by Dane Hartman
Now he was standing, stunned, in a bathroom, while the raging remnants of the SAFE guards picked their way around fallen comrades, tables, chairs in an assault on the john. The first one there was one of the unluckiest. He was a swift Adonis type, who had a wide, teeth-gritted grin on his face, his hands held like claws at his side. His smile disappeared when Harry slammed the door in his face.
The old door, unable to handle any more stress, broke into hunks of splinters. Dust and wood splinters spread through the small antechamber like a cloud.
The door was only a temporary obstruction. After it broke, the dazed guard kept going, smashing into the rear wall. The cop didn’t wait for the blond’s eyes to clear. He gave him a straight arm shot in the jaw, sending the man’s head through the little window. His skull squeezed through and held him upright as Callahan concerned himself with other problems.
The second fleetest of foot was a woman. She was flat on the heels of her predecessor. He kicked her right under the kneecap. Her smug grin faltered slightly when she felt the sharp pain on her leg, but it returned when the wound didn’t stop her. She took another step in triumph, but the smirk vanished completely when the leg he had kicked collapsed under her weight.
She fell to her knees right in front of him. As he looked down at her, he noticed a mop standing in a bucket of rancid water squeezed between the toilet and the wall. He lifted both just as the remaining guards came at him with the coffee maker. Two men held the container by its handles and base. Then they hurled the hot stuff at Harry just as he threw the contents of the mop bucket at them.
Harry ducked as the liquids met in midair. The hot coffee meeting the cold water created an explosion of water and steam.
The combination of the two temperatures was enough to lessen the scalding as Harry used the diversion to duck and roll under the water, coming up against the back wall, darting toward the right door.
To his annoyance, there were more SAFE guards there, well out of the line of the liquid fire. There were a half dozen waiting, most of them rather burly. They were waiting for Harry to come to them, but he would have none of it. He immediately turned tail and ran back the way he had come.
Coming out of the john was the woman he had just kicked, looking upset. She held the end of the mop as if she meant business. Harry went right for her as she swung the long stick.
Ducking under the pole, he lifted her right off the ground so that she went through the left window back first, protecting him from most of the glass shards. They both tumbled into a dirty alley.
As he rolled to his feet, Harry grabbed the mop from the dazed girl’s hands. But just as he stood, one of the boys tried to leap out the shattered window after him. Harry pushed the mop head into the middle of his attacker’s chest and held on as if the sweeper was a battering ram.
The mop was strong enough to stop the jumper in midflight. With a sudden, abrupt push, Harry sent him back the way he came, just in time to collide with a second jumper who thought there’d be no obstruction. He heard them collapse on the store floor.
Harry ran left to the end of the alley and turned right. The adjoining alleyway went for some thirty yards before emptying onto the street, but its mouth was filled with more SAFE guards. They must have left the store by the front door to circle around the block in time to cut him off.
Harry glanced behind him. Mop aside, people were pouring through the broken window and coming after him. He was blocked. There was no place else to go but up.
The lowest section of the wall around him was less than eight feet high. Summoning all his strength, Harry jumped, his forearms wrapping around its top while his legs scraped for a toehold.
Callahan pulled viciously, almost forcing his body up by sheer will-power alone. He felt one hand grabbing his heel just as he was able to swing his torso up and roll across the top of the wall. His shoe came off.
He slithered off the wall and found himself lying on his back on the roof of a car. He was spread-eagled, his knees and elbows bent. He looked around to see that he was on one end of a small sea of cars. He had rolled into an elevated parking lot: the kind where piggyback machines held three cars in a bunk bed arrangement over the same spot.
It must have been an overnight parking lot since Harry could see no manager, and any car behind the first row at the street’s entrance would be impossible to get out on a moment’s notice.
