by Gary K. Wolf
“Duck, good to see you again.”
Delancey wore a three piece gray pinstriped suit, cut as conservatively as was possible when dealing with wings and a tail. He didn’t wear shoes. Few Toons did. Instead, he painted his feet so he looked like he was be wearing spats.
Way back when, Delancey had been a promising actor. Stardom in a string of bird-brained turkeys turned his career dead as a dodo. He landed on his webbed feet when he founded The Telltale.
“Barney Sands,” said Sands, without removing his eyeball from his camera’s viewfinder.
“Sands,” said Delancey. “I’m familiar with your work. I’ve smelled your films on several occasions.”
“I want to thank you for your pithy reviews,” said Sands, exposing a gruff, sarcastic demeanor I’d not witnessed in him previously. “They make excellent wrapping paper for my garbage.”
“I’ve heard it said a bad Telltale review can end a filmmaker’s career,” said the duck. “Yet, unfortunately, here you are.”
Sands paused his filming momentarily and swapped out one lens for another.
Roger put up an itty bitty balloon reading, “That lens will make Delancey look a whole lot fatter.”
Delancey turned to Cooper. “Mister Cooper. Nice of you to honor us working stiffs of the press with your august presence.”
Cooper gave a snort. He turned his back on the duck and stared out the duck’s floor to ceiling office window.
“Mister Cooper has a lawsuit pending against The Telltale,” Delancey explained. “In one of our reviews, we accused him of using a double for the action scenes in Sergeant York. He denies our claim. Says he did all his own stunts.”
Cooper turned and faced the duck straightaways. He took off his black leather jacket. I thought for a moment he was going to poke the duck in the bill. Instead, Cooper extended his bare forearm. His arm bore a six inch scar.
“Shrapnel,” he said.
“Not according to my source,” said Delancey. “A broken champagne glass from a party at Toon socialite Beverley Hill’s mansion.”
Delancey turned to me. “What are you doing here, Valiant?”
“I come to offer you an exclusive.”
“Always interested in a good story. Who’s the subject?”
“Willy Prosciutto.”
The duck shook his head so vigorously that the motion traveled the length of his body and dislodged a few of his pin feathers. “You are kidding, right? You want The Telltale to take on Willy Prosciutto?”
I nodded. “Me and my cohorts have uncovered some very unsavory stuff on that swine. You print what we got, there might be a Pulitzer for you.”
“Or a double barreled shotgun loaded with double ought pellets. This is duck season, you know.”
“You’re telling me you’re scared of Willy Prosciutto?”
“Naw. I’m scared of earthquakes and tornadoes and mad dog killers and crazies who douse Toons with DIP. That’s what I’m scared of. I’m totally, completely, and utterly terrified of Willy Prosciutto. Crossing him is like crossing the bridge leading to the great beyond.”
Delancey opened a mahogany cigar box he kept on his desk. He offered cigars around. Since they were made of rolled newspaper stuffed with birdseed and grain, he was the only one who partook. “Just out of curiosity, what have you got on Willy P?”
“We know for sure he’s laundering money. We think he murdered Clabber Clown.”
“You got proof?”
“For the laundering part, sort of. We got his henchman, Louie Louie Louse, picking up the goods. For the murder part, not so much. We had a picture of the corpse, but that disappeared.”
“The corpse disappeared?”
“No, the picture. Although on second thought, the corpse did too.”
“So what you got is bubkus. Laundering money isn’t even a misdemeanor in Toontown. Most folks find the process funny. Prosciutto will walk out of the courthouse door a free pig if you bring him up on those charges. The murder? That’s more serious. Though with no evidence, there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
“You know that muckraking gossip columnist of yours? What’s his name?”
“Walter Windchill. The coldest man in Toontown.”
“How about having him plant a story in his column? Maybe implicating Prosciutto in Clabber’s murder.”
“Which you can’t even prove happened.”
“Windchill writes a gossip column, not a sworn affidavit.”
Delancey gave my suggestion some thought. He sat in his office chair, leaned back, and propped his size thirty clodhoppers on his desktop. He gazed up at his ceiling while he puffed on his stogie. The air filled with the smell of roasted oats.
He took his feet off his desk and stood up. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I’m not usually one to turn down a good story. Contrary to what you might think, I am kind of obligated to print only what I believe to be the truth. I’m not going out on a limb hoping to snare Willy P. He runs Toontown. He can have me shut down faster than you can say ‘libel suit.’ I can’t afford to rile such a powerful and ruthless figure. Sorry, but I gotta fold my tail feathers on this one.”
From Delancey’s plush office on the top floor, we took the stairs straight to the bottom. That was where The Telltale’s flash photographer Shutters Malone had his office.
Shutters was a true camera bug. He had the body of a cricket, tripods for legs, camera lenses for eyes, and flashguns for antennae.
We found Shutters fast asleep in his desk chair.
Shutters had his office papered with pictures he took when he was Joe Viality’s official photographer. One of them showed the Mayor tweaking the Governor’s nose. Another pictured Viality goosing a poobah. No question. Viality did like to put fun into his work.
