Читать книгу The Comic Book Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

That was all Lindsey was going to learn from poor Patterson, at least right then.

The kid was only out for a couple of seconds, if he was really out at all. While Linc Morris and Lindsey got Patterson propped up, his legs straight out in front of him and his back against the glass display case, Janice Chiu stayed in front to watch the store. Poor Patterson was pale and sweating. His breathing was shallow and his hands trembled visibly.

Classic shock—any tenderfoot scout would recognize the symptoms. Was it the stress of the burglary made worse by Lindsey’s accusation? Or was it the knowledge that his scheme had failed and he was in deep trouble?

It could be either.

Patterson stirred and looked around. He fumbled around, looking upset. “Where—where are my glasses?”

Lindsey picked them up and handed them to him. Patterson fumbled them onto his nose. Linc Morris said, “Maybe I ought to call an ambulance, Terry.”

But Patterson shook his head. “I’m okay. I j-just felt a little dizzy. I didn’t eat breakfast. Maybe a bite of food—I mean—uh, a couple of bites of breakfast.”

“All right,” Lindsey told him, “there has to be an eating joint nearby. International Surety’ll buy you a Danish and coffee.”

Morris wanted to come along and make sure his boss was okay.

Why? Lindsey wondered. The loyalty of a worker to his employer? Are you kidding? Plain friendship? Or something a lot closer and a lot less healthy than that? They went for that more in San Francisco than here in the East Bay, but still....

Or...if it was an inside job, maybe Patterson and Morris were both in on it, and junior here wanted to make sure that his boss didn’t throw him to the wolves. The wolves being International Surety for starters, followed quickly by the cops.

Maybe Patterson figured that out too. He was starting to get his color back, and he told Morris to make the Hayward run for him, pick up the new shipment of comics from the distributor and bring it back to the store. Jan Chiu could keep watch over Comic Cavalcade and take care of the customers while Morris was gone.

Then Patterson, leaning a little on the older man, let Lindsey get him to the sidewalk. They crossed the street as soon as there was a break in the traffic. Lindsey led Patterson into the first eating place he saw, a black-and-white art deco place called Cody’s Café. He slid Patterson into a booth and stood in line to buy him a sweet pastry.

Patterson disappeared the Danish so fast Lindsey figured he must have missed his dinner last night as well as his breakfast this morning. Lindsey got him another, refilled his coffee cup, and said, “Well, how ’bout it, Terry? You ready to give everything back and drop it? Officer Plum there might be pretty annoyed with you for filing a false report, but I think we can still square it.”

Patterson shook his head.

“Sticking with your story?”

“It’s the truth, Mr. Lindsey.” He held up his hand like a witness in court. “So help me. I th-thought it was your job to be on my side, not against me.”

“That’s right. That’s why I don’t want to see you ruin yourself. Look, Terry, you’re just a kid. How old can you be—twenty-eight, thirty?” In person Patterson was substantially older than he sounded on the telephone—certainly no teenager.

“T-Twenty-six.”

“Don’t mess yourself up now. They’ll catch you. If the cops don’t, then we will—International Surety. You don’t think we’re going to pay out a quarter mil on this phony claim, do you? We’ll deny the claim, it’ll drag on for years. You’ll never see the money. But you will see the inside of a cell, I can promise you that!”

Maybe I overplayed that a little, Lindsey thought. Patterson put down his Danish and started to sweat again. Lindsey grabbed his wrist, but this time the kid didn’t faint.

Instead he started to cry.

A tall, skinny, twenty-six-year-old man slumping there in the middle of a crowded restaurant with every kind of Berkeley character imaginable sitting around him, reading newspapers and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and he was bawling.

“What can I do to convince you?” the kid sobbed. “I found the door jimmied when I came in this morning. Then I checked the stock and discovered the missing comics. How can I prove it? I’ll swear an oath. I’ll take a p-polygraph test. How’s that? Would you believe that if I pass it?”

“Let’s leave that for now.” Lindsey decided to let up on him a little. He’d been playing good-cop-bad-cop with the kid and taking both roles himself. You learned to do a lot of things in his job, and the plain honest unadorned truth was that Bart was darned good at it, and one of these days Harden at Regional was going to move up to National and Lindsey expected management to take him into account for Harden’s slot. The trouble was, his good work had been done in a little office, one man plus secretary. He’d been so loaded down all these years with routine that he’d never had time for anything else. He was like the character in the Disney Alice in Wonderland who had to run at top speed just to stay in one place.

