Nick blinked and squinted as they stepped out of the county jail and Judy wondered if it had been the first time he had seen natural light since his arrest. The sun was almost directly overhead, their shadows so short they were hardly visible. A gust of wind ruffled Judy's fur and Nick sighed. "That feels nice," he said, and he gave Judy's paw a brief squeeze before he untangled his fingers from hers.
Judy understood what he meant. Standing outside the brooding walls of the county jail the view was hardly any less dismal, but the context made all the difference. The buildings near the jail were squat and ugly, made of crumbling bricks with a somewhat crooked array of advertisements on their sides that seemed perfectly chosen for their location. There were at least a dozen billboards advertising lawyers, some of them with the painted likeness of whatever smarmy mammal had paid for them. There were almost as many advertisements for bail bondsmammals, some of them proudly announcing in faded letters that they were open twenty-four hours a day. The asphalt of the street was coming apart at the edges into coarse black gravel, and the same wind that had moved Judy's fur sent a newspaper tumbling past and brought with it an unpleasant smell like a car's exhaust mixed with a gutter.
Despite all of it, though, Nick was outside the jail wall, and that was enough of a victory for the moment. When Judy started walking towards the cab she had taken to get there, which was still roughly idling as the driver flipped through a yellowing magazine, Nick raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question. "I think your car was impounded," Judy said, somewhat reluctantly, "Or maybe stolen."
Nick laughed, and there was no bitterness to it. Judy couldn't put a finger on exactly what it was, but Nick looked better than he had when she had first seen him again in the jail. He still looked tired. His clothes were still rumpled and his fur was still matted. But even if he didn't look exactly the way he had before his arrest, there was enough of his old self there that the difference was obvious. Maybe he was standing a little straighter or walking a bit more casually, but whatever had changed Judy was glad to see it. "Of course," Nick said as he pulled open the door to the cab with one paw and gestured inside with the other, "Why would this be easy?"
It was an almost-perfect echo of what Judy had imagined Nick saying when she had realized that the Buchatti was gone, and she couldn't help but smile as she climbed into the back of the cab. As Nick got in after her and shut the door, she tapped the driver on the shoulder until she got his attention and gave him the address of Nick's house again. If the half-deaf goat had any problem with predators in general or foxes in particular, he didn't say anything, although he seemed to be clutching the steering wheel rather tightly and when he changed gears for the first time he did it so sloppily that a terrible grinding noise came from somewhere near the front of the car and Judy might have fallen off of the overstuffed bench in the back of the car and onto its floor if she hadn't braced herself against the door.
The goat's driving did improve after that, to the level that Judy expected of a taxi driver in the city, but even as he seemingly carelessly maneuvered the car around and through traffic he didn't continue his previous loud monologue. That suited Judy just fine, and she turned to Nick. There was some part of her, maybe a part that would always be there, that almost couldn't believe that they were actually sitting next to each other again. Nick, for his part, seemed to be studying her, and Judy wondered if the same thought was going through his head. He eased back, rocking back and forth as he settled into the seat. "So how'd you get me out, anyway?" he asked, "Last I checked prohis didn't get paid that well."
If the taxi had one advantage over the Buchatti, it was that it was actually possible to hold a conversation in it, and Judy had no trouble hearing his words above the almost sewing machine-like sound of the car's little engine. He had asked his question almost casually, but while Judy thought that there was real curiosity behind his words she wondered if it was Nick's way of trying to push aside whatever had happened to him since his arrest. "I borrowed the money from you," she said, gamely enough.
"Borrowed?" Nick said, drawing out the word and shaking his head in mock despair, "Are you turning to a life of crime now? What would the Bureau think?"
His words were gently teasing and Judy smiled. "I promise you'll get it back. Besides, I'm not a prohi anymore. Bellwe— I was fired."
Nick didn't react to her verbal misstep; it didn't feel right to say Bellwether's name in his presence and she could only imagine what the ewe had said to him. Nick simply said, "Oh," and the ensuing silence was just starting to feel uncomfortable when he added, more quietly, "Thank you."
Judy sidled over to him until her hip was brushing against his. "I don't care about being a prohi," she said, "I care about you."
Nick leaned against Judy and she was struck, not for the first time, by how warm he was. She reached her arm out, pulling him into a sideways kind of hug, and anything else either one of them wanted to say didn't matter.
