Seduction of the Innocent

The morning was overcast and cold, not terrible weather but hardly the best spring might offer Manhattan. I’d left the top up on my snazzy little white Kaiser-Darrin when I escorted Bob Price to the federal courthouse at Foley Square. At the Entertaining Funnies office on Lafayette Street, his partner Hal Feldman declined to come along.

"I’ve tried to talk him out of testifying,” Feldman had said. He looked like a cop who’d been trying for hours to talk a jumper in off a ledge. "He won’t hear it.”

"I know,” I said. "I tried, Maggie tried, even his shrink tried.”

"Stubborn jackass,” he said, his Brooklyn-tinged baritone ragged. "Well, I can’t watch it. I don’t go to public executions.”

Normally Hal was a dapper guy, but this morning his tailored blue suit seemed rumpled, his John Garfield-ish mug hadn’t seen a razor yet, and his wavy dark hair was like a squirmy nest of black snakes. In his mid-twenties, Feldman clearly had been sitting up all night. With a sick friend, as it turned out.

He sighed, grinned wearily, clasped my shoulder. "I’m just glad Bob’s got you to babysit him now, Jack.”

"Happy to, Hal. Just so everybody understands I don’t change diapers.” I checked my watch. "We ought to head out.”

The editor shook his head. "He’s still working on that goddamn opening statement.”

I frowned. "Hell, I thought sure he’d be finished by now. Hasn’t he been working on it for days?”

"More like weeks.” Feldman lighted up a Camel. His eyes were bloodshot. "All night, he’s been alternating NoDoz and that diet medication of his.”

"Dexedrine, you mean?”

Feldman nodded wearily. "He’s eager to go down there, Jack, into that lions’ den, can you buy it? Thinks he’s doing the right thing, the noble thing. Says he’s a friendly witness, and certainly these senators, as good patriotic Americans, will wanna do what’s right, too. You know, listen to reason.”

"That isn’t the way things work in real life.”

"Jesus,” Feldman said, rolling his eyes, "that ain’t even the way it works in our comic books.”

(From Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allen Collins)

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