Who P-p-p-plugged Roger Rabbit?

by Gary K. Wolf

  “Say goodnight, Gracie.” Potts pointed the gun between my peepers and thumbed back the hammer.

  “Don’t despair, Eddie,” proclaimed Roger Rabbit. He jumped up from his hiding place behind the sofa. “Help is on the way.” Stealing a page from Mighty Mouse’s manual, he sprung off a sofa cushion, sailed through the air with the greatest of ease, and landed on Potts’s head. He hung on by wrapping his skinny arm around Potts’s throat. He might as well have hooked a shark on a spool of sewing thread. Potts had only to wiggle his Adam’s apple to free himself of the rabbit’s grip.

  Potts swung the .45 around and fired pointblank at Roger. It punched a hole through the crotch in his overalls. One inch higher it would have eliminated his worries about tight underwear.

  Roger slid down Potts’s back. He hit the floor, contracted his body into a six-inch coil, and sprung open with full force directly into Potts’s nether region. His startlingly potent impact popped the formula and Selznick’s .44 out of Potts’s waistband.

  Roger snagged them both on the fly.

  Potts shot at Roger again, adding a smoking black polka dot to Roger’s bow tie.

  Clutching the formula and the gun in his paws, Roger hotfooted out the front door.

  Potts went after him, traveling as fast as a man can run on one leg and a mop handle.

  Score one for the amateur. Time for the old pro to step in and write the finale.

  I caught Potts at the door, grabbed him by the elbow, spun him around, and cocked my arm.

  Potts jellied me with his gun butt.

  I woke up with a tiny angel stroking my forehead. “Heaven’s a lot smaller than I imagined,” I said.

  “Are you all right?” asked Little Jo.

  I blinked, but her balloon stayed fuzzy. It wasn’t my eyesight. She shook so badly everything she said came out like scribbling on the wings of a palsied moth.

  I put her in my hand and stumbled to my feet. Her shivering rattled my palm worse than a fistful of Mexican jumping beans.

  “What happened after I hit the floor?”

  “Pepper Potts ran out chasing Roger. Clark pulled himself together and went after them both.”

  I stretched out on the sofa. I put her on my chest.

  She walked up my necktie and stood next to my chin. “I was so scared, Eddie. Not because he was going to kill me. But because I thought I’d never see you again.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the lips.

  To my surprise, I kissed her back. I went easy on the suction for fear of swallowing her whole. Ridiculous as it sounded, I seemed to have fallen head over heels for a woman who could sleep in my mitten. Go figure love.

  “What do we do next?” she asked.

  I knew what I had in mind, but I figured she meant the case. “Not much except hope Roger can stay away from Potts.”

  She ran her delicate hand along my cheek. “Since we’re momentarily stalled, how about we break for dinner and whatever?”

  Beauty, brains, and a mind reader, too. “My place or yours?”

  We settled for hers, it being closer. While she changed into something more comfortable, I went for a bottle of wine. This being a special occasion, I splurged on one without a screw cap.

  I stopped at a florist and bought a bouquet. Miniature roses, naturally.

  When I returned, she had changed into a black satin dressing gown that clung to her the way gum sticks to a sidewalk.

  She cooked a great dinner, though the portions were a little skimpier than I prefer.

  I threw a platter on her turntable.

  I sat on the sofa. She lounged on my shoulder. Sinatra crooned hello to young lovers. I turned my head. We took Frankie’s advice and kissed in the shadows. Her perfume made me want to club a mastodon, invent fire, or scribble stick figures on a cave wall just to impress her.

  I sniffed her again. “That’s a different scent from the one you had on at Selznick’s.”

  She ran the underside of her wrist beneath her nose. “No, this is my usual.”

  “I’m positive you wore another.”

  “Oh, I remember.” She snuggled into my neck, pressing her contours against my racing pulse. “That was Jessica’s. I borrowed a drop in the ladies’ room.”

  “She use a common brand?”

  “Hardly. It’s called Jessica’s One and Only. She has it specially blended by a perfumery on Rodeo Drive. Why?”

  “Only curious.” About why Jessica ratted herself to Delancey Duck. “I like yours better.”

