4

I slept in my jalopy and showered in the morning mist that blows off the ocean. My chenille seat cover toweled me dry. I finished my toilette by lathering on enough Ben Gay to parboil a yam, then dressed standing on the curb.

My mood brightened right along with the landscape as Big Sol punched in for work right on schedule and threw the master switch that drapes this town with tinsel.

A Toon mockingbird flew by, littering the landscape with a bad impression of a canary. I brushed its ersatz warbles off my car before they cracked open and blistered the paint.

I cranked up my engine and headed on down the yellow brick freeway.

Breakfast consisted of auto exhaust and two Almond Joys nutty side up chased with the dynamic duo, a shot of gargle and a gasper.

I paid a quick visit and twenty bucks to Arnie Johnson, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. I didn’t have an appointment, but Arnie squeezed me in, between a mangy dog and a bloated goldfish. He taped my cracked ribs, stuck three stitches in my head, advised me to find a safer line of work, and agreed, as usual, not to report my assorted bumps, cuts, and bruises to the proper authorities.

He updated my chart, informing me that my head now bore only three less stitches than a regulation Spalding baseball, and was only ten shy of a world’s record. He told me to hurry up and take a few more lumps so he could secure his place in medical history. I promised to do my best.

I found Professor Ring Wordhollow in his office, surrounded by piles and piles of Toon balloons.

With his slender, rounded appendages and limber joints, Wordhollow resembled a stick doll manufactured out of LifeSavers and rubber bands. He wore a shapeless pair of nubbly blue wool trousers, a white shirt, an ink-spotted green tie tucked into his waistband, and a belted shooting jacket with half a dozen pens and pencils filling the loops designed to hold shotgun shells.

As head of UCLA’s Visual Linguistics Department, Wordhollow devoted his life to the study of Toon conversation. He pored over balloons the way touts read the racing form. He could point out subtle—and to him, thrilling—differences in texture, thickness, circumference, lettering style. As a human, he had a major handicap in the exercise of his chosen academic specialty. A scholar of American history could easily learn to speak English. Wordhollow could hold his nose and blow until his face turned blue. He’d never produce a balloon.

I gave him the one my attacker left behind. He promised to take a look.

A revolving circle of Toons picketed the entrance to Schwab’s. Seems Hollywood’s most famous drugstore discriminated. It refused to serve Toons their daily dose of tutti-frutti.

I say throw open the door and invite them inside. They want to spend five bits for a two-bit soda, let them. They want to sit next to humans and gobble overpriced French fries, who cares? Eddie Valiant’s definition of civil rights. Their money’s as good as anybody else’s. I ought to know. I’m the one working for a rabbit.

I ducked my head, stiffened my arm, and plowed into the tightly packed bubble clusters of protest which blocked the front door. It was like swimming through the sting and pop in a bottle of beer.

Once you got past the turmoil, it was a typical day at Schwab’s. Out-of-work actors and actresses hogged the counter stools nursing cheeseburgers, lime rickeys, and the hope of being discovered. The only stars I saw sparkled in the eyes of the rubbernecked tourists lined up for booths.

On my way to the fountain, I checked out the counter dollies. I tallied four pairs of pretty good legs, one set of blue eyes so fiery they could melt the Tin Man, and enough angora sweaters to wrap King Kong’s high school ring. My purely unofficial opinion was good quality, but not great. Nobody likely to replace Jean Harlow this year. Or any year, for that matter.

Skipper, the counter boy, had his nose buried in a Hollywood fan magazine. His lips moved as he read. I watched his mouth and caught the gist. Baby Herman confesses to being Heddy Lamar’s love child. For this they turn perfectly good trees into paper?

“Any messages?” I asked.

Without raising his eyes, Skipper reached under the counter. He handed me a single note. A phone message. “Slow week,” he said. I never heard Skipper utter more than two words running. He aspired to laconic, saw himself as the drugstore Gary Cooper. I slapped half a buck into his open palm.

“Thanks, Eddie,” he said with his usual one, two. He tried doing George Raft flipping the silver but muffed the catch. Miss Liberty plopped in the sink. “Oh, drat.” I left him up to his elbows in Lux detergent and warned him to beware of sharks. He laughed. But he would. He yuks at anything. Skipper’s the kind Toons were made for.

A mean eye and hostile attitude swept the Iowa hayseeds out of my usual booth. I slid in and unfolded Louise Wrightliter’s notes.

I set the two stars side by side and ran an eenie meenie miney moe. I caught Jessica Rabbit by the toe. I picked her up and started to read.

