by Gary K. Wolf
Herman pulled us both to him and put his tiny arms around our shoulders. “The poon platoon, the beaver brigade, together again. All for one, and one for all.” With a lecherous wink, he pointed at an attractive woman waiting in line. “That’s the one I’ll give my all for.”
With the aid of a small stepladder, he climbed off his director’s chair. He hung a sign on the back reading “Gone to Lunch” and motioned for us to follow him into his dressing room.
A disgruntled tourist bolted out of line and blocked our way. “Where you think you’re going, pipsqueak?” he said. “I been waiting an hour to get snapped with you. You ain’t walking out when I’m next.”
Simba and Somba, the two gorillas Herman employed as bodyguards, shambled forward, their brassed knuckles scraping the concrete floor. Herman waved them off.
“One more,” he told his shutterbug. Herman held out his arms. The tourist picked him up. Baby Herman reached into his diaper and hauled out a box Brownie. He pointed it at the tourist. Herman and the shutterbug popped their cameras at the same time. The Hasselblad flashed. Herman’s Brownie squirted a stream of faintly brackish water, hitting the tourist full in the face. He loved it. He vowed he’d never wash his kisser again.
“Butt brain,” whispered Herman under his breath as we walked away. “I make wee wee in this.” He tucked his Brownie back into his diaper. “You try being thirty-six years old and still not potty trained. It ain’t funny, McGee. And the baby talk. Always the baby talk. If another old lady chucks me under the chin and says ‘Kitchee kitchee coo,’ I’ll spit up on her.”
We entered his dressing room. “Take a gander at this.” Herman held up an ordinary picture frame holding a photo of Theda Bara. “Mandrake the Magician designed it special for me.” He touched the glass. Bara’s picture disappeared, replaced by one of Clara Bow. “This guarantees that the thrill of the hour always sees her smiling puss on display in my crib.” In quick succession he flashed photos of a dozen well-known screen lovelies. Including Carole Lombard.
Herman opened a wooden cabinet with a picture of Little Bo Peep stenciled on the front. It held all the comforts of home, assuming you lived in a good bar. He poured heavy shots of high-test mother’s milk into baby bottles. He handed me and Roger the ones without nipples. “Here’s to dry didees,” he toasted, and started to suck.
Roger took one drink and went into his patented pinwheel routine. I opened the door, nudged him out, and watched him spin away. At his velocity, he’d stay high for a good ten minutes.
“Hang on for a second, buckaroo,” said Herman. “I’m writing my memoirs. Seeing Rog reminded me of a poignant tidbit. Let me get it down before I forget.”
Herman picked up a recorder molded in the shape of Mickey Mouse. “People think I’m an overnight success,” said the Baby. “To that I say cockie doo doo.” Mickey’s automated arm grabbed Herman’s balloon and slipped it into a canvas bag slung over his mousey shoulder. “I spent years learning the trade. I started out blowing up word balloons for a newspaper comic strip. I enrolled nights at Stooge U, where I studied the classics. The eye poke, the foot squash, the fur singe, the ear twist, the body crumple.
“I met Roger Rabbit about then. At a gas station. When one of my girl friends brought me in for a lube job and diaper change.”
He turned off the recorder. “I got to get it down before I forget.” He tapped his tiny skull. “The memory’s the second thing to go, you know.” He gave his crotch a tussle. “Lucky for me I still got the memory of an elephant, if you know what I mean.”
He sat in a blonde oak chair specially manufactured to his diminutive scale. “What no-good poop-a-doop brings you sniffing around?”
I couldn’t fit into his furniture so I perched on his toy box. “For starters, I’m checking to see if your best friend knows you been stepping out with his girl.”
Herman gave me the obscene smirk you see at strip shows and bachelor parties. “Be more specific. I got a lot of best friends. I’ve introduced my dinky to most of their darlings.”
“Try Gable and Lombard.”
“Oh, them.” He scratched the single tuft of hair desecrating his scalp. “Nothing to it. Me and Carole are just kissing cousins.” I swear he leered when he said “kissing,” but it could have been trapped gas. You know babies. “We’d never put the horns on our good buddy Clark.”
