A Killing in Comics (13 page)

My barber and Calabria’s barber were looking at each other bug-eyed, wondering if they were about to share a crossfire. But there was nothing to worry about. The major had loved Frank Calabria, and Frank Calabria had loved the major, and I was the major’s kid.

Tony was toweling off Calabria’s remaining lather when the mob boss finally glanced at me. “You
do
need a shave, kid.”

“Well, I spent the night with a beautiful woman up in her tower suite. You oughta try that sometime, Frank. Clears the sinuses.”

He laughed, this time letting his face in on the action. Tony was applying a creamy film to Calabria’s cheeks, preparing to take one more close pass on his rocky puss with that gleaming razor.

“I saw your fellas in the lobby,” I said, “on my way up, yesterday evening. Do they just sit there all night and wait till you need a shave?”

The two bodyguards were glaring at me. And, by the way, they both could have used shaves themselves.

“Something like that, kid,” Calabria said. “They kinda take turns sleeping.”

“And yet the hotel management doesn’t toss them out for loitering.”

“They got a friend in a high place.”

Up a Waldorf Tower with his mistress.

I asked, “Did they spot an old friend of yours, going up?”

With a frown on that iguana pan of his, Calabria was watching me in the mirror opposite; but the width of the shop was such that this didn’t provide much of a view—strictly long shots, no close-ups, in the movie playing in the mirror.

“
What
old friend, kid?”

“Hank Morella.”

“Oh, little Hank! No, we didn’t see him go up. When was this?”

“Half an hour ago, more or less.”

“No, no, kid, we was already in here. Older a guy gets, longer it takes to spruce him up. Where was Hank off to?”

“Picking up Donny’s things from the former love nest. Two suitcases worth.”

Still trying to watch me in that too-distant mirror, Calabria asked, “Is that where
you
were, kid? Honey Daily’s suite? You don’t waste any time. Hell, neither does she.”

“Frank, I don’t kiss and tell. But I will admit I’ve spoken to Miss Daily recently.”

“What about did you speak to her?”

“Donny’s murder.”

Calabria told his barber to back off a second, and gazed over at me. “Yeah, I heard the cops think it’s a killing. And I would dearly love to see whoever done that to Donny get his head handed to him. But why is it your business, kid?”

“Those two naive chumps behind
Wonder Guy
,” I said, “are looking like the prime suspects. And we do business with those very chumps,
and
with Americana, so Maggie wants this thing cracked fast.”

His eyes slitted as they studied me. “Don’t you think the homicide boys are up to the job?”

“Do they know who to talk to? Could some city flatfoot get you to talk so free and easy, like I’m doing?”

He laughed loud enough to tempt other patrons to look at him, though they didn’t, or anyway pretended not to, and he motioned to Tony to start back in on the shave.

“Kid, I will help you if I can. In fact, if you need anything, just say so.”

“Then you and Donny were pals till the end?”

“Who
says
we weren’t?”

“Rumor has it Donny, and Louie Cohn for that matter, have forgotten their roots, and who got them started. Have neglected old friends and turned their noses up at longtime relationships, personal and business. Rumor has it.”

Scissors sang, manicurists twanged.

“Donny and Louie,” Calabria said finally, “sell comic books to children. Their business interests and mine do not have no common ground no more.”

Which was horse hockey—the publishing business could supply a man like Frank Calabria with various avenues of distribution for a variety of products, as well as provide fronts for laundering gambling and drug money.

But even the major’s son couldn’t get away with disagreeing with Frank Calabria on such a point.

“Will I see you at the funeral this afternoon, Frank?”

“. . . I got business conflicts.”

For many years, Donny and Louie and, for a time, my father had been Calabria’s Jewish
paisans
. After Prohibition ended, Calabria needed new rackets, and the two men who would later sell
Wonder Guy
to ten-year-olds of all ages had helped Calabria find them. Their publishing interests, the girlies and smooshes, were sold in cigar stores and in drugstores and on newsstands, and the same distribution system that legally delivered magazines could also provide the sub rosa services attached to the numbers game, illegal bookmaking and slot machines.

Mario was lathering me up now, and Tony swept the cape away and began giving Calabria the whisk-broom treatment. The gangster’s tie was a striped silk of alternating shades of gray, and cost more than the average New Yorker’s weekly rent.

I watched as the mob leader descended from the barber-chair throne, got whisked off some more, then dug into his pocket and removed a fat bankroll from which he peeled two twenties for his barber, who took it, bowed, thanked him profusely, and retreated.

The pockmarked guy helped Calabria into his suitcoat, and Big Jim handed him his fedora. Calabria held a hand up to them, indicating they should stay put for a moment, and walked over to me. He took a moment to regally don the hat, then stood right in front of me, a commanding figure, freshly barbered and shaved, looking and smelling like a million legal bucks. He had dark blue eyes with a lot of eyelash, almost feminine, although the unblinking deadness of them was strictly masculine.

Almost whispering, he said, “I would like to go to that funeral. Nobody told me I couldn’t. But I know my attending could be seen as not a positive thing. And I wouldn’t never do that to the grieving widow.”

My barber, upon Calabria approaching, had stopped in mid-shave, so I could risk a nod.

Calabria leaned in so close I could smell the aftershave tonic. Rosewater.

“Kid,” he asked in a near whisper, “do you think you know who did this to Donny?”

“Not yet.” I was keeping my voice down, too.

“But you will?”

“I think so. This homicide dick, Chandler, isn’t stupid, but you should still put your money on me.”

“I’m willing to, kid.”

“. . . Pardon?”

His eyes narrowed and his smile widened. Still in that conspiratorial near-whisper, he asked, “What would you say to ten grand for finding Donny’s killer?”

