Dick Tracy (12 page)

It was all because the new boss—Al “Big Boy” Caprice—had arrived around eleven, politely announced to the patrons that the Club Ritz was under new management and temporarily closed—and promptly cleared the joint out! Shortly thereafter, the new boss had begun rehearsing the girls, personally.

And whenever the club’s musical director—88 himself—made a suggestion, Big Boy snarled at him to shut up.

It had begun with Big Boy’s brilliant notion to do a “real peppy version of ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.’ ”

88 had tried to explain that the tune would not work effectively up-tempo, and that the patrons might consider a cheerful rendering of that particular dirge in bad taste.

“
Your
taste is in your
mouth!”
Big Boy had told him.

“Thank you very much,” he’d said.

Big Boy had then turned to the girls and, flicking ashes from his enormous cigar onto the shining dance floor, said, “You girls will come out dressed like bums, like tramps, and then you sing a little, and then strings offstage’ll yank the raggedy clothes offa you . . . they’ll be these, like what you-call-it, breakneck garments.”

“Breakaway,” 88 corrected.

“Shut-up!” Big Boy had said. “Anyway, under the rags you’ll have a lot of skin and not much else. Then it’ll rain balloons and confetti and everything. It’ll be classy as all get-out.”

Big Boy had directed 88 to play a “real peppy version” of the song, and 88 had done so . . . dozens upon dozens of times. They had alternated this exercise with rehearsing an equally peppy number called “More,” an up-tempo ode to greed, which seemed fitting to 88, considering the nature of his new employer.

Big Boy, oddly enough, had a sort of childish energy; he got in the midst of the girls and demonstrated steps and kicks, his arms around the girls, getting real chummy. At first the girls, despite the late hour, were kind of charmed by their new boss and his larger-than-life presence and quaintly cornball notions. But when any chorine failed to kick at exactly the right moment, or precisely the right height, he would shout obscenities at her. He’d slapped a couple of the girls, as the night wore on.

“You’re gonna do it till you do it right,” he told them. “When people come here, they’re gonna get something classy, something perfect. They’re gonna think they’re in a lousy palace. And they’re gonna
know
who’s king of this town.”

Big Boy had just stepped out momentarily, when Breathless drifted in, in white slacks and matching halter top, trimmed in gold sequins. She strode across the dance floor, jiggling the goods, but without any her of usual studied seductiveness. She was irritated. As opposed to annoyed, which was her natural state.

88 began to play, “If There Is Someone Lovelier Than You,” and it softened her as she reached the piano, and leaned against it.

She glanced with ironic disgust at the exhausted chorines who were leaning against each other, or the back stage-wall, or sitting like Indians. Some were grabbing smokes. They looked as feminine as a baseball team.

He broke back into “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” and the girls made faces.

“You still floggin’ that dead horse?” Breathless said to 88. “You been on that all night!”

“Yowsah,” 88 said, and went back to noodling the ballad. “You missed the part where he had ’em lay down on the stage to make patterns, like he saw in the movies. I tried to explain it was a different medium, but His Eminence didn’t see it that way.”

“Next week, ‘On a Waterfall,’ ” she leered, and shook her head, and sighed, still leaning against the piano; she looked tired, but on her, tired looked great. What a gal, he thought. He began playing “On a Waterfall.”

“Cig me,” she said.

He kept playing the left-hand vamp, but with his right took his deck of cigarettes from off the piano and shook a smoke toward her. She plucked it out with her lips.

“Light me,” she said.

He did, using a monogrammed lighter the wife of a theater owner in Cedar Rapids gave him last year.

“It’s enough to make me long for that loser Lips,” she said, and took a deep drag on the cigarette.

“Lips was a beast,” 88 agreed, easing into ‘Cocktails for Two.’ “But this clown is the missing link.”

She laughed; it was low and sultry. “Where
is
slopehead about now?”

“Outside.” 88 smirked, his cigarette drooping as ever downward, and began playing “I Get a Kick Out of You.” He said, “He painted himself a ‘Reopening Soon’ sign and he took it out to the doorman. He’s encouraged he can whip this sorry bunch of showgirls into shape in a day or two.”

