Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks (3 page)

But Harry also realized that the tail was not about to take any kind of major action. He was just checking Harry out, probably keeping a record of what he was doing, where he was going.

Where he was going now was to a Chinese restaurant on Spofford Street, in the heart of Old Chinatown. He was hungry and in the mood for the Szechuan food the Quemoy Inn was noted for: hot and spicy enough to cry over. In fact, you ate enough of it you had no choice but to start crying.

The tail was having none of it. He lingered on the corner opposite the restaurant. Every so often Harry would part the luridly red bamboo shades and see him there, studying the
Chronicle
with the intensity of a scholar. People like that had to have the patience of Methuselah waiting to die. Hell, Harry thought, let him wait. He was in no particular hurry.

Harry had just gotten through his hot-and-sour soup, savoring the burning sensation it induced in his mouth, when a couple of youths sauntered into the Quemoy; like virtually all of the other customers they were Chinese. They looked hungry all right, but not for food. Their eyes were skillful, taking everything in at once. Obviously searching for somebody. And even though there were a great many people in the place, noisily going about the business of eating, the two newcomers had little difficulty in finding who it was they were looking for. And finding their subject they wasted little time in removing 9mm Double Action handguns from underneath their jackets and leveling at him.

Being too preoccupied with protecting himself at the moment, Harry couldn’t figure out whether they intended to open fire on just one individual or a mixed assortment. Didn’t matter. He had already dropped out of his chair and proceeded to shove over his table, knocking the beef dish he had looked forward to eating to the floor.

The two youths—they couldn’t have more than forty years between them—had begun opening fire, directing their handguns toward a large banquet table in the middle of the restaurant. An old gentleman with a head more devoid of growth than the Sahara bore the brunt of their initial fire. He flung out his hands and then crashed noisily down on the table, leaking an abundance of blood. Everyone else was either diving for cover or else already there.

From behind the overturned table that he was using as his shield, Harry sighted one of the two assailants and shot him. The impact of the .44 propelled the youth back against the bamboo curtain that formed a kind of inner door. Bamboo wasn’t going to stop his progress backward. His head smacked against the glass of the outer door. The glass was more resistant. It stopped the youth all right. Stopped him dead.

His companion, suddenly and uncomfortably aware that he was facing a threat from an unexpected quarter, did what amounted to a little dance, zigzagging back, transferring his fire from the banquet table to the table that Harry had converted into his temporary bastion. But because he had to do these acrobatics his aim wasn’t awfully terrific. Three bullets thudded harmlessly into the waiters’ station just beyond the location of Harry’s table.

But because of his arduous efforts to get out of the line of fire, he was making it harder for Harry to hit him. Now he had taken refuge behind one of the several mock-Corinthian columns that distinguished the interior of the Quemoy. From there he was firing both at Harry, keeping him pinned behind the table, and at the other customers, preventing them and the waiters from moving. No one was getting hit because by this time everyone had had ample opportunity to find shelter. Harry sensed that the youth had panicked, that his only thought was to escape.

Exhausted of ammunition for the 9mm, the youth quickly substituted a snubnose .38 which he evidently carried around with him for this purpose. With no warning, he darted out from behind his protective column, driving toward the kitchen. Harry fired but knew even before he pressed the trigger that he had no chance of hitting him. The youth was moving too fast and keeping low, weaving in between the confusion of tables and chairs, firing blindly as he went along.

Abandoning the table that had defended him, Harry raced after the youth, ignoring the screams from the cowering diners who had no idea whose side Harry was on.

Approaching the kitchen, the youth blundered right into one of the cooks who’d evidently thought to take him unawares. And it was true that the youth, with his attention riveted on Harry’s pursuit, failed to notice the man who barred his way right at the kitchen entrance. The cook, a short wiry man with a look of great concentration to him, was ready to bring down a heavy black pan on the youth’s head. And bring it down he did with one crashing slam. It stunned the youth who reeled from the blow, but it did not succeed in knocking him out. Which was unfortunate for the cook. Turning to confront his latest assailant, the youth fired three shots at the cook, all of which entered his abdomen, with the result that his white uniform was quickly overwhelmed by blood.