  “I’m glad.” She stuck her tongue, and other portions of her anatomy, into my mouth. I licked off her clothes. She preserved her modesty by ducking into my waistband. Things were starting to get complicated when somebody knocked on her door.

  I took a deep breath, a cold shower, and went to answer.

  The stranger at her door was a squat, redheaded, albino-skinned human. His ice-blue eyes would look natural floating in the Arctic Ocean. The size of his ears put Gable’s to shame. His trench coat reached to his feet, which, oddly, were bare. “Hello, Eddie,” he said in a mildly grating voice.

  Inside my pants leg, Little Jo unhooked my elastic sock garter and rode my argyle from calf level to the floor. She crawled out from under the ribbing.

  “What’s going on?” she asked

  “Joellyn,” said the stranger, “slip some clothes on before you catch a chill.”

  “Friend of yours?” I asked her.

  She wrapped my pants cuff around her. It went all the way with plenty to spare. Dame fashion dictated wearing cuffs wide this year, and I’m a slave to convention. “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” she responded.

  “Are we supposed to know you?” I asked him.

  He flashed me a goofy gleamer. “You bet! I’ll give you ten guesses.”

  “Grumpy, Sneezy, Heckle, Jeckle, Tom, Jerry, Dasher, Dancer.”

  “Here’s a hint. You’re not even warm. Keep trying. You’ve still got two guesses left.”

  I unfurled my gun and hoisted it up his large nose. “I give up.”

  “Oh, Eddie. You’re such a killjoy. If that’s the way you want to be, I’ll come clean!” He opened his coat, exposing a pair of red corduroy overalls. “Surp-p-p-prize!

  I would have staggered backwards into the next county except an end table got in the way. My pants cuff snapped out, spinning Little Jo across the floor like a top. “Roger?” I asked him.

  “One and the same.” He pushed one leg forward, bent over double at the waist, tucked an arm into his craw, and extended the other behind him. A Toon can pull off a bow like that without looking ridiculous. Don’t try it if you’re human unless your first name’s Basil, Errol, Cecil, or Prince. “I bought a toy chemistry set at F.A.O. Schwarz,” he said. “I had a splash of rum left from the motel. I used it to concoct a batch of Toon Tonic. It’s easy. Any fool can do it!” He executed a pirouette. “Great disguise, huh, Eddie?”

  “What about the formula?”

  He extracted the sheet of paper from his trench coat pocket. “Safe and sound.” He handed it over. “And take this icky thing, too.” Holding it by the barrel, between his fingertips, he gave me Selznick’s other gun.

  23

  The now human Roger studied his hands in a mirror. He stuck his twidlers into his mouth and pulled the loose flesh sideways to its natural limit. He crossed his eyes and bracked his tongue, begetting the ugliest face this side of a mud hen with mumps. The sight nearly scared him to death. “Eddie, what’s wrong with me? My best funny face isn’t funny anymore. It’s downright doubly disgusting.”

  “Maybe the mirror’s set to the wrong station.”

  He jacked up his brows to the level of a pedant’s pomposity. “What a ridiculous assertion.”

  “It’s a joke, numb knuckles.”

  That rocked him harder than the
recoil from a misfired blunderbuss. “A joke? Honest?”

  “As I live and breathe.”

  “You made a joke, and I didn’t get it.” Roger’s knees collapsed. He grabbed my arm to stay erect. “Oh, no. It can’t be so! Eddie, I’ve lost my sense of humor.”

  “Buck up. Maybe it’s only taking a breather. Building up strength. Like hair does when you lop it. Plenty of mugs shave their scalps in summertime to thicken their thatch for fall.”

  “One problem. I know of cases where it never grew back.” Roger umbrellaed his laced fingers over his noggin to protect himself from the pieces of his crumbling world. “What would I do if I had to spend the rest of my life hairless?”

  “There are worse things than being a cue ball.”

  “I don’t mean baldness literally.” His raspy voice rose to a pitch midway between tenor and terror. “It was a metaphor. I’m talking about my sense of humor.”

  “There’s worse than being serious, too.”

  “Name one.”

  Before I could, the doorbell interrupted me.

