by Gary K. Wolf
“I suppose.”
“I gotta ask. Do you do the dinky deed with all those thrushes with crushes? Cause if I was you, I’d be in the Hackensack with half the bazzoombas who read Photoplay.”
“Unethical,” said Cooper.
“Ethics is kind of a hazy concept in my crib,” said Baby Herman. “I operate more according to the pleasure principle.”
Baby Herman climbed up into his leather upholstered mahogany high chair. “Hey, girlie,” he called out. “Get your bumptious behind in here. It’s way past lunch time.”
He threw a mild tantrum, pounding his silver spoon on his chair’s metal tray. “Where’s my porridge? I want my porridge! I want my porridge now!”
I couldn’t tell if Baby Herman was acting or acting out. Either way, he had me convinced of his petulance.
His gorgeous young assistant hurried in with a steaming hot bowl of gruel.
Baby’s assistant was indistinguishable from a hundred other ambitious young starlets willing to do whatever was necessary to get a movie role. In her case, breaking into show business started with showing her business. She wore a blouse cut to hither and a skirt hiked to yon.
“Play airplane,” Baby Herman told her.
She spooned up some cereal and headed the gruel toward his mouth while making airplane noises.
Baby Herman opened his mouth, and ate the cereal.
“Finished, all done,” he said after two spoonfuls.
His comely assistant stood up and took the cereal bowl away.
“I hate that watery baby pablum,” said Baby. “But I love having her feed me. She always wears low cut blouses. When she bends over to give me the spoon, I can see all the way to Flatbush.”
I remembered having much the same thought when I saw Jessica bending over. For as much as I hated to admit the possibility, maybe me and this lecherous baby weren’t so different. Except that I kept my sleazy thoughts bottled up inside my head. The baby put his skank right out on public view for the whole world to read. Maybe that’s what made me an ordinary Joe Blow and him a movie star.
Baby Herman noticed Sands. “Who are you?”
I made the introduction. “Baby Herman, meet Barney Sands.”
Baby Herman crinkled his nose. At first, I thought the baby was reacting negatively to Sands. From what I’d heard, audiences did have a “I think the septic tank overflowed” reaction to many of his films. Then I sniffed out the actual, more personal reason for the baby’s woebegone expression.
“Whew, sorry guys.” Baby Herman waved his hand rapidly, fanning fumes away from his bottom. “I did a diaper dumper. I keep meaning to hire myself a personal potty trainer, but then I figure why bother? I got a bodacious blonde changes me afterwards. She gives me extra fondling, no extra charge.” Baby Herman climbed out of his high chair. “What are you three stooges doing hanging around Toontown?”
“I’m a director,” said Sands. “I’m shooting a documentary now, a feature later.”
“Great,” said Baby. “Got a part for me?”
“Sorry, no,” said Sands.
“I do,” I said. “I’m working a big case. I’m out to nab Clabber Clown’s killer. Wanna help me with that?”
“I dunno. Sounds like it could get dangerous. What’s in it for old número uno?”
“The satisfaction of bringing a wanton criminal to justice,” I told him.
“What I’m wanton is not a criminal,” said Baby putting up a balloon so slimy it slithered across the floor and disappeared under the baby’s casting couch.
“There’d also be the rosy glow that comes from doing the right thing,” said I.
“Here,” said Baby handing me one of his diapers. “Wear this over your mouth cause that’s what’s coming out.”
“How about giving back to society a bit of what society’s given you,” I suggested.
“I haven’t been exposed to so much muddy philosophy since I sculpted Plato out of Play Dough,” said the Baby.
I tried a different approach. “You know, Baby, women love private eyes.” I gave him the big lie. “I know from personal experience that the fair sex will do anything for a shamus.”
“Must be Thanksgiving,” said Baby putting up a balloon the equal of any in a Macy’s parade, “because now you’re talking turkey. What do you want me to do?”
