Chief Bogo still looked like a police officer even when he was wearing a suit. The thought had popped into Judy's head completely unbidden, but it seemed as though ever since she had seen Bellwether's earring her brain was making random connections, the patterns between events suddenly seeming as clear as day.
That Bogo was in Redfurred's apartment at all, dressed in a conservative gray suit that he somehow still wore like a uniform, was only the result of an agonizing discussion with Nick. Although Judy's first reaction, once she had recovered enough from her realization to do anything, had been to reach for the telephone that had been knocked askew from a small table in the main room of Redfurred's apartment. Nick had stopped her, though, with a single question: "What if Redfurred's phone is tapped?"
Judy had spent her first month with the Bureau of Prohibition, before the assignment to investigate the Thief of the Night and determine if the club was illegally selling alcohol had somehow spiraled beyond anything she could have imagined, transcribing recorded or live wiretapped conversations. She could remember the names of dozens of mammals the Bureau had been keeping tabs on. She could even remember the cadences of their voices, scratchy and garbled on the recordings and faint and tinny on live calls though they were. What she couldn't remember, though, was whether Brian Redfurred had been one of those mammals. She thought he hadn't been; the name hadn't stirred even a hint of familiarity when Zoya had said it. But she wasn't a hundred percent certain, and the small creeping doubt made it feel as though it would be a certainty that his phone was tapped.
The image of someone from the Bureau of Prohibition, like the almost aggressively antisocial Agent Ramses, listening in on a call and immediately alerting Bellwether had a sort of vividness that no dream Judy had ever had, not even her nightmares of Nick burning in a fire, could match. She had imagined Bellwether, likely with some loyal member of the Bureau to do the dirty work, showing up at Redfurred's door, her face split by an insincere smile. Then again, it didn't even have to be a member of the Bureau; Bellwether obviously had contacts within the ZPD itself to be able to frame Nick. Judy had thought that it could be an officer who would show up to tie up Bellwether's loose ends, ready to make sure that neither Nick nor Judy had the chance to share what they had learned.
In the end, after what had felt like hours but couldn't have been much more than ten or fifteen minutes, they had decided that the risk of using the phone was worth it, but not the risk of calling the police. Instead, when Judy had picked up the phone she had dialed the operator and requested a connection for Chief Bogo's house. As the operator, who spoke in a friendly and open tone with her words spaced apart almost as far as Priscilla Acedia's, looked for a number with an agonizing slowness Judy kept the fingers of her free paw crossed as she cradled the receiver in the other. She hadn't known if Bogo had a telephone in his home or even if he would be home; he might very well have been on duty at the station or else otherwise occupied on a day off.
When Bogo had picked up on the third ring Judy had let out a breath she hadn't even realized she had been holding. "Chief Bogo?" she had asked before he even had a chance to speak, "This is Judy Hopps."
"Ms. Hopps," Bogo had said, his voice robbed of its power by the tinny reproduction that was the best the telephone could do, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Judy thought that she had heard a note of interest in his voice, but that might have only been her imagining what she wanted to her. Judy had worked out what she was going to say with Nick with a carefulness that would have been frustrating if their situation hadn't been so dangerous. "It's about the murder case, sir. I know you told me not to keep investigating but—" Judy began.
"But you ignored my advice and decided to play cop. What did you find?" Bogo interrupted, and although his voice had a harshness that wasn't due just to the connection Judy could feel herself relaxing a degree.
Bogo had obviously intended for her to keep investigating; he certainly wouldn't have given her the file that he had if he had expected her to stay quietly on the sidelines. Judy had quickly caught on as to what he had meant, and she was relieved that he had done the same. If someone was listening in on the line, Judy wanted to make sure they learned as little of value as possible, and she pushed on. "Nothing, sir. But—"
"Ms. Hopps," Bogo had interrupted again, "You called me at my home on my day off to tell me you found nothing?"
