The Rabbit Factory Page 4

  “I have a problem with that.” It was Amy.

  “You got a problem with what?” I was real close to becoming Bad Cop.

  “I know this will sound heartless,” she said, “but we were fortunate that Mr. Elkins was murdered in this out-of-the-way area. The maintenance man who found him has agreed not to discuss it publicly. Then there were another fourteen employees who were attracted to the commotion before we were able to close off the area. They too have agreed not to discuss the incident publicly.”

  “You seem to have an abundance of agreeable employees,” I said.

  “It’s not against the law to encourage our people to protect the company’s privacy. Why broadcast the murder by talking to every employee who knows him? I thought we were trying to keep this out of the press.”

  “You’re the one trying to keep this out of the press.” I said. “We’re the ones trying to solve it. That means talking to everybody Elkins worked with.”

  Brian shook his head slowly. “This is premeditated, isn’t it? Somebody had it in for this guy and hunted him down. Maybe another employee.”

  “Looks planned out to me,” Terry said. “Nobody stumbled on this guy, rolled him for his wallet, and took the time to draw a flipbook. This is a crime of passion. Someone was really pissed off at this guy.”

  “A crime of passion,” Amy said. “That sounds like you should be interviewing people Elkins knew personally. Maybe a girlfriend, a jealous husband, something like that.”

  “What are you talking about, Amy?” Curry said. “Since when do jealous husbands leave flipbooks? I’m afraid whoever did this was pissed off, but not at Elkins. I think the killer is pissed at Lamaar, so he murders Rambunctious Rabbit. That flipbook really bothers me. I think it’s a message to the company.”

  “And what message is that?” Amy said, pursing her lips and squinching up her pretty little White Anglo Saxon-Protestant face.

  “‘Fuck you.’ What else do you think this means?” He gave her the finger and her face turned to Red Anglo-Saxon Protestant. “I think there could be some maniac roaming around the park right now, planning to kill off our characters.”

  Amy glared at him. She wanted us looking for jealous husbands, not scouring the park for homicidal maniacs.

  “Suppose Brian is right,” I said. “Can you think of anyone who is angry enough at the company that they would randomly kill one of your employees?”

  “Rambo is not a random employee. He’s the living, breathing symbol of the company. And while I would never say this on the record, as long as Brian opened this can of worms, with six thousand people working for us, yes, it is possible that one of them is angry or crazy enough to kill another employee.”

  “I’d say a lot of our employees are that crazy,” Brian said. “Sometimes I get the feeling this place is the Post Office with costumes.”

  “Jesus, Brian!” Amy threw her hands up at him, then turned back to me. “That comment was off the record too.”

  Brian Curry was clearly unhinged by the thought that it might be Open Season on Dexter Duck. “I’m sorry, Amy. But this is unnerving. What if somebody deliberately killed this man because he was wearing the Rambo suit? What if this is a series of… of…”

  “Character assassinations?” Terry chimed in.

  Amy’s face went red again, but Terry kept going before she could say anything. “How many people have access to this tunnel system?”

  “About six thousand,” Brian answered. “All our people are costumed. Not just the characters, but everyone. We don’t even call them employees. They’re cast members. Ride operators, restaurant staff, everyone dresses up in theme wardrobe that’s appropriate to where they work. They come down here to change in and out of costume. Plus there are facilities for them down here. Food services, training classrooms, and of course, bathrooms. Cast members are not allowed to use the same restrooms as the public.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It sort of spoils the magic to see McGreedy the Moose taking a piss in the men’s room.”

  “You have a security system to keep non-employees out of these tunnels?” Terry asked.

  It was not a complicated question. Yes or no? But Curry clasped his hands and took five seconds to formulate an answer. Terry and I call it the Fudge Pause or the Waffle Beat. We were about to get a version of the truth.

