A Killing in Comics Read online

  I escorted her to that couch, near where a martini glass rested on the glass table, making a wet circle. The air-conditioning was on high, almost uncomfortably so, and my mind automatically and ridiculously looked at the fireplace and wished it were going.

  I sat next to her and she nestled against me, grabbing on to my arm like a Titanic survivor clinging to a floating chunk of deck chair. The lighting was subdued, with only one of several lamps on, its square shade upheld by a female Balinese dancer on a white table; a male Balinese dancer was doing the same thing with an identical shade on an identical table, but in darkness, past a white door down the wall.

  The other day I hadn’t noticed that the modernity of the furnishings and the general decor—the drawn drapes on a big window we faced were light green with a coral geometric pattern—had these faux touches of antiquity. The lamp tables and a couple of spare chairs had an Egyptian feel, and a couple more disembodied white-plaster Greek noggins on pedestals stared at us from this corner or that one.

  At the same time, even as my nostrils tingled with her Chanel No. 5, I saw the ghosts of the guests of the birthday party, wandering around and even through the furniture—Donny in his cape and sweat-soaked superhero long johns flying from attendee to attendee, Rod Krane in his gray Brooks Brothers rewarding the room with his presence, Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman in their wrinkled off-the-rack numbers, Selma Harrison off to one side with her floral tent a stark contrast to Louis Cohn’s maitre d’s tuxedo.

  Right over by those drapes—they’d been open onto the city at the party, the Empire State in the background—the table had stretched with Donny’s birthday cake. With the lighting so dim, a discolored patch on the floor was hard to make out, and at first I thought it was my imagination.

  I was sitting up.

  She said, not quite slurring, “Liquor cart’s in the bedroom. You want something? . . . Oh, but you don’t drink.”

  “You have any Coca-Cola?”

  “Sure. It’s in the kitchen.” She pointed and her red-nailed forefinger tickled the air. “Over there.”

  She indicated the white door between the two white tables with the Balinese dancer lamps.

  “I’ll get it myself,” I said, and rose.

  I glanced at her, and she was slumped back into an emerald leather cushion, eyes closed, a provocative pile of blonde hair, pink flesh and black taffeta.

  But I took a small detour, to see if my imagination was working overtime or if there really was a big fat stain on the plush white carpeting, right where Donny had fallen. I crouched like Sherlock Holmes trying to find a magnifying glass he’d dropped, finding instead that (despite the lack of light) my eyes were doing fine.

  An area roughly the size of dead Donny had discolored the carpet, all right, turning it a sort of sick gray, as best I could tell in this lighting. That knife had gone in Donny and held the blood in, the cork in a bottle—there’d been precious little spillage, and the knife had not been removed when the body had been, by the ambulance boys—I remembered that clearly, since it was one more bizarre aspect of that offbeat birthday party.

  Then why was the carpet so discolored? And, anyway, blood wouldn’t have made this gray smear. Had the cops noticed this last night? Had Chandler been here today? I rose and glanced over at the couch where Honey appeared asleep.

  Shrugging to myself, I went through the white door into a white kitchen—medium-size, but it had probably been crowded when the Waldorf caterers were using it as a staging station. Much of the floor space was taken up by a red-topped Formica table with four red plastic-upholstered chairs, and two walls were cabinets above counter with doors below, another wall was given over to a little more counter and cabinets but mostly double sink and a big refrigerator. And a second door connected to the dining room.

  Still, the space was small enough that you’d imagine any guest who ducked in to fiddle with something in the refrigerator would get noticed.

  Speaking of the fridge, I checked it to see if any insulin bottle was still in there. It wasn’t—Chandler must have been here today, or his men; the cops last night wouldn’t likely have thought to take the bottle for testing, Donny’s demise still seeming an accident.

  The refrigerator didn’t have much of anything in it but a half-gone bottle of milk, some veggies, half a carton of eggs, some cold cuts and bottles of 7-Up and Coke. I took one of the latter, found an opener in a drawer and a glass in a cabinet and poured and thought.

