Dick Tracy Read online

  “CALLING DICK TRACY!

  CALLING DICK TRACY!”

  There’s big trouble on the wrist radio: Five of the city’s deadliest hoods lie dead in a downtown garage—and their boss, Lips Manlis, will soon be number six. “Big Boy” Caprice is on the rampage. With his number-one gun, Flattop, loose on the streets, Big Boy plans to destroy his gangland opposition and unite all the tough guys in town—Pruneface, Mumbles, Itchy, Numbers, and the rest—in an organized reign of terror. Just one man stands in Big Boy’s way: Dick Tracy.

  Soon, the ace detective will be hit from all sides: by the ferocious Big Boy himself; by Breathless Mahoney, the sizzling chanteuse who wants to snag Tracy away from his girl, Tess Trueheart; and by a mysterious, faceless figure, The Blank, who may have found the ultimate way to end Tracy’s crime-stopping career for good.

  Walt Disney Pictures presents

  Warren Beatty

  DICK TRACY

  Original score by Danny Elfman

  Editor Richard Marks

  Production Designer Richard Sylbert

  Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, A.I.C., A.S.C.

  Coproducer Jon Landau

  Executive Producer Barrie Osborne

  Screenplay by Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr., and

  Bo Goldman & Warren Beatty

  Produced and Directed by Warren Beatty

  Produced in association with

  Silver Screen Partners IV

  Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.

  © 1990 The Walt Disney Company

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  The following novel was freely adapted from the screenplay to the film Dick Tracy and draws on the rich sixty-year history of the great detective. While true to the story of the film, there are scenes and characters that do not appear in the finished motion picture.

  DICK TRACY

  A Bantam Book / June 1990

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1990 The Walt Disney Company.

  Cover art copyright © 1990 The Walt Disney Company.

  Dick Tracy ® and © 1990 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  ISBN 0-553-28528-9

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries, Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  A TIP OF THE FEDORA

  I would like to thank my agent Dominick Abel, for his patience and persistence; Elyce Small Goldstein, director of licensing, Tribune Media Services; Matt Masterson, my friend and the world’s top TRACY fan, who provided research material and support; actor Ed O’Ross, “Itchy” in the film version of this story, who lent support and help; Robyn Tynan of Disney Publications; Barrie Osborne, Executive Producer of the film, for providing valuable guidance; George Bamber of Mulholland Productions for his intelligent and thorough suggestions; Mike Argirion, editor of Tribune Media Services, for helping put this project in motion; Robert S. Reed, president of Tribune Media Services, who (with my former editor Don Michel) selected me as the writer of the “Dick Tracy” strip back in 1977; Lou Aronica, Robert Simpson and Colleen O’Shea of Bantam Books; Paul Thomas, for background information regarding vintage recording devices; my lovely, talented wife, Barbara Collins, for helping prepare a detailed synopsis of the screenplay; and my ornery seven-year-old son Nathan, who provided inspiration for a certain character in these pages.

  M.A.C.

  To the memory of Chester Gould.

  Thank you, Chet . . .

  from the eight year-old kid

  you encouraged.

  D I C K

  T R A C Y

  A NOVEL

  Once upon a hard time, in a cold gray city on a cold gray lake, a nameless urchin, the pockets of his frayed jacket filled with other people’s watches and wallets, ducked into an alley, avoiding the cop on the beat.

  The boy scooted behind a cluster of garbage cans, startling a mangy cat who was nestled there nibbling at a fish head. The cat, as gray as the overcast afternoon, and looking only slightly less scruffy than the boy himself, reared back and snarled, its fur standing up like porcupine needles.

  Scrawny as it was, the cat looked to be a vicious beast, but the kid wasn’t scared; almost routinely, he slapped it with one of the leather billfolds and the cat yowled and scurried down the alley, its claws clicking on the bricks.

  The gray cat might have seemed an omen of bad luck to the kid, only it wasn’t exactly black, and besides, the kid didn’t believe in any kind of luck, good or bad. To him life was a matter of survival, pure and simple—well, more like impure and not so simple. He was as much an animal, a scavenger, as the cat he’d spooked.