  “Think of the park as a giant ship,” Curry began. Metaphors are handy when you’re telling half-truths. They’re nice and muddy. “Now on a ship, the engine room, the radio room, and the other critical areas are all under tight security.” He paused, either to make sure we understood or to invent some more bullshit. “But they don’t monitor every passageway or every stateroom. It’s the same thing here. There are so many corridors and doors that connect us to the buildings up top, that we can’t possibly watch them all.”

  “So anyone who buys a ticket can just stroll down here?” Terry asked.

  “It’s not that easy,” Curry said, defending the Mother Ship. “We’ve got visual security at all the main entrances that connect with public thoroughfares. My guards are well trained. They can tell the difference between a cast member and a curious tourist.”

  “But the killer could have been another cast member,” Terry said. “Or he could’ve been anybody who got past the guards dressed as Donald Duck.”

  “Dexter Duck,” Amy said, correcting him. Terry acknowledged her with his best “don’t-mistake-me-for-someone-who-gives-a-shit” smile.

  Curry nodded his head. “The security system was originally designed to keep out nosy parkers, not homicidal maniacs. But after 9/11 we issued every employee an ID card. They have to swipe it to get into this area.”

  “And how hard would it be for somebody who doesn’t work here to steal somebody’s ID card?” Terry asked.

  “This is a theme park, not Fort Knox. Somebody who was really determined could sneak down here. But believe me, it’s going to change.”

  My cell phone rang, which totally surprised me. “You guys get cell reception down here?”

  “We get better reception down here than they get at Spago,” Curry said. “A lot of our cast members are aspiring actors. They’d bitch if we didn’t have air conditioning, but they’d quit if we didn’t have cell service.”

  I answered my phone. It was Big Jim, my father.

  “Hey, Mike,” came the booming voice. “How’s my boy?” I could picture his fifty-six-inch barrel chest swelling up and his cobalt blue eyes twinkling the way they always did whenever he called me his boy.

  “I’m fine, Jim,” I said. I never call him Dad when I’m trying to impress others during a homicide investigation. “But I’m busy here.”

  “I’ll make it quick. Angel wants to know if you want chicken or fish tonight.”

  “What is this?” I said, walking out of the group’s earshot. “A family dinner or a wedding reception? Tell Angel I’ll have whatever she serves.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll definitely see you tonight at 7:30.”

  “Oh, I get it. This isn’t about menu options. This is your way of making sure I haven’t forgotten and that I’ll actually show up tonight.”

  “You’re way off base,” he said, which confirmed that I was totally on base. “You’d make a lousy detective. See you tonight.” He hung up, just in case I thought about changing my mind about dinner.

  He didn’t have to worry. I definitely wanted to see my father as soon as possible. He used to be a driver for Lamaar Studios.

  CHAPTER 8

  I flipped my cell shut and flagged Terry to come over. I wanted to pursue his TTT theory.

  TTT stands for Tony the Tiger, who is on every box of Frosted Flakes, which is Terry’s favorite cereal, which sounds like serial, which is a word we don’t like to blurt out when we’re investigating a homicide, so Terry came up with the code.

  “We’ve only got one dead body, plus an MO we’ve never seen before,” I said. “You think this could be a serial
killer?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out. Start with the flipbook. If you’re pissed at Elkins, just kill him and be done with it. Why go to the trouble of creating a fifty-page going-away gift? It’s a signature, so we recognize him the next time.”

  He held up Elkins’s personnel folder. “The vic lived in West Hollywood. Not exactly a gated community. Why not kill him there? Why go to the trouble of getting past Lamaar security? Even if it’s Mickey Mouse security, they still have guards and cameras. Killing Elkins down here, while he’s dressed in a Lamaar costume, feels like maybe the killer is out to hurt the company.”

  “You think Elkins is dead because he just happened to be the guy in the rabbit suit?”

  “I like it better than Amy’s jealous husband theory.” He laughed. “Shit man, if I was crazy enough to strangle someone who was fucking my wife, I might cut something off the bastard. But it wouldn’t be his bunny ears. Curry’s got the right idea. This is way too slick to be a one-shot deal just to kill Elkins. Maybe somebody has a hard-on for the company.”

