Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (19 page)

“Did Rocco make any phone calls while you were there?”

“No.”

“What time did you leave his place?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention. I’d guess about eleven thirty or so.”

“Did you see anybody else in the house, or outside it?”

He thought for a while. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. As I was driving away, I saw Baby Herman’s stooge, you know the one, the rabbit, Roger Rabbit, walking up the drive.”

That dragged Roger back into the ballgame. He hopped bolt upright. I braced myself for trouble, but Roger only puffed forth an innocuous balloon containing a vague reference to important matters elsewhere and fled out the door.

“Queer fellow, your assistant,” said Sleaze. “You know when I first met him he reminded me of someone. Now I know who. Roger Rabbit. Do you see the resemblance?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it,” I said casually. “I do. The both of them could be twins.” I bid Sleaze a quick farewell and went out to collar Roger before he did something dumb. About as easy as changing the course of the Mississippi River.

I searched for several blocks in every direction, but couldn’t find hide nor hair of the skedaddled bunny.

On the off chance he might surprise me and do something reasonable, I hot-footed it over to the Persian delicatessen where he’d left the scroll.

I don’t know which smelled worse, the deli’s cuisine or a dead camel. Not that it mattered, since they were probably one and the same.

The deli’s owner, a middle-aged greaseball named Abou Ben Something spoke English about as well as I spoke ‘toone-sian. He tried semaphore, but I couldn’t read his waving arms, either. We finally hit on charades. I got through by pretending to read a napkin wound around a fat weiner. He ran into the back room and returned with the scroll, plus some old codger who should have been hanging in the front window with the rest of the skinny, brown, wrinkled sausages. The old galoot handed me a sheet of paper with marks on it that looked like they had been scratched there by what eventually wound up as the main ingredient in the chicken salad. I finally got the key to deciphering it when I realized that half the o’s were grease spots. If you ignored them, the message came clear. “Beware,” it said. “Great tragedy will result should this fiendish device ever fall into the hands of a ‘toon.”

Imagine that, a cursed teakettle. Though oddly enough the scroll’s dire prediction
had
come true. The teakettle
had
fallen into the hands of a ‘toon, and great tragedy
had
resulted. Maybe the teakettle really did carry a curse. And maybe Santa Claus also swept out my chimney for me every Christmas.

I slipped the deli owner a fin for his trouble and shagged it on out to the sidewalk before the deli’s zingy smell did permanent damage to my nose.

I debated whether to pursue clues or keep after Roger. Clues won.

I made a few phone calls, and in no time located the messenger service that had delivered the stolen artwork to Hiram Toner’s gallery.

The place, called what else but Speedy Messenger Service, told me somebody had dropped the artwork at their office and had paid cash in advance for delivery to Toner. Their records didn’t show the sender’s name.

I sweet-talked a secretary into giving me the name and home address of the clerk on duty when the sender came in, in the hope that maybe he could provide me a description.

When I came out of the messenger service, it was a cool, sunny day, and there wasn’t a ‘toon anywhere in sight. It made me want to chuck what I was doing, drive back by the Persian deli, pick up a roast goat sandwich and a bottle of camel whiz wine, and head out to the nearest stand of timber for a solitary picnic and drunk.

I flipped a coin. It came up Dominick DeGreasy. I resisted an urge to make it best two out of three, and headed off to do my duty.

I found Dominick DeGreasy stalking through the syndicate’s production studio, glaring his work force to higher levels of productivity. The few people crazy enough to ask him a question got, instead of an answer, a public dressing down for not knowing their jobs. Quite a manager, DeGreasy.

“Got a minute, Mister DeGreasy?” I said to him.

“Don’t bring your problems to me,” he said, mistaking me for one of his employees. “That’s why I pay you good money. To know how to deal with problems.”

“No problem, Mister DeGreasy. Just a few questions. I’m Eddie Valiant, remember me? The guy looking into your brother’s murder? The guy who’s going to return your teakettle?”

“Oh, sure, Valiant.” He looped an arm the size of an oak tree around my shoulders. “You got a line on my teakettle yet?”

