by Dane Hartman
Then one of the men downrange from Harry allowed his head to appear above the craggy rock formation behind which he’d been hiding; he was obviously inspecting the territory, looking for a way out. The sirens were growing louder. The police were a factor to take into consideration right about this time.
Harry risked breaking his own cover, possessed by a compulsion to put a stop to this man’s flight. He had a sudden vision of himself standing in the middle of the knoll explaining to his colleagues just what had happened and where in hell everyone had gone to and why he couldn’t save one for questioning—because he suspected that the man flattened out in the dirt back there had long since given up any notion of surviving.
The man Harry had elected to take in saw him, couldn’t help but see him with the noise he was producing. Not much noise maybe but enough—crackling twigs underfoot, scraping past bushes that refused to let anyone go by without announcing their passage—but there was nothing Harry could do about it, not if he wanted to maintain his speed.
The man and a friend of his who’d secreted himself among the fossilized crevices of the rock directed their fire at Harry, assuming he was leading some kind of attack. Their shots made the going treacherous but Harry, by zigzagging and dodging, escaped them, sustaining only rough scratches from the brambles and thorns that assaulted him in the dark, scraping skin from his face and hands.
Across the knoll, surprised and probably incredibly confused by this unexpected onslaught, the opposition opened fire—not at Harry but at the rock formation. The men they were targeting were now so preoccupied with bringing down Harry they had thrown caution to the wind.
One of the two shooting at Harry cried out. He then cried out again as if to reaffirm his pain. A .38 had caught him in the side of the face, gone right through one cheek, clipping off a good bit of bridgework, then gone out the other, leaving this great big bloody hole through which even the slight steady breeze off the bay could whistle. Though the wound was ugly it wasn’t lethal, but that did not make any difference to the gunman insofar as the pain was concerned. He dropped his weapon and pressed both hands to his injuries. His friend had to go it alone.
The friend did not much like proceeding with the solo act since his only intention had been to escape from the field in the first place. But with gunfire plaguing him from across the knoll and now with Harry diving onto a steeply angled moss-covered rock, threatening with his Magnum, escape was out of the question.
Harry, taking advantage of his distraction, gained ground, flattened himself out, then rushed him again. The rounds he got off forced his target to lower himself back into his Ice Age souvenir. “Shut the fuck up,” Harry could hear him urging his bleeding friend who was able to release just a sad whimper, a sob caught perpetually in the throat. A sound like that could set a man on edge.
At last the poor trapped bastard couldn’t take it any longer. He decided he might as well chance crawling out of his lair in hope nobody would notice or noticing, give a damn.
But as he did so, two rounds—neither of them Harry’s because Harry wasn’t in any position to hit him—struck him from the side. One was supposed to. It broke a few ribs in its journey, then got stuck somewhere in the right lung. The other had ricocheted up from a stone and caught him in the groin. You couldn’t say that one killed him and the other didn’t; he might have lived with just one of the injuries, but they had acted in concert and sucked the life right out of him. It seemed like going through a lot of trouble to die.
From the trees across the knoll flashlight beams shone, prying apart the darkness, separating the shadows of vegetation from the shadows of men with guns. Dogs barked furiously, enraged at having been dragged from the comfort of their kennels for this sort of outing where people were as liable to shoot them as their masters. And shoot they did, disregarding warnings that it was the police they were dealing with now and not just another bunch of hoodlums looking for new ways to die.
Harry found himself, uncharacteristically, isolated from the action. Didn’t like it one bit. Leaving the cheekless man where he was, sponging up the copious flow of blood with hands caked by dirt, Harry scrambled across the knoll. It wasn’t completely safe—bullets that hadn’t found a home yet had a tendency to puncture holes in the grassy stretch of land—but no one was firing at Harry. No one seemed to remember him or realize he was there.