This might be his big chance to shine, to be noticed by the big shots...if International Surety was still operating by the time the case was wrapped up. There had been rumors of a takeover bid from a bigger company. International Surety hadn’t been doing too well the past few years, and there was hardly an employee who wasn’t looking over his shoulder to see if something might be gaining on him.

Lindsey said, “Do you have a list of the missing items?”

“Off-Officer Plum took that.”

“You didn’t keep a copy?”

He shook his head. “B-But I can make another list,” he said.

“Thirty-five items? You memorized them?”

“Uh, I can see them,” he said. “I can just close my eyes and see the displays, the boxes, I can visualize everything that they took. Comics are my life, Mr. Lindsey. If I don’t get the money for the ones they took, I’ll lose my store, I’ll lose everything. I’ll never pay off the consignors.”

He felt around in his pockets for a stubby pencil, grabbed a napkin and started writing. Lindsey took the pencil and the napkin out of his hands and gave him an International Surety ballpoint and a lined pad.

He sat there making the list. He wrote down the first dozen or so without slowing down. Then he stopped and closed his eyes for a few seconds, opened them and wrote down a couple more, stopped again, wrote again. Finally he scanned the list, nodded, and handed it to Lindsey.

“It—It was the whole RTS order,” Patterson said. “I don’t know what I’ll do. What will George say? What about the consignors?”

Lindsey scanned the list, took his International Surety ballpoint back and slid it into his pocket. “Hold on,” he said. “What order did you say?”

“RTS.”

“Yeah. What’s that?”

“Uh, Ridge Technology Systems.”

Lindsey said, “You’ve lost me, Patterson. You run a comic book store, right? What’s Ridge Technology Systems and what do they have to do with a bunch of overpriced comic books?”

“Ridge was my customer. They were going to buy the comics.”

“Ridge Technology? That sounds like some kind of electronics outfit.”

“Y-Yeah,” Patterson said. “They build computers. We even have one of them in the store, for inventory and accounting. A Circuitron 60.”

Lindsey grinned. The computer at International Surety was a Circuitron 60. He remembered the classes on how to use the thing. He had gone first, then sent Ms. Wilbur. When she came back she helped him figure the thing out. He didn’t know or care who built it. To him, computers were generic, like jet liners or toothbrushes or VCRs. You just use them, and don’t pay any more attention to them than you have to.

“You often sell comic books to high-tech corporations?” Patterson shook his head. “No. Uh, could I have another Danish?”

Lindsey got him one. He had to stand in line again, and he glanced at Patterson to make sure he didn’t slip away. He didn’t.

“This is the first time,” Patterson said. “Usually we sell to private collectors. But this guy came in one day—”

“What guy?” Lindsey had his pocket organizer in his hand, ready to jot down the name.

“George. George, uh, Dunn. He came from RTS, he had this computer printout with a list of comic books. He said his company wanted to buy them as an investment. Something about tax shelters and needing to spend the money before the tax reform law took effect. He said they wanted exactly these comic books. He told me how much they were willing to pay for them and the prices looked about right to me so I said we’d try to assemble the collection they wanted.”

Lindsey studied the list Patterson had handed him. “They wanted these exact comic books? Titles, dates—exactly these and no others?”

“Well, uh, M-Mr. Dunn, George told me these were what they wanted. He said if they couldn’t get exactly these comics we could propose substitutes for them. Like another issue from the same era, of the same comic. Or another title in the same publisher’s line, with the same artists and features. Like, uh, the August ’44 Captain Marvel Adventures instead of the July ’44, or an EC book like Tales from the Crypt instead of The Vault of Horror.”

“Wait a minute. A what book like Tales from the Crypt?”

“EC. That was a publisher. They started out with things like Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from American History. EC stood for Educational Comics. Then they switched to horror and science fiction and changed the company to Entertaining Comics. So it was still EC, see?”

Lindsey nodded. “Okay. Now, what about Dunn, Terry?”

“Oh. Well, what I was saying—see, he really didn’t want to take any substitutes if he could help it. He said they might lower their offer or—or even go to another dealer if we didn’t get them exactly what they wanted.”

“And you got ’em?”

