virgin bobby soxers, and defend your mother. You’re a regular Eleanor Roosevelt.”
“I guess I picked up my moral code from Lucky Duck comic books.”
“Funny, very funny.” He put both elbows on the table. “You know what I get per page on that crap?”
“I suppose a pretty good—”
“Sixty bucks a page.”
I was surprised. “That’s three times as much as any of the rest of us—”
“Sure, but I’m at least six times as good. And—” he stirred more sugar into his coffee— “I am going to be a vice president of Destry Productions.”
“Congratulations. When did Lon tell you the—”
“Lon Destry doesn’t know yet.”
“Then how—”
“It’s because I know something about him,” said Segal, grinning. “I know… Look at who just walked in over there. All washed up.”
“How exactly are you going to become a vice—”
“By using the old bean.” He tapped his head once more. “See, I keep my eyes and ears open, thereby picking up little tidbits of info. One such item…and don’t let this upset your boyish hopes and dreams, Tyrone. But the item concerns Carol Cinders.”
“Oh, so?”
“She is sleeping around with our esteemed boss.”
“Carol and Lon Destry?”
“Exactly.”
“But his wife—”
“Also exactly.” Segal stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee. “Should Mrs. D. find out, the whole studio, including cartoons, features, comic books, toys, and all, would go down the chutes. Therefore, it’s worth something to Lon to keep the knowledge from her.”
“That sounds like blackmail.”
“Right.”
“But you—”
“When I’m VP, Tyrone, I’ll see you get a nice little raise.” He tasted his coffee, made a face.
“Geeze, that’s too sweet to drink.”
Segal had commenced suspecting the romance between Carol and Destry while she was still working at the studio. He took to following her, watching her house, and generally keeping track of her. Sure enough, he began spotting Lon Destry rendezvousing with her. There was a slanting hillside field just above her house, and Segal’d hunker down there among the scrub brush and wild grass. He started taking along a camera, a fancy one borrowed from the studio. With it he could make pictures at a long distance and even at night. He was gathering quite a file of material.
One thing began worrying him, though. After a while, he suspected someone else was watching her. Not as regularly as he was, but now and then.
“That could foul me up,” he said one afternoon at the Mug.
“How?”
“Use your noodle, Tyrone.” He dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee cup. “There’s some gink in a Panama hat who parks his jalopy in front of her joint some evenings. He’s got his license plates muddied, and I haven’t been able to get close enough to make out his puss. I just see the Panama topper and the Life mag he’s always hiding behind.”
“Think he’s a cop?”
“No, but maybe a private eye,” he said. “See, what if Mrs. Destry has tumbled? If she knows her hubby is fooling around, then I’ve got nothing to go to Lon with.”
“Might be a good idea just to forget the whole—”
“Like hell, Tyrone. I’m going to parlay this into something big,” he assured me. “But I’ll have to move fast.”
Two nights later Carol Cinders killed herself. Her body was found by her agent the next morning, a gray misty morning as I recall. There was no note, yet it was pretty obvious she’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills. A nearly empty bottle of the things was found spilled beside her bed. There were traces of sleeping drugs in the bottom of the tumbler of scotch she’d mixed them up in. Her fingerprints were all over the bottle and the glass.
BLONDE MOVIE BEAUTY A SUICIDE! is how the newspapers put it.
Segal had been watching her that night, the night she killed herself. He was stationed up in that weedy field behind her house. Now I don’t know if he actually saw into her bedroom and witnessed her taking the pills or not. He always denied that part when I asked him. But, somehow, he was certain she was dead up there.
And he knew she’d left a suicide note.
Carol was cutting costs at that part of her life, and there were no servants. Not even a watchdog. So it wasn’t tough for Segal to make his way down the hill and onto the grounds. He shinnied up a drain pipe onto the balcony outside her bedroom window and went on in.
Segal didn’t touch anything except the note. Folding that up carefully and tucking it away, he got out of there.
Carol’s note said she didn’t want to live any more if she was to be parted from Lon Destry. Apparently, Destry’s wife had grown a shade suspicious, causing Destry to decide he had to end the affair right there and not risk losing his wife’s financial support.
I thought at the time that Carol had been tougher than that, not the kind to kill herself over a fouled-up romance. There was the note, though, naming Destry as the reason for her suicide.
It could’ve ruined him.
Segal pointed that out to Destry when he showed him a photostat of the original the next morning early. Destry agreed, and that’s how Segal became a vice president.
* * * *
Zarley was looking unhappy. “Gee, I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said. “You know, I saved all my Lucky Duck comic books, from when I was a kid. I think Segal was a genius…now, though, you tell me he was a moneygrubbing blackmailer.”
“That doesn’t affect his work,” said Heinz. “Myself, I admire a guy who got something out of the system. He had Destry by the short hairs, and they both knew it.”
Old Myers had been drumming one freckled hand on the table top. “Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut,” he said.
Banner frowned. “You know some details I left out?”
“A few,” the old cartoonist replied with an odd smile.
“Let’s hear ’em,” said Zarley. “Maybe they’ll untamish his image.”
Myers said, “I wouldn’t think so.” He sighed, tapping his fingers a bit more. “Since, as you said, Ty, just about everybody involved is dead and gone, I don’t suppose it matters now.”
