Dick Tracy

by Max Allan Collins

  Plus, he’d dropped by the funeral home to pay his respects to Officer Moriarty’s family. Chief Brandon had offered a full police funeral, but the Moriarty family had wanted to keep it small, simple, private. But the line of cops who’d come for visitation today seemed never-ending.

  Now Tracy sat at the counter in the diner, sipping his coffee, enjoying a few moments of solitude. But he was glad when, a few minutes later, Tess and the Kid came bustling in. The Kid was dressed up in the little red suit Tess had selected for him—short checked pants with argyle knee socks, a blue shirt and black-and-white polka dot tie, and a little red cap, under which his reddish hair sprouted like weeds. He looked clean and vaguely miserable.

  “Dick!” Tess said. “What a wonderful day we’ve had.”

  Tracy got off the stool, gave her a hug, a peck on the cheek, helped her off with her coat.

  “You have a good time, too, junior?” Tracy asked him.

  “Swell,” he said, noncommittally.

  Tess excused herself to wash up and Tracy and the Kid took their places at the booth from the night before.

  “Decided to wear the clothes, huh?” Tracy said.

  The Kid nodded and sighed. He gestured to himself; to his little polka dot tie, to his short pants. “Look what she done to me!”

  “Yeah, I can see. Pretty tough, huh?”

  “Yeah. You wear clothes like this, first thing you know, pow—you wind up in school.”

  “Wouldn’t that be awful.”

  The Kid nodded vigorously. “I feel like a doggone sissy.”

  Tracy clicked in his cheek. “Yeah. Rough one.”

  The boy looked sharply at Tracy. “But don’t say anything to Miss Tess.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  Tess came back, and she and the Kid ordered Blue Plate specials while Tracy stuck with the chili. Tracy got filled in on what he’d missed of their adventures. Then pie for the grownups and ice cream for the Kid followed. It was a pleasant replay of their evening here last night. And was the happiest Tracy had been in some time.

  Tracy drove, Tess snuggled against his shoulder. The Kid was in the backseat, curled up like a fetus, asleep. Pretty soon Tracy pulled up in front of Tess’s three-story brownstone apartment building. They sat and talked in the parked car, neither of them anxious to disturb the sleeping boy.

  “I could call in sick tomorrow,” Tess said.

  “You know, you can’t call in sick everyday,” Tracy said.

  “I had this afternoon off, legitimately.”

  “But not tomorrow. You better behave yourself. You need that job.”

  “I know,” she said. “But one little day can’t hurt . . .”

  “Little crimes lead to big crimes,” Tracy reminded her.

  She laughed and elbowed him gently. “Look who’s talking. I saw the papers. I heard the radio. They’re saying you’re a maverick cop. Running around making false arrests, bullying people.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Sounds just like you.”

  He looked sideways at her, gave her a crooked smile.

  “Seriously, Dick—be careful about this. I know your heart’s in the right place. I know you’re thinking about . . . about Papa.”

  He nodded somberly.

  “But, Dick—you’ve got a career to think of. You’ve got . . . the future to think of.”

  “I know, dear.”

  She sighed; her eyes tightened in concern. “We’re going to have to turn that little boy over to the system, aren’t we? He’ll be in an orphanage before he knows it.”

  “Maybe he’ll find some parents to adopt him.”

  “Dick . . . do you mean . . . ?”

  “I’m not sure what I mean. Look, I’ll take the Kid tonight. You got to get to work in the morning. He can hang around with me at headquarters tomorrow, till I get somebody at the Welfare Department to come over and process him through the proper channels.”

  “That sounds so cold.”

  “We can still see him. But we both have lives. We both have jobs.”

  “Yes, and we both live alone. I don’t mind living alone.” She glanced back tenderly at the slumbering boy. “But you know—I liked having company for a couple days.”

  He touched her hair. “I’ve got six hundred bucks saved up, Tess. Tidy little nest egg.”

  “What are you saying, Dick?”

  “Look,” he said, “maybe it’s about time . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ll talk about it—as soon as this craziness with Caprice is behind me.”

