Dick Tracy (20 page)

“What . . .”

The Kid smirked. He kept his voice a whisper. “Look, I don’t blame ya. That blonde is a real tomato. But you got somethin’ good going with Miss Tess. Don’t be a dumb dick.”

And the boy went out and took Tess’s hand and they were gone.

B
ig Boy shrugged out of the black-and-red dressing gown and allowed Flattop to help him slip his dinner jacket on. The accountant, Numbers Norton, placed a white carnation in Big Boy’s lapel with the grace and skill of a baker putting one last frosting flower on a wedding cake.

Breathless sat by the fireplace, dressed in the low-cut black gown she would wear onstage tonight; she seemed lost in thought, staring into the flames.

Big Boy was a little worried. “None of our contacts at headquarters got a line on nothin’?”

“That’s right, boss,” Flattop said, brushing Big Boy’s tux off with a little whisk broom. “I think after the D.A. chewed out his tail, Tracy’s gonna be smart enough to lay off us for once.”

Big Boy wagged his big head. “The big grand opening, and I gotta worry about that copper. I’d hate to embarrass the judges and congressmen and other high-hat bums. I don’t even know if I dare open up the casino room! Can’t afford to have my joint busted up into kindling, first night open . . .”

A knock at the door broke Big Boy’s paranoid reverie.

“Get that,” he said to Norton.

The little accountant scurried to the door.

It was 88 Keys. He was wearing a sporty yellow cap and a sky-blue overcoat over street clothes.

“Why ain’t you in your tux?” Big Boy demanded. “You gotta go on ’fore ya know it!”

Keys took the off the cap, held it in his hand. “It’s important, Mr. Caprice.”

Big Boy, annoyed by the intrusion of the pansy piano player, particularly at a time like this, almost shouted at him. “What do
you
want? You don’t come to me, I come to
you
, piano man!”

“This is different,” 88 said. The pianist’s Oriental eyes were languid, yet they glittered. “This isn’t show business. It’s just plain business . . .
your
business.”

There was something about Keys’s tone that made Big Boy take him seriously. “You got one second to make your point,” Big Boy said, and gestured for him to come in and sit down.

The gangster and the piano player took seats at one end of the gleaming red conference table and spoke privately.

“I can help you get rid of Tracy,” Keys said. He lit up a cigarette; it drooped insolently from the middle of his upper lip as the piano player smiled mysteriously, blowing smoke through his nostrils. “And nothing will come back on you. At all.”

Big Boy studied the man. “Spill.”

“I got a torn-in-half C-note in an envelope last night,” Keys said. He left the cigarette in his mouth when he talked. “Slipped it under my door. I don’t know where it came from.”

“This better get interesting, fast.”

“It does.” Keys lifted an eyebrow, smiled on one side of his face, cigarette drooping. “There was a note with the torn hundred that said if I wanted the other half, I’d find a cab waitin’ out front of the club this evening. It was.”

Big Boy crushed a walnut in his fist; he popped the nuts in his mouth and chewed them fiercely. “You still got the note?”

“Yeah.” He reached in his pocket and got it, handed to Big Boy, who looked it over. “The cabbie drove me to that industrial area off Seventh . . . around Fairfax? I don’t know that neighborhood too good, and honest, I could never find my way back to the specific building. But I got dropped off at this car barn; it was all dark. The cabbie said go in—he’d been paid to wait. So I did.”

Big Boy was unwrapping a Havana from its cellophane. “You did all this for a C-note?”

Keys shrugged. “Times are hard, Mr. Caprice. I work all week for a C-note from you, don’t I? Anyway, the car barn was empty, except for a little table.”

Big Boy was puffing his Havana, getting it going. “Then what? They served you corn-beef hash?”

“Not hardly. There was a briefcase on the table, and an envelope beside it. So I stood there and waited—there was no chair—and then this guy came in. That is, he walked out onto this catwalk above me, and looked down at me. I never seen anything like it. I would’ve laughed, frankly, if it hadn’t given me the creeps.”

Big Boy’s features contorted. “What are you talkin’ about?”

Keys gestured with one hand. “He was all in black, like some kid’s idea of a bad guy. Black floppy hat, a black coat he wore like a cape. The thing that got to me, though, the thing that made all that man-in-black stuff disturbing not laughable, was his face.”

“What about his face?”

“He didn’t have one.” Keys raised an eyebrow; he sucked on his cigarette, blew smoke out through his nose again. “It must’ve been a mask, but it didn’t look like one. His face just looked like a lump of featureless flesh under that hat.”

Big Boy sat and tried to make sense of it. Keys waited patiently till Big Boy asked, “What did he call himself?”

“He said his name was the Blank.”

“I wonder . . .”

“What, boss?”

“Ever hear of a guy named Redrum?”

“No. Should I have?”

“How long you been in this town?”

“Just a year. This faceless guy is somebody you know?”

“Maybe,” Big Boy said, exhaled smoke. “Didn’t you see it in the papers, few days ago? Frank Redrum escaped from Alcatraz. Tough cookie. He had a bootleg outfit back in the twenties. His boys betrayed him, he did some time, then he got out and knocked ’em off one at a time.”

“And he had no face?”

“He had a face, all right. A face that’d stop a clock. Two clocks.”

Keys almost shivered. “Well, this face is worse than that—it was no face at all! And his voice—it was just as weird. Weirder. All hoarse, distorted. Some of it was the speaker.”

“Speaker?”

“Yeah. He talked into a microphone; whispered, actually, but it came out of a speaker, amplified and distorted, though I don’t know where it was positioned in the room. The voice seemed to come from everywhere . . .”

