The Rabbit Factory Read online

  On the opposite side was the identical picture, but through the miracle of Photoshop, Joanie had digitally aged us fifty years. My hair was silver and thinning, but at least she gave me hair. I was thirty pounds heavier, and my face was lined with crags and crevices.

  Joanie was even harder on herself, thickening out her middle, bluing her beautiful strawberry blonde hair, and adding liberal amounts of wrinkles and liver spots to her glowing skin. But she didn’t change her eyes. There were crow’s feet on the outside, but inside they were still the color I told her was Cavu Blue. My father flies a Piper Warrior on the weekends, and CAVU is pilot talk for a sky that has ‘Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited.’ To me nothing is bluer.

  “I resent the fact that you think I can’t function without Rosa cleaning up after me,” I said to the left side of the frame. “For your information, I was recently honored by Good Housekeeping as one of the only men on the planet who has actually mastered the art of picking up his own dirty socks and underwear. And you thought I couldn’t live without you.”

  Andre paddled in. Andre, just for the record, is a six-year-old black Standard French Poodle. Not the kind of dog you’d expect to be living with a cop. But this dog has instincts like Sherlock Holmes and better communication skills than a kennel full of movie Lassies.

  He cocked his big curly head and gave me his most serious man-to-man look, which I clearly understood to say, “Hey, Lomax, I heard you talking, and now I see that it’s just you and the picture of your dead wife. I’m starting to worry about you, pal.”

  I half-put the frame back down on the dressing table, then pulled it back to my lips, pressed my face to the glass, and set it back down. Andre, realizing that this was a private moment and that there was nothing edible in it for him, toddled off back to the living room.

  The phone rang. It was my partner, Terry Biggs.

  “Hey, Mike, we got a live one.” A ‘live one’ was Terry’s standard lame joke for a homicide victim.

  “Ask me if the vic was a man or a woman,” he said. Terry is a wannabe stand-up comic, but he’s never sure he’s going to get the straight line, so he helps you serve it up to him. I was in no mood to resist.

  “Okay, Terry, who bought it? A man or a woman?”

  “A rabbit,” he answered, hoping to get a bigger reaction from me than I was capable of giving. “Actually a guy in a Rambo Rabbit suit. It happened out at Lamaar’s Familyland.”

  “Familyland?” I said. “Is no place sacred?”

  “I guess the scumbags are branching out. More work for you and me,” Terry said. “I’ll pick you up in fifteen.”

  I hung up. The letter was still in my other hand. There was a wooden box on top of Joanie’s dressing table. I had found it gift wrapped at the bottom of my shirt drawer a few days after the funeral.

  A brass plaque on top was engraved Mike and Joan… till death us do part. That’s where I found the letters. I put Number Six back in the box. There were still three more to be opened.

  I picked up my gun and my shield and had one more go at the picture. “This is not easy reading, Joanie,” I said. “Don’t be surprised if I come home tonight and flush all these fucking letters down the toilet.”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” said the annoying little voice inside my head who hasn’t paid a day’s rent in forty-two years.

  CHAPTER 3

  A horn honked and my partner pulled up in his 2002 silver Lexus ES 250. “Hey, kids,” he yelled out the window. “We’re going to Familyland! Yayyyy!”

  That’s Terry, the Fun Homicide Cop.

  I got into the Lexus ES 250, which I love to remind Terry is actually a Toyota Camry with a wood-paneled dash and a few other non-essentials to jack up the price. “Good morning, Detective,” I said. “Are you looking for the guy who slapped a Lexus logo on the front of your Camry?”

  “Nice way to talk to the man who brought you breakfast.” There was a container of Starbucks in the cup holder plus a bag of Krispy Kremes on the floor. “Today’s the 18th,” he said, pulling away from the curb.

  “Yeah, I saw that,” I said, sipping the coffee and trying hard to ignore the aroma of fried dough and sugar wafting up from the waxy bag of carbs at my feet. “It made Page One of today’s paper.”

  Terry was one of three people who knew about Joanie’s letters. “It’s that time of the month,” he said. “You get mail?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s having a great time. I don’t get the sense she’s coming back.”

