Dick Tracy (19 page)

Fletcher had shaken the arm off; he was angry, and so was Tracy. This was developing into a public scene, but neither man at this point cared.

“Do it, then,” Fletcher had almost shouted. “But you better behave like a
cop
and not some mindless thug, no better than the riffraff you’re chasing.”

The D.A. had stormed off, his footsteps echoing down the marble hall.

Now it was evening, in the office at HQ, and Tracy—putting his cleaned and loaded .38 in his shoulder harness—told Sam Catchem about the encounter with the D.A.

Catchem had spent much of the day on a fruitless search for fingerprint evidence in the rubble of the explosion in the basement of Tess’s building, while Patton had canvassed both Tracy’s neighborhood and Tess’s, looking for witnesses, but there had been none, at least none willing to go up against Big Boy Caprice.

Catchem said, “You don’t really suspect the D.A. of bein’ connected, do you?”

“He’s a politician.” Tracy shrugged. “Of course I suspect him.”

Catchem was standing, leaning a hand on Tracy’s desk; he gestured open-handedly with the other. “He’s got a real good conviction record.”

“Sure. But you’ll note that none of that flesh-and-blood rogues’ gallery that met with Big Boy last night has done any time at all in recent years. And God knows we’ve tried: we’ve made the arrests, but the D.A.’s office has consistently found the evidence insufficient to prosecute.”

Catchem’s eyes narrowed. “Is that why you didn’t tell Fletcher we’re going to hit Caprice tonight? And what we’re going to do with Bug Bailey, once we get there?”

“That”—Tracy nodded—“and that maybe he’d find some legal reason to stop us.”

Pat Patton wandered into the office. “Say, Dick,” Patton said, noting the Kid curled up on the bench in the hall, snoozing, “weren’t you going to call the Welfare Department about your little pal here?”

Tracy admitted he simply hadn’t had the heart to make the call. Not after the Kid had saved his life . . .

Through this day and now early evening, the Kid had been Tracy’s constant office companion, except for a couple hours when Tracy fixed the boy up with the public-affairs officer for a tour of the police station. The Kid had been anything but a pest, amusing himself reading newspapers, the funnies mostly, and filling up a tablet of paper (usually used for crime-scene diagrams) with all sorts of grease-pencil drawings.

The highlight of the day had been an impromptu late-afternoon ceremony here in the office, when Tracy and Tess watched Chief Brandon present the boy with a scroll.

“For action in the face of grave danger,” Brandon had imperiously intoned, “the recipient is awarded this Honorary Detective’s Certificate.”

The Kid had tried to conceal that he was touched by the honor, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

“Best-looking officer on the force,” Tess had said, mussing the boy’s hair.

“This is just a temporary certificate,” the Chief told the boy, “till you pick a name out for yourself. Got one in mind, son?”

“Not really,” the Kid had said.

Tracy had pinned a small badge on the boy, telling him, “Now, don’t take this as encouragement to go jumping on the back of any more cars.”

“Okay, Mr. Tracy. Listen . . . uh, maybe I’ll have a badge for you sometime.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothin’.”

Now they were waiting at the office for Tess to get back from some grocery shopping; she was going to prepare dinner at Tracy’s apartment, where Tracy hoped to catch a nap before returning to HQ for the evening’s festivities.

In the meantime, the lights off in the hall, the boy had succumbed to his own nap. His sketches were scattered around him and by a chair in Tracy’s office where the boy had sat earlier, doodling.

“Hey,” Catchem said, picking up off the floor a scratchy, lively picture of a dog, a terrierlike mutt, “this is pretty good!”

“Yeah,” Tracy said, “the boy’s got real talent.”

Catchem examined drawings of himself, Tracy, Patton, and other cops from the squad room; they were good likenesses. “I wonder if he’s ever put it to use.”

“He sure has,” Tracy said. “He said sometimes Steve had him sit on a street corner and do sketches of people for a nickel.”

Catchem, admiring his own portrait, smiled warmly. “Jeez, that’s kinda nice. You wouldn’t think a crumbum like Steve would think of something as nice as that.”

Tracy grunted a laugh. “He thought of it all right. He’d be in the crowd picking pockets.”

Patton picked up another drawing. “Hey—look at this!”

