Dirty Harry 11 - Death in the Air

by Dane Hartman

  The killer’s neck, and what was left on top of it, snapped back, and he fell on the grill set up in the center of the circular restaurant. Harry heard the sizzle of the gunman’s shirt and of flesh baking, before he pulled him off the grill and dropped the corpse on the floor.

  “Bon appetit,” he told the dead man.

  Callahan let his exhaustion catch up with him as he walked back out into the plaza section of the hotel. He had forced himself to accept the escape of the last man. At least he would bring the all-too-clear message back to Carr. Harry Callahan knows where D. Patterson is and he’s not telling. And he’ll send every Program operative to hell, first.

  The Inspector had put one foot on the stairway back to the lobby, when the steps were riddled by more bullets. Harry threw himself back as the lead ripped up the stone staircase.

  He fell and slid across the slick floor until his head hit a table leg. Looking up, he viewed a hellish sight. The last gunman had been waiting for him in the open-air elevator. He had been waiting for Harry to press the up button, so that when the doors opened, he could have blasted the cop.

  He had been waiting with a carful of innocent hotel guests.

  And when Harry didn’t do the logical thing—when an exhausted Harry took the stairs, against all odds—the enraged gunman had pressed an upper-floor button and rose above it all. Rose above it to shoot down at the amazed Inspector.

  The elevator kept rising, and the gunman kept firing as the glass in front of him cracked and fell like jagged rain. Harry got to his feet and started running, the bullets following him wherever he went.

  He got a momentary respite when the last killer’s weapon ran dry. Harry raised his Magnum to shoot back, but stopped in mid-motion. He couldn’t shoot. No matter how good he was, at this range and angle, he couldn’t chance hitting one of the killer’s hostages.

  And even if he nailed the bastard perfectly, he also knew that the high-powered rounds would probably go right through the killer and into an innocent victim. Callahan had to wait and look for a way out while the murderer reloaded.

  The shooting started again as the car continued to rise. Harry dodged, twisted, turned, and ran, looking like a ballet dancer on speed. He realized that the killer was just toying with him now. He was sadistically enjoying the predicament he had forced the cop into.

  Finally, Callahan managed to gain safety behind the stairway he had originally started up. It gave him time to catch his breath and think. But that time was cut short.

  “Callahan,” he heard. “Callahan, get out here or I start killing them and dropping their bodies one by one.” The gunman’s voice echoed out in a singsong over the sobs of fear from the elevator’s passengers.

  Harry jumped, grabbed the banister and pulled himself onto the stairway. He ran up as the bullets ran up after him. He made it under the lip of the main floor balcony just before the rounds caught up with him.

  “Callahan!” The voice was stronger and harsher this time. “I told you I’d kill them!” Then the man returned to his condescending, sarcastic tone. “Just come out and take your medicine and they won’t be hurt.”

  Harry looked at the lobby. The dust had settled, and many of the hotel’s employees were gathered there with the petrified security staff. None of them had ever experienced anything like this before. They all looked at him helplessly. He knew how they felt.

  Harry stepped out from his cover just as the elevator stopped on the thirteenth floor.

  The doors opened behind the gunman. Naturally, the terrified passengers began streaming out. The killer whirled. “Don’t move,” he barked. “Everybody stay just where you are or you’ll die.”

  Harry looked up at the scene. The .44 snapped forward as he was realizing that the angle was perfect. As soon as his elbow locked his arm straight, he pulled the trigger.

  All those hours on the target range paid off with that one shot. It went up all twelve floors, entered the gunman’s head at the top of his spine, and exited out the top of his skull. The only other thing it hit was the elevator’s ceiling.

  As the passengers watched, the top of the man’s head split open. It was a horrible sight—but better than dying.

  Harry left before his own force caught up with him. He didn’t feel like explaining tonight. Tomorrow, there’d be the reams of paperwork, the triplicates to be done in triplicate, but tonight he just wanted to get back to the room in the shadow of the freeway where Patterson was.

