Dick Tracy (2 page)

Hoodlums.

On the table—amid the clutter of cards, paper money, ashtrays, beer, and whiskey bottles—were several revolvers and an automatic. This would not seem a game worth cheating in.

The Kid, still in the shadows, remained unnoticed by the five hoods seated in the center of the big high-ceilinged garage, under the room’s only lit lamp, a hanging shade that sent a cone of light down on them like a spotlight presenting the star attractions of the afternoon.

And the Kid meant to stay unnoticed—and to stay warm, and dry; he ducked behind a stack of boxes. He nudged a box and bottles clanked, and an oil can clunked to the floor.

Several grim faces at the table turned his way. From his vantage point, ducked down as he was, he didn’t see this. But then, on his belly like a snake, he peeked around the corner of the boxes, fronted by a row of fifty-gallon metal drums, and did see two of the men rise, each of them filling a hand with a revolver.

But another of the men at the table, an odd duck with a large round face and tiny features, said, “Sit down, Shoulders! It’s nothin’.”

“I heard something,” the one called Shoulders said. The guy had a thin, pockmarked face and shoulders so wide he might’ve had a plank under his bright green suit-coat.

Only that was no plank: it was really shoulders. And the man called Shoulders looked dangerous as green-rainbowed meat; and right now he was moving across the cement floor toward the Kid’s dark nook.

The Kid gritted his teeth, balled his little fists, rose up on his haunches, though still not up above the boxes.

“Little Face is right, Shoulders,” called out the other one who’d risen. He was a big guy smoking a cigar; his mustard-color suitcoat was off and his dark green shirt was cut by suspenders. “It’s just thunder—gonna rain, maybe.”

“Look, Stooge,” Shoulders said, “I
heard
something
drop.”

“It’s the sound of your money droppin’ into my pocket,” another of the guys at the table said. This one was a muscular-looking horror with a heavily ridged forehead. He wore a suit that was redder than blood and a shirt as black as death and a tie that was redder than the suit. “Come on back here and play cards.”

“You ain’t my mother, Brow,” Shoulders said crankily, as he prowled.

The revolver clunked on the yellow table as Stooge sat back down and said, “Who didn’t ante up?”

“Careful with that rod of yours, Stooge,” another one said. Under his derby was a round, ratty face, cigarette dangling in his lips, bobbling as he spoke. He had slick black hair and a whiskery mustache; wore a purple suit and matching shirt and tie. “It’ll go off, tossin’ it around like that. It ain’t no toy.”

“You’re such a nervous little girl,” Stooge said, studying his cards. “I almost hate to take your money. I hate to make a little girl cry.”

“Just be careful! When I die, I want it on purpose, not by accident. What was that?”

The Kid heard it, too—something rustling in the darkness.

The Rodent stood; his nose and mouth twitched. His eyes moved back and forth.

Then that mangy gray cat—how did
he
get in here?—stepped into the pool of light.

“I
told
you I heard somethin’,” Shoulders said, vindicated.

“Hiya fella,” Rodent said to the cat.

With frightening quickness, Rodent grabbed the animal and flung it by its tail into a wall of drums. The cat screeched and skittered away into the dark to lick its wounds.

“You’re a card, Rodent,” Stooge said.

“Speaking of cards,” Brow said, “who dealt this mess?”

Several hands went by uneventfully, and the Kid—hoods or not, grateful to be in where it was warm and dry—settled himself on the cement floor and curled up and allowed himself to fall into a state approaching sleep.

He never let himself go quite under, though, and snatches of conversation would come his way: “Don’t breathe that clam-sauce breath of yours on me, Shoulders!” “Shut up and deal, Rodent!” “Are we gonna hit Caprice or not?” “The boss ain’t said yet—just play cards.”

“Uh oh!” the one called Stooge said, and he said it loud enough to startle the Kid.

Alert now, the Kid again peeked around the edge of the stacked boxes.

“What’s wrong with you?” Shoulders asked, in a casually disgusted tone.

“I drew aces and eights,” Stooge said, cards tumbling from his fingers.

“The dead man’s hand!” Rodent squealed.