But in the time that it took the youth to do this Harry had had an opportunity to gain on him. Crouching so that he could adequately target the youth, Harry fired once. His bullet slammed into the youth’s neck, emerging from his throat at a sharply angled trajectory. He was dead before he fell, collapsing against the dying cook who improbably was still standing in place.

Police were pouring into the Quemoy, alerted by the sounds of gunfire and shrieking that had filtered out to the street. A horde of curious onlookers had taken up position directly outside the Quemoy, anxious not to miss any action.

The maitre d’, a venerable gentleman whose memories went back to the bloody upheavals that marked the 40 Days of Peking in 1900, crawled from under the table where he’d concealed himself and regained an upright position. With as much dignity as he could summon, he stepped up to Harry and thanked him for his help. Gazing sadly at the body of the cook now collapsed on the blood-slicked kitchen floor, he said, “Without you we would have suffered a much greater loss of life.”

“You know who these thugs are?”

“Not by name, no,” the maitre d’ said. “But we know who sent them. A gang of extortionists. They claim their actions are politically motivated, but they are simply a group of common thieves and murderers who ravage the Chinese community. It is most regrettable that they chose to make innocent people victims of their vendetta. As well as our cook. It will be difficult to find a replacement as good as him.” He looked up at Harry—and Harry being as tall as he was the maitre d’ had a long way to look—and with a strangely mischievous gleam in his eyes, shrugged and said, “But there is one benefit to our customers that has emerged from all this terrible violence.”

“And what is that?”

“The lunches are all on the house. Especially for you, Mr. Callahan, who are such a frequent customer, you can choose whatever you’d like as an expression of our gratitude.”

Harry thanked him. “But I’ll have to take a rain-check. I seem to have lost my appetite.”

“Would you at least care for a fortune cookie?”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I have a good idea what kind of fortune I’m having today already.”

As he strode out of the Quemoy, DiGeorgio spotted him. “What are you doing here, Harry? We send you out to Palo Alto in the morning and look where you turn up.” Surveying the scene of mayhem that greeted his eyes, he muttered, “This is going to be one hell of a lot of paperwork. A field report the size of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.” He was well aware of Harry’s distaste for the routine bureaucratic tasks that were necessitated by his job.

When Harry came out of the restaurant, he noticed that the tail was gone or else had found a better way to conceal himself from view. Probably shied away from this American-Chinese replay of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Harry considered. Well, he’d be back again. If not him then someone exactly like him.

Lunch hour was proceeding a bit more placidly at the Top of the Mark where Bull Ryan and a friend of his were leisurely working their way through a steak and lobster, supplemented by a substantial quantity of dry martinis and wine. Bull’s complexion seemed to grow ruddier by the minute as his liberal imbibing continued. His friend was just about his age, but time hadn’t done badly by him; his ash-gray hair only emphasized his finely etched features and his bright hazel eyes.

These two men, Bull and his dining companion, had once been irreconcilable foes, years ago during the height of labor strife on the docks. At that time the man sitting across from Bull had been a lowly patrolman whose chief occupation was to batter in the heads of union militants. But things change, and old enemies find that they have much more in common than they thought. Where there had once been bitter acrimonious disputes, there was now the sort of peaceful accord that could be honored from time to time over drinks and expensive food just as they were doing at the moment.

“I’m worried about your, man Callahan,” Bull was saying. “I spoke with Matt, and Matt, well, you know how he is. ‘Don’t concern yourself, there’s no problem,’ he said. But I’ve done a little research on Inspector Callahan. He doesn’t seem to me the docile compliant type. Am I making myself clear?”

At that, Bull’s friend laughed, a reaction that rather surprised Bull.