I nodded. “Maybe, just maybe. Can we go someplace private and discuss it?” “Sure, sure. In here.” He led me into the employees’

lounge. When he entered, every employee inside walked out. “Respect,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the retreating multitude. “That’s what it takes to run a big company. Respect. You either got it, or you ain’t.”

“And you got it?”

“In spades. There’s not a worker in this company who doesn’t respect Dominick DeGreasy.” The coffee machine showed its respect by serving him up a freebie when he rapped it with his fist. “Tell me what you found out about the teakettle.”

“In a minute. First, I’ve got some other stuff to go over with you, stuff that bears directly on the case.”

“Stuff? What kind of stuff? I want that teakettle. Period.”

“And your brother’s murderer. You want him too, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure. Sure, I want him too. It’s just that I sometimes forget what I want more. Rocco was a great one for always taking care of me. It’s hard for me to keep my priorities straight now that I have to take care of myself.” He walloped the candy dispenser, but it refused to knuckle under to management pressure. Must have had a stronger union than the coffee machine.

“On the day he died, your brother wrote a check to Hiram Toner at the Hi Tone Gallery. The check went to pay for return of that stolen artwork I found photos of in Rocco’s office. Rocco mention anything about that to you?”

“No. Rocco took care of the money. I took care of discipline.” Dominick stuck his gargantuan hand into the candy machine’s delivery slot. The rankest amateur soothsayer could have predicted what would happen next. He was going to get that massive paw of his stuck up there, and, sure enough, he did. In a lot of ways, I hated dealing with Dominick DeGreasy worse than dealing with a ‘toon. At least with a ‘toon you knew enough to expect the ridiculous. With Dominick, you expected the normal, but got the ridiculous anyway.

I put a shoulder to the machine. Two healthy grunts, and I set him free. Although, for as much gratitude as he showed, I’m sorry I bothered. I should have left it on him and let him explain to his respectful employees how he came to be wearing their candy machine for an ID bracelet. “Did Rocco have many dealings with Hiram Toner?” I asked him.

“Enough. He had arrangements with most of the art dealers around. If anything interesting turned up on the market, legit or otherwise, the dealers gave him first crack. If he liked it, he bought it, no questions asked.” After getting caught once, you’d think even the numbest numbskull would get the message, but some numbskulls never learn. It took Dominick less than two seconds to get in up to his elbow, again. I got him loose, dug some change out of my pockets, and pumped it into the coin slot.

“You know Sid Sleaze?” I asked.

“Never heard of him.” Dominick stabbed at the buttons with his broad, lumpy finger. He hit two buttons at once, but only one bar came out. He tore off the wrapper, jammed the bar into his mouth, and swallowed it whole.

“How about Sid Baumgartner?” I asked, trying Sleaze’s real name.

“Yeah, I know Baumgartner.” Dominick straightened out the only two pictures in the room, one of him, one of his brother Rocco, with a metal plaque that said “Our Founder” bolted under each. “This Baumgartner approached the syndicate a bunch of times with an offer to buy out one of our contract players.”

“Which one?”

His sandpaper voice gained another layer of grittiness. “Always the same. Roger Rabbit. I wanted to go for it, but Rocco told me he would never sell that rabbit in a million years. I told him he was nuts. Baumgartner offered a lot more than I thought the rabbit was worth. But Rocco refused to even consider the idea. He never told me why, but I always suspected Jessica was behind it.”

“Strange. When I asked Rocco if anybody had ever wanted to buy out Roger’s contract, he said no. Any idea why he lied?”

A few employees drifted into the coffee room, saw Dominick, and promptly drifted right out again. “Beats me. Rocco had a peculiar obsession with that rabbit.”

“Rocco ever mention anything about Jessica’s starring in a pornographic comic book?”

His lips curled back across his teeth in a leer. “She do that? No kidding? I told Rocco that woman was a doxie. I told him, but he never listened. No, he never mentioned nothing about any comic book like that, not that he would. He was nuts over that broad.” He leaned close to me. His breath smelled like he’d been gnawing on garlic cloves. “I hear she’s the leading candidate to take the fall for Roger Rabbit’s murder. I hear the cops think they can make it stick. That the angle you’re playing? You out to pin it on her too? Because, if you are, I’ll back you one hundred percent. She caused Rocco a lot of heartache, and I want her to pay.”

