The Barrens & Others (42 page)

Dick Tracy
is the second standout. Although Chester Gould also used light and shadow to excellent advantage, his characters lacked the depth of Gray's. But with the rogues gallery of grotesque villains he flung against his hero through the years, who noticed? Flattop, the Brow, Flyface, Coffeehead, Shakey, the Mole, Pruneface… everybody has a personal favorite. Mine has always been Mumbles.

I had to do a Mumbles story.

I didn't know personally the co-editor, Max Allan Collins, though I did know his work – his mystery novels and his scripting of the current
Dick Tracy
strip. So I called Marty and said I wanted in. He said, No problem, but hurry, and he gave me Collins's phone number.

Al (that what he's called) and I discussed Mumbles. He had drowned in the strip in the mid Fifties, but Al had brought him back later on. He told me Mumbles would be in the film, played by Dustin Hoffman, no less. No one else was doing a Mumbles story so I was welcome to him.

But hurry.

I hurried. I put
Reprisal
aside once more (amazing the book ever got finished) and dove into Chester Gould's characters. My story takes place in October, 1956. It's a bit tongue in cheek, but I slipped in a tiny lesson in sociology for those who take it for granted that rock has always played up and down the radio dial, who remain unaware of the racial storms that raged around the music in the early days.

I was there.

I may have been only ten in '56, but I'd already experienced my rock 'n roll epiphany (see
Soft & Others
) and remember buying a copy of "Hound Dog"/"Don't Be Cruel" – on a ten-inch 78, no less. (Wish I still had it.) I remember rock 'n roll being called "race music" in polite circles and "nigger music" on the street. But all that was a sidebar to the story. Uppermost in my mind was remaining true to Gould's sense of the grandiose and the outré.

Al was delighted to get a story with a classic Chester Gould death trap.

Rockabilly

Detectives Helmsly and DeSalvo had formed a two-man Committee to End the Noise.

"That racket's gotta go, Tracy," DeSalvo was saying.

"Yeah," said Helmsly.

Tracy couldn't look at these two without thinking of Abbott and Costello – Helmsly as the former, pudgy DeSalvo the latter. In fact they once did the "Who's On First" routine at a PBA talent show. But they were good cops, even if they were a little rough around the edges.

"You know we like the kid as much as anybody," DeSalvo said, "but either he takes his junglebunny music somewhere else or one of us goes in there and accidentally sits on his pipsqueak phonograph."

Tracy put down the newspaper. The news from Hungary was pretty depressing – martial law and mass arrests since the Soviets marched in – and the presidential campaign at home was boring, with Ike and Nixon looking like shoo-ins.

He stared at DeSalvo. He didn't like the jungle-bunny reference, but he let it slide. A lot of people were getting pretty worked up about this new rock and roll music the kids were playing, calling it jigaboo jive and nigger music. He'd even heard some preachers and teachers on the radio calling it the Devil's music. Tracy didn't know about that. All he knew was that it wasn't his kind of music.

The trouble started when Junior brought his little, fat-spindled phonograph into the locker area off the squad room and started playing these funny looking pancake-size records with big holes in the middle–"forty-fives" he called them. There were times when the music coming out of that tiny little speaker made Tracy want to try a forty-five of his own on that thing – something .45 caliber.

Obviously Tracy wasn't the only one bothered by it. DeSalvo was still carrying on.

"Bad enough we have to listen to it half the day workin' on the Wonder Records case, but we'd like a break when we come back to the squad room."

"Okay," Tracy said. "Send him out here. I'll talk to him."

"Thanks, Tracy," said Helmsly. "Peace and quiet again, huh?"

"Peace on earth," Tracy said.

Tracy thought about Junior as he waited for him to appear. He was a little concerned about some of the changes he was seeing in the boy. The most obvious was his hair. Junior was starting to look like some of the j.d.'s they were picking up on car thefts and in gang rumbles on the north side. What was next – a studded black leather jacket and engineer boots? Tracy would have to draw the line there.

Not that Junior wasn't a good kid – he was the best. But Tracy couldn't help feeling uneasy when he saw him looking like a young hood.

And listening to hood music.

Ye gods, that rock and roll stuff was enough to drive any sane man up the wall! Junior played it endlessly at home. You couldn't pass his bedroom on the second floor without hearing twangy guitars, thumping drums, and wailing voices. Tess seemed to tolerate it better, even claimed to like some of it. But it set Tracy's teeth on edge. Especially that Little Richard fellow. Ugh!

"Hi, Tracy," Junior said as he opened the door to Tracy's office. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, Junior. Sit down a minute."

Tracy was at once fascinated and repelled by Junior's hair. What formerly had been a wild shock red was now a carefully combed masterpiece of...what? The kid had let it grow and now it was Brylcreemed to within an inch of its life. Parted high up on each side, combed toward the center and a little forward so that some carrot-colored curls hung over the forehead; the sides were slicked back above the ears to meet at the rear of his head in what was being called a D.A. – and it didn't stand for District Attorney.

Tracy didn't like any of it.

"This music you've been playing. Do you like it?"

Junior's freckled face lit with enthusiasm.

"You bet! All the kids like it."

"Surely not all of them."

Junior's smile broadened. "You know that Elvis Presley song you hate – 'Hound Dog'?"

Tracy winced. "How can I forget? You play it a hundred times a day."

"Well, it's the number one song in the country right now."

"There goes the country. Can you tell me why?"

"It's cool. It's groovy."

Tracy laughed. "Ah! That explains it. And that's why you listen to it all day long?"

"And all night too. At least till I fall asleep."

A thought struck Tracy.

