The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,3

the broadcast version! And Walter turned out hundreds of those. Typing till his fingers bled.”

“I read that ‘Shadow’ paperback he wrote a few years ago,” I said. “A lotta fun.”

“You need to tell him that...”

But Gibson was holed up in a corner of the room doing card tricks for a clutch of wide-eyed fans, children of ages ranging from twenty to fifty. Gibson himself was a tall, somewhat heavyset gentleman in a dark suit with a crisp tie; his hair was starkly white and fairly long, though neatly combed—his wire-rim glasses and beaming smile reminded me of the science-fiction author, Ray Bradbury.

I don’t believe I’ve ever used the word avuncular in a book before, but it applied to him, perfectly: he was your favorite uncle. Right now he was getting as big a kick out of doing his card tricks as his little audience was watching them.

“Let’s not bother him,” I said. “Maybe later?”

“If you wait till Walter’s not busy talking to somebody, it’ll be a very long wait—he loves people, loves to make conversation.”

“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