Judy had suspected that not all of his irritation was being feigned for a potential eavesdropper, and she quickly moved on. "Someone ransacked Brian Redfurred's apartment looking for something. We didn't find anything but—"
The lie about not finding anything had come just as easily the second time as it had the first, and Judy would have sworn that when she had mentioned Redfurred's name that Bogo had taken a sudden breath. "But you decided to bother me instead of calling the police. Are you still at Redfurred's apartment?" Bogo had said.
"Yes," Judy had said before giving him the address.
"There will be consequences for this, Ms. Hopps," Bogo had said, "You have no authority to perform investigations, not for the Bureau and not for the police. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir," Judy had replied, doing her best to sound suitably humbled at the harsh words.
Nick, who had been standing next to Judy for the entire call, had given her a wink and a smile as he had nodded approvingly. "Good," Bogo had replied, "I'll be there in half an hour. You had better have an explanation for why you thought this was a good idea."
With that, the buffalo had simply hung up, but Judy knew that he had understood her meaning. When he had finally arrived, Judy had been incredibly glad to see him; while waiting for him to show up every sound had been a potential visit by an eavesdropper who had figured out what they meant. It hadn't taken long to explain everything they had learned, from the possibility that the pictures of Nick had been forged, to how they had gotten onto the path of Brian Redfurred and from there the revolver and the earring. When Bogo had opened his suit jacket Judy had half-expected him to pull out a gun and prove that trusting him had been a terrible mistake, but it had only been to retrieve his glasses to aid in his examination of the earring.
At long last, Bogo lowered the earring away from his face. "I have seen Bellwether wearing this," he said at last, and a flash of irritation moved across his broad face, "And heard her bragging about it."
"So you see how it all fits," Judy began eagerly, "Bellwether's the one who framed Nick! That's why all of the other notes were written by Lionheart but the one planted on Nick was typed! She must have seen that she had the opportunity to take all the credit for Lionheart's arrest and get Nick arrested. You wouldn't believe how much she hates him!"
"She really does," Nick added, "How many times did Bellwether tell you to find an excuse for arresting me?"
Bogo's seemingly perpetual frown darkened a degree as Judy answered, "Three."
Bogo opened his mouth to begin speaking, but Judy plunged on before he had the chance. The connections were suddenly so clear to her that it was all she could do to try to keep her words focused, and her mouth seemed to be running on its own. "So she hired Brian Redfurred to kill two officers, and then had someone—or maybe it was more than one mammal, I don't know—tamper with the evidence to frame Nick. But she didn't have the gun that was actually used in the murders—I think Redfurred didn't trust her—so she came here herself to look for it and lost her earring. And she got me arrested long enough to make sure she could steal the credit for arresting Lionheart! It all makes sense!"
Judy looked up at Chief Bogo, aware that she probably sounded pleading but unable to do anything to change it. "Please, don't you see it?"
He was silent for a long moment, polishing his glasses before putting them back on. "Ms. Hopps," he said, and his tone had a gentleness to it Judy had never heard, "You're asking me to believe that a senior member of the Bureau of Prohibition—who has dedicated her life to stamping out bootleggers—risked her career and her reputation for the chance to resolve a petty grudge?"
"And advance her career," Nick said, staring up at Bogo, his expression neutral, "She might have been in league with a bootlegger all along, too. This might be more than a tempest in a teapot dome."
The possibility that Bellwether had been colluding with one of more of the gangs had also occurred to Judy herself, but she wasn't sure she would have been able to say it without sounding like she had gone completely screwy. "In which case you're asking me to believe that some of my most trustworthy officers have betrayed that trust," Bogo replied, but he didn't sound angry at the implication.
She got the sense that the buffalo was taking her measure, and Judy took a deep breath before she answered. "And are you sure that they're trustworthy? The officer who took the photographs outside Zweihorn's house, the mammal who ran the test for gunshot residue, the one who compared the bullets... Do you trust all of them?"
Bogo frowned. "Perhaps one of them doesn't deserve that trust, but every single one of them has served loyally for years."