  Terry was there for me when Joanie was dying. Not intruding. Not giving advice. Just there. A lifeline. He knows when to keep quiet, and this was one of those times. Carbs, be damned, I decided, and unbagged a glazed donut as we headed for the 405 South.

  Terry Biggs is the best partner I ever worked with. For starters, he’s not very L.A. He’s one hundred percent Da Bronx. From the time he was a kid, he knew he was going to become a cop. But in the late seventies when he was ready to apply, the city of New York was in financial hell, and the NYPD had a hiring freeze. Los Angeles, on the other hand, had money, criminals, and jobs. Terry switched coasts and joined LAPD.

  Terry is tall, dark, and ugly. Don’t get me wrong. I love him. We’ve been friends and partners for seven years. But he’d be the first to back up my description. Six-foot-three, a mop of greasy black hair and a face that’s kind of muley, but more pock marked than a real mule. The man is butt ugly.

  Until he speaks. And his voice, soft and sweet as honey, warms you. He’s funny, charming, loving, and before you know it, you’re thinking what a beautiful guy. Women are particularly vulnerable to his special brand of ugliness. Terry Biggs had never had a problem getting girls.

  Keeping them was a different story. He’d had three marriages go south. But number four was the charm. Marilyn. She’s with LAPD Rescue. They met on the job.

  About ten years ago, Terry stops at the Ralph’s on Robertson. He’s just parked his car when two guys with guns come tear-assing out of the market carrying a sack, which later turns out to contain $18,000 in cash and food stamps.

  Terry pulls his service revolver and yells the standard, “Police, drop your guns, etcetera, etcetera.” Now Terry is off duty, so he’s wearing plaid shorts and a New York Yankees T-shirt. Apparently, this is not an intimidating outfit, and the robbers keep running. They jump into a moving car, and in two seconds flat, the car is barreling down on Terry.

  He dives out of the way, but a fender catches his foot in mid-air and breaks his ankle. He still manages to get off three shots and blows out two of their tires. The car plows into one of those metal dividers where they collect the shopping carts. The driver gets a face full of air bag. One of the gunmen pulls his own trigger on impact and shoots himself in the leg. And before the last guy can figure out where the door handle is on their stolen car, Terry limps over and is singing “You Have the Right to Remain Silent.”

  The headline in the paper the next day says, One of L.A.’s Finest Bags Three of L.A.’s Dumbest. But there was a second part to the story that got even more coverage. Lots more.

  A few minutes after Terry nails the bad guys, about a dozen black and whites converge on the scene, followed by LAPD Rescue. The cops are screaming, “Officer down! Officer down!” which lets the Rescue Squad know to bypass the dirtbag who is bleeding to death and take care of that cop over there with the Camel dangling from his mouth.

  The ambulance screeches to a stop, the driver’s side door flies open and out jumps Marilyn Cavanaugh. Marilyn has green eyes, curly red hair, and a big Irish smile. Sounds pretty good on paper, but she’s what they politely refer to in the Personal Ads as full-figured. She’s a hefty lass, Marilyn is, weighing in at about fourteen stone. But she’s also a top-notch paramedic, and no one ever complains that their Angel of Mercy is too chunky. Certainly not Terry.

  Big as she is, Marilyn is lightning on her feet. Wham, bam, she takes Terry’s vitals and quickie-splints his ankle. Then together with her co-pilot, Marty Delaney,
she hoists Terry onto a gurney and wheels him into the back of the bus. Marty hops in with the patient. Marilyn slams the rear doors, jumps in the cab, and flips on the siren. Terry, who has been operating on pure adrenaline, knows he’s finally headed for a fistful of Advil, a six-pack of beer, and at least a week’s paid leave. He closes his eyes and thanks God for another mission accomplished. Marilyn, feeling all the pressure of being responsible for an Officer Down, peels out, hell bent for Cedars-Sinai.

  And that’s when the A-M-B-U and the L-A-N-C-E part company. The back doors fly open, and the gurney catapults out onto the macadam, where it rolls about thirty feet until it runs head on into a Soccer Mom parking a minivan. The cops, who are still on the scene, scramble to help Terry, who now has a concussion to go along with his broken ankle. When they realize this is not particularly life threatening, they all have a huge laugh. But the camera crew from News Channel 4 has the biggest laugh of all. They had been shooting the departing ambulance for the evening news when the doors burst open. The video ran incessantly for three nights.

