by Gary K. Wolf
“I’m producing Coop’s next movie,” said Sands after his secretary left. “The film’s going to be a rollicking comedy titled Hi, Toon! The action takes place entirely in Toontown. Coop plays the lead.”
“Sounds interesting,” I lied. I wanted nothing to do with Toons, in real life or on screen. As much as I liked Gary Cooper, he wouldn’t be getting my six bits for a ticket to this opus.
“The movie’s funny,” explained Sands, “but the movie’s real.”
“Real funny,” I deadpanned.
“Exactly,” said Sands, not getting my joke. “I want this film to serve up a big raw slice of Toontown life.”
To make that slice of whoopie pie slide down my gullet, I’d have to dissolve the entire film can in a gallon of hooch. Even then the residue would stick in my craw.
“Because of the true-to-life quality of this film, I’ve asked Coop to switch to a new acting style,” Sands continued. “All the young up-and-comers are using it. The style is called the Method.”
That’s why I’ll never be a mogul. I thought Cooper had been doing just fine with whatever style he’d been employing. Shows you how little I know.
“Coop will immerse himself in his role, actually living the life of the character he plays. I want him to hang out in Toontown. Get inside the heads of his Toon co-stars, find out what makes them tick. Use those emotions to structure his own performance.” Sands flipped his Zip and lit another cigarette. I never saw a guy smoke so fast. Like he had a pair of suction fans inside him instead of lungs. “The end result will be sensational. The new Cooper. Crude, basic, and untamed. Giving a performance that delivers a punch straight to the gut.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a laugh riot to me,” I pointed out.
“The concept doesn’t translate well to the spoken word. You have to visualize the action the way I do in my head. I’m mixing filmic metaphors. Taking the absurdities of the Toon type, overlaying them with Coop’s new hyper-reality, and making movie magic.”
I looked at Cooper. Either he’d forgotten how to use a chair or he was drawing on his new Method style to impersonate a board. His legs were stretched out straight, his butt was on the front of the seat, his neck was on the top of the chair back. His hands were clasped behind his head. He was staring up at the ceiling.
“You okay with this cockamamie idea?” I asked him.
“Yup,” he said.
I said to Sands, “You want my two cents worth—”
“Not particularly,” he answered.
I gave him my opinion anyway. “You’re making a big mistake. Cooper can hang around Toontown forever, and he won’t find out anything about what makes a Toon tick. Toons come in two varieties: the ones that have nothing in their heads but random thoughts all tangled together like a ball of kitten-snaggled yarn, and the ones that have nothing in their heads period.”
Instead of lighting up another foreign fag, Cooper took a toothpick out of one of his jacket’s many pockets. He put the sliver of wood between his lips and rolled the pick back and forth. “Fascinating.”
Sands amplified. “The Method method demands that Coop get the up-close-and-personal experience to make it work. Coop has to go to Toontown. He has to live there. He has to soak Toontown in.”
As far as I was concerned, they could both go soak their heads in a bucket. “Sounds like you got everything all worked out fine. Waddya need me for?”
“Insurance, Mister Valiant.” Sands reached into his desk drawer. He pulled out a stack of word balloons, the kinds Toons put up over their heads when they talk. “Somebody doesn’t want this movie made.”
I handled the balloons carefully.
Toon balloons come out pliable but harden fast. I’ve seen people use the chunky ones put up by especially thick headed Toons as cobblestones in sidewalks. These were normal. A sixteenth of an inch thick, maybe a foot across, so brittle they would shatter to pieces if you dropped them, or even if you gave them a stiff look. The pure white balloons had started out blank, wordless. Tough for a Toon to do that. Toons always got something to say. Ceaselessly blab-blab-blabbing on. Most likely, these had been put up by a character from one of the old silents. Somebody had razored letters out of other balloons and pasted them in place on the blanks. The messages all said basically the same thing.
Shut down production of Hi, Toon!, or else bad things—very, very bad things—would happen to Gary Cooper.
I handed the balloons back to Sands. “These oughta go to the police.”
