Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (8 page)

“Jessica? Jessica carne by to see me? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.” Talk about happiness. If Roger had been Flash Gordon, he would have been outside his rocket ship swinging on a star. “I knew you could pull it off, Mister Valiant. I knew I picked the right man. I knew you could get me Jessica back. How did you do it? Put the arm on Rocco? That it? I’ll bet that’s it. You found out what he had on her and forced him to stop.”

With a swift left jab, I punched a jumbo hole in the biggest of his balloons. “Not so fast. I don’t know for sure whether or not Jessica came to see you last night. If she did, it wasn’t for a reconciliation.”

“Why then?”

“The police think she killed you, and I go along with them.”

The rabbit shook his head so vigorously hjs flopping ears left spiral marks on the fur around his head. “Not a chance. She loves me! She would never do something like that. What makes you suspect her?”

“For starters, your last words.” I took out my notebook and read them to him. “No fair! You got me everything? Jessica. My contract.” I turned the notebook and laid it on the corner of the desk so he could read his final statement himself.

Twice he followed the words with his finger and both times wound up in exactly the same place. “Wait! I’ve got it,” he said, holding a finger straight up as if to test the wind. “I wasn’t talking to Jessica. No, I was talking
about
her. To someone else. To Rocco DeGreasy! I was talking about Jessica to Rocco DeGreasy, and he shot me.”

“Try again,” I said. “According to the cops, it’s the other way around. You shot him.”

“I shot who?”

“Rocco DeGreasy.”

“Rocco?” Granted, the guy acted for a living, but his googly-wide eyes and puckered nose sure said dumbfounded to me. “You mean the police think I shot Rocco?”

“Dead as a doornail. He got his about an hour before you got yours. The way the cops figure it, you went to DeGreasy’s house and killed him. Jessica saw you do it, followed you home, and took her revenge.”

“That’s ridiculous. I could never kill anybody. Not even Rocco DeGreasy.”

“You threatened to once. Remember? At a photo session? In front of two reliable witnesses.”

Roger began to bounce around so actively I checked the rug for hopscotch boxes, but I saw only lifeless shag and yesterday’s ashes. “Right. I did do that. But I didn’t mean it. I could never kill another living being. It’s not in my nature. I even sidestep ants on the street. I was being irrational that day. Look at it from my viewpoint. There I was peacefully going about my job, when in walked Rocco DeGreasy. He started giving me guff about how he and I ought to get together and resolve this ‘misunderstanding’ about my contract. That’s a direct quote. ‘Misunderstanding.’ I’ll never forget how his fat face jiggled when he said it.

“I told him there was no misunderstanding. He had promised me my own strip, and that was it. End of negotiation. That’s when he laughed at me, and I went after him. I guess I became a tad irrational, what with his laughter and this being the first time I’d seen him since he’d coerced Jessica into leaving me.”

“Assuming that he did coerce her.”

“Of course, he coerced her. I told you before, she would never have left me of her own free will. She loved me. Jessica loved me, and I’m positive she still does. Anyway, yes, I attacked Rocco that day, and, yes, I threatened to kill him, but I never intended to follow through.”

“What exactly do you remember about last night?”

Most of the rabbit’s thought balloons came up either totally blank or slightly hazy. “Not much, I’m afraid. I spent pretty much of an ordinary evening. I had dinner, watched some television, and read awhile. No visitors, no phone calls, nothing out of the ordinary.” He dribbled out a few more empty memories and finally gave up trying. “Where was Rocco killed?”

“At his home, in his study. You ever been there?”

“No, never. We conducted our dealings exclusively at his office. How was he killed?”

“He got shot with a thirty-eight-caliber revolver.”

The rabbit opened my cigar box and seemed rather disappointed to find it contained cigars. “Well, there you are. That should clear me. I’ve never fired a gun in my life, or owned one, either.”

“What about the one in your nightstand?”

Roger’s words came out with at least a yard of spacing between them, and so tiny I nearly got eye strain reading them. “What one in my nightstand?”

“A thirty-eight-caliber revolver with one bullet missing. The cops have it. They’re running it through ballistics right now, but I’d be willing to bet it turns out to be the murder weapon.”

“You’re kidding. In my nightstand? How could that be? I’ve never owned a gun in my life.”