  About sixty seconds later, a totally humiliated Marilyn returns for her Officer Down Twice. And that’s how they met.

  After that, she visited him every day, first in the hospital, then at home, offering to do whatever she could to make him happy. One night, it seemed that the thing that would make Terry the most happy was a roll in the sack. No problem for Marilyn. Rarely does a nice Irish girl get the opportunity to have sex with a man and actually diminish her Catholic guilt.

  One thing, as they say, led to another, and despite the fact that Marilyn had seven-year-old twin daughters, and a third, age five, Terry signed on for the whole package. And that’s how a guy from The Bronx winds up living in Sherman Oaks with a wife and three teenage Valley girls.

  We plugged along the 405. “No sense using lights and sirens,” Terry said. “With all this traffic, we’d wind up causing an accident. Besides, the guy we’re going to see is already dead, so what’s the hurry? You been to Familyland?”

  “A bunch of times. You know Joanie,” I said. “She was a kid at heart.” What I didn’t say was how much she wanted kids. We both wanted them. We spent three years and thousands of dollars trying to make one. It was our fertility doc who actually discovered the ovarian cancer. Congratulations, Mrs. Lomax. You’re not going to have a baby, and you’re going to die.

  “I always thought of Lamaar as a rip-off of Disney,” Terry said. “But that’s sort of like saying Pepsi is a rip-off of Coke. There may be truth in it, but it’s still an eight hundred-pound gorilla on its own.”

  He was right. Lamaar, like Disney, had started out as a small animation house. Rambunctious Rabbit, Slaphappy Puppy, McGreedy the Moose, and a shitload of terminally jolly characters had captured the public’s heart and transformed the little cartoon studio into a global entertainment company.

  Today Lamaar made movies and TV shows, owned music and toy companies, operated hotels and a cruise line, licensed cartoon characters, and was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Familyland was just one small piece of the corporate pie.

  Terry recapped the highlights of his last two trips to Familyland with Marilyn and the girls. He made sure to give me some tips on how to get ‘back-doored,’ which is theme park jargon for entering a ride or attraction without waiting on line. Apparently, his ability to buck the long lines and get the VIP treatment at Familyland had made him even more lovable in the eyes of the four women who already adored him.

  We don’t like to talk about a case before we get to the scene, so Terry segued into the upcoming college hunt for the twins, who were juniors in high school. He never once mentioned how expensive it would be, which if you know Terry is just like him. He was just a button-popping proud Dad, who wanted the best for his girls. We were discussing the merits of applying for early admission when he pulled onto the off ramp. The arrow on the sign for the main entrance to Familyland pointed right. Terry turned left.

  “They said don’t go to the front gate,” he told me. “We’re going to the admin building on Happy Landings Boulevard. They want to keep this investigation low profile, so try not to look like a cop.”

  That’s the nice thing about Terry. Sometimes he lobs out a straight line for me to take. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll leave the donuts in the car.”

  Terry gave a little chuckle, which from him is a rave. I, in turn, bowed to thank him for the set-up line. Sometimes homicide can be a lot of fun.

  CHAPTER 4

  Until Dean Lamaar showed up with his world-famous rabbit and a bottomless checkbook in 1970, the little town of Costa Luna, California was exactly that. A little town. But after he gobbled up most of the town in one gulp, Lamaar wanted to make sure his investment would be protected by a real police force and not some Podunk constabulary.

  Everybody agreed that the local cops could handle the small stuff, like Drunk and Disorderlies. But the supremely paranoid Mr. Lamaar was particularly jittery about a race riot breaking out on the carousel. The big stuff, he insisted, required big guns. And that meant LAPD.

  Meetings were held. Palms were greased, backs were scratched, and eventually codes were rewritten. I’ve heard that the legalese goes on for 150 pages. The short version is that Lamaar’s Familyland is technically outside of LAPD’s jurisdiction. Unless the shit hits the fan. Defining ‘the shit’ takes up most of the 150 pages.