Harry got a rhythm going; the energy that propelled him could have gotten a funeral limousine through the Indianopolis 500 in record time, and he had within the span of a minute gotten across the open space. But even so the battle, between the surviving gunmen and the police, seemed to be drifting away from him. He couldn’t quite close in on it.
For a few moments everything was chaos—dogs were howling and men were shouting orders and abusing God, mother, and country. Flashlights went on and off in a weird progression. At intervals Harry thought he could see what was happening, only to have the visual blotted out completely, leaving behind a confused audio of hoarse voices and gun reports.
When the lights fell his way Harry sometimes caught a glimpse of a man or rather a shadow that looked and moved like a man. Harry held his fire, not wishing to shoot one of his own men. That was the last thing he needed to do, given how precarious his situation was already down at headquarters.
From deep within the cluster of trees to his right came a booming voice, amplified by a bullhorn: “This is the San Francisco Police Department. We order you to throw down your weapons and give yourselves up.” Despite the authority invested in the command, the only response was a noisy burst of fire.
Now the man Harry’d seen before was thrown in sharp relief by a flashlight beam. To escape the incriminating light he raced downhill, panicking before a hail of bullets could catch up with him.
He had a mistaken idea of where safety lay.
“That’s it right there,” Harry called to him. his Magnum ready to tear a hole through the man’s chest.
The man wanted to stop, but the momentum of his flight prevented him. He finally skittered to a halt, casting aside his gun and raising his hands in surrender. He was a smart fellow, Harry thought, to recognize when the odds no longer favored him.
Up close, the gunman looked like an overworked bank teller. He could have used a bit more sun. There was no fear on his face though, only deep disgruntlement that things should have worked out this way.
There were a few more gunshots, then nothing, just the cicadas who obviously weren’t about to let human beings upset their nightly songfest.
A number of uniformed men sprang into view, their faces still hidden in shadows so that Harry couldn’t yet distinguish one from another. Gradually they were close enough for Harry to identify them. They advanced cautiously, fearful that the danger wasn’t over.
Bob Togan, a sergeant who’d traded vice for this sort of circus, took one look at Harry and shook his head. “You,” he said simply. It wasn’t that he had expected Harry—the dispatcher hadn’t mentioned Harry’s name in the report—it was just that somehow seeing Harry didn’t really surprise him. Harry had this odd habit of turning up in odd places. Places where there was likely to be a good deal of blood in the vicinity.
“That’s right. How are you doing, Bob?”
“Well as can be expected.” He gave the prisoner a derisory glance. “You read him his rights?”
“I’m not exactly on the force now.”
“Oh no? Could have had me fooled.” Togan knew very well what was happening with Harry; he just enjoyed feigning ignorance. The prisoner meanwhile was looking from one man to the other, confused over this exchange.
Across the knoll a couple of officers were inspecting the damage around the rock formation. The cicadas were experiencing some competition now from ambulance sirens, which made a mockery of the pleasant quiet you expect from a park at night.
Togan ordered the prisoner led off. He wanted him out of his sight quickly. “You have any idea what this was all about, Harry?”
/> “Can’t say as I do.”
“Some help you are. Where are you going?”
“I got an appointment to keep.”
“Oh yeah, what does she look like? You can’t always be doing this sort of shit, not all the time.”
Harry ignored him. “One thing, Bob. When you file your report I wish you’d neglect to mention my name.”
Togan laughed. “Hey, what’s wrong, don’t want the glory that’s coming to you?”
“You know what you can do with your glory, Bob.”
“I got an idea.” He was still laughing. Harry was merging with the dark; that’s one thing Harry did terrifically, fading out of sight so you’d never know he was there to begin with.
C H A P T E R
F i v e
Bill Evans was on the radio now; a lulling ballad for lovers you’ll never see again. The music was soothing after the sound and light show in Golden Gate Park. Something like a headache was at work in Harry’s skull, a dull throb that hadn’t decided whether it wanted to become a full-fledged headache or fade away entirely.
