Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (13 page)

Little Rock laughed dryly. “I should say so. It’s run by a fellow named Hiram Toner. He has a reputation as a somewhat less than ethical dealer.”

“Exactly what do you mean by that?”

“I mean the provenance of his art warrants extremely close scrutiny.”

“Could you translate that into plain English for me?”

I finally saw a resemblance to his father in the haughty way he peered at me down his nose. “He’s a fence for stolen art.”

I hauled out the photos I had found in Rocco’s office. “Recognize these?”

He fanned them out card fashion in front of himself and kept glancing at me over their tops like a riverboat gambler figuring out how to stick me with the Old Maid. “Where did you get them?” “They were in your father’s office. You know what they are?”

He laid them face up on the desk, arranging them into a pleasing pattern the same way he would have had they been hanging outside on his gallery wall. “They were stolen from here about a month ago.”

“Any clue as to who did it?”

“None. I opened up one day, came in, turned off the burglar alarm, took a look around, and saw they were gone. They had been taken right off the wall during the night. The police investigated, but could find no evidence of forced entry. We never did discover how the thieves got in.”

“Who had keys?”

“Only me. And, of course, my father.”

I turned the photos over. “What about the prices on the back?”

He perched a pair of tiny half glasses on the end of his nose. “These prices are considerably lower than the works are worth.”

“As if the guy selling them might know they’re hot?”

“Yes, that’s likely the case,” said Little Rock, “especially at the Hi Tone Gallery.”

I returned the photos to my pocket. “What about Jessica Rabbit? Your Uncle Dominick thinks she was taking your old man for a ride.”

I couldn’t remember right off where I had seen his expression before. Then I placed it. I once had a puppy in love. “Shows you how little Uncle Dom knows about women. Jessica is one of the most charming and beautiful ladies I’ve ever met. She was far better than my father deserved.”

Chalk up another conquest for Jessica the Juggernaut. “You have any idea who will inherit your father’s estate?”

“No, although I suppose it will probably be me. I guess I’ll find out for sure tomorrow, when they read the will.” He didn’t seem particularly interested. Maybe he knew about the DeGreasy syndicate’s rotten financial shape, that he’d be lucky to inherit carfare home from the lawyer’s office.

I asked him point-blank the syndicate’s net worth, but he insisted he had no idea. He contended that his father had always excluded him from the fiscal end of the business.

“You know if your father had any recent dealings with someone with the initials SS?”

“SS? No, not that I know of.”

I played a long shot. “I notice from your sign out front that you represent Carol Masters, yet I don’t see any of her works out on display. How come?”

Little Rock slumped down into his chair as if somebody had yanked a cork out of his toe and deflated his body by ten pounds. “Father told me to pull them.”

“Why?”

Little Rock turned his beautifully manicured hands palms up. “I’m not exactly sure. About six months ago Father took a vehement dislike to the woman. I can only guess it’s because lately Carol has become a forceful crusader for ‘toons’ rights, and Father resented her for it. She led a contingent of ‘toons right into Father’s office on a quest for higher pay scales and , improved working conditions. Lord, I wish I could have been there to see it. I suspect that may have been the final straw. Shortly thereafter Father began a concerted effort to strangle Carol’s career. He spread the word that she had become unreliable, that a high percentage of her work required extensive retouching. He even rejected one of her strips outright, and that’s almost unheard of in the industry.” “Did he have a case?”

“Not that I could see. Carol takes some of the best photos around. I had originally intended to feature her next month in a one-woman show—her first. I had invitations set, flyers printed. When Father found out about it, he was furious. He instructed me to cancel it, and what’s more to remove everything of Carol’s from the gallery.”

“How did Carol react when she found out you were scrubbing her show and yanking her stuff?”

“How would you expect? She stormed out of here in a royal tizzy. That was yesterday. When I heard Father had been killed last night, my initial reaction was that Carol Masters had done it. I was actually quite surprised to find out it had been Roger Rabbit instead.” “You consider Carol Masters capable of murder?” “Most assuredly. Especially if someone pushed her as hard and as far as my father did.”

