by Gary K. Wolf
“Me and this famous movie star.” Chief Hanker maneuvered Cooper over to a trophy case full of Chief Hanker’s awards. Most of them had been given for good attendance in grade school. Chief Hanker threw an arm around Cooper’s shoulder.
“Say cheese,” said the photographer.
“Cheese,” said Chief Hanker smiling broadly.
“Jeez,” said Cooper, scowling.
A flashbulb popped. The flashbulb’s balloon kept shining for the entire ten minutes Cooper needed to sign what seemed to be every piece of paper on Chief Hanker’s desk.
“Waddya think?” asked Cooper as we stood outside Chief Hanker’s office.
“The police ain’t gonna help us.”
“Agreed,” said Cooper.
“We’re gonna have to solve this ourselves.”
“Yup,” said Cooper.
Roger and Sands had left the station. They were waiting for us outside on the street.
“What do we do next?” asked Roger.
“I’m mulling a couple of options,” I answered.
“I say we go over to the Hotsy Totsy Club,” Roger suggested.
“For as much as I’d like to spend the night ogling shapely gams at Toontown’s sleaziest night spot, I’m afraid I got more important business.”
“I know that, Eddie. Ogling wasn’t what I had in mind. I think we oughta go right to the heart of the matter. To the bottom of the barrel. Get to the itty bitty nitty gritty.”
“What are you babbling about?” I said.
“I’m curious,” said Cooper.
Sands didn’t weigh in since he had temporarily abandoned our little troupe. He was taking his method acting technique to heart. He and Mutt were working the crowd up and down the street outside the police station. Sands was singing along in Italian to his music box rendition of O Solo Mio.
“Willy Prosciutto owns The Hotsy Totsy Club. He keeps an office in the back. He’s almost always here. I say let’s confront the bear in his den. Or I guess I should say the pig in his pen.”
“Good idea,” said Cooper.
I had to agree.
The Hotsy Totsy’s bouncer had no problem with humans or full grown Toons like Roger. He drew the line at puppies. Mutt couldn’t come in.
I wasn’t going to leave the little guy tied to a lamppost. I told Sands to stay outside with him. Use the time to perfect his organ grinder role.
Me, Cooper, and the rabbit ordered drinks.
Since The Hotsy Totsy Club was a Toon establishment, they only sold Toon Tonic.
Toon Tonic affected Toons the way liquor affects humans. Some Toons got woozy, some passed out, some got even sillier than normal. The one thing Toon Tonic didn’t do to Toons was make them mean.
That’s what Toon Tonic did to humans.
Two shots, and I felt like taking somebody apart.
One sip had Cooper clenching his fists, squinting his eyes, and gritting his teeth.
Tonight’s singing group was pretty famous, even outside Toontown. They called themselves Ike, Ted, and Tina, the Three Tooners. Before each number they set their pitch with a tooning fork. They sang Toon classics, I Got a Kick Outa You, What Is This Thing Called Wuv?, April in Toontown, and The Lady Is A Lamp.
Roger, well Tooned up by his shots of Toon Tonic, hopped on stage and joined them.
The Three Tooners didn’t care. They sang by sending up interlocking word balloons. Nobody could hear them anyway. What was one more balloon more or less?
The photos mounted behind our booth showed movie stars, mostly human, enjoying themselves here at the club. I saw pictures of The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, The Ritz Brothers, and that new Russky comedy team the Karamazov Brothers. Lauren Bacall playfully blew a huge whistle into her Bogey man’s ear. Frank Sinatra sang on stage. Sinatra was so skinny, only his head was visible. His microphone’s slim pedestal obscured his body.
Cooper spotted Charlie Horse, the Toon actor who played Moses in The Ten Commandments. A bad career move for poor Charlie. Ever since then, his word balloons came out as stone tablets. They fell on the ground and broke before anybody could read them. He had to converse by writing his words on a piece of paper. Cooper went over to say hi. Cooper came back with one of Charlie’s stony balloons. The balloon said, “I’m in therapy. Hoping to be speaking normally soon.”
