Dick Tracy

by Max Allan Collins

  Shortly, he found the massive redbrick warehouse; a few lights were on inside, but he could hear nothing, even when he pressed his ear to the cloudy glass windows along the Front Street side of the building. He went around back and found a window ajar.

  And found Pat.

  The pudgy detective was sprawled amidst some garbage cans, and next to him, with a dent significantly reminiscent of Patton’s head, was the garbage-can lid he’d been smacked with.

  Tracy cradled his partner in his arms like a big baby, and the man began to groan, and come slowly awake.

  “Tracy . . . oh!” Patton touched his head. He wasn’t bleeding, but he had a bump on his head like a doorknob.

  “Are you okay, Pat?

  Tracy helped him slowly, tentatively, to his feet.

  “The best you can say is I’m alive.”

  Tracy was still steadying him. “I don’t suppose you know who hit you.”

  Patton shook his head; the motion hurt him and he winced.

  Tracy let go of his partner and then watched him, to see if he’d fall again; but Patton seemed steady on his feet. Steady enough, anyway.

  “Did they take your gun?”

  Patton checked. “No,” he said.

  “Okay. Stay put. And really stay put this time. Sam and some boys should show any minute.”

  Tracy climbed in the window and moved through a dim—but not pitch-dark—warehouse where wooden crates and boxes were stacked high, like fortress battlements. He tripped on something, caught himself without making any noise. A train track embedded in the cement floor had caught his toe. Railroad tracks, in fact, seemed to wind here and there, throughout the warehouse.

  That made a sort of sense. There was probably a freight elevator in back, with tracks on its bed, that lowered to an underground railway tunnel. The system of underground railway tunnels—fifty miles of them, on which diminutive battery-driven trains carried freight, coal, and cinders beneath the central city—had been a boon for bootleggers. Due to corrupt city officials, some of those tunnels, not long ago, had been used to ship hooch from the riverfront to warehouses like these to speakeasies like Lips Manlis’s joint.

  Taking care not to trip over the rails, Tracy wound his way through the towering crates, the .38 out of his topcoat pocket and tightly in hand now; he was listening quietly, hearing nothing.

  Then he heard it: the echo of voices.

  Tracy froze.

  He moved closer to the sound, and the blurred words became distinct enough to make out.

  “I didn’t come to this burg to be a lousy janitor,” somebody said.

  “Just finish up so we can get out,” another voice said.

  Tracy moved toward the voices. Quickly but carefully, quietly.

  “The boss sure does mean business,” a third voice said, “don’t he?”

  The voices were louder now; cavernous though the warehouse was, Tracy was closing the distance.

  “Personally,” the first voice said, “I think the boss has got a screw loose.”

  The voices were just around the corner now.

  “That’s it,” one of them said. “Let’s get out of here before the cops show.”

  “Raise ’em!”

  Tracy yelled the words as he stepped out into the open where three men dressed as cops were standing in a loose circle near some stacked crates and boxes, not doing anything apparently. But nearby were several mops in buckets, the sight of which deflected Tracy’s attention just long enough for the phony cops to go for their guns, which were hipholstered in true cop fashion.

  A bullet whizzed through Tracy’s hat and sent it flying and he moved right toward the fake cops instead of taking cover, he charged right at them, firing his .38. Bullets zinged and sang around him, but the bad guys were unnerved—they could shoot, but they couldn’t aim, back-pedaling, as he bore down on them.

  There were six bullets in Tracy’s .38, and Tracy parceled out two per hood, bullets going in straight as arrows but spiraling out the back.

  And all three of the “cops” were as lifeless as the cement floor by the time they hit it—two face down, one face up.

  Tracy stood over them, his eyes wide and burning from the cordite, his breathing heavy, near panting, his gun trailing smoke.

  Then he began looking around. The buckets of soapy water interested him.

  But not as much as the walnut shells.

  Tracy was just finishing up a quick, expert diagram of the crime scene when he heard the sirens of arriving squad cars. Something blue winked up at him from the floor, and he knelt, found a sapphire earring, which he studied briefly, then dropped in his pocket.

