Dick Tracy

by Max Allan Collins

  “No, that’s okay. I like mine black.”

  Tracy shook his head and started to shave with a straight razor. “Why don’t you go change your clothes. Then I’ll rustle up that chow.”

  “Swell!”

  “Oh, and junior . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Better get your things together. I’m taking you with me to headquarters today and I’m going to have to make the arrangements to . . . you know.”

  “You’re turning me into the orphanage, huh?”

  “Don’t look it at that way . . . Tess and I’ll come see you this weekend. Ever go to the movies?”

  He shrugged. “I snuck in a few times.”

  Tracy was drying his face off with a towel. “Well, we’ll take you to see the new Tom Mix picture. How’s that sound?”

  The Kid sighed. “Swell.”

  Tracy went into the other room and the Kid looked at the powder on his fingers and sighed again. He was about to start rubbing the stuff onto his teeth when a sharp knock on the front door startled him.

  The Kid cracked the bathroom door open and listened. “Mr. Tracy,” an old woman’s voice was saying. “I’m Mrs. Skaff—from the Welfare Department.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” the detective said to the door. “I’m not dressed yet . . .”

  “It’s come to our attention that you have an orphan with you. Mr. Tracy, you’re a single man . . .”

  “Mrs. Skaff,” Tracy said, “I have the situation in hand. It’s my intention to contact the orphanage this afternoon . . .”

  “I don’t think you quite understand, Mr. Tracy,” the woman’s voice went on. “You can’t just pick up a child off the streets and take him home like a stray dog.”

  Panic clutched the boy’s chest. He slipped out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. Miss Tess had thrown his old clothes out, so he had no choice but to put the sissy ones back on.

  He went to the dresser and picked up the baseball; he forced it into his pocket. Then he grabbed the wallet and stuffed it into his other pocket and climbed out the window onto the fire escape.

  “I don’t appreciate you comparing that child to a dog,” Tracy told the closed door tersely.

  The woman’s voice responded just as tersely: “He must go to the orphanage now. It’s the law.”

  The irony of having that phrase tossed in his face was not lost on Tracy.

  “Don’t force me to get a court order, Mr. Tracy.”

  “All right, all right,” he said.

  He went to the bedroom and found the window open. On the floor, sprawled like a ten-story suicide, were the red pajamas. The Little Lord Fauntelroy getup Tess had forced on the Kid was gone.

  So was the baseball. And the Kid, too.

  He sighed, shook his head, and then noticed that his wallet was also missing. He swore silently and trudged out into the living room, buttoning up his shirt, saying, “Human nature” to himself, bleakly.

  “Mrs. Skaff,” Tracy said, unchaining the night latch, “you frightened the boy away—but I’ll find him, and take care of it . . .”

  And as he opened the door, Tracy looked out at Flattop, whose cupid lips were pursed in a self-satisfied smile. The gunman reached out with one hand and pushed the door open wider; and with the other, pointed a big .45 right at Tracy.

  “It’s the law,” Flattop said sarcastically, in the old-woman voice.

  Itchy was just behind him, and laughed nasally, weasel-like, in appreciation of Flattop’s mimicry; beneath the bright blue fedora, which matched his expensive topcoat, Itchy’s face was bulging eyes behind pop-bottle eyeglasses, and sneering, madman’s lips. Itchy dug at his neck with one hand, but in the other was a long-barreled .38 revolver with a silencer.

  Both men wore gloves: not a good sign.

  Flattop, looking like an undertaker in his long black topcoat, bareheaded (no fedora invented could sit on that flat skull), pushed Tracy roughly back into the little apartment. Itchy followed, shutting the door.

  “Morning, fellas,” Tracy said through bared teeth. “Care for a little breakfast?”

  “Maybe a little hot chili?” Flattop said, raising the hand Tracy had burned.

  “Or scrambled yeggs,” Tracy said.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Itchy said. He was reaching behind himself, trying to get at a spot between his shoulders. But his gunhand was steady.

  “It’s your play,” Tracy said to both of them.

  “We’re not here to shoot you,” Flattop said pleasantly. “This is a friendly call.”

  “A business call,” Itchy said, digging at his neck.

