by Gary K. Wolf
I got out of my car. We faced off across an open bag of grass seed. “I came to pay you my respects.”
“Bull froggers you did.” Ferd and I matched up in one dimension. He was as wide as I was tall. He put a hand on my shoulder and pressed down, sinking my feet into Heddy’s newly tilled clay. “You’re here because you forking need something.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“You mark my harking words, before you flicking leave, you’ll ask me for a flooking favor.”
Heddy shouted “Heads up!” and lobbed out a pair of brews. Ferd popped the caps with his bottom teeth and handed one to me.
“Ink in your eye,” he toasted, “and lead in your pencil.” We both drank to that.
“What they got you working on?” I asked.
“A famucking ring of hooch haulers running shine into Toontown. Until this afternoon. The big boys pulled everybody off the feeping streets for a big forking murder case.”
“Anybody I know?”
“Not fupping likely.” He knotted his dangly ears under his chin to keep them from falling into his mouth when he tilted his head back to swig. “This one’s way out of your fooping league, Shearluck. And strictly hush-hush. I don’t fipping know if I ought to even tell you about it.”
“Why not? I’ll read it in the papers.”
“You learned to freeping read?” Ferd plunked himself on the porch swing and set it in motion, tugging his waistband out so the moving air would blow through. “Promise you’ll keep it under your fornicking hat?”
“Absolutely.”
He stopped the swing and leaned in close. His tiny words elbowed each other for space inside a balloon the size of a gnat’s whisper. “Famous famucking movie star. Kirk Enigman. Took one in the fleeping pumper. Big bore. The doc thinks a fumping forty-four, though I can’t fligging remember the last time I saw one of those.”
“Any leads?”
“Yeah. We got us a real fudding break for a change. A neighbor eyeballed the farfing killer. Gave us a perfect description. Squat, heavyset monkey. Porky pig jowls, caterpillar eyebrows. Wearing a rumpled brown suit. Drove away in a prewar Plymouth coupe, two-tone, tan over rust.”
Me to a T, right to the rusty bucket. “Any suspects?”
“Nobody yet, but it won’t be long. With that fligging description to go on, I could draw you his picture.”
“Who’s in charge?”
He took a long, slow, delicious swig. “Sergeant Bulldog Bascomb.”
That meant problems. Bulldog Bascomb was a sleuth hound so dogged he made Mike Hammer look like a mutt. Bascomb treated P.I.s in general, and me in particular, with the respect he bestowed on the nearest fire hydrant. “Do me a favor, would you?”
Ferd smacked his hands together, exploding his beer can, and spraying himself with busted suds. “I famouching knew it!”
“Naw, nothing major. Let Heddy know I remembered something I gotta do. Tell her I’ll take a rain check on dinner.”
He cleansed his hands by combing his fingers through his chest fur. “Always glad to deliver the frinching news that you’re fleaving leaving.”
“One other thing.”
He tossed his split can over the porch railing. It landed in a bush already festooned with more crumpled metal than a Christmas tree. “Here it comes.”
“Yeah, Ferd. I’m gonna ask you to run a check for me. But it’s for Heddy, too.”
His vacant expression told me he needed a stronger wind to get my drift.
“I got a line on Freddy.”
“He’s alive?”
“That’s hard to answer. He sort of is, and he sort of isn’t.”
“I don’t get it.” His finger scratched at the top of his head but didn’t make a dent.
“Trust me on this one, Ferd. Do it, and don’t tell Heddy.”
Puffs of exhaust fume blew out of his ears as the gears whirled inside his noggin. From the clanking, he needed a rebuilt transmission. “Give me the scoop.”
“I need everything you can dig up about a Cuban butcher boy named Tom Tom LeTuit. His activities for the past couple of years, and where he’s currently calling home.”
“You better not be yanking my tail, gum-foot.” He underscored his metaphor by reaching behind himself and jerking his shaggy rump. It sent him somersaulting paws over jaws across the back of the swing and off the porch. Toons.
“Would I lie to you?”
He stood and dusted Heddy’s rosebushes off his fur. “Absofoopinglutely.”
I headed for my wheels. Ferd grabbed my arm.