Judy thought she understood his unspoken point. Framing Nick seemed to require an extraordinary amount of cooperation between several different mammals rather than the actions of a single mammal, and nothing Judy had seen in the personnel files Bogo had included in the packet he had given her gave her any reason to suspect that a single one of them would work against the police. Although Judy suspected that the fact Bogo had included those files at all meant he was willing to entertain the possibility that one of them had betrayed his trust, it did seem hard to fathom. The officer who had taken the photographs outside of Zweihorn's home, Michael Bison, had had a niece die years ago when she had been caught in the crossfire of a petty gang squabble. It was hard to imagine the bison, who had been a member of the ZPD for almost twenty years and had a distinguished service record, could have possibly been involved, and while the other mammals didn't have records that were quite as unimpeachable there was nothing that Judy or Nick had seen to suggest that they were traitors. "Frankly, that sounds like your problem," Nick said, and his tone had a kind of forcefulness to it that should have been surprising considering how Bogo towered over them but somehow wasn't, "We've served everything else up to you on a silver platter. Or will we need to find Redfurred, too?"
If Bogo was upset at Nick's words, which weren't quite respectful, he didn't show it. "I'm afraid that won't be necessary," he said.
"You have Redfurred?" Judy asked, her optimism flaring to life and then immediately dying when she saw the look in Bogo's eyes as he shook his head.
"I think we might," Bogo replied, and he pulled a manila folder that looked tiny in his massive hoof out of his suit jacket.
From the folder Bogo pulled out a photograph and held it so that both Nick and Judy could see it. The two of them stared at the image mutely, and it was Nick who broke their silence. "Chief Bogo," Nick said, his head rising from the photograph as jerkily as a half-broken windup toy.
"Ms. Hopps," he continued, giving Judy a nod that let her see his pupils had contracted to pinpricks.
"If you'll excuse me a moment," Nick said, and his words were oddly precise after he took in a somewhat shaky breath.
Without waiting for an answer, he turned away and walked across the room, his movements still jerky and stiff, until he reached the small water closet adjacent to the bathroom. Before he even had the door fully closed, Judy could hear him retching. She couldn't blame him; if she had been capable of vomiting herself she would have been right there with him. As it was, her guts seemed to churn in her chest from having seen the picture of the fox who had to be Redfurred.
Judy had thought she had a strong tolerance for seeing violence. Even when Carajou had been sitting in a pool of his own blood, his head twisted at an impossible angle, she hadn't panicked. But how the wolverine had died was nothing compared to what the fox had suffered. She didn't have to be a doctor to know that the fox had been savagely beaten to death, his body swollen and misshaped beneath a tight-fitting suit and his head so battered it was easy to understand why Bogo wasn't completely sure that he was Redfurred. That on its own shouldn't have been too terrible after everything else Judy had seen, but the fox looked so similar to Nick in his build that they could almost have been brothers.
It made it all too easy to imagine his suffering on Nick. Judy could see Nick's near-perpetual half-smirk destroyed by a mouthful of cracked and shattered teeth, the light and seemingly effortless grace he moved with lost to twisted and broken limbs that ended in ruined fingers and toes. Redfurred, and she didn't doubt that it was him, had suffered terribly. She could only imagine Bellwether's rage when Redfurred wouldn't say where he had hidden the murder weapon, someone larger and stronger than the little ewe dishing out vicious blows until they went too far. "I stopped by the station on my way over," Bogo said as he slid the photograph back into the folder it had come from, "This fox was pulled out of the river yesterday morning. No one could identify him at the time, but I believe it must be Redfurred."
"That's..." Judy began, and even as she heard Nick's continued retching from the water closet she could feel her eyes filling with tears of helpless and frustrated anger.