  “A friendly business call,” Flattop said. He eyeballed the flat. “Jeez, copper, you call this an apartment? Secondhand furniture. Threadbare carpet. Little dinky rooms. Sad. They ought to pay you more.”

  “I’ll take it up with the Mayor,” Tracy said.

  “Get your coat and hat, copper,” Itchy said. “We’re goin’ for a ride . . .”

  “The one-way kind?”

  “Depends on you, Tracy,” Flattop said cheerfully, and nudged him with his .45. “Depends on you . . .”

  The Kid had scrambled down the fire escape to the alley, where he paused to empty the wallet; it was leather, but way too worn to be worth anything. He’d pocketed the money and was just about to dump the rest in a garbage can, when the wallet fell open and Tracy’s badge caught the sun and glinted at him. He studied it a long time.

  He felt bad. Up in that apartment was the only guy who’d ever really been halfway decent to him. And the Kid had taken his money. The boy sighed. It was a hard world.

  But he slipped the whole wallet in his pocket. He couldn’t quite bring himself to toss the badge, or the snapshots, either. Miss Tess was in one of them.

  He was just coming around the corner of the alley when the front door to Tracy’s building flew open and Tracy was prodded down the steps by the flatheaded guy and his nervous partner. The killers from the Seventh Street garage! They had guns on Tracy, but in their pockets; somebody going by casually might not make anything of this.

  But the Kid sure did.

  Ducking back in the alley, the Kid saw the flatheaded guy shove Tracy into the red sedan at the curb, and the nervous one jump behind the driver’s seat.

  He didn’t know what to do. These guys were hoodlums! Murderers! What could he do, a kid? Maybe he should find a cop! But that was against the Kid’s code of the street . . .

  Swallowing, summoning courage, the Kid followed the car out into the street as it began to pull away. He almost slipped twice in the rain-slicked street, before he picked up enough speed to get near the back bumper.

  He dove for it.

  Grabbing the bumper, he pulled himself onto the car as it began to accelerate. He held onto the bumper with all his might, pulled himself up inside the spare tire on the back of the car, curling up inside there, an unseen stowaway as the car roared off.

  Flattop and Itchy shoved Tracy down the steps into the basement. They were in an apartment building, a good many blocks away from Tracy’s own. It was not, however, just any apartment building: this was where Tess lived.

  “What are we doing here?” Tracy demanded as he descended.

  “Shut-up, flatfoot!” Flattop said, and pushed him with the gun in hand, and Tracy stumbled down a few of the steps.

  At the bottom of the steps, Tracy found himself in a furnace room; it was hot in here—ungodly hot, the big old boiler furnace working overtime. It was cold out, but not cold enough to justify this . . .

  Two figures stepped out of the darkness.

  Wearing a topcoat and fedora as red as the blood he’d so often shed, Al “Big Boy” Caprice moved forward, with a friendly smile on his grotesque puss. Just behind him was the bespectacled mob accountant, “Numbers” Norton, a little yellow rat in a big tan topcoat.

  Nobody needed a topcoat in this inferno of a furnace room.

  “Glad you could join us, Tracy,” Big Boy said. He
withdrew some walnuts from his pocket, cracked one, and sorted through the broken shells for the nuts.

  “Those are good for the liver, I hear,” Tracy said.

  Big Boy popped a nut in his mouth and chewed; he gestured around the small, steamy furnace room. A tiny wooden table with a single chair was set beneath a hanging lamp, in a cone of light—as if awaiting someone. Perhaps it was.

  “We thought you’d be more comfortable in familiar surroundings,” Big Boy said. “So I had you brung to your girlfriend’s place.”

  Tracy moved forward and Flattop braced him with a tight arm around the chest. “If you’ve touched her . . .” Tracy began.

  “Tracy!” Big Boy said, as if hurt. “What kind of guy do you take me for? She ain’t here. She’s down at her job. We put some candy upstairs for her, with a card from you. Thoughtful of you, wasn’t it?”

  “Why don’t you sit down, copper?” Flattop said, and sat Tracy bodily down at the small wooden table.

  Big Boy cracked another walnut. “Why don’t you call me ‘Al’? That’s what my pals call me. You mind if I call you ‘Dick’?”