Patterson nodded, looking like a crane with Danish pastry crumbs tumbling down his chin. “It was a hard job. Some of the comics were in store stock, some came out of my own collection, and some came from consignors. But I got the whole order together for them. And now everything is gone. Everything!”

“You’re certain this list is complete and correct?” Lindsey asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Lindsey read the list again. Carefully this time, not just scanning it. If Patterson wasn’t pulling some new fast one, he decided, the kid had to have an eidetic memory. He not only had the thirty-five titles, but the date and issue number for each, a one-word comment on its condition, and a price. Lindsey looked at the prices and whistled.

“Twelve grand for a comic book?” he said.

“Th-Those are Overstreet prices, s-sir.”

“What?”

“Overstreet. Uh, there are several books, uh, price guides for comic collectors. Overstreet is the oldest and the most authoritative. Especially for Golden Age—that’s 1940s and earlier. Thompson and Thompson is better for Silver Age—Sixties. Of course, everything is negotiable. Sometimes people will pay way over guide if they want something badly enough. Or, uh, if there’s not much demand for an item, you either have to sell it under guide price and just eat the difference, you know, or else you’re stuck with it. Or you can hold it and maybe the price will come back.”

“Twelve grand for a comic book,” Lindsey repeated. He still couldn’t believe it. Father would turn over in his grave if he knew that. If he had a grave, that is. He hadn’t made twelve thousand in his entire short career. Mother said he’d never made much money, when she was having one of her lucid spells and talking about Father and the old days.

Twelve thousand dollars.

“Give me a quick definition of Silver Age and Golden Age.” He wanted to be prepared for Harden’s questions. He knew they would come.

“Uh, the first really big boom in comics started when DC brought out Superman and Batman.”

“DC? That’s a publisher, like EC?”

“Right. It stood for Detective Comics. That was one of their early books. They started their superheroes with Superman in Action Comics for June ’38 and Batman in Detective for May ’39. The boom lasted all through World War Two—the GI’s really loved comics, see. And the comics from that period are called Golden Age.”

Lindsey nodded.

“Maybe I could have another bite?” Patterson asked. Lindsey grimaced but he bought the kid an English muffin.

Patterson downed half of it with a gob of marmalade, sighed, and said, “After the war the boom fizzled out. Most of the superhero comics died out. For a while there the EC’s were the only bright spot, and then the censors killed them off. Comics were pretty sparse for a decade or more. Then in February ’59 DC brought back the Flash and in November ’61 Marvel started Fantastic Four with the Human Torch in it and there was another big boom.”

Lindsey was trying to keep his eyes from glazing.

“Uh, that s-sixties boom was the Silver Age. Of comics, I mean.”

Lindsey nodded. He ran his finger down Patterson’s list. He almost dropped it. “There’s one here for twenty thousand! What’s this? Science Fiction, third issue, 1933?”

“It’s too bad that’s coverless. Still, it’s inscribed. It’s a unique item. With a cover it would be worth fifty.”

Lindsey picked up a paper napkin and wiped his forehead. “Is that according to the price guide?”

Patterson shook his head. “It isn’t a comic book. It—It’s a mimeographed mag. It was put out by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the guys who invented Superman. Superman collectabilia is a whole thing of its own, Mr. Lindsey. This has a short story in it with the very first appearance of the Superman character. He wasn’t anything like the final version, but it’s the very first. And this copy is inscribed by both Siegel and Shuster. There are people who would kill for it!”

He seemed to hear his own words as if somebody else were speaking. He turned pale and stopped.

Lindsey got the conversation back on track. “You have copies of these price guides in your store?”

“We stock them. You can have a couple, c-compliments of the house.” He managed a weak smile and a feeble laugh.

Lindsey nodded.

“Or—Or there’s an appraiser we could g-get to verify the prices. He knows my stock anyway, he knows all the stores.”

Darn, the kid was so sincere, so eager to please, Lindsey found himself starting to believe him. He decided to reserve judgment. He asked Patterson who the appraiser was, expecting to hear that he was some Berkeley vagabond who hadn’t had a bath since Gerald Ford was President.

Patterson paused, apparently searching his memory for the bozo’s name. What a character—he could reel off those thirty-five comic books complete with all the details, he could recite facts and dates of fifty years of publishing history, but he couldn’t remember a man’s name.

“Uh, Professor ben Zinowicz,” he said.

