Dick Tracy (13 page)

“This is breaking and entering, you know,” she said.

“Maybe you should call a cop.”

Her lips pursed in amusement. “Maybe I should. You’re Dick Tracy, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“You mind if I call you . . . Dick?”

“It’s my name. What’s yours?”

“Breathless.”

“That’s not a name.”

“It’ll just have to do, won’t it?”

He drifted over to her. He didn’t seem to be looking her over, like so many men did, she noted; perhaps he was just more discreet. But he was a detective: she didn’t figure he’d fail to examine the evidence.

“Big Boy slapped you, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “Did you see it?”

“No. One side of your cheek was blushing, and I didn’t figure you embarrassed easily. Didn’t take much of a detective to put that and Big Boy’s rep for roughing up women together to figure you’d got a taste.”

“I’ve been slapped before.” She went to the bar; poured two martinis.

“I’d imagine,” he said. “But why put up with it?”

She handed one of the drinks toward him. “What do you mean?”

He took the glass. “A few hours ago you were Lips Manlis’s girl, weren’t you?”

“Do you know that, or are you just guessing?”

“I’m a detective, remember.”

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“If I were going to arrest you, I’d have done it by now.” He smiled mirthlessly; sipped the drink. “You’re in a cheery mood, for somebody whose boyfriend passed away so recently. No grief for the man?”

“I’m in mourning, sure.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m wearing black lace step-ins. If you don’t believe me . . .”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Listen, Tracy. Why don’t you tell me what you’re up to?”

“I want you to tell me who killed Lips Manlis.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Sure, I know. Your new boyfriend. The suave man-about-town who slapped your sweet face not so long ago, and who’ll do the same again and again, unless you care to stop him.”

“Or take a powder.”

“Or take a powder,” Tracy said, shrugging. “You know, I don’t think you’re such a bad kid.”

“Oh?” she said archly.

“I think underneath it all, you . . .”

She stood. “I already told you, Tracy—underneath it all are black lace step-ins.”

“I don’t think you’re as tough as you pretend to be, Breathless.”

“Look who’s talking,” she said, and she slipped her arms around him. Pressed against him.

“I take it back,” he said. “You
are
bad.”

“I’m even better than that,” she said, and brought her lips close to his, and he pushed her gently away.

“No,” he said. “It might be nice. I won’t deny it. But I understand you, Breathless. You have your weapons and I have mine. I just thought maybe you’d like to see the guy who killed Lips Manlis get his. I figured you’d be on Manlis’s side, in this thing . . .”

She laughed.

That surprised him. “Whose side
are
you on?”

“The
only
side, Tracy.” She smiled and gestured to her bosom. “My own.”

There was a knock at the door. Tracy straightened himself and answered the knock and it was one of the other two plainclothesmen, the rumpled-face, freckled one who was always smirking. If he’d been the one come calling, Breathless thought, I’d have him leaving his wife by now.

Tracy took something from the rumpled-face detective and nodded at him and shut the door, leaving the man out in hall.

“Recognize this?” he asked.

He was holding out her blue sapphire earring.

“Not really,” she said.

“You’re wearing its twin,” he said, moving closer. “I saw you wearing it out there. So I sent for it. Figured you’d want it back.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I am missing an earring, but taking a close look at that one . . . I don’t think it
is
the mate.”

“A little detective work, checking local jewelers and so on, and even without your help, we’ll I.D. it as yours all right.”

“So what?”

“We found it at the warehouse tonight. Where Lips Manlis was killed. You know how they killed him?”

She looked at the floor.

“Actually,” Tracy continued, “we don’t know yet whether he was alive or dead, when the cement was poured in. Be better if he were dead first. Drowning in wet cement, ye gods. That’s a rough one. Local hoods call it ‘the bath.’ ”

“Please be quiet.”

He came over and held the earring in her face. “You
were
there. You know it and I know it. Now, I can take you down to headquarters and we can sweat it out of you under the hot lights, or . . .”

