by Gary K. Wolf
Chapter: •9•
Carol Masters wasn’t at her studio, so I tried her at home. She lived in a partially ‘toon, partially human neighborhood that real estate agents called ethnically enriched, and urban renewers called blighted. Depending on which way you happened to be facing—toward the gossiping, front-stoop ‘toon and human housewives or toward the babbling, back-alley ‘toon and human drunks—either term could apply.
Carol’s apartment occupied half a floor in what had been, in the late forties, a fashionable row house. Now it and the houses linked together on either side of it resembled a rickety roller coaster already well over its summit and plunging pell-mell on its long run downhill.
Carol’s door-bell wires drooped stiffly out of their housing like twin copper fangs, so I rapped on the door. Carol answered it, dressed as she had been at her studio, and invited me in.
I took an immediate liking to her home decoration. No wall to wall furniture to trip you up every time you went to the kitchen for a late-night beer. No chintz to gather dust. A few comfortable chairs placed for easy face-to-face conversation, some scattered end tables, and a colorful rainbow painted across two walls, culminating on each end in framed displays of Carol’s photographs. Her record collection filled most of a six-foot-long shelf, bluegrass to the center with a few rock records tacking down either end.
She told me to pour myself a drink while she finished processing some photos in a darkroom she had rigged up in her bedroom closet.
I checked my watch. I never drink until after six. It was then four-fifteen. Close enough. I buried the bottom of a glass under three fingers of bourbon, walked into the bedroom after her, and sat down on her bed.
There wasn’t much to be said for this room’s decor. Her clothes, mostly sweaters, shirts, and jeans hyphenated at irregular intervals by a few frilly party numbers, hung on a trapeze-style bar suspended from the ceiling. She had cameras, lenses, carrying cases, and other equipment I couldn’t identify scattered everywhere. I could smell her photographic chemicals even through the closed closet door.
She came out after a few minutes carrying some wet prints. “Let me just put these in the dryer,” she said. She placed the prints into a small contraption set on top of her dresser.
I came up behind her and looked over her shoulder at her prints, five copies of the same Baby Herman strip. “How come you don’t do this at your studio?”
“I work when the mood strikes me,” she answered. “There’s no punching a time clock when it comes to creativity.”
I didn’t quite see the creativity involved in smelling up a bedroom by running off five identical prints, but who was I to question art? “How did you get into this business?” I asked while she finished loading the dryer.
“I started out processing film for a small comic book publisher. He gave me a chance to shoot some complete episodes, I liked it, was good at it, and so went upward from there.”
We went back into the living room where Carol poured herself a duplicate of my drink and sank into an easy chair that was slipcovered in a pastel print. It nearly swallowed her small body whole. “Is this visit business or pleasure?”
I passed up the other easy chair in favor of a wooden kitchen chair which, as usual, I straddled in reverse. “Let’s start with business. I’m just wrapping up Roger’s case. If you could clarify a few minor points, that should do it.”
“However I can help.”
“Give me some background on the syndicate. How long have you worked for the DeGreasys?”
“About five years.”
“You like it?”
“So-so.” Carol kicked off her sneakers, put her feet on the front of her chair cushion, and wrapped her arms around her knees, compressing herself into a compact bundle of pretti-ness—pretty feet, pretty hands, pretty chin, pretty nose, pretty hair. Anyone seeing her like this, elfin and vulnerable, might be tempted to write her off as a harmless piece of fluff, a cream puff. Until you saw her eyes. The kind of cool, luminous eyes that peek out at you through jungle shrubbery and size you up for lunch. “I could do a lot better financially and have a lot more artistic satisfaction as a free lancer, but I still have five years to go on my contract. I’ve offered to buy myself out, but the DeGreasys won’t play. Or rather one of them won’t.”
“Rocco?”
“Right. He’s the corporate hard-nose. He personally negotiates every contract, and he ties down every loose end. Nobody gets out of a Rocco DeGreasy contract unless he lets them out.”
“And if somebody tries?”
“That’s where Dominick comes in. He’s the muscle man.”
“Sounds like a very dynamic duo.”
