Seduction of the Innocent (22 page)

“No argument here.”

“Anyway, I saw him on that
Barray Soiree
show, with your stepmother.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right.”

Our goulash arrived, its wonderful aroma steaming up at us, when suddenly I realized somebody was standing next to our table, hovering, and it wasn’t a waiter.

“Jack Starr,” Lehman said in that familiar nasal whine, after giving Sylvia a little nod of acknowledgment. “Good evening to you.”

He was in a gray suit with a floppy black bow tie, his hair again winging right and left, as if he were about to take flight, his mustache twitching with pleasure at seeing me. I had no mustache, but I guarantee you if I had, it wouldn’t have been twitching with delight.

“Mr. Lehman,” I said. “Surprised to see you here. I figured you more for the White Horse Tavern type, or maybe Chumley’s.”

“There are evenings when you could find me at either,” he said pleasantly. “But man does not live by bongos and espresso alone.”

“I guess not,” I said, much more interested in the goulash than this conversation.

He frowned. “And yet...isn’t it ironic that we should meet on these premises?”

“Why is that?”

He glanced upward, whether to heaven or the 35th floor, I couldn’t tell you. “The loss of my friend and associate, Werner Frederick. Such a tragedy.”

The last time I’d talked to him, he was letting me know how much bigger an expert he was on Any Damn Subject than his late “friend.”

“You’ve obviously just been served your supper,” he said, “and I don’t mean to intrude. I’ll call your office tomorrow and we’ll make an appointment.”

I frowned up at him. “For what?”

The mustache twitched some more. “Well, perhaps you won’t be involved. It’s more Miss Starr’s bailiwick.”

“What is?”

“It’s just that...much as I dislike capitalizing on the misfortune of others...with Dr. Frederick gone, you will need someone
else
to write that new column for you.”

Oh for Christ’s sake....

He nodded to me, the wings of hair bouncing, and started off; then he shot a condescending little glance at Sylvia. “And I can assure you, Mr. Starr, that I would
not
need any writing assistance.”

He returned to his table where the waiter brought him the check, which he signed, and I said, “What a pompous jackass.”

“I guess he didn’t realize,” Sylvia said, having a delicate bite of the steamy goulash, “that without Dr. Frederick, there is no column.”

I hadn’t gotten into this with her yet, so before taking another bite, I said, “Not necessarily.”

Her expression was curious and hopeful.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said.

And we did, at my apartment, which was her first visit. She passed the test with flying colors, loving the framed funny-page artwork and the Bauhaus furnishings. I do keep a liquor cart and made her a martini, olive and all. Just because you’re on the wagon, that doesn’t mean you can’t still be a good host. And ply attractive females with alcoholic beverages.

Now lest you think there was any quid pro quo going on, let me assure you: my telling Dr. Winters about the chance Maggie was offering her, to try out for an advice column of her own, did not have anything to do with us necking on the couch. Nor did it have anything to do with me turning down the lights, leaving only one modest end-table lamp on its dimmest setting, and unzipping the back of her dress, and discovering that she had the most beautiful full breasts in the world. She had worn no bra, and when she shimmied out of the dress, turned out to be free of panties, as well.

She stood before me like Venus de Milo with arms and said, shyly, “Don’t think ill of me. I’m no loose woman. I just don’t like the lines that underthings make against my clothes.”

“That’s a perfectly reasonable policy,” I said, as I stared unabashed at the evidence I’d been seeking, and it had nothing to do with a murder case.

She was,
as the saying goes,
a real blonde.

I was sitting on the couch and then she was sitting on me, and her expression as she ground herself exquisitely into me was dreamy and rapturous, lost in herself, just as I was lost in her, but when she finally came, she was looking at me, those dark blue eyes locked onto mine, where they stayed until our breathing had returned to normal.

After an awkward moment when I had to deal with the pants that were down around my ankles, I walked her into the bedroom, both of us naked now, except for me in my black stag-movie socks.

Earlier, when we’d first got to my digs, I had taken my coat off and she had realized for the first time that I was armed, that the shoulder-holstered .45 (a gift from the major, a relic of the Great War) (the gun, not the major) (well, either way really) had been with us the whole evening, and this seemed to frighten and excite her. Before I took the shoulder sling off, she touched the gun, caressed it gently, tenderly.

I forgot to ask her, later, if that might have had any psychological significance.

So, anyway, we walked naked, hand in hand, into the bedroom. She used the bathroom, then I did, and naked as Lyla Lamont the other day, we climbed into my already-slept-in bed and curled up, spoon-style.

We talked about this and that, and eventually got around to the event that so linked us: the murder of Dr. Frederick. I told her, much as I’d told Maggie (though the previous telling did not involve naked spooning), about the events of Friday after I’d sent her off in that cab outside the Waldorf.

