by Gary K. Wolf
The receptionist put up a balloon shaped like an arrow. The arrow went ahead of us, leading us, pointing our way.
The arrow took us to a small office located about as far from the studio’s front door as you could be without leaving the building.
The name on the door, written in a balloon composed of typewriter script, read Hippety Hopper.
I knocked.
Door knocking is a problem with Toons. Since they speak in word balloons, you can’t hear them tell you to come in. Sometimes, a Toon will slide his balloon under the door, but that takes a combination of concentration and skill which most Toons don’t possess. Usually they come to the door and open it personally.
Like here.
The door opened. With a name like Hippety Hopper I expected a rabbit. I was close. I got a female kangaroo.
“Yes,” said Hopper. “Can I help you?”
“Once upon a time, you wrote a radio show that featured a character name Moe Reality,” I said.
“I did,” said Hopper. Clearly starstruck, she gave her answer to Cooper.
I didn’t care. Whatever worked.
“I won an award for that one. Best Use of Funny Names In A Non-Funny Situation. Nowhere near as good as your Academy Award, Gary, but I take what I can get.”
“Wise decision,” said Cooper.
“Did you base your Reality story on the Joe Viality affair?” I asked her.
Hopper shook her head. She reached into her pouch and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She offered them around. Everybody passed. These were Toon smokes. They gave off the same odor you get when you spin your rubber tires peeling away from a stoplight. “Absolutely not,” said Hippety. “ All those characters were purely fictitional. Any similarity to actual persons was coincidentious.”
No matter what she said, I still wanted to check this out for myself. “Does the station keep copies of your scripts?” I asked her.
She laughed. “Of course not. They wouldn’t have room for all those balloons. Once a program’s in the wires, that story’s gone forever.”
Looked like we had another dead end.
Roger was studying some glamour shots of herself that Hippety had framed and hung on her office wall. “These are really swell,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I’d like to get some like this taken of my wife Jessica. Who took them?”
“My former boyfriend,” she said. “He’s a camera bug. His name is Shutters Malone.”
Chapter Fourteen
We went to the Toontown Hysterical Society, firmly rooted at Ivy and Vine.
The Hysterical Society catalogued Toontown History.
The big display this month featured Oleo, a butter knife forged by Merlin as a warm up for Excalibur. I read the explanatory balloon hanging next to the knife. According to Toontown legend, Valiant became Prince by pulling Oleo out of a ramekin of solidified lard. After that, Oleo disappeared for years until one day the little cut up reappeared in the silverware tray at the Toontown Automat.
I leaned in close. The inscription etched into the blade read “Made in Camelot.”
I asked the librarian where they kept past issues of Toontown’s newspaper, the Toontown Telltale. She told me to check in the stacks.
I should have known nothing is ever that straightforward in Toontown.
We entered the stacks.
We went by stacks of pancakes, stacks of phonograph records, even stacks of stacked women. Finally, we came to the stacks of newspapers.
Took a while but we finally located the issues dealing with Mayor Joe Viality’s resignation.
Quite the spicy story.
Viality had been a clown with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. He ran for office under the slogan “We’ve had a clown in Toon Hall for the last four years. Let’s at least get one with experience.”
He won in a landslide.
He put mirth into Toon Hall. Toons were tired of doom and gloom in politics. They were ready for a few guffaws. Politics has always been a laughing matter to most voters anyway.
Mayor Joe Viality milked his spot in the limelight for maximum comic potential. He came into his first press conference wearing a red nose and a propeller beanie. He always rode on Toontown’s float in the annual Pasadena Rose Parade. Instead of throwing candy to the crowd, he lofted water balloons.
At-Random House, a book publisher whose output defies logic, issued The Wit of Mayor Joe Viality. Wit was a ten volume set, profusely illustrated. The book included the famous photo of Mayor Viality in yellow and green polka dotted pantaloons, a strawberry wig, and fools cap greeting the Queen of England on the steps of Toon Hall.
Sydie Saddle’s On-the-Gallop Poll showed that Mayor Joe Viality was Toontown’s best loved public official since Judge Puffle.
At that point, Mayor Viality’s career took a steep downhill slide.
A dire scandal hounded Mayor Viality out of office.
Mayor Viality kept every word balloon he ever uttered while in public office. He felt they had great historical significance. Mayor Viality wanted to leave them to his library. He kept them locked in his office safe.
Several of them fell into the hands of The Toontown Telltale.
The newspaper printed them on the front page. They showed Mayor Viality’s abject contempt for his constituents.
He made jokes about how many Toons you needed to screw in a light bulb. He made Toon knock knock jokes.
The balloons caused a public outrage. Petitions circulated calling for Mayor Viality’s impeachment.
Mayor Viality resigned from office in disgrace.
Willy Prosciutto’s handpicked candidate, Boss Tweedledeedledum, replaced Mayor Viality.
Viality went to work as a janitor in Toon Hall, where he’d once ruled supreme.
We drove over to Toon Hall.
The Hall stood at the edge of Toon Square. The middle of the square featured a gigantic marble statue of a pigeon. A marble general sat on the pigeon’s head.