“Are you girls kidding?” Shoulders said. “You throw down a hand like that? You coulda won with that hand!”

“He did the right thing!” Rodent said. “It’s the dead man’s hand, I tell you!”

“Rodent,” Little Face said, cards held daintily in his two hands, a big smile on his little face, “this ain’t Deadwood, and you are not Wild Bill Hickok.”

“Bad luck,” Rodent said, standing, shivering, cigarette tumbling from his lips, “bad luck!”

A loud rumble made the Kid jump.

But this time it wasn’t the sky.

One of those double garage-doors along Seventh Street burst open, like a jack-in-the-box, only it was nothing so harmless as a grinning toy clown, even if the grille of the black sedan that had splintered its way into the garage did seem to be grinning—a wide, ghastly silver grin.

Frozen with fear, but fascinated, the Kid peered over the tops of the boxes and drums as the sedan screeched in, coming to a sideways stop. A man leaned out the open door and stood on the running board, a tommy gun in his hand, but he was no angel and the rain he poured on the room was a lead rain.

The Kid ducked back down, his mind filled with the face of the man spraying those tommy-gun slugs; it was a horrible face, a face that branded itself into the Kid’s consciousness: hooded eyes, pug nose, Cupid’s-bow mouth, heart-shaped, pimpled face, and a head as flat as an anvil.

“Flattop!” somebody shouted.

It was Little Face, who had been dealing when the cardplaying quintet had been so rudely and violently interrupted; Little Face threw the cards into the air and scattered them all about, and he and the other four scattered the same way, heading for cover, grabbing their guns off the table as they went.

But Rodent didn’t make it very far.

Flattop traced an angular line of fire across his back, which sent Rodent twitching to the cement. Then Rodent calmed down once and for all.

Flattop, imperturbable in his violet sport coat and bright blue tie under his long, dark topcoat, smiled faintly, and fanned the tommy gun around the room, chewing up metal and glass.

Stooge tumbled from behind a delivery truck.

Flattop paused in his machine-gunning to laugh, reached inside the black sedan where somebody was handing him out another tommy gun, like a caddy handing the proper wood to a golfer. Changing magazines was too much time and trouble.

The Kid, huddled against the wall behind the drums, wondered why nobody else had returned fire. That Flattop guy was standing out in the open, like he was unafraid, like he thought nobody could hurt him.

Of course, those guys had revolvers and automatics, and Flattop was blasting away with a Chicago typewriter, against which handguns were like party favors, and anyway, if they fired at him, they’d give their positions away. The Kid nodded. They’re smart. They’re waiting for him to get close. Then they’ll shoot.

The air cracked, as somebody did; Flattop whirled and wrote something obscene with his “typewriter,” and Shoulders tumbled from the running board of the parked auto he was firing behind.

“That leaves two,” Flattop yelled above the din of the tommy gun, which he was spraying around the room; one of the wooden chairs fairly flew off the floor and danced in the air and seemed to explode into fragments. The bullets kissed and kissed and kissed the metal of trucks and autos, leaving puckers behind, windshields shattering here, spiderwebbing there. The radio exploded and cut off the hillbilly band. The glass of the corner office area turned to shards and fell noisily to the cement and made even smaller pieces of themselves. Bottles in the stacked boxes burst and broke and bled whiskey and gin.

Flattop was empty again; gray smoke curled out of the Thompson barrel. He had the empty gun in one hand and was reaching back to his unseen assistant in the sedan for another loaded one, when Brow came screaming out of somewhere, firing his revolver.

Several bullets stitched the sedan door just behind him, but Flattop merely looked casually Brow’s way, as if the flying slugs were gnats, a nuisance requiring swatting. With a fresh tommy gun in hand, Flattop tore off a volley and the Brow went down, limbs askew, like a dime store paper skeleton doing its dance.

“That leaves you, Little Face,” Flattop said.

There was silence.

“Come on out, Little Face,” Flattop said. His voice was sweet. Melodic. His hooded eyes gave him a lazy look.

Little Face stepped out from behind a parked truck.

His tiny features were squinched in irritation.

“What’s wrong with you, Flattop?” Little Face said. “You coulda killed me!”

