Dirty Harry 12 - The Dealer of Death

by Dane Hartman

  So instead Harry decided to stay put. To his astonishment, no one else had come out of the shelter to assist these five men. Maybe it was thought that they were merely practicing war-games, maybe no one wanted to be bothered.

  Of course, the men hunting him down were very noisy. There was no way they could avoid it, with the brush and twigs and stones that lay underfoot. Nor did they make any effort to subdue their voices. Harry could hear them very distinctly now. After the passage of a few minutes, the men were almost on top of him.

  Harry had only to raise his eyes, and push aside a couple of drooping leaves, in order to see one of his pursuers, his chest and waist covered in the drab khaki Turner favored as the uniform of members of The Saving Remnant.

  “Wait, I think, there . . .” Harry heard the man say to his companion whom he had yet to spot.

  A succession of rounds blasted the foliage encircling him. Harry dropped closer to the ground, but managed to get off a shot. Aiming at the patch of khaki that was visible to him, it immediately turned a muddy crimson. There was a sustained yell, then the man vanished from sight.

  A further barrage from the man’s companion followed, and again they tore up a great deal of the vegetation and bits and pieces of a tree trunk, but they failed to find Harry who kept plunging deeper into the brush. He could not see his attacker to return the fire and so he desisted, hunkering down behind a rock formation sparkling with crystals.

  The three men who’d gone looking for him elsewhere were now stumbling hurriedly in his direction, alerted by the outbreak of gunfire. “Over here! He’s over here someplacel He’s gotten Hank, he’s gotten Hank bad.”

  “Where the fuck is he?” one of the newcomers asked impatiently.

  “Over there somewhere, I told you. Would you look at Hank, please. He’s in bad shape.”

  There was an interval of silence during which Harry guessed Hank’s condition was being examined.

  Then he heard an angry shout. “What are you talking about, you shithead? Hank’s in bad shape? Hank’s not in bad shape. Hank’s fucking dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Dead, what did you think he was, sleeping? Where is this fucker?”

  Harry had an urge to move forward, because he still could only hear them, and he wanted a view as well. But it was an urge he suppressed, moving would only disclose his position.

  In any case, soon enough they were mobilized sufficiently to resume their search for him. But they were a lot more cautious now, keeping low, spreading out so that no one was too close to his companion.

  Of the four, one was emboldened to advance faster than the others. Maybe he was under the impression he’d be awarded with a medal of some kind if he personally vanquished Harry.

  Harry let him get close. He was hopeful he could lure his friends within range too. Taking them out one at a time was going to be a tedious, and potentially more dangerous business.

  The lead man, however, stopped abruptly as though he sensed he was in jeopardy. He waited until the other three had caught up with him. “What is it?” one of them asked.

  The lead man held up his hand, indicating silence. He motioned two men forward and directed them to form a circle. Because he was completely vulnerable from the rear, this was exactly what Harry feared.

  He had to stop them, and he did this by the simple expedient of firing in their path.

  “Get the fuck back here!” the lead man ordered. “Don’t fire, it’s no use firing, you can’t hit him, get back here!”

  But the others weren’t listening. They opened up with a furious assault that accomplished nothing. The rounds continued to be deflected by the rock.

  Though it meant briefly exposing his head to view, Harry took aim and fired back.

  One man spun around, clutching his leg, and tumbled into the undergrowth. A second did some kind of a dance and threw down his gun. Harry had to duck down too quickly to be able to puzzle out whether the man was hit or whether he’d suddenly lost his nerve.

  There was a great deal of shouting and confusion, but no more firing. Harry risked raising his head again. What he saw surprised him. Two men were lying prostrate, moaning with pain, while the other two were tearing back through the woods, either to obtain help, or else just to get to somewhere safe.

  Seeing his opportunity, Harry broke cover and headed across the practice range, zigzagging as he did so simply as a precaution, but he drew no fire.