Bill Evans gave way to a news commentator with a voice that went well with a final beer at the end of the night. Only it wasn’t the end of the night. It was, in fact, just shy of ten o’clock. The events of the last hour had sufficiently drained Harry so that he considered putting off his visit to the Hyacinth or The Sojourner or whatever the hell they were calling it tonight. He had an idea of taking in a movie or else of going to bed. But he knew very well that he would find his way to the hijacked yacht—that is if Keepnews was correct in surmising that it was hijacked. Harry had this thing about obligation; it was his personal code. It didn’t much coincide with the way the department thought about how people should behave. Actually, it didn’t much coincide with the way his friends thought either, which may have explained why he had very few friends. But whether they were friends or enemies they held the same opinion when it came to Harry: one day his sense of obligation was going to kill him.
As he drove back toward the marina he was subjected to no further distractions such as the one that had gotten him off on the road into Golden Gate Park. Had there been any he might have foregone the temptation and continued on anyway; he’d had enough for one night.
And that may have explained why he failed to notice he was being followed. There was someone way in back of him in a BMW; it had a clean cocoa color to it and was not the kind of vehicle people ordinarily employ for the purposes of tailing a person.
But it didn’t matter. The BMW was way in back of Harry, proceeding at a very leisurely speed. Harry was in no hurry, neither was the tail.
Harry parked his car a couple of blocks from the marina. He wanted to walk. He also didn’t wish to make his interest in the marina known without doing some preliminary reconnaissance. All the documents and photographs relating to the structure and design of the craft in question were hidden under the car seat. Harry didn’t need them anymore, the significant particulars were in his throbbing head.
The BMW pulled up about a block farther from where Harry had parked. Its occupant—and there was only one occupant—waited for a couple of minutes before getting out and having a look around.
Like a restless nighttime stroller, Harry wandered past the marina, casually observing the yachts on the other side of the fence. In the lights that demarcated the mooring slips he could make out the flybridge of one boat, the pilothouse of another, the empty masts of another. In the dark water that lapped against their hulls the reflections of these boats shimmered magically.
But what struck Harry as odd was that there was no sign of life, none on the boats, none on the docks. There should be some security presence here, he thought, at least a bored watchman doing the rounds. But if he was anywhere nearby he wasn’t bothering to make himself known. Maybe nodded out somewhere, dreaming dreams of the big bucks that could make boats like these happen.
But where among them was the rechristened Hyacinth? From the outside he couldn’t tell. No way to identify these yachts at this distance. He decided he would have to climb over for a better look. He located a portion of the fence that was unexposed by light and maneuvered himself up and over with little difficulty. Didn’t make much noise doing this, but when he was down he looked sharply in all directions, prepared to confront someone who would want to know why he’d chosen to enter the marina in such an unorthodox fashion. But if anyone had noticed Harry he wasn’t troubling himself to step out and talk to him.
All Harry could hear was water lapping the hulls and the rumble of cars passing back and forth on Marina Boulevard. Once or twice he thought he heard the docks creak, but if that’s what they were doing it was on their own volition. No human feet were causing those sounds. No human feet, no human anything.
Harry proceeded farther, drawing closer to the yachts, comparing each one of them to the picture he carried in his head. The cutter he was seeking was not such a unique model that it would easily stand out among the others. But there were certain idiosyncrasies that he’d been instructed by Keepnews to look for. And presumably there was only one boat with the name The Sojourner spelled out on its bow.
It took him a while, but he found it. Whatever its name, it was a beautiful specimen all right. The Hyacinth had been painted white with a trimming on its decks that bore the color of its name. But it wasn’t white any longer. Instead it was a dark blue, the color of sky just before it fades to night. The trimming was submerged under the blue as well. So, Harry thought, probably was the blood.