  He was eight years old, but he didn’t know that; he was the illegitimate child of a chorus girl who’d left him behind at her rooming house, but he didn’t know that, either. He knew only a life of stealing and scrounging at the behest of a tramp called Steve, who had no last name that the kid knew of, but still had one more name than the kid. In fact, that was as close to a name as the kid had: the Kid. And the Kid could not remember any life before this one, this life as the chattel of his burly, unshaven Fagin.

  The boy huddled against the brick wall of the building, hoping the beat cop—there was a pair of them, actually—would not check the alley. He was big for an eight-year-old, though sewer-rat skinny, his hair a reddish mop sticking out from under an oversized cap copped from a railroad worker; his threadbare black jacket had once belonged to an adult—its elbows were carelessly patched, as were the knees of his raggedy blue denims. Within his shoes, which were too large for him, were pieces of cardboard, covering the holes in the soles.

  Winter was coming, and he and Steve would soon hop the rails to a warmer clime—or at least so the Kid hoped. That was the best part of living with Steve—seeing the world; the Kid had been in small towns, he’d spent time on farms, he’d seen the West, he’d been to New York, too. This here town was okay—plenty of open-air markets to cop fruit and vegetables off stands, some nice parks to sleep in, railroad dicks less mean than some places; but it was no place to spend the winter, the wind riding in off the lake like a witch on her broom, chilling your bones.

  Convinced the beat cops had moved along on their way, the Kid sighed with satisfaction as he spread his spoils out before him on the table that was the alley’s brick floor. Three wallets and two watches. Steve ought to be pleased. The watches—one a fancy wrist number on a leather band, the other a gold-plated pocket watch—would together bring in three or four bucks from that pawnshop fence Steve had been using.

  But when the Kid dug into the wallets, he came up near empty: one buck in one, two bucks in the other, and nothing at all in the third. Usually a five-spot would show up in one out of three. The Kid sighed again, this time in weariness and frustration. Steve would beat the tar out of him, sure.

  Of course Steve beat the tar out of him on general principles, even after a good day; but a disappointing haul like this would get the Kid a whale of a licking. A bad haul was out of the question: the Kid wouldn’t go back to Steve, couldn’t go back to Steve, with little or nothing. Not unless he wanted to lose a tooth or two, or go to sleep for three days, like that one time.
>
  A loud rumble made the Kid jump. It sounded like a freight roaring into the trainyard, or maybe the noise the ground might make cracking apart in one of those earthquakes they say happened out West sometimes.

  But it was only the sky.

  Thunder, threatening rain. Yesterday he’d got caught out in it; it came down straight, and it came down hard, and had seemed to the Kid a fusillade fired from thousands of angels with tommy guns, aimed right at him. Today he wasn’t about to get caught out in it.

  On this cold gray dying afternoon, as what there was of the sun began slipping below the horizon like another sneak thief, the Kid gathered the money and the watches, stuffed them in his pockets, and dumped the wallets in the nearest trash can; and he moved down the alley, till he found the recession of a doorway where he could get out of the line of watery fire the rumbling sky was promising.

  At least it wasn’t cold enough, yet, for snow, the Kid thought, and he pulled the lapels of the oversize tattered coat up around his face and leaned back against the door.

  And it gave way.

  Just a bit; but it had been unlocked and just barely shut, or barely not shut, and the Kid almost started to believe in luck. Because he suddenly had a dry, relatively warm place to be.

  Slipping inside, shutting the door quietly, he found himself in a garage. Various trucks and automobiles were parked in neat rows, over across from him, and off to the left, along the Seventh Street side, were double garage-doors. To the right was a service area where the hood of a car was up, the engine being worked on, only not right now. Tools were scattered around, but it was after hours. A glassed-in office area was in the corner adjacent to the service area. Nobody was working here.

  But five men were playing.