  The door to the shelter was bolted and even a .44 was not about to force it open. After all, it had been designed to resist an atomic blast. But Harry was not discouraged. He had a feeling that very shortly he would gain entrance to the shelter without having to storm in.

  He chose to conceal himself behind a corrugated shed in which were stored tools and farming implements.

  Within a couple of minutes, the same two men he’d seen fleeing the woods reappeared, their faces soaked in perspiration. One of them stepped up to the door of the shelter—a door whose location one had to be sure of as it was camouflaged with grass and sod—and pressed a bell of some kind that Harry had failed to notice. The bell activated an intercom system. While it looked as though the man was speaking to the ground, Harry guessed there was someone responding to him from inside.

  Then, electronically, the door slid open. The two men entered. Harry waited a moment then followed right behind them.

  They didn’t realize he was there at first—not until the second man looked back to see if the door was closing.

  “Don’t say a word and get your hands up,” Harry instructed the pair.

  Because Harry occupied the top stair, he clearly held the most advantageous position. The two men understood their dilemma and complied with his directive.

  Harry didn’t count on the sudden appearance of another man, carrying an Ingram M10 in his hands. The M10 Harry knew was one of those scaled-down submachine guns capable of firing 1200 rounds per minute. Which was more than sufficient to eliminate the threat he posed to the security of the shelter.

  At first, the newcomer failed to notice Harry. His eyes were directed elsewhere. “Doc Pine’s coming along in a minute,” he said. It was only then he gazed up and discovered what had happened.

  His immediate reaction was to raise his gun. He didn’t shoot it—his own men were in the way—but he wanted to make clear he meant business. “Stop right there,” he commanded. “You all stop right there.”

  C H A P T E R

  T h i r t e e n

  The two hostages on the stairs were obviously confused. Harry urged them forward, while their colleague urged them not to move.

  For a couple of seconds, it was a standoff. Then one of the men in front of Harry bounded down to the bottom of the stairs, possibly in expectation his friend might follow, leaving Harry exposed to the murderous fire of the M10.

  But instead his friend spun around, drawing his gun from his belt simultaneously, in an effort to divert Harry’s attention from the man brandishing the submachine gun.

  Harry, however, understood where the greater danger to him lay and leapt to the side just as the man with the M10 opened fire. But where Harry was before he wasn’t now, and consequently, he managed to avoid injury. The steel door above rang noisily with the impact of the rounds hurtling into it.

  With one of his comrades trapped on the stairs, Harry’s assailant couldn’t adjust his aim without risking the death of the wrong man.

  Taking advantage of that fact, Harry threw himself down firing two shots, both of which caught the man at the bottom of the stairs in his gut. His face bore a look of unmistakeable surprise and sudden shock. Somehow, even as he was thrown back against the further wall, he managed to maintain hold of the M10 which he discharged at a furious rate before he died.

  But his aim was way off, which was understandable as his main concern at the moment was getting the business of dying done. Rather than hitting Harry, he cut his friend down, savaging him with a hail of bullets that blew out his vitals, strewing th
em all over the stairway.

  The blood and viscera made the going slippery, but at least Harry encountered no further opposition. Nonetheless, he proceeded with caution, having no idea what had happened to the third member of the party who’d escaped the fate of his two associates. There was no doubt in his mind that there must be others about in this immense subterranean structure. Surely that quack, Dr. Pine, could be expected to turn up, though Harry did not anticipate much of a problem from him.

  He prowled the rooms, keeping close to the walls and using the shadows to obscure his presence whenever possible. Muffling his own footsteps, he listened attentively for any sound that might give away the presence of the opposition. But the only sound he was conscious of was the sound of his own rapid breathing.

  No one seemed to be around. Had everyone fled as soon as they’d heard the exchange of gunfire by the entrance?

  Then he stopped. He was sure he’d heard something. He was standing by a room so jammed full of chests and cabinets and old grandfather clocks it was almost impossible to get a sense of the dimensions of this room. Then he heard a hacking cough.

