by Gary K. Wolf
Roger showed Clabber Clown’s picture to every patient we passed. Nobody recognized Clabber. After questioning fifty or so, I realized that these Toons were so far out of it they wouldn’t recognize their own grandmothers.
Then one of them, a Toon weasel, couldn’t recollect Clabber, but did recognize Cooper. The weasel walked alongside us, engaging Cooper in a scholarly discussion of acting techniques. “I understand from reading the trades that you’re going to be doing the method thing.”
“Yup,” said Cooper.
“I’m not really crazy,” said the weasel. “I’m playing a psycho in a new movie called A Cuckoo Flew Over Its Nest. I’m in here building up my sensory memory.”
“Good idea,” said Cooper.
“How would you play the role? If you were gonna play the role?”
“Batty,” said Cooper.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,” agreed the weasel. “Thanks for the tip.”
“No problem,” said Cooper.
We came upon a woman, maybe in her late fifties or early sixties. Hard to tell with humanoid Toons. Her features were soft and rounded, her eyes were wide and so blue they sparkled in the sun. Her gaze was piercing to the point of eerie. She didn’t seem to look at you so much as into you or even through you and out your other side. She had braided her long, yellowed white hair into a single strand that encircled her head and framed her face like an antique ivory halo.
She walked with magisterial grace. She wore what everybody here wore—a long, flowing white gown. She had customized hers with a belt made of woven strips of silk the same shade of blue as her eyes. Around her neck a silver locket hung from a delicate silver chain.
If she followed the pattern we had encountered with every other loony in this bin, she’d announce she was the Queen of Stooges and give us each an eye poke.
Roger showed the woman Clabber’s photo. She ignored the photo and studied me instead. “I know you,” she said using a word balloon with the heft of absolute certainty.
“I don’t think so. Name’s Eddie Valiant. I’m a private detective.”
“I have no idea what that entails, but I’m sure you do interesting work.”
She extended her hand, knuckles up.
I couldn’t shake a mitt held in that position. I didn’t know if I should rotate her hand around myself, or ask her to. Maybe I could twist mine side to side a couple of times to show her the logistics.
Cooper stepped forward and bailed me out. He took her extended hand and pressed the back gently to his lips. “Gary Cooper,” he said by way of introduction. “Pleased.”
“Oh, Mister Cooper,” she said. “I’m Annie Mation. I’ve seen all your films. I’m one of your biggest fans.”
She seemed fairly lucid. I hopped on before her train jumped back off the tracks. “Have you seen this guy around here lately?” I showed her Clabber’s photo.
She took a quick glance. I expected her to say no like every other wild goose we’d questioned on our chase.
“That’s Clabber Clown.” Her balloons had the exquisite grammar and high toned lettering style of an entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.
“Half an hour ago.”
“What? Where?” I asked.
“Inside. In the common room. Right by the big window. Sitting in the old leather chair.”
“You’re sure the guy was Clabber?”
“Of course. We’re fast friends. No mistaking Clabber Clown. Although I must say he looked odd. He’s always dressed in his clown suit. Today he’s sitting in his underwear.”
“How long as he been there?” I asked.
“Quite a while,” she said. “Rather strange. He hasn’t moved a muscle. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect he was dead. Of course that couldn’t be. Doctor Trinaire would never leave a dead body sitting in a chair in the middle of the Common Room.”
I wasn’t so sure.
As we headed to the Common Room, Roger put into words what everybody else already figured out anyway.
“Bingo, eureka, I figured things out,” he said in a balloon that could have doubled for the illuminated marquee on the Pantages Theater. “Somebody killed Clabber. They dragged him back here. They stripped Clabber of his clown suit and wore Clabber’s outfit around town. That way everybody would think Clabber was still alive.”
I didn’t bother to acknowledge Roger’s synopsis. Obviously that was what happened. Any fool, even a dopey rabbit, could have figured that out.
Cooper, more of a gent than me, said, “Brilliant deduction!”
We entered the Common Room went to the big window, and found the old leather chair.
There was somebody sitting there all right. Not Clabber Clown.
Nothing the least bit clownish about this guy. A distinguished-looking humanoid Toon. He wore a dark blue double breasted suit, a white shirt and regimental striped tie. I was a little rusty on my regimental identifications, but I believe his belonged to the brave and distinguished British Highland Guards. Over his suit he wore a starched and pressed white lab coat.
He had a full, thick head of hair. He looked about thirty. When I leaned in closer and saw the thin cracklature patterns road mapping his face, I realized he was at least twice that age, maybe more.
He stood up and extended his hand. “How do you do. I heard we had visitors. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Doctor Gunter Trinaire.”
Doc Trinaire escorted us to his office.
Diplomas from a dozen prestigious universities hung on his wall. I know a phony diploma from the real McCoy. I ought to. My office is full of fakes. These were one hundred percent legit. The guy was what he said he was, a fully trained and licensed medical doctor and psychiatrist.
I figured he was going to read us the riot act for breaking in to his institution. Probably threaten to call the cops.