“Driving that fleeking heap is like prancing around in a fupping sandwich board reading ‘I shot Kirk Enigman.’ Leave it here,” he said. “I’ll hide it in my garage. Take mine, instead.”
I asked the obvious question. “Why?”
“I don’t want Heddy losing her last brother to the gas chamber.”
At last something we agreed on.
He exhaled a string of steel-colored BBs, looped them through his car key, and snapped them shut. “I find you’re slobbering me, I’ll skin you bare and boil the bones.” He draped his improvised key chain around my thumb and twisted it hard enough to tingle. “A word to the wise, Eddie. Let it be sufficient.”
The dashboard of Ferd’s Toon Buggy boasted more screwy levers, meters, switches, gears, knobs, and push buttons than Doc Frankenstein’s erector set. I tickled the starter, eased the slush box into giddy-up, dropped my feet through the floorboard, and gave the engine a running start.
Philco Phil, Ferd’s dashboard dipole, asked me my pleasure. I opted for news. He fiddled his innards. A crosshatched balloon peeled off his loose-mesh grill cloth. Philco Phil grabbed the broadcast in his knobs, gargled his tonsils, and began to read.
“Welcome to Person to Person with your host, Edward R. Murrow. “
MURROW: My guest this evening. A gull, a donkey, a booby, a goose, a cootie, a cat’s paw? Or a deeply thoughtful lagomorph with profound, hare-brainy insights into his cony nature. You decide.
ROGER RABBIT: Jumping jibbers, that’s a toughie!
“Change the station,” I told the airhead. He ignored me. They always do.
MURROW: How did you begin your theatrical career?
ROGER: As a powder puff in a burlesque house. Talk about getting show business under your skin! I’m really brown with orange polka dots or yellow with green stripes. I forget.
Ferd’s rearview mirror distorted the cars behind me, making them look skinny on top, fat on the bottom. That’s why it took me a minute to peg the buggy behind me for an unmarked patrol car.
MURROW: What’s hardest about being a Toon?
ROGER: Avoiding erasers. No, fading in sunlight. No, being stuffed into trombones. No, keeping a straight face at operas.
The patrol car sniffed my tail pipe.
MURROW: How do you feel about sex in the cinema?
ROGER: Personally, I prefer popcorn.
The cruiser spouted a gum ball dispenser and flashed it red. Philco Phil coughed out another piece of repartee.
MURROW: Disprove the widely held belief that Toons can’t resist getting a laugh. Tell a joke and leave off the punch line.
ROGER: That’s easy. Name Ignatz Insect’s favorite radio show.
MURROW: I give up.
ROGER: Davy Cricket.
MURROW: You told the punch line.
ROGER: No, I didn’t. It’s Name That Toon.
I weighed making a run for it, but when I goosed the gas pedal, the grinder under the hood couldn’t shake out another ounce of pepper. I dropped anchor. It caught on a lamp pole and jerked me off the road.
MURROW: How has stardom changed your life?
ROGER: I don’t get mistaken for the Easter Bunny as much.
A car door slammed. Flat feet cru
nched pea gravel. The law’s paws rapped my rear fender.
MURROW: What do you do for fun?
ROGER: Everything!
A twelve-gauge load of kennel breath blasted me through the window. “I ought to slap you behind bars, Valiant.”
A zillion cops to choose from, and I get hauled over by Bulldog Bascomb. “You got a specific charge, Sarge?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” woofed Bascomb.
MURROW: Who turned the lights out?
“Shut up,” I whispered to Philco Phil.
“You got big worries,” Bascomb snarled. “Name one.”
“Kirk Enigman, the famous movie star. He bit the onion a couple of hours ago.” Bascomb’s porcupine eyebrows locked elbows, rolled over, and pointed their poisoned quills at me. “I’m hot on the trail of his coldblooded killer.”
“Let me know the minute you catch him. I always wanted to see one up close.”
Bascomb put a match to the rigor mortised grunion he called a stogie. “I got a witness saw a dumpy hard apple in chocolate worsted fleeing the scene.” He fingered my nubbly brown lapel.
“Like it? Eight bucks off the rack. I buy ‘em by the dozen.”
“The killer made his getaway in a battered Plymouth rust bucket.”