  Playing cards, poker, their chairs pulled up to a bright yellow table. On a fruit crate nearby was a radio with a plug plugged into a couple of extension cords trailing off somewhere; from the radio came a hillbilly band, making a racket.

  A pretty crummy backdrop, the Kid thought, for five guys who were dressed up so natty. It seemed odd to him, for a second, the expensive wide-lapelled suits with the colored silk shirts and bright ties and fifty-buck fedoras—till he saw the men’s faces, and realized who it was that dressed so fancy at crazy hours, at ill-suited places.

  Hoodlums.

  On the table—amid the clutter of cards, paper money, ashtrays, beer, and whiskey bottles—were several revolvers and an automatic. This would not seem a game worth cheating in.

  The Kid, still in the shadows, remained unnoticed by the five hoods seated in the center of the big high-ceilinged garage, under the room’s only lit lamp, a hanging shade that sent a cone of light down on them like a spotlight presenting the star attractions of the afternoon.

  And the Kid meant to stay unnoticed—and to stay warm, and dry; he ducked behind a stack of boxes. He nudged a box and bottles clanked, and an oil can clunked to the floor.

  Several grim faces at the table turned his way. From his vantage point, ducked down as he was, he didn’t see this. But then, on his belly like a snake, he peeked around the corner of the boxes, fronted by a row of fifty-gallon metal drums, and did see two of the men rise, each of them filling a hand with a revolver.

  But another of the men at the table, an odd duck with a large round face and tiny features, said, “Sit down, Shoulders! It’s nothin’.”

  “I heard something,” the one called Shoulders said. The guy had a thin, pockmarked face and shoulders so wide he might’ve had a plank under his bright green suit-coat.

  Only that was no plank: it was really shoulders. And the man called Shoulders looked dangerous as green-rainbowed meat; and right now he was moving across the cement floor toward the Kid’s dark nook.

  The Kid gritted his teeth, balled his little fists, rose up on his haunches, though still not up above the boxes.

  “Little Face is right, Shoulders,” called out the other one who’d risen. He was a big guy smoking a cigar; his mustard-color suitcoat was off and his dark green shirt was cut by suspenders. “It’s just thunder—gonna rain, maybe.”

  “Look, Stooge,” Shoulders said, “I heard something drop.”

  “It’s the sound of your money droppin’ into my pocket,” another of the guys at the table said. This one was a muscular-looking horror with a heavily ridged forehead. He wore a suit that was redder than blood and a shirt as black as death and a tie that was redder than the suit. “Come on back here and play cards.”

  “You ain’t my mother, Brow,” Shoulders said crankily, as he prowled.

  The revolver clunked on the yellow table as Stooge sat back down and said, “Who didn’t ante up?”

  “Careful with that rod of yours, Stooge,” another one said. Under his derby was a round, ratty face, cigarette dangling in his lips, bobbling as he spoke. He had slick black hair and a whiskery mustache; wore a purple suit and matching shirt and tie. “It’ll go off, tossin’ it around like that. It ain’t no toy.”

  “You’re such a nervous little girl,” Stooge said, studying his cards. “I almost hate to take your money. I hate to make a little girl cry.”

  “Just be careful! When I die, I want it on purpose, not by accident. What was that?”

  The Kid heard it, too—something rustling in the darkness.

  The Rodent stood; his nose and mouth twitched. His eyes moved back and forth.

  Then that mangy gray cat—how did he get in here?—stepped into the pool of light.

  “I told you I heard somethin’,” Shoulders said, vindicated.

  “Hiya fella,” Rodent said to the cat.

  With frightening quickness, Rodent grabbed the animal and flung it by its tail into a wall of drums. The cat screeched and skittered away into the dark to lick its wounds.

  “You’re a card, Rodent,” Stooge said.

  “Speaking of cards,” Brow said, “who dealt this mess?”

  Several hands went by uneventfully, and the Kid—hoods or not, grateful to be in where it was warm and dry—settled himself on the cement floor and curled up and allowed himself to fall into a state approaching sleep.

