Dick Tracy (28 page)

G
rabbing him by his expensive purple suitcoat, Tracy shoved Mumbles up against the wall. Hard.

“Talk to me, Mumbles,” Tracy said.

“Whadyawanfrmetrz?” Sweat pearled Mumbles’s forehead; his blond hair was already damp from it. “Whadyawan?”

“I want you,” Tracy said through clenched teeth, “to tell me who set me up.”

Catchem, smoking nonchalantly, and a stocky uniformed cop, thumbs hooked in his gun belt, were watching from the sidelines in Mumbles’s well-furnished flat.

“Whatdyatalkintomeabouditfur?” Mumbles asked pitifully, the detective right in his face.

“
What
did he say?” the uniformed cop asked Catchem, who shrugged.

“I’m talking to you about it,” Tracy replied calmly to Mumbles, “because you sit at Big Boy’s right hand. He likes you. You’re the king’s favorite jester.”

“Idintsetyuptrazldinsetyup!”

Tracy smiled; he could smell bourbon on the hood’s breath. “I know you didn’t set me up, Mumbles. But you know who did.”

“Cntyufiggritoowwtfryrsf?” Mumbles said, half sneering, half pouting.

“
What
did he say?” Catchem asked the uniformed cop, who shrugged.

“Sure I can figure it out for myself,” Tracy said. “But I need confirmation. I need a witness.”

“Idnwitnsnuthin!”

“Sure you did. You witnessed plenty.” Tracy drew back a step, glanced over his shoulder. “Ah. Here’s Pat.” Patton had entered; in his hands, perched on its hind legs, was the shiny decorative gray-blue polar bear, the water dispenser that had been on the table in the interrogation booth many days before, when Tracy had given Mumbles the third degree.

“Thirsty, Mumbles?” Tracy said, taking the rather large figurine from Patton. He thrust the object in the hood’s face and the hood recoiled, as if it were a bomb with a lit fuse. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

Mumbles said nothing; he swallowed nervously.

“What do you make of this thing?” Tracy pondered, as if he didn’t know the answer. “Looks more like a cookie jar than a water jug, doesn’t it? You’re the original kid who got caught getting in the cookie jar, aren’t you, Mumbles?”

And Tracy lifted the top off the polar bear; inside were several controls and switches near two slightly raised metal cylinders, around which was wound a wire.

“Whdthelzat?” Mumbles wondered. It sounded like his mouth had gone dry.

“What
did he say?” Patton asked Catchem and the uniformed cop, who both shrugged.

“That,” Tracy explained, tipping the polar bear’s beheaded form to give Mumbles a good look, “is a wire recorder. Something Bug Bailey devised for us—the principle is that when you speak into a transmitter, sound is recorded on a steel wire as it’s rotated between the poles of an electromagnet.”

“Sndsfaznatin,” Mumbles said with a sneer.

“It does sound fascinating, Mumbles,” Tracy said pleasantly. “Literally.”

The detective flipped one of the switches within the polar bear.

Mumbles’s eyes went wide in his head as he heard his own voice: “Bgbykldlpsmnls.”

“You know, Mumbles,” Tracy said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure this would hold up in court—there are those who might say I coerced this statement.”

Casually, Tracy rewound the wire and played it back again, this time cutting some of the slack with his finger.

“BbByklldLips Manlis,” the wire recorder said.

“Just the same,” Tracy said gently, “I wonder what Big Boy would say if he heard that?”

Mumbles stared at the recorder, paralyzed.

“What do you think, Mumbles?” Tracy asked, and he played it back once more, his fingers tight around the wire, further slowing it down.

“Big Boy killed Lips Manlis,” the wire recorder said.

Mumbles swallowed.

Tracy repeated the process: “Big Boy killed Lips Manlis,” said the headless bear.

Mumbles was shaking, but he remained silent.

“Okay, boys,” Tracy said, smiling at Catchem, Patton, and the uniformed man. He nodded toward the door. “Let’s go play this for Big Boy.”

“Wait!” Mumbles said. Suddenly he was the epitome of elocution. “88 Keys set you up.”

