by Dane Hartman
“Geez,” he said, looking up at the drain pipe which was intermittently dousing him when the water overflowed. “Why the hell didn’t we stay in the car, Harry?”
“Because the car is on the other side of the market,” Callahan told him, his back flat against the wall of one of the shops which was first to close up. “And that’s where Bender and Tuccio will probably be coming in. And we’d scare them off if they saw us.”
“Wow,” Devlin breathed with feigned awe. “You think of everything, Sherlock.”
Harry smirked, then glanced around the corner to get a good look at the parking lot. Two burly white men in three-piece suits sauntered into the marketplace. “This looks like it,” Harry warned his partner. He cocked his head in the duo’s direction. “Tuccio’s advance guard.”
Devlin gave a low, mock groan. “Why couldn’t we have called in the cavalry on this one, Harry? Or at least some backup troops?” Callahan didn’t bother answering.
They had had nothing in the way of leads except an illegally overheard phone call. If they had tipped their hand to anybody, questions would have been asked. As it was, they would “just happen to be at the right place at the right time thanks to their incredible shadowing techniques.”
As the Inspector watched, the two suited men drifted down the main walkway of the market, which was littered with rejected produce. The rain had done a lot to keep the stench of rotting food from being overpowering, but it couldn’t completely wash away the smell. The duo stopped in the middle of the market and nodded back the way they had come. Appearing near the first stall was Tuccio himself, his gaunt face framed by thin, greasy grey hair sticking out of a nearly new London Fog trench-coat. In his hand, he carried a sumptuous dark red leather attaché case.
As he neared his two bodyguards, another figure detached itself from inside one of the center booths. Coming out from behind two standing crates of nuts was a neatly dressed black man, who stood taller than any of the Caucasians present. He cut a more sophisticated figure as well, wearing dark slacks, a turtleneck and a leather coat. He slipped out between two hanging canvas flaps which made up the side wall and approached the trio.
“Let’s have it,” he demanded, pointing to the briefcase.
“Whatever you say,” Callahan said under his breath. He pulled out his six and a half inch Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum and held it up near his head. Its blue steel gleamed in the hazy morning light.
“Hey, Harry,” Devlin warned, seeing the gun. “You don’t want to spook them.”
“Bender’s been linked to at least a dozen killings,” Callahan whispered back. “If he decides he wants to shoot his way out of here, would you rather your gun be inside your coat or inside your hand?”
To respond, Devlin pulled his own .357 snubnose out of its waist holster.
“Let’s see if we can soothe them with a diplomatic approach,” the Inspector suggested.
He moved out from his hiding place just as both Tuccio’s and Bender’s fingers were wrapped around the case’s handle.
“Excuse me,” Harry said pleasantly. “Does anyone here know the time?”
“Fuck!” Bender bellowed. “This is a set-up!”
As soon as the big black man barked, Tuccio jumped back, the briefcase being pulled out of the hitman’s grip. The smaller conman almost fell into Fatso, causing him to drop the leather bag. The briefcase skittered to the floor and spun in place. Its fall was a signal for the others to start going for their guns. Callahan stopped them cold.
“And this,” said Harry, raising his weapon, “is a .44 Magnum. At this range, it could blow your head clean off. So, unless you’re feeling real lucky, let’s just stay real calm.”
He looked from one man to the next, the long open barrel of the .44 looking like a tunnel leading straight to hell. Each white man dropped his hand from the strike zones of their coats.
Bender wasn’t so easily cowed. His hand stayed inside his leather jacket, where Harry imagined his big fingers were already wrapped around the grip of a heavy automatic. Judging from the size of his well-cut coat, Bender could be carrying anything from a target .22 to a sawed-off shotgun.
“So what do you say, punk?” Harry asked pointedly, the Magnum aimed directly between the black man’s angry eyes. “Do you feel lucky?”
The hitman was angry, but he wasn’t stupid. Certainly not stupid enough to think he could outdraw a .44 which was already pointed at the bridge of his nose. If he thought there might be a chance that Harry’s bluff was worse than his bite, he still might, have tried something, but there was no mistaking Callahan’s expression. Here was a cop who wasn’t reluctant to use ammunition. Harry would shoot first and fill out the report in triplicate later.