"Would you consider yourself an authority on rock and roll, Junior?"

The kid shrugged. "Sure. An expert even."

"Good. I want you to look at something."

Tracy called to DeSalvo to bring him the evidence in the Wonder Records case. DeSalvo came in lugging the box.

"Hey, Junior," he said as he placed the box on Tracy's desk. "This is the kind of stuff you listen to. Maybe you can have them when the case is done."

Junior's eyes lit as he peered into the box. He glanced at Tracy.

"Can I look?"

"Sure," Tracy said. "Handle them as much as you want."

Junior fished out a stack of 45's and shuffled through them like cards. Tracy noticed the kid's enthusiasm fading.

"Aw, these are all copies."

If the statement startled Tracy, it shocked DeSalvo.

"How do
you
know?" the detective said.

"Just look at the labels. 'Long Tall Sally' by Mark Butler, 'Blueberry Hill' and 'Ain't That a Shame' by Kevin Coyle, 'Maybellene' by Buster Squillace, 'I Hear You Knockin'' by Eleanor Robinson, 'Eddie, My Love' by Diane Gormley, 'Sh-Boom' by the Crew-Cuts? These aren't the real records. I
have
the real records, the ones that were done first – and best – and they're sung by Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Smiley Lewis, the Teen Queens, and the Chords."

Suddenly Tracy saw what Junior meant.

"Oh, I get it. You're saying these are copies because they're sung by different artists that the originals."

"Right. They're put out for radio stations who want to play the top hits but don't want to play the originals."

DeSalvo ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Why on earth would they want to do that?"

"Because all the originals were sung by Negroes," Junior said, looking DeSalvo straight in the eye. "Some folks call it junglebunny jive and so the big stations won't play it unless it's rerecorded note for note by white guys."

Tracy could see that Junior's sense of fair play was deeply offended, and he had to admit the kid had a point.

"That's not the kind of copying we're concerned with here," Tracy said before DeSalvo could reply. "The president of Wonder Records, Mr. William B. Cover, came to us with a complaint that someone is pressing perfect copies of his records and then selling them to all the stores in the city."

"If they're perfect copies," Junior said, "how did he find out?"

"Sales reports," DeSalvo said. "He read where a store reported sales far above what he'd shipped to them. He checked further and found out it was going on all over town."

"Serves him right," Junior said under his breath.

"No talk like that, understand?" Tracy said. "Whether you approve of what Wonder Records is doing or not, it's perfectly legal. Bootlegging copies of his product is not."

Junior looked down. "Sorry. You're right."

"We know it's an inside job," DeSalvo said. "Mr. Cover is positive someone's 'borrowing' his masters and pressing the copies."

"Borrowing?" Junior said.

"Yes," Tracy said. "None of the masters is missing, but Cover says someone must be pulling them one set at a time, pressing off the copies in a secret plant, then returning them. He says that's the only way the crooks could make such perfect copies."

DeSalvo snapped his fingers. "Say! What if we put Junior inside and–"

Helmsly burst in before Tracy could tell DeSalvo to forget it.

"Just got a call from the Wonder Records. They found William B. Cover dead in his office."

Tracy was on his feet. "Foul play?"

"Strangled."

"Find Sam," Tracy said. "Tell him to meet me down at the Wonder offices."

*

As Tracy pulled into the parking lot at Wonder Records, he marveled again at the design that had made it one of the city's landmark buildings. The upper two-thirds of its north wall had been designed to look like the top of a phonograph. The huge black disc representing a record was the most arresting feature. The giant tone arm rested beside yet; once every five minutes it would swing over and land on the disc. The disc itself didn't spin but the bright orange Wonder Records label at its center did, giving the illusion that the whole gargantuan record was turning on its spindle.

Inside, Sam Catchem was waiting for him on the top floor. Cover's office took up most of the level. There was a small lobby outside the elevator vestibule where a receptionist desk guarded the passage to a set of oak double doors. These opened on a suite of richly appointed rooms. In the rearmost office a team from Forensics was dusting everything in sight while a pair of morgue attendants waited for the signal to load the sheeted body on their stretcher and take it down to the meat wagon.

Tracy went down on one knee beside the body and pulled back the sheet. He'd met William B. Cover only once before, at headquarters. A bluff, hearty man of about fifty with thick brown hair and apple red cheeks.

"Strangulation didn't do much for his complexion," Catchem said in his usual laconic tone, talking around the lighted cigarette that dangled from the corner of his mouth.

Tracy had to agree. The big red cheeks were now a dusky blue mottled with tiny purple hemorrhages in the skin.

"What have we got, Sam?"

"One dead rock and roll record mogul, done in with the cord from his telephone."

"How long?"

"Still got some warmth left in him. I'd say about two hours. How about you?"

Tracy pressed the back of his fingers against Cover's throat. Not completely cold yet. He glanced at his watch.

"I'll go with that – which puts time of death right in the middle of lunch hour. Witnesses?"

"None."

"No secretary by the door?"

"Yeah, but there's a private elevator at the back end of the suite. According to his secretary – who found the body, by the way – he often brought his new talent in and out via that route. Seems he liked to keep them secret till he went public with them."

"She never heard anything?"

"I don't know. She was still pretty hysterical when I got here. She's down on the next floor. Maybe she's pulled herself together now."

Tracy threw the white sheet back over the corpse and nodded to the morgue attendants to take it away.

"Let's see what she can tell us."

The receptionist was Carolyn Typo, a pert brunette, young, barely out of secretarial school. She was shivering like someone with total body frostbite. After a few soothing remarks and reassurances, Tracy got to the point.