“They do tend to balance out each other’s weaknesses.”
“You ever heard of Dominick DeGreasy attacking anyone with a pie?”
She got a big yuck out of that. “A pie? Hardly. He’s more the brass knuckles type. Why do you ask?”
I snickered once or twice as I described Roger’s run-in with the pie man. I told her it sounded like a practical joke to me, but to justify my retainer I had to at least go through the motions. “Know of anyone who might want to smother Roger with a pie?” I found it impossible to ask such a question and sound serious.
Carol didn’t laugh, though. She burrowed sideways into her chair and bounced her answer off the wall. “No, no one. Roger hasn’t any enemy in the world.”
I treated my next question pretty much as a joke, too. I asked her if she had seen anyone hanging around outside her studio this morning when Roger left, maybe someone packing a loaded pie.
No, she told me without so much as cracking a smile, she hadn’t seen anyone. She got up, poured herself another drink, but didn’t offer to do the same for me.
Better lay off, I figured. The lady obviously had no sense of humor. “I talked to Jessica Rabbit this morning,” I said soberly. “She gave me a slightly different version of the story I got earlier from you.”
“How so?”
“According to her, it was Roger who underwent the big personality change that broke up their marriage. She says he became an ogre. You see any evidence of it in your work with him?”
She twisted the ends of her hair around her index finger. “None. She’s lying. Roger’s the same sweet bunny now as he’s always been.”
“She also said that Roger made up that bit about Rocco DeGreasy promising Roger his own strip. She says the rabbit has no talent.”
Carol slammed her drink down on her coffee table. “I don’t know whether or not Rocco promised Roger his own strip. If Roger says yes, I believe him. Roger wouldn’t lie. As for Roger’s talent, the rabbit’s absolutely loaded with it. He deserves a strip of his own. I can’t see why the DeGreasys don’t give it to him. Rocco’s a tyrant, but he does know natural ability when he sees it. Which is a lot more than I can say for Jessica. Not having any talent herself, I would guess it’s probably hard for her to recognize it in others.”
“Funny but you’re the only one with a good word to say about the rabbit. I always wonder when I see one person bucking the crowd. In my experience, the majority’s usually right.”
She got out of her chair and traveled toward me in the kind of half-circle a ballistic missile takes on its way into enemy territory. She pointed at me, standing so close that, if either of us moved forward by so much as an inch, her fingers would hit my nose. “Now I understand. You’re going to dump Roger, aren’t you? He hired you to help him, and you’re going to abandon him, instead. You’re not in this for truth and justice. You’re in it for the money!” She jabbed me in the chest with a fingernail sharp enough to pin me to the wall. “Well, no matter what anybody says, in my book, Roger is one fine rabbit, and he deserves a lot better than he seems to be getting from you.”
I grabbed her tiny hand. “I don’t think you understand, lady,” although quite clearly she understood only too well. “He’s my client, and I care about him, sure. But I’m beginning to suspect he’s a certified nu
t case. He does go to a psychiatrist, you know. Instead of a detective, I think he might need a padded room ten feet square.”
She pulled back her hand and held it rigid and slightly away from her, as though it had to be sterilized before she could use it again. “Of course, Roger’s a touch goofy. He’s a cartoon rabbitl What do you expect him to be, Albert Einstein?”
She yanked open her front door. I went through it sideways, to prevent her from kicking me in the pants on my way out.
In a crazy sense I had to envy that fruitcake rabbit. I sure never had a friend that devoted to me.
Chapter: •10•
Rocco crossed his legs so that two teeny-weeny trolls, gripping opposite ends of a third troll dipped in shoe polish, could seesaw across his immense upraised oxford. When they had finished with him, the troll threesome scurried over to me, took one look at my hopelessly scarred steel-toed brogans, dismissed me as a lost cause, and went back to general cleanup.
“Let me get this straight,” said Rocco, aiming his index finger at the guts of my theory. “You’re actually suggesting that I or my brother Dominick attempted to assassinate Roger Rabbit yesterday with a custard cream pie? Is that the gist of your accusation, Mister Valiant? Do I have that one hundred percent correct?”