We found ex-Mayor Joe Viality sweeping the halls.
Viality had aged quite a bit since his time as mayor. During his years with Barnum and Bailey, he had been lean and athletic. He specialized in strenuous physical comedy. Pratfalls off high places. Soaring flights from out of cannon barrels. Corkscrew twists, rubber bandy stretches. Vitality did them all. He was generally credited with inventing the circus clown’s holy trinity of pratfalls; slips, splats, and splits.
Like most Toons, his once supple skin had turned crinkly with age. While most elderly Toons came to resemble last month’s newspaper, Viality looked more like an ancient scroll unearthed from a desert cave. I saw not a hint of the fluid movements that had made him a comedic legend. His legs moved herky jerky while his arms went jerky herky. He was constantly out of sync with himself.
“I’m Eddie Valiant,” I said. “This is Barney Sands. He’s a movie director. I’m sure you recognize these two. Roger Rabbit and Gary Cooper.”
“Can’t say I do.”
“They’re both big movie stars.”
Viality shook his head. “Haven’t been to the movies for years. Can’t afford to on my salary. What can I do for you gents?”
“We’re looking into the disappearance and possible murder of Clabber Clown,” I told him. “I understand you know Clabber pretty well.”
Viality stood a bit straighter. Showed me the barest hint of that stage presence which had once made him the world’s greatest clown. “I sure did,” said Viality. “We spent years together touring with Barnum and Bailey.”
“He work for you when you were mayor?” I asked.
“He did indeed,” said Viality. “I appointed Clabber as my advance man. Clabber warmed up the crowd at Mayoral speeches and press conferences. To get them
laughing, Clabber told jokes about unemployment and the housing shortage. Real knee slapping stuff.”
“You ever find out who leaked your word balloons to The Telltale?”
“Never did. I wish I had. I’d pay them back good.” He swung his mop in an arc. The mop head sprayed us and everything around us with dirty water.
“You stored those balloons in your safe, right?” I said.
“Correct.”
“Who had the combination?”
“Only three people,” said Viality. “Me, Clabber, and Shutters Malone, my official photographer.”
“So obviously,” said Roger, getting in his two cents worth, “the thief must have been Clabber or Shutters since you wouldn’t steal them and leak them yourself.”
“Impossible,” said Viality. “Clabber was my best friend, my sidekick, my crony. Clabber wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. Neither would Shutters.”
A commotion interrupted us.
An entourage of local government lackeys came marching down the hallway.
Toontown’s current mayor, Boss Tweedledeeledum, headed up the parade.
I meant headed up in the literal sense.
Boss T had two heads.
His two noggins looked completely different from one another.
One of Boss T’s heads was fat, jowly, with a pushed in nose, teeth the color of rotted corn, and rheumy brown eyes underscored by bright red lower lids. That one had only a horseshoe of hair. A lighted cigar hung from that head’s mouth. That head issued balloons, saying things like: “I’ll see that guy gets exactly what he deserves,” and “What we need in Toontown is more taxes.”
Boss T’s other head was slender, devilishly handsome. That head sported a full head of hair teased up into a full pompadour, a perfect Roman nose, angular jaw, white teeth, sparkling baby blue eyes, and a pencil thin mustache that would have been right at home on the upper lip of any lady-killing lothario. A long cigarette holder extended from that head’s mouth. That head said things like “Hi ya, baby. Wanna boff?” to passing young women and “Who’s ready for cocktails?” to any female who looked to be over the age of twenty-one, and a number of those who didn’t.
A bunch of toadies—Boss T employed real Toon toads for the purpose—followed him.
Boss Tweedledeeledum gave an unending series of pronouncements and orders.
His toadies collected his word balloons like they were stone tablets Boss T had acquired directly from God.
The toadies stacked Boss T’s balloons into a big red wagon. Two of the toadies—the effort required two since the wagon was stacked full of pithy sayings—pulled the wagon along behind them.
“Boss T’s fat head, the left one, the head everybody calls the head cheese, hangs around with politicos, making shady deals in smoky back rooms,” Roger told me. “His other right-headed head, more head-windy, swings wild with Baby Herman and his crew, tearing up the jazz clubs and hootchy cootchy joints, giving the vice squad all they can handle.”
Obviously, physiology required Boss T’s two heads to go every place together.
You would think that would be a real handicap for a politician. Always arguing with your counterpart about what gets done when, and what’s best for the overall good of the main body. Until you realized that our own two party political system worked pretty much the same way.
“How does a nincompoop like that keep getting elected?” I asked Roger.
“I dunno,” said the Rabbit. “He’s really unpopular with the citizens of Toontown. He’s the reason most Toons have only four fingers. They’d rather do without one than pay Boss T’s infamous Thumb Tax. Yet he always wins his elections by near unanimous vote. A whole lot of Toons suspect Willy Prosciutto stuffs the ballot boxes. Nothing’s ever been proven, though.”
Boss T spotted us.
“Hey, Viality,” said his stern left head. “What are you doin’ shooting the breeze? The city don’t pay you to flap your gums. The city pays you to clean the floors.”
“Joe, Joe, Joe,” said the friendly right head. “Good to see you again. Let’s you and me go out for a drink after work. Catch up on the old times. Waddya say?”
