Dick Tracy (29 page)

“Oh, no, Tracy . . . you can’t be serious.”

“Pat, how often do I pull rank on you?”

“All the time!”

“Well, then, jump, Detective!”

Tracy grabbed onto either side of his hat, pulling it down protectively over his skull.

Patton swallowed, licked his lips, took the deepest breath of his life, and leaped through the jagged-glass opening Tracy had made on his trip down . . .

When Patton’s feet hit the table, the teeter-totter swung up and catapulted Tracy through the glass of the second skylight, exploding him onto the roof. He landed on his side, and lay there stunned for a moment; but then he rose, shaking the wood fragments and slivers of glass off himself like a wet dog drying itself off.

He looked down through the hole he’d made and saw Patton sitting on the floor near the makeshift teeter-totter with his legs stretched out, like a kid playing jacks—glass fragments and wood pieces scattered about him.

“Are you okay, Pat?” he called down.

“I will be,” Patton said, “after my rest cure.”

“Sit tight,” Tracy advised.

“I’ll do that,” Patton said.

But in fact Tracy’s assistant was getting to his feet, and filling his hand with his gun, ready for whatever might come through that steel door.

Tracy, meanwhile, had moved to the edge of the roof, to lower himself to the fire escape, when he heard Brandon’s familiar voice, amplified by a bullhorn: “All right, Big Boy! This is it!”

Big Boy knew he’d been had.

He’d been sitting at the crimson conference table with Johnny Ramm, several other bailed-out mob chieftains, and assorted bodyguards, when the phone call came in.

“It’s for you, boss,” Itchy had said.

“Who is it?”

“Says his name is the Blank.”

Big Boy went to the phone and said, “You been paid, Blankie boy. You did good. Now, be a nice no-face and fade away.”

The voice on the other end was hoarse and hollow as it laughed.

“What’s so funny, Blank?”

“Look in your attic,” the voice said.

“Boss,” Flattop said. He was at the window. “There’s some cars parked out front, in the yellow.”

“Yeah, so?” Shrugging, he hung up.

“Five or six guys per vehicle. Sitting in parked cars. It’s either a heist or a raid.”

Big Boy went quickly to the window. “Let me see.” He looked out and noted the trio of black sedans parked across the way, well-spaced out.

“Something wrong?” Ramm wanted to know.

Big Boy patted the air. “No, no. Fellas, enjoy yourselves. We’ll all go down and hear Breathless sing real pretty in a few minutes. Meantime, I got to check something out.”

He had taken Flattop up to the attic, where they’d discovered Tracy’s girlfriend—who the papers said was missing, who Tracy was claiming had been kidnapped—trussed up like a virgin waiting to be sacrificed to some heathen god.

He knew at once the Blank had crossed him; set him up—stowed the kidnapped girl in Big Boy’s own building and undoubtedly tipped off the police. And kidnapping was a capital crime in this state!

Then Tracy had come crashing down through the skylight, but they’d managed to lock the flatfoot in. Big Boy had turned to the Trueheart dame who he held in his arms; her eyes, above the slash of white over her mouth, were as wide as Big Boy’s horizons weren’t.

“You’re comin’ with me, baby,” Big Boy said to her, removing the gag. “Anybody shoots me, they shoot you.”

He hauled her down into the conference room; sat her down in a chair. The vast blood-red table was empty—Ramm and his two bodyguards and several more of Big Boy’s own retinue, the accountant Numbers Norton included, had moved to the windows.

Ramm turned to Big Boy. “Plainclothes cops.” He snorted, turned back to the window. “Who do they think they’re fooling? Why do they bother with these pointless raids?”

“Johnny,” Big Boy said carefully, “this isn’t just another raid. I been framed on a kidnapping rap. See that frail over there? That’s Tracy’s missing girlfriend, who I just found tied up in my attic, thank you very much.”

Every pair of eyes in every hoodlum face in the room fixed widely and whitely on Big Boy. Every hoodlum’s mouth was dropped open, as if awaiting a dentist’s drill.

“Tracy’s out of stir,” Big Boy said calmly, but it was the calm before the storm, “all stirred up, and he could be in this building right now, coming after us. The only thing keeping those cops outside from charging in is all my civilian guests downstairs in the club.”

From outside came a booming voice: “All right, Big Boy! This is it!”