  A phalanx of uniformed men descended, with Sam Catchem leading the way.

  Catchem stood with his hands in his topcoat pockets and stared down at the three corpses in cop uniforms. He wore a red fedora and a loud tie and his perpetual smirk.

  “You been a busy boy, Tracy,” Catchem said. “These the first cops you ever shot?”

  “Recognize them?” Tracy said, joining him.

  Catchem was a veteran of several police forces; he’d never lit in one spot longer than a year or two, with the Boston Police Department his most recent stop. Tracy had recently interviewed and hired Catchem for the Major Crimes squad, taking a chance on him, because the man had racked up citations for bravery and cracked major cases from L.A. to Brooklyn.

  “Philly talent,” Catchem said. “Brothers. The Crouch boys.”

  “I didn’t know you were ever on the Philly force.”

  “Wasn’t. That was when I was in the delicatessen business.” He fished some smokes out of his pocket.

  Tracy grabbed his arm. “No,” he said. “No smoking in here till we deal with the evidence properly.”

  “There was a crime committed here?” Catchem asked curiously. “Killing the Crouch boys is a public service.”

  Chief Brandon arrived with a second wave of men. He was turning in a slow circle, looking around at the warehouse’s mostly empty floor, with the expression of a tenant who had come home to find his apartment burgled. “What happened in here?”

  “Lips Manlis came in,” Tracy said, “but he didn’t come out. Isn’t that right, Pat?”

  Patton was bringing up the rear, working on his derby, trying to restore its shape. “Far as I know,” Patton admitted. “I slept through part of it.”

  “Officer Lefty Moriarty was patrolling the area,” Catchem said, “and called in about the unmarked car, but that’s the last we heard of him.”

  “Have a couple men check the periphery,” Tracy said to Patton, “outside the building.”

  Patton nodded and did.

  Moriarty was a reliable veteran cop whose beat included this waterfront area. Tracy knew him only slightly, but the man’s reputation was solid.

  “As for the unmarked car both Pat and Officer Moriarty saw,” Tracy said, “you’ll find it parked behind that wall of crates. I already checked it—no plates, no registration. You can be sure it’s hot.”

  “Who all was in here?” Brandon demanded. “Besides these phony cops you drilled? What happened here?”

  “There’s a recently-in-use cement truck parked up top of that platform over there,” Tracy said, pointing. Brandon and Catchem took that in, but obviously didn’t grasp the significance.

  Tracy walked and gestured toward the mops in buckets of water, off around the corner of the stacked crates. “We’ll have the lab check that dirty water—but from the smell and texture of it, I’d say the remains of Lips Manlis were recently encased in quick-drying cement.”

  Now Catchem, Patton and Brandon got it, and exchanged nods and knowing looks.

  “Lips always did want to be a pillar of the community,” Catchem said. “So the Crouch boys were cleaning up, while somebody else dumped Lips in the drink?”

  “Most likely,” Tracy said. “Plenty of access to the dock from this warehouse. Neither Pat nor Moriarty would have seen that.” Tracy shook his head. “It’s to
o bad those phony cops all went down.”

  Catchem snorted. “Why?”

  “Because,” Tracy said, quietly arch, “corpses don’t respond all that well to interrogation. And because I want the one who hired them—the one who ordered the rub-out.”

  “You don’t know for sure Manlis is dead,” Brandon pointed out.

  “Then,” Tracy said, “we better find Lips Manlis, fast.”

  “We’ll put an A.P.B. out on him,” Patton said.

  “Write that A.P.B. on a slip of paper,” Catchem said wryly, “tie it to a rock and throw it in the river, why don’t ya, and let Lips know we’re lookin’ for him.”

  “But who was responsible?” Brandon asked, frustration tingeing his voice. “It could be any one of the major gang figures.” Brandon counted them off on his fingers. “Pruneface, Johnny Ramm, Mocca, Spaldoni, even Texie Garcia . . . with this gang war brewing . . .”

  “I know who was responsible,” Tracy said.

  Brandon looked at his ace detective with a wide-eyed, frozen expression.

