The Rabbit Factory (9 page)

Never to be heard from again, the proud new owner of Rambo's left ear told himself as he picked it up and held it to the light.

Sitting in his faded leather desk chair, wearing a frayed terry bathrobe, he hardly looked like a murderer. His face was white and bloated. Over the years it had taken on the color and texture of the Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man.

He had never plotted a real murder before. But he had approached the execution of Eddie Elkins with the same systematic, careful planning that went into every script he ever conceived.

Ś During his writing career he had created hundreds of stories for feature films and television shows. He was mediocre on

dialogue and passable on character, but when it came to plot development, nobody could touch him. He was known in the business as the Story Guru.

He set the ear down, picked up a fresh yellow pencil, and began chewing on it. He had been writing on a computer for fifteen years now, but he still couldn't think without gnawing on a No. 2 Ticonderoga.

There had never been any question in his mind that the job required a professional killer. "We have to hire someone," he had told the others when the plan was first being hatched. "I mean really, who among us is capable of wet work?"

"I haven't been capable of wet work since I had my prostate removed," one of his partners in crime had said.

They had a good laugh over that one. That had been over two years ago. Slowly, methodically, the plan came together. Then they took a month-long trip to Europe to recruit the man who eventually killed Elkins. A working vacation they called it. Museums, fine restaurants, four-star hotels, and as they loved to say, "cloak and dagger meetings with potential hit men."

In truth, there was nothing cloak or dagger about the meetings. Finding candidates was easy enough if you asked the right questions in the right neighborhoods.

They found their assassin in Palermo. "A Sicilian hit man," one of them had said. "How fucking stereotypical can we get?"

But they agreed he was the right man for the job. Now, two years later, Elkins was dead and the Story Guru was alone in his den, having a quiet victory drink. So how come I'm not feeling victorious, he thought.

Fear. He felt it bubbling up in his belly. Planning is one thing, he thought. Pulling it off is something else. At first it had been an

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The Rabbit Factory

adventure. Hatching a real murder plot was a thrill. Cruising the continent for professional killers was better than sex. But now it had gone from a dream to a reality and with that came the possibility of getting caught. His plot was airtight. He knew he was too smart to get caught, but he was a worrier by nature.

He took a deep breath and looked at the top right hand corner of his monitor. Monday, April 18, 11:09 p.m. He had been sitting at his computer for three hours searching for news about the murder.

Pencil still clenched between his teeth, he went back to the Google site and for about the fiftieth time that night he typed the words 'Murder at Familyland' into the Search bar. And like every time before, he got thousands of pages of Familyland references, but nothing about the man who had been strangled in the Rabbit Hole more than twenty-four hours ago.

"I know how Ike Rose and those people at Lamaar operate," he had said from the very start. "The guy inside the Rambunctious Rabbit suit at Familyland will get whacked, and there won't be a whisper about it on TV, radio or newspaper. They'll bury it."

He searched the LA. Times site. Then cnn.com. Nada. Not a word. Just as he predicted. The Lamaar Company didn't want the public to know about the death of Eddie Elkins.

He removed the splintered pencil, spit a few yellow flakes onto the rug, and poured another two inches of Grand Marnier into his glass. "Here's looking at you, Rambo," he said, downing half the amber liquid in one swallow.

He sat back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. There's no reason to be nervous, he told himself. Everything is going according to script.

Big Jim settled into his chair. "The movie business is all about power," the smug professor explained to his captive audience. I put my pad down on the table and nodded my head in surrender.

"But the people in power change about every five minutes. A few bombs at the box office, and the hotshot who had the vision suddenly finds himself with a lot of time for golf and martinis. Then a new messiah shows up with his vision. Usually some retread who got fired from another studio. It didn't work that way at Lamaar. From the time he went into business until a few years before he died, Dean Lamaar didn't just run the company. He was the company. My way or the highways

"There's no Mr. Paramount, no Mr. Columbia, but there was a Mr. Warner and a Mr. Disney and a Mr. Lamaar, and if it's your name on that front gate, you are God Almighty. You think I'm a control freak? Imagine if I had a power base."