Judy sat at Nick's dining room table, the file Bogo had given her spread out across the table. Nick was showering first, and she could hear the patter of water droplets and the sound of him humming something as she tried to absorb the material. There was quite a bit more than had been in the file that Darnielle had given her, and the folder full of those documents sat forgotten on a chair. It had turned out that there were actually two photographs that had been taken outside of Zweihorn's home, although only the one that she had already seen had a fox recognizable as Nick in it. Judy had only looked briefly at the other photograph, which was so badly overexposed by the light coming out of Zweihorn's open door that the mammal on the doorstep was almost completely washed out. About the only recognizable parts were a pair of legs and what was distinctly a fox tail, which made it worthless without the other.
Judy had a vague idea that it was possible to manipulate a photograph, but she wasn't sure what the tell-tale signs would be. Despite how grainy the image was, it was definitely Nick's face in the photograph; she could even see the cut under one of his ears he had gotten in the apartment fire, although it wasn't much more than a smudge in the image. She tried looking at the other parts of the photograph, trying to see if there was anything out of place, but there wasn't anything that seemed obvious. The fox in the picture (she refused to think it was Nick) had an oddly clumsy-looking grip on the revolver he carried, but nothing else stood out. Then again, that a revolver was visible at all seemed strange to her. If the gun was visible in the picture, it would have been visible to Zweihorn, too, and it didn't seem likely that she would have cheerfully let a mammal into her home who clearly intended on killing her.
Frowning, Judy set the pictures aside and turned to the report from Zweihorn's house. There weren't any photographs, but she doubted that they would have added much. For the most part, the report did little more than clarify the broad strokes she already knew. Both Zweihorns had been found in their dining room, probably at a table not too different from the one she was sitting at but much larger in scale. Both of them had only been shot once, through the eye. Although copies of the autopsy reports wasn't included, they were referenced, noting that both rhinoceroses had powder burns on their faces that indicated they had been shot at extremely close range. Just as she had when she had read about their deaths the first time, Judy felt a sense of wrongness about them. It just didn't make any kind of sense to her; it was like a jigsaw puzzle missing half its pieces that just couldn't be put into any kind of order. The chain of events simply seemed absurd; after first letting a fox into their home, the Zweihorns would have had to sit down at their table, their daughter asleep in her bedroom on the floor above them, and let him shoot them both.
Other than confirming the bizarre details of their deaths, there was a new piece of information that seemed as though it might be important; Angela Zweihorn had nearly eight hundred dollars hidden in her dresser. That a crooked cop had money she shouldn't wasn't too surprising in itself, but it was more than Judy would have guessed.
Judy was about to switch focus and take a look at the police report around River's death when Nick walked into the dining room; she had become so focused on the files that she hadn't even noticed that the water had stopped running. Nick was wearing a suit that Judy recognized as one of the ones he had bought at the department store; the style of it was a little different from what he usually wore and it didn't fit him quite as well. "Find anything?" he asked.
Judy sighed and set the report aside. "Just things to check up on," she said, "I want to talk to Dr. Tolmie again. Maybe there's something he found in the autopsies."
"Maybe," Nick said, agreeably enough, and he spun one of the chairs at the table around and sat straddling it, his arms folded across the top of the chair's back.
"There's something we really ought to talk about first, though," he began, and Judy could feel her heart begin to pick up speed.
They had spent most of the taxi ride back to Nick's house in silence. Once they had arrived the taxi driver had barely waited for the door to the car to close before peeling out, and Nick had let it pass unremarked, saying only that he needed a shower. Now, as he spoke, his voice uncharacteristically serious, Judy had the sinking feeling that she knew exactly what he'd say. He's going to pull back, she thought, He'll say it was all just the heat of the moment and he'll pull back.
It was easy to imagine. Judy knew he would be lying when he said that the kisses hadn't meant anything, that the simple gestures of physical contact were just her misunderstanding his intentions. She was so sure that Nick was going to wrap himself back up in his mask of aloof disinterest that when he did speak, the words didn't make sense at first. "We need to plan for what happens if we can't prove my innocence."
Judy gaped at Nick for a moment as the words sank in, and a flicker of concern crossed Nick's face; she was apparently taking too long to respond. "I already told you, I'm not giving up on you," Judy said, the words flowing out of her mouth seemingly without input from her brain.