Another athletic SAFE guard vaulted over the wall, fully expecting to land on the ground and give chase. He was very surprised when he landed on the slick, uneven purchase of a car seemingly hovering off the ground. He slipped across the highly polished roof of a Mercedes, his chin slamming against the metal, and dropped clumsily inbetween two rows of automobiles. Harry heard some sickening sounds of contact before the man hit the dirt.
As the guard was falling, Harry sat up to pull off his other shoe. He was just in time to throw it at another guard who stuck his head over the wall. The solid leather shoe hit the man in the face and bounced off. The man, whose head disappeared, left only the start of a nose bleed on the stone.
Then Callahan got up and leaped to the next car. He kept going until he reached the center of the darkened lot. He stopped on the car roof there, and turned to face his enemy.
The SAFE guards were spread out on almost all the roofs behind him, waiting like a chess set. The man standing in the lead was a curly-haired muscular man—one who had taken off his jacket and sweater to reveal a tank top and incredible rolling muscles.
“Don’t bother trying to run anymore,” he told Harry lightly. “The others are circling the block and will cut you off any second.”
Harry responded by jumping from the center car to one car behind it, away from the street.
“Don’t bother trying to get out the back way either,” he said. “As you can see, the buildings are blocking you, and we’ll reach you before you get five feet.”
Harry casually stepped from the roof of the Camaro he was on to its trunk, then across to a Volkswagon Rabbit’s hood and onto its roof. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice rough.
“The question is, what do you want, Inspector Callahan? Did you seriously think you could assassinate Steele and just walk away?”
“Of course not,” Harry said, moving warily toward the back of the yellow car. “I’m not out to assassinate anybody. I just want to capture the one who killed all those women.”
“That’s what you say,” another dark-haired one said smoothly. “But that’s not your reputation. You’re known as a gun man.”
“So where’s my gun?” Harry inquired, hopping from the Rabbit to the hood of a station wagon. By that time he had counted all the SAFE guards. There were eighteen of them—all male—standing on the car roofs. But as he finished that count, more started showing up on the sidewalk.
“That’s what we want to know,” the lead man answered.
“Just listen,” said Harry, letting desperation creep into his voice. “You’re not making any sense. I’d have no reason for killing Steele and even if I wanted to, I’d be crazy to do it in the middle of your headquarters.”
The words seemed to have no effect on the leader, who started to flex his muscles. “We just want you to let it be known,” he said soothingly, “that we will no longer stand for any more spying, any more lying, or any more killing. Before we were content to listen and wait, but now, be warned. We are after blood. And we will not rest until whoever is responsible for our brothers’ and sisters’ deaths are punished. And the suspect and the punishment will have to satisfy us.”
“OK,” Harry said agreeably. “OK, I’ll tell them.”
“Now,” the leader declared. “We will mete out our first punishment for transgressions against our community. You will be an example of the skill and strength of SAFE. You will be the first wrongdoer brought to justice by the Anti-Conspiracy Squad.”
The A-Cs, Harry mentally abbreviated. Cute. He stood his ground as the others started to pull the chains from the
ir waistbands. The link belts served more purposes than keeping their pants up. Swinging them lightly in their hands, they began moving in. These guys were experienced street fighters, Harry realized. He recognized the covers on their wrists. With little studs attached to the leather strip, they could be used for blocking as well as offense.
The night air was cool across Harry’s face as he stood openly on the station wagon’s rear. The oncoming A-Cs might have thought that he didn’t try to run because he knew it was hopeless. But in truth, he just wasn’t ready yet. He remained standing.
The lead man was on the car in front of him, when, at the last minute, Harry turned and jumped toward the lot’s last row. The area became a thumping ground of cars bouncing on their shocks as all the men tried to go from car to car to keep up with Harry. Finally Harry turned with his back up against the wall, his feet on the trunk of a Firebird.
Standing on the Toyota right in front of him, the lead man smiled. Harry dropped off the back of the car and with all his weight landed on the lever which held up the carport.
