Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks (7 page)

Harry, taking refuge behind a parked car, rose above the hood just enough to get the crazed dying bastard in sight. Carefully aiming his .44, he fired.

The white man gave out a shriek that might have awakened the dead he was shortly to have as company, then he seemed to levitate for a moment before collapsing backward, thrown by the force of the bullet that had entered his belly and sprung out in back, taking sizable chunks of vital organs in its passage.

“Oh shit, oh fuck! This is some crazy shit!” the black was muttering, his hands over his head in a supplicant gesture, his gun tossed aside.

Patel meanwhile was having a hard time understanding what had happened, why this intense little engagement he’d had going had come to such an abrupt end.

He was unable to see Harry because Harry had gone down behind the car, uncertain that the danger was over. Nor with the darkness in the shop could he see that the dead man’s partner was ready to surrender.

When it was evident that the firing had ceased, Harry stood up again, but by that time Patel had gone charging into the pawnshop, his 9mm Browning ready to speed whomever had survived into the next world.

Harry, convinced neither of Patel’s competence nor of his sense of mercy, hastened across the street, right behind him.

Patel was under the impression no one was watching him; he figured he had a few moments to earn a medal without a witness to say that maybe he didn’t deserve it. If he wondered about who had fired the bullet that took the white out he didn’t seem to let it stop him from putting his gun to the survivor’s head.

He wanted to kill him, to prove he had achieved some kind of victory here, little realizing that it was his gun that had succeeded in killing the man he was supposed to be protecting. True, he hadn’t intended to but it would be a bit of an embarrassment for him.

“Oh man, don’t! Oh shit, man, please! My gun ain’t even loaded. Check it out.”

Patel had his finger on the trigger, in no mood for such excuses.

Harry was sure Patel would have fired if he hadn’t interrupted.

“Party’s over, Sandy.”

Patel glanced up; irritation showed in his face but he left it out of his voice.

“I should have guessed. You were the one who got him then?” He gestured towards the fallen man whose body was still pumping out blood, trying to get rid of it all before the embalmer had to do it instead.

“That’s right.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Harry. It was my show. I could have handled it. You’re not absolutely indispensible.”

He was still looming over the black man, the Browning poised at the man’s temple.

“I’m awfully sorry about that, Sandy, but if I hadn’t interrupted, this shooting match might have gone on forever.” Sandy scowled and made some unfortunate remark under his breath. Harry ignored him. “Besides, I was rather worried you might hit another innocent bystander.” Noticing Patel’s look of incomprehension, he gestured to the fallen pawnbroker. “The .22s didn’t bring him down, it was your Browning that did it. Don’t believe me? Wait until ballistics checks on that wound in the head.”

Obviously Patel didn’t believe him; he sensed that Harry was playing some sort of a trick on him for motives he couldn’t immediately discern. In any case, he still had his gun on the man lying prostrate on the floor.

“I think you can safely let the suspect stand up.”

Sandy didn’t care to do this, evidently not having abandoned his notion of blowing someone away—intentionally this time.

“How many times you got to be told, Sandy?”

Patel, flushing with anger, raised his gun.

Gratefully, the black dared to look up. For the first time, his eyes met Harry’s. There was immediate recognition.

“Officer Callahan!”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Longlegs!”

Patel’s face was filled with his perplexity and annoyance. He might have suspected that the two were confederates.

Well, they weren’t confederates exactly, but they were old acquaintances you could say. Longlegs was a man with a rap sheet that could compete favorably in length with
War and Peace.
The guy had done time for cashing fraudulent checks, thieving cars, pickpocketing, sticking up five & dimes, grocery stores, gas stations, and greasy spoons; he’d been served summons for loitering, for drunk and disorderly conduct, for peddling hot watches, for creating a disturbance with a mother of a transistor radio; beyond that, he was suspected of contributing to a variety of scams, con jobs, felonies, and misdemeanors. He couldn’t help it. It was in his nature. He didn’t mean any harm by what he did nor did he ever hurt anyone—their pocketbooks maybe but not their bodies. So it did not surprise Harry when he picked up Longlegs’ gun and found that it was not loaded.

