Dirty Harry 08 - Hatchet Men (10 page)

It almost worked. Harry had nearly gotten the kid out the door when he noticed two smirking Tiger Claws blocking him from the other side of the screen door. Both were standing, side by side, with their toes against the bottom of the partition, making it impossible for Harry to get out easily. Callahan didn’t bother talking. He knew there was nothing he could say now. They had called his bluff. He couldn’t legally or morally shoot anybody. He couldn’t force his way out without a fight. And there was no way he was about to get caught sandwiched in between the gang.

Harry moved back quickly, taking the kid with him. He backed around the pastry counter as the two Tiger Claws came slowly through the door and the four diners walked slowly down the steps. The cooks and waiters scattered. Harry quickly checked the layout for details. The ovens were to his right. The stoves were behind him. The register and display counter was to his left—as was the door and windows out on the street.

Callahan kept his tight grip on the kid’s hair. He pushed the Magnum against the side of the kid’s jaw so everyone could see it. Its appearance did nothing to deter the half-dozen teens approaching him. As he watched, two of them pulled out a ko-buda tonfa; which was another martial-arts trainer that could double as a billy club. Made of hardwood, it was a thick stick with a handle protruding from the side.

Another kid pulled a tokusho keibo from his back pocket. This was an Oriental police baton. It was like a switchblade club. When closed, it was six and a half inches long. The kid held it up for a second, then tapped the button at its base. The telescopic design sprang three inner portions out to a full length of twenty and a half inches. The message was clear. Go ahead. Do your worst. Kill the kid if you want. Whatever you do, you’re not getting out of here easy.

Harry heard the heavy breathing of the kid he was holding. He heard the quiet footsteps of the approaching Tiger Claws. He heard the bubbling of the boiling tureen of soup behind him. He saw the four dining Tiger Claws spread out as they approached and come together in a pack again as they neared. He waited until they started squeezing past the counter.

Then he brought the .44 up sharply and slammed it down on the lead kid’s head. He let the gun fall with the Tiger Claw. It was all but useless to him now. Besides, he had something else to occupy his hands with. As the kid and Magnum dropped, the Tiger Claws surged forward. Callahan twisted and grabbed the handles of the soup pot. With nearly an arm-wrenching pull, he lifted it off the stove and hurled it at the attacking teens.

The boiling hot soup surged over the tureen’s lip and splashed directly down upon the first three gang members. They screamed in pain and shock, falling to the sides and back. The heavy pot slammed into the fourth kid’s chest, knocking him over. The pot bounced and crashed into the pastry display case, sending broken glass spinning across the floor.

The two teens left standing reacted with savagery. The fifth swung his metal club at Harry, but the cop was already ducking down to retrieve his gun. The club was a better trick than it was a weapon. At more than twenty inches, it was too long for the small restaurant. The tip got caught on the stove’s lip. Harry reached up and wrenched the thing out of the kid’s hand. Then he stabbed back with it in a sharp, jabbing motion, first catching the kid in the nose and then the eye. He stumbled back, tripping over the fourth kid, who was trying to get up after the pot had hit him.

The sixth kid swung the ko-budo tonfa at Harry’s head as Harry swung his .44 at the ko-budo tonfa. The cop’s gun blocked the blow and then Callahan slammed the baton just over the sixth kid’s ear. The kid went down, slammed against the edge of the display case, bounced back, collided with the upright oven and then fell for good.

The Tiger Claw who had gotten hit with the pot found his feet again. He took one look at his five friends, writhing and sleeping on the ground, looked up at Harry’s still figure—standing amid the wreckage with his Magnum at his side—and then ran out of the restaurant as fast as he could.

Harry shook his head. Kids shouldn’t play with matches. And if they couldn’t stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. The cop figured he only had a limited time left in Chinatown. If and when that kid came back, he’d be bringing a lot of Tiger Claws with him. But he wasn’t about to drag the leader in and have the poor child start screaming police brutality. Harry would just have to dispense with legality and dispense a little street justice.