He honestly didn’t want to do it. He was hoping that he could stall long enough so that McConnell could call in the fleet, who’d wrap the bunch up with no problem at all.
But rather than try to outfight eighteen chain-wielding maniacs on top of the cars or outrun Lord knows how many on the ground, Harry had to settle for some destruction of personal property.
It was a game of dominoes. Except little black rectangles were replaced by big metal cars.
The Firebird collapsed on top of the car below it which collapsed on the bottom car, and all rolled forward. Their weight was enough to tip the unit in front of that, which spilled those three autos into the metal bunk in front of it. The dark-haired leader was thrown from his perch when the Firebird rammed the Toyota, sending both it and the tracks it rested upon forward. The muscle man spun down among the shifting metal while doing cartwheels in mid-air.
Not all of the units fell forward. One or two tipped slightly to the right or left, shaking up the auto berths on all sides. Since Harry was standing in the back, the parking lot looked like a sea of cars, its metal surface rippling as if a boulder had been dropped at its edge.
While all the A-Cs were hurled around as if the entire area were struck by an earthquake, Harry stayed exactly where he was, not wanting to risk running into the undulating mass of steel. The SAFE guards on the curb watched in amazement.
But staying on the street wasn’t safe either. When the domino theory reached the front bunks, the cars no longer had other vehicles to bump into, so the tipping units poured its trio of autos onto the street. The remaining A-Cs scattered as the cars crashed down onto the concrete, bouncing into each other. They fell off of their perches like so many two-ton matchbox toys.
Only after all the destruction had been done did the police finally show up. They came screeching around the corner in their patrol cars, only to brake hard when they saw the road littered with crumpled autos. The SAFE guards scurried like ants through makeshift metal tunnels while the cop cars screeched to stomach-turning stops or slid into the littered vehicles.
Harry watched the chaos from the back of the lot. Then he strode forward, stepping over groaning A-Cs and tumbled cars.
As he emerged from the lot, some uniforms were rounding up the last of the stunned SAFE guards. Others surveyed the wreckage in amazement. The officer nearest Callahan was scratching his head until he caught sight of the inspector. He smiled smugly and approached, one hand motioning Harry forward and the other on the butt of his gun.
“Come on, buddy,” he said, “let headquarters figure it out. Let’s not have any trouble, OK?” he continued. “Let’s just go quietly.” Callahan opened his mouth to speak, but the officer cut him off. “You can explain later.”
Harry let the officer lead him to his patrol car just as a paddy wagon arrived. As the cop was reading Harry his rights, Lynne McConnell hopped out of the wagon’s cab. Seeing Harry, she carried over his gun, still in its holster.
“This is yours, I believe, Inspector?” she said pointedly, giving the Magnum to him. The uniformed patrolman’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped open in the middle of “. . . if you don’t have an attorney, the court can appoint you one.”
“About time,” Harry grumbled, referring to both the gun and McConnell’s appearance.
“Now, wait a minute,” the cop said, recovering.
“This is mine too,” said Harry, slipping his shield out of his back pocket and flashing the star. As soon as the arresting cop was satisfied, the A-C leader came storming out of the parking lot; his left arm and right hand bloody, his face as contorted as a mad bull’s set to charge.
He spotted Harry as he slipped the Magnum into his holster. “You were wondering where my gun was,” Callahan told him, pointing the heavy barrel right at the bull’s face. “Here it is.”
The man stared down the barrel for several seconds, his lower lip loose until two cops appeared to chaperone him to the paddy wagon. “You know,” McConnell marveled, “I never believed those stories Devlin and DiGeorgio used to tell about you,” she told him. “I do now.”
Harry strapped on the specially-made shoulder holster and slipped the Model 29 back home under his arm before shrugging into his jacket. Oblivious to the sergeant’s compliment, he muttered, “Now all I need are my shoes.” McConnell looked down to see Harry’s stockinged feet. “If you find any shoes in there,” Harry called to the investigating officers, “they’re mine.”
