Dick Tracy

by Max Allan Collins

  “You may be right,” Tess said with a tight, defiant smile, as he pulled her up the steps.

  “Let go of her, Big Boy!”

  Tracy’s voice!

  Big Boy, at the top of the stairs now, up on the pedestrian walkway of the bridge where he was leading Tess across, looked back and to his dismay saw the detective, in that stupid yellow topcoat, running down the embankment near the tunnel opening. His eyes bulged.

  A brightly lit cruise ship was heading toward the bridge. The sound of gears meshing announced that the bridge was separating to allow the ship to pass.

  The cement-and-steel leaves of the drawbridge were raising on Big Boy’s one side, with Dick Tracy sprinting toward him below, and a cityful of cops waiting, back in the other direction. Cornered and then some, Big Boy glanced around desperately, looking for any alternative. Someplace to shoot from behind, if nothing else. A doorway in the nearby bridge tower beckoned.

  “Come on, baby!” Big Boy growled, and yanked Tess toward that door, which God or the Devil or somebody had left unlocked for him.

  Big Boy dragged Tess into what proved to be the gearhouse of the massive bridge; the gangster stood on the steel-grating floor and looked around at what resembled gigantic, monstrous watchworks all around him. Eyes darting about, he spotted a supply area, where a coil of rope waited.

  He smiled.

  He felt as at home here as Quasimodo in a bell tower.

  “What are you doing?” Tess demanded, as he dragged her toward a huge spoke that lay horizontally as it revolved ever so slowly into its vertical twin.

  “You play Sleeping Beauty,” Big Boy said, and pushed her down on her back on the gigantic spoke. He began to tie her down with the thick hemp. “And I’ll wait for your prince to come . . .”

  Tracy had known at once, when Big Boy sent all of his partners in crime bursting out that garage into the waiting armed arms of the entire city police force, that the cunning crime boss had only been providing a diversion for his own escape. And hearing the rumbling of metal wheels below the pavement, and the sound of the foghorn coming from behind the movable wall in the wine cellar had told Tracy just exactly how Big Boy was making that escape.

  Tracy knew the underground train system connected the club with the warehouse and the riverbank. But he had to choose between those two places as the most likely one for Big Boy to head to . . .

  He targeted the riverbank, figuring Big Boy would consider that warehouse of his too likely to be crawling with cops in the aftermath of the assault on the club. But just the same, Tracy called by two-way as he ran, to have somebody cover the warehouse.

  “Will do, Tracy,” Patton’s voice said.

  Tracy was glad to find that Pat had made it safely out of the attic, but he didn’t discuss the matter. He was too busy running. He was nearing the waterfront area now.

  He moved past the dock to the rather steep incline of the riverbank. Fog hugged the river, and as Tracy moved down the slope, the pea soup was thick enough to partly obscure the nearby municipal drawbridge. Below him somewhere was the viaduct-type opening of the tunnel—the riverfront drop point where, in bootleg days, crates of liquor from Canada had been shifted from boats off the lake, to the river, through the tunnel to the Manlis warehouse and various speakeasies beyond.

  Then, as he came down the embankment, he saw them! Big Boy escorting Tess out of the tunnel; the grotesque, hunched gangster, in his black tux with white carnation, looked like the headwaiter in Hades.

  Gun in hand, Tracy sprinted down the slope; he called out to them—“Let go of her, Big Boy!”—as the slouchy gangster pulled Tess up the cement stairway. The lights of a ship of some kind were shooting through the fog toward the bridge.

  Tracy could see the gangster looking around desperately; saw the evil gnome-king pull Tess into the tower of the bridge.

  He kept running.

  The wet riverbank slowed his steps, but he kept running, and then he was up the stone stairs, standing hesitantly by the door he’d seen Big Boy go in.

  He knew that when he went through that door, odds were he’d be fired upon.

  His hand settled on the knob. He turned it, pushed the door open, and could hear nothing but the inexorable grinding of giant gears. I love you, Tess, he thought, and he went in, slowly, sidestepping into darkness, for cover, putting his back to the cement wall, searching the room with his eyes.