  “I think you could be right, but as long as we’re here, let’s find out if anybody had a hard-on for Elkins.”

  Easier said than done. We spent three hours talking to people who supposedly knew Elkins. Apparently nobody knew him that well. In deference to Amy’s Corporate Paranoia, we just told the rank and file that he had been killed. We left out the fact that he died on the job, in uniform.

  Our best shot was Elkins’s Keeper, Noreen Stubiak. Curry explained that the Keepers were hired to follow the characters around. “Just in case,” he said, without actually explaining in case of what. “They’re not authorized to do anything but call Security if a character needs help. I had to fire one of them a few weeks ago because he used pepper spray on a bunch of teenage punks who were harassing Officer Jelly Belly.”

  “If I were you,” Terry said to Curry, “I’d issue Officer Jelly Belly a .357 Magnum. Teach those little bastards not to fuck with cartoon cops.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Curry said, laughing. “At the risk of prejudicing your investigation, I have to warn you that the Character Keepers are not trained security people. They’re just whistle blowers who are paid burger-flipper wages. Don’t expect much from Noreen.”

  Understatement. Noreen had the IQ of a pipe wrench and none of the personality. Her first question was, “What do you mean, he’s dead?” Terry explained the concept to her and proceeded to ask a series of questions using one- and two-syllable words. After five minutes, he got as much as he could from her, which was practically nothing.

  “He was a good person. He always treated me like a lady. I’m gonna miss him,” Noreen said, as she left teary-eyed.

  Terry hadn’t written a single word in his note pad during the entire interview with Noreen. He tore out the blank page and handed it to me. “Here, file this under Clueless.”

  Nobody else seemed particularly broken up over Elkins’s death. “He seemed like a nice guy but he kept to himself” was the prevailing response.

  At noon Curry invited us to break bread in the executive dining room. We took a Pasadena. Terry and I wanted to thrash out our first impressions over a more private, less executive lunch, without having to resort to code. Amy and Curry gave us their home phone numbers, cell phones, beepers, pagers, and mothers’ maiden names, and made us promise to keep in touch. We left the park with Elkins’s personnel file and very little insight into whodunnit.

  CHAPTER 9

  When we got back to the parking lot, Sheriff Daves was still standing guard. “Sheriff,” I said, “don’t you have deputies who can take over for you?”

  “The way I figure,” Daves said, “Lamaar is the biggest taxpayer in the county. They got a homicide. Even if I can’t do much, it’s smarter for me to hang out here than chase skateboarders off of Mrs. DeFrancis’s driveway.”

  “Well, we’re glad you’re still here, Sheriff,” I said. “You’ve had a lot of contact with Lamaar Security. What’s your take on Brian Curry?”

  “Smart,” he said. “Corporate type, but not a candy ass. Man of his word. Got some real integrity, far as I can tell. But he’s totally out of his fucking league to solve a homicide. They’d have been much better off with the last guy.”

  “What last guy?” I said.

  “This Texas cop. From Dallas or Houston, I forget which. He had one of them double names like Billy Bob. Only his was real weird. Ben Don. Ben Don Marvin. He was Head of Security till six months ago. Then he got canned. Brian Curry filled his boots.”

  “Why did he get sacked?” Terry asked.

  “Marvin ran a little operation where he was stealing stuff and selling it. Not valuable stuff, but shit that collectors will pay a bundle for.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like costumes.”

  Sometimes I play Dumb Cop to pump more information out of people. In this case, I felt like Dumb Cop. “I don’t get it,” I said. “The Head of Security is probably pulling down 125 big ones plus stock options and other goodies, and he’s stealing what—rabbit suits?”

  Daves shook his head. “People pay good money for those sweatshirts and hats and shit with the characters’ pictures on it. Imagine what they’d pay if they could get their hands on an actual costume that Rambo Rabbit wore. Thousands. I’m not kidding, thousands of American dollars.”

