Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (23 page)

Up to here the rabbit had been doing an A-number-one job. I don’t know if I could have handled it any better myself, so you know how good that made him. It must have been beginner’s luck, though, because, instead of following through on the syndicate angle, he veered off on a half-baked tangent involving, what else, but his darling Jessica. “That pornographic comic you made with Jessica Rabbit,” he said. “Tell me the true story behind it.”

“What do you mean, the true story?” asked Sleaze. “What does he mean, the true story?” he said to me. “I told you the true story. What else does he want?”

“I want you to admit you drugged Jessica and forced her to appear in your reprehensible comic.”

“Where did you get this guy?” asked Sleaze, scrambling the air alongside his temple. “He crazy, or what?”

“Yeah, he’s crazy,” I said, trying to pull it out of the fire. “He used to moonlight as a gymnasium punching bag and took one too many to the noggin.”

The rabbit refused to take my out. “You drugged her, didn’t you?” he said in balloons whose interlocking shape had an ominous resemblance to the chains cops find when they frisk down motorcycle bums. A nice touch.

“You’re crazy,” said Sleaze waving away the rabbit’s balloons before they locked around his throat. “It happened just the way I indicated. Jessica appeared in that comic of her own free will, and she came back later begging for more. That’s the truth. I’ve seen enough of these women to know why they do it. Some for the money, some because they’re mentally unstable. If you want my opinion, Jessica was one of the rare few. She did it because she loved it. She loved to strip naked in front of an audience. She loved to excite men to a sexual frenzy. She loved to …”

Roger hopped forward, hauled off, and slugged Sleaze full on the jaw, but the rabbit packed the wallop of an anemic butterfly and didn’t even muss the man’s makeup.

Sleaze rubbed at his jaw the way you’d rub at a mosquito bite, wound up, and clouted Roger with his purse. The rabbit sailed backward, crashed into the wall, and slid down it, unconscious, to the floor.

“Why did he do that?” asked Sleaze wonderingly, still rubbing idly at his chin. “Why did he attack me?”

“Because you’re a slimeball,” I answered, “and the best you deserve out of life is a broken jaw.” I stepped forward, swung hard, and sent Sleaze to slumberland. He somersaulted backward across his chair and hit the floor, his dress up around his waist. I walked around the desk, grabbed his hem, and pulled his dress down across his knees. I didn’t care about his modesty, but my delicate sensibilities deserved better.

I leaned over Roger and slapped him back to consciousness, restraining myself from putting a bit of extra muscle into it. “Let me at him,” said the rabbit gamely, struggling to get to his feet. “Let me at him. I’ll tear him limb from limb.” He got halfway up, bumped his head on one of his own balloons, and fell right back down again.

“Not so fast, slugger,” I said. “Besides, he’s still asleep from the last time you decked him. Give the poor guy a break.” “He’s what?” asked Roger incredulously. “He’s still out.” I pointed to Sleaze lying unconscious in the middle of the floor. “I did that?” “You sure did.”

“But I could have sworn he hit me back.” “A reflex action. You hit him, he went out like a light, and his arm jerked up as he went down. It caught you under the chin and sent you flying. But you KO’d him, fair and square, no doubt about it.” “I did? I really did?” “A regular John L. Sullivan.”

Roger found his balance and got to his feet. “You know I never actually hit anybody before,” he said proudly. “Could have fooled me.”

“Yes, honest. And it felt wonderful. Standing up for Jessica that way. I’m rather sorry now I didn’t take boxing lessons when I had the chance. I met Joe Palooka once, you know. And Rocky Marciano, too. We made a March of Dimes commercial together. They both said I should have considered a career in the ring. I assumed they were joking. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe I missed my calling. Maybe I should have been a pugilist. Sugar Roger Rabbit. How does that sound? Or Killer Rabbit. Kid Rabbit. Hurricane Rabbit. The Great Brown Hope.”

The Great Brown Hope? That nearly pushed me over the line, but I let it go. Let him have his moment of glory. How many moments of any kind could he have left?

Roger and I went to Jessica’s place.

He begged to go in with me. I doubted he could control himself in her presence, so I told him nothing doing.

It turned out to be a moot point. Jessica wasn’t home. Her housekeeper told me she had gone to a funeral. And then she told me whose.

