32

Sleaze’s secretary did everything but barricade the door with her desk to keep us out of his office. When I bulled past her and got inside, I could see why. Her boss had a very nasty secret.

We caught him just slipping on one of those red and white Little Orphan Annie numbers that became the rage after the kid struck it big on Broadway. He stood there in black padded brassiere, lacy garter belt, and sheer nylon stockings, his dress bunched around his shoulders, staring at us over his frilly white collar in embarrassed surprise. “This isn’t the way it looks,” he said lamely. “I’m not a transvestite. I’m incognito. You can’t imagine how difficult it’s been for me lately with these people parading around outside. Having them yell at me and pelt me with spoiled vegetables. I wear this getup so I can come and go without being recognized. Really. That’s the only reason.”

Sure it was. And I’m the Ape Man’s uncle. He pulled his dress down the rest of the way and gave us our first clear look at the bottom half of his face, completely done up with rouge, powder, and lipstick. In a beauty contest between him and Elsie the Cow, he might get the nod. Call it a tossup on looks, but at least Sleaze didn’t drool.

Sleaze straightened out his stocking seams to plumb line perfection. He sat down at his desk, pulled out a makeup mirror, and began gluing on a set of long, fluttery, false eyelashes you could have used as decoys in a butterfly hunt. “What is it you want?” he asked.

I tossed him the envelope of negatives, which he caught girl-style, with his forearms in together and his hands spread apart. “Little Rock DeGreasy cracked and told me about your forgery racket,” I said. “I want to hear your version.”

Sleaze gave the negatives a casual look and flirtatiously handed me the envelope back, holding onto it just a fraction of a second too long after I’d grabbed the other end. Swell. On top of every other wacko in this goofball case I had an amorous drag queen, too.

“I wanted badly to get out of the porno, business,” said Sleaze taking great pains to arrange himself so I had a clear shot at his shaved legs. “It’s not nearly as lucrative as most people assume. Tastes change rapidly. So I agreed to go along with Carol and Little Rock’s scheme. I duplicated their stolen negatives, and they sold them as originals.” He smiled. Lipstick speckled nearly every one of his teeth. “I’m very proud of my process. I invented it myself, you know. It’s absolutely foolproof. I can duplicate a negative so perfectly that not even an expert can tell.”

“You used that process to duplicate the negatives to Jessica’s comic book, didn’t you?” said Roger. I knew it was true. I knew that’s what Sleaze had done, but I’m sure I never told the rabbit. Imagine that. He must have figured it out by himself. Imagine that. “You sold the originals to Jessica,” he stated. “And a set of duplicates to Rocco.”

“It shows you how good they were,” said Sleaze. “Not even an expert like Rocco DeGreasy could spot them as phony.”

Roger turned to me. “Sorry for the interruption, partner. You want to take it back?” His balloon came out the size of a blackjack and as hard as last week’s biscuits. It hit the floor and sent up a balloon of its own with “THUNK” in bold letters inside.

“No, go ahead,” I said. “You’re doing great.”

The rabbit plunged right back in without so much as a thank you smile. “You went to Rocco’s house the night he died to sell him the negatives,” Roger said. “He examined them and gave you a check for ten thousand bucks. Then he tossed them into the fireplace.”

“Yes. Can you believe it?” said Sleaze. “If he’d only known what fine artistry had gone into producing them. All that work, up in smoke.”

“Once that transaction had been completed,” continued Roger, “you gave Rocco another proposition. Hiram Toner dealt with wealthy collectors through a middleman. That middleman was you. Toner gave you photos of the artwork he’d gotten from Carol Masters. You knew where they had come from, but you took them to Rocco anyway. Except you didn’t intend to sell them to him. At least not the artwork. You intended to sell him the story behind the artwork. Right so far?”

Sleaze nodded. He opened a cylindrical case atop his desk and took out a long blonde wig. He set it on his head, wiggled it around until he got the look he wanted, and pouted at himself in the mirror. “I showed Rocco the photos of his stolen artwork and told him that for another ten thousand I would tell him a very interesting story about them.”

“So he paid you another ten thousand, which accounts for the fact he wrote you two checks that night rather than one. You then outlined the entire hoax.”

Sleaze nodded again, but carefully, so his wig wouldn’t slip.

I felt like suggesting he tack it in place with a stapler, but I wasn’t in the mood for humor.

“What did Rocco do when you told him his son and his best photographer had conspired against him?” Roger asked.

“He went to the phone and called each one.”

“You were with him when he did it?”

“Yes.”

“You heard what he said to them?”

“Yes. He told Carol he knew she had stolen his artwork and had duplicated it for multiple sale. He told her he planned to turn her over to the police. He told Little Rock pretty much the same story, that the scheme had come apart. But he didn’t mention anything about involving the police. Instead he ordered the boy to come to his house immediately for a chat.”

“Did either one of them, Carol or Little Rock, arrive while you were there?”

“No, neither one.”

Roger then asked a question that, I must admit, hadn’t occurred to me. Oh, it would have sooner or later. It just hadn’t yet. “Why did you put an end to the scheme anyway? Weren’t Carol and Little Rock paying you nicely for producing their negatives?”

“Sure. But, according to one of my contacts, several collectors who’d bought those photos had met by accident, compared notes, realized they’d been taken, and were tracking their way back to the source.”

So the scam was unraveling, pretty much the way Carol and Little Rock figured it eventually would. What little Sleaze had to lose by bailing out when he did, he stood to make back and then some with one big score off Rocco.

