Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (21 page)

“I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but I had a pretty good hunch.

“I peeked through the window in Rocco’s study. Rocco lay dead across his desk. I stumbled back to my car and drove around for a while, trying to sort out my options. Finally, I decided to visit Roger at home. I wanted to tell him I knew what he had done and would help him in any way he wanted—with getaway money, a hideout, an alibi, whatever he figured he needed.

“I parked my car around the corner from his bungalow. I got out and went to the door just in time to see Jessica Rabbit ring the doorbell. Roger answered it, and she went in.”

“Roger was still alive when Jessica got there?”

“He sure was. I didn’t want Jessica to hear what I had to tell Roger, so I didn’t ring the bell. I crouched outside the living room window to wait until Jessica came out. That’s when my frog must have fallen out of my pocket. I waited there for nearly half an hour. Then a bunch of things happened in rapid succession. Somebody started to play the piano. I heard a pair of loud voices, and then a shot. The door opened a crack, something came flying out, and the door slammed shut. I peeked in through the window and saw Roger lying dead across the banister. I expected to see Jessica standing over him, but I didn’t. She was nowhere in sight.”

“Did you see anyone else in there?”

“No, no one. I beat it out of there as quickly as I could. And that’s it. Judging from what I saw, Roger shot Rocco, and Jessica shot Roger.”

“That seems to be the general consensus. This object that came sailing out the front door. What was it, did you see?”

“Nothing much. An ordinary teakettle.”

A marching band could have taken a quick-step cadence from my loudly thumping heart. “What became of it?”

“I picked it up on my way past and threw it into the trunk of my car, along with my camera stuff. As far as I know, it’s still in there.” Her mouth twisted sideways, the way it would if somebody grabbed her by forehead and chin and wrung her dry. “Are you going to report me to the police?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On a lot of things. On how the case breaks. On how well you cooperate from now on. On how much of what you’ve told me turns out to be the truth. On whether there’s a full moon tonight.”

She didn’t take kindly to my humor. “You’re going to leave this hanging over my head, aren’t you? You really are a louse, Valiant. A genuine, Grade-A weasel.”

“I’ve been called worse. I’ve been called better, too, though I think the ones who call me worse have a firmer fix on the real me. Now, how about you give me the keys to your car? I want to take a close-up look at that teakettle.”

She reached into her jeans, pulled out a key, and tossed it over. Although I don’t think she believed I meant it, I wished her a good day.

I walked down the hall, turned, and tiptoed back to her apartment. I put my ear to her door. I heard her pick up the phone and dial it. I didn’t bother to listen to her conversation. I knew well enough who she was calling. And I knew why.

I went downstairs, found her car parked out on the street, and opened the trunk. Sure enough, there, buried beneath a pile of photographic paraphernalia, sat my phantom teakettle.

In its pictures, it looked like an ordinary dime-store teakettle, but not in person. You hear people say they don’t make things like they used to. In the teakettle department, they hadn’t made one like this for a thousand years. It had intricate ornamental doodads and curlicues inscribed over every square inch of it. It had the solid heft of Krazy Kat’s brick. Its top fit tighter than the door to Scrooge McDuck’s vault. It was ancient and well constructed, but so were my grandmother’s false teeth. What made this so much more valuable?

I put Carol’s car key into her mailbox, tucked the teakettle under my arm, and headed for my office.

I set the teakettle on my desk and examined it from every angle. No secret compartments that I could see.

I pulled out my pocket knife, flipped out the heavy blade, and scraped away a layer of metal. All I got for my trouble was more metal. No gold underneath here, not unless some medieval alchemist had found a way to turn it back to lead. I scraped a few bumps off the handle, but they were just that, bumps, not jewels. I leaned back in my chair and considered the possibilities. Maybe this wasn’t the actual teakettle. Maybe somebody had substituted this worthless piece for the real thing. Or maybe the teakettle had some other significance. Maybe it was the key to some illicit drug-smuggling ring. Maybe it had come into the country loaded with opium.

I picked it up and turned it over. On the bottom I discovered what appeared to be more Persian writing. I had a hunch it probably said “Made in Japan,” but I copied the inscription into my notebook anyway.

