Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (17 page)

Of course. Had it been anybody else, this case would have been duck soup, and heaven forbid that Eddie Valiant should ever have a case handed to him on a silver platter. “Tell me what you saw.”

She detailed her story in the flat, unworldly voice that floats around the edges of a seance. “I was in my bedroom, giving my hair two hundred strokes, when I heard a shot. I went running into the hallway to the top of the staircase. From there I had a clear view of Rocco’s study below. I saw the door open, and I saw Roger come charging out, a smoking gun in his paw.”

“He didn’t see you?”

“No. He was in too big a hurry to get away. He went straight out the front door and down the sidewalk.”

“Still holding the gun?”

“Still holding the gun.”

“You didn’t see anybody else come out after him?”

“No.” She walked to the window and inhaled some of the loose-weave gray flannel that substitutes for fresh air in this burg. “I went into the study and saw what had happened. That Roger had shot Rocco dead. I immediately went back to my room, dressed, got into my car, and drove to Roger’s bungalow.”

“Why do that? Why not just call the cops?”

She gave me a look hard enough to hammer nails into my forehead. “I planned to use what I knew to blackmail Roger.”

“For what? What could the rabbit have that you could want?”

She sat down on the edge of my desk, leaned toward me, and whispered the week’s worst-kept secret. “Why, his teakettle, naturally. I wanted his teakettle.”

“Why didn’t you get it from him when you were still living together? He would have given you anything, especially an old teakettle.”

She returned to her chair. I didn’t feel such a compulsion to dust it for her this time, not after the ton of dirt she had dished around my office. “I didn’t find out how valuable it was until after I’d left him. I couldn’t ask him for it then, because I feared he might promise to give it to me only if I returned to him.”

“And you wouldn’t have done that?”

“Not even for the teakettle. I already told you. That rabbit’s a turkey.”

To my eternal credit, I let that one slide. “What is it about this teakettle that makes it such a hot item in your book? Exactly how valuable is it?”

She closed her eyes and launched into a tale fantastic enough to provide a six-month scenario for
Terry and the Pirates.
“In the early tenth century, a dying gourmet potentate wanted to provide for his royal chef. So he had the palace artisan construct for him a solid-gold teakettle, inlaid with a single, huge blue-white diamond and a multitude of other slightly smaller but equally precious stones. Several hundred years later this priceless teakettle fell into the hands of the Templar Knights. You’ve heard of the Templar Knights?”

“Sure. They came right after the Templar Days.”

She dismissed my sarcasm with a crinkle of her nose. “The Templar Knights fought for Richard the Lionhearted. They claimed the teakettle for themselves during one of their grand crusades to the Holy Land. To protect it from thieves on the journey home, the Templar Knights disguised it by having it lacquered gray. As fate would have it, thieves stole it anyhow, although as nearly as historians can tell, they had no inkling as to its true worth. To them, it was nothing but a common teakettle. That’s the last record we have of it until it turned up on Roger’s stove.”

“And how did you find out about it? Was it Rocco who told you? I understand he’d been studying up on mythology lately. Was this why? Because he was hot on the trail of the caliph’s teakettle?”

She lit a third cigarette and shooed the smoke away from her face with a hand as delicate as any Japanese fan. “Yes, precisely. He first saw it in a still photo taken from the
Alice in Wonderland
movie. He remembered it from a sketch he had seen years ago while researching a strip on the Arabian Nights. He went out and bought a ton of mythology books and searched through them for every reference to the caliph’s teakettle. He found enough to become convinced that it really existed, and that what Roger had matched its description perfectly. I learned about it one night when I heard Rocco and his brother Dominick discussing how to get their hands on it. Roger hated and distrusted them, so they couldn’t offer to buy it outright. Roger had that complicated burglar-alarm system, so they couldn’t break in and steal it. When I overheard them, they were just coming around to the prospect of murder.”

“They intended to kill the rabbit? For his teakettle?”

“So they said.”

“What happened when you got to Roger’s house?”

“I found the door open. I went inside and saw Roger dead. I looked around, but the teakettle was nowhere to be found. I figured that Dominick had probably beaten me to it. So I left. That’s how it happened.” She crossed her heart and hoped to die. “The truth.”

