Dick Tracy (17 page)

A
patch of sunlight fell from the bedroom window onto the Kid’s face as he lay sleeping snugly beneath the covers. The light gradually nagged his eyelids open, and then he sat up with a start, not sure where he was.

Looking around, he realized he was in a bedroom, Tracy’s bedroom; in a bed, Tracy’s bed. On the nightstand was a small, round clock, which showed the time as a little before seven. The boy stretched, then climbed out.

He looked down at himself and made a face. He was wearing red pajamas; the idea of wearing special clothes to bed seemed pointless and even silly to him. But Miss Tess had bought these, among other clothes, for him. She’d even bought him a little suitcase, which he noticed was over in the corner, next to a dresser.

On that dresser was a picture of Miss Tess, smiling, looking real pretty in a summery dress; and a picture of a white-haired man with glasses and a strong jaw, who the Kid figured was Tracy’s pa, with his arm around an older lady who had a real nice smile, who the Kid figured was Tracy’s ma. In front of the framed pictures was the baseball and glove Tracy gave him yesterday. That Tracy sure was jake.

Also on the dresser was a wallet.

The Kid looked in the worn leather billfold. There was fifteen bucks in there. And some more pictures, several of Tess, and those same old people that he figured for Tracy’s parents. Also, pinned to the leather was a shiny silver detective’s badge. It said “Chief of Detectives” on it.

He caught his own reflection in the dresser mirror as he held the wallet in his hands; his face looked white, his hair was sticking out every which way, and his eyes looked real ashamed, as if he’d caught himself at something.

He swallowed and put the wallet back on the dresser.

“Are you up?” Tracy called from the other room.

The Kid went out into the little living room. For a guy with a decent job, Tracy sure didn’t live fancy; just two rooms and a kitchenette and a can. Of course, the place was nicer than the Kid was used to, by a long shot—but he’d seen fancier digs. Like when he and Steve went around to sell their stuff to certain fences, for instance.

Tracy was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. He was wearing a T-shirt. He had muscular arms and wide shoulders; the Kid wouldn’t mind a build like that himself someday.

“What are you doing?” the Kid asked, standing just outside the bathroom.

“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Tracy asked, turning to the Kid. Tracy’s mouth was foamy white.

The Kid laughed. “Don’t bite me or nothin’.”

Tracy laughed back. “Look like a mad dog, do I? Well, you ought to try this stuff. Doesn’t taste so bad—peppermint.” He lifted his toothbrush from under the running tap water. “I don’t have a spare brush, so just sprinkle some in your hand and rub it on your teeth with your fingers.”

He handed the Kid a tin of tooth powder.

“Do I have to?”

“Just wash your mouth out with water after.”

The Kid was looking at the tin of tooth powder with distrust. “You know, Tracy—for a tough guy, you sure do a lot of pansy things.”

“Is that right? Your pal Steve—how are
his
teeth?”

“He don’t have too many. They’re pretty black.”

Tracy shrugged. He began working his shaving brush in its mug. “That’s where you’re headed, if you don’t use that stuff.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Your decision. I’m not your father.”

The Kid made a face and sprinkled some of the tooth powder on his fingers.

Tracy glanced at the boy. His face was kind. “You want some breakfast? I scramble a mean egg.”

“Sure! Is that coffee I smell?”

Tracy was lathering his face up. “That’s for
me,
junior. Milk?”

“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.

F
lattop 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.”