Dick Tracy (4 page)

Tracy walked over to the central area where it looked like it had snowed spent shells. Black tiremarks streaked the gray floor. “The car that broke through those garage doors left its own sort of fingerprints; have Casey get closeups of those skidmarks.”

Patton nodded and hustled off to get evidence envelopes and tweezers from the squad car.

The newest member of the Major Crimes squad, rumpled-faced, freckled Sam Catchem, was at the periphery, where lab technicians, various detectives, morgue attendants, and Casey, the crime-scene photographer, waited with the onlookers, behind the roped area by the ruptured doors. Tracy moved methodically around the room, lifting the sheets off corpses one by one and studying the victims.

Pat Patton began gathering the spent shells and recording them in his field notes, while Chief Brandon moved away from the forensic team to join his ace detective. Brandon was a husky man with a rock jaw, a ski nose, and black-marble eyes. He moved through the garage like a tank.

“Watch your step, Chief,” Catchem said wryly, as the Chief didn’t seem to notice Patton in his path, crouching over the slugs with his tweezers like a little kid searching for four-leaf clovers.

Brandon nodded at Patton, and did indeed watch his step; it amused Tracy to see the big fullback of a man trying to dance daintily around the evidence.

“Five dead men,” the Chief said grimly, “and we don’t even know who the hell they are.”

Catchem approached lazily, a cigarette drooping from his full lips, hands in the pockets of his rust-color topcoat. “Whoever did it took their I.D.,” he said, “but didn’t take a dime.”

“When you’re through with that cigarette, Sam,” Tracy said not unkindly, “don’t toss it in here . . . I don’t want the evidence compromised.”

Tracy was studying a burly corpse whose red suit was matched by a bloody face; the most distinguishable remaining feature was a heavily ridged forehead.

The Chief laughed humorlessly. “How in heaven’s name are we supposed to identify
that?
Are all these birds the same? Riddled with slugs and stripped of I.D.?”

Tracy nodded. “Unless, when they’re stripped at the morgue, some laundry marks turn up.”

“It’s going to be impossible to make ’em.”

“This one’s street moniker is the Brow,” Tracy said casually. “East Coast boy. Red Hooks Gang graduate. List of aliases that would fill a phone book.”

“How in . . .”

Tracy stood. “Note the prominently ridged forehead.”

The Chief, visibly impressed, removed his white cap with its shining gold badge and scratched his head, ruffling his snow-white hair. “Can you make any of the others?”

Tracy walked to another corpse and nodded to Catchem to remove the sheet. “This is a Detroit Purple Gang torpedo they call the Rodent.”

“Called
the Rodent,” Catchem corrected with a smirk.

The Chief’s eyes were wide and a little glazed. “He looks like just another one of these shot-up stiffs to me.”

“That long nose and weak chin, even after the tommy-gun damage, are the key identifying features.” Tracy bent down and turned over one of the body’s palms, so that the knuckles faced up. “Those nails are chewed to the quick. Rodent was a nervous little rat.”

Tracy strode over to another corpse and Catchem kept up, flipping the sheet off the next body Tracy was calling the Chief’s attention to.

This one was a thin but wide-shouldered thug in a dark green suit and a green and tan tie that bore a violent abstract design.

“You can see why the boys called this fella Shoulders,” Tracy said matter-of-factly. “West Coast free-lance torpedo.”

The Chief seemed frankly amazed. “How do you . . .”

“You know, Chief,” Tracy said with gentle sarcasm, “those circulars the other P.D.’s and the F.B.I. send around aren’t just to help decorate our bulletin boards.”

The detective moved along to the next body. He glanced at Catchem, who took the silent cue and pulled back the sheet like a magician pulling a tablecloth out from under a fully set table, a table that remained motionless. Like the body that had just been revealed.

“This fella was something of a dude,” Tracy said, “even if he did die in his suspenders, with his coat off.”

Catchem’s face—which seemed somehow mournful and amused at the same time—revealed his frank but unsurprised admiration for the ranking officer’s detecting abilities.