“The piano man?” Catchem asked.

“Yeah,” Mumbles said. He carefully formed the words: “Big Boy paid him to get you out of the way.”

“Officer Horvitz,” Tracy said to the uniformed man, “take him in.”

The stocky cop cuffed Mumbles, who stood with his head hanging low, muttering to himself. This time nobody bothered asking the hood what he was saying.

Down on the street, Tracy said with no small satisfaction,
“Now
we have enough.”

Patton and Catchem exchanged glances, nodding.

“We can pick up 88 Keys, Flattop, Itchy . . . and Big Boy, too.” Tracy looked at Catchem. “Sam, I want you to contact the chief by two-way, and organize a raiding party. A dozen cars, but the front line should be plainclothes officers only.”

“Plainclothes?”

“You can tell Brandon to stuff some uniformed boys in street clothes if he likes. But we have to go to the Club Ritz and make those arrests. And when we do, I want the whole place surrounded.”

“I got you,” Catchem said. “These babies are tough—this time, they ain’t goin’ with us without a fight.”

“Right,” Tracy said. “And right now, the Club Ritz is open for business—Saturday’s a big night for ’em. If Big Boy and his stooges see the place surrounded by cops, they’ll have a club full of hostages to shield themselves with.”

Catchem nodded and took several steps away and called in on his two-way.

In the meantime, Tracy rocked on his feet, hands in his pockets, lost in thought. Deep within himself.

“You okay, Tracy?” Patton asked.

“Is the enemy of my friend my enemy?” Tracy asked.

“Huh?”

“Or is the enemy of my enemy my friend?”

“
What
did he say?” Patton asked Catchem as the latter returned.

Catchem ignored the question, saying to Tracy, “Brandon’s already on his way to the Club Ritz.”

“What did you say?” Tracy said, eyes confused.

“The Chief had an anonymous phone tip,” Catchem said, “that Big Boy is holding Tess at the club.”

Tracy’s eyes hardened. “The enemy of my enemy
is
my enemy,” he said with finality.

“What
did he say?” Catchem asked Patton, who shrugged and rolled his eyes.

But Tracy was already climbing in back of the car.

Catchem quickly took the driver’s seat, and Patton got in back with Tracy, and the squad car roared into the night, taking the next corner on two wheels.

T
he night was clear and cold, handfuls of stars flung across the sky like diamonds glittering on black velvet. An icy wind blew in off the lake, but it was no hindrance to Tracy and Patton as the latter lifted the former up to the roof of the building whose first floor was the Club Ritz. To Tracy, the wind, with its wintry bite, was bracing—a reminder that he was alive and well and not in a cell. He was outside, in the cold, clean air. And a cop again.

They’d gone up the fire escape in the alley, the same one Tracy had used to get to the ledge where he’d eavesdropped on that underworld summit not so long ago. And when they ran out of ’scape, Patton made a step out of his interlaced hands, palms up, and lifted Tracy onto the rooftop. Then Tracy leaned over the edge of the roof and lent his assistant his hand, hauling him up.

The flat expanse of the roof was broken three times: once, off to one side, by the dormerlike projection of a door to (and from) the rooftop; and twice, by a pair of many-paned skylights angled for maximum effect—and with the spilled jewel box of stars in the sky tonight, it would be a quite a view.

But it was quite a view tonight looking down through the nearest skylight, as well.

In the dark attic below sat Tess Trueheart, gagged, hands bound at the wrist, ankles tied, the ropes starkly white looping around her simple black-and-red-print dress, binding her to a wooden chair. She was slumped in the chair; she could have been dead.

Tracy pushed his hands against the glass, like a street urchin pressed up against a Christmas window at Macy’s. The attic was otherwise largely empty—a trash barrel, a long, low table, a few discarded sticks of furniture. The only illumination in the room came from the pair of skylights.

Patton gripped Tracy’s arm, hard; the simple gesture conveyed both hope-and apprehension.

Tracy glanced around the rooftop. Sam Catchem had told Tracy that he’d left a rope up here, tied to a pipe—the rope Sam had used to lower himself and Bug into the attic for surveillance duty. Tracy had expected it still to be up here.