  She sighed, shook her head, nestled against his arm. “Will it ever really be over?”

  “Sure, Tess. Then maybe I can think about that . . . that other thing.”

  “What other thing?”

  “You know—the Chief of Police slot.”

  She looked at him, her eyes shining. “Oh, Dick . . . that would be wonderful, but I wouldn’t want you to do it just because . . .”

  “Hey, the extra money would be awful nice.”

  She squinted in near-irritation. “I don’t care how much money you make. That’s not why I want you to consider that job.”

  “Why do you, then?”

  “Because it would be a way for you to pursue the work you love without having to run around the streets, risking your life, every day and night.”

  “Tess—that is the work I love. The streets. The risk. The game.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “I know, dear. Please don’t think I’m a terrible nag. I’ll stand behind you—beside you—whatever you decide. It’s just . . . I’d like to have you around for a few years.”

  They kissed. Tracy couldn’t help but think of his encounter with Breathless Mahoney yesterday; it lingered in his mind, and elsewhere in his body, a guilty pleasure.

  “Is something wrong, dear?” she asked him.

  “No, Tess,” he said, and he kissed her again, and banished Breathless from his heart and his mind, if not his soul.

  “Where are we?” the Kid said from the backseat.

  Embarrassed, Tracy pulled away from Tess and said to the barely wakened boy, “Dropping Miss Tess off, is all. Go back to sleep.”

  He got out of the car, walked around and opened the door for her. They walked hand in hand up the steps to the doorway of the building.

  He was looking into her eyes when a voice, the Kid’s voice, rang out: “Hey! Tracy! Look out!”

  “Get down!” he yelled back to the boy, instinctively, and he pushed Tess back, into the recession of the doorway, and Tracy covered her body with his as tommy-gun fire ripped open the night, bullets eating chunks out of the brownstone building; he caught sight of the black sedan as it rolled by, the barrel of the weapon snorting orangely, bullets biting into the building, the tommy gun held in obscure hands. He kept her covered with his body, and the tommy-gun chatter ceased, and he moved away from her, yanking his .38 from under his arm.

  Then Tracy was standing in the street, watching the red taillights disappear.

  He slipped the gun back in the shoulder holster, glanced at his car—saw no bullet holes in either the body of it or the windshield, saw the bright eyes of the apparently uninjured boy as he popped up in the front seat—and rushed to Tess, sat on the stoop with her, cradling her in his arms. She was trembling. So was he. “Are you all right, Tess? Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay, I’m okay . . . is the boy . . . ?”

  “I’m fine, lady,” the Kid said, standing there in his new suit and tie. He shrugged. “It’s just the clothes.”

  Tracy laughed, and so did Tess.

  The boy did, too.

  But then the the smell of gunpowder, and the holes the bullets ate in the brick building reminded them that nothing was funny at all.

  “Jeez,” the Kid said, eyes round more with wonder than fear, “I thought we was goners.”

  “They’re just trying to scare us, Kid,” Tracy
said, not believing it.

  “Let’s go get ’em!” the Kid said eagerly. “What’re we waitin’ for?”

  Two beat cops were approaching quickly on foot. One of them asked Tracy if he’d seen who the shooter was.

  Tracy shook his head no. He spoke to them in a whisper: “Stick around here, boys, will you? A little protective custody for my girl.”

  The two cops nodded; one said, “Sure, Tracy.”

  Tracy walked Tess up the brownstone steps. “Sorry, honey,” he said, embarrassed, as if this were somehow all his fault. Maybe it was, at that.

  “Don’t be,” she said gently. She had pulled herself together, somehow. “When you play in the streets, it’s all part of the game. I may not like it—but I know it.”

  She touched his cheek, said, “Don’t worry about me, Dick,” and went inside.

  Tracy returned to the dark street, collected the Kid, climbed in the car, and headed back to headquarters. There’d been no license plate on that sedan, but he could identify the make and model, and that was a start.

  In a pool of light from his banker’s lamp, Tracy sat in his otherwise dark office, studying photos the boys from the Auto Theft squad provided him. He tapped one of them and smiled tightly; this was it: the make and model and year of sedan that the machine-gunner had fired from.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said.