“Rocco also wrote a check to Toner that night,” said Roger. “Why?”

“Rocco decided to go ahead and buy the artwork, even knowing it to be forged. He planned to use it to keep Carol and Little Rock in their places. I don’t think he really intended to turn either of them over to the police. He just loved to make them worry. He put Toner’s check into an envelope and asked me to mail it on my way home, which I did.”

The rabbit then switched topics a hundred and eighty degrees. A good technique. Keeps your quarry off balance. “Little Rock told us you approached the syndicate numerous times on his behalf with offers to buy out Roger Rabbit’s contract.”

Sleaze went to the window and listened to the concerned citizens chanting, “Hey, clown, get out of town,” on the street below. He shut the heavy drapes, muffling out the sound completely. “True, I approached the syndicate,” said Sleaze. He rifled through his purse for a cigarette, held it to his lips, and waited for some gentleman to step forward and light it for him. I was inclined to watch him die of a nicotine fit, but Roger caved in and did the deed. “Little Rock and I discussed Roger Rabbit quite often, and we shared the same assessment of him,” said Sleaze, tapping his cigarette into his ashtray after every puff. “The rabbit had a tremendous amount of talent, talent which Rocco let go to waste. Little Rock could not approach his father outright with an offer to purchase, since his father would refuse out of general principles, simply to deny little Rock something he wanted terribly. So Little Rock asked me to act as go-between. But Rocco wouldn’t sell. I offered him nearly twice Roger’s fair market value, but no. Rocco remained dead set on keeping the rabbit in his stable. Why, I don’t know, and I never found out.”

Up to here the rabbit had been doing an A-number-one job. I don’t know if I could have handled it any better myself, so you know how good that made him. It must have been beginner’s luck, though, because, instead of following through on the syndicate angle, he veered off on a half-baked tangent involving, what else, but his darling Jessica. “That pornographic comic you made with Jessica Rabbit,” he said. “Tell me the true story behind it.”

“What do you mean, the true story?” asked Sleaze. “What does he mean, the true story?” he said to me. “I told you the true story. What else does he want?”

“I want you to admit you drugged Jessica and forced her to appear in your reprehensible comic.”

“Where did you get this guy?” asked Sleaze, scrambling the air alongside his temple. “He crazy, or what?”

“Yeah, he’s crazy,” I said, trying to pull it out of the fire. “He used to moonlight as a gymnasium punching bag and took one too many to the noggin.”

The rabbit refused to take my out. “You drugged her, didn’t you?” he said in balloons whose interlocking shape had an ominous resemblance to the chains cops find when they frisk down motorcycle bums. A nice touch.

“You’re crazy,” said Sleaze waving away the rabbit’s balloons before they locked around his throat. “It happened just the way I indicated. Jessica appeared in that comic of her own free will, and she came back later begging for more. That’s the truth. I’ve seen enough of these women to know why they do it. Some for the money, some because they’re mentally unstable. If you want my opinion, Jessica was one of the rare few. She did it because she loved it. She loved to strip naked in front of an audience. She loved to excite men to a sexual frenzy. She loved to…”

Roger hopped forward, hauled off, and slugged Sleaze full on the jaw, but the rabbit packed the wallop of an anemic butterfly and didn’t even muss the man’s makeup.

Sleaze rubbed at his jaw the way you’d rub at a mosquito bite, wound up, and clouted Roger with his purse.

The rabbit sailed backward, crashed into the wall, and slid down it, unconscious, to the floor.

“Why did he do that?” asked Sleaze wonderingly, still rubbing idly at his chin. “Why did he attack me?”

“Because you’re a slime ball,” I answered, “and the best you deserve out of life is a broken jaw.” I stepped forward, swung hard, and sent Sleaze to slumberland. He somersaulted backward across his chair and hit the floor, his dress up around his waist. I walked around the desk, grabbed his hem, and pulled his dress down across his knees. I didn’t care about his modesty, but my delicate sensibilities deserved better

I leaned over Roger and slapped him back to consciousness, restraining myself from putting a bit of extra muscle into it. “Let me at him,” said the rabbit gamely, struggling to get to his feet. “Let me at him. I’ll tear him limb from limb.” He got halfway up, bumped his head on one of his own balloons, and fell right back down again.

“Not so fast, slugger,” I said. “Besides, he’s still asleep from the last time you decked him. Give the poor guy a break.”

“He’s what?” asked Roger incredulously.

“He’s still out.” I pointed to Sleaze lying unconscious in the middle of the floor.

“I did that?”

“You sure did.”

“But I could have sworn he hit me back.”

“A reflex action. You hit him, he went out like a light, and his arm jerked up as he went down. It caught you under the chin and sent you flying. But you KO’d him, fair and square, no doubt about it.”

“I did? I really did?”

“A regular John L. Sullivan.”

Roger found his balance and got to his feet. “You know I never actually hit anybody before,” he said proudly.

“Could have fooled me.”

“Yes, honest. And it felt wonderful. Standing up for Jessica that way. I’m rather sorry now I didn’t take boxing lessons when I had the chance. I met Joe Palooka once, you know. And Rocky Marciano, too. We made a March of Dimes commercial together. They both said I should have considered a career in the ring. I assumed they were joking. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe I missed my calling. Maybe I should have been a pugilist. Sugar Roger Rabbit. How does that sound? Or Killer Rabbit. Kid Rabbit. Hurricane Rabbit. The Great Brown Hope.”

The Great Brown Hope? That nearly pushed me over the line, but I let it go. Let him have his moment of glory. How many moments of any kind could he have left?