“Those are rubies in this pinkie ring,” Tracy said, kneeling as if being knighted, taking the corpse’s right hand in his own. “But underneath it all, he was just another stooge . . .”

Tracy began unbuttoning the dead man’s silk shirt.

“Tracy,” the Chief said, “what are you . . .”

Tracy didn’t respond; the answer to the Chief’s question was on the exposed chest: a battleship—that is, a tattoo of a battleship, punctured here and there with entry wounds, but staying afloat on tattooed waves, nonetheless.

Tracy stood. “I’d rather not bother undressing him further, but you can take my word for it: he’s got ‘Mother’ in a heart-shaped tattoo on his left arm, and ‘Home Sweet Home’ with some entwined flowers, on the other.”

“Who
is
this stooge?” Chief Brandon asked, mystified.

“Stooge Viller.” Tracy said.

Finally Tracy ended up where he began—with the first corpse he’d uncovered.

“Lift it, Sam,” Tracy directed.

Catchem did.

“Surely you recognize
this
thief, Chief.”

“He does look familiar, Tracy,” the Chief said with heavy sarcasm. “He reminds me of four other fellas I saw of late, all of ’em doing their Swiss cheese impersonation.”

“Look at the ears.”

The Chief leaned over the body and squinted at it, specifically at either side of the big head. “Well, I’ll be . . . look at all that scar tissue.”

“Little Face Finny,” Tracy said. “Last time we encountered him he was heading up a stickup gang. We had him on the lam, and he hid in a cold storage locker and half froze to death.”

“Ye gods,” the Chief said, shivering, “I remember—the doctor almost had to amputate the man’s ears.”

“Finny almost lost his hands, too—you can see some scarring there, as well, and on his face and neck. The jury felt so sorry for him, they let him off easy. But when he got out, he headed east.”

Tracy nodded to Catchem and the torso was covered up.

The Chief was back to scratching his head. “What brought him to the city, Tracy? I’d think tangling with you again would’ve been the last thing he’d want to do.”

“Tangling with somebody was the last thing he did, all right. But what brought
any
of them here?”

“I don’t know.” The Chief shook his head. “Somebody imported these rods.
Why?
It’s not like there’s a shortage of guns in this fair city of ours.”

“This fair city of ours,” Tracy said, “is divided up into so many little fiefdoms, among seven or eight of the most vicious gangsters in this country.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “Pruneface, Johnny Ramm, Texie Garcia, Ribs Mocca, Spud Spaldoni, Lips Manlis . . .”

“And Big Boy himself,” the Chief added.

Tracy nodded gravely. “Lucky for us Big Boy’s never been able to form a coalition between those groups . . . instead, they squabble amongst themselves, and skirmishes flare up, and they do us a favor now and again, and kill each other, a little.”

“So far we’ve been luckier than a lot of towns,” Brandon said. “No civilian casualties.”

“That’s because there’s never been an all-out war. But with Prohibition over, the revenue is drying up. The legitimate liquor industry is geared back up and serving its public. The bootleg mobs are confined to serving the dry counties here and there, and new sources of income are sorely needed. The local mobs are ripe for weeding out and consolidation.”

Brandon’s face was tight with thought. “You think somebody—Lips Manlis, maybe, or Big Boy, or Pruneface—is planning to be the city’s one and only crime boss?”

“Yes, I do,” Tracy said flatly. “Moreover, I think somebody else
knows
about it and is planning a counterattack.”

“How do you figure that, Tracy?”

He shrugged, gestured around himself to the sheet-covered corpses. “Why would you stick around after a noisy, risky execution in the middle of town, taking billfolds off corpses? Why risk a shoot-out with the cops, or exposing yourself to eyewitnesses, to do that?”

Brandon didn’t have a clue; he said as much.

“I don’t know about takin’ the I.D.s outa wallets,” Catchem admitted, “but as for this butchery . . . maybe the shooter just
likes
firin’ tommy guns. Looks to me like a crazy man did this, hired gun or not.”

“What do you think, Pat?” Tracy called out, to his loyal assistant, who was standing rubbing the small of his back, tired from all that bending over, putting shells in evidence envelopes. Tracy knew Pat had been listening; Patton was not brilliant, but he was alert, and he was not stupid.