“I’d say . . . hello.”

He raised a palm, as if half surrendering. “I mean, I understand you already have a client, and I don’t wish to impugn your ethics . . .”

“Impugn away, Frank. I don’t see any conflict of interest here.”

Calabria smiled a deceptively mild-mannered smile. “If I was involved, in this murder? There would be.”

I shrugged. “Then give me the full ten grand up front, which protects me in such a case.”

He chuckled, shook his head, then chuckled some more. “The major would be proud of you, kid. You got a streak of hustle in you, and more guts than sense. You want me to have the check messengered over?”

“Naw, just stick it in the mail. Nice doing business with you, Frank.”

He nodded, his expression avuncular. “Keep in touch, kid. You need anything, just let me know. You have the private number, right?”

“Right,” I said.

Calabria and his entourage trooped out, the two bodyguards apparently unsure whether to nod respectfully or glare at me, and hedged their bet by doing neither.

After the haircut and shave, which Calabria had paid for (I tipped the guy five bucks for preserving both ears), I found my way to a bank of phone booths in the lobby. I spent a nickel and Bryce put me on with Maggie.

“Where are you?” she asked, her concern edged with irritation. “I called downstairs to see if you’d have breakfast with me, but got no answer.”

“I’m at the Waldorf,” I said. “I had breakfast in Honey Daily’s suite. Cooked it for me herself.”

“. . . Are you planning to sleep with all the suspects?”

“No, I thought I’d take the women, and you could start with Spiegel and Shulman.”

I could almost hear her shudder over the line.

“Anything interesting to report?” she asked. “Besides your love life?”

I filled her in about Honey’s take on Rod Krane and Louis Cohn and Will Hander as suspects, as well as Hank Morella dropping by for Donny’s things. And finished up with my close shave with Calabria and company.

“You took him on as a client?” she asked. “Since when are you taking on clients?”

“Since I can pick up an easy ten grand and get Frank Calabria’s cooperation.”

“You think we’ll need it?”

“Maggie, I don’t know. I really don’t. But it’s nice to know Calabria will take my calls. Donny came out of the rackets, and who can say his murder isn’t connected?”

“More hoodlums die by violence,” Maggie said philosophically, “than editors or publishers.”

“Yeah, and more hoodlums die by violence in Americana comic books than in real life. You haven’t changed your mind about attending the funeral, have you?”

“No. No, that’s all yours.”

“You don’t think less of me, do you?”

“For what, Jack?”

“My slumber party with Donny’s girlfriend.”

“That’s right, Jack,” one of the world’s most famous striptease artists said, “I’m shocked by the very notion of sex. I hope you watched those movies about venereal disease when you were in the army.”

“Why, which ones did you star in?”

I could hear her trying not to laugh at that, then she said, “You’ve got the whole morning left—next stop?”

“Americana Comics,” I said. “That whoosh you’re about to hear is me flying over there.”

CHAPTER SIX FUNNY BOOKS ARE NO LAUGHING MATTER!

The morning was overcast and cool, and the few blocks from the Waldorf over to the editorial offices of Americana Comics on Lexington Avenue made for a pleasant, even bracing walk. The lack of July heat made Manhattan pedestrians less surly than the norm, and I only got sworn at three times and wasn’t spit upon at all. I still would rather have had time to stop at my digs for a shower, but the fresh shave and haircut made me feel human enough to venture into the world. Donny’s funeral would kill the afternoon, so I needed to squeeze some life out of the hours available.

The Americana waiting room on the fourth floor of the Dixon Building on Lexington Avenue might have been any austerely businesslike reception area but for one thing: on the wood-paneled wall behind a good-looking blonde receptionist loomed a huge gold-framed portrait . . . not of the founder of the company (except perhaps figuratively), rather of a muscular figure in a flapping blue cape and red muscleman tights with a white W on his expansive chest, and blue boots. Fists at his waist, smiling confidently, chin up, Wonder Guy stood on an outcropping of rock, poised against a blue sky streaked by white clouds, with a Manhattan skyline faintly discernible at a distant horizon.

The waiting room had half a dozen chairs at left and right, with end tables providing the latest news magazines but no comic books—Americana’s product was for kids, but its offices were for the grown-ups. Closed doors on either side of the reception desk were labeled EDITORIAL and PRODUCTION, respectively.

The blonde guarding the gate wore black-rimmed glasses, as if to mask her beauty—the tactic might have worked for mild-mannered radio reporter Ron Benson, Wonder Guy’s secret identity, but this doll in the well-filled white blouse with lace-filled keyhole neckline needed a better disguise.

She knew me enough to say, “Good morning, Mr. Starr,” though I didn’t remember her name and no nameplate on her desk was there to remind me. I did, however, recall how nice her legs were, having seen her up and out from behind that desk a few times.

And before you label me a shameless ogler of feminine pulchritude, let me defend myself by saying all the distaff staffers at Americana were notoriously good-looking, the best legs and fullest busts on display in any single Manhattan office.

This was yet another part of Donny Harrison’s enduring legacy.

Even Wonder Guy seemed to have a certain leer going in that great big painting. Of course, the portrait—the accomplished oil technique of which was something that would have eluded cartoonist Moe Shulman—was the work of an artist who used to provide raunchy covers to Donny’s old sexy pulp magazines.

Somehow that said it all—that the signature painting of the red-white-and-blue hero of America’s youth had been executed by a guy who more commonly depicted slobbering males (mad scientists, cannibals, Red Indians) in the process of ripping the remaining shreds of clothing off tied-up nubile maidens.

“Isn’t it terrible about Mr. Harrison?” the receptionist said, big brown eyes behind the glasses staring up at me with unblinking insincerity.