A Killing in Comics (14 page)

“A shame,” I said. “How’s the office holding up?”

“We’re all too busy to be sad,” she said, even though none of the waiting room chairs was occupied, and her desk—but for an appointment book, intercom box and blotter—was bare as a newborn’s behind. “We have to get a whole day’s work done by noon.”

“Ah. The funeral.”

“Yes.” Then she brightened. “We’re closing early!”

“Are you going?”

“Uh, no. None of us girls are. We were talking and some of us were planning to, but it’s funny . . . Mr. Cohn was quite insistent that this was only for close family and friends.”

She seemed quite befuddled by this exclusion. I, on the other hand, grasped immediately why a full row of busty, leggy secretaries might not be welcome by, say, Mrs. Harrison at her beloved husband’s service. Too bad, since I did have to attend (close friend), and it would have passed the time trying to guess which of the Americana girls Donny had merely pinched, and which he’d bent over a desk for some corporate punishment.

“Speaking of Mr. Cohn,” I said, “I’d like to see him.”

“I think he’s on an important long-distance call, Mr. Starr. But he should be done within half an hour. Would you care to wait?”

“How about Sy Mortimer? Is he in?”

“He is. Would you like me to buzz him?”

“Yes.”

She did, and Sy would see me—seventh office on the right.

Before I headed through the EDITORIAL door, however, I said to her, “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Daisy.”

“Daisy, would you be sure to let Mr. Cohn know that I’m here, and that I’d like to see him?”

“Certainly, Mr. Starr. Should I ring you in Mr. Mortimer’s office, when Mr. Cohn is available?”

“Would you?”

The EDITORIAL and PRODUCTION doors opened onto the same hallway, but to the right the hall emptied out into a big bullpen of artists. Death comes to us all, but life and commerce go on, as even now a dozen cartoonists, behind a battery of drawing boards, were at work on comic-book pages under a cloud of tobacco smoke. Some of these men in their twenties and thirties—shirtsleeves rolled up, ties loosened—would be penciling pages, others inking them, still more doing lettering, both the dialogue balloons and the explosive sound effects—BAM!, POW!, ZAP!, WHAM!

The smoky chamber was oddly joyless, and at least as silent as Donny Harrison’s funeral would be, each artist deep in his work, the only sounds the soft dissonant symphony of scratching pen tips and rubbing of pencil lead and rubber eraser against the tooth of bristol board, with an occasional grunt or groan providing percussion.

Attitudes toward their late publisher would be mixed among these men (female cartoonists were rare if not unknown in the comic-book business), as Donny had been renowned for paying freelancers well for the initial work, but retaining all rights.

And these men were freelancers, not employees, given space to work in out of the generosity of Americana’s heart, but without the benefits a company employee might expect or at least lobby for.

None of these fellows were creators of properties; you would rarely if ever find Rod Krane or Moe Shulman here (they had their own studios). This was the anonymous army of funny-book artists who drew various second-string superheroes and backup features and covers and occasionally
Wonder Guy
and
Batwing
stories, when the Krane and Shulman crews were unable to fill the need. Wonder Guy, after all, appeared in his own book as well as
Active Comics
and
World’s Strongest Heroes
; Batwing appeared in his own book, and
Detection Comics
as well as
World’s Strongest
.

Hundreds of pages a month had to be churned out to keep all that newsprint chugging along in four colors, to keep kids of all ages trading in their dimes for comic books.

A few faces looked up at me as I took in this factory of creativity, and the ones that recognized me and nodded, I nodded back at.

Then I headed left, down the carpeted hall. At right were editors’ offices—wood-and-glass fronted, providing no privacy (but evidence to bosses Donny and Louis that their people were hard at work). Some offices had double occupancy, but most were solo, the desks big and wooden and formidable, providing plenty of space for the oversize comic-page original art the editors would have to deal with.

Every single office had the cluttered look of ongoing, even frantic work, typical in a deadline-driven business like the comics. Cover proofs, some in black-and-white, others watercolored as printer’s guides, plus full-color printer’s proofs, were tacked on bulletin boards and sometimes Scotch-taped to walls; file cabinets were piled with papers and portfolios and original art and printed comic books.

