Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

chapter 2

"Where are we going now, Mr. Valiant?" Cherry asked as they left the trolley.

"We're gonna visit a close, personal friend of mine to help crack this case," Eddie replied, then turned to the boys on the back of the trolley and waved to them. "Thanks for the cigarettes!"

Cherry and Atticus followed Eddie. The detective slicked down his hair and tried to look his best as he led the aspiring private detective and cartoonist behind him to a local bar. They walked in and saw a lot of men either shooting pool, sitting together with raunchy conversation, or drinking on a stool to drown their sorrows in the crazy world they live in.

"Hi Harry, you okay?" Eddie greeted one of the bar flies.

"Hi, Eddie." the man, Harry, spoke back, briefly.

Cherry and Atticus felt shaky as a trolley was rumbling from outside, but no one else seemed to be affected by it. Must have grown accustomed to it after dealing with it for so long. 

Eddie spotted an officer and placed his cap back on his head, looking dead drunk. "What's with Earl?"

One of the men on a stool took out a notepad and wrote something down, showing it to Eddie to answer his question.

"Laid off?" Eddie was appalled.

The man with the paper nodded.

"A new outfit bought the red car," another man said to Eddie, explaining. "Some big company called Cloverleaf."

"No kiddin'," Eddie remarked. "They bought the red car?"

"Yeah, put the poor guy on two weeks notice." the man answered, walking away. "Cutbacks, they said."

Eddie sighed for his friend. "Oh, well, Earl. Here's to the pencil pushers. Maybe they all get lead poisoning, huh?" he then took out a shot to sip it, but a hand stopped him. 

Cherry and Atticus sat on stools together, and saw pretzals in a bowl, deciding to have a little munch. They saw the woman who had stopped Eddie from drinking his shot. She seemed to have been a waitress with puffy and short length black hair in a uniform and bore a strict look on her face. 

"Tomorrow's Friday, Eddie," the waitress told him. "You know what happens here on Friday?"

"Fish special?" Eddie shrugged.

"My boss checks the books on Friday," the waitress swiped the shot glass from him. "If I don't have that money I gave you back in the till, I'm gonna lose my job."

"Don't bust a button, Dolores," Eddie said, coolly. "You've only got one left." he handed her the check from earlier.

"50 bucks?" the waitress, Dolores, eyed it. 

"Yeah." 

"Where's the rest? And who are these kids? Beat it, kids, you'll get me in trouble if I serve youse alcohol!"