Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf Page A

client believes Roger Rabbit might be getting framed for your brother’s murder and wants me to check into it to see what I can find.”
    “Sounds like a waste of money to me.”
    “Possibly. The rabbit might be guilty as hell. But, then again, there’s the outside chance he might be getting set up for somebody else, and if that’s so, Rocco’s murderer is right now running around scot-free. You wouldn’t want that, would you? You wouldn’t want your brother’s killer to go loose?”
    Dominick squirmed around in his chair, unable to find a position that fit. “No, you bet I wouldn’t want that to happen. But why should it? The cops put their top man on the case, this Rusty Hudson. I got connections downtown, and I requested their best man special. The mayor himself gave me Hudson. He’ll find out who really killed Rocco. Why should I think you’ll do anything he won’t?”
    “Because he already considers the case closed. He’s not going to follow up any loose ends. Why should he? The rabbit’s a tailor-made fall guy. Hudson hangs it on the rabbit and wraps up the case in record time. But he might just be wrong, and that’s what I intend to find out. It would be a lot easier if I had your help, but I’m going to keep plugging whether I get it or not.”
    He shoved some junk from one side of his desk to the other and probably considered that a good day’s work. “If I go along with you, what do I have to do?”
    “Hardly a thing. Answer a few questions about your brother.”
    He looked across the desk at his brother’s chair. For the first time in his life, there was nobody in it to tell him what to do. “I guess I can go that far,” he said finally.
    “Swell. Oh, and also I need to look through your brother’s personal effects. See if there’s anything in there that might throw some light on who besides the rabbit might have had a motive to kill him.”
    He balked slightly at that. “The cops already went through Rocco’s stuff.”
    “Sure they did, but with the preconceived notion that the rabbit committed the crime. I come to the task with an open mind.”
    He eyeballed the empty chair again, but it still wasn’t talking. “Go ahead and search,” he said at last.
    “Would you mind?” I made shooing motions toward the door. “I’d like to do it alone. It helps me concentrate.”
    “Sure.” Dominick got to his feet, happy to have an excuse for motion. “Rocco kept his stuff in his drawers. Just stick your head out when you’re done.”
    Before he left, Dominick made a big production out of locking the file cabinet and his desk.
    As soon as he shut the door, I picked the lock on his desk drawer.
    He must have had fifty pornographic magazines of the whips and chains variety stuffed in there. I searched around but found nothing else, and I mean nothing. His drawers contained no files, no calendar, no paper, not even a pencil. I put his magazines back and locked up. With a perverted dodo like Dominick at its helm, this company would be lucky to last twelve months.
    I used my picks again on the company files.
    Based on what I found in there, I revised my prognosis to six months. The company’s financial statements showed that the DeGreasys had been steadily losing money for nearly a year. They had less operating capital than I did, and I had enough checks kited to lift me halfway up the hill to the poorhouse.
    I checked under “R” and found one of those green cardboard dividers the cops put into place whenever they take something out. According to the divider’s notation, they had removed the Roger Rabbit file. I fanned through the rest of the folders, but they’d taken nothing else. Obviously, as far as the cops were concerned, Roger was it.
    I closed up the files and was just about to start in on Rocco’s desk when something clicked, something odd. The file drawers appeared to be a few inches shorter than the file cabinet properT pulled the cabinet away from the wall and examined