ZOOTOPIA
(Parody of Chinatown)
TW: Slight non-explicit talk of sexual themes.
A 1937 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 drove just out of the city and onto the long bridge over a riverbed, the land below was barren. The sun blazed off its ugly concrete banks. Where the banks are earthen, they are parched and choked with weeds. The car pulled off the bridge and down onto a flood control road about fifteen feet above the riverbed. The car door opened and Mr. Hopps stepped out. He looked around.
The rabbit failed to notice Nick, who held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, he lays downstream and just above the flood control road using dried mustard weeds for cover. Nick watches while Mr. Hopps makes his way down to the center of the riverbed. There the rabbit stops, turns slowly, and appears to be looking at the bottom of the riverbed, or nothing at all. The fox trained the binoculars on Mr. Hopps. The sun glistens off the rabbit's glasses. Soon, Nick's ears picked up the sound of something like champagne corks popping. Then a small, coyote pup, atop a swayback horse rides into the riverbed, and into Nick's view.
Mr. Hopps stops and stands still when he hears the sound. Power line and the sun are overhead, and the trickle of brackish water at his paw shoes. He moves swiftly downstream in the direction of the sound, toward Nick. The fox edges back a little as Mr. Hopps rounds the bend in the river and comes snout to snout with the boy on the muddy banks. The rabbit says something to the boy. The boy doesn't answer at first. Mr. Hopps points to the ground. The boy gestures. Mr. Hopps frowns. He kneels down in the mud and stares at it. He seems to be concentrating on it. After a moment, he rises, thanks the boy, and heads swiftly back upstream, scrambling up the bank to his car. There he reaches through the window and pulls out a roll of blueprints or something like that. He spreads them on the hood of his car and begins to scribble some notes, looking downstream from time to time. The power lines overhead hum. Mr. Hopps stops, listens to them then rolls up the plans and gets back into his car, and drives off.
Nick hurried to get back to his car. He gets in and gets right back out. The steamy leather burned him. He takes a towel from the back seat and carefully places it on the front one. He gets in and takes off.
It was dusk now, and the street lights went on. Nick pulled his car to the side of a curb, close to the entrance of Point Fermin Park. He parked across from Mr. Hopps's parked car on the other side of the street. The fox hurried out of his car, a 1935 Ford V8 De Luxe Phaeton, across the street and through the entrance. Nick gazed around the cliffy beach. He spotted the rabbit from a distance as he headed down the cliff's side to the beach below. He seems to be in a hurry. Nick hurried after him, keeping a distance, but struggled to negotiate the path that Mr. Hopps took to get down. Nick looks to his right where the bay is a long, clear crescent. He looks to his left. There's a promontory of sorts. It's apparent Mr. Hopps has gone that way. Nick hesitates, then moves in that direction but climbs along the promontory in order to be above the rabbit. At the outfall, Nick spots Mr. Hopps below him, kicking the sand. The rabbit picks up a starfish and brushes the sand off it. Mr. Hopps looks absently up in Nick's direction. Nick backs away and sits in the outfall and yawns. A lighthouse in the distance flashed on the land the duo were on from time to time.
Nick sat in the outfall as the sun kept setting, engulfing the place in darkness. Soon, the fox stood up suddenly. He muttered a few swears as a puddle had formed in the place he had sat, soaking his trousers. Mr. Hopps below watches the water trickle down from the outfall. The rabbit stands and stares at the water, apparently fascinated. Even as Nick watches Mr. Hopps watching, the volume and velocity seem to increase until it gushes in spurts, cascading into the sea, whipping it into a foam.