“We?”
He pointed at the front fold of his diaper. “Me and Dinky Do Right.”
“You and Dinky know anything about Davey Selznick’s missing box?”
“Probably. What’s her name?” He hiccupped with such force his chair scooted back.
“It’s not a she, it’s a what.”
“What’s a what?”
“The box. Selznick’s box.”
“Selznick? That reminds me.” He picked up a telephone made in his own image. “I got to call my agent.”
He indicated his phone. “You want one of these? I can get you a good deal. They’re going out of production. Low sales. I can’t imagine why.”
I could. Who wants to put their ear to a baby’s rear end?
“What do you hear from Selznick?” he said when his agent came on the line. Herman nodded a few times and smiled. He stuck a big cork into the mouthpiece to keep his balloon out of the handset. “With Enigman out of the way, I’m a shoo-in for Rhett Butler! Warm up the casting couch, Mother. We’re testing O’Haras tonight.”
He pulled out the cork. “How about the Andy Hardy series?” He didn’t like what he heard. “What do you mean, I’m too old? I know I’m thirty-six, but I can play younger.” Apparently his agent didn’t agree, since Herman yanked his self-likeness out of the wall and smashed it on the floor. He pulled on his bottle with a fuming vengeance.
“A man of his word, that Enigman. We had a meeting, him, Roger, and me, with Selznick. I heard Enigman tell Selznick he’d die for that role. He did, and I got it!” He picked up Mickey. “Memo. Send a thank-you bouquet to Kirk Enigman’s funeral.”
“Where were you about four o’clock yesterday afternoon?”
“That’s when Enigman fell off his stroller?”
I nodded.
“I was home taking a nap.”
“So you’ve got no alibi.”
“Up your wazoo-zoo, Valiant.” He winked. “I never go beddy-bye alone.”
“This naptime companion got a name?”
“Yeah. And so does her husband. You ain’t getting either one.”
Roger Rabbit walked in with his arm around Bulldog Bascomb. “I love to garden,” said Roger to Bascomb. “Mostly carrots. A hybrid variety exactly the width of my front tooth. Give me a dozen to get my rhythm, and I can mince those babies faster than a VegOMatic. I also grow tomatoes because they’re homebodies and stay put. Not like peas and corn, which are always sneaking off to vegetable beds to make succotash.”
Bascomb’s dewlaps went atwitter. “I love this goofy rabbit,” he said to me. “I’m his biggest fan.” Somewhere, down on the lower rung of Bascomb’s pedigree, a hunting hound rolled over in his grave.
“Who are you?” asked Herman.
Bascomb flashed the tin.
“Well, it’s about time. I report a burglary, I want action. I am a star.”
“Different division,” said Bascomb. “I’m Homicide.” His stainless-steel balloon softened to the consistency of mush. “I got a few littermates would love your autograph,” he said to Roger. “If you would oblige.”
“My p-p-p-pleasure,” said Roger.
Bascomb pulled out his police notebook. He handed it to the rabbit. “One to Buster, one to Bowser, one to Biter, one to Barney…“
“You had a break-in?” I asked Herman.
“Last night.” He freshened his makeup with a dash of baby powder, one puff on each end. “While I was…napping, they robbed my house.”
&nb
sp; “You didn’t hear them?”
“My…naps tend to be loud and raucous.”
“What’d they take?”
“That’s the odd part. Nothing that I could tell. I checked. I still got my little black book, my eight pagers, my marital aids, my spurs, my electric…”
“Maybe they were looking for the secret of eternal youth.”
“I keep that with me.” He wiggled his diaper pin.
“…and finally Big Bad Bob,” said Bascomb. Roger signed his name with a flourish.
I waited for Bascomb to make his move. It turned out to be a hitchhiking motion, aimed at the door. “Beat it, Valiant,” he growled. “I got questions for the Baby.”
I was glad to oblige. Roger followed me out.
“Roger,” said Bascomb.
