The Rabbit Factory (51 page)

"Yes, sir," I said. "You almost killed us." j

"Don't take it personally. You're Lomax, right?"

"Detective Mike Lomax, sir. LAPD."

"Lomax," he said. "Years back, I had a driver named Lomax. Big Jim we called him. Good man."

"He's my father, sir."

"I'll be damned," he said. "I guess Disney was right. It's a small world after all. You and your Dad get along okay?"

"Very much so, sir." t; >

"That's a real blessing," he said. He took another sip of the soda. "I had two overwhelming feelings after Father passed. The first was the sheer sense of relief. But the other came as a complete surprise. I loved the feeling of power. Taking someone's life is the ultimate God-like act, and for me, power wa a rush. I like being in control. That's been my strength and my Achilles heel.

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"In 1937 Disney released Snow White and followed it up with Pinocchio. Two Hollywood blockbusters. I was living in Manhattan at the time." He laughed. "Manhattan, Kansas. I made a very, very low-budget animated short about a farmer who couldn't start his tractor. The Intractable Tractor, I called it. Boy, was it bad. I had a lot to learn and nobody to teach me. But then I got lucky. The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. I joined the Army, and instead of shipping me overseas, they sent me to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and assigned me to a unit that produced military training films. A lot of it was animation, because everything had to be simple enough for the average GI Joe to understand. That's where I met the men who would become my lifelong friends."

"The Cartoon Corps," I said.

He smiled. "You've done your homework. Uncle Sam bought us lots of sophisticated equipment, but we were in over our heads, so they flew in some of the best animators in the business to teach us the tricks of the trade. One week a guy would help us make a film on how to avoid venereal disease, and the next week he'd be back home working on Fantasia.

"We learned a lot and after the war, Lars Eeg and I went to Hollywood. Lars was a better animator than I was, but I became the successful one. I think it's because he always had pretensions of becoming a fine artist. My goal was to create cartoons that would capture the essence of the twentieth-century American family. Did you ever wonder why Familyland isn't called Lamaar Land? Because I wanted the name Lamaar to be synonymous with family.

"I love children. Did you know that in 1970, Scholastic Magazine did a nationwide survey of kids under ten. If they could

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Marshall Karp

spend one day with any person, living or dead, real or fictional, who would it be? Their first choice, ahead of Babe Ruth, Superman, Santa Claus, and Elvis Presley, was me. It's ironic, isn't it Mike?"

"What's that, sir?"

"I murdered my own father in cold blood, and somehow I became a father figure to millions."

Lamaar took us on a guided tour of the rise of his empire, including his split with Eeg. "He was never a team player," Lamaar said. "His family still thinks they're entitled to more money than I gave him, but they're wrong. Lars only perfected my idea. He wasn't down there in that vermin infested cellar when I created it.

"Sooner or later all good things come to an end. By the late nineties the company was losing money. We had been down before, but this time was different. We were old men. Our stockholders had no faith in us and the Japanese had money. They stole the company out from under me.

"They promised me total creative freedom and a contract for life, but they began destroying my baby before the ink was even dry. They hired Ike Rose. The Great Jewish Hope, all fivefeet-nothing of him. I remember my first meeting with him. He kissed my ass like everyone who ever drove through our front gates. Mr. Lamaar, you're a genius, Mr. Lamaar, you're a legend, Mr. Lamaar, let me kneel at your feet and bask in your brilliance. I knew right then he'd be trouble.

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"Three weeks later he issued his famous Memo From the Beach. After living, breathing, and soaking up every aspect of the Lamaar Company for less than one calendar month, he spent a weekend at his beach house in Malibu and wrote a fiftyseven-page document on how to fix it. He never said fix. He used 're' words. Reshape, revitalize, resuscitate, reinvigorate, rejuvenate, re-energize, and my favorite--reanimate.

"The world has changed, he said. And for that they paid him millions. A new millennium is upon us. We have to give the people what they want. And for that they heaped stock options on him. And what in Mr. Ike Rose's Talmudic opinion did the people want?"