I had to admit it did sound a lot less likely coming from him than it had from the rabbit.
Rocco leaned back in his chair. “Look at the contents of this office, Mister Valiant. Look. The original, framed comic strips on the walls cost an average of fifty thousand dollars each. My desk. A priceless antique. These trolls. Fifty dollars a day. My suit. Six hundred dollars worth of custom-tailored linen. I have wealth, status, a successful business. Why, Mister Valiant, why on Earth would I jeopardize all that by assaulting a rabbit with a custard cream pie?”
At least I had that one covered. “Roger threatened to kill you during a fight at Carol Masters’s. Maybe he scared you so badly, you decided to get him before he got you.”
“Are you serious?” He poked his pork-sausage thumbs against his chest. “Me, frightened of a rabbit?”
He was right, of course, and I knew it. This whole line of questioning gave me a near-terminal case of embarrassment. The only reason I decided to have one last go at Rocco before I bailed out was so there could be no Carol Masters walking around saying I hadn’t given the rabbit his money’s worth. “Maybe it sounds farfetched, but so does a lot of other stuff in this case. For instance, why did you give a contract to the rabbit who stole your girl? Why did Jessica suddenly leave Roger and return to you?”
Rocco went to his bar and poured two Scotch and sodas. He collared the nearest troll, upended it, and swizzled it through both glasses. Rocco handed one of the glasses to me, wrung the troll out over the sink, and draped it across the faucet to dry. Another troll trotted up with a butterfuly net ready to snare our ear puffs. Lovable rascals, trolls, but a bit short in the smarts department.
“You wonder why Jessica came back to me?” Rocco said, scooting the troll’s net away from his head. “I suspect she simply grew tired of Roger’s eternal lunacy. I provide her with cultured, refined companionship. You can’t get that from a rabbit. As to why I gave Roger his contract, also simple. Naturally I was miffed when Jessica and Roger eloped. Who wouldn’t be? But I never let my personal life interfere with business. Baby Herman needed a stooge. I pegged Roger Rabbit as the perfect choice, the eternal sidekick, a fluffy Gabby Hayes.” He waved his arm in a circular gesture, which grew in circumference to encompass the office, the building, the street outside, the entire world. “Oh, I’ve heard the rumors. That I signed Roger only to win back Jessica.” His laughter exposed two rows of teeth remarkable for their resemblance to weatherworn tombstones. “I’d like to hear anyone explain how I could expect to regain Jessica by turning her new husband into a big success.”
“I don’t think Roger would classify being fall guy to Baby Herman as a big success.”
Rocco clicked up a notch from joviality to mild annoyance. “I’ve discussed that with Roger at great length. He does not have the talent to support his own strip. Period.” He sat down at his priceless antique desk and fondled the lapels of his six-hundred-dollar, custom-tailored suit. “Tell you what. Even though I’ve gone over it with him a hundred times before, I’ll be glad to meet with Roger and explain it to him yet again. Lately he refuses to come here, so I’ll even spare him that. I’ll go to his house. Any day he wants. Just tell him to let me know when, and I’ll be there.”
Rocco fluttered his fingers through a bypassing troll daydream, a wispy, multicolored affair of abstract content, the kind trendy socialites imbed in lucite and display on etageres. “As for the incident with the custard cream pie, I think we can probably categorize that as another of Roger’s hallucinations.”
“It was no hallucination. I saw the pie tin myself.”
“Yes, I’m sure you did,” said Rocco. He closed his eyes and folded his hands across his chest. Cast him in lead, stick a clock in his stomach, and he would easily have fetched six bits as a novelty buddha in any el cheapo second-hand store in town. After a few seconds he came back to life, rummaged through his desk, removed as address book, and copied out a name, which he passed across to me. “Do me this one favor. Here’s a noted ‘toon psychiatrist, Doctor Booker T. Beaver. You may have heard of him. The syndicate uses him for public-service comics—VD pamphlets and family-planning brochures the medical associations distribute to the free clinics. Roger goes to him. I think a few words with Doctor Beaver might put this whole pie episode into proper perspective. Do that. Talk to Doctor Beaver. And, if you still suspect me afterward of having any connection with this bizarre pie-flinging incident, I’ll be more than happy to do whatever you want, even take a lie detector test, to convince you of my innocence. Is that a reasonable approach?”
