“Twenty-five dollars?” Banner scowled. “They pay twenty-five bucks for that simple bigfoot stuff of yours, and think my meticulously rendered and beautiful work is worth only fifteen?”
“Collectors are goofy,” Heinz repeated.
Hollins said, “I wonder how much interest there really is in collecting originals.”
“Apparently not all that much,” I put in. “The Funnies Museum that was going to open in New Canaan isn’t. They were going to display hundreds of original cartoons and strips from the 1890s to the present, but—”
“He got arrested,” said Banner. “The guy who ran the setup. That’s why the museum didn’t open.”
Heinz gave one of his knowing chuckles. “No, that’s not the real reason,” he said. “Not the complete reason anyway.”
Puffing on his cigar, Hollins said, “You know Errol Bojack, the guy who was supposed to be the curator?”
“Sure, I know Bojack,” said Heinz. “I also knew Rollo Meech and Corky Tollhouse. I know all about the ghosts of the Fairfield Sisters as well.” He paused, pouring more ale into his glass.
“There are ghosts in this?” asked Banner.
“Ghosts, murder, jealousy, greed,” amplified Heinz. “Almost like a Dr. Judge continuity.”
“You guys sure are needling me today,” Banner complained. “I don’t mind a bit of good-natured professional jealousy, but I—”
“How about Bojack and the Funnies Museum?” interrupted Zarley. “What’s the real story, Heinie?”
Heinz took a long appreciative swallow of his beer. “It’s sort of a gloomy story.”
“Tell us then. This is a good day for it,” urged Zarley.
What started it (Heinz told us) was Rollo Meech and a peculiar desire of his. Rollo lusted after original comic art — strips, panels, cartoons. Some of you probably knew him. He had lunch here at the Inkwell a couple of times and was certain to turn up at any cartoonist’s funeral. He was a tall chunky guy in his late twenties, with curly hair and a big fannish smile. He had a face that looked as though he ought to be saying “Golly!” and “Gee whiz!” He was a hard core comics nut, and wanted to be a cartoonist himself but never got any further than a job as art director for Paddle Ball Digest over in East Norwalk.
The reason you saw Rollo, with his lovable grin and his Gee Whiz! face, at so many funerals and wakes was because of his passion. If a cartoonist died, Rollo was on the doorstep offering to buy up all the deceased’s leftover drawings. While some widows booted Rollo out, others needed the dough and they sold him their husbands’ work and whatever other originals they’d managed to accumulate. Rollo had almost a vulture’s sense of impending death. You kick off, slump over your board, the pen slips from your fingers, and before it hits the floor Rollo is ringing the bell, offering your wife a deal.
He must have had family money — his pop owned three or four bowling alleys in New Jersey — because he managed to buy up most of the originals he wanted. But not all. The one item he wanted more than anything was an original political cartoon by an artist named Harry Clemens.
“Who?” asked Zarley.
“Harry Clemens,” repeated Heinz. “He was a major political cartoonist with Hearst early in the century.”
“He won the Pulitzer, didn’t he?” Banner signaled the waiter to bring him another rum.
“No, Clemens was always a shade too unsavory for them.”
“A boozer?” asked Zarley.
“That was one of his vices,” said Heinz. “Anyway, during a particularly severe spell of goofiness, Harry Clemens burned up every blessed original of his he could lay his hands on. He made a bonfire in the courtyard of his Greenwich village studio. There happened to be a blizzard going on and shortly thereafter he died of the aftereffects of exposure.”
Banner set down his fresh drink. “That’s a rotten way to kick off.”
“I see what’s coming,” said Zarley. “There was, someplace, one undestroyed Harry Clemens original and Rollo Meech had to have it.”
“Exactly,” said Heinz. “A single Harry Clemens original, an immense thing showing Columbia holding her torch of liberty aloft, turned up sometime in the 1940s among the effects of an old Hearst editor. It sold for a hundred dollars at the time and continued from collector to collector until eventually it was worth five thousand dollars. By that time it was in Juke Tollhouse’s collection. You all knew poor Juke and his stunning wife, Corky. He died young, poor Juke.”
“This is getting damn depressing,” remarked Banner. “I remember when Juke died. He fell off the bar car on the 6:05 to Westport three years ago. Depressing.”
“Let him get on to the good part,” said Zarley. “To where Rollo Meech tries to persuade Corky into selling him the only known Harry Clemens.”
Rollo Meech was more subtle than to try to seduce Corky (Heinz resumed). He offered to buy the whole of Juke’s collection, which was quite large. You remember all those dreary displays Juke used to stage at the Comic Artists Club in Manhattan — Fifty Years of Funnies, the American Graphic Humor Tradition. Even though Rollo usually didn’t wait for the body to cool before he dashed over to make an offer on the originals, he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d resort to romance to gain what he was after. Money, cheating, lying, cajoling, yes, but Rollo would never permit himself to pretend affection for the widow — even a pretty and relatively young widow like Corky Tollhouse.
Errol Bojack, on the other hand, had no such scruples. He’d long had the dream of opening a museum to house his collection of cartoon art. And being as fanatic as Rollo, Bojack desired the Tollhouse collection too. He had dough too — money that poured in from that chain of fast-food Indian restaurants he owns, Madam Curry’s. And he’s not a bad-looking guy, almost handsome in a too-tanned and varnished sort of way. Corky liked him.
I happened to be at her house down on the Sound the day Rollo came after Juke’s collection. You know I’m handy with tools, so I’d promised to fix some cabinet doors for Corky. Being always thirteen weeks ahead on my deadlines, unlike most of you chumps, I can afford the time to do favors for my friends.
Rollo paid his call at noon, the only time he could sneak away from the Paddle Ball Digest offices. He’d brought a certified check for $7,500, the price of Juke’s entire collection. From where I was at work in the kitchen I could see, with a little judicious stretching, into the big living room.
“Juke was a genius,” Rollo was saying, smiling one of his most ingratiating smiles, his eyes wide with admiration. “America lost a great graphic panelologist when he passed on, Corky.”
“Juke was O.K.,” Corky replied. Something, I noticed, was bothering her.
By thrusting my head a bit more into the hallway, I spotted the problem. A pair of man’s shorts was partially visible under the flowered sofa Rollo was anxiously sitting on. Since Juke had been dead nearly four months at this point, it seemed unlikely Corky was that bad a housekeeper. Furthermore, the shorts had some kind of Indian pattern on them, exactly the sort of thing a guy who ran a bunch of quick curry joints might go in for.
“To own Juke’s collection, including of course so many wonderful drawings of his own,” Rollo said, “is truly, Corky, going to be a real honor. As I often told Juke before he was unexpectedly taken from our—”
“It wasn’t all that unexpected.” Corky twirled a lock of lovely blonde hair. “He’d almost fallen off the darn train three times before. And he was always falling off bar stools. That’s how he did that to his leg Christmas before last.”
“The man admittedly had flaws, Corky. Still, his work on Moronic Metz will most certainly earn him a place in that panth—”