“Poor guy,” said Cooper.
“Yeah, I feel for him.”
Roger returned to our booth and slid in beside us.
I signaled our waiter. A penguin on roller skates. Toons always do everything the hard way.
“What can I get ya?” asked the penguin.
“An audience with Willy Prosciutto. Tell him Eddie Valiant wants to talk.”
“Sorry, no can do,” said the penguin. “Mister Prosciutto isn’t here. Maybe you could try back tomorrow night. Or the night after. Or the night after that. You never know when he’s coming in.”
The penguin skated off.
Cooper, still feeling the poisonous effects of Toon Tonic, shook a fist at the penguin. “Jerk,” he said. “I oughta—”
“Cool off, Mister Cooper,” said Roger. “A rabbit never takes no for an answer. Unless the question is ‘want some hasenpfeffer?’ Let’s do this the sneaky way.”
Sounded like a great idea to me! Was the rabbit getting the knack of private detecting? Or was my Toon Tonic turning ludicrous into luscious? The way the Tonic did with the plug ugly dollies I always took home with me when under the influence.
I took a chance and trusted the rabbit.
Roger led us through the club and down a back hallway lined with identical doors. He stopped in front one. The door had no markings, no sign. “This is Willy’s office.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I came here once with Jessica. She was auditioning for a two week singing engagement at the Hotsy Totsy.”
“She get the job?”
Roger shook his head. “Willy wanted her to do more than sing. She’s a good girl, my Jessie Wessie. She won’t play patty cake with anybody but me.”
Roger dropped to his knees. He pressed his eyeball to the keyhole. “Sorry, I have to spy this way until Superman’s copyright on X-ray vision expires.”
“What do you see?”
“Willy’s in there. Him, Louie Louie, and Honey Graham.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “Let’s figure out our next move.”
Roger wasn’t one for long range planning. Or for any planning whatsoever.
He stood up, opened the door, and barged right into Prosciutto’s office.
Cooper and I had no choice. We had to back him up.
We followed him in.
“Well, well, well,” said Willy Prosciutto. “the three musketeers. What brings you boys to my humble place of business? No, wait. Before you answer that, since I know your answer’s gonna be something I don’t like, and I’m gonna have to have my boy Louie Louie bust your chops. Let’s clear the room of the feminine kind. Don’t want the little lady seeing bloodshed.”
He didn’t have fingers, hence he couldn’t snap them. He put up a balloon that said “Snap” instead.
“Take a hike,” he ordered his girlfriend.
“You can’t just tell me what to do like that,” said Honey in a balloon as scalding as a puff of steam. “I ain’t your slave! I got rights! I got feelings! I gotta tell you, I’m not happy with the bossy way you treat me. I deserve better!”
“Tell you what—we’ll talk about this later, okay? Like maybe when Hell freezes over. Until then, you do what I tell you. If you don’t like the arrangement, how’s about you give me back all the clothes, and the jewelry, and the little two-seater car? You get on a bus back to Podunk Village or wherever you was living before I turn
ed you into what you are.”
Honey opened her mouth, ready to argue. She thought better.
She picked up her mink coat. The six Toon minks making up the coat arranged themselves snugly around her body.
Honey stormed out.
“What’s up with youse guys?” said Willy. He didn’t have any knuckles to crack so he clicked his tongue instead.
Louie Louie stood in a corner, shadow boxing. Louie Louie was fast and good. He kept knocking the shadow to the floor. The shadow, a gamer, kept coming back for more.
“We got evidence that shows Clabber Clown was killed,” I told Willy. “You wanna tell us your whereabouts yesterday afternoon?”
“No, I don’t. Because that ain’t none of your bees wax.”
Louie Louie laughed. He did it for real, no balloon. He knew the effect a laughing louse had on a human. Louse laughter was like having a millipede run a thousand fingernails over a blackboard. I thought all my teeth were gonna fall out and my hair along with them.
