6

I slipped out of the building through a side door, crossed the street, and came up on the rabbit from behind. “Surprise,” I growled. I grabbed the rabbit’s arm and hustled him unceremoniously down the street.

I whizzed my reluctant companion past several human-only and several Toon-only bars before we came to a grubby hole-in-the-wall saloon, maybe twenty feet wide and thirty feet long, willing to serve both species.

The bar, tended by a puffy-eared, flat-nosed human, ran the length of the right hand wall. A bunch of derelict Toons held down one end. A bunch of derelict humans pegged down the other. The saloon’s only interior decoration consisted of several framed newspapers welcoming Lindbergh back from Paris, a subtle play on the common belief that certain humans—Babe Ruth, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, and, of course, Lindbergh—were really humanoid Toons who had crossed the line.

I marched Roger to a booth, sat him down, and slid in beside him, trapping him against the wall.

A Toon waitress came over. In her younger days, she probably got mistaken for Dixie Dugan. Nowadays she carried forty pounds too much flab, three pounds too much makeup, and the resemblance leaned more toward Petunia Pig. “What’ll it be?”

“Boilermaker for me,” I said, “and a ‘shine for the fur ball.”

She waddled to the bar to fill our order.

The rabbit wiggled himself some breathing room. “I’m sorry,” he said, misinterpreting the reason for my anger. “I know you told me to keep my distance, but I couldn’t resist. My entire life I’ve been a clown, acting out jokes for a living. Here I saw the chance to get involved in something serious for a change, and I took it.”

His right-hand fingers started a frisky jig on the booth top, which his left-hand fingers couldn’t resist joining in. “You can’t imagine how exciting it’s been for me just to follow you around and watch you work. Granted, I disobeyed your order. For that I apologize. But, to be honest, I’m delighted I did. I haven’t had this much fun in ages.”

“I’m glad I brightened your humdrum life,” I said sarcastically. “Maybe you’ll do something for me in return.”

The rabbit doubled up his ears so they wouldn’t collide with the booth top when he nodded his head. “Name it.”

“Tell me about your wife,” I said with enough frost in my voice to turn the rabbit’s nose blue.

“My wife?” The rabbit’s word balloon miserably failed its maiden flight, collapsing half-deflated across my shoulder.

I grabbed it, squashed it into an hourglass shape, and tossed it in front of him. “Jessica Rabbit.” I pointed to the mangled balloon. “Your wife. Remember her?”

“Oh, of course. Jessica!” Roger plucked the name from out of the air above him and extended it to me pillowed in the cup of his palm. “Jessica. She’s my wife.”

I rolled the name into a tiny ball and flicked it into orbit off the end of my thumb. “And also Rocco DeGreasy’s current romantic interlude. How come you didn’t tell me about her?”

The rabbit twiddled the stubby ends of his ears. “I didn’t think it was important.”

I tilted my head back and rolled my eyes. Melodramatic, I know, but dealing with Toons seemed to have that effect on me. “Your wife plays patty cake with one of the guys you work for, one of the guys who you say reneged on your contract, and you don’t think it’s important? My friend, you got a lot to learn about what makes the world go round.”

“Well, how come you didn’t pry it out of me?” said the rabbit, turning untypically militant in his own defense. “I mean you’ve got some responsibilities in this case, too.”

The waitress brought our drinks. While I fished out my wallet, she snabbed a few stray ear puffs floating across the low ceiling.

“So maybe we both made a mistake,” I said, figuring there to be zip percentage in arguing with a bubble-brain like Roger. “What say we chalk it off to experience, and start over?”

“Fine with me.”

“Great. Let’s begin with how you and Jessica first met.”

The rabbit crossed his oblong pupils as though reading the high points of his life off a crib sheet taped to the rear of his nose. “We met one day at a photo session.”

“At Carol Masters’s place?”

“Yes. Jessica had just finished shooting a liquor ad, and I was there to do a supporting role in a jungle Jim strip. This was, of course, when I was still doing bit parts, before I signed with the DeGreasys. We chatted for a while. Nothing of any great import. Mainly trade gossip, who got his contract dropped, who got a new strip, who got married, who had kids, who got divorced. Normal small talk. We seemed to get along pretty well, so I asked her to dinner. I didn’t really expect her to accept, not with her being a humanoid and me a barnyard. But she did. We went to this cozy Italian place and had a delightful time. We talked and laughed and played kneesies under the table. She came back to my place for a drink. I made some popcorn, lit a fire, and played her a song on my piano. Then, more as a gag than anything else, I proposed to her. Got down on bended knee, the whole works. To my great surprise, Jessica accepted. We flew to Reno and tied the knot.” He commemorated the happy event by looping his ears into a bow and bugging his eyes out into two perfectly matched hearts.

“You mean Jessica married you on your first date?”

“Yes. I could hardly believe it.”

Same here. “How long after your marriage before the DeGreasys gave you a contract?”

