Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?

by Gary K. Wolf

  Roger placed the balloon less than six inches from Catman’s snout.

  Catman read the balloon and meowed. “I know about that.”

  “Spill,” said Roger, his balloon so close to Catman’s face that Catman inhaled a few of Roger’s words up his nose when he took a breath.

  “Clabber Clown was best buddies with ex-Mayor Joe Viality. Ex-Mayor Viality appointed Clabber to a high post in his administration.”

  Catman scratched his chin, trying to remember details. His eyes shut. He started to purr.

  Roger shook his shoulder. “Clabber Clown, Mayor Viality.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Catman. “I got the facts. I’m with ya. I remember Willy Prosciutto forcing Mayor Viality out of office. I can’t recollect how that happened, when, or why.”

  Catman’s scaly, cracked, gray-colored word balloons had as much heft to them as the remnant ashes of a burned out life.

  “Check with Tweeter,” Catman told Roger.

  Tweeter was Catman’s adopted nephew and crime fighting partner.

  “Tweeter’s younger than me. He might remember more.”

  Catman rolled over and dropped off to sleep.

  On our way out of the bus, I grabbed a couple of Z’s off Catman’s snore balloon. They were thick and heavy, perfect for use as bottle openers.

  Miss Ethyl drove us back to the hotel.

  Thanks to Miss Ethyl, Sands now had a film processing lab set up in his closet. She had also brought in a projector and screen so we wouldn’t have to use Roger’s ears and a flashlight.

  “I’m gonna develop this,” said Sands taking today’s film out of his camera. “Let’s see what I got.”

  Sands went into his darkroom.

  Cooper stretched out on the sofa.

  Roger bounced around the room like a cotton-tailed rubber ball.

  “Waddya think, Eddie? Waddya think? Think that Mayor Viality and Willy were up to no good? Clabber got the goods on them. He used those goods to blackmail Willy. Now Willy’s fed up. He gave Clabber the old high ho. Or worse. Sure doesn’t look good for Clabber. He’s our client. We gotta find him, Eddie. We gotta protect him. We gotta get the goods on that nasty old P-P-P-Prosciutto and make sure Clabber stays safe. When are we gonna start detecting, Eddie? You, me, and Mister Cooper. Just like old times. Except you and me never really detected together. Neither did Mister Cooper for that matter. So it’ll be like the new old times.”

  “Lemme have your room key,” I said to Cooper. “If I don’t get a swig of brain freeze, and quick, I’m gonna strangle that yakkety rabbit.”

  “Good idea.” Cooper fished out his key. He had to push through a cloud bank of Roger’s floating word balloons to hand the key over.

  As I headed for the door, Sands came out of the darkroom. He carried several short lengths of film. “I got some good stuff today. Great stuff.”

  “Ooooh, lemme see, lemme see,” said Roger

  “Later. After I’ve done some editing.”

  “No, now. I’m too exited. I can’t wait.”

  Roger grabbed one of the film strips. He hauled a magnifying glass out of his pocket and studied the strip frame by frame.

  “I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” said Roger. Roger handed the film and the glass to me. “Take a peeper at this and tell me what you see.”

  I held the glass to my eye and focused on the film.

  He had given me eighteen frames Sands had shot out the car window to finish off his roll. The images showed a row of trash cans in an alley beside a Toontown apartment house. The unlidded cans were filled to capacity with typical Toon garbage—crumpled up word balloons, old anvils, exploded cigars.

  “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

  “Check the area behind the cans,” said Roger

  I looked where he told me.

  A pair of feet stuck out from behind the trash cans. Massive clown feet. “That’s Clabber Clown!”

  “Exactly,” said Roger “Check the area just beyond his feet.”

  I angled the magnifying class and focused in. I saw a big Toon balloon lying on the ground. It said BANG. A Toon gunshot.

  I looked up at Sands. “You know what you got here?”

  “Random background material. Nothing special.”

