A Killing in Comics (12 page)

He shrugged. “I didn’t drive Mr. Harrison in to work, hardly ever—he took the ferry and caught a cab, unless he knew he was going to have meetings, and then I drove him. Otherwise I stayed around home—Mrs. Harrison don’t drive, you see.”

“Ah. Then why do I have the impression that you’re on the Americana payroll?”

He frowned. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Hank,” I said patiently, “the major was in business with Donny and Louie. And the Starr Syndicate is in business with Americana.”

“Oh. Sure.” He shifted in the chair. “Mostly I work for the family. I do everything from cut the grass to get the dry cleaning. I guess . . . it’ll
all
be for the family, now.”

“So where do you live then, Hank? Out on Long Island?”

“Yes, I live over their garage. That’s better than it sounds—a real nice apartment. Triple garage.”

“How many cars do the Harrisons have?”

“Just the one Caddy. But there’s all kinds of junk out in that garage.” He frowned. “What I meant was, I have a nice big space up over there.”

“Swell. What was Donny like to work for?”

“He was all right.” Morella shrugged. “He wasn’t no saint, but somebody was out of line, killing him.”

“Don’t go out on a limb, Hank.”

He didn’t get that; the little dark eyes in the otherwise handsome mug were like two raisins on a slab of cinnamon bread. Or maybe I still had breakfast on the mind.

Looking a little flushed, Honey came in, a fetching if slightly absurd sight in her filmy dressing gown with a big brown leather suitcase in either hand, like she was taking a sudden trip.

She lugged them over and dropped them, heavily, next to Morella’s chair. “Here. What’s she going to do with them? Synagogue rummage sale?”

He swallowed, turning the cap in his hands like a steering wheel. “I don’t know, Miss Daily. I was just supposed pick his stuff up.”

“Well?” she asked, hands on hips, eyes and nostrils flaring. “You waiting for a tip?”

He swallowed. “No, ma’am.” He rose, nodded to me, said, “Nice seeing you, Jack,” and she stepped back to give him room as he got hold of the suitcases and trundled off. Shaking her head, she tromped after him disgustedly, and I guess got the door for him. I couldn’t see the foyer from where I sat.

The door slammed, and she came over and sat next to me and her arms were folded and her chin crinkled. “The nerve of that big gorilla,” she said. “Busting in on me like that.”

“He was just doing his job. Mrs. Harrison sent him?”

Her chin crinkled some more and her brow furrowed; the whole avoid-wrinkles regimen was out the window this morning. “She must have. The nasty bitch.”

Ignoring this touching sentiment for the widow of her late benefactor, I said, “So, then, Mrs. Harrison must have known about you.”

“She knows about me. She’s not an idiot. She’s a fat, pampered bitch, but not an idiot.” Her face turned toward mine. “So, you
know
that goon of hers, this Morelli creature?”

“Morella. Hank Morella. Sure.”

“What’s that Neanderthal’s story, anyway?”

That Neanderthal’s story was a fairly interesting one, and I shared it with her. Henry Morella had ties back to Frank Calabria, supposedly a cousin of one of Calabria’s top lieutenants, who requested of the mob boss that something nonviolent and noncriminal be found for his sister’s boy. And Morella
was
just a “boy,” back then, specifically a glorified office boy, a kid who served as Donny’s chief gopher.

“When I mentioned the other day,” I said to her, as she listened and sipped coffee, “that Donny began in the sleaze racket, you seemed in the dark.”

She nodded. “All I ever knew was he and Louie were in the printing business. The only publishing I heard about was Yiddish newspapers in the late ’20s, early ’30s.”

“Before your time,” I said with a shrug. “Hell, before
my
time. They published a line of magazines that were pretty risque for back then . . . a lot of them had ‘Saucy’ or ‘Spicy’ in the titles.”

Her eyes tightened; she was back to the nonwrinkling expressiveness I’d grown to know and love. “But they weren’t . . . pornographic or anything . . .”

“Not quite. The trade name for ’em was ‘smooshes’—pulp fiction magazines with a heavy dollop of sex, and particularly racy covers and illustrations. Some of the artists working at Americana today, doing patriotic funny books for kiddies, were responsible for that raunchy stuff. Donny also did showbiz mags with leg art of starlets and showgirls and strippers; also ‘art’ magazines with models who were so very artistic, they would even pose with their shirts off.”