“Ben Zinowitz,” Lindsey repeated. “Is that Zinowitz, i-t-z?”

“I-c-z.”

“Okay. Lindsey jotted the name down. “Maybe I’ll pay our Professor Zinowicz a little visit. Where—”

“Uh, ben Zinowicz,” Patterson interrupted.

“Right,” Lindsey said, “Zinowicz.”

“Ben Zinowicz.”

“What the hell is this, an Abbott and Costello routine? That’s what I said, Zinowicz, Professor Ben Zinowicz.”

Patterson rattled off the dates, publishers, and prices of all the Abbott and Costello comic books ever published including the 3D issue for November 1953.

Lindsey held his head and groaned. Lindsey asked if Patterson had Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First routine in any of those comics, and he said he did, and then, light bulb clicking on above his head, Patterson said, “He’s Professor ben Zinowicz. Ben Zinowicz is his last name, like J. P. McEvoy. Uh, that was the guy who wrote Dixie Dugan. His full name is Nathan ben Zinowicz.”

He gave Lindsey directions to the prof’s office but warned him to phone first.

Lindsey said, “That’s okay, I’ll take a chance on catching him there.”

Patterson said that wasn’t it, ben Zinowicz was kind of picky and he didn’t like drop-ins.

He’d risk it, Lindsey repeated. For a moment he studied the directions to ben Zinowicz’s office. Then he said, “Look, Patterson. If you’re playing straight all you have to do is keep your nose clean. And phone me at once if you get any bright notions about who took the comic books or where they went.”

The kid nodded and blinked, eager to please.

“And,” Lindsey couldn’t help it, he was starting to feel like a tough private eye, “don’t leave town without telling me first.”

What about the police? Patterson wanted to know.

Lindsey said it would be a good idea to tell them too.They left the restaurant. Patterson went back to his shop, his shoulders slumped. Even if he was innocent he had good reason to be morose. Maybe, especially if he was innocent.

* * * *

Lindsey followed Patterson’s directions and found Professor ben Zinowicz’s office without much trouble. It was in a classic neo­Grecian building called Wheeler Hall. When Lindsey mentioned ben Zinowicz’s name, the receptionist in the main office acted as if he’d asked for the President—maybe the Pope. She gave him an office number and he walked away, straightening his tie.

Lindsey knocked on ben Zinowicz’s door and heard a crisp voice snap, “Come!” Lindsey thought, I hate people who respond to knocks or door bells or knocks with Come instead of Come in. You tell a dog to come, you tell a person to come in. People who answer knocks with Come have very serious self-esteem problems and try to establish dominance in relationships with those kinds of stunts.

Apparently ben Zinowicz had had his office for a long time, or else the university administration was really eager to keep him happy. The room was furnished with a thick Oriental rug, an antique desk and matching chairs. A beautiful painting hung in an ornate frame between dark-stained bookcases behind his desk. Lindsey did a double take at the oil painting. It was a family portrait of Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, and Huey, Louie, and Dewey.

“Yes?” Professor ben Zinowicz said.

He was sitting behind his desk, looking as if he were posing for a portrait himself. He could have been anywhere from fifty to sixty, with steel-gray hair, a deeply lined face, and sharp eyes the same shade as his hair.

Lindsey entered the room and closed the door. He sat in a chair that must have been worth as much as a 1940 issue of Shield-Wizard. Compared to the steel furniture at International Surety, this chair was like something out of Buckingham Palace: soft, rich leather, dark wood with a sheen like satin, and brass nail heads with a patina of age.

When Lindsey started to lift his briefcase onto ben Zinowicz’s desk, the look he got from the professor stopped him, and he set the briefcase on the floor instead.

Lindsey reached into his jacket, pulled out a business card and handed it to the professor.

Hardly glancing at the card, ben Zinowicz dropped it into a tooled-leather wastebasket. “You don’t have an appointment with me. If you’d called, you could have saved yourself the trouble. I carry life insurance through the University of California and auto and fire through my own broker. Please close the door behind you as you leave.”

“I’m not an insurance salesman.”

The prof grunted and extended a carefully groomed hand.

Lindsey started to retrieve his card from the wastebasket, then instead reached into his jacket and tendered a fresh one.

Ben Zinowicz scanned the fresh card, then looked expectantly at Bart Lindsey.