  “You got that wrong,” I said. “I think you accidentally photographed a murder scene!”

  Chapter Six

  We retraced our route.

  I held up the print Sands had made of the murder scene, comparing the photo with the buildings we drove past.

  I got a hit.

  “Hold it, right here,” I told Miss Ethyl. “This is the place.”

  I checked our location on Roger’s Gossipy Guide map. We were at the end of Oops Alley.

  Me, Cooper, the rabbit, and Sands got out of the car.

  Sands left his camera in the car. I couldn’t understand that. This could wind up being his big money scene.

  We walked down the alley toward the trash cans.

  I’m good at reading people. In my line of work, you have to be. I knew Cooper wouldn’t faint or puke. He talked soft, but the man carried a big stick.

  The rabbit would also be fine. He’d treat a dead body the same way he did a live one, as raw material for a lousy joke.

  Sands worried me. To him, a stiff was a guy who couldn’t act, not a dead body in a dark alley. At the first sight of the cacked clown, Sands would toss his cookies, his cupcakes, his lunch, and every meal he’d eaten going back to last week.

  My fears were unfounded. Because so was the body.

  By that I mean we couldn’t find the stiff. Clabber’s body had vanished. Right along with the BANG balloon.

  “You sure you got the right place?” asked Roger.

  “See for yourself.” I showed him the picture.

  Roger compared the two. “Yep. What do you supposed happened to poor Clabber?”

  “Maybe the trash men came by and carted him off to clown heaven,” I answered.

  Roger opened a trash can lid and peeped inside. “Nope. Still full. Trash men didn’t take him. They haven’t come by yet.”

  “I was kidding.”

  The rabbit arched an eyebrow. “Bad taste, Eddie. Nothing funny about murder.”

  He was right. My joke was what I expected from Roger. I was starting to think like a Toon. I had to wrap these cases up quick and get out of Toontown before the condition turned permanent.

  “Or maybe he wasn’t here in the first place,” said Sands. “Maybe that picture’s nothing but an optical illusion.”

  Since almost everything in Toontown comes with eyes, ears, and a mouth, if something did happen here I figured there must have been at least one witness.

  I asked around the alley.

  The garbage cans told me they had been talking trash to one another while playing a game of fifty-two pickup. They had been too wrapped up scouring the alley for scattered cards to notice any pursuit as trivial as a murder.

  I hated interrogating buildings. Buildings put up balloons the size of cumulus clouds. I needed a step stool, sometimes an extension ladder to get close enough to read what they told me.

  The buildings around the alley were a considerate bunch. They dropped their balloons to ground level, no ladders required. They gave me squat. At about the time of the murder, they had been organizing a forthcoming block party. They had seen nothing.

  “What’s our next move?” asked Roger.

  “We go to the police.”

  Sands shook his head vigorously, sending his hat in one direction, his toupee in another. A rat foraging through the garbage spotted the toupee lying on the ground. The rodent sent up a balloon asking the toupee to come into the rat’s lair, have a drink, and make little rat
s.

  “I told you when we started this,” Sands protested. “I can’t have the police involved. Too much publicity. My investors will have a fit.”

  “I went along on that when we were talking about threatening balloons. Now we got a dead clown. I can’t let that go unreported. I won’t. I could lose my license.”

  If I had one that came from someplace more official than the five and dime.

  A bright red word balloon drifted past me. The balloon said “HELP!”

  The balloon came from Roger. He had burrowed so far down into an open trash can that he couldn’t get back out.

  I grabbed his leg and pulled.

  He came out slathered with garbage and holding three quarters of a chocolate cake.

  “Amazing the good stuff people throw out.” He studied the cake. “You don’t supposed this is a clue, do you Eddie?”

  “Could be poisoned. Maybe the cake killed the clown. The bullet was only the frosting. Take a taste and find out.”

  Oh, no. I’d made another joke at a murder crime scene. I really had to get out of Toontown.

  “Okay, if you say so.”