She seemed mildly appalled. “
Wonder Guy
Donny was involved with that kind of trash?”

Didn’t have the heart to remind her what her role in
Wonder Guy
Donny’s life had been.

I flipped a hand. “That’s where the heroes of American kids everywhere were born—out of the muck of mags like
Spicy Models
. But I can’t get too indignant, considering both my mother and my two stepmothers appeared in those very pages.”

Her eyes sparkled and she laughed as she said, “Really? Oh, that’s wonderful.”

“You seem to be over the outrage of Donny publishing pornography.”

She made herself stop laughing. “I’m sorry. It just . . . struck my funny bone is all. But where does Morelli come in?”

“Morella. Well, Donny was trying to test the limits, you know—really see what he could get away with? So he published an un-airbrushed photo of a lovely lass in an issue of
Saucy Sweeties
. . .”

“What do you mean . . . un-airbrushed?”

“I mean, an untouched-up frontal view that revealed the blonde was a brunette.”

Honey covered her mouth with a red-nailed hand; those nails were starting to need some touch-up, themselves. She was amused and horrified, always an interesting combination.

“So,” I went on, “Donny got indicted for publishing obscene materials . . .”

“No!”

“Yes. And the DA’s office was looking at jail time.”

She shook her head, certain I was fantasizing or maybe hallucinating. “Donny never did a day in jail in his life!”

“No he didn’t . . . but Hank Morella did. Hank took full responsibility for that clear and yet fuzzy photo.”

Her eyes were bigger than Betty Boop’s. “Why on earth would he do that?”

“Well, Hank was listed as an editor on the masthead of several of Donny and Louie’s mags. He did no editing, of course, but the title helped justify the decent paycheck the kid earned, as a favor to silent-partner Calabria. Anyway, Donny retroactively anointed Hank the real editor of
Saucy Sweeties
, and Hank took the full blame, saying he’d sneaked in the questionable photo without Donny or Louie’s knowledge.”

Slowly shaking her head, she said, “I still don’t understand why Morelli . . . Morella . . . would
do
that?”

“He’s what we call in the detective business a fall guy, Honey. He took the heat off Donny. Served six months, and emerged to a lifetime position as Donny’s driver. Which is why he’s on Americana’s payroll.”

Her smile was as skeptical as it was pretty. “You’re making all of this up.”

“If I had that good an imagination,” I said, “I’d be
drawing
comic strips, not helping syndicate ’em.”

I rose, yawned, excused myself and said, “I need to take my leave, Miss Daily. All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy. But you whip up a mean omelet, and I would love to be invited back.”

A vision in white and pink and blonde, she stood and, holding on to one of my arms with both of hers, walked me toward the foyer and said, “Consider yourself the proud bearer of an open invitation. Only next time, call first. I must have looked a mess last night.”

“Frightening,” I said, and shivered.

We were at the door now.

“I bet you get slapped a lot,” she said.

“It has happened.”

I kissed her, and took my leave, glancing back to catch her wicked little smile and sweet little girl wave before the door closed.

She said nothing, and yet I could still hear her voice saying,
I like you. You’re silly.

And I could still remember how poorly Sylvester the Cat had fared in that cartoon . . .

 
 
 
To refer to what the Waldorf offered a guy in need of a haircut and shave as a barbershop would be like calling the Radio City Music Hall a movie house. I left my fedora at the hatcheck window and ambled into the gleaming marble-and-chrome chamber, rows of black-padded porcelain chairs at left and right, attended by a white-uniformed army of barbers, mirrors on facing walls making an infinity out of this world of scissors and hair tonic and scalp massages.

Down toward the left—past where the right wall of chairs halted to make way for manicure booths—waited one empty chair.

I knew that chair was empty for a reason, that reason being that Frank Calabria was seated in the one next to it. Calabria’s was the final chair near the back wall and its bench meant for half a dozen waiting customers. Right now that bench was taken up by only two individuals, the same two I’d seen last night in the hotel lobby: Calabria’s bagman Big Jim and the pockmarked hood with the loose-fitting suitcoat that failed to hide the obvious artillery.