  “What’s this about, Big Boy? Why did you send your triggers around to haul me here, if all you wanted was to small talk?”

  Big Boy pretended to be offended. “My boys aren’t triggers. They’re messengers.”

  “I mistook those telegrams in their hands for a forty-five and a thirty-eight. By the way,” he said, looking at Big Boy but nodding toward Itchy, “you ought to tell this nearsighted pinhead that revolvers with silencers aren’t worth the trouble. Too much escaping gas.”

  “When I drill you,” Itchy said, scratching his stomach, “you’re the one gas’ll escape out of.”

  Big Boy raised a calming hand. “Let’s not be impolite to our guest, boys.” He looked around the furnace room again. “Don’t you think your little sweetie deserves better than a dump like this, Dick? If you were on my payroll, you could make her happy.”

  “She’s happy enough as it is.”

  “I doubt that,” Big Boy said with a knowing smile. “You been going with her for years, but on your salary, how can you afford to do right by her? Sad. How I hate to see our valued civic servants suffer.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I’m a businessman, Tracy,” Big Boy said, reasonably. “I think all this shooting nonsense has gotta cease. All these tommy guns and cement overcoats and bombs in cars . . . did you hear about that disgraceful murder last nght, right outside my place? Poor ol’ Spaldoni.”

  “Somebody must’ve wanted to make you look bad, Big Boy, blowing up Spaldoni right outside your place like that.”

  “I know. I know.” He shook his head sadly. “Everybody wants to make me out to be a big, bad man. I’m just in the entertainment business. My business is to serve the public.”

  “We have that in common, then. If there’s a point to this, Big Boy, I wish you’d get to it. I’m late for work.”

  Big Boy exchanged smiles with his boys. “Ain’t this guy a pip?” he asked them good-naturedly. Flattop and Itchy weren’t smiling. “Numbers” Norton was doing his best to fade into the background.

  “The point is,” Big Boy continued, “I don’t want trouble. I thought you might be in a position to help me out.”

  “Oh?”

  Big Boy nodded sagely. “What I need is, Tracy, for you to go bother the real criminals. Bank robbers and embezzlers and jaywalkers. I think you should support a good local businessman like me. And I think a good local businessman like me should support local law enforcement.”

  Big Boy dropped his walnuts into one topcoat pocket and reached into the other and withdrew a large wad of bills. He threw the loose stack of bills onto the table, in front of Tracy.

  Big Boy, ever the philosopher, said, “Everybody’s got his price.”

  Tracy picked up the stack of bills and began riffling idly through them. “What’s mine?”

  Big Boy pointed at the money Tracy was thumbing through. “You’re holding fifteen gees in your hot little hands right now. And you’ll get fifteen more, at the end of every quarter. That’s sixty grand a year, in case your math ain’t so good.”

  Tracy watched the green bills flutter under his thumb. “Oh, that’s a very businesslike arrangement. I’m impressed, Big Boy. When can we seal this deal?”

  Big Boy shrugged grandly. “Right now.”

  Tracy gave him a bland smile. “All right, let’s. You’re under arrest for attempted bribery of an officer of the law,” he said, and hurled the wad of money in Big Boy’s face, and in one continuous motion, slammed an elbow into Flattop’s belly, doubling the wincing-in-pain punk over even as Tracy was throwing a left hook into Itchy’s chin, leaveling the pop-eyed purse-lipped gunman.

  But then Big Boy had him from behind, and Flattop was on him, snarling, and swinging his massive .45, catching Tracy along the side of the head with the barrel.

  Tracy, as he crumpled to the floor, felt rough hands on him, and he was hauled back to the table, where a furious Itchy was looping a thick rope around him, binding him to the chair.

  Flattop held the .45 to Tracy’s temple while Big Boy backhanded the detective, brutally. The gangster sneered at Tracy and Tracy looked back at him coldly.

  “Hot in here, did ya notice, copper?” Big Boy walked over to the big boiler furnace behind Tracy and patted it with a gloved hand; it echoed hollowly. “This accident’s just been waitin’ to happen. Somebody carelessly turned it way up this morning and jimmied some of the safety valves and so on.” He made a clicking sound in his cheek. “See those trash cans in the corner? Those are your girlfriend’s. You brought ’em downstairs here, after you dropped that candy off to her. You just happened to be down here, when the boiler blew . . . which it’s gonna, in due time. This basement’s gonna be blowed to chop suey.”