They had come so close to finding the link that could prove Nick's innocence once and for all and it had turned out to be another dead end. Judy could practically hear Bellwether's simpering laugh, and she was surprised when Chief Bogo placed a single hoof on her shoulder so lightly that she could barely feel it. "You've done exceptional work, Ms. Hopps," Bogo said, "But Dawn Bellwether plays politics better than anyone I know. This earring isn't going to be enough."
Judy knew that Bogo was right and hated it. She could practically hear the excuses. Bellwether might blame Judy for stealing the earring and planting it, or maybe the ewe had already bought an identical pair to replace her missing earring. If Judy was right that the revolver Redfurred had hidden in his light fixture was the one actually used to murder the Zweihorns and River it was an excellent clue towards Nick's innocence, but Judy was sure Bellwether could squirm her way out of that as well, and even if Nick went free so would the ewe. "I do think that you might be right," Bogo continued, "And I'll see what I can find."
"Is that a promise?" Nick asked.
Judy hadn't noticed him come back into the main room of the apartment. His fur seemed in much more of a disarray than it usually did and his eyes seemed to have sunk into his head, but he had at least a little of his usual ease as he walked up to Chief Bogo and looked him dead in the eye. "It is," Bogo said, "But I do have to call this in."
As Bogo moved to the telephone, Judy gave a quick glance to make sure that his back was to them as she looped an arm around Nick's waist. "Are you OK?" she asked, pitching her voice low to avoid being overheard.
"Oh, I'll be fine," Nick said, waving one paw carelessly, "It was just a little difficult seeing a picture of a fox who looked like he went twelve rounds with an elephant."
His tone wasn't quite as steady as it normally was, but Judy didn't question him, content to stand beside him. "How's your foot?" he asked, and Judy let him change the subject.
"It's fine," she said, "It doesn't hurt at all when I walk."
That much, at least, was the truth, and Nick nodded. "So what do you say we get out of here?" he asked, and Judy saw no reason to stay; if anything she wanted to be gone before any police arrived.
"Let's go," she said, and as she walked out of the apartment it occurred to her that she still had her arm wrapped around Nick and Bogo might see them.
Somehow, though, she couldn't bring herself to find that more important than supporting Nick.
Judy didn't know which station Bogo had called or if it had simply been because he had phoned in the call himself, but the police response was impressively quick. By the time that they walked out of the apartment building there were already a couple of police cars making their way down the block to join the spot where Bogo had left his own car in front of the building. Curious mammals had already left their buildings at the sound of the wailing sirens, which Judy supposed must have been fairly rare in the neighborhood. None of the mammals, who seemed to be mostly pigs and goats with a few smaller mammals like a dormouse and a few larger ones like a giraffe (wearing the battered coveralls of a lineworker carrying a beaver dressed the same way on his head) mixed in, paid either fox or bunny any mind as they walked away from the apartment and towards where Judy had parked the car.
Judy ignored the other mammals too, her mind racing through what possible avenues of approach that they had left. "We should go back to your place," Judy said, "We need to go back through the files. I'm sure there's something that we've overlooked. But we'll find it."
Nick was silent until they had made their way back to the car and they had climbed in. "Carrots," Nick said slowly, "Do you remember how I promised to take you out for a night on the town once this all ended? A tuxedo for me, something slinky for you... You know, really putting on the Ritz?"
He spoke the words carefully, and Judy regarded him with an equal amount of care. He seemed more or less back to his usual self, and Judy nodded. "Of course I do," she said, "And we will."
Nick shook his head. "Will we?" he asked.
There was no anger or sadness in his voice, and that made it all the worse. To Judy, he sounded more like he was discussing the weather and less as though his life and freedom were on the line. "Listen to me, Nick," Judy said, and she leaned in as she looked up at him until she could see her breath making the fur of his neck ripple, "I am never going to give up on you. Never."
She didn't know if Nick had started their embrace or if she had, but somehow Nick's arms had ended up around her and her arms were around him. His body was warm against hers and she could feel the underside of his muzzle resting against the top of her head between her ears. "What did I ever do to deserve you?" he murmured, and Judy's response was immediate.