“I’ll do my best. By the way,” I said casually, “did you know Jessica’s also interested in your teakettle?”

If you’ve ever seen a matador wave a red flag in front of a bull, you have some idea how Dominick DeGreasy responded to that one. He did everything but slobber and paw the carpet. “It’s not hers,” he yelled. “It belongs to me and Rocco. What the hell does she want with it?” “According to her it’s solid gold.”

Dominick’s face lightened from bright crimson to pastel pink to its normal pasty white, and he gave out with a chuckle that sounded like the croak of a dying frog. “Solid gold! She says it’s solid gold? Boy, oh, boy, is she in for a surprise. It’s nothing but an ordinary teakettle. That’s it. Nothing but plain old metal.” He whipped out his fat leather wallet and waved it in my direction. “Whatever she offered you, I’ll double it.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was no way on earth he could double the kind of reward Jessica had promised me. Instead I assured him that, as soon as I got my grubby hands on it, the teakettle would be his.

I found Roger the last place I would have thought to look-back in my apartment, his feet hanging over one arm of my sofa, his ears drooped limply over the other. The residue from his deep funk had turned his white fur the same shade of blue as a careless grannie’s home rinse. Quite the pleasant sight to walk in on. Home sweet home, assuming you lived in a funeral parlor.

“You sure lit out of Sleaze’s place in a hurry,” I said. “I got kind of worried. I thought you might be starting to disintegrate on me. You’re not, are you?”

The last time I saw eyes with that much pleading and despair in them, they were staring out at me from inside a cage at the city pound. “I didn’t kill Rocco,” he said. “I just don’t have it in me.”

“Sure, you know that, and I know that, but prove it to the rest of the world. Maybe Sleaze
is
lying about seeing you there the night Rocco died. I don’t know why he would, but it’s possible. Maybe Jessica’s lying, too. I don’t know. That’s what we have to find out. Who’s telling the truth, and who’s not. That’s why we call this a mystery. Otherwise, if everything was cut and dried, we’d call it an unvarnished truth.”

I passed out whiskey and cigars. We both chugged down and lit up. “Look, I got us a great lead,” I said. “I found the messenger service that delivered the stolen artwork to Hiram Toner. I’m on my way over to see the clerk who took the order. Why not come along?”

Roger’s word balloons came out filled with cigar smoke. He had to repeat his answer again after he’d exhaled the smoke, so I could read it. “No, to tell you the truth, I kind of lost my taste for it. You go ahead. Investigate the case however you want to. Without me. I’ll just wait around here for your final report.”

So there was a God in heaven after all, and he did respond to prayers. What more could I want? The rabbit off my back.

Freedom to pursue the case any way I saw fit. Yet it failed to give me the rush I would have expected. Lord, let it be a case of the grippe,
delirium tremens,
terminal scurvy, anything but the nagging suspicion that I might actually be starting to like the dipsy-doodle cottontail. “Sure, sure,” I said. “If that’s the way you want it.” “That’s the way I want it.”

When I sized Roger up, he seemed somehow smaller, as though some brute had whaled five pounds of stuffing out of him. Try as hard as I might, I just couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. I left him and went into my bedroom. In my top dresser drawer, underneath my dress-white boxer shorts, I found the special deputy’s badge I got awarded a few years back after successfully completing one of those rare jobs where I found myself on the sunny side of the law. I polished it on my sleeve and pinned it into one of my old wallets.

I went back out into the living room where the rabbit was again draped across the sofa. “Stand up.” I told him. He blinked extra slowly. “What?” “I said stand up. I’ve got something for you.” “Can’t you give it to me here?” “No, I can’t. Now will you stand up, or do I have to help you?”

“Sure, sure, whatever you say.” He stood up, but with such rotten posture that he resembled one of those collapsible wooden rulers that fold into about fourteen sections.

I poked him in the chest. “Snap to,” I said, and he did pull out a few of his kinks, although he still retained about as many bends as a road map of a con man’s morals.

“You’ve been a great help to me in this case,” I said, stretching the truth so far that, if it ever sprang back and hit me in the chest, I’d be a dead man for sure. “And I think you should have some official recognition. So I want to swear you in as my assistant.”

“You mean it? As your official assistant?”