  The room was a large, dim, musty concrete chamber dominated by massive automated apparatus—gears, levers, giant wheels, interconnected like some meaningless mechanical puzzle. But the puzzle’s meaning was actually quite clear: outside, the leaves of the drawbridge were raising to admit passage to that ship, and the gears were grinding, groaning, accordingly. The immense machinery extended well below the elaborate network of steel grating catwalk that was the floor.

  Then he saw her.

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Tied on her back on a giant spoke, roped down like an animal about to be slaughtered, hands and arms bound to her breast. The spoke was moving. Slowly, its great teeth were grinding together as the upright wheel meshed with the prone one.

  Like the evil troll that he was, Big Boy peered up from behind machinery, near Tess, and called out, gloatingly.

  “Drop the gun, copper,” Big Boy said, “and maybe I’ll let your sweetheart climb offa that merry-go-round.”

  “Don’t do it, Dick!” Tess cried out. Her eyes were filled with as much anger as fear.

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  “Got yourself a feisty one, flatfoot,” Big Boy said. “Pretty, too. But she ain’t gonna be so pretty when that wheel turns her into toothpaste.”

  “Don’t do it, Dick! Don’t give up your gun!”

  “Okay, Big Boy,” Tracy said.

  “Step into the light first. Let me see you.”

  “Don’t, Dick! He’ll shoot you!”

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  Tracy took a deep breath and stepped into the light; but the gun was still tight in his hand.

  “You win, Big Boy,” Tracy said, and threw his gun down.

  But he threw it hard. Down past the machinery, down to the hard cement below the catwalk. When the gun hit cement, it fired spontaneously—just as Tracy figured it would. Only somebody who didn’t really understand guns told you to drop ’em . . .

  As Tracy hoped, Big Boy didn’t realize it was the detective’s dropped gun going off, and thought he was being fired on from some new direction; the gangster turned and shot toward the sound, and the bullet whizzed and ricocheted, as Tracy—hoping these bouncing bullets wouldn’t accidentally find Tess—dropped to his knees, and slipped back into the darkness.

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  On all fours Tracy crawled, weaving around through machinery, hands gripping the mesh of the catwalk, listening to Big Boy’s heavy breathing. That was his compass.

  He came up behind the gangster, but Big Boy sensed it or heard it or something, and pivoted, and Tracy drove a hard shoulder into the man’s soft belly, sending him down to the steel-grating floor, Big Boy’s own gun tumbling out of his hand, clattering on the steel but not, thankfully, firing on impact as Tracy’s had, nor dropping down to the cement below.

  They rolled on the wire-mesh floor, locked in each other’s arms, like schoolboys wrestling at recess. Big Boy wound up on top, his girth pressed down on Tracy, his big hands closing around Tracy’s throat. They were powerful hands and Tracy’s world began to turn red; but before it could turn black, Tracy rocked Big Boy with a right to the jaw, and then rocked him again. On the third time Big Boy’s eyes got cloudy and his fingers loosened and Tracy pushed him off, getting out from under him.

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  As Tracy got to his feet, wanting to get over to Tess, he realized the choking had taken its toll; he was dizzy, off-balance, and suddenly Big Boy was charging him like a bear. It knocked Tracy backward, hard, steel teeth digging into his back.

&nbs
p; And now Tracy was between the giant spokes of moving gears, and Big Boy was on him, hands on Tracy’s chest, pushing him, his head, his neck, into the path of the grinding gears, Tracy slammed both his fists into both of Big Boy’s ears, as if Big Boy’s head were between cymbals he was clashing.

  The gangster yowled in pain, fell forward on Tracy, almost shoving him into those hungry sprockets; but Tracy slipped out from under him and now Big Boy was face down, his neck on the gears, the cloth of his black tuxedo jacket caught there.

  The gears were pulling Caprice in and the gangster was wriggling helplessly, like a fish on the deck of a boat, his screams finding their way above the grating of the gears.

  For a moment that lasted a lifetime, Tracy stood, panting, looking at him.

  Considering whether to just stand here and watch this monster die. The monster responsible for Emil Trueheart’s death. The monster who would kill Tess. Who had killed Manlis and Officer Moriarty and so very many others. A vicious beast with no respect for human life . . .

  Tracy sighed, said, “Damnit,” and yanked the big man out of the gears.