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Terry said.

  “And not just costumes. It was all sorts of gewgaws and whatnots. Like if the characters marched in a parade waving flags, them flags would just vanish into thin air. Sometimes, even pieces of floats would disappear. Shit like that.”

  “How did this Ben Don guy get caught?” I asked.

  “He didn’t really get caught. Somebody high up in the organization was on eBay one day and saw that a woman in Kansas was selling a pair of shoes that she claims was worn by an actual Lamaar character. So the executive, he bids on it, and he buys it. Sure enough, it’s the real deal. That’s when the shit hit the fan. They audited the books and realized they were replacing a ton of items that had gone missing. They couldn’t pin it on Marvin, but they knew it was too big an operation to be going down without him. So they canned him.”

  “Do you think he did it?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Daves said, without missing a beat. “Ben Don was smart. As scams go, I’d say it was pretty clever. Plus it didn’t really hurt nobody.”

  “Thanks, you’ve been a big help, Marlon,” I said.

  “One more thing before we go,” Terry said. “You’re thinking that Elkins was killed by someone who knew him. But is it possible Ben Don was so angry at getting fired that he decided to come back and get even with the company?”

  Daves didn’t ponder this one either. “Nope,” he said. “Black-marketing the costumes was your basic victimless crime. Marvin made a bundle, got caught, and was shipped out, hush-hush. Never prosecuted. Why would he come back and commit Murder One? It doesn’t add up.”

  “You think anyone else would want to hurt the company?”

  “Nobody I know. Most folks love Lamaar. If somebody has a beef with the company, they ain’t gonna come around and kill Rambo. I’m sticking with my original theory. Find out who this Elkins guy was fucking and follow the rabbit droppings.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Five minutes later we were back on the 405, doing eighty. “We did real good, partner,” Terry said. “The Sheriff told us to keep our eye on the rabbit shit, and Amy Cheever wants us to keep the murder out of the press for the sake of the children. For the sake of her corporate ass is what she means. Which by the way I couldn’t help notice that you were noticing. You interested?”

  “First, I’m not about to date a principal in a homicide investigation, and second, I thought we had an agreement. No meddling in my social life.”

  “I wasn’t meddling in your social life. I was trying to help you get one.”

  “I’m having dinner with my father tonight. You can help me with a good Teamster joke
.”

  “Okay, how do you know if a Teamster is dead?”

  “The Danish falls out of his hand. I need a new joke.”

  “I got a new fat joke.”

  “He doesn’t think of himself as fat,” I said. “He’s big. His name is Big Jim, not Fat Jim. And he’s a Teamster. I need Teamster jokes.”

  “It’s too bad he’s not a proctologist. I got a great proctology joke.”

  “Gosh, when I was a kid, I always wished my Dad were an astronaut or a quarterback. I never thought about wishing for a proctologist.”

  He thought for a few seconds. “Alright, here’s my best shot. How come Teamsters don’t have anal sex?”

  “I give up.”

  “They’re too lazy to get off their fat asses and bend over.”

  I actually laughed. “Not bad,” I said, “but it’s got the word fat in it. Plus with that anal reference, it’s got overtones of proctology. Don’t quit your day job, Detective Biggs. Speaking of your day job…”

  “You want my take on all this?” he said. “It’s not about Elkins. Don’t be surprised if another fucking cartoon character gets whacked. Curry thinks so too. I guarantee you he’s going to beef up security and keep a tight watch on those critters. He won’t be letting them prance around the park with idiots like Noreen Stubiak.”

  I know my partner. He sees innocent people get zipped into body bags every day, and his way of coping with the injustice of it all is to deflect his emotions with humor. But sooner or later it gets to him. I watched his jaw tighten and his eyes burn holes in the windshield. He smacked his hand down hard on the steering wheel.

  “Damn,” he said. “What a shitty reason to die. Just because you dressed up like Donald Fucking Duck.”