"I ask myself the same thing," she said, and then Nick chuckled.
"I bet when we first met it was for the other reason, wasn't it?" he asked, and Judy nodded, enjoying the feel of the fur of his muzzle brushing against her head.
"Well, at least you're honest," Nick said, but he didn't sound upset.
"Listen, Judy," he said, and he still hadn't let her go, "I know what you're saying when you won't give up on me."
He squeezed her gently. Although the thought hadn't occurred to Judy herself, she realized that what he was implying was true. The reason she refused to give up on Nick wasn't just because her sense of justice wouldn't let her rest while an innocent mammal was being framed and she had the power to do something about it. It was because she loved him, and to give up on him would also be to give up on that love. "But I've got my own way of telling you something important," he continued, "So I'm saying that we need to go dancing."
Whatever Judy had expected Nick to say, it hadn't been that. "Dancing?" she said, her voice rising a little in her incredulity.
It was about the worst possible time to give up and do something frivolous, but Nick simply nodded, the motion dragging the nape of his neck between her ears. "Dancing," he repeated, "I know a nice little club, not too far away. Not a swanky one, but we can save that for later."
"But—" Judy began, but Nick cut her off before she could continue.
"I'm not going to go back into jail tomorrow if we take the time to have a little fun tonight," Nick said, and Judy couldn't hear so much as a trace of teasing in his voice, "Going to my house and worrying isn't going to do anything."
Judy was quiet a moment, considering what he had said. She remembered something Nick had said what felt like years ago, when he had asked her if she had ever done anything fun in Zootopia since moving to the city. The answer had been no then, and she remembered the regret she had felt when she had realized that she hadn't so much as explored the city. Maybe he was right that they should take a break, and the memory of the last time they had danced came back into mind. "Someplace like the Blind Tiger where no one will notice a fox and a bunny together?" she asked, and by the way Nick laughed and pulled himself back to settle into his half of the car's bench seat she knew that he knew he had won.
"Mammals noticed," Nick said, and she could see the familiar half-smile on his face, "They just didn't care."
The club that Nick had instructed Judy to drive to certainly didn't look like much from the outside. Like the Thief of the Night, it was in the basement of a building. The building was squat and a little run-down looking, the windows on the first floor so hazy that they looked as though they hadn't been cleaned in years. A grimy white sign of warping and splintering boards above the front door labeled the building as "ACME EXPORTS, LTD." Rather than approach the front door, though, Nick led Judy past a loading dock in the back of the building to a door labeled "BASEMENT" under which was a crudely stenciled and faded image of a pink pansy. As they approached, Judy could faintly hear the sound of jazz being played, and when Nick pulled the door open the noise became almost overwhelming.
The mammal stationed just inside the door, a surprisingly large mountain goat who had squeezed himself into a poorly-fitting gray suit, nodded at Nick as they entered. "Mr. Wilde," he said, his voice barely audible over the din.
"Rick," Nick replied, nodding in kind, and without any further conversation they were inside the club.
The club, which Nick had said was called the Pink Pansy on the drive over, didn't make Judy think much care had been taken when it had been converted from a basement. The walls were made of brick that had been sloppily white-washed and the coating was visibly flaking away in spots. It speckled the floor of oiled dirt like dandruff near the walls, and the small stage crammed into one corner of the room looked as though it had been made from a varied assortment of reclaimed wood from wooden crates that had been broken apart and rejoined. There was a bar in the opposite corner of the room where it seemed no effort had been made to disguise its origin; it was simply two large crates, the stenciled letters "ACME EXPORTS" and "THIS SIDE UP" perfectly visible across them even in the dim glow of a few light bulbs in tin reflectors scattered across the ceiling with no discernible pattern. The basement room was warm, almost stuffy, but considering how many mammals were packed into it that was no surprise. They filled the basement with their scents, cologne and perfume and natural musk all combining into a smell that managed to be both sickly-sweet and somehow sour. Although Judy didn't spot very many mixed-species couples dancing, there were a few among the dozens who crowded the dance floor, spinning and twirling in a way that seemed careless and yet didn't seem to result in bumping very often.
