The War of the Worlds Murder (2 page)

“I can’t believe it!” this Randisi creature blurted.

Did I owe him money? I sometimes bought comic books and old paperbacks through the mail. Maybe he was a dealer I’d shorted on the purchase of Jim Thompson or Richard Stark paperbacks. He seemed harmless enough, if overenthusiastic—of medium size, solidly put together, but not a threat.

“
You
wrote the
Nolan
books!” he said, pointing a pleasantly accusing finger.

Nolan was the thief anti-hero of my two published novels.

“Right,” I said, waiting for a shoe to drop.

“Those are
great
! I love those books!”

My eyes tightened. “Really?”

He reared back and laughed, once. “Why? Don’t you believe me?”

“Well...it’s just that I never met anybody before who’s read my books...at least, that I wasn’t related to.”

“Well, I’m a fan. Big fan.”

This was a first for me; and a moment I’ll never forget.

“Muscatine, Iowa,” he said, reading my name badge further. “Is that ‘Port City’?”

Port City was the fictionalized version of my hometown that I used in the books.

“Sort of,” I admitted.

“Where is it?”

“On the Mississippi—between Iowa City and the Quad Cities.”

“Like in your books!”

“Like in my books.”

We shook hands and fell in alongside each other, walking and talking.

“What do you think of this place?” Randisi gestured around a dealers’ room rife with rare books and vintage paperbacks.

“It’s heaven,” I said. “Also, hell.... I can’t afford any of this stuff.”

“I know the feeling.... Y’know, there are some big writers here. The Guest of Honor wrote the book that Steve McQueen movie came from—with the car chase? But the
really
cool thing is...Walter Gibson is here.”

“Really? The guy who created the Shadow?”

“ ‘Maxwell Grant’ himself—pretty spry for an old boy, too.”

“How old is he?”

“Late seventies, I think. Still writing. Still doing magic tricks. He knew Houdini and Blackstone and all those guys, y’know.”

Robert J. Randisi and I continued to walk and talk, and so began a friendship that endures to this day. In ensuing years, Bob would found the Private Eye Writers of America, and become a bestselling writer of Western fiction, as well as authoring many fine mystery and suspense novels.

That evening, we wound up having dinner together—meeting up with Barb—at the now-defunct George Diamond’s Steak House, where the fillets were the size of a football and the salads were half a head of crisp cold lettuce slathered in three dressings that mixed so well I’m salivating now. My lovely blonde wife lived up to Bob’s high expectations of the standards of a “successful” hard-boiled mystery writer.

And I was impressed to learn he’d sold a story to
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
; I’d never been able to crack the short story market (ironically, the first short story I would publish was sold to Bob, editing a PWA anthology, about ten years later).

After dinner, Barb headed to our room at the Palmer House to “play with” the things she’d bought, while Bob and I retired to a corner of the hotel bar. We talked for several hours about our respective dreams—many of them now realized—and he paid me the huge compliment of asking me to describe, in some detail, the three Nolan novels that were as yet unpublished, and at the time languishing in a publisher’s inventory, fated not to see print till the early ’80s.

Bob, it turned out, was a civilian employee of the Brooklyn P.D., taking what are now 911 calls, and I was further complimented that a guy who worked in a world where he encountered real crime and criminals could be impressed by my imaginary ones. I told him I thought his writing future was bright—he
was damn near a cop, and that was useful in lots of ways, from background info to PR possibilities.

A handsome, sharply dressed young black guy swung by the table—Percy Spurlock Parker, a mystery writer who was also just starting out—and informed us about a cocktail party in a hotel suite, where the con’s Guest of Honor...who I’ll call Lawrence R. Trout...was holding court.

I was not particularly a fan of the Guest of Honor. Under his real name, he remains held in high esteem by a lot of writers and fans, particularly those in the New York area who have long been active with the Mystery Writers of America; a major mystery award in his honor is given by the MWA. Among his crowd, Trout must have been a nice enough guy, and no writer has a long career without talent and ability. But at the time I found his work dull and unremarkable. (Truth be told, I still do.)