Lamaar struggled to lift his head from the pillow and screamed at the camera. "Violence, profanity, infidelity, nudity, fathers fucking daughters and granddaughters. Incest. Innnnncesssst."1

His head fell back on the pillow. He put one hand over his eyes and took short, shallow breaths. A minute passed before he removed his hand from his eyes and spoke again. This time, his voice was calm, softer, a little raspy from the beating he had just given his ancient vocal cords. "Do you know the word heterodoxy, Mr. Lomax?" he said. ;;; "No, sir."Ś:Ś',

"It's like heresy or blasphemy. A sin against God. My father used to use it in his sermons. Ike Rose committed heterodoxy. His first foray into reanimating my vision was a movie called Home for the Holidays.

"I told him it was a huge mistake. I said it would ruin tho Lamaar image. He opened a new division called Freeze Frame to release it. He said this way the Lamaar name won't be associated

with an R movie. But that's bullshit. The Fundamentalists know it's a Lamaar film, the Christian Right knows it, The Moral Majority knows it. Who does that kike bastard think he's kidding?

"I wanted to stop him, but I was powerless. They turned me into fucking Colonel Sanders. He created Kentucky Fried Chicken then sold it to a conglomerate. They put his face on every bucket of chicken, but he had no say in running the company. I too was stripped of my power. To make matters worse, the movie was a blockbuster. It cost $30 million to make and pulled in $266.4 million. Wall Street loved him.-., Ś%

"I knew what that meant. Little by little, the balance would shift until debauchery and depravity replaced morality and virtue. Familyland would become Paganland. My partners told me to stay calm. Today's audiences aren't looking for 1950s family fun, they told me. Lebrecht said R-rated movies are a sign of the times. But then I found out Ike Rose wasn't stopping there. He's been negotiating to build a multi-billion-dollar complex in Las Vegas. The Lamaar name right in the middle of America's cultural hellhole--gambling, prostitution, drugs, all run by organized crime. That's not the legacy I wanted when I died."n/Ś.Ś'.;

He was breathing heavily, but while the voice analyzer clearly registered stress, the technician bent his thumb upwards to signal that it was also registering honesty. H "I hated Rose and everything he was doing. I couldn't sleep. And then one night, I realized that Father had been right. My simple drawings had turned into a company that was a purveyor of filth. My only salvation was to destroy the Sodom and Gomorrah I had built. I was indeed its Creator, and I had the right--no, the obligation--to wipe it from the face of the Earth.

"I met with Kevin, Mitch, and Klaus. They were wealthy beyond imagination and they all knew I was responsible for the lives they had been blessed with. They were loyal. I didn't have to prod them.

"We decided I should fake my own death. Everyone knew I hated the way the company was being run. If I were still alive, I would be a suspect. But if I were dead, I would have the power to orchestrate its demise. We put together a master plan the same way we used to produce a feature film. It didn't happen overnight. It was fine-tuned, perfected. Nothing was left to chance. I have a question, Detective. How did you figure out I was still alive?"

"You made a videotape two days after you supposedly died," I said. "We watched the source tape and there was a minor earthquake in the middle of filming. That time-stamped it for us."

Lamaar shook his head. "Damn," he said. "The earthquake...the fucking earthquake." He let out a pitiful sigh.

"I have a question," I said. "Why did you make the tape after you faked your death? Why didn't you make it before?"

"I did, I did," he said. "We shot it on May 19, two days before I died. It was supposed to be shown at my funeral. But the day after I faked my death and moved in here, Klaus came racing in and told me that the tape had been destroyed. It was sent out to be duped, but somehow it wound up in a box of tapes that were scheduled to be erased for re-use.

"I was devastated. I had wanted that tape to be my legacy, a testimonial to what I had created. Klaus said we could reshoot it. I remember ranting and raving that we couldn't reshoot because I was dead. But he had a plan. Before dawrkon May 23

we sneaked back into the studio, shot a second version, and backdated it. No one saw us. I remember that earthquake. I thought it was my father rumbling down in hell, pissed off that I really wasn't dead."

Henry Collins entered the room and held up a clear plastic bag. Inside the bag was a pink-and-white fuzzy hunk of fabric and wire mesh with a jagged cut along the bottom. It was Rambo's ear.

"LAPD has a rabbit head that's missing one of those," I said.

"This is just one of a dozen things we've found that connects them," Collins said. "Including Lebrecht's phony passport. They didn't go out of their way to hide anything."