Sands slipped the balloons back into his desk drawer. “I can’t do that. I have investors.” He started whirling around in his desk chair so fast that when he finally stopped, his hairpiece kept going and wound up sideways on his head again. “They’re already worried about the avant-garde nature of my concept. If they find out there’s any kind of threat that could shut down production and cause them to lose their dough, they’ll cut their losses. They won’t cough up another dime.”
He gave me the sad-eyed, forlorn, frightened look you get from a badly whipped basset hound. “I’ve had a bad run. A couple of movies that didn’t do so great. Hi, Toon! might be my last chance. At least I got Coop. That’s a big plus. Me and Coop, we go back a long way. He used to do bit parts in the one-reeler comedies and travel shorts I made when I was first starting out. That was when his name was Frank, and nobody knew him from my Uncle Abe. Frank Cooper. What a nothing name, I told him one night while we were working our way through a bottle of bathtub gin. ‘You want to change your name to something memorable.’
“Like what?” he said.
“At the time, we were filming a puff piece for a chemical company, buffing up their image that had taken a hit when a bunch of birds downwind of their plant fell out of the sky dead. In Gary, Indiana, we was. Lousy name for a town. No character. Not like Chicago or Detroit. But, I thinks to myself, a great name for an actor. ‘Name yourself after here,’ I tell him, ‘after where we are now.’
“‘Come-On Inn?’ he says.
“I says, ‘naw, not where we’re staying. Where we’re filming.’
“‘Indiana?’ Coop says.
“‘Naw. Not Indiana. Indiana Cooper? That would be stupid. Call yourself Gary.’
“‘Why?’ he asks me.
“‘Because Gary’s not a name. You will be the one and only,’ says I. ‘Unique in all the world. Instead of Frank, of which there are many, you’ll be Gary, of which there will be only you.’ He thinks about it for a while, and he does what I suggest. You know how that deal worked out.”
If Sands made movies the same way he told stories, all the motion in his pictures would come from his actors flapping their gums.
Sands gave Cooper a respectful little bow. “Coop told me if I ever needed a favor, to just call. So I called, and here he is. Coop’s my ace in the hole. I lose Coop, my whole movie goes belly up. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure he’s protected.”
“You okay with this?” I asked Cooper. “Going into Toontown even though somebody’s out to croak you?”
He waggled his toothpick up and down in a gesture I took to mean “Yes.”
“Coop’s fine with what we’re doing,” said Sands. “These are Toons we’re talking about. What are they going to do? Smack him in the face with a pie?”
“Or a sledge hammer. They do have a lot of those.”
Cooper inhaled so sharply he almost speared his own tonsil with his toothpick. From the confused and slightly worried look he threw Sands, I could tell he’d never considered that Toon method of mayhem.
Sands shook his head at Cooper and waggled his hand. “An extremely remote possibility. These are Toons. They’re not malicious. They wouldn’t hurt a human.”
Sands had obviously never heard about Judge Doom’s shenanigans. “Let’s get down to business, Bar
ney. What’s my part in this?”
“I want you to act as Coop’s bodyguard. Make sure he’s kept safe from harm. You’ll stick with him around the clock until the movie finishes shooting.”
“You said he’s gonna be living in Toontown and shooting the movie there, too.”
“Correct.”
“Forget it , Barney. I don’t go to Toontown. Not anymore. Not for any reason. Bad things always happen to me when I go to Toontown.”
“You’ll have help,” he said pleadingly. His canvas shoes were planted at the heels but swinging back and forth at the toe in a frenzied but perfectly choreographed rhythm, one shoe Fred, the other Ginger. Any second, I expected them to propeller themselves off the ground and send him flying down to Rio. “You wouldn’t be doing this alone. Coop’s co-star has volunteered to assist. Function as Coop’s co-bodyguard. So it would be the two of you together. That’s where I got your name. That’s who recommended you.”
Do tell.