“I suppose you’re a personal security planner or a family protection counselor or...” He waved his hand, flashing an immaculate French cuff and a brilliant gold link. “...Or whatever the latest euphemism is to get to people who don’t want to talk to salesmen. I still don’t want to hear your pitch.”

“I’m a claims adjuster,” Lindsey told him.

Ben Zinowicz frowned. “I don’t recall filing any insurance claims against, ah, International Surety, Mr. Lindsey. Now, if you listen carefully I think you will hear your office in Walnut Creek summoning you home for an urgent conference.”

He dropped Lindsey’s card into the wastebasket along with its mate, and focused on a page of typescript that lay on his desktop. He took a gold-barreled pen from his suit pocket and jotted something on the margin of the script.

Lindsey said, “I’ve come to ask you for help. The claim is being filed on a commercial casualty account. Stock loss, burglary. The insured indicates an intention to claim an inordinate value for the stolen merchandise, and he suggested that you might verify his valuations. Of course, we’ll need an independent verification even if you do support the claim, but this is a preliminary appraisal.”

The prof looked up from his papers. “Let me understand you, Mr. Lindsey. Are you attempting to hire me as a consultant?”

Roast his soul, he was just another money-grubber! He couldn’t share his expertise with a member of the public whose tax money paid his doubtlessly excessive salary. “Okay, Prof,” Lindsey said, “let’s put it on that basis. Interested?”

That brought the first smile Lindsey had seen to the professor’s face. If you could call that thin, grudging tic a smile. “I might be.” He laced his fingers under his chin and leaned back in his overstuffed leather swivel chair. “Just what, specifically, do you want me to do? Bear in mind that I charge a sizable hourly fee.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred dollars per hour.”

The s.o.b. didn’t even blink!

Lindsey tried to keep a straight face. “For starters I just want you to look at a list of comic books and tell me what they’re worth.”

“A list?” His eyebrows tried to fly away. “Nobody can tell you what comics are worth from a list. Condition is everything. Two copies of the same comic book could be worth vastly different amounts.”

“Okay, give me an example.”

The professor dropped his hands to his lap and leaned his head so far back that Lindsey couldn’t tell whether he was reading a secret code off the ceiling or taking a nap. Finally he said, “Take Pep Comics, for example, one of the more interesting second-line superhero comics. The first issue was published by MLJ in January 1940 and featured the Shield, the Comet, the Rocket, and several other strips including Fu Chang. Golden Age superheroes are always in demand, and the Comet was an early Jack Cole strip, which adds to the value. Then the Yellow Peril type character is another plus.

“I would say that a mint copy of Pep number one would be worth five hundred dollars, easily. But a run-of-the-mill collectible copy, even if a dealer rated it as fine, would only be worth about half that. A lesser copy—but still complete with cover of course—might be worth only half that, and a very poor copy—coverless, for instance, or with important pages missing—would be virtually worthless.

“Then there are other variables. Is the copy inscribed by any of the artists or writers? Does it have an interesting provenance? Does it have a clear provenance at all? Has the paper been de-acidified? Is there rust around the staples? Have they been carefully removed and replaced with stainless material?”

He was waving his hands around, lecturing now. Lindsey stopped him. “Please, Prof! Do you have all that in your head? Or did you get it out of Overman?”

“Overstreet,” he corrected. “I regard Overstreet as occasionally useful, chiefly for bibliographic purposes. My own valuations are consistently more valid.”

Lindsey let out his breath. The guy didn’t suffer from an excess of modesty. He asked, “What about Science Fiction?”

Ben Zinowicz said, “What about it? You mean Heinlein and such?”

“No. The Superman thing.” He tried to recall what Patterson had told him. “From 1933. It’s coverless. Shouldn’t it be worthless? But it’s very valuable, don’t you agree?”

Now ben Zinowicz gave a real smile. “I think I know the item you mean. It’s nearly extinct—one, at most two copies survive. A cornerstone item of modern sequential narrative. As for condition—let’s just say that Science Fiction is the exception that proves the rule.”

Lindsey nodded. “I think you’re hired.” He crossed his fingers. Harden at Regional would have to go for this, or Lindsey would have to go over his head. One way or another, he could see that these silly missing comic books were going to make or break his career with International Surety. This might be the very opportunity he’d been searching for. Anyway, Hobart Lindsey had no intention of letting any case do him in. He was going to get to the bottom on this—and soon!