He reached down and grabbed a handful of the leader’s hair again. He hadn’t hit the kid hard enough to put him out for long, and sure enough, as he pulled, the kid groaned and responded. Harry slipped the .44 into its holster, grabbed the kid’s arm, wrenched it up his back and whirled the kid around so that his stomach was against the stove. Then he pushed down his head so his face was hovering over the open flame which had been heating the soup.

“There’s nobody around to back you up now, punk,” Harry told the Tiger Claw through clenched teeth. “And I don’t give a shit if you leave here without a face or not. Answer my questions or get fried.”

Having a code of life was a lot easier than living up to it. This kid, this high-ranking Tiger Claw, had always thought that he could handle anything that was thrown at him. And up until now, that had been true. But now his face was just a few inches from a searing hot flame. A flame that was already frying his rapidly blinking eyes and crisping his eyebrows. He felt a pain unlike those inflicted by blades, chains, and clubs. He suddenly felt overwhelmingly inclined to answer any question the tall cop asked of him.

“Who killed the two Chinese at the wax museum?” Harry demanded, pushing the kid’s head closer to the flame.

“Ni . . . Nihonmachi hitmen,” the kid heard himself saying.

“Where do they come from?”

“All over. New York, L.A . . .”

“Where did these three come from?” Harry growled, pushing the head down again.

“Chicago!” the kid yelled, trying to pull away. “Chicago, I swear!”

“How do you know?”

“The orders come from there. The Nihonmachi headquarters is in Chicago.”

“What about the kidnapping?” Harry asked in a different voice. It was a softer, more intense tone.

The kid paused until Harry started pressing down on his head again. “What kidnapping?” the kid squealed, confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“The kidnapping of the Japanese girl!” Harry yelled. “Did the Chinese do it as revenge? Was she some kind of warning to the Nihonmachi?” With every question, Harry pressed.

“I tell you, I don’t know about any kidnapping!” the kid yowled, his face closer to the flame than ever before. “I’d know about it if the Tiger Claws did it. I swear! Maybe the Thunderfists. Check the Thunderfists!”

Harry pulled the kid abruptly up and hurled him against the back wall. The kid hit head first and slid slowly down to the glass-, pastry-, and soup-splattered floor. His eyes crossed and fuzzed, but he didn’t lose consciousness.

Harry stepped around the broken counter and moved toward the now open door. As he neared, the kid he had jabbed in the eye found his feet and stumbled in front of the cop, trying to maintain a kung fu stance. Harry pushed his fist in between the kid’s wavering arms and sent him to the floor again with a devastating punch. The kid hit the tile and slid all the way to the front window.

Without pausing Harry went outside to the deserted streets, got into his car and headed toward home.

C H A P T E R
F o u r

P
olice and reporters were crawling all over his apartment house when Harry arrived at dawn. His parking garage blocked by two video vans, he parked around the corner and slipped in by the fire escape. The presiding cops inside recognized him and let him shave, shower, and change. Harry left the way he had come, wearing a dark green tweed jacket, a thick cotton button-down shirt, a plaid tie, a brown sweater vest, matching slacks, and his own Lawman leather shoulder holster.

Once he arrived at the Justice Building, however, there was no fire escape he could use to avoid the veritable army of reporters that charged him. Ever since the press had discovered what great copy he made during the “Scorpio” mass-murder case more than a decade ago, they hadn’t missed an opportunity to paint him into a corner. And this was no exception. In fact, this situation was made to order. A kidnapped woman. A young man shot on the street. The escape vehicle found at the scene of a double murder. And the massacre of five “alleged” drug smugglers. Perfect, just perfect.

Harry walked right toward the mass of microphones, video cameras, lights, and note pads. The two opposing factions—Harry and the reporters—converged on the bottom step of the front entrance.

“Inspector Callahan,” came the first shouted question Harry could hear over all the other shouted questions, “why did you kill the young boy outside your apartment?”

“Fuck you,” said Harry lightly as if he was saying “nice day.”

“Were you and the girl who was kidnapped lovers, Inspector?” came another question, along with a mike that was stuck right under his nose.

“Suck cock,” said Harry with a friendly smile, waving at the still-photographers.

“Inspector,” came a third voice, “don’t you think murdering five men who just want to sell pot is a little severe?”