She touched his lips with a fingertip. “I sweat better in the dark.”

Their eyes locked together; his will was as strong as hers, and she liked that. The attraction, the pull, was magnetic; she could tell he felt it, too.

“I know how you feel, Tracy,” she said, making her voice as sultry as possible—and that, she knew, was plenty sultry. “You don’t know if you want to hit me, or kiss me. I get a lot of that.”

He sighed, shook his head; he was clutching the earring tightly in a fist. He raised his other hand and pointed a finger at her. “I’m going to put Big Boy away. You want to help, you give me a call. You don’t want to help, you might find yourself living in a room a lot smaller than this one. It won’t have a makeup mirror or fancy white carpet. And your roommate won’t be some man you can wrap around your pinky. More likely some hard-nosed harridan who strangled her husband.”

“Stop,” she said with dry sarcasm. “You’re scaring me.”

He grimaced, shook his head. Then more softly, he said, “Right now you’re safe. Big Boy’s in jail—you’re the one who can keep him there. Just think about it. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

He started out.

“Dick . . .”

He looked at her.

“See you again, Tracy.”

She kissed the air.

She thought she saw him smile, ever so faintly, before he disappeared out the door.

The radio was on, softly, when Tracy entered his two room apartment—“Stay as Sweet as You Are,” a crooner seemed to be advising Tess, who had fallen asleep in Tracy’s favorite easy chair. A ladies’ magazine lay across her lap, her head nestled sweetly against an oversized arm of the chair.

He took off his coat and hat and hung them on a hook on the wall just inside the bedroom, where the Kid lay sleeping—snoring—on Tracy’s bed.

He felt a strange tug of emotions—guilt was part of it, from the encounter with the sultry saloon singer; but most of it was that feeling of warmth that Tess gave him. He went to her and knelt beside her, and gently touched her hair.

She awoke with a start.

Tracy, a little startled himself now, said, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Oh my,” Tess said, sitting up straight, yawning. “What time is it?”

“Before dawn,” Tracy said. “Barely. How did you and the dead-end kid fare?”

Her smile was crinkly. “He’s been sawing logs since his head hit the pillow, about two minutes after we got here.”

“You gave him the bed, I see.”

“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t figure he’d had the opportunity to sleep in one too often.”

“Probably not.”

“I’d better go,” she said, smoothing herself, standing. Tracy got up and helped her into her coat, and moved with her toward the door. She paused to adjust the position of a vase of lilies she’d given him earlier.

“Aren’t these pretty?” she said. She yawned again. “I’ll have to be getting to the greenhouse before you know it. New delphiniums coming in.”

“Thanks for taking care of the kid,” Tracy said. He reached in his pocket for his car keys. “You take my buggy home; it’s parked right in front. I’ll have Pat pick me up on his way to work.”

She took the keys, smiled, and said, “You needn’t walk me down.” She touched his face. “You look exhausted. Please get some rest.”

Tracy glanced toward the bedroom. “Do you want me to make the arrangements with the orphanage . . . ?”

She squeezed his hand. “Not just yet. He’s such a sweet child.”

Tracy grinned. “Sweet child?”

“Listen, I only have to work half a day,” she said. “You and Pat drop the boy off at the greenhouse on your way to headquarters this morning.”

“What . . . ?”

“Let me have the boy. Let me show him a good time, buy him some new clothes, give him a taste of what being a
real
kid is like, not some wild boy of the road.”

Tracy sighed, but he was smiling. “You know what?”

“What?”

He leaned his face to hers and kissed her. A soft, sweet kiss.

“That,” he said. “I’ll drop him off about eight. You just hold onto my car and I’ll meet you two at Mike’s for supper.”

Her smile was glowing.

Tracy laughed softly. “And you wild boys and girls of the road be good, now—hear?”

“I hear,” she said sweetly, gratefully.

The warmth, and the guilt, flooded him.

“Tess . . .”

“What?”