Just then the phone rang. It was Roger, so excited I had to hold the phone away from my ear to keep his word balloons from stinging my earlobes when they came zipping out. “It worked just the way you said it would,” he bellowed. “I positioned myself just outside Little Rock’s gallery. I could see Little Rock through the gallery window. You had been gone maybe an hour when he got a phone call. He talked a few moments and hung up, quite upset. He rushed out and got into his car. You’ll never guess who he went to see.”

I knew perfectly well, but I let Roger surprise me anyway. “I can’t imagine.”

“Sid Sleaze!” Roger exclaimed. “He stayed in there with Sleaze for the better part of an hour.”

“Did he have something with him when he came out?” I asked. “A small box, or maybe an envelope?”

I could tell from Roger’s silence I had just impressed the fuzzy socks off him. “As a matter of fact, he did,” Roger said reverentially. “It was a large envelope. He took it with him to his house. I’m calling from a phone booth nearby. What do you want me to do?”

I got the address. “Wait for me there,” I said. I’ll be right over. And, Roger, one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“It’s all downhill, now.”

On the way to Little Rock’s, I stopped first at the Persian deli. I bought a falafel sandwich and gave Abou Ben a copy of the writing on the bottom of the teakettle. He promised to have his uncle translate it for me that evening.

Next I stopped by to see a scientist friend of mine. I gave him the teakettle and asked him to analyze the composition of its metal and any residue it might contain. The scientist informed me a thorough examination would take a couple of days. I told him I didn’t have a couple of days. Or rather, Roger’s doppel didn’t have a couple of days. I wanted to have this case wrapped up air-tight before that little guy expired. I owed him that.

The scientist told me he’d do what he could.

Roger’s hop, hop, hop up the walk to Little Rock’s front door turned his stream of questions into a verbose roller coaster. “How did you know Little Rock would get a phone call?” read his words on his upspring. “How did you know who it would be?” they read on his descent. “How did you know Little Rock picked up a package?” Uuuuuup. “Do you know what’s inside it?” Downnnnnn. “What do we tell Little Rock once we’re inside?” Uuuuuup. “Who does the talking?” Downnnnnn. I got motion sick just reading him.

I slapped my hand over his mouth to shut him up and scrambled his wavy words so Little Rock wouldn’t see them and get wise to our play. I shoved the rabbit behind me where he wouldn’t get in rny way, and rang the bell.

Little Rock opened the door and stood there staring at me, with his mouth open about as wide as first hole on a championship putting green. “Yes? Oh, Valiant, wasn’t it? What are you doing here?” He fluttered a hand. “I’m so sorry, but I’m just in the middle of something. Could you possibly come back later? Say tomorrow. Tomorrow would be just perfect. See you then.”

He started to shut the door on me, but I pushed past him into the house. Roger bounced along after me, and Little Rock brought up the rear. “Here now, exactly what do you think you’re doing?” Little Rock babbled. “You can’t come in here.”

“Too late,” I countered. “I already am in. And you’re in, too. In deep, serious trouble.”

Little Rock’s Adam’s apple gulped through a series of moves good enough for first place in a yo-yo tournament.

“I know what you’ve got going with Carol Masters and Sid Sleaze,” I stated.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he retorted lamely. “Sid Sleaze? Who’s Sid Sleaze?”

“He’s the guy whose office you visited not half an hour ago.” I pointed at Roger. “Want me to have my assistant here play back a videotape of that event?”

Roger showed some of that quick wit that made him such a hot property in the comic biz, and picked up on my bluff. “I can have the machine set up and rolling in five minutes, chief,” he said.

Little Rock looked from one of us to the other for the slightest sign of a schuck, but both of us held fast. “Oh,
that
Sid Sleaze,” he said finally. “Of course. Now I know who you mean. I had some minor business dealings with the man. Nothing significant. He wanted to buy some things from the gallery.”

I put out my hand. “Let’s have it.”

“Have what?” asked Little Rock.

“The envelope you got from Sleaze.”