It certainly was, and I figured I’d better go along with it, since it was probably the only reasonable approach I was likely to encounter in this screwball case.
Chapter: •11•
Roger’s psychiatrist agreed to see me after office hours. In person he presented as imposing a demeanor as a ‘toon beaver could. He moved slowly and with great precision, so that the layer of fat that plumped out his lower body gave him an air of portly dignity rather than jiggly overindulgence. He kept his broad, flat, oblong tail tucked up and away in a special pocket sewn on the underside of his white jacket, a gimmick that made him resemble a cross between the hunchback of Notre Dame and a ping-pong paddle. His head hair, the same slightly muddy brown as a river bottom, was parted down the middle and combed to each side, hiding his stubby ears. He waxed his scraggly nose whiskers and twisted them into a handlebar so curvaceous that, in bad light, he might be mistaken for a Harley Davidson. Yellow-tinted aviator glasses camouflaged his ridiculously bulging button eyes and broke up the solid arch extending from the tip of his nose to the top of his head.
To satisfy his cravings for something to gnaw, he kept a number of mahogany wood turnings in an antique umbrella stand beside his desk. A solid silver dustpan and whisk broom took care of the wood chips.
His medical diploma, dated twenty years earlier, proclaimed him a graduate of TCU, Toon Christian University.
His word balloons resembled the scrawly prescription forms you take to the drugstore. “Naturally,” he said, “since Roger is a patient, I can’t discuss his case clinically, but if he’s in trouble of some sort, and I might be able to help, I would be only too happy to oblige. So long as I compromise no professional ethics in the process, of course.” He ran his nose the length of a wooden pencil, then devoured it as casually as someone eating a piece of candy. He plucked the eraser discreetly off his lips and dropped it into his wastebasket. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked with great solemnity.
That nearly put the capper on it. How could I conduct a serious interrogation of a psychiatrist who snacked on pencils? I thought about the retainer and pressed forward. “My main concern is an incident involv
ing an attack with a custard cream pie.”
When the beaver leaned back and stroked his severely receding chin, his white coat flapped open to reveal a three-piece, dark-blue pinstripe suit, expertly tailored to disguise his spreading paunch. “Ah, yes, I’m quite familiar with it,” he said after a short period of contemplation.
“You are?”
“Most assuredly.” Doctor Beaver rolled his front paw across a desktop dispenser containing a giant ball of extra-heavy-duty dental floss, a necessity for those prone to munch on mahogany. “Let me phrase this as delicately as possible. Roger has undergone a tremendous amount of strain recently. His continued role as a subordinate to Baby Herman. His marital problems climaxed by the loss of his wife. In my opinion, Roger must be considered a very sick rabbit, fully capable of concocting the most fantastic stories to rationalize his failures in life. There exist a number of quite complex psychological theories which explain such behavior. To put it into layman’s language for you, Roger has become incapable of separating reality from fantasy. One of Roger’s most persistent nightmares involves an attack of some faceless aggressor wielding a pie. He’s reported it to me numerous times. Although he normally specifies lemon meringue.”
“But I saw the empty pie tin.”
“I’m sure you did.” The beaver tilted his bullet-shaped head forward on his squatty neck and tweaked a stray kink out of his moustache. “Most likely Roger either hired someone to hit him with it or did the deed himself and fabricated the attacker. He’s done such things before with other of his nightmares. Acted them out, that is. At my encouragement, naturally. I consider it quite beneficial to dramatize these deep-seated terrors, to disentangle them from the subconscious, to confront them head on, to see that they’re nowhere near as frightening in actuality as they are when kept locked in the mind. Roger’s never acted out the pie episode before, though I’ve urged him to do so quite often. I have a hunch I’ll hear him confess to it at his next session. It would be a major breakthrough.”