  “Well, c’mon, Tracy—spill!” Catchem said.

  Tracy curled his finger at Catchem, Patton, and Brandon, and they followed as Tracy walked a few paces and knelt. He pointed to the walnut shells. “See those?”

  “So somebody was eating walnuts,” Catchem said, unimpressed. “So what?”

  “So crushing walnuts and wolfing them down,” Tracy said, “is one of Big Boy Caprice’s least offensive, but most distinctive, habits.”

  “That’s right,” Patton said, nodding eagerly. “I hear some doctor told ’im it was good for his liver.”

  “So would be givin’ up booze,” Catchem said.

  “Walnuts,” Brandon muttered, and sighed and, shaking his head, went off to meet the morgue boys who had arrived for the stiffs.

  Tracy, still kneeling, said to Catchem and Patton, “Get an evidence envelope and tweezers and pick up those walnut shells carefully. We’re going to see if we can’t find the fingerprints of a certain Al ‘Big Boy’ Caprice.”

  Catchem shrugged. “Getting prints off a surface like that is probably a long shot.”

  Tracy smiled faintly. “Sam, you look like a man who’s bet on his share of long shots.”

  “Sure,” Catchem said, “but ask me if any of ’em ever come in.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Dick,” Patton said. “What’s another evidence envelope after all those slugs back at the warehouse?”

  Patton went off after the envelope, and Tracy stood, reached into his pocket, and withdrew the blue sapphire earring. He dangled it before Catchem’s bemused face like bait.

  “Is this expensive, you think?” Tracy asked him.

  “On our pay, it is,” Catchem said, eyes narrowing in on the jewel. “I don’t figure you could spring for a pair of those for Tess. On the other hand, for people with good jobs, like your average hoodlum, it’s affordable.”

  “Something a gangster’s moll might wear, then.”

  “Yeah, or a movie star or a high-ticket lady of the night.”

  “Okay, then. Tell me: what was a woman doing here?”

  Catchem shrugged. “Maybe pulling a trigger. It’s happened before.”

  “There’s a hair caught on there,” Tracy said, demonstrating by turning the earring in the light.

  “So there is,” Catchem said. “Well, detective that I am, I can report that the human ear is often in the general proximity of a head of hair.”

  “In this case,” Tracy said thoughtfully, “a platinum blonde head of hair.”

  Patton was back with his evidence envelope.

  “Still got your tweezers?” Tracy asked him.

  Patton nodded, reached in his pocket, and gave the tweezers to Tracy, who carefully plucked the silver hair from the earring and held the tweezers out for Pat, who opened the small manila envelope for Tracy to drop in the platinum strand.

  “Now what?” Patton asked.

  “Now you get another evidence envelope for the walnut shells,” Tracy said.

  “I figured you’d come up with something else,” Patton said, good-naturedly smug. “So I brought a couple.”

  Tracy dropped the blue sapphire earring in a spare envelope Patton provided and handed the envelope with the hair in it to his bright-eyed partner, saying, “Give that to the lab boys, and the walnut shells, too.” He handed the packet with the earring to Catchem, saying, “Take that back to the office—maybe we can find its owner.”

  “I didn’t figure you were gonna suggest I take it home to the wife.”

  “What good would one sapphire earring do her?” Patton asked him.

  “It’s one more than she’s got now,” Catchem said.

  Brandon, who’d been talking to the two uniformed men that Pat had sent out to check the periphery, was rejoining the Major Crimes squad detectives, wearing an expression longer than this evening had been.

  “What’s wrong, Chief?” Tracy asked hollowly. The depth of the news was apparent in Brandon’s features before even a word could be spoken.

  “We’ve found Officer Moriarty,” Brandon said. “Out behind some barrels. Shot dead.”

  “Damn!” Tracy said. His eyes were burning. “That tears it. He’s killed a cop now. Big Boy’s killed a cop now . . .”

  “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” Brandon said somberly, “there’s a widow to whom a few words need to said in bereavement . . .”

  And the big bear of man lumbered off.

