by Dane Hartman
The problem was seeing where all this blood was coming from because of the jacket he wore. But Harry had no doubt that Loomis had been knifed. There was of course no telling who’d been responsible. Everyone at the bar looked equally innocent—and equally guilty—their eyes were all fixed on the uncertain progress Loomis was making toward the exit. It was as though he felt he could be free of his pain if he could only get some fresh air. This therapy would not be sufficient. Not that it mattered. Loomis did not have enough energy left in him to attain the door. He stopped, turned again so as to face the Winnicker’s regulars expectantly waiting for his death. Then, drawing himself up, he seemed about to curse them all for their iniquity. But when he opened his mouth to speak the words he got out were submerged in a bubble of blood that smeared his lips and chin all at once. With a final shudder he crumpled to the floor. Even then he seemed not to have made his mind up about dying; he was on his knees, like a penitent at confession; his eyes were closed but you could see he was still living because tears—of pain, of anger, of regret—still leaked from them. He even managed to wipe his mouth free of some of the blood with the back of his shirtsleeve in an attempt to recapture some shred of dignity. That done, he decided all at once to give up. He died like that right on his knees.
“We can call the cops now,” the proprietor, a lug of a man with a Texan hat and a bountiful beard, informed the bartender. Harry had the impression that incidents like this were not all that infrequent. As soon as he’d made his announcement—which was directed to the customers as much as to the bartender—the bar began to clear.
Harry had not moved the whole time. There’d been nothing he could have done for Loomis, and while he had his suspicions as to which one of the men here had knifed him, he could not be absolutely certain. Moreover, the murderer would have backup, and Harry was not prepared for a struggle against such formidable odds. This was enemy territory. He did much better on neutral turf.
But he did have to assume that Loomis was killed for his habit of talking too much to the wrong people. Being one of those wrong people, Harry recognized that he too was in danger. Not here though. They—whoever “they” were—would not risk perpetrating two murders in the same bar on the same evening. Especially when one of them would involve a cop—even if that cop was on suspension.
Once beyond the vicinity of Winnicker’s though, it was natural to expect his unknown antagonists to strike.
No matter. He had no impulse to linger on here, hoping they’d all go away by the time he left. He was not, however, fast enough out the door to avoid the police coming in. They’d responded to the belated call far more quickly than Harry had anticipated. He had not wished to deal with his colleagues at this juncture.
Especially with Bob Togan.
Togan looked so astounded to see Harry here, of all places, that he gave him a far more searching glance than he did the corpse at his feet. He might be viewing an apparition. “Harry?” he inquired tentatively, possibly hopeful that he might be mistaken, that it might be somebody who just looked like Harry.
“How are you doing, Bob?”
It was Harry. Togan seemed gravely disappointed.
“You wouldn’t want to tell me what you’re doing here, would you?”
He did not sound remotely hopeful.
“No.”
But on the other hand he wasn’t prepared for such a brusque rebuff. “Wait a minute, you can’t just walk out on me like this! What happened here?”
“You can see for yourself. Some joker took a knife to this guy on the floor. His name is Chuck Loomis, did time for assault once. Probably a drug runner. Who did it is something I couldn’t rightly tell you. Now you know all I know.”
Togan clearly meant to question those few customers remaining in the bar, but he would obtain nothing from them and he probably already knew that. The murderer had fled, and all anyone would ever say was that they’d seen nothing. Why make such a big deal about another barroom brawl? And that would be the end of it.
Harry stepped around Loomis because it was not possible to step over him. “Keep me out of this one, Bob,” he said in parting.
“I’m always keeping you out of shit, Harry!” Togan called after him. “Why don’t you do me a favor and keep yourself out now and then?”
Harry didn’t reply, he was already out the door.
C H A P T E R
T e n
Though the sun continued to blaze in the west, a pale orange star in a grayish summer sky, darkness had already taken root here on this obscure street. Taller buildings guarded it from too much light. In the near distance Harry could make out the bellow of foghorns as the ferries sluggishly made their way into port.
Harry had to interpret the shadows—somewhere along this block he was certain Chuck Loomis’ killer was waiting for him. His car was the only vehicle parked up ahead. It was as conspicuous as its owner.
That nothing happened to him so surprised him that he began to think he’d done something wrong. The possibility of a bomb, planted in his car occurred to him, but he would just have to risk it.
No sooner had he inserted his key into the lock than a sharp ringing sound disrupted the lazy silence of the street. Harry dropped down instantly, sliding underneath his Buick—or rather the SFPD’s Buick because they had neglected to take it away from him for the duration when they had relieved him of his badge. It still took him a moment longer to identify the sound. It had been a single gunshot richocheting off the roof of the car. His assailant was positioned on top of one of the buildings, overlooking the street.
But which one? From his poor vantage point he couldn’t even raise his eyes high enough to see past the third stories of the tenement houses.
Harry reached up and extracted the key from the lock. The gesture did not provoke the gunman into firing again. With the key in hand, Harry inched his way under the car, keeping his chest against the pebbly bed of the street, until he reached the other side.
