Dick Tracy (10 page)

“So somebody was eating walnuts,” Catchem said, unimpressed. “So what?”

“So crushing walnuts and wolfing them down,” Tracy said, “is one of Big Boy Caprice’s least offensive, but most distinctive, habits.”

“That’s right,” Patton said, nodding eagerly. “I hear some doctor told ’im it was good for his liver.”

“So would be givin’ up booze,” Catchem said.

“Walnuts,” Brandon muttered, and sighed and, shaking his head, went off to meet the morgue boys who had arrived for the stiffs.

Tracy, still kneeling, said to Catchem and Patton, “Get an evidence envelope and tweezers and pick up those walnut shells carefully. We’re going to see if we can’t find the fingerprints of a certain Al ‘Big Boy’ Caprice.”

Catchem shrugged. “Getting prints off a surface like that is probably a long shot.”

Tracy smiled faintly. “Sam, you look like a man who’s bet on his share of long shots.”

“Sure,” Catchem said, “but ask me if any of ’em ever come in.”

“I’ll take care of it, Dick,” Patton said. “What’s another evidence envelope after all those slugs back at the warehouse?”

Patton went off after the envelope, and Tracy stood, reached into his pocket, and withdrew the blue sapphire earring. He dangled it before Catchem’s bemused face like bait.

“Is this expensive, you think?” Tracy asked him.

“On our pay, it is,” Catchem said, eyes narrowing in on the jewel. “I don’t figure you could spring for a pair of those for Tess. On the other hand, for people with good jobs, like your average hoodlum, it’s affordable.”

“Something a gangster’s moll might wear, then.”

“Yeah, or a movie star or a high-ticket lady of the night.”

“Okay, then. Tell me: what was a
woman
doing here?”

Catchem shrugged. “Maybe pulling a trigger. It’s happened before.”

“There’s a hair caught on there,” Tracy said, demonstrating by turning the earring in the light.

“So there is,” Catchem said. “Well, detective that I am, I can report that the human ear is often in the general proximity of a head of hair.”

“In this case,” Tracy said thoughtfully, “a platinum blonde head of hair.”

Patton was back with his evidence envelope.

“Still got your tweezers?” Tracy asked him.

Patton nodded, reached in his pocket, and gave the tweezers to Tracy, who carefully plucked the silver hair from the earring and held the tweezers out for Pat, who opened the small manila envelope for Tracy to drop in the platinum strand.

“Now what?” Patton asked.

“Now you get another evidence envelope for the walnut shells,” Tracy said.

“I figured you’d come up with something else,” Patton said, good-naturedly smug. “So I brought a couple.”

Tracy dropped the blue sapphire earring in a spare envelope Patton provided and handed the envelope with the hair in it to his bright-eyed partner, saying, “Give that to the lab boys, and the walnut shells, too.” He handed the packet with the earring to Catchem, saying, “Take that back to the office—maybe we can find its owner.”

“I didn’t figure you were gonna suggest I take it home to the wife.”

“What good would one sapphire earring do her?” Patton asked him.

“It’s one more than she’s got now,” Catchem said.

Brandon, who’d been talking to the two uniformed men that Pat had sent out to check the periphery, was rejoining the Major Crimes squad detectives, wearing an expression longer than this evening had been.

“What’s wrong, Chief?” Tracy asked hollowly. The depth of the news was apparent in Brandon’s features before even a word could be spoken.

“We’ve found Officer Moriarty,” Brandon said. “Out behind some barrels. Shot dead.”

“Damn!” Tracy said. His eyes were burning. “That tears it. He’s killed a cop now. Big Boy’s killed a cop now . . .”

“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” Brandon said somberly, “there’s a widow to whom a few words need to said in bereavement . . .”

And the big bear of man lumbered off.

“You can bet Big Boy didn’t pull the trigger,” Catchem said with a sneer.

That made Tracy stop and think; he drew a breath, gathered his composure.

“Gentlemen,” Tracy said, all business once again, “you saw the imported talent that got shot up at the Seventh Street garage earlier tonight.”

His assistants nodded.

“Well, now some boys from Philly show up in cop suits and apparently help fit Lips Manlis for a cement overcoat.”