“Case solved. Find the louse who raided my closet and stole my car. “
“Don’t play cute with me,” Bascomb snorted. “You’re in this murder up to your bloodshot eye sockets, and I’m the pooch who’s gonna prove it.”
“Sorry, Sarge. I plead total and complete ignorance.”
“That’s the one excuse a jury’s likely to believe of you.” His gruff, throaty chuckle jingled his Army K9 corps dog tags and the metallic blue disk proclaiming him rabies-free. “The name David 0. Selznick ring a bell?”
“Let me guess. He wants you to play a loose cannon in Gone With the Wind.”
“That’s good, Valiant. Funny.” He tested his jaws to see if they opened wide enough to rip off my head. They did. Easy. “Selznick told me that Kirk Enigman, Baby Herman, and Roger Rabbit were up for the same great big juicy role. Rhett Butler, if you can believe it. I couldn’t.”
“You landing any time soon,” I said, “or you gonna keep circling around in the ozone all night?”
“I’m coming down, you bet. Right on your case.” He planked his foot on my running board. “Enigman’s unfortunate passing leaves Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman minus a major competitor. It also puts them neck and neck in the race for prime suspect.”
“Why aren’t you out chasing them?”
“I am, more or less. Check my logic on this and see if it don’t make sense. You’ve been known to work for Roger Rabbit. The rabbit wants Enigman bumped. A scamp greatly resembling you does the deed. Ain’t that a funny coincidence? Sounds like murder for hire to me.”
He scratched his head just behind his ear. His leg gave an involuntary shake. “What did I forget? Of course, the gun. Did I mention the gun? No? How could I skip that juicy tidbit. Selznick tells me you left his office today in possession of a big-bore forty-four. Exactly the size howitzer used to slick Enigman.” He inverted his paw, turning it pad up, and made a spidery motion with his fingers. “You want to give me that gun, Eddie?”
He stuck one of his fingers under my lapel and raised it up, displaying my empty holster. “Save your breath. You’re gonna tell me somebody swiped it. You’re gonna tell me you ain’t got it no more. Right?”
“Along those lines, or words to that effect.”
He chucked me under the chin with his dew claw. It raised a welt the size of a barnacle. “I’m proud owner of a perfect record, Eddie. I’ve solved every case I’ve ever tackled. My method’s real simple. I figure out up front who did it, and then I stick to them like ticks to my uncle until I prove it.”
His next balloon assumed the shape of a hangman’s necktie. Bascomb’s not one for subtlety. “You’re gonna take the fall for this, Valiant. Count on it. You might as well confess now, save us both a lot of time. Think about it awhile. When you’re ready, whistle. I’ll be right around your corner.”
He signaled the squad car. It pulled up beside us. Bascomb yanked open the door and jumped in on the fly.
First, I stoked my gut furnace with a shot of liquid coal. Then, I pulled one of Philco Phil’s buttons, a little harder than I had to.
“Oh, my goodness,” the radio yelped. “You won’t believe the excitement you missed.” Philco Phil gathered up the jumbled program. “Stay tuned for a minute while I put these in order.”
“Skip the verbatims,” I told him. “Spout the gist.”
Philco Phil’s nickel-plated nameplate drooped at either end, disappointed.
“The studio went dark, and a gunshot rang out. Then a body hit the floor.”
“That’s ridiculous. Who’d want to kill Edward R. Murrow?”
“Senator McCarthy for one, but it wasn’t Murrow who took delivery.”
“You’re telling me a triggerman plugged…”
“Roger Rabbit. One and the same.”
9
Back when the world was a ball of ferns, when a good front lawn was a half acre of bubbling slime, a giant amoeba split in two. The front half, the end with the brains, called itself Los Angeles. The butt end became Toontown.
I live in a bungalow apartment near the border.
My landlady swears my place comes with a great view. If so, I never saw it. L.A. air’s too fouled with dense, hazy, aimlessly drifting babble. I wouldn’t mind if it said anything important. I’m not after philosophy. I’d settle for a weather report or yesterday’s ball scores. Instead I get “Yikes,” “Zowwee,” “Bam,” “Pow.” And worse. Vinegary swear words that water my eyes.