Still, he was a pro, and I’d met precious few of those—a real-life successful mystery writer. He’d even had a Steve McQueen movie made out of one of his novels—what would that be like, I wondered, having a major movie star bring one of your characters to life! So I eagerly followed Bob and Percy onto an elevator and up to a small suite, where lots of mystery writers and fans were crowded in.

Cigarette and cigar smoke hung thick, but it wasn’t really a
noir
-ish atmosphere (particularly since nobody was using the
noir
term yet in these circles); it reminded me of the bars my rock band played in (I’d turned down a booking to attend the con) and, while not a smoker myself, I was used to such a smokehouse stench. A few women were among this group, but it was predominantly male. In future years, that ratio would reverse, but the mood (and for that matter reality) of that suite on that evening was strictly Boys’ Club.

Booze was flowing fairly freely, its blow softened by chips and pretzels. I’m no teetotaler, but I’ve never particularly been a drinker either, so I stayed with Coca-Cola. I engaged in several conversations with people who no doubt would become my friends in future years, though I frankly don’t recall any of them specifically, with the notable exception of Chris Steinbrunner.

Chris was one of the sweetest, kindest, most articulate and knowledgeable men in the world of mystery. Heavyset, his clothes (suit and tie) an unmade bed, his comb-over dark hair disheveled, his eyes constantly on the move behind heavy-rimmed glasses, moonfaced Chris was as focused mentally as his appearance was a blur.

“I know you,” Chris said, taking in my name tag, gesturing with mixed drink in hand. “You’re the Mickey Spillane defender!”

“Guilty as charged,” I said with a grin.

One of the oddest things about my career, for that matter about my life, is that I have become the premiere defender of one of the world’s best-selling writers. Heavily exposed to the wave of private-eye TV shows in the late ’50s and early ’60s, as a junior high kid I inhaled private-eye novels, starting with twenty-five- and thirty-five-cent paperbacks featuring the wild likes of Richard S. Prather’s Shell Scott and G.G. Fickling’s Honey West, then discovering Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, and loving all three, particularly Spillane, whose fever-dream sex-and-violence writing style set my adolescent brain on fire.

Imagine my surprise, growing older, when I learned that many mystery writers and even some snooty fans considered the incredibly popular Spillane to be beneath contempt—they adored Hammett and Chandler (as did I), but Spillane was a
boorish, right-wing lout. I happened to be a boorish, left-wing lout, but I took offense nonetheless, and my contributions to fanzines were spirited defenses of Spillane, with scholarship about his comic-book work and his “lost” stories that had appeared in pulpy men’s adventure magazines.

At another Bouchercon, in Milwaukee in 1981, I would be the con’s contact man with Spillane, the Guest of Honor, and the creator of Mike Hammer and I would become great friends. He is my son Nathan’s godfather, has been my collaborator on numerous projects, and the subject of an Edgar-nominated critical biography I cowrote with fellow Spillane buff Jim Traylor, as well as a documentary film I made a few years ago, which was screened to much acclaim in Italy, England and (for the Mystery Writers of America) in New York.

Back in ’75, however, most mystery writers—major and minor—were saying disparaging things about Mickey. Not only had he never been nominated for the MWA’s prestigious Edgar Allan Poe Award, he was the only published author ever refused membership in the organization...a shameful occurrence.

So in that smoky suite, Chris Steinbrunner—who with mystery-world maven Otto Penzler had written one of the first and best books on the history of mystery—looked me in my young eyes and said, “God bless you, my son.”

“Really? What did I do?”

“Merely defended a great writer.”

I worked up my most boyish smile—and they were pretty boyish back then. “You and Otto Penzler defended him, too. I got tears in my eyes reading the nice things you said about Mickey.”

Though I hadn’t yet met Mickey, I already loved the man; he was my literary father.

“He’s the most influential mystery writer alive,” Chris said. “No contest.”

Randisi, who was at my side, said, “I’ve always loved Spillane. I pretty much love all private-eye books. But Spillane, he’s one of the biggies.”

“He’s
the
biggie,” I said.

Still intimidated by my incredible two-published-novels career, Randisi merely nodded, respecting my every word (this would soon change).