  He left it to the approaching patrolmen to take care of the immediate details, then slowly made his way back to the damaged patrol car. With a Magnum in one hand and a Browning in the other, no one considered stopping him.

  No one but the superintendent of the Grand View Park Apartments.

  He came out of the shadows behind the car as Harry tossed the handguns into the front seat. He first smashed Callahan in the kidneys, then grabbed his hair and slammed his head on the patrol car’s ceiling.

  “We learn our lesson quick, asshole,” he said in the nearly-unconscious Inspector’s ear. “After all the men you murdered in 4-B, we started wearing flak jackets.”

  Before anyone could do anything about it, the man with the bullet hole in the chest of his jogging suit shoved the Inspector into the car and drove off.

  C H A P T E R

  T h i r t e e n

  No wonder the super had looked different at Jessup’s office. No wonder the killer had taken so long to die in the Fairlawn restaurant. They had all been wearing bulletproof vests under their jackets.

  This realization did Harry absolutely no good at all, as everybody he had shot in the chest during the last few hours watched the superintendent beat him to a pulp.

  Actually, the only one available was the killer who had stumbled out of the police car with his head on fire. And he was in no condition to really enjoy the show. In fact, he was lying on a cot, moaning.

  His head looked like an overcooked marshmallow, but the super couldn’t very well bring him to the hospital, considering the situation, as well as the fact that he might reveal something in his delirium.

  So he lay groaning in pain, as Harry tried to keep himself from doing the same. It wasn’t easy. The super was angry, impatient, and extremely vindictive. He had kept coshing Callahan as they drove back to Nineteenth Avenue—seemingly to warm up.

  All of Harry’s guns were in the far corner of the Grand View cellar apartment, which, seemed miles away from where the cop hung. The grunts the human marshmallow made sounded in harmony with the creaks made by the crossbar Callahan was attached to.

  “You were too fast for me to kill, back at Jessup’s place,” the super admitted, putting on the thick, black leather gloves. “Every time I got a clear shot at you, you kept moving. Well, you’re going to stay still now.”

  He walked to the middle of the cellar studio, surveying his handiwork. The cop was literally hung up by his wrists, to a beam twelve feet off the floor—naked.

  “Following you was easy,” the super continued, flexing his fingers and smiling. “I just walked behind the wreckage.” He looked at the Inspector’s already bruised, battered body, admiring the aged scars that revealed the trials of his career up till now.

  “Big, tough guy,” the super scolded. “Think you’re really something, don’t you? Well, let’s see how long it takes me to make you nothing.”

  Then he started in. The first part was simple. Taking a reed cane, he whipped the cop.

  It was a scene out of a childhood melodrama come to painful life. Harry remembered his school days when the teacher would take a hickory stick to someone’s backside or a ruler to somebody’s knuckles. He remembered the sound of those whips coming in for the kill. He remembered that whipping sound as being the worst part of it.

  His memory lied. The whipping was the worst part. And the super was an experienced, practiced torturer. He was very particular about where he placed the stick, and when.

  He was very practical in his approach, and proud of it. So
proud, in fact, that he lectured Harry on the subject while he beat him.

  “You see,” he said, “we don’t want to hit your chest, or it might start the heart palpitating. You could get a seizure and die that way. We don’t want that. And we don’t want to go for a cheap shot in your balls, or your blood might overheat, causing you to faint. I want you up and aware.”

  So he went for the painful, not permanently damageable parts. Like the ribs, the back of the legs, the fleshy part of the back, the shoulder blades, and the armpits.

  He took his time and carefully aimed and executed each blow with all his strength. The pain was beyond belief.

  It was a great shock to him just how much pain his body could tolerate. There was a breaking point, but he hadn’t reached it yet. That didn’t make the search for it any more tolerable.

  As much pain as he felt, however, he did not feel fear or dread. He knew just what this man could do to him, and that sooner or later, one way or the other, it had to end. Death was easy. Working up to it was the hard part.

