A Killing in Comics Read Free

she didn’t needle me. Just said, “He’s a sweetheart, around home.”
    Apparently “home” was this coral-and-emerald suite at the Waldorf.
    She turned the big light blue eyes on me and her eyelashes fluttered. I wondered for a moment if it was natural or an affection; then I decided I didn’t care.
    “I’d like to get to know you,” she said.
    “What would Donny say?”
    “I’m not slipping the key to my suite in your pocket or anything.”
    “Damn.”
    That got a little laugh, more than it merited. “I’ve watched you . . .”
    “From afar?”
    One corner of her mouth turned up. “Something like that. It’s just that . . . well, you’re the topic of conversation, time to time.”
    I sipped my rum and Coke, minus the rum. “Am I now? Is it my good looks or my rapier wit?”
    “They haven’t come up, your looks and your wit.”
    “Ah.”
    I can do both “Oh” and “Ah,” you see. For years I was on the short list for the Algonquin Round Table.
    She traded her empty martini glass for a full one on a tray a uniformed Waldorf waitress was gliding by with. Across the room Donny was doing the same, except his other hand was on the waitress’s rump.
    “But I have noticed them,” she said. And sipped. “Your good looks.”
    “And my wit.”
    “That, too.” She cocked her head, looked around the room. “Where is your stepmother?”
    “Not here, I’m afraid.”
    “Pity. I would have loved to meet her.”
    “I’m afraid she’s at the office.”
    Her shrug was a little studied. “I would have thought she’d be here . . . that she’d be one of those flamboyant, bigger-than-life people. Filling up a room like this without even trying.”
    “Well,” I admitted, “she would if she were here. But she’s in one of her reclusive phases. Afraid I’m the sole emissary of the Starr Syndicate.”
    Honey frowned and managed not to produce any wrinkles, all eyes and mouth; impressive. “What do you mean, reclusive phase?”
    “It’s kind of personal.”
    “Personal for her, or you?”
    “. . . She’s a little on the vain side. When she thinks she’s too overweight to be seen in public, she hibernates.”
    “Oh my.”
    I’d said too much. I leaned closer. “Listen, she hasn’t porked up or anything. She’s probably twenty pounds over what she describes as her ‘fighting weight,’ and if she were here, she’d still be the best-looking woman in the room. Second best.”
    Honey didn’t pursue that, but the baby blues had a twinkle when she asked, “Your father was in business with Donny, wasn’t he?”
    I nodded. “The major had a printing concern with both Donny and Louis. Started out together printing Yiddish newspapers and worked their way all the way up the ladder to racing forms and smut.”
    “Smut?”
    “Well . . . sleaze, anyway. I wonder how many parents around the country know the publisher of Wonder Guy Comics started out shilling nudie pics of showgirls and strippers.”
    She studied me, her mouth amused but her eyes serious.
    One of the cliques, over near the bar (predictably), was strictly cartoonists—the creators of Wonder Guy , writer Harry Spiegel and artist Moe Shulman, and artist Rod Krane, creator of the other big Americana Comics success, Batwing, a sort of modern-day Zorro with pointy ears.
    Businesslike in a dark suit and dark blue tie, Harry was a little guy with a pie-pan face, gesticulating and loud and laughing too much; Moe was a head bigger, in a slept-in-looking brown suit and brown tie, with a big oblong head and glasses so thick they made his little eyes seem normal size. Krane was in between in height but seemed to loom over both men, a confident, dark-eyed guy with sharp, handsome features in a sharp, handsome dark gray Brooks Brothers with black and gray tie on a gray shirt. He was smoking a cigarette in a holder. Would I kid you?
    We’d both been working on our drinks for a few seconds, just lolling in the chatter and clink and smoke and jazzy