  He sprang forward, hoping for the element of surprise, the .44 cocked and leveled in his hands, ready to blow away anyone who posed resistance.

  When he raised his eyes, he found himself looking into the deadest pair of eyes he’d ever beheld on the face of someone still among the living.

  Someone coughed again. Harry turned to see Dr. Pine. He was seated by a canopied bed and on the bed lay Grant Turner.

  “Say hello to Mr. Turner,” Dr. Pine said matter-of-factly. “Mr. Turner is unable to say hello back, I am afraid. Actually, Mr. Turner is unable to say much of anything at all.”

  Harry stepped closer to the bed. Turner’s eyes fixed him with a blank but unrelenting stare.

  “What happened to him?”

  Pine indicated a small scar near the corner of his eye. “Someone with a grudge against the founder of The Saving Remnant apparently stuck a very sharp object into his brain. It didn’t kill him, but it seems to have succeeded in making Mr. Turner a vegetable. He has lost much of his motor function along with his speech. It is impossible to tell whether he is aware of his surroundings or not. I fear he’ll have to be consigned into an institution soon because I am not of the age where I can care for him with the proper attention he needs. But for now, I decided to leave him be. He so loves these antiques of his. And if there is a sudden attack by the Russians, you see, he’ll be safe here.”

  Harry averted his eyes from the hard dead stare of the brain-damaged Turner. He observed that Pine, in his own peculiar way, had withdrawn from reality. He had not so much as remarked upon the gunshots he must have heard earlier. It probably made no difference to him what happened now that his leader was incapacitated.

  “Who did this, do you know?”

  Pine shrugged. “There were no witnesses, but my guess is that it was one of Mr. Turner’s foremost disciples.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Mr. James William Gallant. Mr. Turner always called him Jimmy. Never call somebody Jimmy if they are likely to think you’re patronizing them.”

  “Gallant,” Harry muttered under his breath. Always goddamn Gallant, one step ahead of him. “Where is he now?”

  “Quite frankly, I don’t know. If he could speak perhaps he’d tell you,” Pine said, gesturing to the silent figure in the bed. “But since that is clearly impossible, I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He coughed again, then apologized. “I have a frightful cold.” To dramatize this, he blew long and hard into a dirty handkerchief. “I suspect Mr. Gallant has established himself in compatible surroundings. He looks a great deal different from when you last laid eyes on him.”

  “How different?”

  “Very. I did some cosmetic surgery on him that however minor has dramatically altered his appearance. Come over here and I’ll show you.”

  He guided Harry over to a Charles Rennie Mackintosh tea table and proceeded to open an oversized manila pad. “Have you a pen? I will make a sketch.”

  Harry lent him his pen. The doctor held it over the paper for an instant as though he were trying to recall exactly what changes he’d effected on Gallant.

  It was at that point Harry became aware that somebody had just come into the room. He glanced behind him just as the last soldier of The Saving Remnant fired at him with a .38. The bullet grazed Harry’s shoulder, searing him and loosening a trickle of blood down his right arm.

  Harry still had the .44 in his grip. He dropped to the floor and fired back. There was a furious exchange. The man with the .38 was firing not at Harry directly but rather was trying to pin him down while he sought cover.

  But the hapless Dr. Pine didn’t react fast enough. Harry took hold of his arm to pull him down. But as Pine responded, he was struck three times in succession by the .38. Two of the rounds were hardly critical, but the third entered his right eye and lodged in his brain. The doctor remained upright, but blood was running out of his nostrils and when he opened his mouth, as though he had something more he wished to say, blood poured out. Almost as an afterthought, he collapsed to the floor and with a strangled gasp, gave up the struggle to hold onto his life.

  All this while Harry continued to return the fire. He ceased the moment he lost sight of his assailant. Presumably, he’d found cover behind one of the chests. Harry waited, prepared for a further onslaught. Nothing happened. He listened, but heard nothing.