“Disguising his voice, same way he was disguising his face,” Big Boy said, mulling it over. Then looked sharply at Keys. “So. Give with the rest of it.”

Keys shrugged. “He said I’d be the go-between. He said open up that briefcase, and I did, and it was full of money. The other half of the C-note was on top—but that was a drop in the bucket.”

“How much cash was there?”

“I haven’t counted it yet.”

“How much, Keys? I ain’t gonna take it away from you or nothin’.”

Keys swallowed. “Five grand. At least that’s what the Blank claimed. Like I said, I haven’t counted it yet.”

“This is
your
fee?”

“First payment of it, anyway,” Keys said.

Big Boy’s eyes were moving back and forth, fast. “Why didn’t he come to me direct?”

“I don’t know. All I know is, he wants to help you get rid of Dick Tracy.”

Big Boy thought about that. “Well, Tracy
was
the guy that put Frank Redrum away. Tracy’s put a
lot
of guys away. Whether it’s Redrum or not, it sounds like somebody wants to get even . . .”

“Yeah—for a price.”

“What?”

“If it’s revenge, it’s revenge for a price. Here’s the message I’m supposed to pass along.” He got out another piece of paper and read the typewritten words: “ ‘If you kill Dick Tracy, you will be the prime suspect and the city police will mobilize against you. But for one hundred thousand dollars, I will guarantee Dick Tracy will not be a problem for you, anymore. And you will not be suspected of a thing. Fifty now. Fifty later.’ ” Keys shrugged. “What do you think?”

Big Boy crushed the cigar in his hand. His brow was creased in thought. “You got a way to get in touch with this Blank?”

Keys shrugged. “No. But he chose me as a go-between, didn’t he? He’ll get in touch.”

Big Boy sat and smoked and considered. Then he got up and pointed a thick finger at Keys and said, “Piano man, if this is some scam of yours, keep in mind I can snap my fingers and you’re a hamburger. Rare.”

Fear flickered in Keys’ eyes. “It’s no scam, Mr. Caprice . . .”

He laughed harshly. “I’m gonna make a deal with some bum I never saw, and
you
never really saw, and don’t know how to get to?” He shook his head. Then he waved an arm and Keys drew back.

“Get outta here!” Big Boy raved. “Go put on your tux and play your piano.”

The pianist got up and quickly left.

Big Boy shook his head disgustedly as Flattop approached. “Want me to follow him, boss?”

“Where to? The piano?” He snorted a laugh. “He’s a bug. Forget about him.”

Breathless rose from her seat near the fire and drifted over to Big Boy. “What was that about?”

“None of your business.”

Her lip nearly sneered; not quite. “So what
is
my business, then?”

He slapped her, gently. “Me. I’m your business. And don’t ever forget it.”

He took her throat in one of his big hands and kissed her greedily.

“Opening night, baby,” he said. “Break a leg.”

Gallantly, Big Boy offered her his arm to walk her from the conference room to the showroom.

“You, too,” she said, wiping off her mouth with the back of a hand.

And took his arm.

A
gray-haired, gray-mustached man with a round face considerably younger than his hair moved cautiously along the periphery of the private garage adjacent to the Club Ritz. Behind a parked limousine, he removed his long topcoat and revealed a formal waiter’s uniform—red jacket trimmed with black and gold, and high collar with tuxedo tie. He left the topcoat behind and moved to a doorway beyond which was a bustling, crowded kitchen, the staff frantically doing its best to keep up with a capacity opening-night crowd. The gray-haired, gray-mustached man with the round, young face slipped into the hubbub, blending immediately in.

Just another waiter.

In the showroom of the club, the quiet elegance of Lips Manlis had been replaced by the wild revelry of Big Boy Caprice—a carnival-type atmosphere that made opening night—and one might suppose,
any
night at the Club Ritz—a rowdy, no-holds-barred New-Year’s-Eve-like celebration. Scantily clad showgirls kicked and shimmied as the band on stage, elegant in their white tuxes, beat out a blaring brand of swing.

At the center of it all was Big Boy, a ruling monarch surrounded by rivals who had become his subjects—Pruneface, Texie Garcia, Johnny Ramm, Ribs Mocca, and the rest, resplendent in their formal attire, looking like a ghoulish wedding party. The queen of the madams, Texie Garcia, the lone female among these wolves, dripping with jewels, cigarette holder in hand, had poured herself into a tight red dress that announced her as a literal scarlet woman. Her matching red pillbox hat with veil was an absurdly tasteful touch. Flattop wore his black gloves, as usual, as if everything he did in life were criminal, making him afraid to leave his fingerprints on even a champagne glass.

“So what do you think?” Big Boy asked Pruneface proudly. “Is this a joint or is this a joint?”

The hideously wrinkled gangster was gazing droolingly at the showgirls. “Gotta hand it to you, Big Boy,” Pruneface said admiringly, “they’re the classiest broads in town.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Texie put in, and Itchy, who was sitting next to the madam, cozying up to her, laughed his weasel laugh. Texie seemed to like it.

Across the room, the gray-haired, gray-mustached waiter with the young, round face was keeping busy, without really serving anyone anything. He was also keeping his eye on the entryway to the stairs that led up to the conference room. Right now a pair of tuxedoed goons stood guard there.

Bathed in a blue spotlight, Breathless Mahoney took the stage; her skintight backless black gown shimmered. So did her hair. So, seemingly, did her hauntingly pale skin, the bright red lipstick startling against the ghostly complexion. Though the casino room at the rear remained boisterous, the showroom quieted as the chanteuse began to sing her torchy ballad.

Outside, in a moonless overcast night lit only by neon, a police car slid silently to the curb across the street from the Club Ritz.