  Gable stood on the threshold. I hardly recognized him. He’d combed his hair by sticking it under a ceiling fan. Dark blue stubble bandannaed his jaw. His trousers and shirt harbored more rumples than stiltskin. “You’re here,” he said. The whiskey in his voice could keep a booze cruise afloat for a week. Where are the flash bulbers when I need them? The Telltale prints one snapshot of Gable in this condition, it ushers in a national fashion trend suiting yours truly to a positive tee.

  “Congrats. Your detective skills are improving.”

  “Not really. This was my last resort.” He staggered inside with the lathered, stiff-legged gait of a war horse hobbling through the curtain stanza of the Light Brigade’s farewell poem. “I already tried your place, mine, Roger’s, and every gin mill in between.”

  Roger had already killed my mood. Gable now killed my wine. He glugged it straight out of the bottle, belching when he hit bottom. “I’m sorry, Eddie,” he said. “I lost Potts again. Detective work is tougher than I supposed.”

  Roger stood next to him, pantomiming his moves.

  Gable shoved the rabbit away by levering out his elbow. “Ease off the monkey see, monkey do routine, sport. It’s not funny.”

  “It’s not funny?” Roger opened his arms to God or whomever else lived in the apartment above. “Mercy me,” he wailed. “I’m not funny!”

  “Who is this idiot?” asked Gable.

  “Clark Gable, meet Roger Rab…Rabs. Roger Rabs. A passing acquaintance of mine.”

  Roger’s hands formed a U and framed his face. “We’ve got a common vocation, Clark. I’m in the movies, too.”

  Gable unpacked a cigarette from a monogrammed gold case. He tapped it on his thumbnail while he contemplated the rabbit skeptically.

  “Honest Injun!” Roger tallied his most recent roles on his fingers. “A Harey Escape; Beach Blanket Bunny; Grab It, Rabbit; Somethin’s Cookin’.” He stopped at four, discombobulated by his newly sprouted fifth digit.

  “I saw them.” Gable put match to tobacco dogface style, his palms cupping the flame to shield the glow. “I don’t remember you.”

  “He was in the booth,” I said. “He’s a projectionist. Show business, get it? Rog’s idea of a joke.”

  “Pretty lame, sport,” said Gable.

  “Rog isn’t known for his wit.”

  “I am so.” Roger popped to attention and saluted. “Scout’s honor. I’m a fetchingly funny fellow.”

  “Right, Rog.” I winked at Gable. “No argument. You’re a barrel of monkeyshines.” I nudged him toward the kitchen. “We’d drink to it if given a beer.”

  He shuffled away, fanning the empty air behind him to disperse the baleful black bubbles which usually shagged him whenever he grew depressed. Another plus to being human. Henceforth when he wore his heart on his sleeve, nobody expected to see a literal translation.

  “Your friend needs a month in the country.” Gable whirligigged his finger next to his temple.

  “Cut him a yard of slack. He’s a recent arrival.”

  “From where?”

  “State of confusion.”

  Little Jo came out of her bedroom wearing a head scarf, sneakers, baggy slacks, and a plaid work shirt. Add smoked goggles, a welding torch, a half-inch steel plate, and she could replace Rosie the Riveter on a battlewagon assembly line. “Hi, Clark.” She crawled into my lap and curled up like a bad cat or a good book. “You look like death warmed over.”

  “I feel even worse.” He flopped onto the sofa and stretched out.

  Roger returned with a Blue Label long neck in each hand, and a third balanced precariously on his forehead. He endeavored to pry them open with his nostril. Needless to say, he failed gruesomely. Same song, second and third verses, when he tried his teeth and his inner ear.

  I snatched them away before he maimed himself, and popped them the normal way.

  “What happened to Roger?” asked Gable. “Did he escape from Potts with the goods?”

  “A clean getaway,” I told him.

  “At least the day hasn’t been a total washout.” Gable closed his eyes.

  Roger leaned over the back of the sofa. “Haven’t we met before?” he asked impishly.

  “No,” mumbled Gable from two inches this side of Dreamland.

  “I seem to recall us rinsing our skivvies together.”

  Gable’s eyes snapped wide. He grabbed the rabbit by the front of his trench coat. “I’ll tell you once and once only, buddy boy,” he growled. “I’m straight as string.”