“You must let me introduce you to Walter Gibson,” Chris said, his round head swivelling to take in the landscape of the crowded room. Then his eyes returned to mine. “Are you a ‘Shadow’ fan?”

“When I was a little kid,” I said, “I used to listen to him on the radio.”

“Oh, but the pulp novels were far superior to the broadcast version! And Walter turned out hundreds of those. Typing till his fingers bled.”

“I read that ‘Shadow’ paperback he wrote a few years ago,” I said. “A lotta fun.”

“You need to tell
him
that...”

But Gibson was holed up in a corner of the room doing card tricks for a clutch of wide-eyed fans, children of ages ranging from twenty to fifty. Gibson himself was a tall, somewhat heavyset gentleman in a dark suit with a crisp tie; his hair was starkly white and fairly long, though neatly combed—his wire-rim glasses and beaming smile reminded me of the science-fiction author, Ray Bradbury.

I don’t believe I’ve ever used the word
avuncular
in a book before, but it applied to him, perfectly: he was your favorite
uncle. Right now he was getting as big a kick out of doing his card tricks as his little audience was watching them.

“Let’s not bother him,” I said. “Maybe later?”

“If you wait till Walter’s not busy talking to somebody, it’ll be a very long wait—he loves people, loves to make conversation.”

“I can see that. Seems like a real sweetheart.”

“And when you do talk to him, get him going about the old days. I’ve never seen anybody with a memory like his—he can pull up something that happened to him in childhood with photographic detail, and make it as colorful as a Shadow yarn.”

“I promise to find the right moment, Chris.”

“Well, then,” Chris said, taking me by the arm, “in the meantime, you should meet the Guest of Honor.”

Lawrence R. Trout was in his early sixties, tall with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a professorly manner, and a little drunk. He seemed affable enough, if full of himself. Hard to hold him to account for that: he was the Guest of Honor, after all.

Chris introduced me, and said, “Max has published two novels. He’s from Iowa.”

There was some (relatively) good-natured disparagement from Trout about my Tall Corn roots (he was from Connecticut), and then Chris made the mistake.

The big mistake.

“Max is quite the Mickey Spillane fan,” Chris said, cheerful as Santa’s top elf. “He’s written some very nice articles supporting Spillane.”

Trout snorted distastefully over his cocktail. “Spillane? He’s a damn hack. Everybody knows it.”

“Actually,” I said, “it’s my dream that one day Mickey will receive a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. I hope to do everything I can to make that happen.”

Trout, I later learned, was very active with the MWA.

“Over my dead body,” Trout said. “He’s the only published writer we ever rejected from the membership! He churns out pulp dreck—ridiculous trash.”

“Hammett and Chandler were pulp writers, too,” I said tersely.

“Spillane was even
worse
than a pulp hack—he was a
comic-book writer
, you know.”

“So what?”

He eyed me over the drink with orbs that suited his name. “What, are you going to defend
comic books
now?”

“Chester Gould created the most famous American detective,” I said.

Chris put in, “Dick Tracy. Wonderful stuff.”

Trout put a condescending hand on my shoulder. “Let me put the period on this sentence.... I have no respect for any writer who poses on his book covers with guns.”

Mickey, a former WWII fighter pilot and very much a blue-collar writer, had sometimes posed as his famous detective, Mike Hammer, for publicity shots, with Hammer’s trademark .45 in his fist.

“Ian Fleming did the same thing,” I said.

“Please!” the Guest of Honor said, removing his hand from my shoulder before I had to. “
He
was a hack, too.”

I felt the red climbing into my face; and I could hear the quiver in my voice as I said: “Let me tell you something, Mr. Trout—everybody in this room, including yourself, has a career
because
of Mickey Spillane. It was his enormous success in the early ’50s that made crime fiction, and paperbacks, explode. You don’t have to like his work to show a little gratitude and have some common respect for the man who gave all of us...yourself included...a career.”

Quite a few people were listening now. The moment could not have been more awkward. An upstart, barely published brat from Iowa had verbally assaulted their honored guest. On the other hand, a few heads were nodding. Here and there. Less than vindication, but nice.

“Mickey Spillane will never receive a Grand Master Award from the MWA,” Trout said. “He...poses...with...guns...on...his...dust jackets.”