Hazel left a steak on the stove for him but Tracy couldn’t chew with the ill-fitting new dentures. He sat at the lonely kitchen table and spooned oatmeal into his toothless mouth and thought about the dead.

Pruneface. Broadway Bates. Breathless Mahoney.

Gone.

The Brow, the Nazi spy who gave him a run for his money, impaled on an American eagle atop a flagpole after falling from a window. September 24, 1944

Littleface Finney, lost both ears trying to escape the detective. Died in prison. Cancer of the esophagus. 1952.

The counterfeiter Alec Penn

Gang underboss Ribs Morocco

Mumbles, drowned in a lake on July 27, 1945

Texy Garcia

Trigger Doom

Gone

Trusty Hubbub

Jesus …

… clawed to death by his own leopard in 1961

Tracy spooned more oatmeal into his mouth and sipped from the mug of bitter black coffee.

Irma committed suicide on March 3, 1946

The Claw, with that hook to replace his missing hand, electrocuted after getting caught in high voltage wires while fleeing from Tracy. When was that? 1947?

That crooked lawyer George Spaldoni. Tracy shot and killed him in 1934

Gone

Shakey, dimwitted bodyguard for street hoods. Accidentally shot himself while surrounded by coppers. February 1948.

Gone

Tess Truehart

Gone, baby, gone

Now all he has is the costume of doomed hope worn by impending Death, and the fading yellowed comic strips clipped out of newspapers to remind him of who he used to be.