  A sultry, female voice.

  Tracy looked up.

  Breathless Mahoney was standing in the doorway, draped against the doorjamb like a glamour pinup come to unlikely life. She was wearing a black satin gown, tight as her skin, trimmed with black feathers, a plunging neckline revealing a wealth of bosom and a slit up the front showing off one long, lush leg. In one hand, gripped by the neck, was a bottle of champagne; in the other, clutched by their stems, were two glasses.

  In the hall, asleep on a bench, was the Kid.

  “You caught me rehearsing,” she said, as if that explained her apparel. Her smile was a wispy, teasing thing. “So glad you called.”

  “Why the champagne?”

  She moved slowly into the room; she was catlike, languorous in a deliberate way. “Long as I was going to drop by, I thought I might as well help you celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what, Miss Mahoney?”

  “Being alive,” she said. “I heard you almost died this evening.”

  “News travels fast in this town,” Tracy said. “Almost as fast as bullets.”

  Catchem stuck his head in the door, made a slow, wide-eyed, appreciative survey of Tracy’s guest, then said, “One of the boys is makin’ a sandwich run at the deli over on Division. You want ’em to bring you back something, Tracy?”

  “No thanks, Sam.”

  Catchem raised his eyebrows. “Don’t do anything anything I wouldn’t do, children.”

  And he closed the door.

  She moved liquidly across the small office and perched herself on the edge of Tracy’s desk; she wore black spike heels that showed most of her pretty feet. “I have a feeling your partner’s admonition leaves us plenty of leeway.”

  Tracy said nothing.

  She set the champagne bottle on the desk, the glasses as well; they looked more than a little out of place amidst the cop clutter.

  “I was beginning,” she said, “to wonder what a girl has to do in this town . . . to get arrested.”

  “Wearing that dress,” Tracy said, “is a step in the right direction.”

  She laughed. “Who’s the kid in the hall?” she asked, turning an arched eyebrow to the smoked-glass-and-wood door.

  “Just a little street urchin I picked up. Trying to give him a break.”

  “Cute.” She picked up Tess’s framed picture on the desk. “Also cute. Nice hair color.” She studied the picture. “She could use some help with her makeup.”

  “I think she looks fine.”

  She put Tess’s picture down. She gave him a look that would’ve fried an egg. “Are you going to make a move, or do I have to do it all?”

  “I’m on duty,” Tracy said.

  “Don’t you ever get a day off?”

  “Sure. This isn’t it.”

  Then she touched one finger to the cork of the champagne bottle. “If I open this, you think it’d wake the kid?”

  “Miss Mahoney . . .”

  “Breathless.”

  “Breathless. We have regulations about alcoholic beverages in city buildings, and Central Police Headquarters certainly qualifies as a city building.”

  “Oh, really?” she said. She reached for the bottle; her hands caressed the neck. Then, with sudden, masculine authority, she popped the cork. It sounded like a gunshot. She poured the overflowing bottle in one of the glasses and held the brimming glass out to Tracy.

  He took it.

  She poured herself a glass; she raised hers in a toast.

  “Here’s to crime,” she said. “Where would you be without it?”

  She clinked the glass against his.

  “So. What do you want from me, Tracy?”

  He pointed to the photo on the desk. “That car look familiar to you? Know anybody who works for Big Boy who drives a car like that?

  She glanced at it, shrugged. “Not really. I’m more interested in drivers than cars.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Afraid I’m no help on that subject. That can’t be all you wanted . . . ?”

  He reached in his desk, found what he was looking for, and dropped the item in Breathless’s drained champagne glass.

  It was the blue sapphire earring.

  “I had a lot of bad news today,” Tracy said. “But one small piece of good news: We identified you through the jeweler who sold you those earrings . . . though they were charged to the late Lips Manlis.”

  She frowned. Then she slid off the desk, the dress hiking up as she did, showing him creamy white thigh. She strolled over and stopped in the doorway, her shapely backside to him. She looked over her shoulder at him and when she spoke, the words seemed ironic, but there was no irony in her voice.