The musicians, a quartet of weasels whose skill seemed to just narrowly exceed their obvious enthusiasm, played a song that Judy had never heard before although she was perfectly willing to dance to it. Nick offered her a paw and she took it, marveling at just how right it felt to have his other paw delicately around her waist as he led them into a rapid foxtrot. "So what was it that you wanted to tell me?" Judy asked, doing her best to imitate Nick at his smuggest and most teasing.
"You know I love you," Nick replied easily; the music was so loud and his voice was so low that even if someone had been standing right next to him Judy doubted anyone could have overheard him, "But there was something else."
He led Judy through a spin before she got the chance to say, "What's that?"
His answer was so shocking that Judy stumbled a step and might have fallen to the floor if he hadn't had his arms around her. As it was, she couldn't remember either the next few songs or even if Nick had said something else, her mind running through the possibilities of what he had suggested. She thought that he had most of it right, but she couldn't think of how to fill in the void of what he had suggested. It was almost half an hour later before something like a solution seemed to nibble at the edge of her mind, the answer not coming all at once but rather gradually, each piece making the next link obvious. "Do I smell smoke coming out of that little bunny brain?" Nick teased, and when Judy turned her attention outwards again she saw that he was smiling.
"Not quite," Judy replied, "But I think I know what we need to do."
"Hold that thought," Nick replied, "I need to bribe the musicians."
Judy eased herself until her back was to the wall, not caring that the white-wash was probably flaking off onto her dress, and watched as Nick smoothly maneuvered himself to the crowd until he reached the stage. From across the room not even her ears could pick up what he was saying to the weasel who seemed to be the band's leader, but there was no mistaking how a five-dollar bill seemed to appear in Nick's paw and disappear into the weasel's with an equal amount of magic. By the time that Nick had made his way back to her, the weasels had started playing the unmistakable strains of "Someone to Watch Over Me," and while the female weasel singing had a voice quite a bit smokier and rougher than Gazelle's the song was no less sweet for it.
"It's my greatest shame," Nick said by way of greeting as he offered his paw to Judy to dance again, "I'm horribly soft at heart."
Judy simply laughed and let herself brush against his body. "It's one of the things I like about you," Judy replied, and she could hear as well feel it when he said, "Mm-hmm."
"It must be an awfully long list," he teased, and Judy waited a moment before she said anything, trying to hold onto the simple pleasure of dancing with Nick.
Before too long, though, her impatience won out, and she said, "We need to set a trap."
"And what were you thinking of for bait?" Nick asked.
It was a good question. They had precious little to tempt anyone with; although the frame job on Nick might falter it still couldn't be positively proven to be a frame job with Redfurred unavailable to testify. Judy had already given Bellwether everything she had wanted by giving her Lionheart in a way that the ewe could take credit for. It'd be all too easy to discredit Judy and claim that every piece of evidence they had found while trying to clear Nick's name was the fake. Even Bogo might be of little help considering the extent to which the ZPD must have been compromised.
And yet, Judy thought that she had an answer. She knew from reading the Bureau's files that in the process of faking his own death, Nick had also killed off his identity as Randall Steervens, the phantom mammal he had created for the sole purpose of laundering Mr. Big's money. Judy suspected that Bellwether had only gone along with the idea since by publicly pretending that Nick had taken no part in bringing Mr. Big down the ewe had been able to claim sole credit, but she thought that it might just give them an opportunity now.
"When you turned over Randall Steerven's books, you didn't give them everything, did you?" she asked.
Nick's pulled Judy slightly closer to him even as his footwork remained impeccable. "Not everything, no, but nothing that'll do me any good. I've got a few duplicate ledgers hidden away in safety deposit boxes, but they're worthless with Randall Steervens dead."
"That's not true," Judy said, and she couldn't keep the smile off of her face as she leaned against Nick.