“It’s a dangerous business we’re in,” Flattop said, blandly.

“I
left
the side door open for you!” Little Face’s tiny teeth were clenched. “Jeez, what’s the idea of coming in like gangbusters? Every cop in town’ll be here in two minutes.”

The Kid was edging toward the door; it was so close . . .

“I don’t think so,” Flattop was saying. “We paid off the beat cops with a sap. And there’s a thunderstorm coming. Also, this neighborhood minds its own business.”

“That’s your opinion. I must say I don’t much like your style.”

Flattop shrugged; the tommy gun moved with his shoulders. “No hard feelings. Anyway, I appreciate the tipoff, Little Face. And I appreciate you leaving the side door open. I just like to do things my own way.”

The Kid was by the door, sitting by that door, but he couldn’t reach the knob unless he stood up.

“Well, fine,” Little Face said to Flattop, gesturing dismissively, about to turn, “but let’s both take our separate powders. You tell Big Boy he can pay me off later—there’s no time, now.”

“We’ll make time,” Flattop said, and he fired a burst from the tommy gun.

Little Face hung in the air for a long moment, enormous surprise taking the tiny features; and then fell flat on his little face.

“Lezgidoutaher,” a voice from the sedan said.

“Not yet, Mumbles,” Flattop said. “Not yet. Gimme a hand, Itchy—if you can spare one. Get their wallets.”

There were two men in the black sedan; the driver was the mush-mouthed one, a sulky hood in an amber-colored cashmere topcoat. The other, who now climbed out of the car, scratching his neck impulsively, was a blond, purse-lipped hoodlum with Coke-bottle glasses.

The Kid’s hand reached up and touched the cold metal knob.

Like an angel of death in his dark topcoat, Itchy was going from corpse to corpse, removing wallets and other identification, while Flattop surveyed the scene with a demented-cherub expression, and the boy turned the knob.

He turned the knob and opened the door and let in the sound of thunder.

It froze the boy for just a fraction of a second.

Flattop looked sharply over and brought the tommy gun up and fired.

But the weapon was empty. There was only a tiny, impotent clicking, and the Kid was out the door, in the alley, in the street, running into a damp, darkening night and a damp, dark world that was his, where the likes of Flattop would never find him.

Flattop pursued the little brat into the alley, but the boy was gone by the time he got out there.

“Kidsawya,” Mumbles said, slouching behind the wheel of the black sedan.

“I
know
he saw me. That’s why I chased him into the alley, you moron!”

“Dincatchem,” Mumbles said.

“No kiddin’.”

“Gidagulukatim?”

“No, I didn’t get a good look at him!”

Itchy was already back in the sedan. “Shake a leg, Flattop! For cryin’ out loud! We gotta get goin’!”

“Ishysishy,” Mumbles said, with a childish grin.

“So what if Itchy’s itchy,” Flattop said irritably. “We ain’t quite done, yet. Get me that last tommy.”

Mumbles handed Flattop the final Thompson submachine gun and the flat-headed gunman beamed beatifically, seeming at once maniacal and relaxed, as cordite singed the air, and the tommy gun echoed and rang in the big room.

T
he fat lady was singing, but the opera wasn’t nearly over.

Dick Tracy slumped in his plush, padded seat, unable to resist the urge to doze. A gently reproving look from the slender beauty beside him—one Tess Trueheart—made him straighten temporarily, but a long morning at headquarters, catching up with weeks of paperwork he’d put off, conspired with the boredom of culture with a capital C, to make the plainclothes detective’s eyelids grow heavy.

Among all these tuxedos and gowns, his severe black suit with red and black tie stood out; but on his salary, Tracy couldn’t really spare the tuxedo rental. The public, and Tess, would have to accept him as he was: a working cop on a budget.

After all, Tracy was not here to please himself. He was here to make three people happy. First and most important was Tess herself; attending this charity matinee performance of something called
Die Schlumpf
at the Civic Opera House, amidst assorted faces straight off the society page, was a rare treat for a working girl. How could he deny his sweetheart the thrill of viewing the city s cultural event of the moment?