damn martyr.”

  “Okay,” he said. His sigh was like the Big Bad Wolf blowing down a pig’s house. “Okay, Jack. I do like your attitude in this respect.”

  I sipped my Coke. I was feeling less anxious.

  Then he said, “So let me get back to where we started.” That sounded amiable. This didn’t: “Why are you going around giving my friends a hard time?”

  I set the Coke on his desk. “I don’t follow you, Vince.”

  “My boys picked you up, coming out of the Entertaining Funnies offices. You led the goddamn badges there, Jack.”

  I held up a palm. “No, that’s not right. The cops were already on their way. I beat Captain Chandler over there, so I could warn Bob and his partner Feldman, and get them ready fo
r what was coming.”

  His sneer turned into a terrible frown. “Yeah? What about you going over to Lev’s offices? And threatening Charley Bardwell?”

  “I didn’t threaten him. If he said that, he’s a goddamn liar.”

  “Then you didn’t track Pete Pine down, beat the shit out of him, and turn his ass over to your pal Chandler?”

  I sat forward. “Vince, this is as straight as it comes—Maggie asked me to look into the doc’s murder, because for the good of the business, the thing needs to be cleared up but fast. We at Starr don’t want comics getting a black eye any more than you do.”

  Still that awful smile. “So you decided to make Pete Pine the fall guy? Or maybe Charley Bardwell? Or even your ‘friend,’ Bob Price?”

  I was shaking my head. “There’s no ‘fall guy’ about it. If I can find out who did this, and right away, we can maybe control and contain the bad press. If Pete Pine killed that shrink, so be it. Let the chips fall.”

  “You’re not stitching him up for it?”

  “Not him or anybody.”

  “Not even me, Jack?”

  “Are you kidding? Do I look suicidal?”

  The big brutal face bore no expression at all now. “Sometimes, Jack, you never know who’s gonna get the blues and throw a rope over a rafter.”

  “Vince, we’re not on opposite sides here. I have no intention of ‘stitching’ anybody up for this kill.”

  He finished his glass of bourbon, leaned back in his chair and rocked. “So Maggie wants you to clear this up, ’cause it’d be good for business? Like your Uncle Frank’s business?”

  “Calabria’s not my uncle.”

  “You always called him that.”

  “Everybody calls him that. We have a very small piece of Americana and Calabria’s a silent partner in that, as you damn well know, Vince...and he’s got a piece of Newsstand Distribution, too, which by the way we own not the smallest slice of, even though the major started the damn business.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I suppose you and Frank haven’t even discussed this thing?”

  “What thing?”

  “The Frederick kill.”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “And you haven’t talked to Louis Cohn over at Americana about it, either?”

  “No!”

  He gestured with an open hand. “You know, if we go under, Newsstand Distribution won’t want anything to do with Levinson Publications and Entertaining Funnies. Stuff they print is way too rough for their taste. And if that leaves Lev’s comics and Price’s comics without distribution, that puts Americana and Calabria in the catbird seat. You realize that, don’t you, Jack?”

  “If this Senate hearing, and Frederick’s murder, make it so nobody’ll do business with you anymore, then you’re cooked, yeah. But I have nothing to do with that. Nor does ‘Uncle Frank,’ at least as far as I know.”

  I stood.

  “Is that all?” I said. “This is a load of horse crap, Vince, and I’m ready to go home.”

  He shook his head. “You’re not.”

  He lifted a finger and big hands came in and took me by the shoulders and sat me down hard on the wooden chair. The guy with the feathered porkpie hat was behind me and he reached those big mitts around and grabbed me by the elbows and squeezed, holding me into place. The flat-faced guy, with a tiny smile indicating a big love for his work, hit me in the face. My nose didn’t break but it began to bleed. Big fists pummeled my midsection and my chest. The guy knew how to give a beating without breaking any ribs and it didn’t hurt any more than falling off a two-story building. Right, left, right, left, I was his goddamn punching bag. This went on for about a minute that seemed about five.

  Past my assailant, I could see the seated Sarola, just taking in the show dispassionately. Then he raised a hand. This apparently signaled the feather-hat guy holding me to nod to the flat-faced guy hitting me to let up.

  “Give him a drink,” Sarola said, as if worrying about my health.

  The seated gangster handed the Jim Beam bottle across the desk to Lou and as the guy behind me held onto me by my elbows, the flat-faced thug grabbed my face, pushed my head back and, squeezing my lips at the sides like a pimple he was popping, forced open my mouth. He upended the bottle and stuck the snout in and poured the liquid glug-glug-glugging in and I didn’t swallow any, not at first anyway, just kept expelling the stuff, as best I could, bubbling it back at him, and the booze went all over the front of me, my suit, my shirt, and some of it did go down my throat, burning as it went. My belly burned, too.