"That the ledgers are worthless?" Nick asked.
With his voice low, it was hard to hear him over the sound of the music, but Judy could hear the confusion in his voice. She stopped moving with Nick until they were both standing on the dance floor. He looked down at her, head cocked to the side, and Judy reached up to gently grab his cheek with one paw, pulling his head down until he had bent down far enough that she could have kissed him on the mouth. "That Randall Steervens is dead. Tomorrow morning we're going to one of those safety deposit boxes and bringing Steervens back to life."
And then, since his head was at the perfect level, Judy kissed Nick until the confusion melted away from his face as he leaned in, his focus solely on her. Judy had planned on explaining herself once the kiss ended, but when Nick made no motion to break the kiss, instead gently lifting her up until his arms were wrapped entirely around her and squeezing her against his chest. Well, Judy thought, I guess it could wait a few minutes.
Author's Notes:
The title of this chapter, "Say it While Dancing," comes from a 1922 Abner Silver song. Considering that the crux of this chapter is the discussion Nick and Judy have while dancing, it seemed appropriate.
Judy noting that Bogo somehow wears a suit like a uniform, as well as the fact that he was actually at his home when they call, was intended to indicate that the particular Sunday that this all happened on was one of his days off. In the movie Bogo's never actually seen wearing anything other than a police uniform (unless you count an app that crudely pastes his head over that of a scantily-clad tiger), but he does presumably have both other sets of clothes and days off. I suppose he might have given himself and Clawhauser a "security assignment" as a thinly-veiled excuse for attending Gazelle's concert at the movie's end, explaining why he was in uniform then.
Seeing as how this is the second to last chapter of this story, there are plenty of threads tying it back around to the beginning. Judy's boring first month with the Bureau transcribing telephone calls was touched on in chapter 2. Also as she notes, the assignment that kicked this whole chain of events off in chapter 3 was only to determine whether or not the nightclub the Thief of the Night was violating Prohibition by selling alcohol.
That Judy was able to dial the operator on Redfurred's telephone indicates that he had a telephone with a rotary dial, which were first introduced in the late 19th century and quickly became common as the alternative was to always begin a phone call with a direct connection to an operator who would operate a switchboard to properly connect a call. That the operator speaks slowly is a reflection of telephone technology at the time; in the 1920s the quality of the sound reproduction wasn't all that great, and speaking loudly and slowly was still frequently needed to make yourself understood.
Judy crosses her fingers for luck in the movie, and the gesture itself far predates the 1920s. The gesture has in fact been used for centuries, possibly as a result of its use by both pagans and early Christians resulting in it becoming widespread.
Bellwether did in fact instruct Judy on three separate occasions to find an excuse for arresting Nick, first in chapter 11, then reminding her in chapter 23 and for the last time in chapter 34. She does seem to have something of a one-track mind when it comes to Nick.
When Nick says that their investigation might be more than a tempest in a teapot dome, he's combining the common expression "tempest in a teapot" with a reference to the Teapot Dome Scandal, which would probably be remembered as the biggest US government scandal of the 20th century if it hadn't been for Watergate. The details emerged in 1922, shortly before President Warren Harding died in office in 1923, and it turned out that his Secretary of State, Albert Fall, had leased the petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome (an oil field in Wyoming) to private companies at incredibly low rates and without any competitive bidding. Interestingly, while Fall became the first Cabinet member in US history to be sentenced to prison (in his case for accepting bribes from the oil companies to give them such sweetheart deals), no one was ever convicted of paying the bribes. Warren Harding's reputation was further tarnished after his death once it became known that the Republican Party had been blackmailed by his mistress in 1920 to avoid having the details of his decades-long affair with her become public knowledge ahead of the election; to date Carrie Fulton Phillips is the only woman known to have successfully blackmailed a major US political party. In any case, in 1927 the details of the Teapot Dome Scandal were pretty well known by the general public and would be a reference just about anyone in the US would have gotten.