Nick then returned to the top of the cliff and exited the beach. The fox walked toward his car. There's a slip of paper stuck under the windshield wiper. Nick took it and got into his car and turned on the dash light. The paper read: "SAVE OUR CITY! LOS ANGELES IS DYING OF THIRST! PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY! LOS ANGELES IS YOUR INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE! VOTE YES NOVEMBER 6... CITIZENS COMMITTEE TO SAVE OUR CITY, HON. SAM BAGBY, FORMER MAYOR CHAIRMAN." Nick grumbled and crumpled up the paper, tossing it out of his car. He then reached into the glove compartment and took a pocket watch out of the multiple pocket watches there were in the compartment. Nick checked his own watch before winding up the pocket watch to read the similar time on his watch. 9:37. Nick exits his car and walked over to Mr. Hopps's car and places the watch behind the front wheel of the rabbit's car. The fox yawned and headed back to his own car and drove off.
The next morning, Nick walked into his office whistling and swaying his tail.
"Mornin' Cheera," the fox said and nodded to the feline.
Cheera turned from her typewriter and handed Nick a pile of papers. The fox ran a finger from his paw through them.
"Walsh here?" Nick asked.
"He's in the dark room," the feline replied.
Nick walked through his office to Duffy and Walsh's. A little red light is on in the corner, over a closed door. Nick walked over and knocked on the door.
"Where'd he go yesterday?" the fox asked.
"Three reservoirs," a male voice replied from the other side. "Men's room of a Richfield gas station on Flower, and the Pig 'n Whistle."
"Dear gosh," Nick replied, "This guy's really got water on his brain."
"What'd you expect," The voice replied, "That's his job."
"Listen," the fox replied, "we can't string this board out indefinitely we got to come up with something."
"I think I got you something," the voice replied.
"Oh yeah?" Nick said, his voice a bit teasing. "You pick up the watch?"
"It's on your desk," The voice answered, "Say, you hear the one about the guy who goes to the North Pole with Admiral Byrd looking for penguins?"
Nick was already walking away and into his office. He spots the pocket watch on his desk, the crystal frame now shattered. The hands stopped at 2:47.
"He was there all night!" the fox exclaimed.
Nick drops it and sits down. Walsh comes in carrying a series of wet photos stuck with clothes pins onto a small blackboard.
"So," Nick asked eagerly, "What you got?"
Walsh shows Nick the photos. The fox looks at them. They are a series outside a restaurant showing Mr. Hopps with another rabbit whose appearance is striking. In two of the photos, a gnarled cane is visible.
"This?!" Nick asked, obviously annoyed.
"They got into a terrific argument outside of Pig 'n Whistle," the beaver said.
"What about?" the fox asked, his tail motionless now.
"I don't know," Walsh answered, "The traffic was pretty loud. I heard only one thing, Applecore."
"Applecore?" Nick asked for confirmation.
"Yeah," Walsh said shrugging.
Nick tossed the photos in disgust.
"Damn it, Walsh," Nick said, "That's what you spent your day doing?"
"You tell me to take pictures," the beaver protested, "I take pictures."
"Let me explain something to you, Walsh," Nick said, his paw clutched into a fist. "This business requires a certain finesse."
The phone had been ringing while the duo were conversating. Cheera buzzed in over the intercom. Nick answered.
"Yeah, Cheera?" Nick asked. He listened and quickly picked up the phone. "Duffy, where are you?"
"I got it," Duffy's voice replied excitedly on the other end of the line, "I got it. He's found himself some cute little twist in a rowboat, in Echo Park."
"Okay, slow down, Echo Park," Nick spoke, and turned to Walsh, "It's water again."
Duffy sat at the front of a rowboat on a lake, rowing. Nick sits in the stern. They pass Mr. Hopps and a slender blonde-haired and grey-furred rabbit girl, similar to Mrs. Hopps but slightly smaller and with cyan eyes. She's wearing a summer print dress, drifting in their rowboat. Mr. Hopps is fondly doting on her.
"Alright pal," Nick said as they passed the couple, "Let's have a big smile."
The fox pulled out a camera and began to take many pictures but was aiming at the other couple as they rowed by. The lovely duo was blissfully unaware of the action.