Slowly, so very slowly, Bender’s fingers released the edge of his shoulder-holstered weapon and let his hand drift down to his side.
Harry heard Devlin audibly relax by his side. He too had to admit a certain relief inside himself. After all the firefights he had found himself in and all the blood he had been forced to spill, it was nice to think that just once he might be able to bring in all four killers without a shot being fired.
But as soon as that concept was conceived, the possibility was eliminated. Harry was just about to wade into the quartet, when the Produce Market was shattered from behind. The two cops felt the disruption behind them at the same time they heard the whomping crash.
Callahan looked over his shoulder to see a big Lincoln Continental plowing into the first two booths at the edge of the marketplace.
The Ford’s wide shiny grill looked like gritted teeth and its headlights were like two burning sets of angry eyes. It smashed its face into the wood and canvas structures, grinding them under the steel belted radials like a mulch mower. Workers scattered before it and in its wake, leaving their wares to be splattered in a ring around the metal monster.
So much for an easy arrest. It must’ve been Tuccio’s car, driven by a dedicated chauffeur who saw his boss’s trouble and was riding to the rescue. If Harry had been him, he would’ve taken the opportunity to fold his tent and sneak into the night in search of a new boss, but crud like Tuccio usually attracted even less sophisticated associates—the kind who saw a target painted on every man in uniform.
But Harry was not the driver. He was right in the chauffeur’s sightlines, standing square in between the two blazing headlights. The car’s appearance was enough to loosen the cops’ hold on the others. They immediately pushed away from the sight, each pulling a gun from inside their jackets.
Bellowing over the roar of the Lincoln’s engine, Bender produced a brutal looking .45 automatic and tried to blast not Harry, but Tuccio, where he stood.
“You tried to set me up!” he accused over the shattering explosion of the big gun.
Tuccio didn’t hear any of it, but his attention was diverted from the approaching car long enough for him to see one of his bodyguards taking the slug that was meant for him. Bender was throwing himself backward over the counter of the shack he had emerged from even as he was firing, while the guard had been moving to protect his boss. Tuccio watched as the guard took the .45 slug in the left side of his chest, spinning him totally around as a stream of blood spit out of his breast and spread across his shirt.
The guard’s own shiny .357 plated revolver skipped across the black concrete floor before he fell heavily to his knees, then flopped onto his back, his arms wide, his head smacking sickeningly onto the hard ground cover. Tuccio stumbled back, giving Harry a fleeting clear shot at the retreating black man.
Ignoring the oncoming car, Harry shouted “Stop!” and set the .44’s sights on the dropping Bender. He pulled the trigger just as Tuccio’s second guard got in the way. The man had been following his fallen partner, only to catch Harry’s bullet in the neck. Sure enough, just as Harry said, the high caliber slug was enough to rip his head right off at that range.
Tuccio was splattered by his second guard’s guts, which drove him back even fa
ster. The second guard moved one step forward without his head, then did a perfect swan dive forward to slam atop his dead comrade.
“Harry, look out!” Callahan heard Devlin screaming from behind him. “Forget it, just get out of the way!”
He spun to see the market’s booths being slammed aside by the Continental, which was practically on top of him. Devlin had scrambled aside as soon as it had appeared, while Tuccio and Bender had retreated far enough to be out of its way. Only Harry was in danger of its grinding wheels and battered grill.
Even if he had thrown himself to the side, it probably wouldn’t be far or fast enough to avoid being run down. And there certainly wasn’t any way to outrun the speeding monstrosity, so Harry charged forward to meet the car head on.
The unexpectedness of this motion caused Tuccio’s chauffeur to slam on the brakes, which sent the car skidding forward, its already gathered speed too great for it to stop. After two hard strides forward, Harry jumped up, his right foot hitting the car’s hood flat.