  Tracy shrugged. “I like Chinese food.”

  Then Big Boy smiled; it was a horrible, toothy thing under the skinny mustache. “You silly, stupid cop. I offer you a seat on top of the world, and you choose the gutter. I offer you the keys to the kingdom, and you tell me you’re an officer of the law. I am the law. Me!”

  “You’re one law I look forward to breaking,” Tracy said calmly.

  Big Boy’s sneer returned. To Itchy, who stood nearby, he said, “Let ’im have it.”

  Itchy picked up a nasty-looking wrench and stepped near Tracy with the wrench raised; Itchy’s eyes behind the thick glasses were crazed, his lips smiling madly. His weasel-like laugh filled the small furnace room as he moved toward Tracy, who tightened his eyes, and braced himself for the blow . . .

  But Itchy had moved past Tracy, and the blow was struck beyond and behind the bound-in-the-chair detective, against the furnace itself, the glass of the safety-valve meter breaking, metal meeting metal jarringly, and the furnace began to hum and the hum began to build, quickly, to a low rumble.

  The boiler was roaring as Big Boy began climbing the stairs, the mob accountant on his heels. “Hate to miss the fun,” the gangster said, “but ringside seats at some events can prove dangerous. My boys’ll take care of ya, proper.”

  “You’ll fry for this, Big Boy.”

  “I think you’re gonna do the fryin’ today, Tracy.” He looked down from the stairs at the detective; steam was filling the room. He shook his head forlornly. “You shoulda made the deal. So long, sucker . . .”

  And Big Boy was gone.

  “Pick up the dough,” Flattop said.

  “It’s gonna blow, Flattop!” Itchy said.

  “Shut-up,” Flattop said. “Pick up the money.”

  Itchy, scratching his shoulder, began collecting the scattered bills; the furnace was rumbling, the room steamy, fogging the gunman’s thick glasses.

  Tracy looked around the furnace room, eyes darting, looking for something to use to escape as soon as these clowns had finally left; in the process, he glanced up at the window.

  The Kid was framed there. Tracy looked quickly away.
<
br />   “You got it all, Itchy?”

  “Sure, Flattop!” Itchy was stuffing the money in his topcoat pockets. “Think I’m nuts?”

  “Is that a trick question? Let’s go.”

  “Say good-night, Tracy,” Itchy said, and giggled nasally, heading for the stairs.

  “Hey!” Flattop said, spotting the Kid in the window. “It’s that kid!”

  The Kid had watched it all through the window, wondering what he could do to help, trying to catch Tracy’s attention without alerting the hoods in there, hoping a beat cop would come along . . . and then when two of the gangsters came out, one important-looking one in a red topcoat and another unimportant-looking one in a tan topcoat, he hid behind some garbage cans by the stoop, till they drove off. Then he returned to the window and, finally, Tracy saw him!

  But a few seconds later, so did that flatheaded killer.

  From within the basement room Tracy shouted, and through the glass window his voice was muffled but the words were unmistakable: “Get out of here! Run!”

  If he could only break the window—but the glass was thick, and a fist or even a kick wouldn’t do the trick, and if he stayed close to that window, that flatheaded guy would shoot him. What could he do? What should he do?

  The baseball!

  He dug it out of his pocket and backed up and he brought his arm back and he pitched the pitch of his life, the pitch of all-time, and the glass shattered; it was the most beautiful sound the Kid had ever heard.

  But down in the cellar, the flatheaded guy was shouting, “Let’s get him!”

  And he knew they were coming up out of there to grab him, maybe kill him, and he knew he should run, like Tracy said; but he just couldn’t leave Tracy down there, where that boiler looked like it was going to go ka-blooie any second!

  So he hopped inside one of the garbage cans and huddled there.

  And when the two killers made it onto the street, the Kid was nowhere to be seen.

  “That thing’s going to blow any second,” Flattop said. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

  The Kid heard their car roar away.

  He scrambled out of the garbage can and went back to the shattered window and reached in through the jagged glass-teeth to open it and dropped himself down into the steam-filled basement.