  Finally, his impatience got the best of him, and throwing caution to the wind, he rushed down to the other end of the room.

  Still nothing. Presently, he discovered the reason. Although he hadn’t realized it at the time, he’d managed to hit the man and like a wounded cat, he was looking for cover.

  The man was in the process of dying. Thrashing in a deepening pool of his own blood, there was nothing to be done for him. The man died.

  Harry returned to have a last look at the doctor. There was on his face an expression of strange amusement as if it were no great catastrophe to depart the world so messily, without a chance to compose oneself and put the final touches on one’s life. The blank piece of paper on which he’d intended to render the face of the altered James Gallant reproached Harry with its emptiness.

  Now he was alone. Or almost alone, because Turner was still in the bed. There was no telling whether he was aware of the gun battle that had occurred all around him or whether being aware of it, it mattered much to him.

  Somewhere, Harry guessed there would have to be a record of where Gallant had gone. There had to be at least some shred of evidence to explain the connection between Turner and Gallant. There must be a reason why Gallant had chosen to break with his benefactor and leave him as a vegetable.

  There were papers, an incredible number of them. With Germanic efficiency, Turner had catalogued every object d’art, every painting, every cabinet, every lamp, ashtray, and shard of pottery that had come into his possession over the years. There were papers listing the value of his acquisitions and there were even papers which recorded where they were all acquired. They constituted a self-indictment of massive proportions since they were tantamount to an admission of theft on a grand scale. Obviously, Turner no longer had to worry about facing a court of law. No imprisonment could match the one he suffered from now.

  Predictably, there were thousands of old Saving Remnant newsletters and a book full of aphorisms and theories that Turner had self-published and called The Turner Thesis for a New Age.

  Yet nothing he could find among all these documents proved remotely helpful to him. The hours passed as he continued to pore over the records and his concentration began wavering. To have come so far, to have fought so hard, and to still come up with nothing. The frustration and anger were getting to him.

  It was then he came upon a folder containing several 8½ x 11-inch glossies. Each of them depicted a mansion or the grounds of an estate. He surmised these were photographs of the residences which T
urner had chosen to plunder. One photograph in particular caught his eye, but he was unable at first to say why. He went through the batch quickly, but he kept coming back to the same one.

  Although, he was generally unacquainted with the land holdings of the very rich, he was almost certain he’d been to the place revealed in this photograph. It showed a rambling white house, with two large wings on either end, overlooking a body of water.

  Then it came to him. It was Jay Silk’s estate. He’d seen it only once, and then at night, when he’d driven Sheila and her daughter there. But the more he gazed at the photograph, the more he was sure he was right.

  Promise or no promise, he was going up to Silk’s estate that very night.

  On his way out he took a last good look at the man in the bed.

  “Nice doing business with you, Mr. Turner,” he said, knowing the authorities would find him.

  And while he didn’t glance back, he had every reason to believe those dead eyes were following him out of the room.

  C H A P T E R

  F o u r t e e n

  Each room of the Silk mansion could have been installed in a museum and protected from the soiled hands of the public by satin ropes drawn across the doorways. The study, for instance, contained several Italian and French bronzes dating back to the Renaissance. One outstanding piece stood on the white travertine coffee table and it, alone, was probably worth close to a quarter of a million dollars. Even with all the knowledge Gallant had amassed in his time with Turner, he could not begin to estimate the worth of the 17th Century tapestries draping from the walls.

  Since it was no longer a matter of any relevance to use his knowledge in the expectation of pulling a grand heist some night, he decided to make it work for him in another way.

  Although he kept his comments to a minimum, and never tried too openly to impress his employer, he let it be known he had more than a passing acquaintance with the artworld. One morning, he casually inquired of Silk where he’d obtained the 19th Century silk panel Russian screen that was employed to partition one of the larger rooms in the right wing of the house.