I’ve got a secret admirer? An actress in Gary Cooper’s circle. A Hollywood glamour girl who likes her men rough and tumble. She came to the right guy. I’m as rough as one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Riders, and I’ve tumbled further than a weed on the prairie. Coop stars with nothing but the swankiest babes. Lauren Bacall. Lana Turner. Ava Gardiner. Or my personal favorite, Grace Kelly. Could be interesting and cozy.
With maybe a little bit of snuggling thrown in for good measure.
“What’s her name?”
“Her?” Sands took smoking, a simple vice, to the level of major felony. He had five cigarettes going, two in his ash tray, one in each hand, one in his mouth. With that many working, he lost track of what was where. He reached up, scratched his head. His lighted ciggie touched his toupee. “Her. Interesting idea. Play it as a romance.” His toupee smoldered a little but didn’t flame. I guess yak hair must be fireproof. “No, I’m gonna stick with what I got. Hi, Toon!’s a new kind of movie concept I invented. I’m calling it a buddy comedy. Two mismatched guys helping each other to solve a crime. One guy throws tight, hard, fast, and straight down the middle.” He nodded at Cooper. “The other pitches the screwball.”
Forget Lauren, Lana, Ava, and Grace. Cancel the intimate dinner for two. Muff the soft strings. Spill out the champagne. Sands was about to snuff the wistful candle illuminating my fantasy romance and swap it for a stick of dynamite.
“Coop’s co-starring with Roger Rabbit.”
Ka-Boom!
“Nope. Nothing doing. That rabbit makes me nuts. No amount of money in the world is gonna persuade me to hang out around the clock with that hare brain.”
“Not even this amount of money?” Sands reached into his desk drawer again. He pulled out a wad of simoleons so thick he needed both of his tiny hands to lift the stack. He set the moola on the desk between us.
He looked at the dough: he looked at me.
Cooper looked at the dough: he looked at Sands: he looked at me.
I looked at the dough: I looked at Sands: I looked at Cooper.
Sands lifted an eyebrow: Cooper lifted a single eyebrow hair.
I lifted the wad.
I lifted my flask and drained the contents. The flask had been three quarters empty, but still packed enough punch to knock all good sense out of me.
What could I say? My rent was due, my bar bill was way overdue, and my gun was almost out of bullets. So I pal around with the bugsy bunny for a while. How bad could that be?
“Okay, Barney. You bought your man. I’ll take the case.”
Chapter Two
The normal tools of my trade include my service-issue Colt .45 Army automatic toted in a quick draw shoulder holster, a .32 caliber Smith and Wesson pistol taped to my ankle, a single-shot .25 caliber Derringer tucked under my watchband, a switchblade in my left pants pocket, brass knucks in my right, and a blackjack in back.
I rarely need to use any of that hardware. Just flashing one or more items from my arsenal usually cows the breed of lawbreakers I pursue in the course of my day-to-day crime fighting: the loan skips, philandering hubbies, deadbeat dads, crooked business partners, pilfering sales clerks, department store shoplifters, and insurance frauds. My class of wrongdoers aren’t a crime-hardened bunch. They act tough, sure. They ape the on-screen scoundrels they see in gangster movies. Down deep they’re marshmallow meanies. Their bluster shoots blanks, just like Jimmy Cagney’s machine gun.
Special assignments like Sands’s up the ante. I wind up facing off against the real thing, nasty, shifty, dangerous, ruthless thugs, cutthroats, outlaws, racketeers, gangsters, miscreants, and rogues. Granted, I wasn’t headed to the seedy side of Tijuana, where they serve up spiced menace and red-hot peril alongside every order of refried beans. I was going to Toontown, the self proclaimed Goofiest Place On Earth. Still, never hurts to be prepared.
I supplemented my regular munitions with a sawed-off twelve gauge shotgun, a Thompson submachine gun with a circular snare drum clip, a couple of spare handguns, silencers, a few hand grenades, cosh, sap, billy, cudgel, rubber hose, and bastinado. I weighed taking my bazooka but decided that was overkill. Throw in a few dozen boxes of bullets and a case of hooch, and I’m lugging enough equipment to flatten a pack mule.
