said, “Don’t get eager, Patterson. I told you once, it’s going to take a while.”
“But—but the consignors—”
“Do they know about the burglary?” Lindsey suspected that they didn’t, since even George Dunn, the customer’s contact man, hadn’t known until he’d been told.
Patterson shook his head. “Th-They still think their comics are safe. I-I suppose they’ll have to know eventually. I was hoping we could either get the comics back or the money in time to pay them. Nobody’s inquired yet, but sooner or later they will. Probably sooner. What should I tell them?”
Lindsey said, “Before you tell anybody anything, get up a list of the owners and give it to me. It’s not impossible that one of them stole his own merchandise back. I’ve seen it happen, believe me. That way he’ll have both the comic book and the money. Plus all the other comics!”
“Oh, no,” said Patterson. His sandwich arrived and he began to devour it, washing down the mouthfuls with beer and talking around the whole soggy mess. “Not the consignors. They’re all serious collectors. They’re all, uh, honest people. I mean, they can get pretty competitive with each other and they can drive hard bargains when they’re trying to set up a deal. But nobody would do a thing like—like what happened!”
“That’s what you think, kid,” Lindsey said. He was trying out his Humphrey Bogart voice. “Get me the list.”
That fast, Terry Patterson had finished his sandwich and was washing down the last of it with the dregs of his Moretti beer.
“Is—is it okay if I have another?” he asked.
Before Lindsey could say no, he’d signaled the waiter. Instead of canceling the order, he sipped his mineral water and studied Patterson.
“Listen, you said you had an idea for getting the comics back. Spill it.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t so much of an idea. I just th-thought that whoever took them might try to sell them again.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“So, ah, most of the comic store owners know each other...”
“Uh-huh,” Lindsey encouraged him.
“Well, you see, I thought that I might ask some of the other dealers to keep an eye out, and if anybody brings in the stolen comics they could get in touch with us right away, or maybe call the police. You think that’s a good idea?”
Lindsey told him that was a very good idea. He also asked him who his chief competitor was.
“Oh, Jack wouldn’t have burgled my store. He’s not that kind of man.”
“Leave that to me,” Bart told him. “Just who is he, and where’s his operation?
“Uh, Jack Glessner. He owns Cape ’n’ Dagger. It’s a comics and mystery bookstore. He’s on Diamond Street in the city, and he has branches in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Modesto, and Santa Barbara. Are you going to call him?”
“I’m going to visit him.”
“Uh, don’t tell him I gave you his name, okay? I mean, uh, we’re not enemies or anything like that. It’s just that, uh, I used to work for him before I opened my own store and he’s kind of, uh, annoyed about that.”
Lindsey said, “Okay, kid. I’ll tell him I got his name out of the Yellow Pages.”
* * * *
Mother was a lot better that night, in fact she cooked supper for them, just like the old days. While they ate, Bart asked her about Father.
“We hardly knew each other,” she said. “Don’t you remember him, Hobo?”
Lindsey thought, my own mother, calling me by the name I hate. Well, there was no point in trying to change her. He was grateful for the times when she was coherent at all.
“He died before I was born, Mother. You remember that.”
She looked vague. “Died?”
Maybe it had been a mistake for Lindsey to raise the subject, but here he was involved with comic books, and Father had been a comics illustrator. Maybe he was just making conversation, but also, maybe, there was something Mother would say that would bring this matter together. Something that would give him a clue that would lead him to the stolen comics.
He reached across the table and put his hand on Mother’s.
She came back into focus and said, “We met at art school. I wasn’t very talented, I just loved to draw and paint. No,” she shook her head, “I didn’t even love to draw and paint. I enjoyed it, that was all. You could tell the ones who really loved art. The really good ones always said that loving it was the most important thing. Even more important than being talented. So I didn’t really love it. Doing it wasn’t that important to me. But I enjoyed the atmosphere. Oh, those were such days, Hobo, you should have seen us.
“We were all so serious! You’d just laugh today, but we were so happy! The boys used to wear berets and little beards, the girls wore baggy sweaters and big skirts and black stockings, and we’d take the Key train across the bridge on Saturdays and drink wine in North Beach and listen to jazz and talk and talk until morning. The city was so wonderful, it was thrilling just to be there, just to be part of everything that was going on.
“They were fighting in Korea, but we didn’t care much about it, we had our own little world. And then—and then—”
She started to cry. Lindsey felt uncomfortable—he never knew what to do when a woman cried. But Mother’s hand was still in his and she clutched him tightly and picked up her paper napkin in her other hand and started to wipe her eyes.
Lindsey prompted, “Was Father drawing comic books then?”
She sniffed and nodded. She let go of his hand and wiped her face with her napkin.
“It was hard for him to get work. Most of the publishers were in New York. They didn’t like out-of-town artists. But he got a little work. He did a few stories and he got to draw one cover. I’ve never seen him so excited as when he got that assignment. You’d think it was for Collier’s or The American Magazine, not some cheap comic book, he was so excited.”
Lindsey knew about that cover. Gangsters at War, number twenty-six, April 1953. A framed copy of it hung in the living room. He had also seen a copy of it in the display case at Comic Cavalcade. He didn’t know what it was doing in the glass case—the drawing was crude, and there were no superheroes in the book or drawings by famous artists.
“Joseph never saw that book. He drew the picture while he was still at school. Then he got drafted. We got married when he came home on leave. It was just before Halloween, I remember all the pumpkins and witches, I always loved Halloween. Then Joseph had to report to his ship, and he was killed three months later, in January. January eighteenth, 1953. Killed when a MiG crashed into his destroyer. They sent me a medal and his insurance money and an American flag. His commanding officer came to see me. And I have you to remember him by, my little Hobo. And another sailor even called me up, all the way from southern California. I tried to talk to him but he was all mixed up and he