I hear the sky’s still clear in the mountains. I’m tempted to make the climb, homestead a cave, invent a religion. Ponder the nature of truth while I gaze at the stars. Except yaks and incense make me sneeze. And I look awful wearing a bed sheet.
An inebriated Toonmobile dozed in my parking slot. I didn’t wake him. On nights I exceeded my recommended octane level, and my hands and knees gave out short of my doorstep, I’d slept between those old white lines myself. I know how cozy warm wavy asphalt can be.
I stored Ferd’s heap on the street and left Louise Wrightliter’s folders in the glove compartment. They’d be as safe there as anyplace. I walked into my courtyard.
The super had drained the swimming pool again. He used it as a grease pit to swap oil in his Model A. The water, after he refilled it, sported a perpetual slick the thickness of a zoot suiter’s pompadour. Let one breast-stroking lightning bug flash his phosphorous, and the whole complex would go up in flames.
I checked my Simple Simon burglar alarm, a strand of gossamer I loop low across my door. I found it busted clean. As Baby Bear would say, somebody’d been nosing my porridge. Far as I knew, he was still in there, licking the bowl.
I eased open the front window and wiggled in through the venetian blinds. I came out the other side knowing how a loaf of pumpernickel feels after do-si-do-ing a bread slicer.
I hit rolling and landed on my belly, senses crackling. I scoped out the living room. Empty.
I fished my backup heater out of the cookie jar. I skipped searching the kitchenette. If my intruder was hiding in my wheezy Frigidaire, the poor sucker was wilted to a puddle by now. Anybody concealed in my toaster was too little to worry about.
I peered around the door frame into my bedroom. I saw somebody sleeping in my bunk. I prayed for Goldilocks. My luck favored the Big Bad Wolf.
I two-fingered back the covers and exposed a bumpus swathed in a baggy white cotton diaper. A baby? I wasn’t taking chances. I been led down the garden path by babes in scanties before. I pistol-poked the nappie and shouted “Freeze!”
“Sure, Eddie. My p-p-p-pleasure,” said Roger Rabbit, j
erking awake from under the blankets. He wrapped himself in his macaroni arms, turned frosty blue, and chattered his single bucked tooth. “How’s this? Cold enough for you?”
I nearly pulled the trigger. I’d plead justifiable homicide. Testify that a sweet, lovable, wisecracking bunny drove me, a hardboiled, two-fisted, brass-knuckled private op to coldblooded murder. Would any jury in the country convict me? You bet. In a minute.
I holstered my peashooter. I opened my nightstand drawer. Roger had beaten me to my punch. I shook the hollow brown jug in his fuzzy face. “Ninety-six proofs and you couldn’t leave me one?”
“I’m sorry, Eddie. I got a terrible case of the jumpin’ jitters.” My hooch hadn’t calmed him much. His words be-bopped around the black borders of his balloon like sock hoppers at a kangaroo cotillion.
He pointed to his nether region. He wasn’t wearing a diaper but a bandage. “Somebody p-p-p-plugged me, Eddie! Just like the note said would happen. You gotta help me, or I’m a goner. A cooked goose. A p-p-p-plucked p-p-p-parrot. A skinned cat. A dead dog.” He stuck his head under my pillow. Probably searching for more similes. He’d find only gun oil and lint.
“Calm down. Tell it straight and simple.”
He stood up and strolled the knolls of my Posturepedic. “I was on the radio tonight. With Edward R. Murrow. He asked me terribly hard questions, one after another, but I handled them bippety boppety boop.”
“I know. I heard.”
He stopped short. His hangnail eyebrows boomeranged to the top of his forehead. “You gave up Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy for me?”
“Sure. It wasn’t even a contest.” I never bought the notion of a ventriloquist on the radio. Who’s to say he’s not moving his lips?
Roger’s pencil-lead mouth squiggled itself into a goofy grin. His yellow hands moved up and out. I sniffed a bunny hug aborning. I reached for my gat. I would have used it too, I swear. Except the rabbit, in a rare display of good judgment, cocked his noggin, rotated his mitts around to palms out, and backed off. Though his inky-dinky grin still split open his face like the snaky residue of a shaky-handed shave.