“She’s not home,” I told the rabbit, as I got back into the car with him.

“Where is she?” he asked.

I had the sports news on the car radio. At some local West Coast track meet a ‘toon kangaroo had shattered the record for the long jump, and a ‘toon seal took every swimming medal. I wondered how far Wheaties would get in passing them off as all-American boys. “How should I know where she went?” I said. “What am I, her social secretary?”

Roger caught the concern in my voice but misinterpreted its cause. He grabbed my arm. “Something’s happened to Jessica. My Jessica’s in trouble.”

I shook him loose and stared out the window, so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. “No, she’s not in trouble. Do yourself a favor and drop it, all right?”

Roger refused to buy, “You know where she is, don’t you? Yet you won’t tell me. Why? What’s wrong? She is in trouble, isn’t she?”

I try and save this dopey rabbit some grief, and I take gas for it. OK. If he wanted honesty, I’d give it to him and hope he choked on it. I gripped his ears and held them out straight to either side of his head so he got my blast in full, undis-torted, stereophonic sound. “Jessica went to a funeral. And I didn’t want to tell you about it, because it just happens to be yours. Your funeral. The late Roger Rabbit.”

“My funeral? She went to my funeral?”

I pulled forward on his ears and nodded his head for him. “Right. Your funeral. She went to your funeral.”

“Eddie,” he said in a balloon so somber you could have used it as an aerial hearse for a hummingbird. “I want to go there, too.”

“Are you kidding? She went to
your funeral.
You can’t go to your own
funeral
Somebody’s bound to recognize you.”

“Not necessarily.” He squashed his ears down flat against either side of his face to show me what he’d look like in long tresses. “I’ll masquerade as my own aunt. I don’t have any family, so there’ll be nobody there to question me. Oh, please, Eddie, please.”

I held tough for a while but finally gave in. To tell you the truth, I was as intrigued by the prospect as Roger was. I mean how often does anybody get the chance to go to his own funeral?

“Nice turnout,” said Roger, surveying the crowd. He peered down at himself as we filed past his traditional cardboard casket. “And I look so natural.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away a tear.

He headed for a seat down front beside Jessica, but I guided him to a rear row instead. I must admit in his black cotton hose, clunky shoes, woolen skirt and jacket, and pillbox hat he brought off the maiden aunt bit pretty well, but why press our luck?

The funeral director got up and rattled off a bunch of stuff about what a great rabbit Roger had been.

Next Baby Herman crawled out and delivered a eulogy that was actually pretty moving, until the very end when he wet his pants.

From there we went to the cemetery.

Roger’s headstone was engraved with the words, “Hi, I’m Roger Rabbit,” inside a carved word balloon with stem ascending from between two bullet-shaped ears cut into the stone just above ground level.

“Nice, don’t you think?” he whispered. “I designed it myself.”

“I never would have guessed,” I said.

After the rabbit had been planted, and everybody was heading for home, I approached Jessica, but Roger got there first.

“Oh, dearie, you look so lovely,” said Roger, taking his wife’s hand. “I don’t know if Roger ever spoke of me or not. I’m his beloved Aunt Rhonda. I know he mentioned you to me quite often. He loved you very, very much, and always knew that you did not leave him of your own free will, but rather were forced into it by that ne’er-do-well Rocco De-Greasy.”

“We don’t want to overexcite ourselves, do we, Auntie?” I said, pushing the rabbit down the path toward my car. “I think you’d better go back to your hotel and take a nap.”

“Oh, my, that’s so considerate of you,” said Roger, more to Jessica than to me, “but I feel I can be of better use providing spiritual comfort to my charming and beautiful niece-in-law.”

I grabbed him by the elbow and lock-stepped him out to the road. “I really think you need the rest, Auntie.” I tossed him into my car and didn’t take my eyes off him until the car disappeared from view.

“A strange woman,” said Jessica when I rejoined her. “Amazing resemblance to her nephew. They could almost pass for twins.”

“No,” I said, “the old lady’s got longer ears.”

Jessica slipped her arm through mine. She had a flower in her hand, which she’d taken from one of Roger’s wreaths. “What did you think of the funeral?”

I shrugged. “Funerals, weddings, they’re all the same to me.