Beneath the row of photos Malone had tacked a word balloon reading, “Maybe this isn’t great art, but the pay was good and the film was free.”
Shutters snuffled, snorted, and produced a balloon. Letters appeared one by one, like characters on a typewriter. They gave a running account of his day’s activities.
I tore the balloon off by the stem. “Now we know how Hippety Hopper got the material for her script. Pillow talk.”
We drove up into the Hills of Academia, to Toon U.
This was going to be one of the locales in Sands’ movie, so we dawdled a little more than I wanted so Sands and Cooper could soak up the atmosphere.
We went past the Art Department. Sands photographed the faculty listing. Art Fursale, Artie Fact, Art Hillery, Art East, and Art Furartsake.
Passing through the Creative Writing Department we ran into Toon U’s writer in residence, Bear Everything.
“Big fan,” said Cooper, shaking the Bear’s paw.
“Me too,” said Roger. “I can’t believe a bear could have had so many exciting adventures.”
“What, you think that stuff is true?” said Everything.
“Sure,” said Roger.”
“Of course not,” said Bear. “I make those stories up. I tell lies for a living. That’s the beauty of being a writer. Getting paid to spin whoppers.”
“Like politics,” said Cooper.
“Or producing,” added Sands with a chuckle.
We walked past the Mellow Drama Department.
“This is where Toons learn the techniques of relaxed acting,” explained Roger.
“Studied here,” said Cooper.
We went inside so Cooper could say hello to his old professor, Polly Syllabic.
“Gary,” she said giving Cooper a hug.
“Polly,” said Gary.
“Welcome,” she said.
“Thanks,” he replied.
She pointed at her classroom, just starting to fill with students. “Talk?
” she asked, indicating the lectern in the front of the classroom.
Cooper shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Coop’s never been good at improvising,” Sands whispered in my ear. “He needs a script to order dinner at Musso and Frank’s.
“Chat later?” Poly asked Cooper.
“Maybe,” he answered.
“Bye,” said Poly.
“Same,” said Cooper.
From there, we went to Toon U’s School of Broadcasting, which was why I wanted to come here in the first place. The School of Broadcasting kept copies of every radio program broadcast in Toontown.
Volunteer docents were recording a program when we walked in. The docents caught the dialog balloons as they emerged from a radio in front of them. They passed them hand to hand, fire brigade style back into the stacks.
“Decent docents,” said Cooper admiring their work.
I enlisted a few volunteers willing to help us out in return for Cooper’s autograph.
The volunteers searched through the stacks while I twiddled my thumbs and Roger did the same with his ears.
After an hour, the docents found what I wanted. The balloons detailing the Moe Reality episodes from As The World Toons.
When I finished a balloon, I passed the words to Cooper. He read them and passed them to Sands. Sands passed them to Roger. Eventually, we all got the gist.
In the storyline, the Mayor’s official flash photographer, Butters Marole, needed a ton of money to cover his loses at Toontown Downs. To get cash, he sold out his boss to a crime lord named Ham Handed. The Mayor’s advance man, Clobber Clean, found out about Marole’s treachery.
Clean threatened to expose Marole.
Marole went to Ham.
Ham put out a contract on Clobber, intending to permanently shut him up.
Before the contract could be executed, Clean got hold of hard evidence incriminating Ham. Clean used what he found to buy his own life. As long as he had the evidence, he stayed alive.
There the story ended.
“How about that!” I said.
“Very interesting,” said Cooper.
“Life imitating art imitating life,” said Sands, putting his usual artsy fartsy spin on the subject.
Roger put down the final balloon. “I agree with everybody one thousand million percent. What a waste of time that wound up being.” He shook his head. “What was Jessica thinking? I can’t see the slightest similarities between this and our case.”
Chapter Sixteen
We went back to our hotel, and out to the pool. I had some thinking to do. I always think better when I’m surrounded by sunshine, water, girls in bathing suits, and a bar tab being signed for by somebody else,
I stripped down to my boxers. As long as they didn’t get wet and clingy, they were close enough to swimming trunks to keep me in good standing with the hotel’s ban on eyesores.
I used a towel and a pool chair to construct a little doggie cabana for Mutt. He climbed up on the chair seat, under the shade of the towel, and fell asleep, probably dreaming of a world where the living and the dog biscuits came easy.
The pool boy came up. “Can I take your order, sir?’
“Bring me a stiffy,” I told him. “No, on second thought. Two stiffies. And keep ’em coming.”
Why deny or postpone the obvious? I was on my way down a long and decidedly unsober road.
“Same,” said Cooper.
A fellow journeyman joining me in my travels down the road to ruin.
“Might as well count me in, too,” said Sands.
Make that three for the road.
We looked at the rabbit.
“I have a date with Jessica later on,” he said. “I wanna keep a clear head. I’ll have a carrot juice. Double. On the rocks. By that I mean ice. Not real rocks. Make sure the juice gets well strained. Last time, I found tiny bits of stalk. I like my carrot juice the same way I like my women.”
“Orange and bitter?” I said.
“No, silly. In a tall glass and smooth.”