  I set the fizzing glass of Coke on the counter, found a small sharp knife in another drawer, and fished around for longer than I’d have liked in other drawers until I came across recipe cards, each in a little yellow envelope fronted by the beaming, beautiful and utterly sexless mug of that fictional housewife, Betty Crocker.

  One of these envelopes I liberated, slipping it in my suitcoat pocket, dropping the knife in the other, finally exiting the kitchen into the dimly lighted living room, leaving the glass of Coke behind.

  The slumping Honey looked asleep. Certainly her eyes were closed and she was breathing regular and heavy.

  So, I crept back to that suspicious stain and knelt again and cut off a few tufts of discolored carpet, tucking them away inside the Betty Crocker envelope, which went back into one suitcoat pocket, even as the little sharp knife went into the other suitcoat pocket.

  Rising from my knee like a rejected suitor, I noted Honey’s continuing sleep state, and went back into the kitchen, returning the knife to its drawer and reemerging with my Coke.

  I resumed my position at her side on the couch and her arms found my nearest one and clung again.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Her eyelids fluttered.

  “Hey you,” I said.

  The eyelids fluttered some more and opened enough to peer up at me. “I know you,” she said. “You’re that flirt.”

  “That’s right. When’s the last time you ate?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Today?”

  “I . . . I don’t think so.”

  “How many martinis have you had?”

  “I . . . I didn’t even get out of bed till four.”

  “Four P.M.?”

  She nodded and the blonde hair bounced, looking nicely mussed. That was when I realized she didn’t have a smidge of makeup on and still looked as glamorous as an Esquire layout.

  “You slept all day?” I asked.

  “I . . . I had help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Kind in a bottle.”

  “Booze?”

  She shook her head. “Pills.”

  I took her by both shoulders and made her look at me. “You didn’t overdose, did you, you little fool?”

  “I didn’t overdose. I’m no fool. Do I still like you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I only had three martinis. That’s not so much.”

  “Without having eaten? After God knows how many sedatives? You couldn’t be drunker.”

  “Sure I could. Your name is Jack, isn’t it?”

  I got up and turned on a few more lamps. Not enough to turn the living room into a blazing high noon, but plenty to make her squint in annoyance and yell, “Hey!”

  “We’re getting you something to eat.”

  She gestured vaguely, presumably toward a phone, though I hadn’t spotted any in the room. “Call down.”

  “Not room service, a real meal.” I went over and lifted her bodily off the sofa. “Go put some clothes on. Where’s the bedroom?”

  She pointed to another white door, over past the drapes, to the right.

  I walked her over there, past the stain and the drapes and more white Egyptian chairs and into a big darkened bedroom, the color scheme blue and white. The only light came from a bathroom whose door stood open, sending a shaft of white across the unmade blue satin bedspread—a double bed, with a matching satin tufted headboard.

  “Get dressed,” I said.

  She was over against the wall at right b
y double closet doors next to a dressing table with round mirror and round stuffed stool. Arrayed on a glass-topped table were half the fancy cut-glass bottles of perfume and such like in Manhattan. Feet planted but weaving, she studied me.

  “I don’t feel like . . . like getting dressed up.”

  I was sitting on the bed, using the white phone on her white nightstand. “I didn’t say get dressed up. You need a reservation a week ahead for the Starlight Roof, even if I could afford it.”

  She squinted at me. “Where then? I don’t feel like leaving the hotel.”

  “Shut up,” I said. I had the Oasis Lounge on the line. “Table for two in half an hour? . . . Fine . . . Starr.” I hung up. “We’re going down to Tony Sarg’s Oasis. Dress accordingly. A pith helmet maybe.”

  That made her laugh. She was drunk.

  I got up. “I’ll go drink my Coke. If you fall on your keister, try to make a lot of noise, would you? So I can ride to your rescue?”

  She stuck out her tongue at me. “I dare you to stay and watch.”

  “I can do that, but I’ll have to call down and get a later reservation.”