“I need to get a message to a woman named Annie Mation. She’s confined inside Doc Trinaire’s place. I can’t go in there myself. I been banned. So I need you to—”
A little birdie flew into the dressing room. He dropped a gooey white Tweet balloon. The Tweeter landed with a smack on the dressing room mirror.
I read the Tweet. As with all Tweets, this one was short, sweet and came right to the point.
“I need to see you. Now. Urgent. Meet me at Monochrome Mesa.”
The Tweet was signed Honey Graham.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Unfortunately, there was no fool like an old fool, and I was as old as fools came.
Even though I knew I was exposing myself to a possible world of hurt, I still wanted to hear what the gorgeous Miss Graham had to say.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I hated Toontown’s perpetual, unbounded joyousness. In Toontown, every building, tree, fire hydrant, street sign, and lamppost laughed, grinned, joked, and emitted ceaseless strings of word balloons containing happy, rhyming ditties.
What tour companies and the Toontown Chamber of Commerce glowingly described as charm, joie de vivre, and rib tickling municipal mirth, I called disruptive, obnoxious foolishness.
I caught a break from Toontown’s eternal absurdity as soon as we crossed over from Toontown proper into the Toontown suburb of Monochrome Mesa.
Our surroundings changed from the vibrant, multi-hued, living, breathing, habitat of hilarity I hated so much to environs more my style, a bleak, colorless dead zone.
Monochrome Mesa’s two main streets were End of the Road and No Way Out.
The district’s predominant color scheme was dirty black, dingy white, and fifty shades of dreary gray.
No wisecracking mailboxes or manhole covers in Monochrome Mesa. Those traditional Toon civic yuckmeisters had zero comedic material. Nothing funny ever happened there.
Apartment buildings wore bleak, cheerless, gloomy expressions of despair and dejection. Skyscrapers wailed like horror movie banshees as the cold brawny wind pummeled their upper stories. Withered, decaying, grouchy old trees barked profanities and shook their limbs violently at any child climbing their branches. Most streetlights had lost their juice. The few that did work flickered out SOS in Morse code.
Mutt’s experience pretty much typified life in Monochrome Mesa. Mutt went to pee on a fire hydrant. The hydrant saw Mutt coming and peed on him first.
As I said before, one thing I liked about Toontown was the near silence. Everything and everybody communicated using word balloons. No shouting, no screeching, no raised voices because there were no voices. Nobody used them.
Occasionally an advertising billboard got overly zealous and belted a product jingle out loud.
Cuckoo Cola hits the spot,
every hour, take a tot.
Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo.
Once one billboard started, inevitably all the other billboards followed.
Hey, Tony,
Don’t buy phony.
Eat the real thing.
Frank’s baloney.
Bibbidee bobbidee boo,
Have we got a shoe for you.
They’re traffic stoppers,
Our Clod Hoppers.
Buy a pair or two.
Like a herd of cattle headed into a chorale, soon every single thing in Toontown would join the singing.
That might be marg
inally tolerable if everybody sang the same song. Except they didn’t. Everything that could talk, which in Toontown included every single thing, warbled a different tune, in a different tempo, in a different key.
During those outbreaks of inharmonious vocalization, Toontown became a full-blown assault on the eardrums, as cacophonous as an all-night artillery barrage.
No spontaneous vocal outburst would ever happen in Monochrome Mesa.
What few billboards I saw advertised caskets, mortuaries, treatments for incontinence, laxatives, crutches, walkers, and wheelchairs. Not even a mad ad man could create a sprightly jingle singing the praises of those products. Billboards were limited to the sober words and somber pictures painted on their surfaces.
“When studios started filming cartoons in color, black and white Toons lost their jobs,” explained Roger. “A few black and whites tried colorizing themselves with house paint. No soap. Artificial colors bled under the hot lights and ran straight down the drain taking along the show business careers of black and white Toons.”