At first I guffawed, then, when I remembered her eyes, her savage, tiger’s eyes, I realized that maybe, just maybe, Little Rock had a point.

I played clue with him for another half hour or so, but, when I tallied up my score sheet, I found I was no closer to discovering who had killed Rocco DeGreasy with the gun in the study than I had been when I first walked in.

In a contest for most signs in least space, I would have been hard-pressed to pick between Smoky Stover’s firehouse and the front window of the Hi Tone Gallery of Comic Art. Half off on this, closeout sale on that, invest in art for the future, with every S converted to a dollar sign. Toss in the loudspeaker blaring over the entry door, a half mile of flashing neon out front, and a used car lot seemed practically staid by comparison.

I barely got inside when two super-slick salesmen pounced on me, one from either side. For laughs I almost passed myself off as a big spender just to watch them arm-wrestle each other over who saw me first, but instead I flashed my license. That brought them to a screeching halt. I never heard so many hems and haws. Talk about guilty looks. Sylvester the Cat with his mouth full of Tweetie Bird could do a better innocent act than these two clowns. I asked for Hiram Toner, and they pointed me toward the back. As I headed in that direction, I caught one of the salesmen tapping a wall-mounted button, probably connected to an alarm in Toner’s office. Woe to the poor bunco cop snooping around here.

Maybe Toner was compulsively neat. Maybe, more likely, he was Jack Flash with a shovel and pail. Whichever, by the time I got to his office, there wasn’t a scrap of paper to be seen anywhere.

His decor could have been designed by Goldilocks and the baby bear—furniture not too hard, not too soft; lighting not too bright, not too dim; temperature not too hot, not too cold; but everything just right.

Toner greeted me warmly with an outstretched hand. “Hiram Toner,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” Give Toner a swig of Little Rock’s red liquor, and you could have used him for a thermometer. I’d seen cadavers with more padding on them. His suit looked to be expensive, but still fit him like a grocery sack fits a buck’s worth of canned soup and bananas. “How may I be of assistance?” he said, with a voice oily enough to fry a chicken. “Wait, let me guess. You’re here to see about buying an original strip. But which one? Ah, I know. Prince Valiant. Definitely Prince Valiant. It so suits you. Stately, with an aura of chivalry.”

“Sorry. If you’re going into the swami business, you need a new crystal ball.”

“Tarzan, then. I can see it in your rippling muscles.”

“Wrong again.”

“Jungle Jim? Blackhawk? Superman? The Incredible Hulk?”

“Knock off the snappy patter, Toner. I’m no sidewalk sucker. You know it as well as I do. My name’s Eddie Valiant.” I showed him my license, and he copied off its number. The man had gone round the block with gumshoes before. “I’m a private detective investigating Rocco DeGreasy’s murder.”

“So what does that have to do with me?”

I handed him the photos of the stolen strips. “You ever see these before?”

He gave them barely a glance before tossing them back to me like a fistful of spuds in a game of hot potato. “Yes, I’m familiar with them. I had them on consignment here in the gallery. Up until today, that is, when I sent them out to their new owner.”

“And who might that be?”

He plucked a piece of thread off his lapel and deposited it into a tubular wooden wastebasket that had the right proportions to be the box the stork had delivered him in. “All right, Valiant. You already know or you wouldn’t be poking around here. I sold them to Rocco DeGreasy. I got a check in the mail from him this morning for the full purchase price. I sent him the strips by messenger.”

“How did Rocco first find out you had them?”

He crossed his arms and legs in the same direction, in the same motion, the way a seated barnyard ‘toon would, except he didn’t turn himself into a pretzel in the process. “Through the efforts of a gentleman who earns his living matching up wealthy collectors with interesting objects. When he makes a connection, he takes a cut off each end, from buyer and seller both. He put Rocco and me together.” “This matchmaker got a name?”

Toner crooked a bony finger and scratched his head. “Strange, but his name escapes me. I’m really very terrible with names. I keep meaning to take one of those memory courses, but I can never remember when they’re being held.” A fat lot of cooperation I could expect here. “So this mysterious matchmaker showed Rocco DeGreasy the photos. What then?”