  “You can bet Big Boy didn’t pull the trigger,” Catchem said with a sneer.

  That made Tracy stop and think; he drew a breath, gathered his composure.

  “Gentlemen,” Tracy said, all business once again, “you saw the imported talent that got shot up at the Seventh Street garage earlier tonight.”

  His assistants nodded.

  “Well, now some boys from Philly show up in cop suits and apparently help fit Lips Manlis for a cement overcoat.”

  They nodded.

  “So,” Tracy continued, “who else in town has been bringing in out-of-town guests?”

  Catchem shrugged. “Big Boy’s got three heavy-hitters on his team.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Includin’ that character from the Cookson Hills, Flattop.”

  Tracy’s eyes tightened in thought. “Flattop Jones. I thought he was running with outlaws, robbing banks, pulling payroll robberies . . .”

  “Yeah,” Catchem said. “He’s new to the city. They think he’s Robin Hood back in the hills, but robbing hood is more like it. He did a year in an Ohio county jail; no warrants out on him. They say he’s meaner than diarrhea.”

  “Who are the other two?”

  “ ‘Itchy’ Oliver, and a guy they call Mumbles, who’s got half a dozen aliases. East Coast babies. They both got records, but no outstanding warrants. Arrests on charges rangin’ from armed robbery to confidence rackets. If I had to lay odds, I’d give ten to one those three made the garage hit. Tommy gun is Flattop’s style.”

  “Sam,” Tracy said, “I respect your opinion.”

  “Hey, well that’s nice.”

  “I respect it so much, I want you and Pat to bring those three in. Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles.”

  “Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles?”

  Tracy nodded. “Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles.”

  Catchem rolled his eyes. “Sounds like the law firm for the circus, don’t it?”

  “You know where to find ’em?”

  “Sure,” Patton said. “We got addresses on all of ’em.”

  Catchem laughed humorlessly. “Fancy Gold Coast apartments the likes of which we’ll never see. They’ll be snug in their king-size beds about now.”

  “Wake ’em up. I want to talk to ’em.”

  “When?”

  “Now. Tonight. A tour of the HQ holding cells will give ’em a taste of their future.”

  Catchem’s eyes were narrow and doubtful. “On what charge, Tracy? We ain’t got any warrants on ’em!”


  Tracy smirked. “Bring ’em in on suspicion of being ugly.”

  Catchem’s eyes widened and the doubt disappeared. He nodded and shrugged at Patton who nodded and shrugged back.

  “I can live with that,” Catchem said seriously, and he and Patton set out to do it.

  At Central Police Headquarters downtown, with midnight approaching, Tracy strode up the limestone steps, yellow topcoat flashing, past the white globes labeled POLICE and inside. Once up the stairs, he cut through a sprawling squad room where plainclothes detectives moved in and out among a dozen scuffed-up desks; overstuffed file cabinets lined the walls like so many suspects in a lineup. Cathedral windows threw the shadows of their panes on the green-painted walls and bare wood floors. His own office was a smoked-glass-and-wood affair at the end of a hall of similar offices; on the door it said, simply, DICK TRACY.

  He went to the closet to hang up his coat; as for his hat, it was ventilated beyond further use. Tracy’s assistant Pat Patton continually kidded him about going through “so gosh-darn many hats.” On one wall of Patton’s office down the hall, tacked like trophies, were half a dozen of Tracy’s old hats, each of them riddled with at least one bullet hole, and tagged with a date and description, i.e., “Boris Arson shoot-out, March 3, 1933.” Smiling at the thought of this Patton-ed whimsy, he placed the latest of the drilled fedoras on a shelf in the closet, saving it for his friend. It was the least he could do for the man, whose own derby had seen hazardous duty tonight.

  In the meantime, he put on another of the yellow snap-brims; he’d feel naked without one.

  Tracy took his place at his desk, which faced the door. Right now that desk was relatively clean, due to the long morning he’d spent handling paperwork; still, it was cluttered with files, mug shots, half-written reports, and law books, overseen by a heavy black phone and a green-shaded banker’s lamp. A framed picture of Tess was the sole personal touch.