“You’re a motherfucker,” Harry replied breezingly, three-quarters up the steps.

“Inspector Callahan,” came a stern female voice as he neared the front doors, “don’t you think you have a responsibility to the people of this city to explain your actions?”

Harry reacted as if the question got to him. He slowed, a concerned look on his face, then turned to face the mob of reporters with his hands raised for silence.

“A statement,” one demanded of him. “A statement!”

Harry waited until they had all grown quiet and all the pencils and tape recorders were at the ready.

Then, with an abnormally wide smile, he said, “You all eat shit. Thank you.”

With that, Harry slipped inside, accompanied by the sounds of teeth gnashing, pencil breaking, and hair ripping. Harry had spent too many years as the abused, used, misquoted butt of the allegations, secondhand rumors, wild guesses, and assumptions that passed for “electronically gathered news” nowadays. There wasn’t even safety in saying “no comment.” The TV reports and papers would edit it in such a way that he still looked guilty as hell.

Harry had learned his lesson hard, but he had learned it well. He had discovered the one surefire way not to appear on screen or in print was to swear so grieviously that the reporters wouldn’t dare use it. Add that to a wonderfully cheerful smile for the still-photographers so no newspaper reader would believe he was being asked serious questions, and there was the foolproof Dirty Harry style of noninterviews.

His reception on the seventh floor was about as gracious. Inside room 750—the homicide suite—the rest of the detectives reacted to him as if he had just come back after a drunken binge. Some looked heavenward. Others looked in the opposite direction, shaking their heads, and others shrugged at him, as if saying “what can you do?” As he turned into his cubicle his long-time friend and occasional partner, Frank DiGeorgio, pulled his forefinger across his throat, his teeth clenched.

Strewn across Harry’s blotter were enough messages to start papering his walls. Each said about the same thing, but with increasing amounts of intensity. The basic message was: “Go to the head office. Do not pass ‘Go,’ do not collect two hundred dollars.”

Lieutenant Al Bressler was waiting for him. Harry’s immediate superior was a tough old pro, like Callahan, except that he harbored a slight streak of fear that kept him firmly under the thumb of the higher-ups. Unlike Callahan, he was worried about his pension and his retirement. These concerns had taken their physical toll on the lieutenant. He was only a few inches shorter than Harry, but looked even more because of his slightly stooped shoulders and a posture which said he’d been carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders for too long.

In addition, the vests of his three-piece suits were getting strained by the spare tire that was slowly but surely turning from a “bias ply” into a “steel-belted radial.” His longish black and gray hair was unusually unkempt this morning and his normally calm brown eyes were bloodshot.

“You know what you are, Callahan?” Bressler cracked without looking up, as soon as Harry entered and closed the door behind him. “You’re a fucking magnet, that’s what you are,” the Lieutenant answered before Harry had a chance to speak. He looked up then and rose from behind his desk, his fists flat on the surface. “Wherever you go, whatever you do, crime seems irresistibly attracted to you. Violence is your lover, Harry. As soon as we take you away from it, put you on a harmless fact-gathering detail, it comes looking for you, leaving bodies from your house to Chinatown and back.”

“I didn’t ask for trouble, Lieutenant,” Harry said.

“That’s what so incredible, Harry,” Bressler replied. “I know that. I know you don’t go out of your way to find trouble. It just seems to find you. But try to explain that to Captain Avery. Try to explain that to Captain McKay. Try to explain that to the chief and the commissioner! They seem to think you’re some kind of goddamn Charles Bronson in
Death Wish,
for Christ’s sake!”

“Well, it’s not like my file is full of saving cats from trees,” Harry admitted.

“You’ve got a tiger by the tail this time, Harry,” Bressler said, growing serious. “The drug smugglers were a clean bust. Those guys were suspected of murdering several crewsful of pleasure boaters, but the guy you shot outside your apartment could be trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

“The coroner says he was Jap. As near as I can figure he must be a member of one of these Oriental street gangs that have been driving us crazy all these years. You know the setup, Harry. It’s a closed society in Chinatown. We couldn’t do anything about the mess down there if we wanted to. Hell, it’s better if we don’t! We start messing around and a lot of innocents’ll get hurt.”