Church looked at the time remaining on the dialysis machine. "Another eight minutes and we'll be done irrigating Lamaar's kidneys. Let's transport him back to L.A. I'll need a Med-Evac. Set it down at the high school."

"I'm on it," Collins said and left. '

"Mr. Lamaar," Church said. "We have no more questions for now. As soon as you get unhooked from that machine we're going to take you back to Los Angeles."

"I don't want to go back," Lamaar said.'

"Sir, with all due respect," Church said, "you don't have a choice. We're in charge now."

"No," Lamaar said. "You're not." He picked up the empty syringe from the tray at his side.

"Sir?" Church said, and started to move toward him.

"Stop right there," Lamaar said.

"What's in the syringe, Mr. Lamaar?" Church asked.

"Nothing." He smiled. "Just air. Thirty ccs of God's good air." He snapped the syringe into a piece of blue plastic that was on

one of his blood lines.

"Dios mio." It was Jesus.

"Jesus, what the fuck is going on here?" Church yelled.

Jesus moved toward the recliner. "Senor, porfavor."

"Don't come any closer," Lamaar said, and Jesus stopped a few feet from the chair. "The man asked you a question. He wants to know what's going on."

"There's a luer lock on the return tube," Jesus said. "It's there if I have to inject antibiotics into the lines. But he just connected an empty syringe. The air bubble is like instant death. It will kill him in seconds."

"Mr. Lamaar," Church said. "We can negotiate here. You don't even have to go to jail. A good lawyer can..."

"A good lawyer can what? Get me a nice corner suite at a home for the criminally insane? Save it, Mr. Church. I'm in charge of this production. Detective Lomax, I didn't hear anyone yell 'cut.' Is that videotape still running?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Good. Because you're only gonna get one take."

His right forearm tightened as he pressed his thumb down hard on the plunger. He gasped sharply. His body seized up and convulsed for a few seconds, then his hand fell to his lap and his head dropped. A red light started to strobe and the monitor let out a series of shrill beeps alerting us to what we already knew.

The Prince of Joy and Laughter was finally dead.

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// Tl "otherfucker!" Church screamed. "Cocksucking, son of a..."

."Tape's still rolling," the technician said.

Church stormed over to the recliner and shoved two fingers into Lamaar's carotid artery. "Jesus, turn that fucking thing off." The nurse killed the beeping monitor. Ś

Church pulled his fingers from Lamaar's neck. "I think he's done with the dialysis, too." Jesus turned off the pump and began to recite the Hail Mary in Spanish.

"Quiet!" Church yelled. He checked his watch and turned to the camera in total disgust. "8:11 p.m. The suspect, Dean Lamaar, using an empty syringe, apparently pumped air into his dialysis line and killed himself. The coroner will determine actual cause of death. Stop the videotape."

"Tape stopped," the tech said.

Church scowled at Lamaar's lifeless body. "Motherfucking, cocksucking, asshole fuck." Jesus stared at the floor, his lips moving rapidly, either in silent prayer, or he was cursing out Church for hurling insults at his late patient.

"Come on, Garet," I said. "Let's step to the other side of the looking glass." I put my arm on his shoulder and walked him through the magic bookcase into Lebrecht's media room.

"When I was a rookie, I used to work with this old-timer, Sergeant Paulivici," I said. "We had this running gag between us. Every time something really weird would happen on a case, I'd say, Paulie, now I've seen everything, and he'd say, Kid, you ain't seen nothing yet. He was always right."

"I think maybe this time you're right," Church said. "Now you have seen everything."

Church assembled his agents and filled them in on the most recent demise of Dean Lamaar. "But don't worry if you missed it," he said. "The fucker killed himself on videotape, so the whole world can see how vigilant we are when we question a suspect. Henry, you still got a chopper coming to pick up Lamaar?"V

"It'll be here in fifteen," Collins said.

"Get him a hearse," Church said. "Lomax, Biggs, and I are taking the chopper back to L.A. You stay and finish searching the house. What's the story on Lebrecht and Freddy?"

"They're on the way back with Chandler and her team. Are we charging the nurse with anything?'

"I doubt if he's involved with the operation, but I don't want him wandering the streets just yet," Church said. "Bring him in. Tell him he's a material witness to a crime."