“What envelope?” he said with an air of innocence unbelievable in anybody this side of Dondi.

“Come on, don’t play cutesy with me. I know what’s in that envelope. You either give it to me, or I phone the cops, and you give it to them, and believe me, you got a lot better chance with me. I’m not really interested in your scam. I’m out to nab your old man’s murderer. You help me do that, and I don’t care if you bilk the entire Western world. But I have a hunch the cops aren’t quite so open-minded. Now give.”

He caved in easy, but wimps like him always do. He scuttled into his den, came back, and gave me a standard eight-by-ten manila envelope. I opened it and unceremoniously dumped the contents onto a coffee table.

As I suspected, it contained at least three dozen negatives. I picked a few at random and held them up to the light. Sure enough they were the negatives of Rocco DeGreasy’s missing artwork. As nearly as I could tell, there were at least six sets of negatives for each piece. “Take a look,” I said to Roger. “You once told me you could tell reproduction negatives from originals. Which are these?”

Each time Roger held one up and examined it, he gave out with a low whistle of admiration, until there were so many notes floating around, the room looked like the site of yesterday’s canary convention. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said when he finished. “These are absolutely perfect. No graininess, no fuzzy images, no degradation of color. They all look exactly like originals to me.”

“Want to tell us about it?” I asked Little Rock.

Little Rock went to the bar and mixed himself a drink from out of a rainbow assortment of bottles that duplicated the ones he kept in his gallery office. I don’t know what color he was shooting for, but he built and threw away three drinks, all of which turned out jet black, before he finally gave up and tossed down a straight shot of plain, garden-variety, see-through vodka. “Carol Masters and I vowed to avenge ourselves on my father for the unjust way he treated us. So we decided to sell a number of pieces we removed from the gallery.”

“That’s a rather genteel way of phrasing it,” I said. “You didn’t just remove them. You
stole
them, plain and simple.”

There was no way he was going to convince me otherwise, but by golly if he didn’t try. “We did not view ourselves as criminals, Mister Valiant. We took Carol’s works and hers only. We both felt she was entitled to profit from their increased value. We saw nothing morally wrong in her doing so, and in my getting a cut for helping her.”

“I know a rabbi, six ministers, and a Pope who might give you an argument on that. Especially when you take into account what you eventually did with them.”

Still no mea culpa. “That was Carol’s idea, not mine. Carol’s. Rather than sell them once, she reasoned, why not duplicate them and sell them multiple times?

“I told her it was an admirable idea, but would never work. We had the original negative, so we could easily produce more prints, but each framed work had to include both a print and the negative it came from. Since we had only the one negative, that was impossible. We couldn’t use a normal dupe neg. Any knowledgeable collector would spot it in an instant. That’s when Carol suggested Sid Sleaze.

“Carol had worked for Sleaze years earlier, when he still went by the name of Baumgartner. He kept in contact with her through the years, trying to get her to go back to work for him. One day, over lunch, he told her about a new process he’d developed to reproduce negatives so perfectly that not even an expert could tell duplicates from originals. If it worked as well as he led Carol to believe it would, it presented the perfect solution to our problem.

“Carol approached him with our proposal. In return for a flat fee per piece, he was to take our original negatives and turn out duplicates in limited quantity. I framed the duplicate prints and negatives together, and Carol signed them. We then sold them as originals through shady dealers like Hiram Toner.” “The word must have gotten around that these pieces had been stolen from your gallery.”

“To be sure. The police circulated photos and complete descriptions throughout the world.”

“Your fences have any problem finding buyers under those conditions?”

“None whatsoever. There are any number of collectors who care not a whit about a work’s provenance. If they want to possess it, they will, stolen or not.” “How many of these duplicates did you sell?” “We limited ourselves to fifteen copies of each work. Any more than that, and we ran the risk of exposing our ploy. Our buyers weren’t about to display stolen works openly, but they might show them to a close friend or two. Sooner or later someone was bound to see the same supposed original in two collections. At that point values would plummet, suspicions would rise, and angry buyers would begin tracing their way back through their dealers to Carol and me. An altogether ugly situation. We fully intended to be out of it before that happened.”