Less than two pages later, with a five-alarm fire pouring smoke out from under my collar, I signaled Skipper to draw me a seltzer, light on spritz, heavy on ice. I needed cooling, and I needed it bad. The last time I read anything this spicy, it spelled Burp and exploded out of a Toon who’d overindulged in a chili parlor.

A hot number, Jessica Rabbit. Louise Wrightliter meticulously itemized times, dates, and places of Jessica’s multiple rendezvous with Gable. Plus, Louise had a battalion of witnesses—hotel clerks and bellboys, mostly—who had seen the two together. Louise even snapped photos of the happy couple. One showed them clinking champagne glasses and wearing the monogrammed cashmere bathrobes that come with a fruit basket and complete discretion if you rent a bungalow at one of the swankier Hollywood hideaways.

In the pictures of them on the street, both wore sunglasses, slouch hats, trench coats, and baggy britches. Adequate disguises for most people, but not this pair. Anybody on the short side of total myopia would recognize Jessica Rabbit even stuffed in a gunnysack. As for Gable, there was no mistaking him, either. I only saw one other with ears as big as his, and he answered to the name of Dumbo. Forget ordinary earmuffs. Give Gable a set of fur-lined peach baskets.

“Your seltzer,” said Skipper without taking his nose out of his magazine or his mind out of the sewer.

I slipped the waspwaisted glass discreetly under the table, added a dollop of joy juice from my hip flask, and swizzled the mix with my tonsils.

This was the poop Louise had used to write her exposes, and it backed her up six ways to Sunday. I folded the report and stuck it back in my pocket. Looked like I’d have to tell Roger he didn’t have a case. Judging from the swill in Louise Wrightliter’s journalistic garbage pail, maybe he didn’t have a wife anymore, either.

Even though Jessica’s material told the tale, I took a gander at Gable’s anyway. The mark of the consummate professional.

Wrightliter had turned over one of Gable’s stones and found an ugly serpent lurking underneath. According to a “reliable” source, Gable wasn’t the man’s man he appeared to be. He swung more toward a hint of mint, if you get my drift.

Rumors that Hollywood’s premier heartthrob was a nancy. That was a revelation that would rock a neighborhood Bijou or two. I wondered why Louise Wrightliter hadn’t branded her byline on that juicy tidbit. And what did that do to Gable’s supposed romance with Jessica Rabbit?

On the bottom of Gable’s heap was a medical bill from a Doctor Wallace Ford. Five hundred eighty-six bucks for unspecified services rendered. Arnie Johnson came a lot cheaper, but I bet Gable’s problems didn’t result from fleas, ticks, or a porcupine quill in the snout.

Fortunately for my bank account, this case wasn’t over yet. I could milk this cow another day or two easy. Thank God for closet queens, jealous rabbits, and philandering wives.

Time to smell the rest of the roses cooking on my burner. I hauled out my phone message.

Charley Ferris, the day manager, backed out of the walk-in freezer cradling a half-gallon carton as tenderly as a mother would her child. He wore Blondie Bumstead’s white apron, Mary Worth’s sensible shoes, and Steve Canyon’s slit cap except Charley’s came in white paper instead of khaki twill. Charley eats, breathes, sleeps and sneezes ice cream. To him, Heaven’s a frozen cloud of moo juice and Hell’s a busted churn. He turned around and saw me sitting in my accustomed spot.

“Hey, you, Valiant,” he shouted, so enraged he threatened me with his armload of hand-packed. I shivered at the thought before I calculated the odds. Let him conk me to his heart’s content. His bludgeon would melt to slush a good half an hour before I went senseless. “Quit using my establishment for an auxiliary office. I ought to bill you rent for the booth. And your phone calls! One more bookie, one more loan shark, one more bazoomie rings my number looking for Eddie Valiant, and I start charging you secretarial rates.”

I toasted him with a sip of seltzer. “Sure, sure. Add it on my tab.”

Charley slammed his flavor of the month on the table and drew his stainless steel ice cream packing spoon out of his apron string. “Your tab. You mean the one you didn’t pay last month, or the one you’re not going to pay next month?”

The first rule of a private eye. Never let them see you sweat, a procedure which got a lot easier once I started wearing my shoulder pads under my arms instead of over. “Live and let live, Charley. Hermie Schwab pays you fifty simoleons a week, and you act like you own the place.”

He stuck his spoon under my beezer. I caught a deliciously nutty whiff of pistachio, my favorite. If I had to die at the end of a scoop, at least I’d expire happy. “Yeah, yeah, wise guy,” taunted Charley. “How much did you make last week? Come on. Tell me. I’m waiting.” He waved his spoon around the room. “Tell everybody. We’d all like to hear.”