  Lou said in a high-pitched voice as flat as his face, “It’s empty. Got another bottle, boss?”

  Sarola ignored that and said to me, “Here’s the thing, Jack —we’re gonna have the same conversation we just had, but we’re gonna see if a friendly drink hasn’t loosened you up some. And if not, we’ll try some more good old-fashioned persuasion. We’ll beat on you and pour bourbon down your gullet till we believe you. Ready?”

  I nodded.

  Then I kicked out and caught the desk and propelled myself backward, knocking the guy behind me off balance and the feathered porkpie right off his head. It also caused him to let go of me and I dove to the right, grabbed back and got the chair and hit him with it. In the movies, in bar fights, chairs break into kindling. In a real fight, particularly when it’s a nice old solid oak chair like this one, that chair just makes a nice satisfying thud as it smacks into muscle and bone, and the big beefy guy went down, crying out for his mother.

  The other thug went for his gun and I kicked him between the legs so hard his eyes rolled back in his head. He went down, too, like he was praying only his clasped hands were on his nuts, and I took the gun from under his arm and whirled and smacked the other guy with it, who was up again, but not for long. Lou’s gun was a long-barreled .38 and it had caught my driving companion across the temple and he went down for the count. The other guy was getting up and I kicked him in the head.

  He went to sleep, on his back.

  I disarmed the now hatless guy, tossing the gun into the darkness; it clunked and didn’t go off. Not that I would have given a damn if it did.

  Sarola was still behind his desk, but now he was opening a drawer and going for something and it wasn’t a bottle of bourbon. I put everything I had into charging that desk, pushing it back, and the desk and Sarola went smacking into the wall of cartons and bundles, which tottered and caved in, unleashing an avalanche of boxes. I scrambled out of the way as a pile of the things came tumbling down until there was no sign of the desk, with only Sarola’s feet sticking out from under a heap of boxes, like the witch under Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.

  It might have killed him, which I wouldn’t have lost any sleep over, but I doubted it had. I was hurting from the punches I’d taken, and breathing hard, and bleeding from the nose, but could only smile. The boxes right above where Sarola’s feet stuck out were labeled LITTLE LULU and UNCLE SCROOGE.

  These comic books were dangerous, all right.

  I found an automatic switch on the wall by the big garage door, got in my Kaiser-Darrin, backed out of there, and headed for midtown.

  It had been a long time since I’d come home with the taste of bourbon in my mouth, my clothes smelling like a distillery, and that made me smile, too. Made me grin. Had enough gone down my gullet (as Sarola put it) that I was drunk? As many years as I’d been off the stuff, probably wouldn’t take much to put me on my ass.

  I had a date with Sylvia and normally would have gone right to her apartment in the Village, but instead went to the Starr Building, parking on the street for a change. Everything was going just hunky-dory till I passed out in the elevator.

  I woke to darkness, and had just a moment or two of panic, since my last memory was collapsing in that elevator. Then the irradiated numbers of my nightstand clock told me not merely what time it was—six-twenty—but where I was. I reached into the void past the clock for the bedside lamp and switched
it on.

  Yellow-tinged light gently illuminated my bedroom, as I sat up, surprised to find myself in pajamas. I ached in my chest and midsection where Sarola’s two thugs had worked me over, but less than I’d have imagined. After all, I’d only slept, what? Half an hour since I got home? Funny that I neither remembered getting home nor putting on my pajamas, but I knew I had to really shake a leg, even if that hurt a little. I was supposed to pick up Sylvia at her apartment at seven.

  I figured I better grab another shower and shave, before my date, and did so. Then, walking from the bathroom into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around me, I found Maggie sitting on the edge of my bed, facing me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” she asked, expressionless.

  “Getting ready for my date. I’m supposed to pick Sylvia Winters up at—”

  “That was yesterday.”

  “Huh?”

  “You were supposed to pick her up Friday night at seven.”

  “Right.”

  “And this is Saturday.”

  “What? How long did I sleep? What is it, morning?”

  “No. Evening. Night. Don’t worry about Sylvia. She knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  She stood. “That you took a beating yesterday and are recuperating. Why don’t you put something on besides that towel.”

  “...Okay.” I had an uneasy feeling, suddenly, about how I’d got into those pajamas.

  “I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “Make it Coke.”

  “You’ll lose your teeth someday, over that sugary swill.”

  “Coke.”

  She nodded, and went from the bedroom into the kitchen, the next room down in the boxcar layout of my apartment. I traded the towel for underwear from my dresser, then went to my closet and got my navy gabardine, a trifle heavy for this time of year, but the only suit I owned that had been tailored to hide a shoulder-holstered gun.

  And while I may have been disoriented, I knew that, for the time being, I wanted to carry a gun.

  But all I had on was the socks and suit pants and t-shirt when Maggie returned with the Coke for me and some coffee for herself.