“You like your women in a tall glass?”
“No, wait. That’s not what I meant. Smooth, yeah, but not the glass part. I meant…Gee, I’m not sure what I meant.”
What else was new?
I inhaled my first stiffy and half my second.
Following the leader, Cooper and Sands did likewise.
One good thing about Toontown bars. They pour extremely potent hooch. A drink and a half and I could feel my brain cells loosening, clicking into place, spinning, meshing, revving quicker, responding to my squirts of liquid lubrication. Getting to that exalted level of clear thinking would have required an all-night bender back in L.A. “Let’s go over what we know.”
“Okay,” said Cooper, with a bit of a slur. He obviously didn’t have my experience kindling firewater.
“Okie dokie,” said Roger. An orange carrot juice mustache adorned his upper lip. I pointed to my own upper lip, Roger nodded, dipped his finger in his glass, and painted me with my own carroty ’stache.
Sands’s tolerance for the hard stuff was even lower than Cooper’s. Sands was fast asleep in his deck chair. Every now and then he gave out with a loud snore that sounded like somebody playing a bugle, using only the mouthpiece without the benefit of a horn.
“Clabber Clown was paying protection money to Willy Prosciutto,” I said.
“Check,” said Roger.
“Czech,” mumbled Cooper, his chin bouncing off his chest.
“Then he stopped. Because he had something on Prosciutto that Prosciutto didn’t want spread around.”
“Check,” said Roger.
“Chuck,” muttered Cooper, halfway to Dreamland.
“Clabber Clown disappears. Sands accidentally shoots a photo of Clabber which leads us to believe that Clabber’s dead.”
“Check, I think,” said Roger. “Geez, Eddie. I’m having lots and lots of trouble keeping everything straight. Maybe a visual aid would help.”
Roger put up a balloon the shape, size, and color of a blackboard. He wrote on his ersatz board with his fingernail. His first attempt produced a screeching that loosened my back fillings.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Won’t happen again.” He wrote with the much softer and quieter tip of his ear instead.
He diagrammed the case I had outlined.
His first attempt resembled a football play in which the quarterback threw a lateral to the halfback who threw a pass at a cute cheerleader who shot him down cold. Rogers’s second attempt resembled a chess match.
I’m a tad rusty on my chess. I could have been wrong, but I pegged this as the Polish Immortal game, Glucksberg vs Miguel Najdorf from 1929.
There was no mistaking his next diagram. A dance step, the Lindy Hop.
I quit watching after he diagrammed a sailor’s knot.
“We go to the police, but they’re not interested. Not in Clabber’s suspected murder, not in the fact that Willy Prosciutto is laundering money. The Toontown Telltale won’t print our story. One of our key witnesses, Annie Mation, may or may not be loony. Did I forget anything?”
Cooper jerked his thumb from his chest over toward Sands. “The threat.”
“Oh, yeah. Somebody doesn’t want Sands’s movie made. And is threatening to do the dire deed to Cooper if Sands doesn’t back off. Does that about cover everything?”
I thought Cooper nodded in agreement, but what he did was fall asleep.
Sands, on the other hand, got his second wind. His head jerked up, his eyes popped open. “Sure does,” agreed Sands. He finished his second drink. “What a documentary this is going to make. What do we do next? Where do we go from here?”
There was that sixty-four simoleon question again. I had th
e same answer I had last time. Which was no answer whatsoever.
To get inspiration, I chugged two quick stiffies.
While I waited for them to work their magic on my powers of deduction, I flipped through Roger’s Gossipy Guidebook. Sometimes doing mindless, brainless things sparks an idea. I couldn’t imagine anything more mindless or brainless than Roger’s writings.
A series of photos showed Roger running over to Jessica trying to get into the picture with her. Apparently, he had the camera set to go off by timer, but didn’t allow himself enough time to get into position. He got closer and closer to Jessica with each picture. Finally he arrived.
These pictures were stacked up one on top of the other. By flipping them, I got the feeling of cartoon motion. A cute effect.
Another photo pictured Roger, Jessica, and Baby Herman at a costume party. Jessica was dressed as an Arabian slave princess. Real hot cha cha stuff, our Jessica. Baby Herman came as Cyrano de Bergerac. Not much of a stretch there. Roger was dressed as his idol, Bugs Bunny. To my eye, you could hardly tell the two rabbits apart. You seen one rabbit, you pretty much seen ’em all.
My next move came right out of the blue and hit me like a brick.
Or rather hit Roger like a brick. One came sailing over the pool’s wall and beaned Roger on the back of his head. The flying red missile bounced off his noggin and landed on the pool deck, breaking into pieces.
The brick came wrapped in a word balloon. Another note.
“Ouch,” said Roger, rubbing the lump on his noodle. “Do you think that’s a clue?”
“That’d be my guess,” I said.
“I’d better put the pieces together,” said the rabbit. He gathered up the shards of the broken brick. He began to reassemble them like they were a jigsaw puzzle.
I started to call him off, but didn’t. He was all wrapped up in his work. He was temporarily out of my hair. He thought he was being useful. I left him to his labors.