Nick sighed, and she wasn't sure if the terrible melancholy she saw on his face was actually there or just a reflection of her own feelings. He stood up and walked over to where she was sitting, resting his head on her shoulder as he stood behind her. "I know you won't," he said, and there was a smile in his words as much as on his face, "I love that you won't. But it won't hurt to get a lawyer, will it? A good one, I mean."
Judy's initial reaction was to say that they wouldn't need a lawyer, but she swallowed the words. As much as she hated to admit it, Nick did have a point. Whether Nick was being framed by Lionheart, some vast conspiracy within the ZPD, or some combination of the two, they had gone to quite a bit of effort to make it stick. She felt confident that working with Nick she'd be able to find the clues that they had unwittingly left behind and prove his innocence, but the memory of Nick being dragged away came up in her head and there was suddenly a lump in her throat. "I guess not," she said, "Do you have someone in mind? We can go now."
If Nick wanted a lawyer, she would happily go with him to hire one, even as every instinct cried out that it was a waste of the time they had to investigate. Nick chuckled as he stood up and crossed the dining room to rummage through the cabinets in the kitchen before he came back with a dust-covered copy of the yellow pages. "As a matter of fact, I do," he said, "Fru Fru said her husband was the best defense attorney in the whole city."
Nick set the book on the dining room table, being careful not to touch any of the documents Judy had spread out over the table's surface, and flipped to the section for lawyers and scanned the pages, running one claw down the columns until stopping on one. "Petruccio and Associates," Nick said, nodding in satisfaction, "That'll be the one."
"Terrific!" Judy said, springing to her feet, "We can go hire a taxi and—"
"Carrots," Nick interrupted, bending his knees until they were at eye level, "We're not going anywhere until you take a shower and change."
There had been so many other things on Judy's mind that she had completely forgotten that she hadn't cleaned up for a few days. "Oh," Judy said, looking down at her wrinkled clothes, "Is it that bad?"
"I didn't want to mention it, but you smell like a jail cell," Nick said, lightening his words with a wink.
When Judy got out of the bathroom, freshly scrubbed and wearing a clean dress, she saw Nick sitting in the same chair she had been in, poring over the files himself. "Find anything?" she asked.
"Where'd you get all of this?" Nick said rather than answering her question directly, "I'm not any kind of expert, but these look like police files."
"Bogo gave me a folder," Judy replied, "He told me to stop investigating but I think he wants me to keep going."
Nick turned and looked at Judy carefully; she could practically see the gears spinning inside his head as he considered her response. "So he thinks some of his officers might have been in on framing me. Is that about right?"
Judy nodded and Nick chuckled. "It really is never easy," he said, shaking his head, and then he reached over and grabbed something on the table top.
Nick held up the photograph of the fox standing on Zweihorn's doorstep. "This isn't me," he said.
"I know it's not," Judy replied, "But how do you fake a photograph?"
Nick shrugged. "I have no idea," he admitted, "It's not the sort of thing Mr. Big ever had much use for, back in my day. I think he preferred extortion over blackmail."
"Still, you wouldn't catch me dead wearing that suit," he added, pointing at what the fox in the image was wearing.
To Judy, the suit didn't look too much different from the one he was wearing, but she simply nodded. "If we're getting you a lawyer, we're doing this right," she said, and picked up the folder that Darnielle had given her.
She hadn't even flipped it open since Bogo had given her a more complete set of files; there didn't seem to be anything in it that Bogo's file didn't have. Bogo had been more than a little circumspect in how he had given her his files, though, and the last thing Judy wanted was to pass those files along to someone else and give the prosecution another angle of attack against Nick. "Fine by me," Nick said, and then he glanced at his watch before continuing, "We've got about fifteen minutes before the dimbox shows up. How about a cup of coffee and some hash?"
Judy hadn't seen the food when she had walked into the dining room, but he did have two plates of the same questionable hash he had made for breakfast what felt like weeks ago and a couple cups of instant coffee gently steaming sitting on a corner of the table. He must have caught the way she looked at the food because he quickly added, "We really should have picked up some groceries. I swear I'm a pretty good cook when I've got something to work with that didn't come out of cans."
"Mm-hmm," Judy replied, imbuing the wordless sounds with all the skepticism she could.