He brought it over to the desk where Tracy was going through Catchem’s field notes. It was a self-portrait, but in the portrait the Kid was wearing a fedora just like Tracy. And written below the picture it said, “Ace Detective.”

“For a kid who’s never been to school,” Catchem said, “he seems to spell pretty good. You think he can read?”

“I know he can,” Tracy said.“He claims he taught himself. He’s got quite a native intelligence.”

Patton was grinning. “He may not have a name picked out, but he’s got his eye on your job, Tracy.”

“Pretty corny,” Tracy said, and stood and took the self-portrait back to lay it beside the sleeping boy with his other scattered drawings.

“Corny?” Catchem said. “You think that kid is tops.”

“Yeah, I would if . . . well . . .”

“What?”

“Sam, the little bum stole my wallet.”

“Yeah? What’s that lump in your back pocket? Big Boy’s bribe money?”

Tracy felt behind him and, sure enough, there was a lump there all right. He withdrew the wallet; flipped it open, saw his badge, photos, and even his fifteen dollars, all intact. He smiled slowly.

“Shifty little pickpocket,” Tracy said. “He
said
he had a badge for me. Slipped it back to me. I wonder what other secrets he’s keeping?”

Tracy sat at his rolltop desk in the bedroom of his apartment, studying mug shots.

He and Tess and the Kid had come back here, and Tess had prepared supper—featuring her own meat loaf, which the boy professed to like as much as Mike’s.

Tracy had convinced Tess to stay at his apartment, with the Kid, until her own apartment building was inhabitable again. There had been no damage to her apartment, or the building structurally, but there was the stench of smoke and, of course, no heat.

“I’ll sleep on the couch and fix a cot up for the Kid,” he told her.

“What if people talk?” she asked.

“Let ’em.”

Her smile was a beauty. “We’ll be like a little family, won’t we?”

“Sort of,” Tracy admitted.

Now, Tess and the boy had gone down to the corner ice cream parlor to get themselves a couple of cones; and Tracy, rather than catching that much-needed nap, found himself obsessively filing through the ugly faces of the city’s underworld elite.

A knock at the front door interrupted them; it was a little early for Tess and the Kid to be back. The last knock at his door had been Flattop and Itchy.

He took his gun with him.

“Is that you, dear?” he said to the door.

“Yes, darling.”

He opened the door, but after experiencing Flattop’s female mimicry, did not put the gun away. “How was the ice cream?” he asked.

“Melts in your mouth,” Breathless Mahoney said.

She was standing there wearing a black painted-on gown with a neckline that stopped short of her navel. Just.

He glanced out in the hall; no bad guys. No Tess and the Kid, either.

She stepped in and he pushed the door closed behind her. She moved through the room lightly touching things—a lamp shade, the overstuffed arm of his chair, his beat-up radio.

“Aren’t you going to frisk me, Tracy?”

“What do you want, Breathless?”

She shrugged. “What does any woman want? A real man.”

“I’d think you would’ve had enough of men.”

“Oh, not at all. I’ve seldom encountered any. What I’ve had enough of is worms, weasels, and welshers. This town isn’t treating you very well, is it?”

“I don’t have any complaints.”

She approached him slowly, touched his cheek. “What would you say to a desert island?”

“Nothing. I never speak to land masses.”

She laughed. “You’re as cute as that kid you took in. As cute as your milk-fed honeybunch. What if I had money, Tracy? What if I had more money than we could spend in a lifetime?”

“Money has a certain appeal, I guess.”

Suddenly there was sadness in her eyes. “Would you come with me, and be my love, and . . .”

“I’m not much for poetry.”

She paused, a melancholy smile tickling her lips. “Yet you want me to sing, don’t you? And I don’t mean at the club.”

“On the witness stand. Yes. You can bring him down.”

She shook her head; her platinum curls shimmered. “Is that all you can think about? Big Boy? Nailing Big Boy? Is that what you want most in life?”

“Yes.”

“Then
what?”

“What do you mean?”

Her face was amused and disgusted, at once. “Do you start over? Do you take on Big Boy’s successor? Or maybe you move on to another city and take on
their
Big Boy?”

“What’s your point?”

“That there
is
no point!” Irritation bordering on anger did something to the beautiful face that made it suddenly not so beautiful. “You
can’t
clean up a city like this. Why bother trying? It’s a cesspool by nature. The people like it that way. They want their booze, their broads, their gambling, their dope.”

