A Killing in Comics Read Free Page B

were halfway to the little portable bar the Waldorf had provided, along with a uniformed bartender, when Donny trundled up, his Wonder Guy costume soaking with sweat. He was between cigars and bourbons, for which small blessing I was grateful.
    He grinned at me, his bulging features friendly but the hand he laid on my shoulder squeezing a little too hard. “You ain’t trying to steal my private secretary, are ya, kid?”
    “No, Donny. I was just getting to know her. We’ve never met. Somehow she was never around the office when I dropped by.”
    He just smiled at that, flashing his big fake choppers. My God, he was perspiring, even for Donny. Then he whispered in my shell-like ear.
    “You’re not up to something, are you, kid?”
    “No.”
    “Don’t mean with Honey, here. You’re not that dumb. I mean with the boys.”
    He meant Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman.
    “I don’t follow you, Donny.”
    “Don’t you and Maggie get cute, is all I’m saying.”
    I turned to look at him, close enough to kiss him, which I chose not to. “Maggie’s gorgeous and I’m a handsome devil. Cute doesn’t come into it.”
    That made him laugh; his breath was everything tobacco and booze could accomplish in one mouth. He patted my cheek, a little too hard to be affectionate.
    “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said with good-natured menace, and bounded off, cape flapping. He was heading toward the table with the big sheet cake and mints and nuts, like at a wedding. A spread of hors d’oeuvres was at another table in the dining room adjacent—Donny was feeling in a generous birthday mood.
    At the bar I got a fresh glass of Coke on the rocks and Honey noticed I was more a Shirley Temple than martini kind of guy.
    “You aren’t on the job, are you?” she asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well . . . my understanding is, you’re kind of a troubleshooter for the Starr Syndicate.”
    “My official title is vice president.”
    A single eyebrow rose. “I was thinking of your duties. If there’s a lawsuit, or if one of the cartoonists or columnists gets in a jam, don’t you . . . step in?”
    “You might say that.”
    Now both eyebrows hiked. Still no wrinkles. “Then you’re not . . . an editor or anything.”
    I shrugged. “I offer an opinion, when asked.”
    “Are you asked?”
    “Time to time. What are you getting at?”
    “I don’t know. I just noticed you were drinking, uh . . .”
    “Rum and Coke, minus the rum?”
    She smiled. She had lovely teeth. Much nicer than Donny’s, even if he had paid top dollar for his. “I thought . . . I thought maybe Donny had . . . nothing. Sorry.”
    She hadn’t heard any of what her charming part-time room-mate had whispered to me.
    “Oh,” I said. “You thought Donny had asked my . . . stepmother to send me over as a sort of . . . bodyguard. Security person? Because of certain . . . tensions.”
    Tensions like Mrs. Harrison being present. Tensions like the storm brewing between Americana Comics and the team who created Wonder Guy .
    “Something like that,” she admitted.
    “Nothing like that. That’s not a gun in my pocket, I’m just glad to see you. It’s just . . . I don’t drink spirits.”
    “Oh.”
    “I used to.”
    “. . . Oh.”
    “I majored in drinking in college and they flunked me out for doing such a good job. Then when I was in the service, I was in position to see, well . . . the results of overambitious drinking, let’s say.”
    She cocked her head again. I liked the way her blonde locks fell when she did that. I liked the intelligence in those big light blue eyes, too. If I had been drinking spirits, I would have been in love with her by now, instead of only halfway there.
    I answered her unposed question. “I was stateside, during the war. I was in the military police. I put a lot of drunk kids in the stockade. It . . . sobered me up.”
    “That’s . . . that’s admirable.”
    “Yeah, I was up for sainthood, till the Catholics