At left I initially passed a long, narrow glass-and-wood fronted office filled with smaller wooden desks with typing stands. This was the secretarial pool, and a group of lovely young women who rivaled the Copacabana chorus line were machine-gunning along on their Smith Coronas.

The next room on the left was an open break area, half a dozen tables with two walls filled by counters and cupboards with a coffeemaker and all the trimmings. The other wall was home to a humming Coca-Cola machine and a refrigerator. Nobody was on break, so I slipped in and had a look inside the fridge.

Wax-wrapped sandwiches, some small individual bottles of milk and a few candy bars were about it—no insulin vials, although this was undoubtedly where Donny had kept them . . . meaning dozens of people at Americana had easy access to same.

Back in the hall, along the left wall—on the other side of which was the boardroom—were lined framed one-sheet posters of movie productions of Americana properties: the Republic
Wonder Guy
and
Batwing
serials, several of the
Wonder Guy
animated cartoons from MGM. A few industry magazine advertisements for the
Wonder Guy
radio show were also on display, and another frame showed off
Wonder Guy
and
Batwing
candy bar wrappers.

Finally I arrived at managing editor Sy Mortimer’s space, the last of the glass/wood-fronted offices, the next two—Donny Harrison’s and Louis Cohn’s—being larger and private. Donny, in particular, had not wanted to be disturbed while he was working, perhaps when he was giving dictation to one of those showgirl-worthy secretaries.

Sy Mortimer, ironically, had been a part of the circle of science-fiction fans in the ’30s that had included Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman. Though Mortimer was from the Bronx and the boys from Des Moines, they had met through the mail and joined forces in the so-called fanzines that they self-published, a form invented by Harry Spiegel—cartoons and book and movie reviews and science fiction created by teenaged enthusiasts for others like them.

Mortimer had parlayed this amateur work into editing pulp magazines for Donny Harrison, then became a literary agent for science-fiction writers he’d met as a fan and editor, and at the same time began writing comic-book scripts for Americana, creating two of their most unmemorable superheroes, the Blue Barracuda and the Red Archer.

Mortimer’s desk was as work-laden as any of the others, and glass-and-wood wall or not, the plump, round-faced, bald-on-top editor in shirtsleeves and loosened
Wonder Guy
tie, hunkered over a big piece of comic art with a blue pencil in his fist, didn’t spot me till I knocked. Then he brightened as if we were old buddies—we really weren’t, though we knew each other to speak to—and waved me on in, grinning.

“Morning, Sy,” I said. “Thanks for seeing me. I know this has to be a hard day for you.”

He wiped the grin off and worked up a solemn expression. “Yes, Jack, it really is.” He had a big, booming voice that damn near made the window glass rattle. He gesticulated a lot and, despite his unimpressive appearance, had a commanding manner. “But work is a solace. And Donny would’ve wanted us to stay in the saddle.”

“With such attractive female help as additional solace,” I said, and smiled, “I’m sure he would want you to . . . stay in the saddle. Mind if I sit?”

His expression curdled as he decided whether to acknowledge my sarcasm or not. “No. No, please do, Jack. But I do have several issues to get out to the printers today, and an abbreviated time span to do it in—”

I took the visitor’s chair opposite him, and rested an ankle on a knee. “Funny you should say that, ’cause somebody must’ve had an issue with Donny, too . . . and abbreviated
his
time span . . . right?”

“Right.” He shook his head, tossed the blue pencil on the artwork, an
Amazonia
page rife with underclad women running and jumping. “I thought it was a heart attack or something, or maybe Donny just got weak-headed from his condition and all, and passed out on that knife.”

“So did I.”

His eyebrows rose—they had plenty of room. “Yes, and thank God that’s how it wound up in the papers—a weird accident.”

“Well, they’ll get the real story sooner or later, Sy, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope they don’t. With Louis’s connections, who knows? Maybe the cops’ll keep it under wraps. That captain who dropped around, first thing this morning, he seemed okay enough.”

“He collected Donny’s insulin, right?”