“Rocco bought them. I sent him the works within an hour after getting his check.” “How come so fast?”

“Service, Mister Valiant, service. The hallmark of my business.”

“I suppose it didn’t have anything to do with getting them off the premises as soon as possible? I suppose you had no idea those strips were stolen?”

Toner puckered his lips. Press a bugle to them, and I just knew “God Bless America” would come out the other end. “Stolen? My word. Imagine that. Had I known, I would have turned the nasty things over to the proper authorities immediately.”

“How did you originally come to have them?” Toner swayed ever so gently from side to side. “The strips came to the gallery one day via messenger. The letter with them asked if I would be interested in handling their sale. The letter stated that the strips belonged to a wealthy old family that had fallen upon hard times. This family was being forced to part with some very dear and very precious possessions, including the aforementioned strips. The letter stressed the need for upmost discretion, to protect this family from the ill publicity that would certainly befall it should its plight become known. I sent the messenger back with a note informing the family that I would certainly do my best to secure top dollar for these works on its behalf.”

“This family have a name?”

“Most families do. This one never said.”

“How about an address?”

“Sorry, no. In the interest of discretion, they instructed me to send their cut to a downtown post office box.”

“Got the box number?”

“Sad to say, I do not. I’m such a nit when it comes to keeping records of such matters.”

Talking to Hiram Toner was pretty much like running on a treadmill, lots of effort, but no forward motion. A short dose of him, and I began to understand why guys go off and live on mountaintops. “I’m not diddling with you anymore, Toner. I’m turning this whole sleazy mess over to the cops. Explain your nameless family to them.”

He dismissed my threat with a smile almost longer than he was wide. “Do as you see fit. I have no fear of the police. In fact the police and I are old friends. They pop by and inspect my merchandise quite regularly. As you can see from the fact that I’m still open for business, they have yet to find anything remiss.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

He turned his smile into a smarmy grin that hinted he and he alone had a foolproof method for beating the system.

I wished him well in fulfilling his fantasy.

When I was a kid I patronized a soda shop where for twenty-five cents I got a comic book, a double dip cone, and more candy than I could stuff in a gunny sack. A guy we called Pops ran the joint, and still does.

I walked in and said hello.

Pops peered at me through eyeglasses not quite as big as my car’s headlights. “Well fiddle-dee-dee!” Pops always talked like a man with a ‘toon caught in his throat, a lot of hi-de-hos, by-gums, and Land-o’-Goshens. “Eddie? Eddie Valiant? That you?”

“You got it, Pops. What’s good today?”

He pointed an arthritic finger at a box of candy that probably had been there the first time I came in twenty years ago, and hadn’t been that fresh then. “Got some tasty jujubees and some sweet bottles.” He held up a hollow parafin bottle filled with green syrup. The thing had been on his shelf so long the syrup had turned as solid as the wax surrounding it. “You used to like these pretty well, as I recall.”

I slid a double sawbuck across the counter. “Give me this many jujubees.”

By the look on his face I must have just doubled his yearly gross income. “I don’t think I’ve got that many,” he said, clearly afraid he was about to blow his biggest sale of the decade.

I gave him a brand new lease on life. “Make it an assortment, then. Whatever you got. Surprise me.”

He went through his boxes picking a handful of stale candy out of each. I can’t remember when I’ve seen anybody so happy.

“You still keep up with comics the way you did in the old days, Pops?”

He showed me a set of teeth with more gaps than a guilty man’s alibi. “You bet your life I do. Read every one that comes out. Have to use a magnifying glass anymore to make out the words, but I keep plugging away at them. Right-a-rootie.”

Like I said. Definitely a man with a ‘toon caught in his throat.

I fished out the burned negative I’d found in Rocco’s fireplace. “Know what comic this might be?”

He studied it through a magnifying glass large enough to have started life as a porthole in the Queen Mary. “Can’t say that I do. It looks sort of familiar, but I can’t place it right off. Shouldn’t be too hard to find, though. Every comic company uses its own numbering system. I ought to be able to track this one down easy enough.”

I pulled another twenty out of my wallet. “Here’s something to get you going.”