From there it seemed there was nothing left for the cop to do but keep barreling ahead, meeting the car’s windshield with his legs and somersaulting brutally across the rear of the auto, winding up a heap on the hard concrete behind. The car screeched forward, twisting to the side, but once Harry had hopped on, he seemed to disappear.
The driver heard no nasty slamming across his roof and no sickening splat behind. Getting the skidding car under control, he looked bewilderedly around. The Inspector was nowhere in sight. It was possible the chauffeur thought that the cop had been thrown out of range.
The three men outside the car saw what had happened, Harry had hopped up to the auto’s hood and vaulted from there to a hanging hook above the speeding vehicle. Harry pulled himself up, his knees bent, just above the car’s roof, as the vehicle skidded to the side just beneath his shoes.
As soon as it passed, Harry let go of the hook. It was attached to a spring controlled pulley unit, so that it held Harry high enough long enough before drooping slightly. It now hung like a giant fishing pole from heaven. Callahan hit the floor with both feet, kept falling forward and somersaulted across the floor away from Tuccio and Bender.
The two criminals were keeping each other busy. Tuccio was on one side of the collapsed shack the hitman had retreated to, his own gun out, a sleek esoteric looking Heckler and Koch 9mm Automatic. With it, he was trying to plug Bender before the hitman was able to peg him. Fatso, in the meantime, had been unable to sight either of them because of the passing car.
Harry had rolled to one knee when Tuccio’s fourth rapidly fired bullet happened to catch Bender in the side as the dazed man was pulling himself out of the booth’s rubble. It was obvious that the debris from the car’s collision with the shed had stunned the big man, but was far from enough to knock him down for the count. Even the 9mm bullet wasn’t enough to do that.
Bender took the bullet with a grimace, the same way many people took allergy shots. He twisted in the direction the bullet had come from and started blasting .45 rounds. But he was firing blind and Tuccio knew it. The bullets splattered into the ground in front and to the right of the businessman as he continued to pump lead into Bender’s torso.
The next 9mm bullet went into the hitman’s left shoulder, making Bender react as if to a punch. One shattered his jaw, turning the lower half of his face into a bloody mass of pulpy muscle and jagged bone. If the bullet had hit him straight on, he’d have been dead. As it came across his profile, however, it merely tore off his chin.
Bender was unable to keep upright after that. He fell to his right, making Tuccio’s next round miss. He fell heavily, his own gun silent. Spooked by his own ability to stop a man he was certain was going to kill him, Tuccio ran around the back of the destroyed booth toward the idling car, pulling the trigger of his now empty automatic as he went.
From that angle, Harry was unable to hit the crook himself, so he scrambled to his feet to give chase. As he raced forward, Bender turned slowly over, like a bear lazily rolling in the noon sun. He fell onto his back, his gun hand dropping perpendicular to his body. His head drooped. Drifting slowly, looking as if he were simply rolling over in bed.
But Bender wasn’t one to go out like that. Even Harry could see that the .45 was raised off the ground at a slight angle. Bender’s finger tightened and the big automatic boomed, the speeding bullet smashing through the middle of Tuccio’s back, exploding out his stomach just above his sternum.
Some of Tuccio’s middle made it to the car before he did. It splashed against the grill and hood, glowing in the hot white of the headlights. It started to dry immediately from the engine’s heat, losing its lustre just as Tuccio collapsed across its front. The crook’s eyes—gleaming first with surprised life then lost all their illumination. He died as he slowly slid across the grill to the ground.
Again it was just Callahan and the car; facing each other in a sort of perverted version of High Noon. Pressing his foot down on the gas pedal, he sent the big auto barreling across the body of its dead owner. Tuccio bounced twice beneath the spinning wheels, hunks of him being spit out of several orifices.
Harry wasn’t going to stand on ceremony. The driver had had his chance twice before and as far as Callahan was concerned, no more Mr. Nice Guy. He planted his feet apart and blasted away at the oncoming car.