“I tell you what,” said Willy Prosciutto. “Even though what I was doing ain’t none of your no never mind, I’m gonna tell you anyway, because that’s the kinda guy I am. Friendly, always eager to please. Yesterday, I was at my tailor’s all day being fitted out for a new suit. Louie Louie was there with me. As if that was any of your business, which it ain’t.”
“Yeah, it ain’t,” said Louie Louie. “I mean no, it ain’t. I mean yeah. I mean…I don’t know what I mean.”
Willy looked at his right hand louse. “If you’re gonna be my yes man, do it right. We clear on that?”
Louie’s multi-faceted eyes glazed over a little, not a pretty sight. “Yes?”
Willy Prosciutto nodded. “Yes.”
“You sabotaged the clown’s amusement park,” I said. “You were pressuring him to sell you the place. He refused. He got killed. I’m betting the killer was you. You or your louse here.”
Prosciutto smacked one of his pig’s feet on his desk. Judging from the multiple indentations in the wood, he’d done this more than once before. His balloon came out hot, with blistered edges. “I would advise you to keep out of business which don’t concern you.”
Roger started to respond.
Prosciutto pointed at him. “Keep your mouth shut when you talk to me.”
Prosciutto gave Louie Louie a wave. “Throw this lot of trash outta my club.”
Cooper, still under the influence of Toon Tonic, put up his dukes, ready to mix things up with the louse.
I held him back. Sober, Cooper might stand a chance. Tooned up like he was, he was primed to get his perfect nose bent way out of joint.
“Let’s go, guys,” I said.
“We’ll be back,” said Roger.
“I’ll be waiting,” said Louie Louie.
“Me too,” said Willy Prosciutto.
Chapter Seven
“Sir,” said Miss Ethyl to Sands as she drove us back to the hotel, “we are falling increasingly behind our schedule. We still have a number of locations to check out and verify. If we don’t finish that in the next few days, we’ll be forced to delay the start of principal photography.” She waggled a finger at him, the same way I would if Mutt crapped on my rug. “You know what that means.”
Sands nodded. “I make my investors very angry.”
“Correct,” said Miss Ethyl.
I pictured Miss Ethyl in her Katy Gibbs Elocution Class, standing up in front of her classmates, practicing her Voice Of Reason. I bet she earned an A+.
“I realize this murder investigation is quite interesting and exciting,” she said. “However, in the interest of our main project, I must insist that we resume our agreed upon schedule.”
“God forbid we fall behind our schedule,” I said.
“We have already fallen behind our schedule, Mister Valiant,” she said. I’m worried that Mister Sands runs the risk of being forced to abandon his movie completely.”
“What you’re telling me is that you put a higher priority on making a movie than you do on finding out who killed a clown.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Mister Valiant. Mister Sands is a brilliant artiste. His movies will be remembered long after you and I are gone. There are plenty more clowns where that one came from. There is only one Barney Sands.”
“She’s right,” said Sands.
“About what?” I asked him.
“About everything.”
“About you being a brilliant artiste?”
“Well, sure. Of course. Although I was thinking more about getting back on schedule, scouting our locations.”
“Right now, I’d like to sock you so hard in the kisser that I send you to a location somewhere over the rainbow,” I said.
“You are an exceedingly rude man, Mister Valiant,” said Miss Ethyl.
“Yeah, and you’re a cold, ruthless, unfeeling—”
“Language, Eddie,” said Roger. “Little pitchers have big ears.” He pointed at my puppy.
“I ain’t working for your boss no more, Ethyl. You gotta boost his ego, do what he says. I don’t. Pull over. Let me out. From here on, I’m going my own way. And I’m walking to get there.”
She didn’t argue. She wheeled the car hard right, straight to the curb.
I got out.
Cooper opened his door. “Me, too.” He stepped out of the car and fell in beside me.
Roger hopped out after Cooper. “I go where my buddies go.”
Mutt hopped off the back seat right into my arms.
