Max Collins: The War of the Worlds Murder

“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.”

Then the Guest of Honor moved unsteadily away for another drink.

But when he’d passed across my vision, Trout revealed someone else…

…Walter Gibson.

The creator of the Shadow was smiling at me as if he’d just spotted his long-lost nephew.

He approached me with the grace of the trained stage performer he was. His blue eyes holding eye contact with me, he said to Steinbrunner, “Chris, why don’t you introduce me to this young man?”

But Gibson’s hand was already outstretched.

I shook it; the grasp was firm. “Mr. Gibson,” I said, “it’s an honor. I’m a big fan.”

That might have been overstating it: I was not a collector of the valuable old pulp magazines, but I’d read some of the reprints, as well as that recent Shadow paperback I’d mentioned to Chris.

And this was the man who created one of the most famous characters in popular fiction: the Shadow, the sometimes-invisible crimefighter who clouded men’s minds, and knew what evil lurked in their hearts.

Chris made the introductions, and then Gibson said, “I admire you for standing up to that pompous fool.”

“Really? Are you a Spillane fan?”

He shrugged. “Not particularly. He’s done very well updating the Black Mask pulp technique-Carroll John Daly originated that kind of thing with Race Williams, of course. And there’s some of the Shadow in Mike Hammer, too, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes.”

“The old idea of an avenging figure is just as good today as it ever was-the best mysteries always center around one character. Look at Sherlock Holmes, and Dracula.”

“But if you’re not a Spillane fan-”

He patted my shoulder. “You were absolutely right to defend a writer you admire. Writers shouldn’t go around bad-mouthing other writers. And I don’t much like hearing disrespect to pulp writers, either. That was my world, you know.”

I nodded; sipped my Coke. “How much work did you do for the radio Shadow show?”

“Not much-conceptual stuff in the beginning. Sort of helped map it out.” He shrugged. “I like my stuff better.”

Spoken like a true writer!

Gibson’s face creased with amusement. “But you don’t look old enough to’ve heard the Shadow on the radio.”

“It was still on in the mid-fifties,” I said. “I was five or six…I’d listen to it, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar , and Dragnet . In bed at night.” I gave a mock shiver. “The Shadow was the first good guy who ever scared my little behind.”

Gibson gave a grudging nod. “Well, that sinister laugh was a good touch. I’ll give ’em that. But you are too young for the pulps.”

“I read your Shadow paperback. Really liked it. And the reprints. A lot of fun.”

“Good-that’s what they were meant to be…. That Shadow laugh, you know, it wasn’t Orson Welles.”

“Really?”

“Everybody thinks it was, and Orson always claimed it as his…but it was a fella called Readick, Frank Readick. He was the first Shadow, when the character was just a spooky narrator, not active in the stories. They used Readick’s opening till the end, I think. But Orson got the credit-typically.”

“Did you know Orson Welles?”

The Citizen Kane wunderkind had famously played the Shadow on the radio in the ’30s, barely out of his teens.

“Oh, I knew him all right,” Gibson said.

Chris’s owlish countenance brightened. “Really? You never mentioned you met Welles.”

Gibson’s shrug was as grand as it was casual. “I don’t believe you ever asked, Chris.”

“You have me there, Walter. But I knew you didn’t have much to do with the radio version, so I never thought to ask.”

Gibson smiled in a way that said he had nothing more to add to this subject.

The conversation turned to Gibson’s enduring penchant for magic, and how he could still do a mean card trick. He showed us a couple, and they were suitably mystifying-cards appearing in one of Gibson’s pockets, the apparent mind reading of a card I’d selected. Finally, Chris-who’d seen this magic many times-wandered off and got involved in another conversation; and by now Bob Randisi had disappeared somewhere.