The rabbit turned. Bascomb waved his two-inch stack of autographs. “Thanks a heap. “
“Gee, Bulldog Bascomb’s a swell dog,” said Roger as we walked. “A regular pussycat.”
I stopped in front of a scenery panel, a front view of the Phantom’s Skull Cave, to light a cigarette.
“No smoking allowed in here, Valiant,” said Pepper Potts, clippety-thumping out through the cave’s painted lips. Two hundred yards. I should have asked for two hundred yards. “It’s the law.” He extended a hand holding a burning match. “Not that I ever let Johnny Law stand between me and the object of my desires.”
I took my time taking his light. He held the match steady even when it burned so low it singed his fingertips. “You look real natural holding a flaming torch,” I said. “If the movie business slows, I hear they got an opening in New York Harbor as a stand-in for the Statue of Liberty.”
“The problem with that is the clientele. I can tolerate the tired, even the huddled masses. But I could never stomach the poor. “
“Associating with them, or being one yourself?”
“Take your choice.” In a movement worthy of a flamingo, he balanced on his broomstick while his good leg scratched his backside. “How goes the hunt?”
“A lot better if you’d quit cramping my action. Detecting requires a certain amount of incognito. I can’t get that with you shagging me.”
“Don’t give yourself that much credit, peeper. You’re not the reason I’m here. Mr. Selznick’s got a major interest in Baby Herman’s comic strip. He adapts them for theatrical shorts.”
“Theatrical shorts. Sounds like rhinestone underwear.”
“You’re quite the funny man.”
“Au contrary, “ said Roger in a long, thin balloon shaped like a loaf of fractured French bread. “He’s not funny at all.”
“Take a hike, Roger,” I whispered.
“I wonder how hard you’re gonna laugh when Bulldog Bascomb gets a surprise package in the mail. A certain…” Potts’s hand slipped into his jacket pocket.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” asked Roger.
“No.”
“Then I’ll do it myself. Roger Rabbit,” he said cheerily. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Potts ignored the rabbit’s extended paw. “I know who you are. I ain’t impressed. Me and the peep, we got business between us. How’s about you take a flying hop.”
Roger belligerently puffed out his chest. It added maybe a quarter inch to his girth. “You can’t talk to me that way. I’m almost about to become a very big star!”
Potts picked him up by the ears, spun him around, and flung him the length of the studio.
“Where was I?” said Potts. “Oh, yeah. My surprise package for Bascomb.” His voice was as hard and cold as the anvils blacksmiths use to forge shoes for jackasses.
He took a gun out of his coat pocket. He had it taped up inside a clear cellophane bag. He held it up where I could look but not touch. It was the mate to the Dragoon I threw in the drink. I didn’t need bifocals to see my prints on the handle. “Mr. Selznick will swear on a stack of Bibles that this is the gun you took from his office. And I’ll swear the same.”
Potts exchanged the bagged Colt for a jackknife as long and thin as a honed garter snake. He ran it beneath his fingernails to the depth a torturer would insert a bamboo strip. “Bascomb’s going to come after you with a warrant in one hand and a warden in the other.” He tapped the tip of his blade on the bridge of my nose.
“You’re in bad trouble, shoo fly.” He folded his jackknife shut and returned it to his pocket. “Don’t cross me.” He caught a passing balloon by the tail and whammed it on a filler light suspended over my head. The impact produced a spider-web of fractured glass with me framed in the middle.
He slipped back into the studio darkness the way a submarine submerges into the ocean deep after slamming a torpedo into a battlewagon.
“What was that about?” asked Roger.
“Don’t ask.”
“Does it have anything to do with our case?”
“Don’t ask.”
“What’s in his surprise package for Sergeant Bascomb?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Why are you so testy all of a sudden?”
He took the hint without me giving it. “I know, I know. Don’t ask.”