“Almost immediately.”

“How did it happen?”

“One night, right after Jessica and I got married, we were sitting in our living room listening to our stereo. I told her how much I envied her. How it had always been my fondest wish to be a well-known star. The next day, out of the blue, Rocco DeGreasy called up, said he had seen me in some of my supporting roles, said he thought I had enough talent to carry my own strip, and offered me a contract.”

“Did you know about Jessica’s previous relationship with Rocco? That she had left him to marry you?”

The rabbit nodded slowly. “But I don’t think she ever really loved him. I think he had something on her, something dreadful he used to hold her to him. A girl as wonderful as Jessica would never voluntarily stay with anyone as awful as Rocco.”

“Any chance Jessica might have been influential in getting you your contract?”

“I don’t know.” Roger’s ears turned as limp as stalks of old celery. “I always secretly suspected she probably had gone to Rocco about it, but I never asked her outright. I was afraid to. I desperately wanted to believe I had gotten it based on my own merits, not because Rocco thought it might win Jessica back Anyway, for a while I was the happiest bunny alive. I had Jessica, and I had a contract with the biggest syndicate in the business, and I had their promise to make me a star.”

So much for that part of Roger’s life where everybody had sung in tune. Now for the later sessions, where the notes had turned sour, and the strolling violinist had left in disgust. “What caused your marriage to break up?”

The rabbit’s ears flopped over double and wobbled side to side, like a television aerial trying unsuccessfully to align itself with a very faint signal. “It was a real mystery. We had been married about a year when, about two weeks ago, almost overnight, Jessica changed from a kind, wonderful, caring person into a shrewish, raving witch.” Roger’s body sagged.

“You don’t have any idea what caused the change?”

“None. She refused to discuss it or even to admit that she was any different. I suggested a marriage counselor, but she said no. She moved out on me and moved back in with Rocco DeGreasy.”

“You seen her since?”

“No. I’ve tried to talk to her a couple of times, but she avoids me. I understand she’s contacted a lawyer and put a divorce in the works.” His eyelids dipped to half mast in memory of his dear departed, and he saluted her with a long drink of ‘shine. His ear puffs, when they appeared, came out in a curving column of spheres resembling the smoke from an underpowered locomotive chugging up a long, impossibly difficult hill.

“OK. Now that we’ve covered your marital squabbles, let’s do your assault on Rocco DeGreasy.”

The rabbit’s pupils bounced back and forth across his eyes like the electronic blips in an arcade tennis game. “I knew I should have told you about that. I knew I could never hide it from you. Not from a pro.” His thought-balloon formed an image of a wooden hammer that whopped a few licks of sense into his head. “It happened the first time we met after Jessica left me. I accused Rocco of somehow blackmailing her into it. Know what he did? He laughed at me. He didn’t even answer. He just laughed at me. Tell me, Mister Valiant, do you know how miserable it is to have a person laugh at you?”

It seemed an odd statement from someone whose main function in life was to make people laugh at him, but I didn’t feel up to tackling the philosophic implications. “Look,” I said, “I’m not so sure this is really my kind of job. Seems to me that maybe what you ought to do is to take this up with your Toon union labor board. You need an arbitrator, not a private eye.”

“I already threatened to do that, I did, but Rocco warned me that it might have unfortunate consequences.”

“Any idea what he meant?”

“Sure. He meant his brother Dominick.” Roger shuddered the way you do when an icy draft slips down the back of your neck. “I’m not a brave rabbit, Mister Valiant. I’m not about to buck Rocco and Dominick by myself. That’s why I came to you.

I cradled my head in my hands. What had I ever done to deserve this? Other detectives get the Maltese Falcon. I get a paranoid rabbit. “You should have told me about your marital problems before,” I said self-righteously, half-hoping I’d provoke the rabbit to fire me.

The rabbit accepted my scolding with remarkably good grace. “Well, I would have, except you didn’t ask. When we first met, you were so taciturn and in such a hurry. Who am I to second guess a private detective? I assumed a close-mouthed, speedy approach must be your style. I assumed you were a pro, and you knew what you were doing. I guess I was right. I mean you did find out about everything anyway.”

“Yeah, I sure did,” I said with glum resignation. The rabbit dropped his voice so low his word-balloon barely cleared the booth top. “Where do you go next, Mister Valiant?” The words inside the balloon flickered on and off like a decrepit neon sign. “Are you going to see Jessica?”

“Yes, I am. First thing tomorrow morning.”

The rabbit bowed his head and sent up a scrolly, illuminated balloon that could have been ripped straight out of a prayer book. “Well, when you do, would you give her a message for me? Would you tell her I still love her? Tell her I miss her very much, and I’d like to give our marriage another try. Tell her that I’m sorry for whatever it was I did to offend her, and I promise to change. I promise to do anything she wants, if only she’ll take me back. Will you tell her that? Please?”

I didn’t stick around much longer. It depressed me to see a grown rabbit cry.