Big Boy peeked out the window and saw the Chief of Police and that plainclothes cop Catchem standing out in the street; Catchem had a tommy gun.

And just in back of them was a wall of squad cars behind which an army of heavily armed boys in blue were poised for action.

The other hoods took all this in as well.

Ramm’s mouth was an ugly, sneering thing; he grabbed the front of Big Boy’s tuxedo and wadded it with both hands. “You stupid greaseball! What have you done—”

But Big Boy’s automatic was now in Ramm’s stomach; the dapper gangster backed off slowly.

“Now,” Big Boy said, giving everybody a good look at the gun in his hands, “we can lose our heads and fight amongst ourselves, or we can use what little advantage we got left in this situation.”

Ramm’s frown turned thoughtful. “You mean, go downstairs and take hostages?”

“No,” Big Boy said. He pointed at the floor. “We go to our cars—right now. And make a fast getaway, before the cops make their move. They’re not going to hit us till they figure out what to do about all those customers downstairs,
capeesh?
So we move. Now.”

Ramm breathed in deeply. Nodded curtly.

The hoods went to the ammunition closet and began arming themselves with machine guns and shotguns.

“They’ve got
my
number,” Big Boy told them. “But the rest of you guys got a chance.”

Doucet was getting his gun out. “Let’s make a break for it then,” he said philosophically.

“You boys know where the garage is,” Big Boy said, opening the door for them. “I’ll be right there. Try not to let the patrons see your rods, or tip ’em to anything bein’ wrong. Okay? Keep it calm, cool, and collected, girls.”

Ramm was still seething. But he went along with the others as they quickly exited the conference room. Norton, the accountant, lingered.

“What about me, boss?”

Big Boy placed a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “This is it, Numbers. Lock all the doors. Burn the records. Have the boys downstairs break out the guns.”

Norton shook his head sadly and sighed. “Jeez, boss—Tracy’s dame?” And Norton looked at Tess and shook his head again, as if witnessing the act of a stubbornly wayward child.

Then he went out.

While Tess watched with silent contempt, Big Boy crouched at his safe, unlocking it and removing packets of money. He stuffed as many of these into his pockets as he could manage. He had upwards of a cool half million on him. Enough to take an early retirement.

Then he took Tess roughly by the hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, baby,” he said. “We gotta get outta this joint.”

“You animal,” she snarled, “let go of me!”

“Don’t make me slap you, baby,” he advised, raising a palm. “I hate hittin’ dames.”

Then he paused in the empty office, surveyed this throne room he was now reluctantly vacating.

“Look what your boyfriend done to me,” he said to her, as if his feelings were hurt.

And he dragged her out of there.

Back down on the street, in front of the club, Tracy joined Chief Brandon and Sam Catchem behind a barricade of police cars. The club’s neon merged with the cherry tops of the squad cars, tinting the night red.

“You’ve got the area cordoned off?” Tracy asked.

Brandon, bullhorn in hand, nodded. “No fish are getting out of this net. We were positioned two blocks away with those plainclothes men you requested staking out the place in unmarked cars. But once we heard those shots from the roof, I moved in with the uniformed troops.”

“Wise,” Tracy said, and filled Brandon in.

“Thank God, Tess is alive,” the Chief said. Then the relief on his face was replaced with concern, even fear. “What if Caprice tries to bust out of there and brings Tess with him?”

“Big Boy’s too smart for suicide,” Tracy said. “My instinct is we’ve got to go in after him.”

“Tracy’s right, Chief,” Catchem said, a tommy gun cradled in his arms. “The only way we’ll get inside this joint is bust our way in.”

“I don’t know,” Brandon said, troubled. “So many civilians in there . . . Tess included.”

“The longer we wait,” Tracy said, “the more danger the potential hostages are in.”

Brandon’s face flinched in thought. Then, suddenly, he spoke into the bullhorn: “Big Boy Caprice! You and your men, come out with your hands up! Everybody else—stay put! You’re all under arrest. Remain calm!”

Catchem, wide-eyed, said to Tracy, “The Chief just arrested the whole nightclub.”

“Not a bad idea,” Tracy allowed. The detective nodded toward the club building. “Sam, you come with the Chief and me.”

They were crossing the street to the front door when a car horn sounded within the garage over at their left; Tracy stopped momentarily and held up a cautionary hand, and then all hell broke loose.

