It was something they never spoke about; but Tracy felt his pledge to Tess’s late father would not be complete till he put Caprice away.
She squeezed his arm as they walked. “It’s just that I’d feel more secure knowing you weren’t out risking your life every night. I know you love it, but I worry. I’m human. And so are you, Dick. So much death around you . . . you might catch a dose of it yourself.”
“Not me,” he said confidently. Then he tried to make a joke out of it: “The bad guys do the dying; not the good guys.”
“But do the bad guys know that?”
He laughed silently. “Hey, as far as this Chief job is concerned—I’ll keep an open mind . . . if you will. But let’s drop it for tonight.”
“Sure,” she said, and hugged his arm as they walked. He liked it, but he didn’t hug back. Showing affection didn’t always come easy to him.
He just looked at her and smiled shyly. He felt a warmth toward her unlike anything he felt for anyone else on the planet.
“The night’s really cleared up,” he noted.
“Maybe tomorrow we can finally get around to that ride in the country. Might be a nice day for it. Don’t you think?”
“Sure.”
“Say,” she said, as the shopping district began to drop away and the outskirts of an industrial district were looming ahead, “where are we going, anyway? Somewhere ‘romantic,’ and ‘secluded,’ you said.”
“That was Vitamin who said that. But ‘secluded’ is right.”
Mike’s Diner was a chrome-trimmed storefront on a corner near the trainyards. Greasy-spoons didn’t come classier.
“Mike’s again?” Tess asked, though, detective that he was, Tracy suspected she’d known it all along.
“They serve a mean bowl of chili here,” Tracy said, escorting his dressed-up date toward the glow of the diner’s door.
“How mean?” Tess asked.
“I’ve seen it eaten without crackers,” Tracy said, straight-faced.
It was not the first time they’d had this exchange.
As Tracy held the door open for Tess, a small figure came quickly out and bumped into Tracy.
“Gee, mister,” the kid said, moving away from Tracy, “I’m sorry . . .”
He was a red-haired street waif with an oversized cap, a frayed black jacket, and patched denims. A cute, bright-eyed kid, who at the moment had Tracy’s two-way wrist radio in his hands. An antenna wire from the wrist radio extended up Tracy’s cuff, so the “watch” was still connected to the plainclothes detective.
“That’s not a wristwatch,” Tracy said with a mildly scolding smile.
The kid dropped the wrist radio, which hung limply from Tracy’s wrist by the wire clipped up Tracy’s shirt sleeve, and he bolted. Or tried to bolt. The long arm of the law—specifically, the long arm of Dick Tracy—settled a firm hand on his shoulder, gripping him, stopping him.
“Bad luck, kid,” Tracy said, shaking his head. “The first thing a good dip learns is don’t pick a cop for a mark. You just tried to lift a two-way police-band radio off the wrist of a city detective.”
“Let go of me, you stinkin’—!”
Tracy frowned and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Watch your language, junior! There’s a lady present.”
Tess seemed distressed by this; her eyes were wide and sympathetic as she said, “Dick—please! He doesn’t look like he’s had a decent meal in weeks.”
“He’ll get a meal at Juvenile Hall. A night or two there will be most instructive, I think.”
The kid sneered. “Go to blazes, flatfoot!”
“Listen, you little—”
“Dick!” Tess said, moving nearer Tracy. “Please! Let him go. He’s got a hard enough life . . .”
Tracy glanced at Tess, and her look melted him, and he was about to let the kid off with a lecture when a heavyset figure filled the door and bellowed, “My watch is gone! That brat must have stolen it!”
The big man’s face was as red as a tomato and so was his suit; he wore a bowler hat and a napkin was tucked in under his double chin.
The kid took advantage of the moment to shove Tracy in the stomach, pushing him into Tess. The couple didn’t quite lose their balance, catching themselves on the sleek surface of the diner, but Tracy did lose the boy.
Who was a small, fleeing figure, heading toward the railroad yards, disappearing into the dark night.
“That little son of a . . .” Tracy started, and caught himself.
“There’s a lady present,” Tess reminded him, with a pretty little smirk.