  He kept pounding Callahan until the cop was swinging back and forth. The crossbar kept creaking, and the burned man kept moaning. What Harry didn’t do was cry out. The super had told him at the outset that the walls were soundproof.

  So, if it wouldn’t do him any good, he wasn’t going to let it do the super any good, either. Even in ignominious torture, Callahan maintained a certain stubborn dignity. The bastard could kill him, but nothing would make him cry.

  The super wanted him to cry out. The Program enforcement director wanted to make Harry pay for his men’s deaths. Battering or killing wasn’t enough.

  The super had to break him. He had to break him the way he had broken dozens of the enemy in Southeast Asia. Already, Harry had withstood abuse half of them had cracked under.

  It was the super’s heart that began to race; it was his blood that started to boil. He wanted Callahan to crawl. But Harry wasn’t playing his part. He was taking terrible punishment without a sound.

  Callahan might have liked to know how the super felt. It wasn’t a false pride that kept him from reacting, it was an acceptance of the situation.

  He had known he was in for it from the moment the super’s knuckles had sunk into his kidneys back at the hotel, so he had spent all of his intervening moments hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

  Distantly, clinically, almost objectively, Harry mentally examined his damage. His wrists were corded so tightly that the skin was almost gone beneath the ropes, blood oozing down his upraised arms.

  His shoulders were almost out of their sockets, the ligaments stretched to the breaking point. He could handle his weight pretty well for a while there, but after the sixth minute, he could feel it. After fifteen minutes, his muscles began to scream.

  Each whip stroke actually felt as if the super were using a machete instead of a cane. It wasn’t a little sting. It was a deep, solid wound that numbed the rest of the body, but not the strike point.

  Enough of this pain would soon turn his mind into steel wool. The super wouldn’t wait for him. He wanted the lousy cop to howl, to beg for mercy.

  The torturer’s strokes became more frequent, his blows harder. Incredibly, the harder he hit, the less pain Harry felt. Without the finesse, the strike points became as shocked as the rest of the numbed area.

  Realizing that he was losing it, the super hurled the cane away from him. It clattered against the wall and fell to the thick pile carpet.

  The stopping was almost worse than the whipping. Then the crawling anguish was replaced by a stinging buzz which threatened to sweep over Harry’s head and put out his lights—at least for a while.

  That was prevented by the super picking up a carton of sodium chloride, pouring the salt into his hand, and rubbing it all over Callahan’s torso.

  The effect was like dumping a container of water filled with razor blades on someone to wake him up. It did the trick. Callahan’s mind went into overload for a second. His brain told his blinded eyes that he had died and gone to hell.

  “When it rains, it pours,” the super said with vicious whimsy, breathing deeply. “Don’t look so shocked. Salt is good for you. It prevents infection. It stops the bleeding so you don’t mess up my nice new rug.”

  Callahan looked down at himself. It wasn’t his body anymore. It was a raw, welt-covered, livid mass of shrieking, pulpy flesh. He looked back up at his blood-coated arms and couldn’t keep the words inside him anymore.

  “Don’t you want to know where Patterson is?” he grunted, his voice barely audible. “I’m about ready to discuss it.”

  The super barked out a laugh. “You misunderstand, Inspector. I’m not doing this because I have to. I’m doing it because I want to.”

  Outwardly, Harry didn’t react. He didn’t have the strength, and he wouldn’t have, anyway. He didn’t let on that he realized the implications of the super’s statement.

  If the man didn’t want to know where Patterson was, it could only mean a couple of things. Either he didn’t care anymore, or he didn’t need to know. And either way, it meant that things were even worse than Harry had initially expected.

  At first, the defeatist part of his brain said it didn’t matter if he died. He didn’t want to, and he would do everything he could to prevent it, but it really didn’t matter. There was still Patterson, and when she heard about what had happened to him, she’d talk.