The first bullet was too low, breaking through the grill and damaging the engine block, The second shot smashed the windshield from the center outward, blinding the chauffeur with shattered glass. But the bullet itself had missed him. The third bullet caught him right in the middle of his head, pinning him back against the seat. But since the lead had hit him straight on and the seat was backstopping him, there was nowhere for him to go. His corpse remained upright, his mind’s last command keeping his hands frozen to the wheel.
Both Harry and Fatso fired. There was no way of knowing which bullet had the greater effect since both hit their target at once, but it hardly made a lot of difference either way. Harry’s fourth bullet exploded the left front tire while Devlin’s round crashed through the side window and into the dead driver’s shoulder.
The force of the .357 slug pushed the chauffeur’s corpse over, making him turn the wheel. The ruined tire gave way, making the car spin sideways. Harry had just enough time to throw himself to his left as the car went sweeping by, neatly clipping the .44 out of Callahan’s hand.
The operation couldn’t have been more precise. Since Harry was somersaulting forward, his hands wound up behind him as he fell on his back. As the Lincoln’s bumper shot past, it just tapped the end of the Magnum’s barrel hard enough to pull it out of Harry’s grip. The car slid between where Harry lay and Fatso crouched, while the .44 flew into a crate of overripe oranges.
The Continental smashed into another row of booths behind the two rows it had leveled initially. It kept going this time, until there was nothing between it and the edge of the marketplace. Since the place was nothing more than a collection of booths beneath a tent-like awning held in place by thin metal beams, there was no wall to stop the barreling Continental. It vaulted off an asphalt embankment and landed on its nose halfway down the incline. Upside down it lay on the edge of the railroad tracks.
It rocked painfully back and forth, the metal groaning and the hot underside steaming and sizzling in the hard morning rain. On his knees, Callahan watched it reach its resting place then slowly rose to his feet.
“I’ll go check it,” Devlin offered. His superior nodded, so the round cop trotted off toward the wreckage.
Harry turned back to see Brown Bender walking toward him, his .45 shakily pointed at his waist.
C H A P T E R
F o u r
The hitman had taken three 9mm bullets fired at close range and was carrying at least two of them inside his body. But still, the giant was pulling himself toward Harry, the heavy weapon aimed accurately.
Callahan didn’t take his eyes off Bender. Maybe Devlin was still close e
nough to do some good. Harry wasn’t about to turn or call his name. That would be Bender’s cue to start shooting. As it was, the wounded killer was only moving closer to insure his shot. He wanted the Inspector dead.
Thinking about the hitman’s wounds, Harry figured the assassin would not only be strong enough to kill him, but perhaps even strong enough to live on afterwards. Even with slugs in his side and shoulder, and the shattered bottom of his face dripping crimson sludge, he might conceivably be brought back to a semblance of health while Harry deteriorated in the cold ground should his bullet find its mark.
Harry carefully used his peripheral vision to see what immediate chances were left him. Slowly, carefully, he started moving to the side. Bender was beyond expressing anything on his visage, but if he still had a mouth, Callahan was fairly certain that he perceived a smile. As far as the hitman was concerned, Harry was the cornered mouse while he was the fat cat.
Harry slowly kept skittering to the side and Bender kept pace with him. Callahan watched the .45 rise just as slowly, judging where the hitman would stop and pull the trigger. The weakened black man was relying on his momentum to keep him going. If Harry interrupted that momentum, it might throw the guy completely off.
As suddenly as Harry started moving, he stopped. Bender stopped as well, the gun centering on Callahan’s chest. But just as it was coming up, Harry screamed, leaping to the side and grabbing the hanging hook he had used to swing over the car. He pulled it down and threw it forward just as Bender fired.
The hitman looked down as he tried to move away, but to his surprise he found himself standing amid a squashed crateload of bananas. Whether it was the fear of falling or simply that he was too weak to move, Bender remained motionless as the hook slammed into his chest.
The heavy hook should have knocked the hitman over and that would have been enough for Callahan to disarm him. But as fate would have it, Bender’s knees buckled just as the hook got close. The surprisingly sharp point dug in just under his rib cage and the black man’s massive weight did the rest. The hook sunk all the way into his chest. The hook slid back to Harry, dragging Bender with it on his knees.