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  Big Boy paid the detective thanks by pushing Tracy aside, and scurrying for the gun he’d dropped; but Tracy threw a flying tackle into him, spilling him to the grating.

  As the men stumbled to their feet, Tracy began hammering him with punches, and then put all his strength into a roundhouse right that staggered Big Boy to his toenails.

  “I’ve had it,” Big Boy said. He was out of breath; sweaty; dirty; bleeding from the ears, mouth, and nose. His tuxedo was grease-stained and torn.

  He collapsed.

  Tracy ran to Tess, began to untie her.

  “Don’t move, Tracy,” a hoarse voice said.

  Tracy froze. Tess looked up at him beseechingly.

  The spoke turned another notch. Her head was only a few notches away from eternity . . .

  “Don’t you move either, Big Boy. Don’t even blink.”

  Tracy turned slowly.

  On the catwalk with them now was a faceless figure. A faceless figure in a black floppy hat and a loose-fitting black topcoat. In a black-gloved hand was a .45 automatic.

  While Tracy and Big Boy had struggled, the faceless one had slipped in, unnoticed by either of them.

  “The Blank!” Big Boy was looking up from the cross-hatch floor incredulously. “Who are you, anyway? Redrum?”

  “No,” Tracy said. “Redrum’s dead.”

  “What . . . ?” Big Boy said. He was up on his hands.

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  “Let me untie the girl,” Tracy said.

  “No,” the Blank said.

  Big Boy struggled to his feet.

  “I said, don’t move, Big Boy!” The hoarse, theatrical voice echoed in the chamber. “And don’t even think about trying for that gun. You’ll never make it; too much lard.”

  “Who are you?” Big Boy demanded.

  “Let me untie the girl,” Tracy said tightly.

  The Blank ignored him, speaking instead to Caprice: “I outsmarted you. All the crimes you’ve committed, and I brought you down with one you didn’t commit. I knew you’d panic . . .”

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  “Whoever you are,” Big Boy said, “we can make a deal.”

  “No deal. I’m taking it all. With Big Boy Caprice and Dick Tracy both out of the way, I’ll own this town.”

  Tracy said, “I’m untying her.”

  “Don’t move!”

  Tracy turned toward Tess and began untying her.

  “I said, don’t move!”

  Tracy turned back and stepped toward the Blank. “I know what you’ve done. Give me the gun.”

  “Stay back! I’ll shoot!”

  “You won’t,” Tracy said, and moved toward the Blank.

  Whose gun hand lowered momentarily, then raised again, until the .45 was trained on Tracy, a finger tightening on the trigger as the detective kept moving forward . . .

  Tracy didn’t see where the boy came from, or how long he’d been there, or even how he got in; but that kid was there, all right, tackling the Blank from behind. The Blank pitched forward, knocking against a guardrail, tossing the Kid off effortlessly, but losing the gun, too; the .45 fumbling from the gloved fingers, falling down past the grating to the cement with a clunk.

  Tracy took the opportunity to run back to Tess, but Big Boy had taken his own opportunity, finally getting his hands on his own gun, and as the Blank began to rise, Big Boy fired two rounds into the figure, who flopped onto the grating again, faceless face up this time.

  The spoke rotated a notch.

  Big Boy whirled toward Tracy and Tess, but Tracy was already rushing him, and Big Boy seemed stunned that an unarmed man would so boldly charge a man with a gun; but that was exactly what Tracy did, and as Big Boy raised the gun to fire, Tracy fired a punch, a punch that rocked Big Boy back against the guardrail.

  The gangster toppled over the side and into the center of the enormous, grinding impersonal gears, which caught him, pulled him in and possessed him and he screamed until they had crushed him like a walnut shell.

  Tracy didn’t see that happen: with the help of the Kid, he was yanking the ropes from Tess’s feet and her hands, and pulling her free from the giant gear—which was a single tooth away from giving her the same fate as Big Boy.

  “Big Boy thought he was a big wheel,” the Kid said, “but compared to them things, I guess he wasn’t so big.” The boy was looking down past the guardrail into the machinery.

