Dick Tracy

Richard Tracy always wanted to be called Dick Tracy but somehow the name never stuck. Friends and family insisted on referring to him as Richard. When he met someone new he would thrust out his hand, throw back his square jaw, and introduce himself as “Dick. Dick Tracy.”

“Like the famous crimestopper, eh?” someone once remarked, and then that person quickly added, “You look more like a Richard.”

He collected Dick Tracy memorabilia, of course, most of it purchased during late night buying binges on E Bay. His last girlfriend, the one he met on Venice Beach, the one who actually lived with him for six months, told him once that his collection was getting out of hand. Boxes and boxes of Dick Tracy comic books occupied precious closet space in his small one-bedroom apartment. The shelves in the living room were lined not with books but with tin toys and figurines featuring the grim-faced detective. Puzzles. Games. Pocketknives. Lunchboxes. Little Golden Books from the 50s and 60s. Pez dispensers. Lighters. Several Dick Tracy flashlights. Toy guns. Handcuffs. Police badges.

With the addition of the handcuffs, guns, and badges to the collection it was really only a matter of time before Richard “Dick” Tracy would make his first arrest. The perpetrator — “perp” he would remember to write in his report, sticking to police lingo to give his write-up an air of authenticity — was an eighty-two year old woman who lived around the corner. Every morning she allowed her yapping dachshund to use the small strip of grass in front of his apartment as “a receptacle for fecal matter.”

That morning he came up behind her with the stealth of a great detective. The fragile woman shrieked when he snapped the cuffs around her frail wrists and then she slowly slumped to the bag of bones that represented her knees and collapsed, all of the life drained out of her as if someone had suddenly pulled a plug.

“Get up, you big faker.” He tickled at her rib cage with the toe of a high-gloss polished black wing tip. She was as incapable of movement as the cheap wind-up toy he bought from that collector in Detroit. Bastard. He was going to get what was coming to him too.

He considered what to do about the unconcious perp. He rubbed his square jaw thoughtfully, then barked into his two-way wrist radio: “This is Tracy. I need back-up at 2921 Ocean Way Walk. Over!”

Only the birds in the trees, and the dachshund now dancing confusedly at his feet, responded to his command. For reasons he could not comprehend he suddenly felt very warm toward the animal.

“Well, what’s your name, little fella?” He grinned playfully and bent down to pat the dog on its small brown head. “Mine’s Dick Tracy.”

“If you’re Dick Tracy,” he heard the dachshund say, “Then I’m a talking dog.”