“I don’t believe that.”

She sighed. “Tracy—Tracy. Then believe what you’re feeling now. You do feel it. You feel the chemistry—the electricity, between us. How often does that happen in this lousy world?”

“Probably about every second and a half.”

“Does it?”

She plastered herself to him and kissed him, hard and deep. Her mouth was hot, her mouth was wet, her mouth was sweet. The flesh of her bare back on his hands was cool and yet it burned. He tried to remain impassive, but she caught him; her kiss caught him like some crook backed up against a dead-end alley wall.

Still in his arms, but not looking at him, she said, “If I testify against Big Boy, he’ll have me bumped off, you know.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“You sound confident.”

“I’d guard you myself, twenty-four hours a day, if necessary.”

She liked the sound of that. “And if I helped take Big Boy down . . . what’s in it for me? You?”

“Breathless, I . . .”

There were footsteps in the hall. Voices—Tess and the Kid.

Tracy pushed Breathless gently away, quickly wiped the lipstick off his face with a handkerchief, stuffed it in his pocket, and went to the door, which was ajar, he discovered. Had Tess seen anything?

He opened it.

Tess and the boy entered, nibbling at ice cream cones; her red-and-black coat and the boy’s red outfit made them seem connected, somehow. Tess held an extra cone in the same hand as hers.

“I brought you one,” she said softly. Her voice had a bruised sound.

The Kid’s eyes were bugging out as he took in Breathless’s provocatively underclad form. He whistled.

“Some babe!” the Kid said.

“Junior!” Tracy snapped.

“What a cute little boy,” Breathless said, smiling, enjoying herself.

“Uh, Tess,” Tracy said, “this is . . .”

“I know who she is,” Tess said crisply. “Hello, Miss Mahoney.”

Breathless greeted Tess with a knowing smile. “You must be Tess Trueheart. Dick has told me so much about you.”

“Really,” Tess said. She was smiling, too, but it was glazed.

“You’re a very lucky woman, Miss Trueheart,” Breathless breathed. She looked at the embarrassed detective. “I’ll be in touch, Tracy.” She patted the Kid on the head. “Cute little boy.”

Then Breathless was out the door, which Tracy shut quickly behind her.

Tess stuck the dripping ice cream cone in his hand. “Undercover agent of yours?”

He gestured with his free hand. “I’m trying to get her to testify against Caprice.”

“I’m sure the men on the jury will find her most convincing, whatever she says.”

“Tess, don’t get any ideas . . .”

“That’s good advice, Dick.”

The Kid was at the window watching Breathless below, as she blended into the night.

“Some babe,” he said wistfully.

Tess went to the window; she put a hand on the child’s shoulder. She stood by him, looking out into the darkness.

Tracy, feeling uncomfortable, sat in his overstuffed chair and ate the ice cream cone. Pistachio. The sweetness caught in his throat.

“I sure had a swell day, Miss Tess,” the boy told her, as they moved to the couch and sat. “Lineups and fingerprints and mug books. You know, before this, I always thought cops were bums.”

“Yeah, well a bum told you that,” Tracy said. “Consider the source.”

“How about we take in a movie tonight?” Tess asked the boy. “There’s a Jack Holt detective picture at the Rialto.”

“Sure!” the Kid said. “That’d be great! Can you come with us, Mr. Tracy?”

Tracy, still working on the dripping cone, smiled and shook his head. “Afraid not. This is going to be a busy night.”

Tess glanced at him searchingly.

“Take my car,” he told her.

She nodded.

“We better get going,” Tess said, sitting up straight, “or we’ll miss the cartoon.”

“I hate cartoons,” the Kid said.

“Well, I bet you like popcorn.”

“Yeah!”

Tess gave the boy her hand and they rose from the couch and headed for the door. She glanced over her shoulder and said, “Good-bye, Dick.”

He went to her and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled, but the smile seemed sad to him.

“Wash your face,” she told him.

“Pistachio.” He grinned.

Tess and the boy went out into the hall, but then the Kid said, “I forgot something!”

He ran back in to Tracy. He curled his finger, so that Tracy would bend down to him; then he whispered: “Mr. Tracy, I think you oughta know you didn’t get away with it.”

“What do you mean, junior?”

“You still got lipstick on ya.”

Tracy touched his face.

“And it ain’t Miss Tess’s, neither.”