A Killing in Comics Read Online Free PDF

and decor of the place was all her own doing.
    When you come in off the street, the bar is at left and the bar-room area takes up the front third of the long, narrow space. The front area is dark wood trim and glass and chrome, and the tan plaster walls are arrayed with signed framed photos of Maggie and her fellow (if “fellow” is the word) strippers. The barmaids wear white shirts with black tuxedo ties and black tuxedo pants and, often, the same faces as certain of the girls in the framed pics. Since stripping was still illegal in New York—part of Mayor La Guardia’s lasting legacy—Maggie provided work for retired Manhattanite striptease artists, as well as currently practicing ecdysiasts, when they were between gigs on the road.
    The rear two-thirds of the space was given over to the restaurant, wooden booths and linen-covered tables, and the walls were white but covered with cartoons drawn right on the painted plaster. Maggie’s grand opening, in ’42, had been cartoonists only, the night before the National Cartoonists Society had their annual dinner; so not only had the Starr Syndicate talent drawn their famous characters on the walls, so had King Features luminaries like Alex Raymond and his Flash Gordon and Chic Young and Blondie , and the Tribune Syndicate’s Chester Gould with Dick Tracy and Harold Gray with Little Orphan Annie , and even NEA’s V. T. Hamlin ( Alley Oop ) and Roy Crane ( Captain Easy ).
    So the Strip Joint served up both brands of strippers, the burlesque kind and the funny-paper variety, not to mention its famed strip steak. Lunch attracted businessmen who enjoyed being fussed over by pretty (if fully clothed) peelers; and supper, early and late, brought in a largely out-of-town crowd, particularly with the theater scene so nearby.
    Even so, the restaurant business is rough, and I suspect Maggie kept the Strip Joint going so she didn’t have to either hire a live-in cook or sling a pot or pan herself. When she was at her fighting weight (118), she might doll up and mingle with the guests and take a table out with the public, signing autographs and flirting with the men and telling the women how stunning they looked and pointing out Popeye and Nancy and Wonder Guy on the walls to the kiddies.
    But when she was in her reclusive mode, Maggie had her meals sent up on trays, which she ate either in her office or up in her top-floor living quarters. Occasionally she ate in a small private room in the restaurant—designed to accommodate a single table for no more than six—when she had a guest or when she needed to talk business over a meal with one of her minions. Like me.
    I guess while I’m at it I should give you the full layout. Street level is the restaurant. What we call the first floor is the editorial offices of the syndicate, the second floor is sales and distribution, the third is my apartment, the fourth is a reception area, Maggie’s office and her personal gym, the fifth is her suite of rooms. These are all laid out boxcar-style, with a street entrance separate from the restaurant and a postage-stamp entry with an elevator including uniformed operator, eight to six, door locked otherwise.
    So in that private Strip Joint alcove last night, over a bowl of potato soup (Donny dying took a bite out of my appetite), I’d filled Maggie in on the birthday party. She was eating a meal consisting strictly of salad with lots of rabbit food in it and vinegar and oil dressing. She was doing this because she was “huge” (my guess: 135 pounds). She hadn’t said much, except, “The major loved Donny. I never understood why.”
    Mostly I reported everything I’d witnessed and everyone I’d seen there, not detailing my flirtation with Honey Daily. I have a near-photographic memory, although Maggie has on occasion accused me of having a pornographic memory instead, which is partly why I left out having developed a real rapport with the late birthday honoree’s mistress.
    But that was