Longlegs was maybe in his forties. He was in any case one of those whose age remains a perpetual enigma; truly he had a lean and hungry face with sad, slitted brown eyes and a mouth that seemed to droop in a state of permanent melancholia. You could tell he never expected anything to go right, was just going through the motions in desperate hope of beating the odds. He’d gained his nickname—his real name was long ago buried beneath a barrage of aliases, so many that even he’d probably forgotten the one he’d started out with—not because his legs were particularly long but rather because he’d once entertained tourists down on Fisherman’s Wharf by parading about on stilts.

Right now Longlegs needed more than stilts to get around: Police sirens, ambulance sirens were shrieking up and down Mission.

Harry turned to Patel. “I’m taking Longlegs into custody myself.”

Patel didn’t like this idea. Without Longlegs he was left with two dead bodies. Dead bodies aren’t particularly articulate when it comes to clarifying how they had arrived in their current condition.

“He’s mine.”

“Not any more.”

Longlegs looked dazedly from one man to the other. “What is this shit? I’m supposed to go to the highest bidder?”

“You’re coming with me, Longlegs.”

Longlegs didn’t seem willing to move without a guarantee that rising to a vertical position wouldn’t jeopardize his health. But Harry was impatient, and he decided he’d better risk it.

“Where are you taking him, Harry?”

“That’s my business. Your business is to explain how a 9mm cartridge got into that guy’s skull there. Maybe you could tell our friends on the force about Clay Meltzer’s unemployment status. But I suppose you’re saving that for later, aren’t you, Sandy?”

“Son of a bitch,” was Patel’s succinct commentary.

Just as Harry and his charge began to emerge from the battle site, they were confronted by DiGeorgio and three officers Harry vaguely recognized.

“What is this, Harry? Every goddamn disaster and you’re there! You addicted to trouble?”

“That’s right.”

DiGeorgio’s eyes moved to the right into the pawnshop. The extent of the carnage appeared to be greater at first glance than it actually was, with all the wreckage and the blood.

“What happened here?”

“Sandy’ll explain. It’s his show.”

“Patel?” DiGeorgio grunted. He felt about the man more or less as Harry did. Now he seemed to notice Longlegs. In his eyes lay an unspoken question: What the hell does he have to do with this?

“Longlegs, you know DiGeorgio?”

Longlegs was like an actor who, without the benefit of either a script or a rehearsal, found himself thrust out on center stage with no choice but to perform—or do something.

“No, sir, don’t believe we have met.”

His manner was so polite and deferential that DiGeorgio was instantly suspicious.

“I busted him on Sixth for lifting a wallet from some poor sucker. Then I heard the shooting and came down to see what the fun was. I brought along Longlegs, figured he’d get a kick out of it.”

DiGeorgio had better things to do than to puzzle out Harry’s remarks.

“I want to know one thing, Harry.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“When are you going to say one blessed thing I can believe?”

“That time hasn’t come yet.” He turned to Longlegs. “We got to get your ass down to the station, my friend.”

To Longlegs anything was possible tonight. But of one thing he was certain; for whatever inscrutable reasons Harry had, he wasn’t going to be tied in with what had gone on in the pawnship. And that made Longlegs an extremely happy man.

Harry motioned Longlegs into his car. He didn’t say a word to him until he’d driven down to a location on the Embarcadero on the edge of the bay. It was dark and there was no one around. Which was exactly how Harry wanted it.

Longlegs was growing uneasy. Having anticipated a ride to the station house, a ride he was by now very familiar with, he was mystified to find himself in this desolate part of the city. His relief at having escaped blame for the pawnshop mess was turning into apprehension.

Although Harry had stopped the car he left the motor running. A sign he meant to be brief.

“Longlegs, let me know if I’m wrong. But my impression is that you know a shitload of people on the streets.”

Longlegs knew Harry was getting at something but what? That he couldn’t figure out.

“Oh yeah, I know lots of people. What kind of people you got in mind, officer Callahan?”

“Scumbags generally. Professional scumbags.”

Longlegs caught a glimmer of what Harry was driving at but only a glimmer. “Maybe I’m dense but—?”