The only difference is whether you walk or ride down the aisle. Either way you wind up six feet deep in misery.” We reached her car, one of those sporty two-seaters with a name like something off an Italian menu. “How about you and me, we go for a ride?” I said. “Someplace quiet where we can talk.”

“What about?”

“Fairy-tale stuff. Sailing ships and sealing wax. Cabbages and kings.”

She unlocked her side of the car, climbed in, and started the engine. “You came to the wrong person. Catch a ride home with Tweedle-De-Dum.”

“How about teakettles, then? That more your kind of fable?”

She opened the passenger door. “I do believe you’re going my way.” She pointed toward the glovebox. “There’s a bottle inside.”

I swigged down enough courage to climb aboard the sailing ship on her bottle’s label and head out after the nearest white whale. “Call me Ishmael,” I said.

“I beg your pardon,” said Jessica.

“I said, I’ve got the teakettle.”

She immediately killed her engine. “Where is it?” she said with a voice so silky it could magnetize a rubber wand. “And when can I get it?”

“After we work our deal,” I said. “As I remember it, you promised me a pretty rich reward.”

“Of course.” She reached for the ignition. “My place, or yours?”

“Neither. I want something else, instead.”

“What?” From the puzzled way she said it, I could tell she couldn’t conceive of anything more valuable than the treasure she had just offered me.

“Some information. For starters, suppose you tell me about Little Rock DeGreasy’s scheme to sell forged copies of the works he and Carol Masters stole from Rocco’s art gallery.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“Not directly, no. But you knew about it, didn’t you? Little Rock told you about it.”

My guess panned out. “Yes, he told me about it. The boy loves me. He saw his scheme as a means of earning enough money so we could run away together. But just because I knew about it doesn’t make me guilty of a crime.”

“I think different. I could bring you up for concealing evidence, bur I’m inclined to hold out for something bigger.”

She picked her wreath flower off the console between us. One by one she plucked out its petals. When she got to the last one, it turned out she loved somebody not. “Such as?”

“How about murder one?”

She laughed. “You’ll have a fine time proving that one.”

“I don’t think so. You tie in too well. Somebody told Sid Sleaze that the law was getting ready to close down Carol and Little Rock’s forgery racket. I think that somebody was you. You told Sleaze, knowing full well he’d squeeze one last dollar out of the scam by going to Rocco with the full story. You knew how Rocco would react when he heard it. He would call Carol Masters and Little Rock onto the carpet. You counted on one or the other of them getting panicky enough to do Rocco in.”

“Why would I possibly want them to do that? I loved Rocco.”

“I think you loved his money more, and I think it’s going to be you who gets most of it when they read his will. That’s motive enough in my book.”

She brushed her single-petaled flower first across her lips and then across mine. “What if I did construct a situation designed to goad either Carol or Little Rock into killing Rocco? Dear Roger beat them both to it, and I had nothing to do with that.”

“I’m not so sure.” I leaned back against her fine leather seat, really enjoying myself for the first time since this whole miserable affair began. “When Sleaze came over to tell Rocco about the forgery scheme, he also brought duplicate negatives of your infamous comic book. I’d guess Rocco didn’t take kindly to the revelation that his sweetheart was a tart. He called you on the carpet, too. Threatened to kick you out of his will. Maybe even out of his house. So you asked Roger to come over. Before he got there, you killed Rocco yourself. You gave Roger the gun. Begged him to hide it for you at his place. The rabbit was just nuts enough about you to do it. You then followed him home and shot him, too. Bingo. Instant solution to all your problems. You inherit, and Roger, who isn’t around to defend himself, takes the fall.” “Great imagination,” she said. “You should write for the strips.”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll do an Arabian adventure series about a magic lantern. I understand that’s one of your specialties, magic lanterns. Wouldn’t have anything to do with the teakettle, would it?”

Her mouth and her eyes formed three perfect circles within the soft oval of her face. “The teakettle? Certainly not. Are you insinuating it’s a magic lantern? That’s ridiculous. There are no such things. They’re myths. I study about them in my mythology class. Get the connection? A mythology class. Because they’re myths. No, the teakettle is valuable because of its composition.”

“Gold and jewels, I know. The Templar Knights.”

“Correct. The Templar Knights. Now, when can I have it?” she asked with altogether too much pleading in her voice.