Her blue eyes were at once sleepy and alert. “I bet you’d like to blow this dump.”

“Baby, we could go out on the road as a duo and make some real dough.”

She shook her head no. “Without a hit platter, we’d make chickenfeed. Trust me. We can make a killing here. Big Boy may be a repellent human being, but he has an infinitely greater capacity for the acquisition of power than the late Lips. The money is going to start rolling in soon.”

“For him.”

She gave him a wicked smile that was mostly her upper lip. She blew out blue smoke. “We’ll find a way to get our share. More than our share.”

He studied her. “You sure of that, baby?”

“Sure I’m sure. Enough to go away and find that desert island, lover.”

He began to play “Blue Moon.” She sang along, softly, in a wispy voice. Then she made up a few lyrics: “Big Goon—why don’t you leave me alone, biggest creep that I’ve known . . .”

That’s as far as she got when 88’s laughter became infectious and got her laughing, too. He stopped playing, she stopped singing, and they laughed till they cried. Neither of them saw Big Boy coming.

The gangster hadn’t heard the little song Breathless was singing, but the laughter apparently rubbed him the wrong way, anyway, because with a swift move—incredibly swift for a man of his girth—Big Boy slammed the piano lid down on the fingers of 88’s right hand, which had been resting on the keys, unsuspecting.

The pain was as excruciating as it was sudden.

From above the knuckles, where the lid had come down, his fingers went white and began to throb and swell as he massaged them.

“That was stupid!” Breathless said. “He’s the top piano man in town.”

“I don’t like people laughin’ at me,” Big Boy said, factually, not defensively.

“He wasn’t laughing at you!”

Big Boy slapped her.

Not a vicious slap—just hard enough to express displeasure, and ownership. Her eyes went wide and wet, but she did not seem about to cry.

“Listen to me, sweetheart,” Big Boy said, gesturing with a hand in which the huge cigar rested, “bein’ my girl don’t mean you get to lip off. Next time piano man gets wise with me, I don’t rap his knuckles. I twist his little fingers off like pretzels. Understood?”

He looked at Breathless and she nodded, twice.

He looked at 88, who sat cradling his throbbing right hand in his left, and 88 nodded as well.

“And sweetheart,” he told her gently, with a fatherly smile, easing an arm around her, “I’ll do the same to you. Only it won’t be your fingers.” He touched her cheek. “Nice skin. But you know the trouble with delicate skin like that . . . it scars real easy. I recommend milk baths, baby.”

The girls on the stage were taking all of this in with wide, frightened eyes.

“Keep playin’, piano man,” Big Boy said.

88 made himself play, throb though his fingers did.

“See?” Big Boy asked, smiling benevolently. “Sounds fine. Sounds better, even.”

The gangster, looking like a big, hunched evil gnome in his gaudy dark blue shirt and suspenders and red tie, kept rehearsing the girls, maniacally. He tried singing along. Listening to Big Boy sing hurt 88 worse than his fingers.

They were taking five, when the front door sprang open and a broad-shouldered man in a yellow topcoat and matching fedora came in, hauling three of Big Boy’s boys in, bodily—Itchy, Flattop and Mumbles.

88 had lived in the city long enough to know who Dick Tracy was. The detective, backed up by two more plainclothes officers, deposited the three gunmen in chairs at a table, like a bullying maitre d’, and said, “Hello, Big Boy. Here’s your garbage.”

Big Boy Caprice’s clothes, Tracy noticed as he approached the man, were as expensive as they were tasteless. The gangster was standing by the piano, talking to a beautiful, sultry-looking blonde. A platinum blonde, Tracy noted, who happened to be wearing
one
blue sapphire earring. What a coincidence.

“This is a private club, copper,” Big Boy said, sneering at Tracy, then turning his glowering gaze on Patton and Catchem, as well. The blonde’s face was blank, but her eyes smoldered.

“Here’s my membership card,” Tracy said, and slammed his warrant on the piano. The piano player winced; you would have thought Tracy slammed the lid on his fingers or something.

Big Boy unfolded the legal document, gave it a cursory read, and wadded it up and threw it at Tracy’s feet.