They nodded.

“So,” Tracy continued, “who else in town has been bringing in out-of-town guests?”

Catchem shrugged. “Big Boy’s got three heavy-hitters on his team.”

“Yeah?”

“Includin’ that character from the Cookson Hills, Flattop.”

Tracy’s eyes tightened in thought. “Flattop Jones. I thought he was running with outlaws, robbing banks, pulling payroll robberies . . .”

“Yeah,” Catchem said. “He’s new to the city. They think he’s Robin Hood back in the hills, but robbing hood is more like it. He did a year in an Ohio county jail; no warrants out on him. They say he’s meaner than diarrhea.”

“Who are the other two?”

“ ‘Itchy’ Oliver, and a guy they call Mumbles, who’s got half a dozen aliases. East Coast babies. They both got records, but no outstanding warrants. Arrests on charges rangin’ from armed robbery to confidence rackets. If I had to lay odds, I’d give ten to one those three made the garage hit. Tommy gun is Flattop’s style.”

“Sam,” Tracy said, “I respect your opinion.”

“Hey, well that’s nice.”

“I respect it so much, I want you and Pat to bring those three in. Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles.”

“Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles?”

Tracy nodded. “Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles.”

Catchem rolled his eyes. “Sounds like the law firm for the circus, don’t it?”

“You know where to find ’em?”

“Sure,” Patton said. “We got addresses on all of ’em.”

Catchem laughed humorlessly. “Fancy Gold Coast apartments the likes of which we’ll never see. They’ll be snug in their king-size beds about now.”

“Wake ’em up. I want to talk to ’em.”

“When?”

“Now. Tonight. A tour of the HQ holding cells will give ’em a taste of their future.”

Catchem’s eyes were narrow and doubtful. “On what charge, Tracy? We ain’t got any warrants on ’em!”

Tracy smirked. “Bring ’em in on suspicion of being ugly.”

Catchem’s eyes widened and the doubt disappeared. He nodded and shrugged at Patton who nodded and shrugged back.

“I can live with that,” Catchem said seriously, and he and Patton set out to do it.

A
t Central Police Headquarters downtown, with midnight approaching, Tracy strode up the limestone steps, yellow topcoat flashing, past the white globes labeled POLICE and inside. Once up the stairs, he cut through a sprawling squad room where plainclothes detectives moved in and out among a dozen scuffed-up desks; overstuffed file cabinets lined the walls like so many suspects in a lineup. Cathedral windows threw the shadows of their panes on the green-painted walls and bare wood floors. His own office was a smoked-glass-and-wood affair at the end of a hall of similar offices; on the door it said, simply, DICK TRACY.

He went to the closet to hang up his coat; as for his hat, it was ventilated beyond further use. Tracy’s assistant Pat Patton continually kidded him about going through “so gosh-darn many hats.” On one wall of Patton’s office down the hall, tacked like trophies, were half a dozen of Tracy’s old hats, each of them riddled with at least one bullet hole, and tagged with a date and description,
i.e.,
“Boris Arson shoot-out, March 3, 1933.” Smiling at the thought of this Patton-ed whimsy, he placed the latest of the drilled fedoras on a shelf in the closet, saving it for his friend. It was the least he could do for the man, whose own derby had seen hazardous duty tonight.

In the meantime, he put on another of the yellow snap-brims; he’d feel naked without one.

Tracy took his place at his desk, which faced the door. Right now that desk was relatively clean, due to the long morning he’d spent handling paperwork; still, it was cluttered with files, mug shots, half-written reports, and law books, overseen by a heavy black phone and a green-shaded banker’s lamp. A framed picture of Tess was the sole personal touch.

The crime-scene photos from the garage massacre were waiting for him on his desk; they were still damp. He silently thanked Casey for staying through the evening, getting these done; but he saw nothing in the photos that his eyes hadn’t told him on the scene.

He got up and went to a file cabinet and removed a can of chili from a lower drawer (it was not filed under “C,” which he realized was careless of him) and opened the small can and placed it on the hot plate by the window. It didn’t compare to Mike’s chili, but it would suffice.