“Why didn’t you report it that way?”

She displayed another side of herself, the confused innocent. “I was afraid. I didn’t want to get involved with murder. Leave it to that stupid bunny to die with my name on his lips and rope me in anyway.”

“When you entered the house, and when you left it again, did you notice some music coming from out of the piano?”

“Yes, I did. That’s what held the door open. The music had gotten wrapped around the knob. I don’t remember what the song was, if that’s what you’re after.”

“That’s what I’m after.”

“Well, I don’t remember.” She leaned forward far enough across the desk to put her hand on my arm. In an earlier, more direct era, that kind of touch would have been all I needed to grab her by the hair, drag her into my cave, and ravage her until morning. Nowadays we have to be satisfied with a silly grin. I gave her a silly grin. “I did not kill Roger,” she said. “You must believe that. I swear it on my honor.”

“That’s a pretty shaky oath in my book.” I pitched her my beanball. “Ever hear of a man named Sid Sleaze?”

Her hand tightened around my arm, but she didn’t seem to have enough strength in it to squash a cockroach. “Yes, I know him. He asked me to appear in a porno comic book once. He hounds most of the top ‘toons. He’s a filthy, perverted beast, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

“You never gave in and appeared in one of his goodies?”

“Of course not. What kind of woman do you take me for? I have my standards.”

There was only one reply to that. I pulled out
Lewd, Crude, and In the Mood,
and threw it on the desk.

She stared down at it the way an innocent bystander stares at a body which has just fallen ten stories to the sidewalk. “Where did you get this?”

“From a book dealer I know. It cost me a bundle. But I must say it’s worth every penny. You naughty girl, you.”

She reached for it, but I quickly hauled it back and stuffed it into my top desk drawer.

She uncorked a stream of tears that would have made a crocodile proud. “I was trying to break into modeling when I first met Sid Sleaze,” she said. “He passed himself off as a big-time movie producer. He told me he would make me a star. Some star. He invited me to his apartment and slipped me a spiked drink that left me able to function physically, but made me totally uninhibited. When the effects wore off, Sleaze showed me prints of the porno material he had shot of me while I was under. The same stuff he later used to prepare that horrid book. He gave me five thousand dollars and told me there would be a lot more in it for me if I did it again, of my own free will this time. I threw the money at him, and ran out.”

“Did you go to the cops?”

“I was afraid to, and embarrassed. I was only eighteen at the time. Besides, while I was drugged, Sleaze had me sign a formal release. Luckily, Sleaze printed up only a small quantity of those comics. This was when he was first getting started in the business, and he couldn’t afford a large press run. After I became famous, and he realized what a potential gold mine he had, he approached me again, shortly after I married Roger. He said if I didn’t give him money, he would print up another hundred thousand copies for general release.” She brought her cigarette up between us and watched it burn.

“What did you do?”

She killed her smoke by grinding it viciously into my cup, and she kept grinding it long after it had gone out, until nothing remained except loose strands of tobacco and thoroughly shredded paper. “I paid him, naturally. What else could I do? I had my career to consider. Luckily for me, Sleaze proved to be a lot more honorable as a crook than he was as a porno producer. Once he had his money, he gave me the negatives, exactly as promised.”

“He gave you the negatives?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you do with them?”

“I cut them into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet.”

“Did Rocco ever see them, or see the comic?”

“No, never. It’s hardly a subject I’d discuss with a man who worshipped me as the embodiment of sophistication.” As she talked, Jessica came around to my side of the desk, took up a position behind my chair, and ran her fingers through my hair and along the side of my face. “You have beautiful features,” she said. “So strong and well-defined.”

“Chipped out of granite, that’s me.”

She brushed a kiss across my ear. “You will take my case, won’t you?” she said in a throaty whisper that spoke of pleasures rarely experienced by the common man.

“Not a chance,” I whispered back, a lot less heartily than I had intended to. Her voice shot up like a rocket. “What do you mean, not a chance?”