But just as he brought his head into view two rounds plowed into the door he’d been about to open, causing two indentations, one above the other in the steel surface. Harry sensibly withdrew under the car.
These shots, Harry surmised, came not from a rooftop but from someone on the ground, possibly concealed in a thick ailanthus bush on the opposite side of the street.
He did not move immediately. And by the same token the unseen gunmen did not fire. The squad cars might still be parked in front of Winnicker’s at the other end of the block, for all Harry knew, but he could not depend on Togan for help. Actually, he’d prefer not to involve Togan at all if he could help it.
Instead, he listened carefully for the sound of any approaching car. Although it would provide him with only a very few seconds, a passing vehicle would still give him cover. Unfortunately, the street wasn’t heavily trafficked, so it required several minutes before he’d managed to get his key in the door, unlock it, and withdraw the key again so as not to alert his friend tucked away in the ailanthus bush as to what he had planned.
He felt that he had some luck coming to him by now, and his reckoning proved right. For now there appeared, with rumbling motor and spewing exhaust stack, a huge mother of a truck: it was bearing a refrigeration unit that seemed half a block long. Also, it wasn’t moving very fast.
Delighted with this unexpected opportunity, Harry slid out from under his shelter and threw open the door, closing it just as he pitched down in the seat, careful to keep his head out of view from either side.
When the truck had passed, and there was no fire, Harry realized that his ruse had worked. Either that or his assailants had given up and gone away entirely. Well, he would soon find out.
There was no way of keeping the ignition muffled once he’d started it. But that didn’t worry him. He got the Buick into motion, his foot firmly on the gas, his hands gripping the bottom crescent of the steering wheel. All he could see was a lot of sky through the windshield and not much street. Never mind—the last thi
ng he was concerned about was crashing into something—so long as it wasn’t something with sufficient resistance to stop him for good.
The glass on his right side did not particularly enjoy welcoming high-calibered rounds, which had a tendency to turn it into the consistency of cellophane. The glass on his left side wasn’t any more receptive. Well, that answers that, Harry thought, they’re still out there.
The windshield was transformed within moments into an elaborate spiderweb, riddled with holes. Glass splinters bombarded Harry as he attempted to guide the Buick into safer territory. Out of the corner of his eye he observed himself in the rearview mirror. He saw a face he barely recognized: it was the face of a haggard man whose flesh kept bursting out in spots of red; it was as though he were sweating blood. He decided that he’d rather not look.
The gunman on the ground, possibly realizing that he wasn’t going to hit Harry, was discharging his fire into the Buick’s tires with such fierce accuracy that the car listed right as the rubber on both wheels on that side blew. Bad enough driving a car without seeing where you’re going; it was worse with two tires disabled.
The Buick banged along noisily, its speed reduced dramatically. Still, Harry was able to get beyond the range of fire, though this did not mean that he was necessarily safe. He did, however, enjoy the luxury of raising his head above the dashboard. Not that this did much good since with the windshield so cracked and ruptured, it was a little like trying to see through gauze.
Which might have explained why he failed to notice the red Impala that was waiting for him at the next intersection. It shot out as soon as the Buick came into sight, blocking Harry’s path long enough for the man on the passenger side to fire his 30-30 straight into the car.
But this blast, while tearing a huge portion of the battered windshield from its moorings and further crisscrossing Harry’s equally battered face with cuts, did not halt Harry’s progress.
To be sure, the concussive roar of the shotgun explosion and the terrific protest of glass and metal it caused was shock enough to Harry—especially because he had no way of knowing it was coming—but his instinctive reaction was to depress the gas pedal-straight to the floor. The wounded Buick, with one final burst of energy, spun crazily into the intersection and caught the Impala in its rear at such a high speed that it locked into it securely and, more than that, gripped it in its motion so that the Impala was forced to turn with it.
As the driver of the Impala fought to extricate himself, he misjudged his distance or his timing or something and jumped the curb of a traffic island, sweeping a traffic light into the street. But this maneuver, however clumsy, did not succeed in freeing the Buick which dragged along behind it, swinging uncontrollably to the right and to the left.
Harry, having given up on the idea of trying to drive his car any longer, had simply crouched down, waiting for the buffeting to come to an end so he could leap out.
Police sirens could now be heard, a thickening dissonant chorus directly behind them.
This must have decided the two men in the Impala. Recognizing that they could not dispose of the albatross the Buick represented, they brought their vehicle to a halt dead center of the street and got out, presuming they had sufficient time to escape on foot.
As soon as Harry felt the Buick come at last to rest, he forced open the door and half-jumped, half-fell out of the car. Clearing his eyes of the blood that tended to mist them over, heedless of the myriad pinpricks of pain that attacked every inch of his face, he moved agilely, gripping his new Magnum in hand. Time, he thought, to break it in.
The Impala’s driver saw him first. He was doing something you should never do—look back to see if someone’s gaining on you. Harry was gaining on him. The driver did not expect to see Harry alive. Harry did not necessarily look alive with all the blood coating his face and threatening to stain his shirt and jacket, but he certainly moved as though he were. And no ghost had the aim he did. The driver learned this to his dismay as a round from the Magnum caught him in the side, between the ninth and tenth rib. The force took him and flung him into the air, then dropped him unceremoniously on the cement. His companion, still with the shotgun, stopped, astonished to see how things were developing.