It was gone.

And the skylight, which Sam had jimmied open, was shut tight and had been recaulked.

Tracy silently cursed his own misjudgment. “We could use a grappling hook and some rope right about now,” he said.

“Want to send for—”

“No.” Tracy, breathing hard, pulled away from the window, but his eyes were round and frozen downward at the (he hoped merely) unconscious Tess.

“I could break the glass,” Tracy said, “but she’s right below us—the shards would rain right down on her.”

“I have a pocketknife we can use to remove panes,” Patton said. “We can cut away at the caulking . . .”

Tracy shook his head. “We’re better off going in that door over there,” he said reluctantly, “and finding our way down to her.”

But before he and Patton could move to the dormer doorway, light spilled into the dark attic as two figures moved quickly into the room—Flattop and Big Boy himself.

“Where did this dame come from?” Big Boy shouted. He sounded like a stuck pig. The voice was muffled through the glass, but the words were clear. He was standing beside the chair, looming over Tess, his arms spread and his palms open in a gesture of dismay. “We’ve been had! Get her outta here!”

Tess lifted her head, opened her eyes.

She was
alive,
Tracy thought; thank God! For that much.

And then she looked away from the repulsive countenance of Big Boy, looking up, where she saw Tracy in the window above her; her eyes widened, at first startled, then they communicated a wave of emotions to her man: relief, fright, love, concern, sorrow . . .

The look lasted only a moment, less than a moment—but Flattop caught it.

Tracy saw the flat-headed gunman pointing his automatic up at the skylight and pulled Patton out of the line of fire as the shot exploded in the room below and spider-webbed a pane of the skylight glass.

Flattop untied Tess and held the gagged woman in his arms like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold.

Or a monster carrying its victim.

“If they get us on kidnapping, we’re finished!” Big Boy raved, his arms flailing. “Get her out of here, get rid of her, before any more cops show!”

Tracy waited till Flattop, Tess in his arms, had moved away from the wooden chair; then, like a kid about to cannonball into a swimming pool, Tracy hurled himself feet first through that skylight, the wooden frame splintering and panes of glass tumbling out, some fragmenting, others shattering.

In the seconds this took, Flattop shifted Tess over to Big Boy, and fired another round up at the skylight, just as Tracy was crashing through. The bullet whizzed up past Patton, striking nothing but the night.

Tracy landed on his feet, then tumbled onto his side, on his right shoulder, losing his hat on the ride, but despite the glass, he landed well, the thick yellow topcoat protecting him. He came up off the floor with the gun in his hand, bareheaded, face nicked from fragmented glass, topcoat slashed from shards he’d landed on.

But all he got for his trouble was a door slammed in his face, as Flattop and Big Boy, with a wide-eyed Tess still in his arms, moved out of the attic. As he reached the door, Tracy heard locks being thrown and he found himself facing a heavy steel barrier that would have done any prison proud.

“Damn,” he said through his teeth.

“Dick!” Patton called down from the gaping glass-toothed hole where the skylight had been. “Are you all right?”

Tracy stuck his .38 back in the shoulder holster, retrieved his hat. “Yeah,” he said. “Nothing wrong with me a battering ram wouldn’t cure.”

“You want me to go get a rope or something . . . ?”

“No. Too much time. Caprice has Tess!” He was moving around the dark, mostly empty attic restlessly. “I’ll find something.”

He did. A discarded, scarred-up sideboard table, which he hauled under the skylight and overturned, its legs up.

Patton looked down in confusion. “Tracy . . . are you sure you didn’t land funny? Like on your head, maybe?”

“Sit tight, Pat. I’ll get to you.”

Patton watched, befuddled, as Tracy rolled a trash barrel into view, lifting the long table and sliding the barrel underneath, as a fulcrum. With one end of the table raised, and the other lowered by the weight of Tracy standing on it, an impromptu teeter-totter of sorts had been created.

“Tracy, have you cracked up?”

“No. But you’re going to jump down.”

“Jump down?”

Tracy pointed above him; he was directly under the second skylight. “That’s the exit.”