  Tracy took Tess in his arms; she looked at him out of a dirt-smudged face devoid of makeup, her hair a tangle, her features twisted with countless emotions, and he’d never seen anyone or anything more beautiful in his life.

  “I knew you’d come for me,” she said.

  “Don’t ever leave me, Tess,” he said.

  “Never. Never . . .”

  They kissed and the Kid took it in with eyes bigger than the mammoth gears.

  With a tight smile, Tracy pressed Tess’s hand, then gestured for her to stay put as he moved quickly to where the Blank lay dead, or dying, on the catwalk.

  “Still alive,” Tracy said, touching the pulse in the white neck. “Tess, my two-way got smashed up in the struggle. Go call for an ambulance, will you? See if you can find a beat cop . . .”

  Tess stared at Tracy for a long moment, then—with the boy in tow—hurried out of the gearhouse, into the night.

  “It was an audacious plan,” Tracy said, still kneeling over the slumped, bleeding form. “A plan you damn near pulled off. The city would have had a new ruler . . .”

  Tracy stayed with the troubled, misguided soul who had been the Blank—criminal or not, the Blank had spared Tracy’s life more than once—waiting for the ambulance; but death came first.

  The gears ground to a stop. Silence cloaked the musty chamber. The detective slowly rose. He looked down at the lifeless form with something not unlike sympathy.

  Then his eyes hardened, and the gearhouse was just a place where an innocent woman had been saved from an unjust fate, and two criminals had met their due destiny.

  Tracy, Tess, and the Kid shared one side of a booth at Mike’s Diner. The proprietor plopped down bowls of chili in front of each of them.

  “Doesn’t taste as good as usual, Mike,” Tracy told the counterman. “What’d you do—wash the bowls?”

  “Aw,” Tess said, sampling hers, “don’t listen to him, Mike. I think it’s just marvelous.”

  “Except for the guy she goes out with,” Mike said, “this lady has real taste.”

  “Well, this stuff sure beats anything I ever ate in a hobo camp,” the Kid told Mike, as if if paying him the supreme compliment of all time.

  “Thanks a million, kid,” Mike said, and smiled and shook his head as he headed back behind the counter. “Let me know when you’re ready for your ice cream.”

  “Say, Mike,” Tracy said, “you got
to stop calling my friend here ‘Kid.’ It’s not his name.”

  “It isn’t?” the Kid asked.

  “No, Junior, it isn’t,” Tracy said.

  The Kid smirked. “Yeah, well ‘Junior’ isn’t my name, either, ya know.”

  “Sure it is,” Tracy said, and he withdrew a folded paper from his inside coat pocket; he unfolded the official-looking document. “I signed this, and some other papers this morning.”

  “What are they?”

  “Adoption papers, son. I’m your old man now.” Tracy returned to his chili. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  The Kid studied the document; where it said “Name” were the words DICK TRACY, JUNIOR.

  “Gosh,” Junior said, looking at the piece of paper. “You mean, I’m gonna live with you, full-time? The orphanage is yesterday’s news?”

  “Last year’s news,” Tracy said. He smiled at the boy. “It’s like I told you—you’re on my team now.”

  The boy’s chest swelled. “I’m gonna be the greatest detective who ever lived!”

  “Well, then, you may be so smart you won’t need this,” Tracy said, “but here’s a little present, anyway.”

  The detective took a small box from his pocket and handed it to the boy, who opened it and found a little two-way wrist radio.

  “Wow! Does it really work?”

  “Wait till my next call comes in and see.”

  “Mr. Tracy, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Lose the ‘Mister.’ Make it ‘Tracy.’ ”

  “Well, uh . . . what about ‘Dad’ or ‘Pop’ or somethin’?”

  “Those are fine, too.”

  “I guess I got everything a kid could ever want,” Junior said, sighing, smiling, reflecting. “Except maybe a mother . . .”

  Tracy and Tess traded significant glances. Then Tracy studied his chili. “Tess . . . I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yeah?” she said sassily. She dipped her spoon into her bowl. “What about?”

  “Well . . . about you living alone.”

  She shrugged. “We both live alone. We have that in common.”

  Tracy cleared his throat; he searched for the words, but they were like clues eluding him. “Well, when two people have a lot in common, they ought to do something about it.”