Harry turned back to McConnell, all business again. “Where’s Byrnes?”
“I thought she was with you,” the sergeant said.
Harry pursed his lips, cursing inside. “Did you see Steele?”
“I saw a lot of SAFE members,” McConnell elaborated, “they came pouring out of the bookshop like locusts. But not him.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve run across him enough times. I’m sure.” McConnell was concerned when she saw the look on Harry’s face. “Don’t worry, Inspector,” she tried to soothe him. “There’s a lot of people who were inside that place we haven’t found yet. Byrnes probably just made her way home.”
It was possible. Just because Kim and Steele were among those who avoided the police, it didn’t necessarily mean they were together. It was possible that Byrnes and her companion went off for a drink before the fight even got started. It was possible that they slipped out while Harry was trying to get to Steele. It was possible that he was looking for them behind him when they had already moved up front. It was possible.
Harry decided to look on the bright side of things. They had made some progress in the case and he had avoided serious bloodshed.
“Inspector,” the cop who “arrested” him called. “I think you’d better come look at this.” He was standing in the street next to a Ford Mustang that was resting under a BMW.
Harry moved over with McConnell in tow. When he neared, the cop nodded his head at the front seat. Callahan could see clearly past the undercarriage of the BMW. Even in the dark, there was no mistaking the hacked, blood-splattered corpse of the red-headed lesbian.
C H A P T E R
N i n e
The arm that had been around Kim Byrnes was lying outside the covering sheet on the morgue slab downtown. As Walter White went by, he nimbly, almost unconsciously, slipped it back under the sheet.
“Angela Mayer,” he called her. “Female, caucasian, five feet five and a half inches, one hundred and four pounds. Hazel eyes, pale complexion, dyed red hair. Actual color brown.” He paused, flipping back the first page of his findings.
“Struck by a blunt instrument on the top of the head,” he reported, continuing on his route. “Death resulting from shock and repeated blows to head and neck.” He was walking around and around the slab in one of the clean white labs in the Justice Building’s cellar. He was wearing a hole in the tile.
“Could it have been a chain?” Harry asked. The inspector was leaning up
against the second of three slabs in the room, placed neatly between the lab counter and the wall refrigerator units.
White stopped for a second, looking up from his shiny metal clipboard. “Could have been a chain,” he offered, “among other things. This girl was hit with everything but the kitchen sink. I was picking out pieces of metal, stone, dirt, and wood from her brain until early this morning.”
Callahan rubbed his face with both open hands. “I know,” he said. “I was upstairs, waiting for your report.”
“Gee, Harry, I didn’t know,” the coroner apologized. “What’s so important about this one that you took me off the McLaren I.D. job, anyway?”
Harry didn’t want to say that her death might give them a clue to Kim Byrnes’ whereabouts. He didn’t want to think that her death was just the latest in a long string of lesbian-related murders.
“Nothing,” he finally said. “I’m just trying to figure out if there are any new reasons a guy would dance on a woman’s face that way, a homosexual or not. They all got a brutal beating, didn’t they?”
“Every one,” White concurred. “Fractured skulls, battered faces, broken bones; they died painfully, Harry.”
The news didn’t improve Callahan’s disposition. “Anything new in terms of identification?”
“Nothing that changes anything. From what we’ve been able to trace through teeth and body markings, some of the Jane Does were assigned real names through Vice’s files. Every one a known lesbian, every one arrested at least once during regular shakedowns.”
Then Kim’s only chance was proving that she wasn’t a lesbian . . . if she wasn’t dead already. Suddenly it occurred to him that no one had asked the girl what were her sexual preferences. Although police questioners could get pretty base at times, it might not seem important for a rape squad officer to ask. He’d only be interested in getting descriptions—which Kim couldn’t supply. And Vice was really only interested in the young girl for her connection with Lisa Patterson.