“Maybe whoever had this done didn’t want us to know somebody had imported these gunmen,” Patton said. “Maybe they wanted us to think these unidentified stiffs were local. Because imported talent would mean a major gang war was in the making, and then we’d really crack down.”

“That’s part of it,” Tracy said. “But a massacre like this isn’t the move of somebody afraid of us cracking down. There’s more to it than that. Yes, the man behind this wanted to keep us, at least momentarily, from realizing these gunmen were out-of-town talent; but he also wanted to keep us from finding out
who
imported these boys.”

“But, Tracy,” Catchem said, “we
don’t
know who imported ’em. How could we know that?”

“Pat—Little Face Finny, back in his stickup gang days, was in whose camp?”

“Oh,” Patton said, slowly, “I get it. Lips Manlis!”

Tracy nodded again. “I think if we can track the ownership of this garage back through the dummy corporations and holding companies and such, we’ll find the smooth and oh-so-ugly proprietor of the Club Ritz.”

“That’ll take time,” Patton said gloomily.

“I know,” Tracy said. “Time is exactly what good policework takes, Pat.”

“We ought to go over to the Club Ritz,” Patton said, “and just roust that greasy little bum!”

“Not a bad idea at that,” Catchem said.

Tracy was almost amused by his partner’s naive enthusiasm. He put a hand on Patton’s shoulder. “We don’t play it that way, Pat. We go by the book. Remember? When we get Manlis, and when we get whoever is
after
Manlis, we’ll put them both in jail.”

“They belong in the
ground,
” Catchem said.

“If they shoot first,” Tracy said calmly, “they will be.”

“Somebody may beat us to Lips Manlis,” Brandon said, surveying the roomful of corpses.

“At the very least,” Tracy said, “somebody’s sending a message to Lips.”

“And to us,” Pat said.

“And to us,” Tracy agreed.

The four cops exchanged glances; they were as silent as their sheet-covered companions.

I
n a dressing room filled, with flowers, its bulb-outlined makeup mirror adorned with congratulatory telegrams, Vitamin Flintheart, who was on the wagon, lifted a champagne glass filled with soda water to toast Tracy and Tess. The couple’s own glasses brimmed with real bubbly from a bottle currently residing in an upended Viking helmet packed with cracked ice.

“Even the Great Flintheart,” the Great Flintheart humbly said, above the clink of the glasses, “never quite becomes accustomed to a standing ovation.”

Tracy sipped his champagne, thinking that Vitamin may have misread the eagerness of some of the Opera House patrons to rise and stretch at the conclusion of an interminable performance.

“Richard,” Vitamin said, putting his arm around the detective, “I am delighted you returned from the scene of that carnage in the nick of time, so that you might savor my death scene.”

“A lot of people died this afternoon, Vitamin,” Tracy said, “but none more grandly than you.”

Flintheart beamed and bowed elaborately, making a
salaam
gesture. “Richard Tracy, graciousness is thy middle name.”

Tess giggled. It was partly the champagne; but mostly Vitamin, who was the only man on earth who called Tracy “Richard.”

Flintheart stroked his mustache, which, like his hair, had postperformance been returned to its natural shining white. “You must allow me to take you lovebirds to dinner. A veritable feast awaits the cast and crew at the Dorf Arms.”

“Vitamin,” Tracy said, shaking his head gently no, “I promised Tess a quiet after-theater dinner.”

“Ah! No doubt you’ve selected a suitably secluded, romantic spot for your lovely lass.”

Tracy was getting embarrassed. “Thanks for the offer, anyway, Vitamin. We’ll leave you to bask in the kudos you’ll no doubt collect.”

“Can I have my limousine driver drop you anywhere?”

“No, thank you, Vitamin. The restaurant’s close by; we’ll hoof it.”

“Well, at least let me walk you out, then, you two,” Flintheart said, gathering himself into a silver-fox coat, slinging a silk scarf about his neck, cocking his black hat sideways on his head. “Vitamin Flintheart can always use a police escort.”