  But now, her existence was in doubt. Now, it was absolutely crucial that Harry hold on. The super wasn’t going to make it easy. He looked at Harry’s swinging body for a long, silent moment, then started slugging him. Again, the torture was complete with narration.

  “Again, notice which areas I avoid,” the super grunted, between punches to the chin, nose, and eyes. “No blows to the temple or forehead. I don’t want to break your skull or damage your great brain.”

  Harry’s head snapped back with every thrust, his face bouncing back with a new swelling each time. He felt his lips mashed, his nose broken, and his brow bleeding.

  “And not too hard,” the super said gently. “We don’t want to snap your neck.”

  “Don’t we?” Harry wanted to say, but the man’s knuckles cut him off.

  The super lowered his aim to sink his fists into Callahan’s stomach. “Now, the abdomen, lower ribs, and upper back,” he explained. “Have to avoid the chest, neck, and kidneys. Those are killing blows.”

  The super was enjoying himself, and Harry let him. He took the blows until the super got wrapped up in the fantasy of being a heavyweight contender working out.

  Then Harry swung his leg forward to kick the super in the nuts, with all the strength he had left.

  Callahan had misjudged his own power. It wasn’t enough.

  The leg connected solidly, but there wasn’t enough behind it. Harry knew it as soon as the super stumbled back, coughing and clutching his balls. His face was red and he was doubled over, but his knees didn’t buckle and he didn’t collapse.

  He stood in place, tears rolling out of his eyes, for a minute, then gingerly rose to his full height.

  “I’m glad you did that,” he said, with aching relish. “Before, I wanted to break you. I wanted to see your mind snap. Now, I just want to make you die.”

  He came forward, a meaty fist raised high. The bullet stopped him.

  It didn’t kill him. It didn’t even wound him. It just made him stop and look at the door.

  Frank DiGeorgio was standing in it, his smoking police .38 held in both hands. “Hold it right there,” he said.

  The super ignored him. He ran right for the corner where the Magnum and Browning lay.

  “I said freeze!” DiGeorgio shouted, following him with the gun barrel.

  The super kept going.

  “Shoot him in the head,” Harry croaked, his voice hardly there.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” the Sergeant said in disbelief as the torturer reached down for the guns.

  “Shoot him in th
e fucking head,” Harry repeated. He couldn’t get any volume, in his condition.

  The super wrapped his hand around the Browning. He stood up straight. DiGeorgio shot him in the chest from across the room. The super took one step back to cushion the bullet’s blow, and then fired back.

  The nine-millimeter slug ripped into the door frame, showering the surprised Sergeant with wood splinters. DiGeorgio fell back, tripped, and landed on his back in the hallway.

  The super moved forward to finish him off. He kept to the side wall so the cop wouldn’t have a shot at him until it was too late. DiGeorgio pointed his gun very deliberately and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet missed the super by a mile, but it killed him anyway. The lead tore through the ropes connecting Harry’s wrists to the overhead support beam. Callahan came down, his feet held his weight, he threw himself to the side, twisted, and brought down his arms on either side of the super’s head.

  Then, it was only a matter of putting his knee in the middle of the man’s back, and pulling. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The super’s neck stopped where the coarse, thin rope joined Harry’s hands.

  The super tried bringing the gun around to shoot behind him. Harry was having none of it. He jerked the fat little super around until he felt like he was inside a washing machine. Between that and the hemp-covered flesh crushing his windpipe, the super couldn’t line up a shot.

  He fired anyway, all the rounds that remained in the fourteen-shell clip. They smashed into the floor, walls, ceiling, and furniture. One pumped into the human marshmallow just before both Harry and the torturer fell on top of the cot. It cracked beneath the combined weight, flattening to the floor.

  The super’s trigger finger kept contracting, the Browning’s pin kept clicking on an empty barrel, and the burned man sighed.

  “That’s enough, Harry,” was the first thing Callahan remembered hearing after that.