Toting all that extra hardware forced me to pack light in the personal arena. That wasn’t normally a problem. I could usually buy whatever I needed once I got to wherever I was going.
Except that wouldn’t work in Toontown, Everything sold there was geared more toward getting a laugh than keeping you clothed, clean, or well groomed.
You wanted a T-shirt, boxers, socks, garters, belt, or necktie? They came in the colors you’d paint a circus wagon.
Pants that fit? Forget it. They were a foot short, in which case they ended at your knees, or they were three feet too long which meant you rolled them up into cuffs the size of life preservers or had them tailored by a cross-eyed crustacean who cut them off with his claws—and usually a chunk of your leg along with them. Or you could go native and wear them Toon-style, leave them long and let them extend under your feet, trailing behind you like two limp cannelloni when you walked.
Shirtsleeves never came the same length. If one stopped at your elbow, the other hung to mid-thigh.
Neckties spontaneously rolled up like window shades. Or they flashed funny messages. I’ve seen: I’m ready to tie one on, I’m fit to be tied, Don’t tie me down, and the ever popular Let’s neck.
Fedoras popped open on top at random intervals. Little bitty singing, dancing Toons jumped out and performed musical routines on the hat brim. The bestseller these days featured a teensy brass marching band that walked around your noggin playing an off-key ditty that sounded like something John Phillip Sousa wrote soused.
Shoes came in two styles, big and yellow or yellow and big. Toons could tell the difference. Don’t ask me how.
Toothpaste turned your teeth black, soap gave you hives, hair oil made your hair fall out.
Hilarious.
I packed for an extended stay. A spare pair of underwear, an extra shirt, and a second pair of socks. I took two ties, one with a buxom hand painted doxie wearing a bathing suit and, for more formal occasions, one with embroidered palm trees. Add a tube of Brylcreem, a bar of Boraxo which did double duty as both hand soap and sandpaper for taking rust spots off my guns, a half-full tube of toothpaste, toothbrush, razor, and one spare razor blade, and I was good for however long this took.
I loaded my artillery into my Army duffel.
I stuffed my personal belongings into my set of matched luggage, two brown paper sacks from the A&P.
Cooper and I were riding over to Toontown together. Maybe if I was a very, very good boy, he’d let me drive his Duese.
I waited for him on the curb.
A big truck turned the corner. The vehicle was the square-fronted,
open-cabbed style used to deliver milk or ice. In this case the truck carried a big stinking load of bad news.
The driver glared at me as the truck drove past. The wheel woman was none other than Miss Ethyl Gravitz, Sands’s secretary. Apparently Katie Gibbs taught stick shifting and double clutching in addition to typing and shorthand.
The enclosure had been removed from the truck bed, replaced by a low-slung wooden platform. Barney Sands stood on the platform. He held a huge movie camera made of shiny dimpled steel. I recognized the camera as a Newman Sinclair Auto Kine Model G. I saw plenty during the war. The Model G was the news camera of choice for combat photogs. I’m guessing Sands used one when he shot his war documentaries. Probably brought the camera back to the States with him. The G is a big machine, almost the size of Sands’s entire upper body. Usually, photogs teamed up when they shot with one of these behemoths. One photog held the camera steady while the other did the work. A photog working alone always mounted the G on a tripod. Sands was hand-holding his G, an impressive feat since the camera weighed half what he did. He was pointing the lens behind the truck.
The truck stopped.
Miss Ethyl jumped out of the cab. I hadn’t believed she could ever come up with an outfit that could make her look less feminine than the one she wore in Sands’s office, but she could and did: shapeless gray coveralls over a blue denim work shirt, a gray woolen newsboy’s cap, black ankle-high work boots, and heavy leather gloves.
She muscled a stack of bright yellow sawhorses off the platform and set them up beside the truck. That forced passing traffic to give the vehicle a wide berth. To make absolutely sure everything went exactly the way she wanted, she stepped into the road and personally directed traffic.