He was stirring it, bleakly pondering what Officer Moriarty’s family must going through right now, when Sam Catchem came in, smiling, saying, “I got three ugly, mad-as-hades hoodlums who’d like a word with you. They’re having a long, hard, frustrating night.”

“Well, we all have that much in common, don’t we?”

“Don’t we though. After I rousted ’em outta their digs, they started asking for their phone calls, and I explained that ‘departmental policy’ didn’t allow ’em a phone call till after they’d been booked.”

“And of course you never got around to booking them.”

Catchem’s grin was lopsided. “Darnedest thing. I thought Pat was gonna handle that, and here he thought I was gonna. Well. Screwups do happen, don’t they? Pat’s taken ’em down to the holding tank, so they can keep the drunks company.”

Tracy chuckled and turned away from the hot plate, where the chili was starting to bubble. “Bring ’em on up, Sam. I want to apologize for the inconvenience.”

Soon Catchem and Patton were hustling the three hoods into the office. They were a well-dressed trio, at least in terms of money spent, with no sign of casual dress or getting ready for bed, which you might reasonably expect, as they’d been picked up at home relatively late at night. These boys, Tracy knew, were dressed for work.

Which meant they’d been working.

Tonight.

Itchy, who was living up to his name by compulsively scratching under one arm, seemed angriest; he stepped forward, while Flattop insolently laid back, with arms folded, and Mumbles tried to fade into the woodwork.

“We get to make one phone call each!” Itchy said. He began scratching the side of his neck. “That’s the law, copper!”

“Maybe they
are
a law firm,” Catchem offered.

Tracy shrugged at Catchem. Then he sat on the edge of his desk and said casually, “You guys been denied a phone call?”

“Yeah!” Itchy said.

Flattop nodded.

“Salaa,” Mumbles said.

“What
did he say?” Catchem asked.

“He said it was the law, Sam,” Tracy said. “See, the thing is, you guys aren’t under arrest. You’re in protective custody.”

“Protective custody?” Itchy said. He scratched his buttocks. “What are you trying to pull?”

“There was a death threat against the three of you,” Tracy said.

“Dethret?” Mumbles said.

“Yes, a death threat,” Tracy said.

Catchem and Patton sneaked confused looks at each other; even they didn’t know what Tracy was talking about.

“Who made this death threat?” Itchy wanted to know. He was scratching his head.

Tracy shrugged. “I don’t know. It was anonymous. Could’ve been any gangster in town. Big gang war brewing, I understand.” Tracy’s smile was pleasant and false. “Hell—it could’ve even been me.”

That made Itchy twitch.

“You talk tough,” Flattop said with a tiny, derisive smile. “But talk is cheap.”

“I consider that an expert opinion,” Tracy said sunnily, “coming from a cheap hood like you.”

Itchy wasn’t scratching now; his hands were fists and he was shaking them in the air. “We want our phone call.”

With sudden savagery, Tracy grabbed the phone off his desk and yanked it out of the wall. He threw it at Itchy, who caught it clumsily. The eyes behind the Coke-bottle lenses blinked and the lips pursed nervously and then, with an unconvincing show of defiance, Itchy hurled the dead phone to the floor, where it jangled and clunked.

“Sam,” Tracy said, “make a note of that—they waived their phone calls.”

“It’s their privilege,” Catchem said with a shrug.

“Have a seat, boys,” Tracy said, and Catchem roughly sat them down.

“Wastbowtraz?” Mumbles asked, shifting in his seat.

“It’s about Lips Manlis, Mumbles.”

The three hoods said nothing; they were motionless, except for Itchy, who was digging at one eyebrow.

Finally, Flattop said, “Who’s Lips Manlis?”

“Oh,” Tracy said, “I forgot. You’re new in town.”

“That’s right. I never heard of the bum.”

“You ever hear of Lefty Moriarty? Any of you? Officer Lefty Moriarty, who was killed down near the Southside Warehouse tonight?”

The hoods said nothing, remaining motionless, but for Itchy scratching his Adam’s apple.

“Cops get a little testy, you know.” Tracy said blandly, “when one of their own gets it. What about Big Boy Caprice? Any of you ever hear of him?”