  He never let himself go quite under, though, and snatches of conversation would come his way: “Don’t breathe that clam-sauce breath of yours on me, Shoulders!” “Shut up and deal, Rodent!” “Are we gonna hit Caprice or not?” “The boss ain’t said yet—just play cards.”

  “Uh oh!” the one called Stooge said, and he said it loud enough to startle the Kid.

  Alert now, the Kid again peeked around the edge of the stacked boxes.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Shoulders asked, in a casually disgusted tone.

  “I drew aces and eights,” Stooge said, cards tumbling from his fingers.

  “The dead man’s hand!” Rodent squealed.

  “Are you girls kidding?” Shoulders said. “You throw down a hand like that? You coulda won with that hand!”

  “He did the right thing!” Rodent said. “It’s the dead man’s hand, I tell you!”

  “Rodent,” Little Face said, cards held daintily in his two hands, a big smile on his little face, “this ain’t Deadwood, and you are not Wild Bill Hickok.”

  “Bad luck,” Rodent said, standing, shivering, cigarette tumbling from his lips, “bad luck!”

  A loud rumble made the Kid jump.

  But this time it wasn’t the sky.

  One of those double garage-doors along Seventh Street burst open, like a jack-in-the-box, only it was nothing so harmless as a grinning toy clown, even if the grille of the black sedan that had splintered its way into the garage did seem to be grinning—a wide, ghastly silver grin.

  Frozen with fear, but fascinated, the Kid peered over the tops of the boxes and drums as the sedan screeched in, coming to a sideways stop. A man leaned out the open door and stood on the running board, a tommy gun in his hand, but he was no angel and the rain he poured on the room was a lead rain.

  The Kid ducked back down, his mind filled with the face of the m
an spraying those tommy-gun slugs; it was a horrible face, a face that branded itself into the Kid’s consciousness: hooded eyes, pug nose, Cupid’s-bow mouth, heart-shaped, pimpled face, and a head as flat as an anvil.

  “Flattop!” somebody shouted.

  It was Little Face, who had been dealing when the cardplaying quintet had been so rudely and violently interrupted; Little Face threw the cards into the air and scattered them all about, and he and the other four scattered the same way, heading for cover, grabbing their guns off the table as they went.

  But Rodent didn’t make it very far.

  Flattop traced an angular line of fire across his back, which sent Rodent twitching to the cement. Then Rodent calmed down once and for all.

  Flattop, imperturbable in his violet sport coat and bright blue tie under his long, dark topcoat, smiled faintly, and fanned the tommy gun around the room, chewing up metal and glass.

  Stooge tumbled from behind a delivery truck.

  Flattop paused in his machine-gunning to laugh, reached inside the black sedan where somebody was handing him out another tommy gun, like a caddy handing the proper wood to a golfer. Changing magazines was too much time and trouble.

  The Kid, huddled against the wall behind the drums, wondered why nobody else had returned fire. That Flattop guy was standing out in the open, like he was unafraid, like he thought nobody could hurt him.

  Of course, those guys had revolvers and automatics, and Flattop was blasting away with a Chicago typewriter, against which handguns were like party favors, and anyway, if they fired at him, they’d give their positions away. The Kid nodded. They’re smart. They’re waiting for him to get close. Then they’ll shoot.

  The air cracked, as somebody did; Flattop whirled and wrote something obscene with his “typewriter,” and Shoulders tumbled from the running board of the parked auto he was firing behind.

  “That leaves two,” Flattop yelled above the din of the tommy gun, which he was spraying around the room; one of the wooden chairs fairly flew off the floor and danced in the air and seemed to explode into fragments. The bullets kissed and kissed and kissed the metal of trucks and autos, leaving puckers behind, windshields shattering here, spiderwebbing there. The radio exploded and cut off the hillbilly band. The glass of the corner office area turned to shards and fell noisily to the cement and made even smaller pieces of themselves. Bottles in the stacked boxes burst and broke and bled whiskey and gin.