Above the seated bodyguards, hanging off a cabinet knob like a precious painting on a museum wall, was the coat of a gray pin-striped suit, with a darker gray fedora hanging on the knob next to it. The jacket represented maybe two hundred bucks out of the total price of the suit it belonged to, while the black-banded fedora probably went for a meager hundred and fifty clams, give or take a pearl.

Once Frank Calabria’s lawyer had told him to stop wearing $350 suits to court; Calabria had informed said lawyer that he’d rather do time than wear cheap threads.

I ignored the counter where the barbershop version of a maitre d’ told you how long the wait was—assuming you were going to be allowed in—and strode to that empty chair and planted myself in it.

This got the attention of all kinds of people, though Calabria himself was under a hot towel and white cape. His barber, a little gray-haired, round-faced, black-mustached character, turned whiter than his smock and gave me the kind of look Dracula must get a lot.

The pockmarked threat started up off the bench, but ferret-faced Big Jim held him back, smiling at me (I guess you’d call what those misshapen yellow pegs added up to a smile) and whispering to his fellow bodyguard.

A skinny barber—black hair, also mustached—came up and began telling me this chair wasn’t available while at the same time Big Jim informed the face under the pile of steaming towel that Jack Starr was here. Calabria interrupted both men, staying under the towel, his voice muffled but easy to make out.

“Jack! You need a haircut?”

I said, “Yeah, Frank, and a shave. You mind? Chair was open.”

From under the towel, without knowing who he was addressing exactly, he said, “Give this kid a shave and a haircut, and put it on my tab! Kid’s a Silver Star winner, for Christ’s sake!”

When you’ve known somebody a long time, they can get away with calling you a kid. And when they’re Frank Calabria, they can call you anything they want.

The skinny barber washed my hair before he started cutting, by which time Calabria was in the middle of his shave. Over against the wall, the two seated bodyguards watched me like I was Old Faithful and might erupt any minute. Big Jim had a
Police Gazette
on his lap, the pockmarked one
Ring
, the boxing mag.

My barber, whose name tag said MARIO, started trimming without asking me for instructions. I decided not to spook him any further with such trifles as how I wanted my hair cut. I’d be lucky to make it out of Mario’s chair with both ears.

Calabria’s barber, the small round-faced gray-haired one (name tag: TONY), was not in the least nervous. My presence had been adjusted to. Calabria was, obviously, a regular customer. And Calabria would require and expect a steady hand.

Fifty-five maybe, Calabria was a big man—not tall, probably only five-eight or -nine, but wide-shouldered and massive without much apparent fat. He had a lumpy face that somehow arrived at something not unattractive, his widow’s-peaked hair on the blondish side with white coming in unobtrusively. He was like the best-looking iguana you ever saw.

“So a friend of ours died,” Calabria said.

Tony’s razor was expertly removing lather and whiskers.

Over the snip, snip, snip of Mario’s scissors, I said, “You mean, a friend of yours and mine, Frank? . . . Or a friend of the family?”

And he knew what “family” I meant.

Calabria laughed, but his face remained immobile—he had a blade at his throat, after all. “How old were you when I first saw you, kid?”

“I don’t know, Frank. Was it that time the major took me out to Belmont?”

“Maybe it was, yeah. Six? Seven?”

“Eight, probably. I don’t think the major would’ve taken a six-or seven-year-old to a racetrack.”

“Eight, say,” Calabria said. “And you was a wiseass even then.”

“Some things you never grow out of.”

With mirrors fore and aft, countless eyes around the shop were sneaking peeks, pretending not to. Scissors sang a metallic song, the nasal twang of manicurists providing a chorus, while scalp massage machines made like an orchestra of electric kazoos.

“I don’t scare you, do I, kid, like I do some of these panty-waists.”

“Frank, I just try not to do anything to make you want to scare me.”

“Ha. You come walkin’ in here like you own the place. Come over and sit down right next to me in a chair that’s empty on purpose.”

“I needed a shave.”

“And you wanted to talk to me, right, kid?”

“Why, sure—didn’t you ever want to kill two birds with one stone, Frank?”