Dick Tracy Read Free Page A

was a wealthy industrialist who had taken a big interest in the local police after Tracy cleared the millionaire of a murder frame-up. Since then Smith had set his regiments of researchers and inventors to work on various gadgets, the latest and potentially most applicable of which was a two-way wrist radio—a portable police-band radio no bigger than a wristwatch. In fact, it was a wristwatch, keeping perfect time in addition to its sending/receiving capacities.
    Tracy was wearing one of the handful of experimental models right now. As Chief of Detectives, he had distributed the wristwatchlike devices to the half-dozen members of the Major Crimes squad he personally headed up. Nobody was quite used to them yet, and there was some grousing, but Tracy saw the two-ways as heralding a future where policework would be more scientific, more technologically advanced.
    Diet Smith was a true ally in the war on crime, and Tracy meant to keep the rotund multimillionaire happy. And when Smith made a gift of his seats to the premiere performance of an opera directed by actor Vitamin Flintheart, there was no way Tracy could graciously decline.
    Beyond that, there was Flintheart himself, who had been helpful to Tracy in several cases that had veered into the theatrical world. The pompous old ham had a big heart, and Tracy had come to be very fond of him; Flintheart had organized a group of actors who regularly made the rounds of hospitals, orphanages, and soup kitchens, giving free shows.
    Tall, dignified, and utterly self-absorbed, actor Vitamin Flintheart (the nickname came from a propensity toward chugging health tonics and popping vitamin pills in pursuit of a youth long since fled) was not merely directing the opera. He had taken on one of the leading roles. Even now he was joining in with the heavyset soprano whose steel breastplates and Norse horn helmet matched Vitamin’s own, though admittedly each cut his or her own distinct figure. With his flowing silver-white hair and mustache darkened for the stage, Flintheart—famed for his striking profile, drinking problem, and squandered talent—made a less than convincingly youthful Viking.
    But the actor had a melodious, soothing voice, which lulled the detective to sleep—until the formidable soprano would reach for an earsplitting high C, her voice all but shaking the paint off the Opera House walls, and jarring Tracy awake.
    “Dick,” Tess whispered. “Please try to stay awake.”
    She wasn’t at all cross about it; but at least a little embarrassed.
    “I was resting my eyes, dear,” he whispered back.
    “You were snoring,” she said, and smiled in her crinkly, endearing way, cornflower blue eyes sparkling. She wore a handsome dark green dress and matching hat—modest but stylish, and definitely attractive.
    “Sorry,” he said, smiling back at her.
    Her eyes narrowed. “Vitamin certainly has knobby knees, for a Viking.”
    “Vitamin has knobby knees anyway you look at it,” Tracy said.
    Boredom soon settled in again. Tracy’s eyes moved above and to the right, where the Mayor and his wife, and the District Attorney and a bejeweled society-girl date, shared box seats. The Mayor was a heavyset, balding West Side politico who wheeled-and-dealed his way into office, building ethnic coalitions around the city; he and his matronly wife were dressed to the teeth, but going the cultural route was obviously purely a political move on their part. The Mayor had his eye on the statehouse.
    D.A. Fletcher was His Honor’s heir apparent. Handsome, mustached, graying at the temples, Fletcher was smooth with the public and the press, and one of the best courtroom prosecutors Tracy had ever seen. But the detective was uncomfortable with the D.A.’s social climbing and political aspirations. Fletcher was the kind of D.A. who would bounce any case he didn’t feel he had a lock on winning and who would not prosecute anybody if the wrong toes were getting stepped on.
    Tracy and