Nick walked along the sidewalk until he arrived at a building with a sign reading: "El Macando Apartments". The fox climbed over the wall which surrounded the complex before climbing up onto the red-tiled roof. He walked carefully until he reached an apex with a good view of the place he wished to see. Nick aimed downward, himself and his camera facing a veranda below him, where the girl and Mr. Hopps are sitting at a small coffee table eating. Nick was taking more pictures when one of the tiles his lower paws were hooked on slid down the edge of the roof and possibly over a three-story drop. Nick slowed himself and moved over to another space, the rain drain. The tile fell onto the veranda below.
Mr. Hopps looks up at the roof, not spotting the being responsible for the tile's fall. He looks at the girl, concerned, and then stands up to get a better view of the roof. His eyes betray nothing, there is no one there. The rabbit slowly returned to his seat and just glared from the girl to the fallen tile.
Nick lay in a chair of a barbershop, the front cloth covering his front. The fox clutched a newspaper with a heart-shaped outline of the photo of Mr. Hopps and the girl together. The headline read: "DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER BLOWS FUSE OVER CHIEF'S USE OF FUNDS FOR EL MACANDO LOVE NEST." Next to it a smaller column read: "F.N. Wilde hired by suspicious spouse."
Nick grinned as the barber, a young male tiger, trimmed away at the todds hair. Nick's eyes glanced around and noted that almost every customer is reading the same paper.
"When you get so much publicity," The tiger, who had a name tag that read Barney, began, "after a while you get so much blas about it."
A self-satisfied smile formed on Nick's face.
"Face it," Barney continued, "You're practically a movie star."
Nick's ears twitched as he heard some customers discuss the drought. The fox then looked out a wide clear window of the barbershop. A car is stalled, it's hood up. A male feline watches as his radiator boils over.
"Look at that," Nick said, his voice sounding as if he were laughing.
"Heat's murder," the tiger replied.
A new voice entered the fox's ears. He had just caught the last few words of a conversation ending.
"Fools name and fools face..." the voice of a male said, not far from the fox's side.
Nick turned his head to face the customer beside him. A middle-aged male cat, wealthy dressed, held a copy of the newspaper in his paws. The fox held a smile as he spoke to the feline.
"What's that pal?" Nick asked.
"Nothing," the cat replied and indicated toward the paper. "You gotta hell of a way to make a living."
"Oh?" The fox said, "What do you do to make ends meet?"
"Mortgage Department," the feline replied, "First National Bank."
Nick laughed before speaking again.
"Tell me," the fox began, "How many people do you foreclose on?"
"We don't publish a record in the paper," the cat answered, "I can tell you that."
"Neither do I," Nick replied, his ears twitched as Barney was finishing up.
"No," the feline began, "You have a press agent do it."
Nick's fur perks up and the fox gets out of the chair. Barney, a little concerned, tried to restrain Nick by holding onto the barber's sheet around Nick's neck. Nick clearly seems annoyed and walked over to the cat.
"Barney," the fox asked, "Who is this bimbo? He a regular customer?"
"Take it easy, Nick," the young tiger said.
"Look pal," Nick said to the cat, a finger from his paw pointing critically at the feline. "I make an honest living. People don't come to me unless miserable and I help 'em out of a bad situation. I don't kick them out of their homes like you jerks who work in the bank."
"Nick," Barney protested, "For God's sake."
Nick tries to take off the barber sheet.
"C'mon," the fox exclaims, "Get outta the barber chair. We'll go talk this over outside."
The cat shrinks back in his chair. Meanwhile, Barney tries his best to get Nick back into his chair.
"Hey, c'mon, Nick," the young tiger said as he came up with an idea of how to change the subject. "Sit down. Sit down. You hear about the fella goes to his friend and says, 'What'll I do, I'm tired of screwing my wife?' and his friend says, 'Whyn't you do what the seals do?'"
Nick allows himself to be dragged back into his chair but remains stubborn on his claim.
"I don't know how that got in the paper as a matter of fact," the fox exclaimed, "it surprised me it was so quick. I make an honest living."
"'Course you do, Nick," Barney replied before continuing. "So anyway, he says, 'whyn't you do what the seals do?'"
Nick proceeded to listen to the joke and seemed to forget the ordeal he just had.