Not at all.
His word balloons weren’t jangly or distorted the way they get when Toons are angry or upset. They flowed out of him in a gentle gush, like water in a tranquil mountain stream.
“Might I inquire what, exactly, you’re doing here?”
“We’re looking for Clabber Clown,” I answered.
“We think he was murdered,” said Roger, as usual giving away too much too early.
“You think this murder happened here? At my institution?” said the Doc. His eyes widened until they were almost as round as his balloon.
“No,” said Roger, jumping in again.
I squeezed my hand around the rabbit’s scrawny neck. Toons generate their balloons down in their pitoonitary gland. The balloons travel up through their neck and pop out through the tiny glow hole in their craniums. You choke off a Toon’s neck, and he can’t say a word. You can’t hold your grip for too long, or the trapped balloons will either bust out of the Toon’s rear end—accompanied by the noxious stench of a soured puss—or explode inside which doesn’t really hurt a Toon, just makes him go even goofier than normal for a hour or two.
“We were talking to one of your patients,” I said. “Dignified old lady named Annie Mation. She says she saw Clabber sitting in a leather easy chair in your common room. Same chair we found you occupying. She says Clabber was sitting there wearing only his skivvies. Annie says he’s been sitting there motionless for so long, she worried he might be dead.”
Roger was so anxious to get involved in this conversation that his trapped balloons swelled him up to near double normal size. I held my grip.
“You got an explanation for that?” I asked the Doc.
“Of course,” he said, his balloon as silky smooth as a glamour girl’s nightie. “A most simple one. Annie Mation suffers from delusions. Let me show you.”
He went to his file cabi
net. He rummaged around inside and brought out a big stack of word balloons. He set them on his desktop. He brought out several more stacks and added them to his pile.
“These are a sampling of Annie’s daily musings.”
He fanned them so we could see them. They contained scientific equations so advanced Albert Einstein wouldn’t understand them. “In this series of balloons,” Doc Trinaire laid his hand on the pile on his left, “Annie has brilliantly and conclusively proven the theory that time is relative.”
“Doesn’t sound so crazy to me,” I said.
“She then expands that theory to prove that brothers and sisters are relatives, too.”
“She’s right!” said Roger, shaking loose from my grip. “They are!”
I saw what the Doc was getting at. “Is there a clinical term for what’s wrong with her?”
He nodded. “In professional terminology, the woman’s nutty as a bedbug.”
“I don’t understand,” said Roger. “Annie is so serious, so solemn, so somber.”
“Naturally,” said Doc Trinaire. “That’s what happens to Toons who go crazy. They don’t become babbling, incoherent idiots. That’s the way they are when they’re sane!”
Good point.
“If you have nothing further,” said Doc Trinaire, “I would like you to leave the premises.” He pointed toward his door. “And never come back. Not if you want to stay healthy.”
Annie Mation collared me as we were leaving.
“You’ve got to help me,” she said. “He’s making me say things against my will.”
“Who’s making you say things?” I asked her.
She pointed toward the building housing Doc Trinaire’s office.
“Trinaire’s making you say things? What kinds of things?” I asked.
“Awful, horrible, hurtful things.”
“Gimme an example.”
“I warned you,” said Annie.
“Warned me about what?”
Two big, muscular, white coated orderlies came running up.
“Annie,” said one of them. “Time to come inside for your daily therapy session. Doc Trinaire is waiting.”
They grabbed her by her arms and carted her away.
She turned to me and said “I warned you.”
I might have been spooked if I didn’t know she was crazy as a loon.
We stood outside the Sanatorium.
“What happened in there?” asked Sands. “What did you find out?”
Mutt, happy to see me, jumped into my arms. I rubbed him behind the ears the way the little fellah seemed to like it.
“Not much,” I answered.
“Dead end,” said Cooper.
“Boy, you got that pretty close to right,” added Roger.
In the private snooper business, clues are my stock in trade. You get a clue. You follow that clue to see where it leads. That clue takes you to another. You follow that one. Pretty soon you come to the end of the chain, and you’ve broken the case.
In this case, the clue chain broke early. Way early. Long before I reached the end.
I had no new clue. No idea where to go from here.
We were getting into a cab when my next move hit me like a lightning bolt from out of the sky. Or rather like a flying squirrel.
Buzz Bomb three-point landed on my shoulder.
“Gimme gimme the simoleons, Eddie,” he said. “Cause I earned ’em. I found out where Prosciutto launders his money.”
Chapter Eleven
Buzz Bomb was tired. He had flown from hither to yon and back again in a very short time.
He needed a breather.
Instead of taking to the air, flying overhead, and leading us to Prosciutto’s money laundering operation, he opted to go with us in the cab.
Or rather on the cab. Like most aerobats, Buzz got antsy in small, confined spaces. He rode perched on the cab’s front hood. To catch the cooling airflow, he spread his wings in the style used by those little Spirits of Ecstasy nymphs who decorate the front ends of Rolls Royces.