I checked my rear view. I saw what I’d seen for the last couple of miles, a big, mustard-colored Toon sedan. Blackout paint covered its chrome grillwork, all but a narrow slit on its headlamps and all but a foot-square section of its front window. Wide, slick tires built for speed more than comfort stuck out from under its hooped fender skirts. It rode stiffly raked, like it had pogo sticks for shock absorbers, higher in back than in front. Cars like that run fast and loose. They race each other for gas money on straight stretches of 101, or for hundred-dollar purses on dirt tracks at county fairs. The ones that win graduate to faster action. Providing getaway services for liquor-store bandits. Or outrunning border patrols on smuggling junkets into Mexico.
Driving Ferd’s bucket of bolts, I could lose a tail only if somebody sliced it off with a rocking chair. Besides, I like to know who’s on my bumpus, and why. I quit feeding peanuts to the engine. The car rolled to a slow halt.
The sedan angled in ahead of me, blocking my exit. The sole occupant, a woman, got out and walked toward me. Her swing and sway rivaled Sammy Kaye. Her short, tightly-permed brown hair had the shape of a doughboy’s helmet. The belt on her trench coat didn’t hold enough holes to cinch her waist. She’d tied it into a knot. Her legs were heavier than most men liked, but I wasn’t most men.
She stuck her head in my window. The front of her trench coat pulled open, as did the expensive burgundy silk blouse she wore underneath. Roger averted his eyes. I didn’t.
“You’re Eddie Valiant,” she said, her voice more gravel than sand.
“So my mother told me.”
“I’m Louise Wrightliter. You have something I want.”
She knew I had stolen her info. “Fine by me. I’ll trade for a few tidbits of information.”
“That’s all?”
“I come cheap.”
“You sure do.” She went around to the passenger side and opened the door.
I told Roger to go up and chew the rag with the sedan. He climbed out, Louise climbed in. It’s true what travel agents say. The change of scenery did wonders for my outlook.
“Ask your questions,” she said.
From out of her purse she pulled a glass pocket flask covered with filigreed Victorian silver. Pinch me, Mama, I think I’m falling in love!
“Who’s spreading the rumor that Gable has a limp wrist?”
She filled the two shot glasses nesting under the cap of her portable bar, and handed one to me. I took a lick. It was top-quality rum. “I got it right from the baby’s mouth,” she said.
“A baby named Herman?”
She poured me a refill. “One and the same.”
Gabl
e’s bosomest buddy strikes again. “An item that juicy, how come the Telltale never ran it?”
“Let me give you a lesson in the economics of yellow journalism.” She leaned back against the seat. I never had a teacher look so good. “Label Gable a Mabel, it buys you one big issue and ends his career. Link him with a married rabbit’s wife, and you cook up a scandal that feeds your circulation for months. Next question.”
“You heard any stories linking Carole Lombard to Baby Herman? “
“No, I haven’t.” She capped her flask and put it away a lot sooner than I would have. “Though it wouldn’t surprise me. Herman’s undiapered more babes than most maternity wards. Anything else?”
“Nope. That’s about it. Here’s my end of the bargain.” I pulled her file papers out of the glove box and handed them over.
She flipped once quickly through the pages. “What’s with these?”
“Your files. The ones I stole.”
She flung them over her shoulder. They landed in a jumbled heap on the backseat. “Who cares about these? Everything in them is either a bald-faced lie or stored on microfilm. I can recreate the contents anytime I want.”
“Then what is it you’re after?”
“A certain objet d’art.”
“Give me a better clue. Business has been slow lately. My powers of deduction have atrophied.”
She pulled off her kidskin gloves a finger at a time, revealing tattered nails that spent more time on a typewriter than on a manicurist’s table. “David Selznick’s box.”
“Sorry, toots. No deal. I can get a lot more than worthless gossip for that goody. Why, I know people talking high two figures, at least.”
She laughed. “That puts the bidding way out of my range. Maybe I can persuade you with something besides money.”
“Tempting, but no thanks.”
“I meant a story. A particularly good one.” She drew her gloves between her thumb and first finger with the same motion a farmer uses to decapitate a chicken. “Seems I was tracking a tip that Kirk Enigman was involved in a highly illegal enterprise. To get proof, I broke into his house.”
“They teach you that at the Columbia School of Journalism?”
