Dick Tracy Read Online Free Page B

.”
    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