Who Censored Roger Rabbit? Read Online Free PDF Page B

whatsoever. I suspect Rocco thought it would please me and perhaps win me back. Or possibly Rocco feared Roger might move to another part of the country and take me with him. A contract tying Roger down might have seemed the easiest way to prevent that.”
    “Did the DeGreasys ever promise Roger his own strip?”
    Too bad she suppressed her balloons. Her tinkling laugh could have reoutfitted a Swiss bell-ringer. “No, never. That’s nothing more than a story Roger concocted. You should not take Roger too seriously. He does see a psychiatrist, you know.”
    “You ever hear of anyone wanting to buy out Roger’s contract and give him his own strip?”
    “Yes, I heard a rumor to that effect, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to star Roger in anything. Believe me, the rabbit has absolutely no talent. None.”
    The director interrupted us before I could follow up. “Jessica, sweetheart,” the director said, “the agency man wants to shoot a slightly different angle. Could you give us another doppel?”
    “Of course. Would you excuse me?” she said to me. She stepped into a nearby dressing trailer and several minutes later emerged as twins.
    “Ready to shoot,” she told the director.
    The two indistinguishable Jessicas climbed into the helicopter and flew off into the morning sky.
    While I waited for her to return, I located the nearest pay phone and called my client, hoping to maybe clarify a few of the inconsistencies Jessica had lobbed into the ballgame.
    Roger answered in a state of near panic. “My God, am I glad it’s you! You have to get over here. This isn’t just a matter of a broken promise anymore. It’s escalated drastically.”
    “How so?”
    Roger gulped audibly. “Somebody just tried to kill me.”

Chapter •8•
    I sat in Roger’s living room doing my best to swallow a chuckle. “Somebody attacked you with what?”
    “A custard cream pie,” Roger repeated, nervously fidgeting with the pie tin balanced on his lap. “I was on my way home from an early photo session at Carol Masters’s when somebody jumped out from behind a tree and smacked me in the face with a custard cream pie.”
    “It must have been a practical joke. Nobody could kill you with a pie.”
    “Oh, you’re wrong. Indeed, they could. In the classic comic pie toss, somebody plops you in the kisser, coming straight in to get maximum splatter, and then pulls up short so as not to mash in your nose. The pie tin slithers off, and that’s it. But not this fellow.” Roger fanned out his fingers and scrunched them into his face to demonstrate the angle of attack. “He came in from about shoulder level so the custard blocked off my mouth and nose, then he gave it kind of a half twist so the whipped cream flew up and covered my eyes. And he didn’t let go. He held that pie so tightly against my face that I couldn’t breathe. I kicked him a hearty one in the shins, and I guess I connected, because he grunted, dropped his pie, and ran away.”
    “You get a look at him?”
    “No. He had turned a corner before I got my eyes scooped off.”
    “Human or ‘toon? Could you tell that?”
    “No. I’m sorry. I checked around for witnesses but drew a blank.” He held up a standard nine-inch aluminum pie tin covered with half an inch of dried custard. The custard had solidified into a perfect outline of his mouth and nose. “I did retrieve the weapon, though.” He handed me the tin.
    I examined it front and back. No prints evident, but it did bear the stamped-in name and address of a nearby neighborhood pie shop. I wrapped the tin as best I could into my handkerchief. “I’ll check it out,” I said, “even though I suspect this was most likely nothing more than a juvenile prank.”
    “Prank?” Angry whipcords of steam puffed out of the rabbit’s nostrils and heated his nose to the color of an apple. “How can you say prank? It was those DeGreasy brothers. They tried to smother me. If we don’t stop them, they’ll try