A Killing in Comics (6 page)

Harry managed to glare at me and yet at the same time seem like he might bust out crying, which I had a feeling he hadn’t done yet, where the tragic loss of his publisher was concerned.

“Jack,” he said, and it was almost a whine, “you make me sound terrible. I don’t mean to gloat, really I don’t . . . but Donny stabbed Moe and me in the back, over and over. He and Louie Cohn stole and cheated and lied . . . Jack, Maggie—
you
know the story.”

We did—Harrison had paid $130 for the boys to turn their rejected
Wonder Guy
comic-strip samples into a cut-and-paste comic-book story. Buying all rights, as was typical at the time, and even now. He and Cohn had hired the boys to write and draw their own creation, paying them ten bucks a page.

Maggie was nodding. “But you have an industry-standard deal on the comic-strip version—fifty percent for you with the Starr Syndicate paying off Americana from our half. That’s one of the best contracts in the business.”

Harry’s grin split his face. “That’s because you and Jack here are salt of the earth. You’re a kid from Iowa like Moe and me, Maggie, and you don’t try to swindle and screw the talent. You’re not out to steal our dreams! That’s why we’re back to do business with you again.”

“But remember,” she said gently, “Americana blessed the Starr Syndicate contract—Donny and Louis tried to do right by you, in that instance at least.”

Finally Moe spoke up. “Yes, but you don’t know about the toys and the candy and the movies and the radio show.”

Maggie shrugged a little. “Admittedly, I don’t. That’s not any of my business.”

With the expression of a man taking in skunk, Harry said, “They set up a whole separate company for that. A Wonder Guy company that handles licensing and we don’t get a cent of it. They don’t even say our names on the radio show. Americana made a real killing off of our character, and we got zippo! Zilch, zally! Greedy bastards, Maggie. Horrible people. The kind of people Wonder Guy punches out or puts in jail.”

That was their problem, the boys. They were naive kids from Iowa who grew up on science-fiction magazines and hung around with other geeky unpopular kids and believed in the red-white-and-blue simplicity of pulp fiction and Hollywood morality plays. They were unprepared for a world where comic books featuring Wonder Guy punching out mobsters were financed in part by the likes of Frank Calabria.

But I didn’t go into that, and neither did Maggie. Spiegel and Shulman were purveyors of an unsophisticated version of America to kids of all ages, arrested-development creators who were themselves incapable of understanding the more complicated underbelly of not just the business they were in, but existence on the planet Earth itself.

As opposed to the planet Crylon.

“Let’s talk about
Funny Guy
,” Maggie said.

“Let’s!” Harry said brightly.

“You said Americana turned the property down.”

“Yes. Sy Mortimer rejected it outright, but then, when I pressed him, admitted Donny and Louis had put their personal kibosh on it—said we already had
enough
on our plates with
Wonder Guy
!”

“Do you?” Maggie asked, lifting her eyebrows again; God, how did she do that without wrinkling her forehead? Amazing.

“Maggie,” Harry said, “I’m one of the fastest writers in the business. Turning out scripts is no problem. Pages just fly out of my machine, like Wonder Guy up in the sky. And Moe’s got a great bunch of youngsters helping him out.”

Maggie had a thoughtful sip of coffee, then turned to his partner. “How much of the work are you able to do yourself, Moe?”

Moe, who was sipping coffee himself, frowned just a little—he’d picked up on that phrase:
Are you able to?

“I design all the characters,” he said, stiffly dignified, “and I do all the pencil layouts. And I ink the faces myself.”

I said, “Pretty standard. Probably more than Sam Fizer’s doing on
Mug O’Malley
.”

Harry nodded vigorously but Moe just looked at me.

Maggie gestured to the sample strips and cocked her head as she said, “Very professional work. We
are
interested. Have you placed it elsewhere, as a comic book?”

“Oh yes,” Harry said, bright-eyed. And bushy-tailed, goddamnit. “Comic Book Enterprises—one of Donny and Louie’s former editors runs it—have committed to six issues. Our names are
big
on the cover! We can coordinate the launch of the strip with the comic.”

“Good,” she said. “Is doing the property somewhere other than Americana a problem? I mean . . . I don’t mean to pry, but we’re all aware your contract comes due soon, on producing
Wonder Guy
comic books. And our arrangement with Americana on the strip version comes due only a few months after that.”

I said, “You fellas are aware, aren’t you, that Americana has the right, by contract, to specify who we use as artist and writer on the strip?”

Harry’s face fell. “You wouldn’t sell us out, would you?”

I shook my head, firmly. “Not a matter of selling you out. They can make us do it.”

Harry batted the air. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine. Zelly’s on top of it.”

Zelly was Bert Zelman, the team’s lawyer, a smart hustler whose shingle had only been hung out a year ago. Harry had met Zelman when they were in the service together, Harry having served two years stateside as a company clerk, still turning out
Wonder Guy
scripts in his off-duty time. Moe had been 4-f—five’ll get you ten, for his weak eyesight . . . .

I said, “If you boys actually did sell all rights, at the start of this shindig, couldn’t you get fired? What I mean is, we at Starr don’t want to be part of a disaster for you . . . giving you a home for
Funny Guy
and making you lose
Wonder Guy
.”

Harry had already started shaking his head halfway through that. “Jack, Jackie boy—we got them by the short and curlies . . . excuse me, Maggie, didn’t mean to be crude.”

“I’ll get over it,” she said lightly.

