21

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 Tweety 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 paraffin 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.”

He made my money vanish with a skill that would have impressed Mandrake the Magician and gave me a duplicate of the long, hard going-over I get from patrol cops when they catch me hanging around a decent neighborhood at an indecent hour. “You still in the detective racket, Eddie?”

“Some months more than others. This month up to my eyeballs.”

He picked a jawbreaker out of a cardboard box, popped it into his mouth, and poked random holes in it with what he had left of his teeth. “This comic you’re after. It have anything to do with a case?”

I told him it did, and I told him which one.

“No kidding.” His gumball flipped back and forth between his cheeks like he had two competing Mister Tooth Decays in there engaged in a cannon battle over his few remaining molars. “The Rocco DeGreasy murder. Do tell.” He pointed toward a section of his comic rack with more webs on it than you’d find on Spiderman’s laundry line. “I got a big bunch of his syndicate’s stuff over there. Hasn’t been moving too good lately, and DeGreasy’s got this policy of no returns. You want my opinion, I say he got knocked off by an overstocked newsboy.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the tip, Pops. I’ll check it out. In the meantime, I’d appreciate whatever you can dig up on that comic I gave you.”

“Be my pleasure,” he said. “Always happy to assist a force of the law. I’ll get right on it.”

I gave him my card and asked him to contact me when he got results.

I called Big Art at the pool hall I used for an answering service. He checked behind the cigar counter and found one message for me, from the rabbit. Roger had connected with my phone company contact and discovered that, the evening he died, Rocco had placed two calls, one to the DeGreasy art gallery, one to Carol Masters’s studio. He had talked to the gallery for ten minutes, and to Carol Masters for five. I wondered what about.

The rabbit had also done some productive spadework on backtracking the teakettle. The Alice in Wonderland prop man had bought it from a Toontown junkman, and the rabbit was on his way to interview him.

The rabbit said he would call in later for further instructions. I asked Big Art to tell the rabbit to check around with local messenger services and find out which one had delivered the stolen artwork to Hiram Toner at the Hi Tone Gallery of Comic Art.

Next I swung by the office, mainly because it boasted the cheapest drinks in town. When I pulled up outside, I found Clever Cleaver’s car parked at the curb. Since I’ve never been known for my good sense, I went in anyway.

He was waiting for me in the hall. He’d been there for quite a spell, judging from the number of scorch marks his smoky-yellow cigarette puffs had branded into the carpet.

“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” I asked, letting us both inside.

He went straight to my bottom desk drawer, hauled out my bottle, and held it to the light. It contained enough for one whopper or two petites. “You don’t mind, do you, Butch?” he said, pouring the bottle’s contents into a single glass. “After all, I am company.”

I shrugged and shut my mouth to keep my tongue from licking my lips.

He tossed down the last of my hootch and ejected a few projectile-shaped ear puffs, which came at me as low and hard as his next statement. “Get off the Roger Rabbit case,” he said, biting down hard on every word and spitting them one by one in my direction. “I got the wife pegged as the killer, and I’m about this near to proving it.” He sent up two parallel lines so close together you would have been hard pressed to pass a hangman’s noose between them. “You keep poking around, you’re liable to screw up my play, and that would make me very unhappy. So lay off Roger Rabbit.” He took a pencil out of his coat pocket, underlined his words, and stuck them to my wall where I’d have to cover them with a picture, paint them over, or spend the rest of my life looking at them every time I sat down at my desk.

“Sorry to ruin your tough guy rendition, Captain, but you got your facts wrong. I’m not investigating Roger’s murder. I agree with you one hundred percent. Jessica Rabbit did it, and I wish you all the luck in the world in nailing her for it. I’m after whoever got Rocco DeGreasy.”

That brought him up short. “You kidding me? Roger Rabbit killed DeGreasy. There’s no doubt about it. Rusty Hudson put it to bed once and for all when the lab found the rabbit’s paw prints all over the fatal thirty-eight.”

That bit of information, which came as news to me, sure gave the case an interesting twist. “I know it sounds like a lost cause, but I’m not exactly swamped with work right now, so I think I’ll putter around with it awhile longer.”

“Suit yourself. Keep chasing hobgoblins until you’re blue in the face. Just don’t mess me up.”

“Perish the thought. I would like to know one thing about your investigation, though. Did your boys search Roger’s house?”

“You bet. They gave it a thorough going-over.”

“Did they, by chance, take Roger’s teakettle with them when they left?”

Until he knew where this was leading, Cleaver wasn’t so anxious to go. “His teakettle? What could they have wanted with his teakettle? And why do you care, anyway?” His left eyebrow assumed the shape of a hunchbacked caterpillar.

“I collect them, and I need the rabbit’s to complete my set.”

Cleaver scrambled the air alongside his temple. “Valiant, sometimes you slay me.”

He left me with an empty bottle and another big hole in my puzzle.