“Gun,” Tracy said, embarrassed. “Get us a nice booth, honey.” He was rebuckling the two-way as he took off after the boy, yellow coat flapping as he ran.
The kid was fast, but Tracy was fast, too, and the footsteps of both echoed through the night, the kid’s making small slaps, Tracy’s making ominous louder ones. Sometimes there was a splash as feet punched puddles, the aftermath of yesterday’s rainstorm. The streets were as black and slick as patent leather.
The train tracks were half a block away when a freight roared along, its beam cutting through the darkness like a giant’s flashlight, the shrill of its whistle piercing the air, the blatt of its horn shaking the ground, the bells and the clanging and the rattling of the tracks filling the world, and—
—and the kid ran right in front of the train!
Tracy threw on his own brakes, the brakes of his heels, and barely missed bumping into the crossing guardrail, its red lights flashing; just beyond, the train whooshed jokingly by, scattering sparks. Shaking his head, Tracy grinned at the passing train. This kid was long on guts; short on brains, maybe—but long on guts.
When the caboose rushed past, Tracy didn’t wait for the guardrail to raise; he ducked under and ran into the dimly lit yard. A railroad yardman spotted him and said, “Hey, you!”
Tracy slowed and flashed his badge and the yardman, carrying a kerosene lantern, said, “What’s up?”
“Chasing a little pickpocket,” Tracy said. “Just a kid.”
The yardman pointed to the right. “I spotted a kid running down that way. I was going after him when I seen you.”
Tracy nodded and ran where the yardman had pointed.
He didn’t see the urchin at first and was looking frantically left to right; but then, there the kid was: scrambling up the iron ladder of a boxcar. As Tracy took pursuit, the kid was running along the boxcar’s roof, and jumping to the next one, and the next.
Tracy climbed one of the iron ladders and joined in.
“Give it up, son!” he called out.
Without looking back, the kid called, “You gotta catch me first, copper!”
Tracy pursued the brat from one boxcar to another, the leaps shaking the detective from his ankles to his ears. Once, he nearly lost his balance and went tumbling to the cinders.
But he didn’t.
And he followed the boy the length of this thankfully motionless train, where the kid stopped short as he found himself atop the caboose.
“Give it up, son,” Tracy said, and the kid turned, poised at the edge of the caboose’s roof, his back to air.
And the kid gave the detective an elaborate, and apparently heartfelt, Bronx cheer.
And jumped from the car.
Expecting to hear the howl of an injured child, but hearing nothing at all, Tracy moved to the edge, peered down and, expecting at this point to see the youth in a crumpled pile, saw nothing.
Just the darkness of the trainyard.
The Kid slowed as he entered the Hooverville on the other side of the trainyard. Fires glowed, as the otherwise homeless men, women, children, dogs, and cats huddled for warmth. The “houses” of this city within the city were made of this and that—walls of discarded boards, corrugated metal, packing crates; tar paper for roofs. The ground mixed cinders from the ’yards with straw and chicken feathers. Nobody nodded at the Kid as he moved through; the boy wasn’t a permanent resident. He and Steve ha
d moved into a shack after Steve pulled a shiv on its previous owner.
The boy ducked into the shanty, where Steve lay on a “bed” that consisted of several boards atop steel drums; Steve had a mostly empty bottle of whiskey in his two hands. The tramp was a burly brute, bald, his jowly face so gray with stubble it looked dirty, which of course it was, and so scarred he might have been a fighter, which he also was, just never in a ring. He had black beady eyes and a nose he’d broken almost as often as the law. His coat was a tattered black-and-white checkered affair that had been fashionable, a decade ago; his pants were patched like the boy’s.
“Where the hell have you been, boyo?” Steve asked gruffly, sitting up. He took a long swig, and then tossed the empty whiskey bottle to the hard-packed earthen floor where it rolled.
“I been working, where d’ya think?” The Kid sat at a soapbox table, turned up the glow of the room’s only lamp, a kerosene lantern stolen off a railroad yardman. The light revealed the remains of a chicken dinner scattered on the table; Steve’s mouth still looked greasy. There was nothing in the way they lived that reflected the money Steve made off the Kid’s stealing—other than the whiskey bottles littered here and there. Most of the Hooverville residents were lucky to get rubbing alcohol.
