A Killing in Comics Read Online Free PDF Page A

for me. Half a century, you believe it? . . . I see so many friends here . . . my lovely bride, Selma . . . .”
    The most enthusiastic applause so far followed, and even Honey clapped politely, at my side, as Selma nodded around and smiled in acknowledgment.
    “I been blessed to have business partners who was also my friends . . . I see young Jack Starr, there—your pop, the major, where would we all be without him?”
    More applause. Nothing major.
    “And Louie, who counts every penny—is that a rental tux, Lou?”
    A little laughter.
    “And we want our talented boys to know we appreciate what they done over the years—Moe, Harry, Rod. . . .”
    Real applause. I glanced over and saw Harry beaming, bright as a beacon, but Moe looked glum and Krane smug.
    Donny was weaving through all this speechifying. He looked, frankly, a little sick, pale around the gills. And that costume was sopping.
    With his free hand he gestured, like a man trying to clear smoke, and with all the cigarettes and cigars in this room, there was some.
    “I want you people to know I love you all . . . I love you all . . . . Wonder Guy himself never had it better.”
    That was when he started to totter—a collective gasp went up—and then his legs went out from under him like a wobbly card table folding up and suddenly he belly flopped onto the floor, with a crunch . . . right onto the hand clenching the knife.
    I was the first one to him, and when I turned him over, it was the damnedest thing: the blade was stuck almost dead center in the W, jammed to the hilt from all that blubber hitting the white carpet so hard. Women were screaming, Honey and Mrs. Harrison included, and men, most of them Jewish, were yelling, “Jesus Christ!”
    A gray-faced, silent Donny hadn’t even had time to stop smiling. He was grinning up at the ceiling, or maybe the sky, as if Wonder Guy might be up there waving at him.
    If so, he was waving good-bye.

CHAPTER TWO STRIPPING IS MURDER!

    I settled into the comfy wine-colored tufted leather chair across from Maggie Starr, president of the Starr Newspaper Syndication Company (Starr Syndicate for short).
    Maggie’s chair was tufted leather as well, and even more comfortable, but deep brown and swivelable behind a cherry desk smaller than a Buick, just. The desk was stacked with work, neat little obsessive piles—letters and comic-strip submissions and color proofs and columnist copy.
    The office is a large narrow room with dark rich wood paneling, a very male bastion dating to when the major bought and remodeled the six-story brick building back in ’32. The floor was parquet and mostly covered by a massive Oriental rug, with the left wall taken up by bookshelves still holding a leather-bound collection of classics the major bought but never cracked; the right wall displayed an array of framed posters of Maggie’s Broadway revue, her three movies and two burlesque cards, one showing her billed above Abbott and Costello. The rear wall was wooden filing cabinets over which hung a dignified portrait of the major, framed in gilt. Various dark wood seat-upholstered chairs were lined against the walls, making it possible for a sizeable meeting to be held before Queen Maggie’s throne.
    Right now, next to me, were two of those chairs, awaiting our guests, Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman. They were due in twenty minutes, at 10 A.M.
    I’d filled Maggie in about Donny Harrison’s memorable birthday party last night, over dinner, in the private room in the Strip Joint, the restaurant that takes up the first floor of the Starr Building.
    I believe I mentioned the Strip Joint in passing, but you deserve more. When the major bought the building, a Chinese restaurant was in that space, and so it remained till Maggie ran across a fingernail in her eggroll, after which she refused to renew the lease, and put in her own restaurant (and hadn’t eaten Chinese since). The chef she imported from a chophouse in St. Louis, but the layout