“Do you think the choice of Harry to be put on this case was accidental, my friend? You really think we’d get that careless? We’re looking out for Matt’s best interests, you can believe me. Harry’s a man we’ve had our eye on for quite some time. He’s a pain in the ass, quite frankly, and we’ve been waiting for an opportunity to—how should I put it—to get him out of the picture. This Tuber business is just perfect for our purpose.”

Bull thought he understood. Callahan was being set up to take the fall. Suddenly the day seemed a whole lot brighter to him. He went back to his meal with a pleased smile on his face.

C H A P T E R
T h r e e

C
lay Meltzer was not usually the sort of man to suffer from a bad conscience. In fact, he pretty much thought that he was free of such an affliction. For a man raised on the waterfront who had willingly taken orders from a succession of petty tyrants beginning with his father, a conscience was simply a liability. But, much to his amazement, a critical juncture in his life had been reached. He was confronted with the sort of moral dilemma he never knew existed, and now he faced having to make a decision.

Meltzer occupied an insignificant role in Matt Braxton’s formidable organization. He had no designated job as such; he was a gofer, a house nigger, a sometime chauffeur, sometime bodyguard. You needed coffee you sent Meltzer out to get it and then you sent him back again because he neglected to get the order right. Meltzer could just as well been a fourteen-year-old kid the way he was treated, but he was forty-nine with hair flecked with gray and a sad, lined face that had been partially dented in, mute testimony to a bloody struggle on the docks ten years before. Some people said that the blow had done something to his mental capacity. But Meltzer wasn’t dumb. He just knew how to shut up and remain well in the background, obeying orders without questions, taking his salary at the end of every week and making no trouble for anybody. Which was why sometimes when serious matters arose in conversation, nobody bothered to ask Meltzer to leave. The reason was that they weren’t really aware he was there to begin with.

Not that either Braxton or Bull or anyone else for that matter had actually discussed a hit on the Tubers. But the implication was clear enough to Meltzer. More obvious was the money that was passed from one hand to the other, from Braxton’s man to the taciturn well-dressed fellow who had come in from Chicago; Meltzer had witnessed that, too.

But he hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t considered the implications of what he’d heard or seen. He kept thinking it had to do with something else, something that wasn’t a hit. When enough time had elapsed and nothing had happened, he concluded that he’d been mistaken and forgot about the affair entirely.

Until yesterday morning when he’d read the papers. The fifty thousand dollar reward money meant shit, Meltzer knew. Anyone who pointed the finger at the man responsible was sure never going to collect it. That wasn’t what was motivating Meltzer. And he wasn’t even certain that if it had been just Bernie he’d have worried. Hell, he’d seen enough men bloodied and not a few of them killed in labor strife. He’d never cared for Bernie and his untimely departure from the world was no cause for losing any sleep. But his wife? His kids? That was what got to Meltzer, that went way beyond a vendetta.

Meltzer sat on the side of his unmade bed, smoking one cigarette after another, coughing up phlegm. He was thinking of how to go about this; he’d never had any dealings with the police before, never wanted to. He’d prefer to tip them off anonymously, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good. He was a witness; his confession was the only evidence that would mean anything. He’d have to present himself in person.

Even after reaching this decision he didn’t act on it right away. He walked for hours, circling around the station house, continuing the debate with himself long after he realized it was useless. At last he flung a butt into the gutter with a derisive grunt and stepped forthrightly into the San Francisco Police headquarters.

“I’m here to talk to somebody about the Tuber killing,” he announced to the man at the desk.

No surprise registered on the man’s face. People were constantly coming in to divulge information to the police, some of it useful, much of it specious.

“Well, you want to speak to Callahan. He’s the officer on the case. But I don’t think he’s in right now.”

Meltzer, having deliberated this long over coming here, was not about to leave without telling somebody his story. If he did leave he wasn’t certain he’d get up the nerve again to come back.

“What I’ve got to say is important. I don’t care who you get to talk to me.”

“Of course, I understand. I think Officer Patel is available.”

“That’s fine with me. Just so long as they listen.”