  Over the years we had handled a few rape cases and the occasional “I-was-ahead-of-you-in-line-Mother-Fucker” stabbing. This was our first homicide in the Happy Little Kingdom.

  We pulled up to the Dexter Duck Administration Building. Catchy name. So radically different from Donald or Daffy Duck. I hoped the murderer was as unoriginal as the guy who created Dexter.

  There were a bunch of black and whites discreetly parked at odd angles, plus an EMS bus and the Medical Examiner’s wagon. Most of the vehicles still had their lights flashing. That ought to keep it low profile.

  A ruddy-faced local cop with a beer belly that any man could be proud of, sized up the Lexus/Camry from twenty feet away.

  “Budweiser blimp at eleven o’clock,” Biggs informed me.

  The blimp was about fifty, wearing a Smokey hat and tan summer-weights that fit well despite his enormous girth. He lifted a finger to indicate he’d seen us, but had something more important to do first. He pulled a wrinkled red bandana out of his back pocket and honked into it hard. Then he moseyed on over. “Morning, Detectives,” he said, downright friendlier than I’d expected.

  I was prepared for an Archie Bunker voice to go with the Bunker-like physique. But he talked in a high-pitched squeak, and ‘detectives’ came out ‘detectifth.’ It wasn’t the hissy, sibilant S that helps you spot a gay guy across a crowded room. It was more of a good old-fashioned childhood speech impediment that never went away. No wonder he became a cop. In a small redneck town like Costa Luna, a fat guy with a bad lisp needs to carry a gun.

  I scanned the gold-and-black nameplate on the flap of his left breast pocket. “Good morning, Sheriff Davis,” I said.

  “It’s not Davis; it’s Daves,” It came out ‘Davthe.’ “Marlon Daves. Like more than one Dave.” He winked. “Welcome to Familyland, the unluckiest place in the world.”

  “How so, Sheriff?” Terry asked.

  “Fella was wearing two rabbit’s feet, and he still got iced.” We all had a Big Hearty Cop Laugh over that.

  “Lucky that Dean Lamaar is dead,” Daves said. “He’d be all tore up if he knew someone kilt his star attraction.”

  I’m so used to cynical, wiseass L.A. cops that it took me a beat to realize that the statement was heartfelt. Terry and I agreed with Daves that it was excellent fortune for Mr. Lamaar to be dead at this point in his career. Daves went on. “I met with him a couple of times y’know,” he said with obvious pride. “We have monthly meetings with their security people. Sometimes the old man would stop by and say hello. He’d ask me how the missus was. Give me free passes for the kids. Things like
that.” He paused, waiting for our reaction.

  Police work is all about respect. It’s the key to our psyche. Did you ever get pulled over for speeding and try to talk your way out of a ticket? If you whine, make lame excuses, or tell the cop how important you are, it only pisses him off. If you apologize, show remorse, and promise it won’t happen again sir, you have half a chance of getting off with a warning.

  Terry and I both gave the Sheriff an appreciative nod to let him know how impressed we were that he had spent quality time with Dean Lamaar.

  “Anything going on around here we should know about?” Terry asked. “Problems in the company that might get one of their characters murdered?”

  “What makes you think it’s about the company?” Daves said, his tinny voice piercing the air. “Could be that the guy in the bunny suit had an enemy. Maybe he owed somebody money or he had his dick in the wrong place.”

  “Possible,” Terry said, “but I figured you’d know more about the company than the rabbit’s dick.”

  “Sure I know about the company. Bought their stock. It was headed south for a while, till Nakamachi bought them out and brought in Ike Rose to run the place. Sharp guy. Stock’s been going up. Dean Lamaar died about three years ago, so the place isn’t as homey as it used to be. But hell, it’s a business, not a home. My opinion—there’s no problems in the company that would cause a murder. If it was my investigation, I’d find out who that rabbit was fucking. Of course, I’m just a country boy. You’re the ones who do this every day.”

  “Marlon,” Terry said, crossing over to first-name familiarity, “any more country boys as smart as you, and us city boys would be out of a job.”

  The fat man smiled and his chest puffed out a little. You could practically hear Aretha Franklin singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Terry asked where the DOA was.

  “They got these tunnels under the park. They call it The Rabbit Hole. Employees only. Your vic is down there.”