  Roger opened his mouth wide and crammed the cake inside. He emitted a big GULP as the cake slid down his gullet.

  “How long does poison take to work?” He counted on his fingers. “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. Nope, I guess not—”

  His eyes bulged out. They spun around in pinwheel circles. Steam came out of his ears. His mouth foamed. “Poison, Eddie. POISON!”

  Roger stiffened. He tumbled over backwards, landing with a sickening THUD.

  “Poisoned cake? Really?” asked Sands, staring down at the prone rabbit. “That’s what killed the clown?”

  “Dead?” said Cooper.

  I kicked the rabbit hard. “Fun’s over. Time to go.”

  Roger stood up. “You gotta admit, Eddie. I had you going there. I had you fooled.”

  A joke about death. Roger took a long time getting there, but eventually he arrived. Like I always knew he would.

  “There’s gonna be no more filming until we sort out this Clabber affair,” I told Sands. “We’re calling way too much attention to ourselves. We gotta stay a little bit incognito.”

  “We can do that,” said Sands, “Ethyl came up with a perfect disguise.”

  Sands showed me.

  The ever resourceful Miss Ethyl had used paint, glue, fabric, a handle, a couple of knobs, and a few decorative geegaws to turn Sands’s camera into a passable imitation of a hurdy gurdy. She had secured a leather strap to each side so he could carry the fake organ slung around his neck. Thanks to a music box hidden underneath, when Sands turned the main handle the hurdy gurdy played a tinny tune.

  She had outfitted Sands in baggy purple pantaloons with bright red suspenders.

  I pointed out that this violated Toontown’s law against holding up your pants.

  Miss Ethyl produced a three foot wooden ruler. The ruler contained all of Toontown’s rules. I squinted at the itty bitty writing itemizing permitted apparel. Turned out Miss Ethyl had found a loophole. As long as your pants were completely ridiculous, you could use garishly colored suspenders to hold them up.

  Sands passed muster on both counts.

  The rest of Sands’s outfit consisted of a blousy white shirt, a brocade vest, and a red fez. He wore the fez on his bald pate since the alley rat, overwhelmed by true love, had refused to give him back his toupee. A pasted-on handlebar mustache completed his disguise.

  Miss Ethyl couldn’t come up with a monkey. They were all employed in a tourist-oriented cabaret review entitled Monkey Shines. For their big finale, the simians climbed into a big barrel and had a lot of fun. Not my idea of a fascinating night out at the theater, but the tourists must have loved it. The show had been running for years.

  As a sub for a monkey, Miss Ethyl pressed Mutt into service.

  Sands and Mutt made a cute combo. On their trial run outside our hotel, Sands turned his crank and made music while Mutt worked the crowd.

  Mutt was a natural. He hold a tin cup in his mouth while he ran from person to person, standing up on his rear legs and begging. The little pup came away with his cup filled full of simoleons.

  “Waddya think?” asked Sands.

  I said, “Yeah, okay.”

  If times got tough for me down the road, Mutt and his cup might be a good second source of income.

  Me, Roger, Cooper, and Hurdy Gurdy Sands entered the Toontown Police Station.

  “I need to talk to the Chief of Police,” I told the desk sergeant.

  The desk sergeant was a Toon walrus. He sat behind a high desk. He had drilled two holes into his desk top. That way, when he leaned forward across his desk to peer down on us, his twin tusks would have someplace to go.

  “He’s busy,” said the sergeant. “Make an appointment. He’s got an opening the middle of next year.”

  “He’s gonna wanna see us,” I said.

  “Why’s that,” said the cop. “What makes you so important?”

  “We got evidence of a murder,” said I.

  They didn’t take murders seriously in Toontown. No surprise there. They didn’t take anything seriously in Toontown.

  “Here’s a report form,” said the Walrus. “Fill it out in quintuplicate. Make sure there ain’t no typos or spelling errors. Keep the grammar good, too. Give the report back to me when you’re done. I’ll process your info through the system. We’ll get back to you. Probably the middle of next year.”