“Just what I said. I won’t take your case.” I held her lovely hand in mine, and ticked off my reasons on her slender fingers. “First, I think you’re lying about seeing Roger coming out of Rocco’s study after the shooting. Why, I don’t know. Maybe to protect somebody else, maybe to cover yourself. Secondly, for once in my life, I agree one hundred percent with the police. I think you shot Roger. I’d stake my life on it. You had the teakettle for a motive, and you had the opportunity. Thirdly, I won’t take your case because I already have a client, Roger Rabbit, dead though he may be.” I ran out of reasons before I ran out of fingers, so I took the two of hers I had remaining, and squeezed them together. “And these two little piggies went to the gas chamber,” I said.

She jerked her hand away and hid it behind her where I couldn’t intimidate it anymore. “You’re wrong, you’re terribly wrong. I’ve told you the truth. I beg you to reconsider.”

Again I told her no dice.

She cried me another half a river as I shooed her into the hall.

No sooner had she gone than I heard a noise outside my window, like somebody stumbling over their own feet as they descended the fire escape.

I jerked the window open but found nobody there. Down at the bottom of the iron escape ladder, on the street, I did see Roger Rabbit though. Strange. He should have been halfway to my apartment by now. Could it be he stayed behind and eavesdropped on my conversation with Jessica? If so, he knew my true feelings toward her. Even worse, he knew her true feelings toward him, and right now I didn’t think the little guy could handle it. For his sake I hoped he had been far, far away when Jessica told her tale. But knowing snoopy Roger, fat chance of that.

I prescribed myself one final bracer and set resolutely off to face the morose scene I knew I’d find at home.

When I got home, I found the rabbit crawling around the living room on all fours. For a delicious moment I thought he might have regressed to his wild state, but it turned out he had only dropped his contact lens, a plate-glass oval large enough to double as serving platter for roast squab. He buffed it on his sleeve and popped it into his eye, but I don’t think it improved his perspective any, since his face remained as sour as a dill pickle and nearly as green. “Want to talk about it?” I asked.

He shook his head so vigorously that his ears wound around each other. I had to step on his foot to keep him from helicoptering off the floor.

“It might help,” I said.

He shambled into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. He curled his fingers into a fist and rapped one of the cushions his best lick. Some puncher. With a right cross that weak, I wouldn’t back him in a match against Joe Palooka’s thumb. “What does she mean I’m a turkey?” he blurted out in a balloon the size and consistency of a squishy honeydew.

So he had been eavesdropping after all. “Maybe she called you a turkey because you gobble your food.” A pretty good joke I thought, but it left old yuk-a-minute stone cold. Toons! You figure out what tickles their fancy, because I sure can’t.

“Somebody put those words in her mouth,” he said. “She would never talk about me that way of her own accord.”

“Right. The fly on the wall was a ventriloquist.”

“Don’t joke about it.” He snorted. Ever hear a rabbit snort? Imagine an effeminate donkey with bad adenoids. “I’m very upset by what I heard.”

“You shouldn’t have eavesdropped.”

“I’m a private detective now. It’s part of my job.”

“Then you’ll just have to learn to roll with it. Remember, people who peek through keyholes have to expect an occasional poke in the eye.”

The rabbit got up, stood in front of the window, and absorbed enough mellow morning sunlight to cast a shadow of his former self. “Was that one of those gems of folk wisdom we detectives throw out with such proficiency?”

“Call me the old philosopher.”

“The only old philosopher I remember wound up with a gut full of hemlock.”

“Maybe he should have stuck to a bland diet.”

The rabbit threw up his paws in surrender. Match, set, and championship to yours truly. Roger dropped a small, rnilky-white balloon to the floor and bonked it across the carpet with his big toe. “What was the comic you and Jessica were talking about?” he asked, rather idly considering the grave implications of my answer, “and how does Sid Sleaze fit into it?”

If he wanted sugar-coating, the rabbit picked the wrong candy apple. I laid it out for him complete in every detail. “The comic is a racy number called
Lewd, Crude, and In the Mood.
It’s eight pages long and shows Jessica making whoopee. You heard Jessica’s version of how it came to be. The part of it that interests me isn’t the book itself, but rather the book’s negatives. Jessica says she bought the negatives from Sleaze shortly after you were married and destroyed them. Yet I found a piece of those same negatives in Rocco’s fireplace. Which means that Sleaze sold either Jessica or Rocco a copy.”