"Screwy" was a bit of 1920s slang to mean "crazy" and while it is still sometimes used in that sense its meaning has drifted more towards strange or unusual.
Officer Michael Bison is a nod to the Street Fighter franchise, in which the main villain (in the English version, at least) is a hulking man named M. Bison. As bison are the largest extant mammal native to North America, it seemed appropriate.
Windup toys are also quite old, with the first such examples being built in the 15th century for the amusement of royalty due to the expense of precision gears, springs, and other clockwork components. By the late 19th century, they had become drastically cheaper and could be mass-produced as toys, and they remained popular into the early 20th century when this story is set. Consequently, Judy's narration noting that Nick's movements are as jerky as a windup toy when he's trying to keep his composure is a historically appropriate comparison.
As noted in the author's notes for chapter 8, a water closet was a polite euphemism for a toilet in the 1920s, hence its appearance here (in the form of a small room separate from the bathroom likely converted from a literal closet) when the sight of a picture of Redfurred's body makes Nick vomit. Throughout this story I've tried to demonstrate that he's a little squeamish, and seeing a picture of someone who was beaten to death was finally enough to put him over the edge. Judy, in contrast, noting that she's incapable of vomiting is something that's actually true of real rabbits and is one of the reasons that they're so fragile in real life; if they eat something disagreeable, it has to pass through their entire system to be excreted. Whether or not this is also true of bunnies in the world of Zootopia is, I suppose, anyone's guess.
A lineworker is someone who works on power lines, and it seems like giraffes in Zootopia would be well suited to serve as a living cherry picker for a smaller mammal, as I implied was the case with the beaver riding the giraffe's head. After all, why bother paying for a machine when you can have someone do it just as well with their natural abilities? It seems like a market that giraffes could easily corner, at least until the machines get really inexpensive. Although most cities nowadays bury their power lines, in the 1920s it was still quite common to see tangled webs of hastily and cheaply put up lines on poles, which would inevitably fail due to weather or just their shoddy nature.
Way, way back in the comments for chapter 17, I had told Matri that "putting on the Ritz" would appear in the story in some form, and here's the phrase now. The expression means to dress fashionably, and was also used for the song "Puttin' On the Ritz" by Irving Berlin. As the song was written in 1927 but not published until 1929, the use of the song would be anachronistic in the story, but the expression did predate the song.
The name of the building that the club is in being Acme Exports Limited isn't a Road Runner reference, but actually a reference to the trend that was parodied with the Acme Corporation within that cartoon. In the 1920s as yellow pages and telephone books became more popular, businesses were quick to take note of the fact that these listings were alphabetical and that most people were too lazy to look very far down a list of businesses, preferring instead to simply call the one listed first in its category. This led to the name Acme being widely used by countless unrelated businesses (including, incidentally, Acme American Wrought Anvils, such as what would be featured in the Road Runner cartoons) to the point that it became something of a generic name.
The club being named the Pink Pansy is a reference to the fact that the cocktails that many speakeasies served were called pansies. Most of these so-called pansies were either created or became popular as a way of hiding the bad taste of poor quality alcohol, as the top-shelf stuff made outside the US by reputable distilleries was out of the price range of most people during Prohibition and drinking something made in someone's backyard out of a still cobbled together out of an old radiator could be unpleasant.
Floors really can be made out of oiled dirt; it's significantly cheaper than concrete to simply seal the floor with a coating of linseed oil, and from the general description it should be pretty clear that the Pink Pansy is about as far from a high-class joint as you can get.
This was the second to last chapter of this story, and I've avoided providing much in the way of details as to what Judy's plan is for the trap that they're setting. I figured that it would be repetitive to explain it and then immediately have it get set in motion, but chapter 50 is going to wrap everything up, including whether or not they succeed. This is really the home stretch, and I hope you enjoy it! As always, thanks for reading, and if you're inclined to leave a comment I'd love to hear what you thought!