Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (Roger Rabbit, #1)

by Gary K. Wolf

Carol Masters wasn’t at her studio, so I tried her at home. She lived in a partially Toon, partially human neighborhood that real estate agents called ethnically enriched, and urban renewers called blighted. Depending on which way you happened to be facing—toward the gossiping, front-stoop Toon and human housewives or toward the babbling, back-alley Toon and human drunks—either term could apply.

The cops cruised in under command of a humanoid Toon detective, Captain “Clever” Cleaver. The police force contains one division of humans and one of Toons, with each faction investigating only crimes committed against its own kind. I never saw a Toon cop sharp enough to hack it on the human side, though Cleaver came about as close as any.

I’m not bad, Mr. Valiant. I’m just drawn that way.”

There was a football game on I wanted to catch, the Rams against the Bears with the Rams trying something new, a Toon gorilla as linebacker. Nothing particularly unusual about that. Last statistics I saw, nearly seventy five percent of all pro players were Toons. According to some people, it’s ruined the game, made it not so much football as barnyard brawling.

chatting with a pair of early-bird country bumpkins. At the rubes’ request, Hagar donned his Viking helmet, and he and Browne posed with the two crackers for a photo they could show the folks back home in Podunk, Iowa. As their way of saying thanks, the hayseeds pasted sold labels on Browne’s three most expensive framed original strips. Must have been a good year for sweet corn.

“He did it to be ornery,” she said, “to flaunt his control over me. Rocco couldn’t stand to have people cross him, and I’d been doing a lot of that lately.” “How so?” “My work for Toon’s rights, my support of Roger Rabbit.” She turned her palms toward her, bent her fingers forward, and examined her nails. They were far from beautiful, chipped and scratched, like the nails of a rock climber clawing toward the top. “Rocco couldn’t stand uppity women. He retaliated by yanking my work.”

Billy Donovan arrived first. Billy was a construction worker who had drifted in from the deep South. He wore bulb-toed, clodhopper shoes, bib overalls, a gingham checked shirt, and a ratty straw hat. He sucked on a long shaft of barley grass from the shock his country kin included along with a Baggie of homemade grits, a plug of prime chawing tobacco, and a Mason jar of white lightning in their weekly Kentucky Special Care package. Whenever he won a hand, Billy slapped his knee and said “Aw, shucks.” On any given night he said it a lot. For a down-home hillbilly, he played a big-city brand of poker.

Next came Jess Westertminster, the moneyed one of our group. Jess was descended from a long line of distinguished forebears. His great-great-great had crossed over from the old country on board the Mayflower and had been the guy who arranged to have the nation’s first Thanksgiving dinner, catered by the Toons the colonists found living here. For this Jess’s ancestor got his name in the history books. Another of Jess’s relatives had imported thousands of Toons from China to build the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. They became known as the Yellow Kids and won that relative a spot in the history books, too.

“What’s with the Toon, Eddie? I thought we agreed when we started this game. No women and no Toons.” “Yes, Eddie,” Jess chimed in. “Would you mind explaining? What’s this Toon doing here?”

“You’re working for a Toon?” said Jess incredulously. “Cash me in,” said Harry. “I got business elsewhere.” “Ditto,” said Billy. The three of them collected their money and walked out the door.

“Your friends don’t like Toons very much, do they?” asked Roger pensively. “Not many humans do.”

“I mean why humans don’t like Toons. We’re no different from humans, not really. We have different mannerisms, and different physical makeups, and a different way of talking, but we have the same emotions. We love and hate and laugh and cry exactly the same way humans do.”

“Too bad more humans couldn’t have your attitude toward us, Eddie,” he gushed.

“Yeah, too bad.” Because there wouldn’t be a Toon left alive.

Bennie could easily have wholesaled his coat of many colors to one of those chic boutiques that charged astronomical prices for quilts stitched together by Appalachian Toon rag pickers.

the smut peddlers euphemistically call them adult comics—printed

“Yes, I know him. A no-good, through and through. A human publisher of Toon pornography.”

Baumgartner went bankrupt. He re-surfaced as Sid Sleaze and made a fortune.

For the amount of enthusiasm he showed for it, I might just as well have asked him to watch me fold my laundry. I don’t know. You bend over backward to accommodate these creatures, and you get zippo appreciation for it. No wonder nobody goes out of their way to be nice to them. Where’s the percentage in it?

She walked across the studio, winding up in front of a backdrop that pictured a sylvan glade with green trees and clean water and pure air. I took it to be some never-never fantasy-land, the world of the future, until I realized it was a decade-old backdrop and was really the world of the past.

I had the sports news on the car radio. At some local West Coast track meet a Toon kangaroo had shattered the record for the long jump, and a Toon seal took every swimming medal. I wondered how far Wheaties would get in passing them off as all-American boys.

“Of course she was a human. Rocco was a human. What else could his child’s mother be? Humans and Toons can’t mate. Everyone knows that.”

“Got to hand it to them,” he said. “They’re doing a great job of crossing the line.” “What do you mean by that?” I asked. “According to their birth records,” he said, “both Rocco and Dominick DeGreasy are bona fide, humanoid Toons.”

overheard a conversation between Rocco and Dominick. They had apparently been looking for it for years. Ever since they used it to cross the line.” “I know about them being born Toons,” I said. “You telling me this magic lantern made them human?” “Correct. And made them rich, too. It cost them two wishes apiece. They each had one wish remaining, but before they could use it, a thief stole the lantern from them. They searched the world over for it, but never saw it again. “Not that it really mattered to them, not then. They were wealthy, and they were human. Rocco even married a human woman and fathered a human child.

“Look, I got to take this rabbit in for questioning. Maybe he is a doppel. Maybe he will disintegrate before he gets out. So what? This is a Toon we’re talking about. What do you care whether you ever see him again or not?” “I care because he’s my partner. It doesn’t matter what he is or what I think about him. A guy’s supposed to watch out for his partner.”