“You have no idea how it got there?”

“None.” His eyelids rolled down. “Don’t you see? This is a frameup. Somebody is trying to saddle me with Rocco’s murder. Somebody killed him and planted the gun at my place. I probably caught them at it, and they killed me to keep me quiet. Does that make sense?”

It did, and I told him so.

“That’s it, then.” He used a big, blue bandana to wipe the perspiration off his face, and a teasing comb to refluff his fur. “You find out who killed Rocco, and you also find out who killed me. You clear my name, and you also bring my killer to justice.”

“You might not like what I find.”

“How so?”

“For starters, when I got to your house this morning, I found a musical scale trailing out of the piano. The song was ‘When You Wish Upon a Star.’ That have any significance to you?”

A light bulb flashed on over Roger’s head. It was less than a five-watter, but it would get a lot brighter and a lot hotter before I was done. “It was my favorite piece. I play it a lot, and sing along.”

“I remember you telling me you serenaded Jessica the evening you proposed. ‘When You Wish Upon a Star,’ by any chance?”

The light bulb grew to twenty-five watts. “Yes, as a matter of fact, that was the song I played and sang for Jessica that evening. After that, we always considered it our song.”

“So if she had been there with you last night, it would have been natural for you to play it for her again?”

Seventy-five watts. “I suppose so, yes.”

“Now tell me about your burglar-alarm system. How does it work?”

“It’s a marvelous device. It connects to every door and window in the house. It goes on automatically when the front door closes. You have to disengage it after you go in and before you go out, or the thing sets off a wail you wouldn’t believe.”

“When I got to your place this morning, the door was ajar. The musical scale had gotten wrapped around the door handle. That’s how I got in without setting off the alarm. The question is, how did the killer get out?”

“Beats me.”

“Jessica lived there in that house with you for nearly a year. Did she know the code to disengage that alarm?”

A hundred watts. “Yes, she did.”

“So she could very easily have disengaged it after she shot you and walked out without setting it off?”

“Yes, I suppose she could have.”

“Did anyone else know the alarm code?”

“Sure, lots of people.”

“Name them.”

Two hundred watts and flashing caution. “OK, OK, so she was the only one.”

“Right. The only one besides you who could have gotten out without tripping the alarm. Now let’s investigate the other end. In order for the killer to get in, you had to disengage the alarm, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have done that for Rocco DeGreasy?”

“Of course not.”

“His brother Dominick?”

“Noway.”

“How about Jessica?”

“Stop right here,” he said in a fragmented balloon you would expect to come out of somebody with his head buried to the shoulders in sand. “I know in my heart that Jessica did not kill me, just as I know in my heart that I did not kill Rocco DeGreasy. So you can stop that line of questioning here and now.”

“OK. Let’s try this one.” I pulled the rubber Kermit the Frog toy out of my pocket. “Ever see this before?”

Roger squeezed it several times, giggling when Kermit’s tongue unfurled. “You see them around. It’s a pretty popular toy. I can’t say I recognize this one as being any different from a hundred others I’ve seen. Where did you get it?”

“I found it outside your house. It hadn’t been there long. My guess is that it was dropped by the killer.”

“Well, that would leave out Jessica. She would never carry around something as silly as this.”

“Or it might have been dropped by somebody who saw the killer.”

“Oh.” He didn’t seem very happy to hear that there might have been an eyewitness to his untimely demise. I guess that’s what love does to you. Makes you put on your blinders whenever your canter takes you anywhere near the truth. “Mister Valiant, how was I… I mean, what did he use to …”

“You were shot once in the chest. It looked to me like a clean hit. You didn’t suffer much, if that’s your concern.”

He nodded, and a matched set of crystalline teardrops rolled down either side of his face.

“You were apparently killed with some kind of antique musket or pistol,” I said. “You know of anybody who owns a piece like that?”

He shook his head no.

“What about any other enemies you might have had, anyone you haven’t told me about, anybody who might have wanted you out of the way?”

Again he shook his head. He put his bandana to his nose and gave a honk loud enough to have every moose within ten blocks pawing at my door. “Mister Valiant,” he said in those tiny, strung out words again, “I don’t have long to exist. Forty-eight hours at the most. After that I’ll disintegrate, and Roger Rabbit will be gone forever. There’s one thing that I’d like to ask you to do for me as a favor before that happens. You see, Mister Valiant, the real Roger, and now me, well, we’ve always wanted to be a private eye.”

