Dick Tracy (7 page)

“If I didn’t know that guy was one of them ‘arty’ types, I’d swear you two . . .”

“I’m always true to you darling, in my fashion.”

He snorted; spoke through a mouth of half-chewed oyster. “Save the song lyrics for the customers, baby.”

A bell began to ring shrilly.

“It’s a raid!” Lips said, half standing, spewing pieces of oyster as he spoke.

“No kidding,” Breathless said, blowing another smoke ring, crossing her legs and studying her own well-turned ankle.

Customers were scurrying for exits, but Lips half stood and said, loudly, “Be calm, ladies and gents! Be calm—take your seats, no reason to panic.”

“Then why did you?” Breathless asked, with jaded contempt.

His thick lips in a wide, tight smile, Lips gestured with his arms open, waving them calmingly; he looked like an enchanted prince who hadn’t quite made the transformation back from a frog.

Several bodyguards moved in behind Lips, their tuxedos open for easy access to their shoulder-holstered weapons, while Lips and Breathless, who was having him light her up a new cigarette, sat quietly, unconcerned, as the trio of uniformed policemen burst in.

“Gentlemen,” Lips said grandly, and he slurped an oyster. As he rolled it around luxuriously in his mouth, he said, “Buy you a drink? It’s legal now, you know. It was in all the papers.”

The three uniformed cops were big, tough, no-nonsense Irishmen. The one in front said, “You’re under arrest, Manlis.”

“What charge?” He swallowed the oyster; it slid down his throat like a kid on a sled.

“Owning and operating a gambling establishment.”

Manlis smiled slyly. “Can’t we make some kind of . . . financial arrangement, gents?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Let’s see your warrant, then.”

It was slapped on the table in front of him like a winning poker hand.

He looked it over. It was legit, all right. Judge Debirb’s signature was on it.

“On your feet, Manlis. You, too, girlie.”

“Me?” Breathless said, wide-eyed. Suddenly interested.

“You. You can grab your fur on the way out.”

She looked irritably at Manlis, silently demanding he do something.

Manlis shrugged. “Your name’s on the warrant, too, baby.”

Her nostrils flared, her lips curled in a sneer as the three cops hustled them out and down to the street, where an unmarked car waited.

Pat Patton yawned. It had been a long day and as evening turned to night, it wasn’t looking to get any shorter. He had spent all morning and afternoon at HQ catching up on paperwork, which he finally wrapped up only to be called to that garage shooting, where Tracy made him pick up hundreds of shell casings and make field notes till his notebook had more writing in it than a Russian novel.

Now, at Tracy’s orders, he was staking out the Club Ritz. Lips Manlis not only managed this club, the crown jewel of his various enterprises, legal and ill; the liver-lipped ganglord lived there as well, in an apartment on the second floor. Tracy was convinced it had been Manlis who brought in Little Face and the others; and it only made sense that in the wake of the garage massacre, either Manlis would be hit again, or would himself strike back.

So here, in an unmarked car, nestled in the backseat to make the car look unoccupied at first glance, was Patton, arms folded, feet straight out on the seat, as he tried to resist taking a nice long nap. It had been quiet so far. It would probably stay quiet. Only the gaudy neon of the sign over the door of the otherwise relatively nondescript brick building kept him awake; its flickery glow pulsed in his face.

Patton did not resent being, in effect, Dick Tracy’s flunky. He liked Tracy as a man and admired him as a detective. They had a lot in common, Patton and Tracy; both were small-town kids who came to the big city. Like Tracy, Pat had grown up reading Nick Carter and Sherlock Holmes. Some kids dreamed of being cowboys or firemen; for Pat Patton, the dream was always to be a cop.

That is, specifically, a detective, and now he was one. And while he’d hoped to be Sherlock Holmes when he grew up, he could settle for being Watson to an American Holmes. Which Tracy surely was.

Pat had almost nodded off when he noticed three uniformed cops piling out of a black sedan that had pulled up in front of that canopy across the way. What were three uniformed men doing in an unmarked car?