“Hit men, Longlegs. People who command a great deal of cash for their services. People who know how to avoid heat.”

“Hey, Harry, you got me wrong. What happened tonight that was Lee’s fault. I didn’t even know his fuckin’ piece was loaded, man. We were going in there to scare the dude. I didn’t think Lee would pull that shit. I swear I don’t know what got into him.”

Harry wasn’t remotely interested in his protests or apologies.

“Longlegs, my man, you do not seem to understand. I do not care about tonight. I do not care about your late friend Lee. I am more interested in the connections you enjoy right now. On the streets of our good city. You are going to find me some men whose business it is to dispatch other people to the next world.”

“Harry? Oh, come on, where am I supposed to find dudes like that? I’m a small-time man. What do I know? I’m simply chomp change. You need somebody else, not me.”

“No, there you’re wrong, Longlegs. As of now you are working for me. Think of it as a temporary assignment. You find these people, you find them and you tell them you been hearing about some fellow, man with lots of bucks interested in arranging a hit. Give them the name Mark Kincaid. From now on in it’s Mark Kincaid when you refer to me. Understand?”

Longlegs’ eyes widened with fear. “Shit, you got to be crazy, man. I mean you just got to be one crazy motherfucker.”

“That may be, that very well may be. You think about it. Consider the alternative.”

There wasn’t much to consider. With his record, Longlegs could look forward to celebrating a good many birthdays behind bars.

“You’re asking an awful lot.”

“Goodnight, Longlegs.”

Longlegs was about to get out of the car, but he still had one further question for Harry. “Supposin’ I should just split town, I could do that and you’d be out one well-connected spade.”

Harry laughed. “You could make it from here to Tierra del Fuego and you know I’d find you.”

Longlegs rolled his head back and laughed, too. “The Man got you, he got you,” Longlegs said, and those were his parting words.

Harry watched him sprint into the darkness. That was the thing about Longlegs; you could drop him off anywhere in this city and he’d find his way without a problem; the streets and the people who habituated them were in his blood. Harry had no idea whether Longlegs could find the sort of men he was searching for but it was worth a try. At this point anything was worth a try.

C H A P T E R
S i x

I
t was becoming more and more apparent that the Giants were going to capture the pennant; they were leading Pittsburgh two games to nothing and were prepared to make a clean sweep of it that evening. Everywhere you went in San Francisco the talk was about nothing but the Giants and their prospects for the Series. People were already leaping to the conclusion that Pittsburgh was out of the running.

Come evening, every radio, every TV set was tuned into the game. The whole damn city was on simulcast. By the second inning the score was tied, still nothing-nothing.

So preoccupied by the game were people that virtually no one paid attention to the report, broadcast at six on the evening news, that John Bull Ryan had done better than even the Giants by capturing 89.5 percent of the votes cast by the Brotherhood in its postponed election. His overwhelming majority was assured, the commentator had explained, because the dissidents, with no candidate of their own to support, had simply boycotted the election. The murders of Bernie Tuber and his family were mentioned almost as an afterthought. Harry felt like he was the only one in the city to remember them.

Although ostensibly he was still assigned to the case, so many leads had dried up, so many clues had proved unavailing that he was really left with nothing to go on. Which was why he was out tonight looking for Longlegs. Longlegs might not be his last hope, but if he came up empty-handed then Harry wasn’t sure where he’d go from there.

Longlegs was not hard to find. He was seated in a dive off Pacific, a dank place smelling of piss, booze, and failure. Like almost everyone else in town he was watching the ballgame on a color TV squeezed into a nook above the counter. Everyone clustered around the bar, shadowy forms in the harsh, grim lighting; it looked like one more straight gin would send them toppling over from their stools.

Harry approached Longlegs from behind and saddled up next to him. For about two minutes Longlegs pretended not to notice him, continuing to rest his eyes on the TV. But he knew very well that Harry was there. Longlegs might have fucked up at just about everything he tried to do in life but he was a survivor; he had the sense of a survivor. A nuclear holocaust or an ice age, it wouldn’t matter; in the devastation, in the frozen wilderness the man would still be running his scams.