“Sumabitch, sumabitch!” he kept yelling at Harry, outraged that he should still be alive. He turned his 30-30 on him and discharged it while still in motion with the result that he succeeded only in adding a crater-sized hole to the traffic island.
Harry, having a great deal of respect for the 30-30, had flattened himself just in case and now had to waste time in picking his body up and doing something significant with it. The man with the shotgun was sprinting in the direction of the bay. It was obvious he was too preoccupied by the business of fleeing to fire his shotgun. Actually, he no longer seemed conscious of the shotgun in his hand though it was not an object easily forgotten about.
People crossing his path stopped and gazed at him inquisitively. Most, however, were smart enough to stand aside and watch him from a respectable distance. Those who didn’t see him coming found him barreling down on them, ready to knock anyone aside who got in his way.
But if a man carrying a loaded shotgun was a spectacle, Harry was no less of one, his face a mask of blood, his clothes smeared with more of the same. One look at him and you’d think his injuries were sure to be fatal.
Sirens continued to signal the impending presence of the police, but thus far no one could see them. They were still back at the traffic island scrutinizing the damage to the Buick and Impala and to the Impala’s now-deceased driver.
The pursuit continued beneath an overpass. It was darker here and emptier, filled with the rumblings of the traffic piling off the Oakland Bay Bridge into the city. For several moments Harry lost sight of his quarry. Leaning in against one of the massive cement columns that served to prop up the overpass, Harry strained to see what had happened to him.
He was rewarded for his vigilance. The gunman had now broken for an exit ramp, apparently oblivious of the fact that there was no space provided on the ramp for pedestrians. What’s more, he was going against the traffic.
Harry chased him, hoping that he could bring this to a halt soon because his energy was rapidly depleting.
The gunman’s sudden appearance on the off-ramp was greeted by a cacaphony of horns as surprised motorists tried to avoid running him over. Which was too bad; Harry wouldn’t have minded if somebody did his work for him this time.
When the gunman looked back and saw Harry he repeated his favorite phrase: “Sumabitch! Sumabitch!” he called and drew to a stop right at the crest of the ramp. With only a foot or so between him and the oncoming traffic he loosened his 30-30 on Harry who was advancing toward him.
Harry couldn’t duck, didn’t have the time. Instead he had to do a quick step to the right which put him in line with the cars rushing down from the freeway. A green Chrysler with a U-Haul van trailing behind it screeched crazily as the driver sought to brake before he found Harry under his tires. The look he gave Harry was almost as murderous as the shell from the 30-30 which pulverized a portion of one of the cement pillars—but not enough to jeopardize the stability of the overpass.
“What the fuck you think you’re doing?” the driver of the Chrysler shouted, somehow failing to register the percussive report of the shotgun blast.
Harry had no time to make the necessary explanations. He darted around to the other side of the Chrysler just as a member of a bike club, festooned with leather, his face hidden behind faintly ominous, but also faintly silly, goggles, came zooming down the ramp so fast that he could not stop in time and crashed headlong into the rear of the U-Haul. He was thrown forward and up and tumbled in the air like a young bird first experimenting with its wings. When he came down he cracked first his helmet, then his skull, and lay unmoving in the pool of blood that was leaking out of both his ears.
More cars were coming down the ramp, and their drivers weren’t any better prepared to find
their passage blocked than the motorcyclist had been.
One car after another began to go into a skid, then plow into the vehicle ahead of it. The driver from the Chrysler emerged, horror-struck to see what had happened to the cyclist. He would have abused Harry for causing all this carnage were Harry still available. But Harry was already heading up the ramp, ignoring the pile-up that was developing as bumpers collided and taillight glass smashed all to the accompanying din of blaring horns and screaming drivers who couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten into this mess or how they were going to get out of it.
The gunman was now running on the freeway, keeping as close to its perimeter as he could. To give himself time, he would at intervals stop and fire his shotgun. He clearly did not expect to hit Harry—his aim was far too wide of its target—but he did force Harry to drop down.
What the gunman did not anticipate was the appearance of a passing police cruiser. But there it was, its blinking signal light slicing him with blades of red. The cruiser pulled up right beside him. The gunman didn’t wait to see what the two officers inside would do. Instead, forgetting Harry for the time being, he levelled his 30-30 straight into the window on the passenger side of the cruiser and fired.
There was no telling what the cops had been thinking when they pulled over. Possibly they’d just noticed a man running on the bridge and hadn’t noticed the shotgun. But it didn’t matter now. The blast took the first officer directly in the face, blowing his head clean out the other window and onto the bridge. The same blast caught his partner in the neck and upper chest, its force scarcely diminished by the flesh and bone it had first to travel through. Both men were dead instantly.
All this while, Harry had gained on the man. He must have sensed this for he swung the 30-30 around and fired again, not aiming, just assuming that Harry would be somewhere within his sights. He did not realize that Harry had circled around and, veering out into the traffic, had crept up behind the other side of the police cruiser.