He sat up and got a fairly good look at them, but didn’t recognize any of ’em. Of course, it was a big department; but still, he knew most of the men at least by sight, if not name. And if this were a raid, why only three cops?

And what were
any
cops doing, pulling a raid tonight, after that massacre?
He
was the cop on the job, after all.

He fiddled with the two-way radio on his wrist and called Tracy.

“Yes, Pat,” Tracy’s voice said scratchily out of the tiny cloth-covered speaker.

“I’m staking out Manlis’s club, like you said. I just saw three uniforms go in.”

“Anybody we know?”

“No, that’s just the thing. And Dick, they showed up in an unmarked car.”

“Well, that’s the rule on a raid, isn’t it? Otherwise you’d tip off the doorman.”

“Yeah, but the rule’s also the first wave is in plainclothes. And only one car?”

“Maybe more will be along.”

Tracy sounded distracted to Pat.

“Dick, did you hear anything about a raid comin’ down on Manlis tonight?”

“It’s a big department,” Tracy confirmed. “Maybe it’s an operation we’re unaware of. Keep an eye on it. Keep me informed.”

“Where are you?”

“Mike’s Diner. Tess and I are entertaining a guest.”

Pat signed off and continued to keep watch. Minutes later, the three cops exited the club, with Lips Manlis and a platinum blonde in tow. The cops stuffed the ugly gangster, with his napkin still tucked in his collar, and the beautiful babe, who was bundling herself into a dark mink coat, into the backseat of the unmarked car; which then tore away from the curb, burning rubber.

Patton climbed in his front seat, started the engine, pulled a U-turn, and tailed the car, calling Tracy on his two-way as he drove. His eyes reflecting back at him in the windshield glass were as bright and round and shiny as brass buttons.

Ahead, the sedan’s taillights burned red holes in the night.

L
ips, not being particularly a gentleman, had gotten in the black sedan first; Breathless, gathering her dark fur around creamy shoulders, followed. They were not yet seated before they realized they shared the backseat with a flat-headed hood with a tommy gun cradled in his arms. His cupid’s mouth smiled ever so slightly; he wore a black topcoat and a silk scarf.

“Flattop!” Manlis said.

“Is that bad?” Breathless asked.

“Depends on who you ask,” Flattop said.

The car squealed away into the night.

Five long silent minutes later, it pulled into the loading area of Manlis’s own riverfront dockside warehouse. The three “cops” piled out, while in back Flattop nudged Manlis with the tommy. Manlis got the point and nodded to Breathless and, the door opened for them graciously by one of the cops, she got out, showing off plenty of leg. Manlis followed, thinking how Breathless never failed to try and make a good impression on the men around her. If he had gams like hers, he’d be trying to trade ’em for a break himself.

But the only the break he was going to get, he’d have to make himself.

So he did.

He elbowed the “cop” at his right, and the guy doubled over, gun pointing downward, and Lips headed toward the wall of crates, looking for cover. But he’d eaten too many oysters tonight, and too much of a lot else over the years, to move very fast. He knew, even as he tried it, he was waddling; tears of humiliation came to his eyes as he heard, instead of gunfire, the sound of male laughter.

Someone stepped out from behind the stacked crates and stuck a leg out and, awkward as the kid they used to taunt and call “Liver Lips,” Manlis tumbled to the cement, falling flat on his froggy face.

He tried to gather himself, tried to assemble his dignity; his tuxedo was streaked with dirt and grease, his lapel rose was bruised, torn, its shape gone forever. Before him were the legs of the man who had tripped him. The shoes were brightly shining wing tips; Manlis saw his own frightened, ugly face look back at him in their reflection.

“Aw. You got your pretty tux dirty, Lips.”

Manlis looked up at what seemed to be a tall, imposing figure; actually, it was mostly the perspective. Al “Big Boy” Caprice was not tall; he wasn’t even very wide. But he wore power like some people wear a gaudy suit. Like the gaudy money-green suit he was wearing, in fact. A glimpse of the bright green suit meshed with the gangster’s vibrant green topcoat with its lamb collar. Big Boy’s green fedora was a little too small for him, fitting his head like a crown; his big hands were stuffed into kid gloves.