  The Chief’s office door opened. The Chief himself walked out.

  I recognized him easy. His picture appeared often in the L.A. papers. He was at this charity event or that film premier, a fancy concert, maybe a lawn party. Every picture showed him schmoozing with prominent human celebrities.

  The Chief held a stack of word balloons. He handed them to the desk sergeant. “Have one of the secretaries file these.”

  He started back into his office.

  “Chief, hey Chief!” I yelled after him. “We need to talk. We got evidence of a murder.”

  The Chief turned around, and shot me a glance. “Give your info to the Sergeant. I got an opening in my schedule the middle of next year.”

  He started back into his office, then stopped cold, turned, and strode toward us.

  He passed me right by. Same with the rabbit. He didn’t give Sands and his hurdy gurdy a second glance.

  The Chief stopped in front of Cooper. “You’re Gary Cooper, aincha?”

  “Yup,” said Cooper.

  “I’m a big fan. You suppose I could get my picture taken with you? I’ve got pictures of me with all kinds of celebs. You’d be a mighty swell addition to my collection.”

  “Sure,” said Cooper.

  “Maybe we could take the picture in your office,” I suggested.

  “Sure, sure. You bet,” said the Chief. “Come on in. By the way, my name’s Hanker. I’m the chief. Hanker Chief. I got this job because Mayor Viality got a yuck out of my name.”

  Cooper and I walked into Chief Hanker’s office. Roger and Sands followed us.

  Chief Hanker blocked Roger and Sands at his door. “No rabbits allowed. I let a rabbit in my office once. He chewed my office plants down to their roots.” He waved off Sands, too. “No panhandlers either. You and your mutt wait outside. I don’t give at the office, I don’t give at home. I don’t give nothing to nobody.”

  Chief Hanker slammed the door shut, leaving Roger and Sands outside.

  I looked at the pictures hanging on the Chief’s office wall. Photos of him posed beside Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson. Not the famous Western marshal Bat Masterson. This one was a real bat named Masterson. He was dressed in boxin
g shorts. The photo had been taken on the set of a cartoon he was making about a prize fight at the K.O. Coral.

  One of the photos caught me short. The pic showed Chief Hanker in a Toontown nightclub having drinks with Willy Prosciutto. That snap spelled trouble.

  The photos went back a lot of years. They told me that Chief Hanker started his career tall and thin, with the deadly tension of a cocked bowstring. As time passed, his arches fell and took everything up above along with them. The only thing about him that hadn’t changed was his jet black hair. He kept his locks greased shiny and plastered down flat, giving his head the sheen of a highly polished bowling ball.

  Chief Hanker put up a word balloon. “Sarge, send in the crime scene shutter bug.”

  He plonked the balloon with his index finger. The balloon sailed up high and through the transom over his door, heading out towards the front desk.

  “While we’re waiting,” I said, “take a look at this.” I handed him the picture Sands had printed from the negative.

  “Kind of fuzzy wuzzy,” said Chief Hanker. “What’s this supposed to show?”

  “A murder,” I said. “See the feet? There? And the bang balloon. That’s evidence you’re holding. Proof that a Toon gunned down Clabber Clown.”

  He rotated the picture this way and that. “To my eye, there’s nothing here but a pile of trash.”

  “Look closer,” said Cooper.

  Chief Hanker was one starstruck Toon. He did what Cooper told him. “Yeah. I kind of see what you’re saying. That could be a pair of feet. That might be a bang balloon.”

  He slid the picture into his desk drawer. “Leave this here with me. I’ll have one of my crackerjack detectives check it out. You don’t need to give the matter another thought. No sirree. Chief Hanker is on this case. I’ll get to the bottom of this. You bet I will.”

  There was a knock at the door. The department’s official shutter bug came in. I expected a bug with a camera and that was exactly what I got.

  “What we shooting, Chief?” said the bug.