Apparently ben Zinowicz had had his office for a long time, or else the university administration was really eager to keep him happy. The room was furnished with a thick Oriental rug, an antique desk and matching chairs. A beautiful painting hung in an ornate frame between dark-stained bookcases behind his desk. Lindsey did a double take at the oil painting. It was a family portrait of Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, and Huey, Louie, and Dewey.
“Yes?” Professor ben Zinowicz said.
He was sitting behind his desk, looking as if he were posing for a portrait himself. He could have been anywhere from fifty to sixty, with steel-gray hair, a deeply lined face, and sharp eyes the same shade as his hair.
Lindsey entered the room and closed the door. He sat in a chair that must have been worth as much as a 1940 issue of Shield-Wizard. Compared to the steel furniture at International Surety, this chair was like something out of Buckingham Palace: soft, rich leather, dark wood with a sheen like satin, and brass nail heads with a patina of age.
When Lindsey started to lift his briefcase onto ben Zinowicz’s desk, the look he got from the professor stopped him, and he set the briefcase on the floor instead.
Lindsey reached into his jacket, pulled out a business card and handed it to the professor.
Hardly glancing at the card, ben Zinowicz dropped it into a tooled-leather wastebasket. “You don’t have an appointment with me. If you’d called, you could have saved yourself the trouble. I carry life insurance through the University of California and auto and fire through my own broker. Please close the door behind you as you leave.”
“I’m not an insurance salesman.”
The prof grunted and extended a carefully groomed hand.
Lindsey started to retrieve his card from the wastebasket, then instead reached into his jacket and tendered a fresh one.
Ben Zinowicz scanned the fresh card, then looked expectantly at Bart Lindsey.
“I suppose you’re a personal security planner or a family protection counselor or...” He waved his hand, flashing an immaculate French cuff and a brilliant gold link. “...Or whatever the latest euphemism is to get to people who don’t want to talk to salesmen. I still don’t want to hear your pitch.”
“I’m a claims adjuster,” Lindsey told him.
Ben Zinowicz frowned. “I don’t recall filing any insurance claims against, ah, International Surety, Mr. Lindsey. Now, if you listen carefully I think you will hear your office in Walnut Creek summoning you home for an urgent conference.”
He dropped Lindsey’s card into the wastebasket along with its mate, and focused on a page of typescript that lay on his desktop. He took a gold-barreled pen from his suit pocket and jotted something on the margin of the script.
Lindsey said, “I’ve come to ask you for help. The claim is being filed on a commercial casualty account. Stock loss, burglary. The insured indicates an intention to claim an inordinate value for the stolen merchandise, and he suggested that you might verify his valuations. Of course, we’ll need an independent verification even if you do support the claim, but this is a preliminary appraisal.”
The prof looked up from his papers. “Let me understand you, Mr. Lindsey. Are you attempting to hire me as a consultant?”
Roast his soul, he was just another money-grubber! He couldn’t share his expertise with a member of the public whose tax money paid his doubtlessly excessive salary. “Okay, Prof,” Lindsey said, “let’s put it on that basis. Interested?”
That brought the first smile Lindsey had seen to the professor’s face. If you could call that thin, grudging tic a smile. “I might be.” He laced his fingers under his chin and leaned back in his overstuffed leather swivel chair. “Just what, specifically, do you want me to do? Bear in mind that I charge a sizable hourly fee.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred dollars per hour.”
The s.o.b. didn’t even blink!
Lindsey tried to keep a straight face. “For starters I just want you to look at a list of comic books and tell me what they’re worth.”
“A list?” His eyebrows tried to fly away. “Nobody can tell you what comics are worth from a list. Condition is everything. Two copies of the same comic book could be worth vastly different amounts.”
“Okay, give me an example.”
The professor dropped his hands to his lap and leaned his head so far back that Lindsey couldn’t tell whether he was reading a secret code off the ceiling or taking a nap. Finally he said, “Take Pep Comics, for example, one of the more interesting second-line superhero comics. The first issue was published by MLJ in January 1940 and featured the Shield, the Comet, the Rocket, and several other strips including Fu Chang. Golden Age superheroes are always in demand, and the Comet was an early Jack Cole strip, which adds to the value. Then the Yellow Peril type character is another plus.
“I would say that a mint copy of Pep number one would be worth five hundred dollars, easily. But a run-of-the-mill collectible copy, even if a dealer rated it as fine, would only be worth about half that. A lesser copy—but still complete with cover of course—might be worth only half that, and a very poor copy—coverless, for instance, or with important pages missing—would be virtually worthless.
“Then there are other variables. Is the copy inscribed by any of the artists or writers? Does it have an interesting provenance? Does it have a clear provenance at all? Has the paper been de-acidified? Is there rust around the staples? Have they been carefully removed and replaced with stainless material?”
He was waving his hands around, lecturing now. Lindsey stopped him. “Please, Prof! Do you have all that in your head? Or did you get it out of Overman?”
“Overstreet,” he corrected. “I regard Overstreet as occasionally useful, chiefly for bibliographic purposes. My own valuations are consistently more valid.”
Lindsey let out his breath. The guy didn’t suffer from an excess of modesty. He asked, “What about Science Fiction?”
Ben Zinowicz said, “What about it? You mean Heinlein and such?”
“No. The Superman thing.” He tried to recall what Patterson had told him. “From 1933. It’s coverless. Shouldn’t it be worthless? But it’s very valuable, don’t you agree?”
Now ben Zinowicz gave a real smile. “I think I know the item you mean. It’s nearly extinct—one, at most two copies survive. A cornerstone item of modern sequential narrative. As for condition—let’s just say that Science Fiction is the exception that proves the rule.”
Lindsey nodded. “I think you’re hired.” He crossed his fingers. Harden at Regional would have to go for this, or Lindsey would have to go over his head. One way or another, he could see that these silly missing comic books were going to make or break his career with International Surety. This might be the very opportunity he’d been searching for. Anyway, Hobart Lindsey had no intention of letting any case do him in. He was going to get to the bottom on this—and soon!
CHAPTER FOUR
Lindsey was sorely tempted to lay Terry Patterson’s list in front of Professor ben Zinowicz and get his valuations right then and there. But he decided he’d better clear the consulting fee with Harden before he went too far. Before he could propose a next step, ben Zinowicz broke into his thoughts.
“The Regents are very touchy about faculty doing outside work during the hours they’re paid by the taxpayers. A professor is a professor, eh?” He paused to preen, then said, “I maintain an office in my home, for my consulting business. I’m in the Contra Costa directory. Please telephone for an appointment—I divide my time between the University and out-of-town