“But Donny and Louie made a big blunder,” Harry said, that face-splitting grin going again. “See, a few years ago, Moe and me submitted an idea for a spin-off feature—
Wonder Boy
. All about Wonder Guy’s years growing up as a fun-loving kid, a small-town prankster learning to harness his powers for good. Well, they flat-out rejected it—Donny and Louie said, stick to the grown-up version. Nobody’s gonna wanna see a kid version. Is exactly what they said. And in writing!”

I nodded, sipped Coke again. Maggie was just listening, fingertips tented.

Moe said, “And then a few months ago, they launched
Wonder Boy
as lead feature in
Exploits
. Without telling us. Without negotiating anything.”

“Lousy thieves!” Harry blurted.

Now Maggie was nodding. “And it’s a separate property. You may be right, fellas. They fouled up—they may well have opened the front door of the house.”

“Meaning,” I said, “in your contract renewal negotiations, you may get to rearrange all the furniture.”

“Yeah!” Harry said, his smile huge and happy.

“Yes,” Moe said, his smile small and sad.

“But, guys,” I began, sitting forward, “why
Funny Guy
? If you’re going to get
Wonder Guy
back . . . .”

“We just want to branch out a little,” Harry said. “You know—explore our wealth of creativity.”

But Moe cut through the BS. “Frankly, Miss Starr . . . Mr. Starr . . . we need to hedge our bets.”

“You get tied up in court,” I said, with a nod, “or things go badly, you’ll need work. And cash flow.”

Harry said, “I don’t think of it that way.”

But Moe admitted he did, saying, “Can’t have all our eggs in one basket.”

Harry shot Moe a nasty look, which was rare between them; they really were friends since high school. In Iowa. Christ.

From behind us came Bryce’s voice in the doorway. “Miss Starr? . . . Sorry, I know you said no interruptions. But I have a Captain Chandler on the line.”

“Captain of what?” Maggie asked, mildly irritated.

“The police, I suppose,” Bryce said, with a grandiose gesture. “Isn’t that what he meant when he said, ‘Homicide’?”

CHAPTER THREE THAT STABBING PAIN ISN’T FATAL ...

The heat was enough to make me wonder if I looked wilted in my single-breasted tropical worsted, which was blue; my tie was bluer, with cheerful brown birds painted on—they had a right to be happy, they couldn’t feel the heat—against a Sanright to be happy, they couldn’t feel the heat—against a Sanforized blue-and-white-striped cotton shirt. But only a lingering sense of style and a dab of dignity kept me from running out into the spray of the fire hydrant that was blasting half a dozen kids in swim trunks, urchins splashing and dancing around out on the pavement in front of the Tenth Precinct Station House at 230 West Twentieth Street.

The Tenth Precinct’s home lacked both style and dignity, a dingy six-story gray stone building fronted by three prominent arches framing a window, the entrance and a garage. Up two little steps and I was into the high-ceilinged reception area, decently cooled by overhead churning fans. At left was the receiving sergeant behind his judge’s-bench-like desk, where I stopped for directions.

The sarge didn’t even look up, just pointed over at the stairs where a painted sign with an upward-slanting arrow said HOMICIDE BUREAU, 3RD FLOOR. The stairs were creaky and the two flights stuffy, but soon I was through a door and under another whirring ceiling fan, trying to talk myself into thinking I was as cool as those kids out in the fire hydrant spray.

This medium-sized room was home to a reception desk and a small bullpen of four more desks for detectives (unmanned at the moment), as well as the expected pale green plaster walls, wire wastebaskets, hat rack, wooden benches, chairs and mismatched filing cabinets. Nothing about the dreary, institutional chamber built my confidence that the solving of Manhattan’s many murders was in good hands.

The receptionist, a severe woman in her forties in a white short-sleeved blouse and glasses and a black ribbony thing at her throat, was expecting me; or anyway Captain Chandler was, and I only sat on a wooden bench for five minutes before being summoned to enter through the wood-and-frosted-glass door reading CAPTAIN. Another door read COMMANDING OFFICER, so I was not at the top of the ladder; but in New York police department terms, captain’s up quite a few rungs.

Interestingly, Chandler had offered to come over to the Starr Syndicate personally, which raised all sorts of questions, complete with troubling potential answers.

I hadn’t actually talked to the captain, Bryce having been in full protective intermediary mode; but when Maggie’s assistant conveyed the captain’s desire to talk specifically to one Jack Starr and could he come over to our offices to do so, she said crisply to Bryce, “No,” then to me, “
You
go to
him
.”

In her reclusive phase, Maggie sees as few of her fellow human beings as possible.

So at 2 P.M., give or take, I was inside Captain Chandler’s private domain, a dreary office with a few wooden files, a bench against a wall, a window onto the city to my left as I entered, a window on a neighboring brick wall to my right. Under that window, where wainscoting met plaster, nails on the wooden trim held various well-thumbed manuals and directories on metal loops. The light green walls otherwise held scant decoration—a framed police department seal, a framed picture of a graduating class at the academy and assorted cracks and water stains.

Chandler’s desk, big and dark brown and beat-up, was in the middle of the room, putting the brick wall at his back, as well as a corner-positioned two-drawer file atop which were two framed photos (a pretty blonde wife posing alone and then with a boy and girl of grade-school age), a pipe rack and a coffee mug with CAPTAIN on it. Just in front of the file was a hat rack with one lonely brown fedora.