Steve pulled up an orange crate and sat at the table; the crate creaked under his weight. “Where’s the take? What’d ya get?”
“I got hungry is what I got. You said you’d save me some chicken. All I see’s bones.”
Steve slapped the Kid, and the Kid fell off his own orange-crate chair.
“Let’s see the loot, you little mongrel.”
“Okay, okay.” He picked himself up, wiped the blood from his mouth, and got out the watches he’d got—the fancy gold-plated pocket watch, and the wristwatch on the leather band, plus the fat guy from the diner’s silver pocket watch. Steve fingered these appreciatively.
“Not bad, not bad. Any cash?”
“I lifted three wallets, but these guys was as broke as us, maybe broker.” He put the three bucks on the table.
Steve scowled; his eyes were black pools of distrust surrounded by bloodshot white. “If you’re holdin’ out on me . . .”
“I’m not, Steve! Honest! I wouldn’ta come back so empty-handed, except . . .”
The tiny eyes narrowed. “Except what?”
“Nothin’.”
The Kid didn’t figure he better tell Steve about the shooting at the garage; he didn’t know why, exactly—he’d just learned that telling Steve as little as possible was the best way to get hit as little as possible.
“You was out of breath when you come in. You was runnin’, weren’t you? Why? Who from?”
The boy made a face; how he hated to admit this to Steve. But he better. “I took a watch off a guy, outside that diner, and he turned out to be a copper.”
“A copper!”
“How was I supposed know? He was wearin’ plainclothes! He chased me awhile, into the ’yards, but I shook him.”
Steve backhanded the boy; this time the Kid didn’t get up so fast. He didn’t get up at all, just cowered, and tasted the blood in his mouth, and tried not to cry.
“If you led a plainclothes dick here, you little vermin, I’ll give you the beating of your life.”
“There’s an old expression,” somebody said.
The Kid turned toward the space that served as a doorway; a shadow stood there—it had spoken.
It spoke again: “Pick on somebody your own size.”
The shadow moved into the room and it wore a bright yellow coat and a matching fedora. It was the square-jawed plainclothes cop who the Kid had hoped he’d lost, but now was glad had found him.
Steve stood and, with a strange grace for such a big man, picked up one of the orange crates and smashed it over the cop.
The cop was not fazed; he swung a hard right into Steve’s stomach and doubled the tramp over, then crossed with a left that connected with Steve’s stubbly jaw.
Steve went down hard, and the plainclothes cop loomed over him with fists half-raised. The tramp appeared to be knocked out.
“Careful,” the Kid said. To the plainclothes cop.
The plainclothes cop glanced at the Kid and smiled and that was when Steve made his move; the tramp came up with a board in his hand, a board with a nail that glinted in the lantern-light.
Only the plainclothes cop sidestepped and sent Steve crashing into the wall of the shack, knocking a hole in the packing-crate wall, shaking the flimsy structure. As Steve lumbered back at him, the board-with-nail still in hand, the plainclothes cop kicked it out of the tramp’s grasp.
Steve growled and dove at the cop, and the cop went down with the big smelly tramp on him like a rabid attack dog. Steve’s hands went to the cop’s throat, but the cop must’ve plowed Steve in the belly real good, because Steve went rolling off him, doubled in pain.
“Come on, kid,” the plainclothes cop said, and reached out a hand.
But Steve, despite his pain, got to his big feet and tried one more time, charging the cop like a car trying to run somebody over.
They stood slugging it out, until a flurry of yellow-sleeved punches sent Steve flying into another wall and suddenly the whole shack came down on them.
The Kid found himself being pulled out from under the tar paper and boards and such by the plainclothes cop, who said, “Give me a second with your pal. Don’t go anywhere now, junior, or I’ll chase you down again.”
The Kid felt pretty shook up, but he still managed, “Go suck an egg, mister!”
The cop seemed to find that funny. “The name is Tracy. Detective Tracy.”