Roger’s word balloon swirled around like a rubber raft adrift in the treacherous currents of life. His balloon twirled round and round, faster and faster, before disappearing without a trace.
“Those old black and whites live here now, in Monochrome Mesa. Kind of sad, but what can you do? Time marches on.”
Right. One day maybe cartoons become three-dimensional. Then Roger and his two-dimensional buddies would be out of work and residing in a two-bit suburb in two-room shanties of two-ply wood.
“Every now and then, a studio makes a black and white cartoon as a gimmick, but that’s rare,” said Roger. “The only black and whites who have regular acting gigs nowadays work in that new medium, television.”
Roger put up a balloon in the shape of a TV set. His words appeared in a small circle in the center, an area corresponding to a TV set’s minuscule screen. “I think television’s a gimmick that won’t last. How long are people gonna be happy sitting in their living rooms getting eye strain from looking at a silly quiz show on a teeny screen? When they could be in a plushy theater watching a stupendously enjoyable movie in Super Deluxe Widescreen-O-Rama and eating popcorn besides.”
For once, I agreed with the rabbit.
We got out of our car and started to walk. The black and white flagstones paving the street made me feel like a pawn navigating a chessboard, on my way to battle the queen.
A scruffy white dodo bird waddled up to us. He carried a frayed and tattered word balloon stapled to a stick. The balloon read, “Will provide dance music at parties for bread.”
He gave us a free demonstration.
His musical talent consisted of the ability to whistle two notes.
If you danced nothing but the two-step, that worked out fine, one note per step. Me being more of a jitterbugger, he wouldn’t get my light fantastic business.
Besides, I never gave money to panhandlers. Against my principles. Let them earn their cash the way I did, by working dodgy angles until those angles bent into dollar signs.
I pretended to check my pockets. “Sorry. Tapped out. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”
Cooper tossed a generous wad of simoleons into the dodo’s tin cup. “Sounded great,” said Cooper.
I guess the dodo thanked Cooper. What balloons came out of the bird were gruesomely distorted, like the squawky balloons that streamed out of mis-tuned radios. I couldn’t read a word the dodo said.
Sands didn’t contribute to the birdbrain’s breadbasket either. Sands did film the transaction, thus fowling up his documentary with a ruffled dodo tail.
The dodo waddled away.
“You know who that was?” asked Roger.
“No, but I got a hunch you’re gonna tell us,” I said.
“That was Sid Swan,” said Roger. “A famous actor back in the silent days. I did a whole page on him in my Gossipy Guidebook.”
“I’ll bet you’re gonna recite the dismal dodo’s life story.”
“If you insist.”
“I don’t.”
Roger told us anyway.
“Sid’s real name is Donald Dodo. When he first came to Toontown, the casting director at Buffoon Cartoons told Sid he’d have to change his name since there already was a Donald Dodo acting there.”
“Happens all the time in Hollywood,” said Sands. “The good names get snapped up early leaving the latecomers to scramble for next bests. Zazu Pitts was born Joan Crawford. Bela Lugosi was John Wayne.”
Roger continued with his story. “Sid appeared in a few films as Donald Drake where he got typecast as a carefree college playbird, a few more as foppy French Canadian goose Garçon Gosling, a couple after that in a show called Toontown Taxi where he performed as Perry Passenger Pigeon. Finally the studio settled on Sid Swan.”
“Good one,” said Cooper.
“Sid hit big with that moniker. He played The Little Rascals’ comic foil in period shorts.”
“Short films?” I asked, not that familiar with movie jargon.
“No, old-fashioned shorts. Knickers. Plaid they were. Ugliest shorts I ever saw.”
This was a good example of why I never wanted to hear Toon tales. They got more absurd the longer they went on. “You telling me that audiences bought into a dodo playing a goose, a pigeon, and a shorts-wearing swan?”