"I shudder at the concept," I said.

"Dean Lamaar came from one of those Bible Belt states. His father was one of those old-time religion ministers, a real bitter

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II son of a bitch because he got his leg blown off in World War I. Plus he was a drunk. He'd hobble up to the pulpit with his wooden leg and preach against the evils of booze, then go home, get wasted, and beat the shit out of his son." "Stop! Stop!" I said so loud that Skunkie opened his eyes to see what the problem was. "I don't want the life story of some dead guy. I want to know why you think Danny Eeg killed Elkins and where do I find him." "Y'know, Mike, you just don't appreciate what a source I am. I used to drive Dean Lamaar around in the early seventies. Most of the time, he'd just be polite, ask how I'm doing, stuff like that. But a few times he'd be a little plastered, and he'd open up. He even showed me the scars on his hands where his father burned them when he caught him drawing cartoons." "Dad, you are confusing me with someone who gives a shit. I don't want to know about Dean Lamaar's unhappy childhood and his sadistic father." "Okay, okay, just one last juicy little tidbit on the subject. One day the preacher climbs a ladder to fix some shingles on the roof. He's a drunk and a gimp, so he loses his balance, falls off the roof, and lands on a rake. Bleeds to death in a couple of minutes. Now, is that divine justice or what?" "Apparently God punishes fathers who are cruel to their sons," I said. "Process that little tidbit."

"God doesn't punish fathers who introduce their ungrateful sons to beautiful, intelligent, eligible women."

"I'll make you a deal," I said. "If you hurry up and get to the part about Danny Eeg, I'll marry Diana and give you twelve grandchildren." He took a sip of his Irish. "It started right after the Japs

bombed Pearl Harbor. Lamaar enlisted in the army and since by now he's a working cartoonist, they assign him to a unit that makes military training films, and he becomes fast friends with four other soldier boys. They called themselves The Cartoon Corps. They worked together as a team, learned their craft at the Army's expense."

"One of them better be Danny Eeg."

"No, but one of them was Lars Eeg. Danny is his son. He was born about a year after the war ended."

I put my hand over my eyes. Jim wasn't even up to the part where my suspect was born yet. I removed my hand to signal him to go on.

"Lars was a brilliant cartoonist. Way better than Lamaar. When the war ended the other three went their separate ways, but Lamaar and Eeg went off to Hollywood together and landed a job in some nickeland-dime animation house. After a year Lamaar hates working for other people, so, without a pot to piss in he opens his own company. But by now Eeg's got a wife and kid, and he can't afford to live hand to mouth, so he turns down the partnership.":

"Bad call," I volunteered.

"Lamaar struggles. Finally he gets the big call. RKO wants six cartoons starring this new character he created, Rambunctious Rabbit. He does one. It comes out good, but not great. Plus he's such a perfectionist that he spent more than RKO paid him, so he's losing his shirt. He needs help, so he uses part of the front money to hire his old buddy Lars Eeg, who Lamaar knows is much more talented than he is.

"A few months later it's all turned around. Eeg really develops the character. The drawings, the attitudes, the whole

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persona. He doesn't give Rambunctious a girlfriend like Mickey Mouse has. No, he gives him a wife. And kids. A shitload of kids, because what the hell, he's a rabbit. And they don't live in a hole like Bugs Bunny. They live in suburbia. The whole rabbit family becomes the symbol of middle-class, post-war America. It's brilliant. And it's perfect timing. Because now it's 1950, and along comes television. The demand for animation is bigger than the supply.

"Lamaar Studios explodes. Now Dean's got hundreds of employees working around the clock, and he knows he needs a management team, but he doesn't trust anybody. So he sends for his old Army buddies, The Cartoon Corps. In less than ten years they go from a mom-and-pop operation to an entertainment giant. Movies, TV, music, licensing, and of course, since Walt had Disneyland, Dean had to build Familyland.

"They go public and the money is pouring in. Dean Lamaar is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, and his buddies do whatever he asks. They helped run the show, but they are all yes men. Yes, Deanie, yes, Deanie, yes Deanie. I'd hear it in the car. And then one day, Lars Eeg says No.