“Oh. I think I heard of you. You’re Dick Tracy, ain’t you?”
“That’s right. Now, let’s have the loot. You got a watch to return.”
“Why should I?” the Kid asked, but he gathered the stuff, just the same.
Tracy was kneeling over the now genuinely unconscious Steve, who was half-under pieces of the demolished shack; he was cuffing Steve’s hands, in back.
“Is this guy your old man?” he asked the Kid.
“Him? Not on your life!”
Nobody in the Hooverville was paying any attention to this, strange as the sight of the interloper might be. In fact, many of them had disappeared into their shanties; nobody liked having a cop around, and despite the plainclothes, it was obvious that’s what Tracy was.
“Now,” Tracy said, smiling, taking the watches from the boy, slipping them in his topcoat pocket, “we’ll be on our way.”
“What about Steve?”
“Is that his name? I’ll find the nearest patrol car and have him hauled in.”
“You taking me to Juvenile Detention?”
“You bet, junior. But not right away.”
“Not right away?”
Tracy lifted the half-conscious tramp to his feet. The trio began walking through the Hooverville, toward the trainyards—though the lumbering Steve was being half-dragged as the cop and kid moved briskly along.
“First we’re going back to that diner and get you a decent meal.”
“Jeez, mister. That’s decent of ya.”
“I’m doing it for myself, really.”
“Yourself?”
“You saw that good-looking lady I was with.”
“Yeah.” The Kid whistled. “Nice shape on that dame.”
Tracy looked at him with wide eyes. “How old are you?”
“I don’t know. How old are you?”
“Never mind,” Tracy said. He scolded the boy gently with a wag of his forefinger. “Look, she’s not a ‘dame’—she’s a very proper and respectable young lady. But . . .” And Tracy grinned, suddenly, like a kid. “. . . if I don’t take you back to that diner and give you a meal, that very proper and respectable young lady just might get tough with me.”
“I know the feelin’,” the Kid admitted.
Breathless Mahoney, in a midnight-blue gown that left nothing to the imagination, was
singing a torch number her piano player had written for her: “I Always Get My Man.” She stood defiant, insolent in her beauty, in the midst of the black-marble dance floor of the Club Ritz, whose elegant chrome-and-glass showroom was filled to capacity; the bandstand behind her was empty, the orchestra on break but for the piano player, if anyone noticed or cared. One shapely leg exposed thanks to a slit in her painted-on gown, the young woman seemed half Harlow, half harlot—heaven in a hell of a package.
There was a studied casualness about her beauty: her white-blonde hair a mass of curls, some of which nearly cascaded over one eye; her eyebrows dark, rather thick, unplucked; her eyes liquid blue and sleepy; mouth red-rouged and swollen. Her breathy singing and her passive sensuality projected a strange air of boredom—a boredom that was a challenge to the men of the world to wake her up.
Lips Manlis, despite all his money, his power, even his capacity for violence, had never quite woken her. He’d been with her for over a year; it made for an elegant sort of misery—she made no attempt to feign ardor, much less passion.
He figured she was playing him for a sap, but he was hooked. She was driving him bughouse, and for the life of him, he didn’t know why he put up with it. After all, there were twenty dames in the chorus line, any one of whom would go with him at the nod of his bucket head. For years, frails had worked off their tails making him feel like a man, convincing him that they were crazy about him.
But Breathless didn’t even bother.
Maybe that was the fascination in itself. Manlis had been a power in the city for over ten years; worked his way up, a West Side kid who went from pushcart sneak-thief to stickup man to truck hijacker. He’d gotten in on the ground floor of Prohibition and in a matter of a couple years controlled the central city and several suburbs. For a long time that had been enough for him. But since Repeal, things had been getting tight. The pie was getting smaller, but there were still just as many pieces getting sliced out of it.
Time to make a move. That was why he’d imported the expensive shooters from all over the country; and with his old pal Little Face heading ’em up, they’d make a deadly assassination squad, and Big Boy and the others wouldn’t know who, let alone what, hit ’em.
Dick Tracy Page 4