Dick Tracy Read Online Free

“casebook,” Hollywood making noises about doing a movie biography—and it had, to a degree, hampered his effectiveness on the job. The time when Dick Tracy could go undercover, for example, was long since past.
    And now his success was threatening to take him out of the action and put him in bureaucratic mothballs altogether. It was a dilemma, all right; the increased money—to a man who hoped one day to get married, buy a house, fill it with kids—was a serious consideration.
    It could also be argued that, from the command-post position of Police Chief, he might be able to direct an all-out war on crime, and in the bigger picture accomplish much more than he was able to out in the streets. Maybe that would be what it would take to bring down the Big Boys of organized crime.
    Still, the successes of a commanding general could never compare to the foot-soldier thrills of engaging in individual skirmishes.
    “Calling Dick Tracy,” a scratchy, loud voice said. “Calling Dick Tracy!”
    The voice was coming from his wrist.
    It startled Tracy momentarily, and then he bent over in his seat, as if tying his shoes, but cocking the side of his head to his raised wrist, even as he adjusted the volume lower on the two-way gizmo, from which the rather high-pitched voice of his partner, Detective Pat Patton, had crackled.
    “What is it, Pat?” he whispered.
    Tess was sinking into her seat. The eyes of the packed Opera House were on them—on the main floor, and in the balconies alike, the theater was a sea of faces turned their way. Not a patron was paying any heed, at this moment, to Vitamin Flintheart’s Wagnerian excesses.
    “We’ve got five dead hoods over at the Seventh Street garage,” Pat’s voice said breathlessly over the staticky two-way. “I never saw anything so vicious, Tracy.”
    “Have you I.D.’d the stiffs?”
    “That’s just it—we can’t even tell who they are, or were. They’ve been shot to pieces.”
    The Opera House, seeing only an apparently vacant seat where Tracy had ducked down, had returned their attention, perhaps reluctantly, to Vitamin’s musicale. Both the D.A. and the Mayor were hanging over their box seat, however, straining to listen to this little drama, as it came over Tracy’s wrist; Tess, too. Any thought of embarrassment had flown from her mind—her eyes reflected only concern.
    “Don’t let anybody touch a thing, Pat. I’m on my way.”
    Sitting up straight, he gave Tess’s hand a quick squeeze and said, “I’m sorry.”
    She smiled just a little. “No, you’re not. Don’t you get shot to pieces.”
    “I think the shooting’s over for tonight. Anyway, I’ll try to make it back for Vitamin’s big death scene.”
    “Take your time,” she told him wryly, as he rose. “Vitamin will no doubt take his.”

T he corpses littering the cement floor of the garage on Seventh Street hadn’t taken their time dying. It had been sudden and it had been brutal.
    The gawkers had found their way here; uniformed men had roped off the area where the garage door had been, prior to the killers’ car bursting through it. Chief Brandon, on the sidelines, was explaining to the forensic team that he wanted Tracy’s opinion before letting them take over. The rain had not yet come, but the thunder continued to provide its occasional punctuation. Dusk was settling on the city like fog.
    Tracy, his yellow camel’s hair topcoat hanging open, his yellow snapbrim fedora pushed back on his head, stood with hands on hips as he stared grimly down at a bullet-torn body. He nodded and Pat Patton covered the corpse back up.
    Patton stood, sighed, tucked his hands in the pockets of his emerald topcoat, his Kelly-green derby pulled down almost to the eyebrows of his round, open face, which was as white as the underbelly of a fish. Of a dead fish.
    “I thought we’d seen it all by now, Dick,” Pat said. He shook his head. “This takes the cake. These babies are obliterated.”
    “Somebody