“I’d do anything in the world for you, you know. You do know that?”

“Even take me for a drive in the country?” She touched his face again. “Good night, Dick.”

And she was gone.

T
he sun was shining, reflecting off the sandstone steps of the majestic County Courthouse; winter seemed held at bay, for the moment. Unfortunately, Tracy thought, the same could be said for a certain blind woman who could be seen balancing scales by way of a statue near the top of those stairs.

Tracy and District Attorney Fletcher held back for a moment, not wanting to get caught in a confrontation. A crowd of reporters had come in a tide up the steps toward the descending Al Caprice and his several expensive attorneys. Big Boy, beaming, waving his fedora to them as if he were a grand marshal and they were a parade, gesturing with the other hand in a magnanimous manner, had won a victory here today.

“What’s your reaction,” reporter Bush of the
News
asked, “to having your case thrown out of court?”

“Judge Debirb is a fine American,” Big Boy said. “He knows police brutality when he sees it.”

Charet of the
Tribune
asked, “Isn’t a strong police response understandable when one of their own is slain? Specifically, Officer Lefty Moriarty?”

“What?” Big Boy blurted indignantly. “Are you sayin’ the ends justifies the means? That’s a shockin’ way to look at this world of ours. But I will say I think Officer Moriarty’s murder is an awful thing. A tragedy. I sent flowers.”

“Will you be taking legal action against the city,” another reporter followed up, “for false arrest?”

“Or against Dick Tracy specifically?” asked another.

Big Boy patted the air, smiled sweetly. “Fellas, these legal matters are up to my attorneys. But I’ll say this.” His expression darkened. “This Tracy character is outta control. He’s either a fool, or flat-out crazy. The city had oughta get rid of him.”

“If you don’t get rid of him first, you mean?” called out a voice in back.

“Who said that?” Big Boy snarled. But then the snarl eased into a smile. The sweet one, again. “You boys have me all wrong. You believe these police lies. I’m no criminal. I’m a respectable businessman. In fact, other than a couple juvenile raps, I got a clean record.”

“But dozens of arrests,” Bush said.

One of the attorneys stepped forward. “And no convictions.”

“I’ve heard that about Big Boy.” Bush smiled.

“My name,” Big Boy said tightly, pointing a thick finger at the reporter, “is Al Caprice. You fellas want me to keep givin’ out with the colorful-quotes, you better treat me with some respect,
capeesh
?”

“Mr. Caprice,” Charet asked, “who do you think killed Lips Manlis?”

“Well, who’s to say he’s been killed? I think he left town or something. Anyway, you know what the witnesses say.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, three cops yanked him out of his club. I’d like to know if this loose-cannon of a
cop,
Tracy, has an alibi.”

“Mr. Caprice,” Bush said tightly, “you know as well as any of us that Tracy shot it out with those three ‘cops’ in the warehouse where Manlis was seen going in, but not coming out. They were torpedoes from Philadelphia.”

“Sounds like Tracy covering up for himself, if you ask me,” Big Boy said.

One of his lawyers, apparently distressed by his client’s public accusations about a member of the police department, whispered urgently to Big Boy, who brushed him off like a fly.

“Any other questions, gents?”

“Yes,” a voice from the back of the group called out. It was Matt Masterson, the
Chronicle
’s crime-beat columnist. He was a strikingly handsome man with a full head of dark curly hair. “What about the Seventh Street Garage Massacre? The police seem to think you were involved.”

“The cops want to make me their patsy for every murder since Booth popped Lincoln. Well, I was at my dancin’ lesson that night. And I can prove it.”

“You can?” Bush asked.

“Sure.” Big Boy put a hand on his stomach and did a little mambo step, right there on the courthouse steps.

Flashbulbs popped, and the reporters smiled and laughed. Except for Bush, Charet, and Masterson, who as hardened crime reporters had seen too much suffering and murder to be amused by gangsters who got off scot-free with the press by giving them colorful quotes and snazzy pics.