“Aw, what the heck?” said Sands. “Count me in. I’ll film you investigating the clown’s murder. Could be interesting. Might add another layer to the documentary.”
He opened the trunk, pulled out his camera and the new disguise Miss Ethyl had fabricated for him.
I tucked Mutt under my arm and started walking toward no place in particular.
The rabbit and Cooper walked on either side of me.
Sands trailed behind us, filming our march.
For his new disguise, Sands wore a white Good Humor Man outfit. Miss Ethyl had painted his camera to look like an ice cream cart with two bicycle wheels in front, one wheel in back. Sands sat on a bicycle seat over the rear wheel. He peddled his camera around, inconspicuously taking shots as he went. Always the perfectionist, Miss Ethyl had mounted a bell atop the camera for added realism. The bell dinged loudly whenever Sands hit a bump.
We followed The Road To Rune which dead ended at Barbarian Backwater, a housing development for prehistoric characters
The unevolved primitives who inhabited Barbarian Backwater—Neanderthals, dinosaurs, and cavemen—lived in tree houses. These primeval Toonsfolk produced utterances with no balloons, just words. Whatever these Toons said spilled out, fell flat, and laid on the ground like evaporated alphabet soup. Not that this bunch had much to say. The Ape Man’s wild yell was the pinnacle of oratory around here.
Primitive Toons might not know much about civilization, but they knew good ice cream. When they heard Sands’s ding-a-ling, they came running down the street, crawling through the grass, and swinging through the trees. They clustered around Sands’s ersatz ice cream cart. They had no simoleons so they offered to trade shells, rocks, and bones for Good Humor bars.
Miss Ethyl had neglected the most important item of authentication. Sands had no ice cream to sell.
Rather than stick around, trying to explain his lack of product to a mob of ice cream craving, club wielding primitives, Sands peddled away at full speed.
“I’ll catch up with you at the hotel,” he shouted to us.
The three of us, four if you counted Mutt, kept walking.
“Any ideas?” asked Cooper.
“Nothing,” I said.
Roger kept putting up w
ord balloons with light bulbs inside them. Most stayed dark. A few flickered once or twice but never generated any wattage.
“You know what always relaxes me and helps me think?” Roger asked.
“I couldn’t imagine.”
“A visit to the Roamin’ Baths. How’s about it? You guys wanna join me for a spritz?”
“Can’t hurt,” said Cooper.
“Lead the way,” said I.
The Roamin’ Baths were at Cleanliness Street, right next to Godliness Avenue.
The Baths featured all of the most popular style baths; sponge, sitz, sweat, steam, vapor, hot-air, Turkish, Russian, Finnish, sulfur, and acid.
Your price of admission allowed you to roam freely from bath to bath.
We went into the locker room. We ditched our clothes and wrapped ourselves in large soft word balloons, the kind produced by big, soft-spoken Toons.
Roger wanted to start out in the tepidarium. We followed him in.
The temperature was lukewarm. About what you’d get if you filled your bathtub with hour-old coffee.
We dropped our towels and walked into the water.
Cooper had quite the build on him. Well defined muscles, not an ounce of fat.
With his wet fur plastered flat to his scrawny body, Roger resembled a mildewed strand of spaghetti.
Roger put his head under the surface of the water and started blowing bubbles. The ones from his mouth popped out of the water transparent. They collided with each other, absorbing into one another until they became one huge floating bubble.
Roger smacked the big bubble with his open paw, sending the bubble toward Cooper. Cooper hit the bubble back to him. Roger sent the bubble toward me. I poked the bubble with my extended forefinger, bursting the bubble open.
“Aw, Eddie,” said the rabbit. “You’re such a spoilsport.”
Roger’s face contorted into an unpleasant grimace which I thought he meant for me. Instead, his twisted facial expression derived from a severe case of rabitty stomach gas. He relieved the pressure by releasing two bubbles out of his nether end. Those bubbles came out phosphorescent green. They burst open, filling the air with the noxious odor of wilted lettuce.