Again, I told the tale of Bardwell and his monkey, and gave her chapter and verse about my wild experience in her native Greenwich Village with Pete Pine and Lyla Lamont, from the stairwell battle to the struggle for my innocence. Told her, also, about visiting the Entertaining Funnies offices, and how Will Allison had sought getaway money from his bosses.

“I just don’t think Will is a killer,” she said. There was no disclaimer of doctor/patient privacy this time. “He’s just a confused, creative boy. He blusters but he isn’t violent, not really. He’s an oddball in a society that doesn’t do well with oddballs.”

“I came to the same conclusion. Well, Sylvia...now you know everything I know. Is there a suspect you like?”

And without prompting, without my raising it, she said, “Neither that Bardwell nor his pet drinking buddy, Pine, is capable of this crime individually. But together? I think they might just be up to it.”

Finally I got around to giving her a detailed account of my kidnapping and beating at the hands of funny-book-distributing gangsters. Now it’s just possible I waited to tell her this until I had time to recover from our previous bout of affection on my front-room sofa. I won’t cop to that, but it is possible. Possible that I anticipated her sympathy, that I knew if I milked it right she’d un-spoon and roll over toward me and stroke my wounds, among other things, and I’d have another session with this gorgeous shrink, this time not on a couch.

She was asleep, her lovely naked bottom to me, and I was on my back, staring at a ceiling lost in the darkness of the windowless bedroom. I was half-asleep, doing a sort of inventory of what I’d done and seen over the last several days. Going through the suspect list yet again, trying to think like a psychologist about each one, figuring the most important aspect of solving this crime, even more than motive, was understanding who might be capable of the oddly staged “suicide,” with its various bizarre elements.

And that’s when it happened. Several small details collided like sparks starting a fire, or maybe two nuclei slamming into a subatomic particle to make a nuclear reaction. In the comics, when this kind of big idea comes to you, a light bulb goes off over the character’s head.

Well, this was one of those light bulb moments.

And when I turned on the real light bulb in the lamp by the bed, Sylvia rolled over and looked me with squinty eyes and mussed hair and said, “What is it?”

“You may need to get dressed.”

She blinked at me, shook her head a little, worked at getting her eyes to focus. “What? Why?”

“I need to talk to Maggie,” I said. “And if she comes down here, it’s probably better we both have clothes on.”

The Strip Joint was past legal capacity for this week’s edition of the televised
Barray Soiree.
The remote broadcast always pulled a decent crowd, but tonight—just one week after host Harry Barray and guest Maggie Starr had gone a few rounds over the comic-book flap—the usual attendees found the restaurant invaded by a number of special guests personally invited by Maggie...all principal players in the Dr. Werner Frederick murder mystery.

Representing Entertaining Funnies at a table for four were publisher Bob Price, his secretary-cum-fiancee Betty, editor/writer Hal Feldman, and artist Will Allison. Price and Feldman had been questioned and released, although Allison remained a suspect, according to Captain Pat Chandler, who was also in attendance, sharing a table up front with his wife and Dr. Sylvia Winters. And me.

Levinson Publications was represented as well, at a table almost adjacent to its EF rivals, with Charley Bardwell and a garishly attractive honey-headed doll I figured for a call girl, and Pete Pine, seated with a clothed-for-a-change Lyla Lamont, if you could call that form-fitting black sheath “clothed.” The couple had apparently kissed and made up, or maybe kicked and made up. The monkey had stayed home —the other monkey, that is. (Publisher Levinson himself, and Mrs. Levinson, remained on European vacation.)

Maggie had invited the two groups of comic-book professionals and—because of the business relationship between Starr Syndicate and both Levinson Publications and Entertaining Funnies—neither dared decline.

Host Barray had initially balked at doing another show on comic books, the very next week; but Maggie convinced the D.J. that the murder of Dr. Frederick was keeping the topic a hot one. Garson Lehman had agreed to appear again, essentially subbing for the late Frederick, so tonight’s broadcast would be very much a continuation or even a sequel to last week’s.

Sylvia—back in one of her trademark oversized sweater-and-slacks combos (charcoal this time) was watching me closely, realizing I was neither making small talk nor adoring eyes at her. Having spoken with Maggie Saturday night, as we put the pieces together, the lovely shrink surely felt the same tension in the cigarette-smoke-tinged air that I did.

She also noticed I was wearing the specially tailored navy suit again, which concealed my shoulder-holstered .45.

“This is more than just a TV show, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Maggie’s got something up her sleeve.”

“She doesn’t have any sleeves.”

Maggie was in a low-cut shimmering green cocktail dress, indeed sleeveless, with a jeweled rose brooch between her breasts, a third of which were exposed; those big green eyes of hers were the same shade as her dress. All that red hair was piled high, perhaps to distinguish her appearance from last week’s show when it brushed her shoulders. Her makeup was perfect if heavy, full-throttle war paint for public display, including a beauty mark on her right cheek. Making her the young-looking ponytailed woman who’d tended my wounds the other night was damn near impossible.