“Murder? Lips Manlis? I didn’t even know he was dead!”

“You seem all choked up about it,” Tracy said. “You guys used to be pals.”

“I’ll bust out crying in private, if you don’t mind, copper. But I’m sorry to hear old Lips is gone. Heart attack?”

“More like hardening of the arteries,” Catchem said. “Head to toe.”

“Somebody tailored him a cement suit,” Tracy said. “Earlier tonight.”

The blonde seemed to flinch, around the eyes; it was barely perceptible, but Tracy caught it.

“That’s sad,” Big Boy said. “What funeral parlor did they take the body to? There
is
a body, ain’t there?” Big Boy smiled smugly, reaching in his pocket for a walnut, cracked it in a fist, forcefully, selected the nuts from amongst the cracked shells.

“You like walnuts,” Tracy said, “don’t you, Big Boy?”

Big Boy popped the nuts in his mouth and chewed arrogantly. “Lot of people like walnuts. Good for the liver.”

“But bad for the brain, maybe. You’re getting sloppy, Big Boy. You let one of your triggermen kill a cop. That’s bad for business.”

The look in Tracy’s eyes made Big Boy swallow his mouthful of walnuts, hard. But he summoned a smile. “Got any evidence, Tracy? Or is this just the usual police harrassin’?”

“I’ll ask the questions, Caprice. Where were you tonight?”

“Well, I been here at my new club, since maybe eleven.”

“And before that?”

“I was at my dancing lesson,” Big Boy said.

“Your dancing lesson?” Catchem asked with amused doubt.

“Yeah. I’m learning all about chor-e-a-graphy—so I can run my new club good. Been rehearsing the girls tonight, you know. Gotta know that stuff.” He smiled magnanimously at the chorus girls, who were taking all this in with wide eyes and wider ears.

Patton’s round face was crinkled with skepticism. “A dance lesson till eleven at night?” he asked.

“I got a female instructor.” Big Boy shrugged grandly. “She’s Latin. She’s got a thing for me. Sue me.”

“No,” Tracy said, turning the gangster around quickly, roughly, snapping on the bracelets, “we’ll just arrest you.”

Big Boy glared over his shoulder at the detective. “You’ve had it in for me for years, haven’t you, flatfoot? You got this crazy idea I had something to do with that Trueheart dame’s old man buying it. You’re nuts! Off your rocker! Rousting my boys. My lawyers are gonna make mincemeat outta you.”

“Just in time for Christmas,” Catchem said pleasantly.

“Come on, Big Boy,” Tracy said. “You’re going to love the food at the county jail.”

They walked him toward the door. Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles looked menacingly at the detectives, but kept their place.

“When’d you buy this joint, Big Boy?” Catchem asked casually.

“Tonight. I got a signed contract.”

“You saw Lips tonight?” Tracy snapped. “Must’ve been before your dance lesson.”

Big Boy scowled. “I got nothin’ more to say to you bums.” He looked back at his three stooges and said, “Boys, call my lawyer!” Then to the chorus girls he called, “This ain’t a break! Keep rehearsin’!”

Then the three detectives and the gangster were out on the street where a squad car waited, a uniformed cop driving. Catchem shoved Big Boy in the back of the car and got in with him, glancing back curiously at Tracy.

“Are you coming, Tracy?”

“No. Take Caprice to the lockup, and Pat—you get him booked. Sam, you hightail it back here. And there’s something I want you to bring with you when you do . . .”

B
reathless Mahoney sat in her spacious, luxurious dressing room and carefully studied her face in her bulb-lined makeup mirror; she was checking for bruises or abrasions. There seemed to be none, fortunately. As she stared at herself coldly, she thought about Big Boy. Her face seemed to harden, to become a beautiful mask.

She heard the door open and knew it would be 88.

“Hi, baby,” she said, not looking. “How’s the hand?”

“Fine,” a deep male voice said. Not 88’s. “How’s your face?”

She turned in the seat.

It was the cop. The younger, better-looking one with the jaw like the prow of a ship. He closed the door with one hand, his fedora in the other. She smiled. Crossed her legs.