Boss T’s left hand slapped his right head.
“Get serious,” said the left head. “We can’t go out drinking. We got too much work to do.”
“All work and no play is gonna make us a dull boy,” said the right head, then turned to me. “Have we met before?”
“Nope, never. I’m Eddie Valiant.”
“I heard about you,” said the left head. “Heard about you lots. I gotta be honest, I didn’t like what I heard. Not one bit. What are you doing in my town?”
“This is not your town,” said the right head. “This is nobody’s town. This is Toontown. You don’t own Toontown. You just run City Hall.”
“Yeah I run City Hall, without much help from you,” said the left head. “Why don’t you take a nap or something? Let me do my business.”
“Why don’t you loosen up a little bit?” said the right head. “Relax, have some fun. Who knows? You might find that enjoyable.”
“I’d enjoy taking a guillotine to you,” said the left head.
“Oh, that’s harsh,” said the right head. “That would be fratricide.”
“No,” said the left head, “that would be ridding my body of an ugly carbuncle.”
Boss Tweedledeedledum’s left head looked at me.
“Get lost, buddy. Leave the hired help alone.”
Boss T’s right head gave me a wink. “Let’s meet up later. Have us a drinky poo.”
Boss T’s toadies dutifully collected every pronouncement and put it into their wagon.
Chapter Fifteen
I don’t like the press.
Reporters and newsmen think that stupid freedom of the press amendment makes news hounds inalienably righteous. News scribblers believe they should be able to print whatever they know, without restriction, no matter who gets hurt. As far as I’m concerned, freedom of the press should be amended to let me be free to press a reporter’s face into the sidewalk the minute he starts hounding me for details on a sensitive case I’m working. Which is none of his business.
Which was exactly why a couple of my high profile cases fell apart the past few years. Ruining my reputation. Forcing me to take rotten, distasteful, lousy jobs just so I can make ends meet. Jobs exactly like this one.
So I wasn’t happy with our next stop, but I knew we had to go there. Information is my stock in trade. Newspapers deal in information.
We entered the offices of The Toontown Telltale, Toontown’s daily newspaper.
Toontown natives hate this rag almost as much as I do. I’ve heard Toons call the paper The Talltale and The Tattletale. From what I know, those two names suit The Telltale better than the one that ran on the banner.
The Telltale must have a problem with disgruntled subscribers. The place was harder to get into than Fort Knox.
Instead of a receptionist, The Telltale had a uniformed guard—a heavily muscled pit bull. In lieu of a gun, he carried a mouth full of wickedly sharp teeth. That coupled with his aggressive, confrontational demeanor left no doubt about his bite being far worse than his bark.
“Waddya want?” he asked, using a balloon with edges sharp enough to shave the sisal off a welcome mat.
I was getting ready to concoct a plausible story when Roger reached into his overalls and pulled out a PRESS card. The card was actually a small square word balloon bearing the word PRESS.
“I work here,” said Roger.
Of all the dumb stories Roger could have concocted, he had to come up with the one easiest to check and discount. I knew his phony card wouldn’t get us squat. I’d have to flim and flam twice as hard to get us through the door.
The guar
d took the card in his massive paws. He studied the card closely, front and back, right side up, upside down.
He handed the card back to the rabbit. “Go on in.”
He pushed a button on his desk. A door opened, admitting us to the promised land. Me, the rabbit, Cooper, and Sands hustled through the door before Fido wised up and changed his mind.
“Good bluff, Roger,” I said once we were safely inside.
“I wasn’t fooling,” said Roger. “I really do work here. I write a weekly column for the Telltale. You should read my work. Really, really interesting if I do say so myself. Which I do say to myself quite often. I call my column Roger Rabbit’s P-p-p-pellets of P-p-p-pith. Every week, I offer up p-p-p-prudent p-p-p-perceptions and p-p-p-penetrating p-p-p-pearls of p-p-p-perspicacity. I start off every column with ‘Let’s P-p-p-palaver!!!’ The phrase has become my trademark.”
We went up to the publisher’s office, and Roger went right in without knocking.
Me, Cooper, and Sands followed him.
The publisher’s office showed how a good interior designer can turn cartoony into captivating. The color scheme was the basic Toontown primary palette. Except the colors were not the usual bright, in-your-face, whip-you-into-a-frenzy shades, but rather more softly muted tones, designed to calm and soothe. So very un-Toon.
A double row of journalistic awards for excellence extended the length of the office’s longest wall, contradicting my belief that this rag was only good for making paper airplanes and spitballs.
“Guys,” said Roger, “let me introduce the Telltale’s publisher, Delancey Duck.”
Mutt must have had some hunting dog in him because he went on point facing Delancey and stayed that way for our entire visit.
Me and the duck had met before on a previous case. We’d gotten along well enough. Delancey wasn’t a bad bird—considering he was a bird which, in my view, was his main problem. Not natural for birds, cats, cows, elephants, mice, gerbils, or any of these refugees from barnyards and zoos to walk around upright, wearing clothes and talking to you like they were no different from upstanding, stand-upping human beings.