“Big Boy,” Lips said, trying not to sound groveling as he groveled. “Ain’t we pals?”

“No pals in this business, Lips. You taught me that.”

“Can’t . . . can’t we work this out?”

Big Boy’s eyes were large and dark and buggy in a face that might have been handsome, had each feature not been slightly distorted, the brow not so low, the cheekbones not so angular, the cleft chin not so extended. Pencil-thin mustache above full lips or not, Caprice would never be mistaken for Clark Gable.

The big head was wagging from side to side, the brutish face a mask of mock-regret. “I don’t think so, Lips. You didn’t bring Little Face, Shoulders, and them other torpedoes to town to start no ballet troupe.”

“That was just for protection, Big Boy. Things are getting tougher.”

Big Boy nodded sympathetically, as if seeing Lips’s point. “Let me help ya up,” Big Boy said.

And he did. He generously brushed off Lips’s suit. Over by the car, Breathless stood, uncharacteristically alert, with Flattop, Itchy, and the three cops providing an audience. For her, and for Big Boy and Lips.

“Big Boy . . . Al . . . we go way back. I can see that while the world is our oyster, our oyster is gettin’ smaller. I can see that. I would settle for a smaller share.”

Big Boy was reaching into his topcoat pocket; Lips recoiled, expecting a gun, but instead the gangster removed only a handful of walnuts. He cracked one in his massive fist. “See, that’s the problem. You don’t see that our world, our oyster if you will, is gettin’ bigger. Not smaller. You don’t see that, ’cause you’re the past, Lips. I’m the future.”

“Just let me keep my club. My life, and my club.”

Big Boy, chewing a walnut, slipped an arm around Manlis’s shoulder. “Well, let’s talk about your club, first. I’d like to buy your club.”

“Buy my . . . my club?”

“It’s the classiest joint in town. I really like it. I like it so much I took the liberty of drawing up a paper that states you’re transferring title to me.”

“For . . . for how much?”

Big Boy chewed a walnut thoughtfully. “A dollar.”

“A dollar?”

“A dollar. Quite a deal, Lips. Here.” Big Boy withdrew a folded paper from the vest of his money-green suit under his blue topcoat. “Pen!” he called, and snapped his fingers, and Itchy smoothly provided one. Neither Itchy nor Flattop were brandishing their guns, Lips noted with faint relief—on the other hand, the “cops” had their tommy guns trained on him.

Big Boy handed Lips the pen.

“Sign,” Big Boy said.

“This is not fair.”

“Life ain’t fair. Didn’t you learn that on the West Side, Liver Lips?”

“Up yours, pal!” He threw the paper at Big Boy.

“No pals in this business, Lips, remember? But, hey—you don’t like the price? I’ll up the ante. A dollar . . . and your life.”

Manlis licked his lips; it took a while. Then he said, “I could leave? I could start over someplace?”

“Sure. You got money. You got plenty big of a stake to start up again. Just not in my town.”

“I’m not the only one in your way.”

“You’re not in my way anymore, Lips. And you’re just the first of them that’s gonna get out of my way. Sign.”

Manlis swallowed. Big Boy turned his back to Manlis, to give him a surface to sign against. Manlis did, though he thought about embedding the tip of the fountain pen in Big Boy’s fat neck.

Big Boy turned and took the signed paper. “Good boy,” he said. “You know, Lips, I’m even gonna throw something else in on the bargain.”

“Big Boy . . . just let me go. I’ll get out of town. Just let me get outta here.”

Big Boy put a hand on Manlis’s shoulder and the smile under the little mustache was as wide as it was insincere. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. I’m gonna provide ya your means of transportation. You like rail, or air, or water? You know me, I like water. You can’t beat the ocean. Or even the river.”

The sound of an engine starting up in the recesses of the warehouse reverberated and Manlis turned to see a cement truck come rumbling down a platform, its huge mixer churning.

“You’re going first class, Lips,” Big Boy said, working his voice up above the grinding of the cement mixer, patting Manlis’s shoulder. “But before you go, let’s get you presentable . . . you’re dirty, Lips! You need a bath.”