The garage doors flew off their hinges as a car smashed through and tommy-gun fire ripped through the night, stitching bullet holes in the side of the nearest police car.

Tracy dove behind the front fender of the Chief’s car, while the Chief and Catchem scurried behind the line of cars, joining the uniformed men there, whose hands were filled with revolvers and riot guns, but who were holding fire till Tracy, the Chief, and Sam got out of their way.

“Here they come, boys!” Tracy yelled over the bursts of gunfire.

No sooner had he taken cover than Tracy stepped back out into the line of fire, with his .38 thrust forward; he moved out into the street, like a western sheriff, aiming and firing, cool and methodical. One of his first shots punctured the speeding car’s front tire. The vehicle swerved out of control and rolled over onto its left side and onto its hood and skidded across the pavement into the front of a warehouse across the street, which it hit like a metal fist, and exploded into flames.

The red night was truly an inferno now.

A second car rocketed out of the garage and Tracy rolled for cover again. From behind the left bumper of the Chief’s squad car, Tracy unloaded on the speeding sedan as it swung around, a gunman with a tommy gun catching a bullet before he’d fired a single shot and dropping the gun reflexively; it fired a few rounds on its own, spinning, then fell silent. The car, meanwhile, found several of its tires blown by Tracy’s well-placed rounds and fishtailed its way into a telephone pole, which it cracked like a toothpick, and then into a water hydrant, which geysered but was not close enough to the other burning car to put the fire out.

Tracy stood between flames that licked the sky and a fountain of water and fired his gun at the third fleeing car, which Itchy was driving, Flattop leaning out the window with a tommy gun, his cupid lips peeled back over babylike teeth, his normally hooded eyes round as silver dollars.

“I’ve got you now, Tracy!” Flattop screamed. “I’ve got you now!”

Then Tracy’s gun was empty, and the pavement around him was getting chewed up; he dove out of the way, rolled, bumped against something.

The tommy gun that the one gunman had dropped.

Tracy filled his arms with it and, on his back in the street, arching up to aim, he let the tommy gun fly; the recoil was incredible.

So were the results.

Itchy caught several rounds, the car went out of control, veered into the Chief’s car, sideswiping it; a badly wounded Itchy tried to back up and only crashed again, abutting and locking with the rear of one of the barricaded police cars. The car ground to a halt; stalled. Hunched behind the wheel, Itchy reached a hand back over his shoulder where he’d caught a bullet; it was as if he were trying to scratch a place he couldn’t quite get at. Then he fell forward, on the horn, adding to the pandemonium even as he was subtracted from it.

“Give it up, Flattop!” Tracy yelled.

But Flattop climbed out, the tommy gun in his arms; his face was bruised, bloodied, dirty, his hair askew, making an odd contrast with his tux and white carnation.

“Where’s Big Boy?” Tracy demanded, moving forward with the tommy gun in hand. “Where’s Tess?”

Flattop responded by firing a wild volley.

Tracy ducked behind a front fender for cover, then stepped back out and let the tommy gun rip.

Flattop did a jerky dance as he took the slugs and began to shoot at the pavement; the weapon was like a jack-hammer in the hands of a madman, the recoil of the tommy gun propelling him about. But when the ammo ran out, so did Flattop: he hit the pavement hard, spread out on his back like a kid making an angel in the snow. Only there was no snow, and Flattop was no angel, even in death.

“Tracy,” Catchem said, rushing up beside him, tommy gun still in hand, a question mark of smoke curling out the barrel. “You all right?”

Lowering his own tommy gun, Tracy nodded curtly and surveyed the after-battle landscape. No sign of Tess or Big Boy among the cars that crashed out of the garage. The night was suddenly quiet. The crackle of flames and the gush of the hydrant were the only sounds.

Then he heard another sound; faint, but he heard it: a rumbling—metal on metal. Faint, but distinct. He knelt at the pavement, put his ear to it, like a frontier tracker.

“Tracy?” Catchem asked, looking curiously at his kneeling partner. “What are you . . . ?”

Tracy stood and stared at the pavement; he rubbed his chin.

Sirens split the silence; then came the voices of cops rounding up the surviving crooks. Soon paddy wagons, ambulances, and a fire truck or two would roll in. It was over.

But it wasn’t.