“No way,” I said firmly. I wasn’t about to sign on as nursemaid to a cottontailed detective, dying wish or not.

“Oh, please, Mister Valiant, please. I’ll do whatever you tell me to. It’s not like I’m asking you to accommodate me permanently. Forty-eight hours, and I’ll be gone, out of your life forever.”

“Two days isn’t very long to solve a double homicide. Even if I did let you tag along, you might not be around for the close.”

He gave me that irresistible please-take-me-home look you get from a three-dollar pup in a pet-store window. “You can do it, I know you can. What say, Mister Valiant. Please?”

I owed the rabbit, true. If it would make him happy to step and fetch for me, who was I to deny him? “All right, I take you on, but only under one condition. We level with each other. In everything. Agreed?”

“Sure.” He nodded his head so fast, the end of his ear cracked like a whip.

“Then let’s start by you telling me why you pulled that pie assault on yourself.”

He switched back to the same forlorn puppy face that I guess he figured he got me with before. “On myself? No, Rocco did that.”

I pointed toward the door. “Take a hop.”

His puppy face grew up in a big hurry into a beaten cur. His word balloon came out so heavily weighted down with guilt, it dented the top of my desk. “I should have known I could never fool you.”

“Why did you even try?”

He stared at a spot about a million miles over my head. “I guess as a ploy to get sympathy. According to my psychiatrist, it goes back to when I was growing up. You see I came from a very small town, and I …”

I shook my head. “Spare me the historical details. I’m only interested in here and now. Like the bit about Rocco offering you your own strip. You make that up, too?”

“No, not that. That was the truth. I swear it.”

“And your story about you and Jessica. What about that?”

“True. Every word of it.” He hung his head. If I hadn’t jerked back in my chair, one of his ears would have speared me in the eye. “I’m sorry I tried to deceive you,” he said. “I won’t ever do it again. You have my word on that.” He straightened up. This time though, I was sitting well back when his ear came whistling past. “Please don’t hold my one indiscretion against me. I promise you total honesty from here on out.”

“And you tone down the goofiness, too. You want to work with me, you act like a human.”

“You want humanity,” said Roger solemnly, “you will get humanity you won’t believe.”

He held out his paw exactly the way a person would have.

For the first, and I hoped last, time in my life I shook hands with a rabbit.

I took the rabbit to my place.

He didn’t draw so much as a second glance from the people out front on the street. Shows you what the world’s coming to. I can still remember the first ‘toon who moved into this neighborhood. A good-looking guy, humanoid, a dead ringer for Smilin’ Jack. Real personable, and as near normal as a ‘toon could be. That was twenty years ago, and people marched through the streets in protest. They lost; he stayed. Now we’ve got more barnyards than Old MacDonald’s farm. Every morning my next-door neighbor sticks his head out the window and crows at the sun. You go into a diner for lunch, and the guy on the stool next to you orders a bale of hay. Travel ten feet down any sidewalk, and you’ll step in at least one deflated moo balloon. And this is what the politicians downtown call social progress.

I unlocked the door, and we both went in. I don’t believe in frou-frou. My living room comes furnished with a floor lamp, a reading chair, and a sofa. Add to that a wooden table where I play poker and work out chess problems, plus a few pictures, mostly of me in the Corps, and that’s about it. I keep my chess books on the floor, my gun in a closet, my dinners in the freezer, and my booze under the sink. Simple and unpretentious. The kind of life guys go off to monasteries to enjoy, and I live it every day, right here in the City of the Angels.

I sat Roger down on the sofa and went into my closet to dig him out a disguise. I knew that if Rusty Hudson or “Clever” Cleaver ever spotted him, they’d haul him in and grill him. That could easily eat up his two remaining days. Plus I also had two killers to worry about, Rocco’s and Roger’s. If either of them spotted Roger, the rabbit wouldn’t even last that long. So I had to keep anyone from recognizing Roger, a good trick when you’re dealing with a six-foot-tall, nationally famous rabbit. But never let it be said I didn’t give it a try.