"Dean wanted to make an animated feature about the Civil War. The others kissed Lamaar's ass for his creative genius, but Eeg thought it was a bad idea. He had butted heads with the boss before, but by now Lamaar is a full-blown paranoid and he sees this as a threat to his power. He decides that Eeg has to go."

"My way or the highway," I said, just to let him know I was paying attention.

"Exactly. Lamaar offered Eeg $250,000 to cash in his chips. Eeg knew he was the odd man out, so he agreed to take the money. But he had to sign away all his creative rights to any of

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the work he did while he worked for Lamaar. Do you know how much Eeg would be worth today if he hadn't been squeezed out? Over a billion dollars. Lars died, but he's got a son, Danny, who's been fighting for that money for years. Years! And he still hasn't collected a penny."

"And you think Danny Eeg murdered the guy in the rabbit costume as a way of getting back at Lamaar Studios for screwing his father?"

"To make a long story short," he stopped, and we both laughed, "yes, I do. If it turns out I'm wrong, and someone killed Elkins because he molested their kid, you'll figure that out soon enough. But if I'm right about that flipbook, and those Lamaar characters start dropping like flies, you'll know it's a hate crime against the corporation. There's always hundreds of disgruntled employees at a company, but there's only one person in the world who hates Lamaar enough to do this. Lars Eeg's son, Danny."

"But if what you told me is common knowledge, Danny would know he'd be the first suspect on a list of one."

"Right. And he'll have an ironclad alibi. Probably was in another part of the world when the murder happened."

"So he hired someone."

"Getting screwed out of a billion bucks can make a normal man do a lot of crazy things," he said. "By the way, Lamaar did make that Civil War movie. It was called Divided We Fall. It sank without a ripple. It was his only flop."

"Dad, thanks a lot. This is an amazing backgrounder. I owe you. I'm sorry if I called you an overblown windbag."

"You didn't call me a windbag."

"Then I must've just been thinking it."

II He raised his huge hand and slowly lifted the middle finger in my direction. Just like the flipbook. "This does not mean 'one,'" he said. Greater love hath no father and son.

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W'e talked for another ten minutes. I was about to say good night, when Skunkie sat up and barked. Big Jim looked at me and said, "Company."

The doorbell rang. Skunkie raced to the front door. I was right behind him. I pressed the thumb latch and pulled the door open. It was my brother Frankie. He looked like a train wreck.

Frankie hadn't shaved or combed his hair for days. His clothes looked like he'd slept in them, but his pupils were so dilated, it was obvious that he hadn't slept anywhere for quite a while. He was carrying a small black duffel bag, which he dropped on the rug as he entered. His eyes were bloodshot, the rims red. I know my brother doesn't do drugs, but he looked like a candidate for a one-way ticket to Betty Ford.

"Mike?" he said, like he'd just encountered a total stranger. His voice resonated with fear. "I didn't know... I didn't know you'd be here."

"It's a good thing I am." He smelled even worse than he looked. A gamy mixture of body odor, booze, dried vomit, and the unmistakable stench of fear.

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Jim came up behind me. Frankie threw his arms as far around his father as they could go. He's four inches shorter than I am, small, like my mother's side of the family. Big Jim gathered him up like a rag doll and held him tight.

Frankie buried his face into Jim's massive chest, pressing hard, digging deep to tap into that familiar well of comfort and closeness. A Pavlovian wave of relief rippled through his body as once again he let himself be wrapped in Daddy's loving arms. It's that primal physical contact between parent and child that says, As long as you are here with me, you are safe from harm. And when that touch finally came, Frankie's emotional fabric split at the seams, and he began to sob. "Pop," he said, "I am in such deep shit."

Without letting go of Frankie, Jim turned toward me, and he became the second person that day to communicate with me in code. He spoke softly, so he wouldn't disturb the boy inside the cocoon of safety. I could barely hear him over Frankie's wailing, but I could read Jim's lips. C.T.W. they said.

C.T.W. was something my mother had taught us before we even knew the other twenty-three letters of the alphabet. She had learned it from her father, and who knows how many generations had handed it down before him.