  With an elaborate, taunting shrug, she brought her hands to the bowed black sash at her waist and began undoing the dressing gown.

  Rolling my eyes for nobody’s benefit but yours, I went out and sat on the sofa by the unlit fireplace and drank my Coke. Suddenly it didn’t seem all that air-conditioned in the place.

  Twenty minutes later, she emerged from her bedroom. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to “dress up,” but I had no doubt she would have been welcome at the Starlight Roof. Her dress, which stopped just below her knees, was black but her shoulders and midriff were bare under misty black lace, her arms mostly bare, too. A simple strand of pearls was at her pink throat, and now her lips were rouged, red as blood.

  I was already on my feet. “You look swell.”

  “Thanks. I feel . . . better.”

  “So do I,” I said, going over to her. “Listen, a meal will do you good. Way you’re going, you’ll either starve yourself, or drown in martinis.”

  She managed a smile. The blue eyes didn’t look so bloodshot now, either—she must have used drops. “I didn’t fall on my keister, Mr. Starr . . . Jack. But you did ride to my rescue. Thank you.”

  “I’m available twenty-fours,” I said, “to beautiful women, anyway.”

  The Tony Sarg Oasis, off the lobby, was more cocktail lounge than restaurant, the curving wall decorated by a whimsical mural (courtesy of the cartoonist whose name graced the place) of Disneyesque animals—gin-guzzling giraffes, reeling rodents, tipsy tigers. A small bandstand of violinists and cellists put out the room’s signature Hungarian pop rhapsodies, with the main menu item (beyond sandwiches) reflecting the music with a tasty goulash that was a favorite of mine.

  So, as we sat beneath a fan-dancing elephant, I ordered this hearty specialty for both of us, plus another Coke for me and coffee for the lady. She did not object but requested cream. Thus it was that I set about to sober up this female in the midst of full-scale cocktail lapping.

  “I notice you don’t smoke,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Smoking ages a woman. I notice you don’t, either.”

  “I used to. But for me, smoking and drinking went together, so when drinking went, so did the Lucky Strikes.”

  She gestured to all the booze consumption as well as the haze of cigarette smoke. “Doesn’t it bother you, being in this atmosphere?”

  “No. After you’ve been off the sauce a while, you start to enjoy the edge you get, being one of the sober few in a soused-up joint like this.”

  She gave me that smiling-mouth-frowning-eyes expression that she should have patented. “Was that some kind of veiled dig?”

  “No. You seem sober enough right now. Just getting up and moving around and getting dressed was enough to set you on the straight and narrow. When you get some chow down you, you’ll be a new woman.”

  “Didn’t you like the old one?”

  “Nothing old about you, Honey. You’re still fine with me calling you ‘Honey,’ aren’t you?”

  “Jack, I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

  The Coke and coffee came.

  I sipped at the icy glass, then said, “I am sorry for your loss. I know Donny meant a lot to you.”

  She lifted her coffee cup to her lips and studied me over its rim while she drank; she was looking for sarcasm in my words and my face, and couldn’t find any.

  “Thank you,” she said, setting the cup down steadily. “I know Donny wasn’t your favorite person.”

  “He was a lot of people’s not favorite person.” I sat forward, spoke as softly as I dared, competing with “Golden Earrings” in the background. “Honey, am I the first person to drop around today?”

  Now just her eyes frowned. “Didn’t I tell you? That’s how, I mean, who woke me up, around four—a Captain Chandler, and some other police detective.”

  “I see. Then you’re aware that Donny’s death . . .”

  “Was a murder? Yes. Why do you think I was hitting the martinis so hard?” She shook her head, the blondeness bouncing. “You pop enough pills to sleep just short of forever, to try get away from the . . . the awfulness of losing somebody you care about. Then some goddamn policeman comes around and makes it . . . makes it even worse.”

  Her voice was trembling but her eyes were steady; no tears. Maybe she’d cried every tear she had out of her. Or maybe she was just steeling herself, digging into the capacity she had for living thirty-some years and not wrinkling that lovely mug an iota.