Charley knew how to hurt a guy, but I was born wearing cast-iron underwear. “I got potential.” I fluttered my phone message at him like it mattered a hill of beans.

With surprising speed for a guy with frostbitten fingers, Charley snatched the note out of my mitt. “Oh, yeah? Big, important shamus. Hotshot private dick. Peeper to the stars. Let’s measure the vast amount of potential you got.”

I tried to grab it back, but he smacked my hand with his spoon.

I relieved the sting with a slug of tonic as Charley read my note out loud. “‘I must see you immediately,’” he said. “‘I have a mystery which only you can solve. Cost is no object. I’ll pay anything. Please. Help me. You’re the only one I trust.’ Signed…” At this point Charley lost his voice. He tried to talk, but only a harsh, froggy croak came out.

Every eye in the place was on us. You could have heard an egg cream plop. I slid out of the booth, heisted the note away from him, and read the name he couldn’t. “‘David O. Selznick.’” I folded it up real tiny. “Selznick, Selznick, where have I heard that name before?” I slid the wadded note across his extended spoon to soak up some flavor. “Oh, yeah. I remember. He’s only the most powerful producer in Hollywood.” I stuffed it into his open mouth. “So, Charley. You were asking me to take my business elsewhere?” I headed for the door.

Charley gulped hard and swallowed my message. He ran after me and caught me by the arm. He elbowed a paying customer off her stool, wiped it clean with his sleeve, and forced me to sit.

He motioned for Skipper to whip me up a Schwab’s Special, the double banana split.

“Right, boss,” said Skipper, hauling out his steam shovel and building a four-mounded creation to rival the Pyramids of Giza. He dropped it in front of me. It registered six point one on the Richter scale. If he ever served two of these at once, his customers would have to eat them in the basement because the combined weight would drive the counter straight through the floor. Skipper used his fan magazine for a place mat, fulfilling my lifetime fantasy: to lick butterscotch syrup off Betty Grable’s face.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem,” Skipper responded with his usual, stupid grin.

I’m not much for health food, and the special came loaded with it—bananas, pineapple, strawberries, cherries, nuts—but I’m also not one to turn down a free lunch. I ate it left to right, saving the chocolate end for dessert.

As I spooned down the last bite, Charley leaned in real close. His breath reeked of peppermint, the schnapps, not the chewing gum. “You like it, Eddie? If it’s not made right, I’ll do you another myself.”

“It’s fine, Charley. Perfect.”

He handed me a paper napkin, an extraneous gesture since I’d already wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “You want anything else?” asked Charley. “Maybe a malt to wash it down? Or something stronger?” His voice dropped. “Promise me you won’t tell Hermie, but I keep hootch in the freezer.”

No kidding. “You’re angling me for a favor.”

“Your bill.” Skipper laid down my check.

Charley grabbed for the tab, not that he had any competition, rolled it into a ball, and dropped it into an ashtray.

“Eddie. Eddie, my friend,” he said, lighting my leafer and giving me his matches to keep. “I got a niece on my wife’s side. Trudy Hammerschlemmer’s her stage name. The old lady keeps pushing me to introduce her to a big-time producer. As if one would ever come in here. No self-respecting mogul’s gonna hang out in a drugstore. That Lana Turner thing? That was pure publicity eyewash. Just between us girls, Hermie slipped Metro a wad to say they discovered her here.” Charley peeled off his paper cap. A piece of the front end tore loose and stuck to his sweaty forehead. He worried it loose with his fingernail. “If you could maybe give Mr. Selznick Trudy’s portfolio, I’d personally make sure that you never paid for another soda as long as you live. “

This was taking on all the aspects of big potential. “No more complaints about Skipper fielding my calls?”

He crossed where his heart would be if he had one. “As God is my witness.”

Being the only rider on the merry-go-round, I had my best chance ever at grabbing the brass ring. “I want one of those cardboard reserved signs left permanently on my booth.”

His face flashed dark. Who pushed him harder, me or his missus? No contest. He nodded. His wife’s a woman I’d hate to meet in a dark alley.

I wiggled my fingers. “Gimmee the goods.”

He reached over the counter and grabbed a leather book he kept at the ready beside the frozen frappe glasses.

I took a gander at her eight-by-ten glossy. Surprise, surprise! Long, silky hair. Big brown eyes. Soft nose. Wide mouth. Plenty of teeth. Chariey’s niece had a future in the movies, all right.

Whenever Lassie needed a double. Woof, woof. “I’ll do what I can.”

Always one to push my luck, I stopped at the cash register and helped myself to a stogy.

Charley smiled and presented me with the whole box. In my town, in my business, it’s all in who you know.