He stared at the boat for a minute, maybe a bit longer, not sure exactly what he was going to do. In truth, he hadn’t really thought about just how he would obtain the proof Keepnews wanted. He figured it would come to him once he got here: this is called the art of the improviser. But for this short interval his mind was a blank. He seemed to be in neutral. Goddamn motor needs cranking up again, Harry concluded, then went about the business of clambering on board.
With a pocketknife, one of those intricate items of Swiss manufacture equipped with can opener and toothpick, Harry stooped down and began to run the blade along the surface of the deck. One lone light atop the pilothouse provided the only available illumination, but Harry was not exposed by it. In an atmosphere of nearly total silence the scraping blade as it fought against metal sounded much too loud. At intervals Harry would stop and listen closely, but he could only hear the bay water eddying about the boats. His efforts at digging up paint off the deck proved futile. He turned his attention to the railing that ran alongside the stern, probing it with the knife to see if any paint came off.
He was immediately rewarded. Chips of blue flew off as soon as he sank the blade in. Only two coats at most had been applied; what lay beneath was another color, which Harry couldn’t make out with certainty because of the dimness. But he was reasonably sure that it would be purplish in hue—hyacinth.
That might or might not constitute definitive proof. In any case, he wanted to see more. He decided to go below deck. The door to the cabin offered little resistance when he tugged at it; the boat’s most recent owners had been careless about securing it. Darkness greeted him, and a series of steps was barely discernible. Though Harry’s hand found a toggle switch on the wall to his right, one which would probably give him light to see by, he resisted using it. The last thing he needed was to attract unnecessary attention if there were a guard patrolling the slips.
Carefully, to keep from tripping and tumbling into the murk, Harry proceeded down the steps. When he reached bottom his shoes became partially submerged in a soft carpet. He advanced another few paces and promptly bumped into something sharp that caused him to wince and mutter a curse against inanimate objects. Turned out it was a table with metal corners that could prove lethal. God knows what else awaited him in his reconnaissance, but sooner or later he was going to have to risk a light. Otherwise this whole expedition would be futile.
Now the substance underfoot changed consistency. No longer was it carpet,
rather it was dirt, sod. Something leafy brushed against his face, something else with nettles attached raked his arms. For all he knew he could be back in Golden Gate Park again. What the hell was he doing amidst this vegetation? Keepnews, he recalled, liked rare tropical plants and gardening, but he hadn’t told Harry to expect a small jungle—must have slipped his mind.
Harry drew back, finding surer footing on the carpet again. He turned and moved in the other direction, his arms in front of him to give him a sense of what came next. There was, on his left side, a long narrow couch with lots of cushions stacked on it. He kept going and plowed right into something hard. “Shit,” he said pronouncing judgment on this exploration.
What he’d come up against was a bulkhead. Directly below it was a passageway intended for people who needed another four inches or so before they reached Harry’s height. Kneading his bruised forehead, he stooped and made his way through the passageway. He now found himself in the kitchen. There was a small oval window here. It looked out upon the Pacific, not the docks. If a light was possible any place it would be here. All he had to do was find it. After some substantial groping he located the switch. A lamp above the counter eagerly responded, bathing the area in a warm, faintly amber light.
This was sufficient for him to see into the rest of the cabin beyond the passageway. The table was much larger than he’d imagined, the artificial garden, situated midway across the room, much smaller.
He began methodically to open up everything there was to be opened, cabinets, bulkheads, drawers, not certain of exactly what he expected to find but expecting to find something.
What he found, at first, was the sort of paraphernalia he’d have figured a boat like this would be stocked with: utensils, heaters, life preservers, blankets, a weather chart recorder, cans of biochemical gel, a digital depth sounder, a refrigerator cluttered with beer and champagne, tins of coffee. But nothing that could convince a judge that all these things had once belonged to Keepnews. You could fingerprint them of course, but you’d need a warrant simply to get onto the boat. And a warrant would require grounds for reasonable suspicion. Keepnews didn’t have those grounds. Harry had yet to find them.