“Sure. There’s plenty of humans can’t tell one Toon from another. To lots of humans, we all look alike. I’ll let you in on a deep, dark secret. I wasn’t always the big, well-known, instantly recognized star I am today. In my early acting days, I hired on as an extra playing whatever role I could get.”
“Amen,” said Cooper.
“Sometimes that meant playing a muskrat or a beaver,” said Roger. “Human actors do that too. I’ve seen young men playing old men, white men playing Indians, even men playing women. If you’re a good actor, you can play any role. I once played third supporting woodchuck in a film called How Much Wood? The New York Times called my performance quote gnashing unquote. I’m not real sure what that means, but I think that’s good.”
“Real good,” said Cooper.
“Sid Swan’s white,” said Sands. “He wouldn’t have lost his job because of color. What killed his career?”
Roger made a yackety, talking motion with his hand. “Sid sang his sad swan song long before color, when cartoons went to sound. His voice sounds exactly like his word balloons look. Squawky and shrillish. Nobody could understand him.”
“Too bad,” said Cooper.
“Guess what happened to the original Donald Dodo?” said Roger.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” I responded.
“I care,” said Cooper.
Roger rubbed his first two fingers together like a cut-rate shylock conjuring an image of infinite cash. “Donald Dodo put all his eggs in one basket. He feathered his nest with prime Hollywood real estate. Donald retired a wealthy bird. He currently lives in a gilded cage up in the Hollywood Hills.”
Cooper’s left eyebrow went up a fraction of an inch. “My neighbor!”
A minuscule word balloon the size of a sad sigh caressed my chin. I caught the balloon in my palm. The balloon leaked water onto my fingers. The wetness bore the salty smell of tears. The moisture had caused the balloon to shrink.
Like a pizza man tossing dough for a customer from Lilliput, I spun the balloon around on my first two fingertips, widening the circumference enough to let me read the balloon’s words.
“Eddie,” said the balloon. “Over here.”
An arrow underneath the words pointed towards a nearby copse of dead black birch trees. I headed in that direction. My merry band followed me.
I held up my hand to stop them. “Stay here, guys. I want to handle this one solo.”
Traveling alone, I a
pproached the trees.
“That’s close enough,” said another balloon, this one normal-sized.
Judging from the size and style of the balloon’s lettering, the speaker seemed to be none other than Honey Graham. I couldn’t tell for sure because she stayed hidden, out of my sight behind the largest birch. The tree’s droopy branches helped keep her from my view.
“That you, Honey?”
“Yes.”
“You picked the wrong meeting place. You’re gonna need more than a stand of lifeless trees to shield you from my wrath. That old thing about never hitting a woman? Bunch of malarkey. I don’t subscribe.”
“Do whatever you want to me, Eddie. I won’t stop you. I deserve the worst you can dish out, and more.”
Her follow-up balloon, cream-colored with delicately seriffed black letters and bordered with intricate black rickrack, could have been a greeting card from Hallmark’s Abject Apologies section. “I’m sorry I set you up, Eddie.”
“Saying you’re sorry don’t make things right. Doesn’t convince me you mean what you’re saying, either.”
“I know. You have to believe me. You must. Please. I had no choice. Willy made me finger the rabbit for Clabber’s murder. He said he’d hurt me bad if I refused.”
Her next balloon came out dark and gloomy, like the dirge balloons that trail along behind funeral processions. “Then Willy went ahead and hurt me anyway.”
I stepped forward and went around the tree for a closer look.
I didn’t see much. She had traded her sexy apparel for a shapeless black dress sleeved to her wrists, black gloves, and a round brimmed black hat fronted by a veil that covered her face.
“You played me for a sap last time we met,” I said. “What’s your game this time?”
“No game, no tricks. I’m done with Willy. He’s hurt me for the last time. I want to get even. The only way I know how to do that is to have you take him down.”
She handed me five accounting ledgers and a small reel of film.
The ledgers were filled with eight by ten sheets of balloons.