  “Was Chandler . . .” I tried to find the word. “. . . unpleasant? Rough on you?”

  “No, no. He was nice enough. Very gentlemanly. You know, he’s even cuter than you are.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” I said. “And, anyway, you don’t have to rub it in.”

  She smiled; her teeth might have been too large for some people’s tastes, but not mine—big and white and beautiful, framed in full red lips. “Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Jack.”

  “I’m dainty. Delicate. Remember that.”

  “I’ll try to.” She was still smiling, though she’d put the teeth away. “All Captain Chandler did was inform me about the murder, and ask a few questions, and asked if I minded if he looked around. I said of course not.”

  No wonder he was so goddamned nice—Honey was undoubtedly one of his top suspects, and the cute cop had been allowed to search her apartment without a warrant.

  I asked, “Did he take anything with him?”

  “Yes. Several bottles of insulin that were in my refrigerator. Donny had diabetes, you know. Donny always kept several bottles on hand at the apartment.”

  “And at work? And at home?”

  She nodded. “He always said, ‘Boy Scouts like me are always prepared.’ He had such a wonderful sense of humor.”

  Well, that was depressing to hear. Honey Daily, who laughed at all my jokes, found Donny Harrison a riot. I was going to have to rethink my material.

  The goulash came, and was as usual delicious. Honey damn near wolfed hers down, so this had been a good call. I even talked her into a little dessert, some cheesecake and strawberries, not Lindy’s worthy, but not bad.

  Our talk remained small over the meal and cheesecake. I learned that she had grown up in Cleveland, came to New York to try to be an actress. She admitted her good looks got her plenty of auditions, but that her lack of talent meant the only offers were the kind she could have gotten anywhere, from a Cleveland soda fountain to any New York street corner.

  She had switched showbiz gears and taken dancing lessons for a while—her parents, who ran a haberdashery back home, had agreed to stake her for a year out here to pursue her dream; but her terpsichorean talents weren’t any better than her thespian ones. Finally she and another failed actress signed up for a secretarial school, and here Honey excelled. After graduation, she worked for several bosses, but meeting Donny in 1
940 had changed her life.

  A waiter had taken the empty cheesecake plates away, and brought Honey more coffee and me some iced tea—Coke and cheesecake don’t mix—and I began to probe a little deeper. We were better acquainted now, and she was as sober as a judge, ruling out the high percentage of drunken New York judges, that is.

  I squeezed the lemon into my tea and asked, “What does Donny’s death do to your . . . situation?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Nothing? You mean, you’ll continue living in a Waldorf suite . . . . I don’t mean to overstep, but how is that possible?”

  She frowned enough now to show the potential for wrinkling. “You are overstepping a little, Jack.”

  I shifted in my seat, leaned forward to be heard over the syrupy “Gypsy Love Song,” the little string combo taking Victor Herbert way too seriously. “Honey, I want to be on the up and up with you. I’m looking into Donny’s murder.”

  Her eyes, tight with confusion and wide with sudden distrust, bore into me. “You’re . . . what? Why? . . . That sounds wrong, of course I want Donny’s murder looked into, and whoever did this awful thing brought to justice, but . . . that’s the police’s job. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. But I’m licensed investigator, Honey. And among my duties for the Starr Syndicate is protecting its interests.”

  She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “What interests?”

  “The Americana comic properties we syndicate. And their creators—like Spiegel and Shulman, for instance.”

  “Why them?”

  “Come on, Honey. You must know they’re bound to be prime suspects in this thing. Donny made his share of enemies, but they’re at the top of the list.”

  She untilted her skull but kept the eyes narrow. “And you want to . . . what? Help them, or . . . what?”

  “If they’re innocent, I want them cleared, fast. If they’re guilty, I want them caught the same way. Minimize the damage to the interested party.”

  “Interested party,” she said, and sipped coffee, “being the Starr Syndicate.”