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Authors: Max Allan Collins
Tags: Mystery & Crime
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was on my face, and there was still some gin in it; I could forgive her for this, because of what she’d been through, and the gin, but I couldn’t forgive myself for what I felt.
She continued: “You’re like Roscoe. You’re like the young Roscoe I never met. You... you made him very happy, in his last years, Mal. You paid him the sort of... literary respect he never thought to get. When everybody else had forgotten him, you came to him like Milwaukee was Mecca and he was a guru.” She should’ve said Mohammed, but she wasn’t a writer, so she could get away with imprecise metaphors. “You were like a son to him. He never thought much of his faggot boy, Jerome... harsh to say it that way, but Roscoe dearly loved to hate homosexuals. And he and his son could never be close, not the way you and Roscoe were close.”
The tears were back in her eyes; slowly, they began streaming down her cheeks.
“You, Mal,” she said. “You’re the young Roscoe Kane, in a way. The Roscoe I never got to know. Not in the... Biblical sense, anyway....” The wicked little smile, in the midst of the tears, was incongruous, and very, very sexy. “The son he never had, the husband I never quite had....”
“Please, Mae...”
“Mal. Come see me sometime. That’s more Mae West, than Mae Kane, isn’t it? Well, take it any way you like. In a few months, I’ll need to be close to somebody. And I’d like to be close to Roscoe, but he’s gone. Even impotent, he was more of a man than any other man I ever knew. Come see me... it’s the closest I can come to being close to Roscoe again. Could you do that for me?”
“Maybe,” I said. Not ever. No way; despite how much I wanted to.
“And find out what happened to my husband, will you?”
“I’ll try.”
“If anyone can, it’s you,” she said.
“What we need is Gat Garson.”
“I’ll settle for Mallory.”
I touched her wet face and found my way out.
6
“Bouchercon, Chicago-Style” was the official title of this year’s ’con, though the nickname “Crime City Capers” had appeared on the advance flyers. Chicago, the “fabulous clipjoint” as mystery writer Fredric Brown had dubbed it, was the perfect setting for a mystery convention: the place where the Outfit was born and John Dillinger died, site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, home of the Untouchables, setting for the Gat Garson tales. A fitting spot for mystery writers, critics, publishers and fans to gather, and discuss crime and punishment, fantasy-style.
Bouchercon was founded in 1970, in honor of
New York Times
critic Anthony Boucher, who had died in 1968—actually, “Boucher” was a pseudonym of Anthony Parker White. White was an author of science fiction, and classical, puzzle-style whodunits of the sort Cynthia Crystal was inclined toward, and which interested me about as much as lace doilies and Gilbert and Sullivan revivals. But Boucher was a well-respected critic, and had done perhaps as much as anyone to legitimize mystery fiction, and his was a fine name to grace this annual mystery convention.
The convention rotated annually from a city on the West Coast, to an eastern city, to a midwestern city. The state of my finances had thus far kept me from attending any but those in the Midwest, and I’d missed the last one of those, in Milwaukee,blowing my chance to meet Mickey Spillane, whose appearance had by all accounts been a show stopper. Spillane, like Roscoe Kane, had rarely had a kind word said about him critically, and, despite his massive man-on-the-street popularity, hard-core mystery fandom hadn’t treated the Mick well, either, as one crowd rallied around the Agatha Christie puzzle school, and the other around Hammett and Chandler, the tough-but-literary mystery school, of which Spillane was thought to be a bastard offspring. Since Kane was thought to be a bastard offspring of Spillane, you can guess how the critics treated Gat Garson—when they treated him at all.
It
She continued: “You’re like Roscoe. You’re like the young Roscoe I never met. You... you made him very happy, in his last years, Mal. You paid him the sort of... literary respect he never thought to get. When everybody else had forgotten him, you came to him like Milwaukee was Mecca and he was a guru.” She should’ve said Mohammed, but she wasn’t a writer, so she could get away with imprecise metaphors. “You were like a son to him. He never thought much of his faggot boy, Jerome... harsh to say it that way, but Roscoe dearly loved to hate homosexuals. And he and his son could never be close, not the way you and Roscoe were close.”
The tears were back in her eyes; slowly, they began streaming down her cheeks.
“You, Mal,” she said. “You’re the young Roscoe Kane, in a way. The Roscoe I never got to know. Not in the... Biblical sense, anyway....” The wicked little smile, in the midst of the tears, was incongruous, and very, very sexy. “The son he never had, the husband I never quite had....”
“Please, Mae...”
“Mal. Come see me sometime. That’s more Mae West, than Mae Kane, isn’t it? Well, take it any way you like. In a few months, I’ll need to be close to somebody. And I’d like to be close to Roscoe, but he’s gone. Even impotent, he was more of a man than any other man I ever knew. Come see me... it’s the closest I can come to being close to Roscoe again. Could you do that for me?”
“Maybe,” I said. Not ever. No way; despite how much I wanted to.
“And find out what happened to my husband, will you?”
“I’ll try.”
“If anyone can, it’s you,” she said.
“What we need is Gat Garson.”
“I’ll settle for Mallory.”
I touched her wet face and found my way out.
6
“Bouchercon, Chicago-Style” was the official title of this year’s ’con, though the nickname “Crime City Capers” had appeared on the advance flyers. Chicago, the “fabulous clipjoint” as mystery writer Fredric Brown had dubbed it, was the perfect setting for a mystery convention: the place where the Outfit was born and John Dillinger died, site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, home of the Untouchables, setting for the Gat Garson tales. A fitting spot for mystery writers, critics, publishers and fans to gather, and discuss crime and punishment, fantasy-style.
Bouchercon was founded in 1970, in honor of
New York Times
critic Anthony Boucher, who had died in 1968—actually, “Boucher” was a pseudonym of Anthony Parker White. White was an author of science fiction, and classical, puzzle-style whodunits of the sort Cynthia Crystal was inclined toward, and which interested me about as much as lace doilies and Gilbert and Sullivan revivals. But Boucher was a well-respected critic, and had done perhaps as much as anyone to legitimize mystery fiction, and his was a fine name to grace this annual mystery convention.
The convention rotated annually from a city on the West Coast, to an eastern city, to a midwestern city. The state of my finances had thus far kept me from attending any but those in the Midwest, and I’d missed the last one of those, in Milwaukee,blowing my chance to meet Mickey Spillane, whose appearance had by all accounts been a show stopper. Spillane, like Roscoe Kane, had rarely had a kind word said about him critically, and, despite his massive man-on-the-street popularity, hard-core mystery fandom hadn’t treated the Mick well, either, as one crowd rallied around the Agatha Christie puzzle school, and the other around Hammett and Chandler, the tough-but-literary mystery school, of which Spillane was thought to be a bastard offspring. Since Kane was thought to be a bastard offspring of Spillane, you can guess how the critics treated Gat Garson—when they treated him at all.
It
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