After this case broke, I’d introduce him to the little winged honey who adorned the radiator of Cooper’s Silver Shadow. Maybe they’d connect romantically. Then Buzz would owe me one. Tit for tat. What made my world go round.
Buzz directed the cab to the Toontown Laundorama on Wishy Washy Avenue.
“This is a horrible laundromat,” said Roger.
“How so?” Cooper asked.
“The Laundorama never returns anything. Didn’t you ever wonder why Toons always wear the same outfits? Because they’ve sent everything else they own out to get washed, and have never gotten anything back. Eventually they’re left with only one outfit. Like me and my overalls or Jessica and her red dress.”
“Why keep sending clothes here?” asked Sands.
“We don’t have a choice. This is the only laundromat in town.”
Sands started to say something. He caught himself and kept his yap shut. He’d been in Toontown long enough to figure out you couldn’t reason with Toon logic.
“Here’s where the operation happens,” said Buzz Bomb. “This is the establishment that launders money for Willy Prosciutto.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Sands. “This is a laundromat. For clothes. What’s that got to do with laundering money?”
“In our world, nothing,” I told him. “We’re not in the our world anymore. We’re in Toontown. You wanna solve a crime in Toontown, you can’t think like a human. You gotta think like a Toon.”
Another reason I had to quit working Toontown. Toon thinking was starting to come too easy to me.
“Where’s the goods?” I asked Buzz.
“Around back,” he answered.
“You guys stay here,” I told Cooper, Roger, and Sands. “I’ll take a gander.”
The Laundorama stood next door to a grocery store. I went through the front of the grocery and out the rear into their back yard. Mutt tagged along at my heels.
A high wooden fence separated the grocery’s back yard from the laundromat’s. Even standing on tiptoe, I couldn’t see over.
I spotted a stack of empty wooden egg crates, labeled the way you’d expect egg crates to be labeled behind a Toontown grocery store. Plain eggs, Easter eggs, eggs-on-your-face.
I pulled up an empty rotten egg crate. Mutt grabbed one corner of the crate in his teeth and helped me pull. He didn’t have enough oomph to make much difference. but I gave the little guy credit for trying.
I put the crate next to the fence and climbed up on top. The crate gave me just enough extra oomph to see over the fence.
As usual, Buzz had come through for me.
Thousands of dripping wet simoleons hung drying on at least fifty long clotheslines.
I retraced my way through the grocery and returned to my gang.
“Good work, Buzz.”
Sands shook his head. “Criminals literally laundering money in a laundromat? That can’t be true.”
“In Toontown,” said Roger, using a balloon resembling a page ripped from a simplistic book explaining the facts of life to a three year-old, “every literal thing is literally taken literally. When Toons launder money, Toons launder money.”
“Why bother?” asked Cooper, getting to the bigger point.
“Simple,” I explained. “In Toontown, everything talks. Lamp posts, fire hydrants, buildings, whatever you got. Same with simoleons. Money talks. Money can tell you where it’s been, what it’s been used for. Money can tell you outright if it’s been involved in an illegal transaction. So, to quash the evidence, keep their money quiet, criminals immerse their ill-gotten cash in rot gut whiskey for twenty four hours. After getting royally soaked, dirty money won’t remember its denomination le
t alone where it’s been or what it’s been used for.
“Then crooks launder the mindless money in soap and water to erase the whiskey smell. Give the newly cleansed cash a press to iron out wrinkles, and the money winds up with a memory as freshly minted as the day the cash got printed.”
“Do tell,” said Cooper.
“Put your movie camera to useful work for a change,” I told Sands. “Take pictures of those clotheslined simoleons hanging out to dry.”
Sands fiddled with his camera lens. He took the cap halfway off, stopped, and smacked the cap firmly back on.
He pulled himself upright and spoke with as much indignation as a man could muster with his unbelted pants hanging at half mast. “Eddie, you’re traveling a bit far afield here. I hired you to protect Gary and to keep my movie on track. That should be your primary endeavor. I’ve told you repeatedly. I’ve got investors—rich, powerful, people—who won’t be happy if the project they’re funding, the project I assured them would roll along smooth as silk, gets waylaid or delayed in any way for any reason. Chasing after a missing clown, a phantom killer, and laundered money takes valuable time away from what we came here to do. Namely, make my movie. “
“So you’re telling me that you come first. Before solving a murder or bringing a clown slayer to justice.”
“Well, put that way…” When last seen, Sands’s toupee had run off to live happily ever after with an enamored rat. I had hoped that was the last we’d see of Sands’s badly thatched roof. I should have known better. Miss Ethyl had gone back to his house and brought him a spare. He lifted off his replacement hairpiece and scratched his flaky scalp with his forefinger, whitewashing his shoulders with a small blizzard of dried skin. He used his rug to mop off the thin coating of sweat glistening his brow. He plopped his toupee back in place like a king in the morning, donning his crown, getting ready for a brand new day of exercising supreme authority. “Put it that way, yes! Exactly.”