Still, despite the oddly grayish brown color of the mess of food on the plates, she actually was hungry, and she took one of the chairs. As she scooped up a forkful of the steaming mix of onions, potatoes, and carrots she paused as she remembered something and pointed at Nick with her free paw. "Don't think that I've forgotten your promise, by the way."
Nick laughed. "I've got my tuxedo all ready to go, Carrots. All we'll need is your dress."
Judy smiled. It was nice, sitting down and eating with Nick, even with the burden of the investigation and Nick's backup plan hanging over them. And, when Nick leaned over to brush a stray piece of onion off her face and turned it into a kiss, it was even better.
Author's Notes:
The title of this chapter, "You're the Cream in My Coffee," comes from a 1928 song by Ray Henderson. It allows me to continue my theme of songs with titles that reference coffee when Nick and Judy drink it and the lyrics are actually quite sweet; they're from the perspective of a man describing his sweetheart, who he couldn't do without.
Advertising for lawyers and bail bondsmammals near a jail is really just good business sense, and in the 1920s it wasn't uncommon to see advertisements plastered just about everywhere.
The word "smarmy" in its modern context was actually fairly recent in 1927. The earliest known usage of the word to mean someone who is insincerely ingratiating dates to 1924. The word "smarm" did appear earlier, around 1847, to mean to daub or smear, and is thought to be derived from a blend of "smear" and "balm" in reference to someone adding pomade to their hair. If this etymology is right, it would imply that it was a short jump from associating salesmen with oily hair to their insincere charm.
A bail bondsmammal would be the Zootopia equivalent of a bail bondsman, someone who puts up money for bail on someone else's behalf. Naturally, they don't do this out of the goodness of their own hearts, but charge a non-refundable fee that is a fraction of the total value required to bail someone out of jail. This is usually around 10% of the total; if you had your bail set at $1000, you could pay $100 and they would put up the $1000 to get you out of jail. Since bail money is returned to whoever paid it after the person who was in jail makes their court appearances, this means that bail bond companies have a very much vested interest in ensuring that anyone they pay the bail for makes those appearances.
An interesting consequence of this system is that bounty hunting is a perfectly legal profession in the US; bail bond companies will pay bounty hunters to track down people who skipped out on their court appearances after their bail was paid and force them to appear.
Judy could theoretically have saved a decent chunk of Nick's money for their immediate use at the cost of spending a portion of it by using a bail bond company, although there's definitely a chance that no one would be willing to put up $10,000 for a predator accused of killing three mammals, two of them cops. Besides, I think it's understandable that she wouldn't have considered it in her frame of mind.
In any car with a manual transmission, the smoothness of gear changes is entirely dependent on the driver. In older cars especially, such as what would be available in 1927, non-synchromesh transmissions will loudly complain if you don't shift properly. Seatbelts definitely were not standard equipment in 1927, hence why Judy nearly fell out of her seat on a bad gear change.
Nick and Judy went clothes shopping back in chapter 15, where Nick expressed his dislike for clothes purchased off the rack. Since the suits in his closets are implied to be tailored to him, it makes sense that the ones he just bought at the department store don't fit quite as well.
The yellow pages, perhaps known better nowadays as that worthless book that gets dumped on your doorstep every year, actually date back to the 19th century. Then, as now, they consisted of listings for businesses, and the reason that they're printed on yellow paper was a quirk of printing; in 1883 a printer putting together a telephone directory ran out of white paper and used yellow because they happened to have it.
As Nick implies, there is a difference between extortion and blackmail. If you're extorting someone, you're getting them to do what you want under the threat of violence or damage to property. If you're blackmailing someone, you're getting them to do what you want by revealing information they don't want known.
Angelo Petruccio, Fru Fru's husband, showed up way back in chapter 15, and Fru Fru did describe him as the city's best defense attorney.
A dimbox was 1920s slang for a taxi, and Nick's house, having as it does a modern (by 1920s standards) set of appliances would definitely include a telephone.
Nick previously cooked hash in chapter 29 because all he had was canned goods, and they haven't gone grocery shopping since. I'll leave it up to you to figure out how truthful he's being about his cooking skills. Also in chapter 29, Nick did promise to take Judy out on the town once the investigation ended, specifically promising that he'd wear a tuxedo and suggesting that she get something slinky and covered in sequins.
As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!