  “You’re right, Tracy. Why would you want to get mixed up with a cheap floozy like me? I’ll be lucky if I get through the week alive. They probably followed me here.” She laughed mirthlessly. She turned the champagne glass upside down and the earring tumbled to the office floor. “If you want to throw me in jail, go ahead. I’d probably be better off.”

  And she drifted out.

  Tracy got up, knelt and plucked the earring from the floor, and returned it to a small evidence envelope in his desk. Then he got his yellow topcoat and went out in the hall, where Catchem was discussing with Patton the vision of sensuality in the tight black gown who’d just exited past them.

  Tracy gestured to the boy who still slept on the bench. “Keep an eye on him,” he told his two assistants.

  “Where you goin’, Tracy?” Catchem asked.

  “I’m going to follow her,” Tracy said. “That woman’s in trouble.”

  “What?” Patton asked Tracy’s back, as the detective hurried down the hall.

  “That woman is trouble.” Catchem smirked.

  The conference table seemed endless, its surface as slick and reflective as glass, only red, a brilliant blood-red slash down the center of the room. The color seemed fitting, considering the amount of blood that had been spilled by the dozen gangsters seated there—amongst themselves alone.

  Big Boy’s spacious office—a red art-deco chamber unchanged since the departure of its previous tenant, the late Lips Manlis—was on the third floor of the Club Ritz. Tomorrow night was the club’s grand reopening, but tonight was an even more special occasion.

  Tonight Big Boy had gathered together the city’s crime lords, the aristocracy of the local underworld. Dressed to their yellow teeth in all their colorful, wide-lapelled glory, they sat glowering at each other, their respective bodyguards lining the walls, the tension tighter than piano wire in an assassin’s grip.

  They were all present; a virtual Who’s Who o
f hoodlums: Pruneface—his long, grotesquely wrinkled mug a fright mask out of which cold dark eyes glittered—ran much of the Northside out of Ravenwood; Texie Garcia—ebony-haired, fortyish, witchily attractive in a slinky black dress—was the city-wide queen of prostitution; Northsider Lawrence “Acey-Deucey” Doucet, a razor-thin blond, had gambling in the suburbs sewn up; beaky one-time Big Boy gunman Ribs Mocca—looking sporty in his bowler hat and bow tie—now operated the city’s widest-spread protection racket; Southside boy Johnny Ramm—dark, dapper, mustached—owned nightclubs perhaps less grand than the Club Ritz but many in number; Ben “Spud” Spaldoni—who might have been Ramm’s brother—was the West Side slot-machine king. There were half a dozen dangerous more, seated at the blood-red table in the blood-red room, rivals in the business of crime, trading looks of suspicion and displeasure in strained silence.

  Seated at the head, in a pinstripe suit as red as the table, and redder than the room, was the Big Boy himself. Smiling paternally, a thick Havana cigar in the corner of his thick lips, Caprice rose slowly and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his vest. A gold watch chain draped itself across his belly. A carnation as red as the suit was snug in his lapel. An ashtray mingling cigar butts and walnut shells was set before him. Behind him were Itchy and several other bodyguards. Seated near him was his balding, bespectacled accountant, Numbers Norton.

  “I suppose you’re wonderin’ why I asked you all here tonight,” Big Boy said grandly.

  “We’re wondering,” Pruneface said, in a deep, gravelly voice that suited his hideously crêped face, “why a guy who just started a war would ask for a peace conference.”

  “I didn’t start a war,” Big Boy said, smiling genially. He shrugged matter-of-factly. “Lips Manlis was importing torpedoes; he was the one getting ready to start a war. Against us all. I just took some, what do you call it . . . preventative measures.”

  “Yeah, and you bring the heat down on us all,” Spaldoni said. He shook his head in undisguised disgust. “That’s just plain stupid, Big Boy.”

  Big Boy frowned; but just momentarily.

  Spaldoni went on. “A massacre like that, it gets Joe Q. Public all up in arms. Followed by a cop killing. It gets the newshounds up on their high horse. It makes the cops act crazy.”