“Right.” Mortimer shifted in his seat, sat forward. “What’s your interest in this, Jack? I mean, no offense, I get that Americana and the Starr Syndicate do business. But I never had the feeling that Donny Harrison was your favorite person in the world.”

“He wasn’t. The major was fond of him, though.”

Sy nodded; the overhead florescent lights, buzzing like mosquitoes, reflected on his bald pate. “A lot of people were fond of Donny, me included. He could be a hell of a lot of fun—nobody ever had a better way with the ol’ rack jobbers out in the hinterlands.”

“Cigars and booze and broads make a lot of friends.”

He pawed the air. “You make it sound cheap and sleazy. He was a fun-loving guy who liked people and people liked him. Donny would take doughnuts and coffee to the truckers loading up bundles of comics. He would—”

“Treat you like crap, Sy?”

That froze him. The fat little man with the booming big voice was reduced to whispering: “Why . . . why do you say that?”

“Because I’ve seen it. He belittled you, Sy. He made fun of you and made your life miserable, piling your desk with more work than Scrooge gave Marley.”

He leaned forward, pressing his presence on me. “Donny was no goddamn Scrooge!”

I kept my tone casual. “No. He paid you generously, and after you ate a fifty-pound bag of his fertilizer—or was it a one-hundred-pound bag? He rewarded your hard work with this position. How’s it going, incidentally?”

Mortimer had been managing editor for less than a year.

He swallowed, and began blinking. “Very well. Great. Wonderful. Why?”

“Because I understand Americana sales have dropped a third, since the end of the war.”

His shrug was twice as elaborate as necessary. “Market’s glutted. We’re still the top of the superhero heap.”

“What about Spiggot Publications and
Marvel Man
?”

He sat back and batted the air. “We still outsell them overall and, anyway, Louie’s taking care of that.”

“With the plagiarism lawsuit.”

“Right.” He came forward again. “What are we talking about, anyway, Jack? Why are you so down on everything and everybody? You’re asking more questions than that cop.”

“That cop doesn’t know what questions to ask. He’s not on the inside of this business like I am.”

His eyes narrowed. “So . . . what’s your interest in this awful tragedy? How does it affect Starr?”

“We syndicate the
Wonder Guy
and
Batwing
strips, and Spiegel and Shulman are both suspects, and for that matter so is Rod Krane.”

He laughed loud, a big forced laugh that probably didn’t even convince him. “Those pipsqueaks Harry and Moe, murder somebody? That’s dumber than anything we ever published. And Krane had no reason to want Donny out of the way—he’s got a much better contract than the boys, and if he has any complaints about Americana, I never heard ’em.”

“Nonetheless, I’m looking into the murder.”

He gestured to himself with both hands, and acted astounded. “So, what?
I’m
a suspect now?”

“Why, do you have a motive?”

His face turned white. “Don’t be an ass.”

Now I sat forward. “
Do
you have a motive, Sy? When I go asking around, what am I going to hear about you and Donny that you wish I wouldn’t?”

He swallowed and tried to smile, but if that sick thing was a smile, I never saw one. “If . . . if there was some disagreement or something, why would I tell you about it?”

I shrugged. “So I hear it here first. So any false accusations anybody makes will have the legs cut out from under them, by you telling me the true facts.”

“Well . . . we did get into it last week, I suppose, Donny and me. But that was just a business blowup, kind that happens, time to time.”

“What sort of business blowup?”

The sick supposed grin again. “I guess you know the boys . . . Harry and Moe . . . their contract comes up soon.”

“Right.”

“And . . . and they really don’t have a leg to stand on. The deal they made as kids may be lousy, but it’s legal.”

“So some say.”

He put a hand on his endless forehead, like he was taking his own temperature. “Well . . . I did something that maybe, might have, you know, given them ammunition, the boys.”

“Which is?”

He let out a long sigh and looked toward me but not at me, glazed. “Before I was editor here, Harry submitted an idea for a kid version of
Wonder Guy
—all about Wonder Guy’s childhood in Littleburg as a kid, Ron Benson growing up on a farm, dealing with his powers and having to keep them a secret.
Wonder Boy
.”