  “No, silly. At the Laundromat. Across the highway from Dyke’s.” Roger broke into song. “Ninety-six boxes of soap on the wall, ninety-six boxes of soap, if one of those boxes should happen to fall, ninety-five boxes of soap on the wall.”

  Gable gave the rabbit a closer look. “Roger?”

  Roger flashed Gable a peek at his overalls and toasted him with a swallow of suds. “Hare’s looking at you, Clark.”

  Gable pinched the rabbit’s cheek. “Astounding.” He tugged Roger’s crop of red hair. “I’ve never seen a better makeup job. I’d swear you were human.”

  Roger flashed him the thumbs-up sign, proof positive of human genus. “You’d be right.”

  “What… How…” An actor lost for words. Mark the date. It’ll never happen again.

  “Roger glugged a potion called Toon Tonic,” I explained. “It changes them into us. Also works the other way, for any fool eager to make the trip.”

  I explained how Pepper Potts, Kirk Enigman, Tom Tom LeTuit, and probably Roger’s unscrupulous cousin Dodger had been partners in a scheme to manufacture and sell Toon Tonic. Potts won sole control of the business by ash-canning his three associates. “Potts is one dangerous snake. He’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.”

  “Whew,” said Little Jo.

  “Double whew,” said Gable.

  “That goes triple for me,” said Roger. “Whew, whew, and whew again.”

  “Where is the formula now?” asked Gable.

  “Tucked away.” In my coat pocket alongside Selznick’s Dragoon. I tried and rejected Potts’s hiding place. Safe as a bank vault, great for the silhouette, but murder on the inner seam.

  “My compliments, Eddie,” said Gable. “You appear to have solved the case.”

  If you didn’t count a few minor, unanswered questions. Like who muffed Baby Herman? Did Jessica really dish her own dirt to the Toontown Telltale, and if so, why? What happened to my brother Freddy? How does Heddy fit into this mess? And my two biggies. What’s the secret of life? And, does the light go off when you shut the icebox door?

  Morning kicked a hole in the window and lobbed in a shaft of daylight. “Time for me to hit the road. I have to see a dog about a bigger dog.”

  “I’m coming with yo
u,” said Roger.

  “Pass,” said Gable. “I’m going home. I’ve decided I’m functionally ill-suited to this line of work.”

  “I’ll stay here, Eddie,” said Little Jo. She bussed me on the earlobe. “And keep your home fires burning.”

  Outside Little Jo’s building Roger, Gable, and I encountered a beat cop, a brick-solid, red-faced shillelagh of a man twirling a four-pound billy club the way a kid elevators a yoyo. “You three,” he barked the instant he spotted us. “Hold it right there.”

  He slid his billy into its sheath. His steel-cleated boots sparked on the concrete sidewalk as he walked in our direction. His gun hand rested on the mahogany butt of a long-barreled Police Special.

  A half dozen ribbons for bravery underscored a name tag identifying him as Officer Meany. I hoped Roger decided to go along quietly. This wasn’t a fight any man smaller than a steam shovel was likely to win.

  “You who I think you are?” asked Officer Meany.

  Roger hung his head and prudently extended his hands for the cuffs. “One and the same, Officer.”

  “Not you, nitwit. Him.” He pointed at Gable.

  “Aren’t you Clark Gable?”

  Gable flashed his pearly whites. “Guilty as charged, Officer.”

  “My wife drags me to every one of your pictures.” Officer Meany hauled out his ticket book and handed it to the star. “How’s about signing an autograph to her?”

  “My pleasure,” said Gable. “What’s her name?”

  “Timothy.” The cop flushed when he said it. “And don’t write nothing gushy. She’s a hard-nosed, two-fisted, can-do kind of broad.”

  “Right.” Gable inscribed his name and added a small self caricature.

  “What about me?” Roger asked the cop.

  “What about you?” Officer Meany tucked his ticket book into his large rear pocket.

  “Don’t you want my autograph?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “But I’m…Ooooof!”

  I elbowed him hard in the cowcatcher. It slowed his chugging but didn’t knock him off the track.

  “I’m Roger Rabbit!” He did a slipshod buck-and-wing.