Dirty Harry 03 - The Long Death

by Dane Hartman

  Both were so intense, he couldn’t help writhing on the floor. His mind went on automatic and screamed for the Magnum, but his charred hands couldn’t grip it. His body took over. He rolled to the last window, brought his feet up and kicked the window out.

  From that position, Harry could see the flames licking into the room behind him. The fire moved like waves—getting closer and closer every time. He didn’t hesitate to check the drop. With a final effort, he reached up, grabbed the sides of the broken window and propelled himself out feet first.

  The flames seemed to roar out of the window in anger after him as he plummeted sixteen feet to a side incline. He slammed against that, rolled down, hit another inclined roof right below that, and fell into a pile of sand that had collected against the side of the house. Harry didn’t know the extent of his injuries, but he did know he wasn’t dead.

  Hands plucked at him. They rolled him over. Harry saw figures in blue and yellow uniforms. The cavalry had arrived. He was carried out to the safety of some ambulances across the street. He felt tired. He didn’t feel good. The last thing he saw that day was the face of Captain Avery looking down at him with concern.

  Harry laughed himself into unconsciousness.

  C H A P T E R

  F i v e

  “You’re extraordinarily lucky, Inspector Callahan,” said Dr. Steve Rogers.

  “Yeah, I know,” Harry said from the hospital bed. “Wounded on a weekend. Won’t even miss a day’s work.”

  “Jesus, Harry, you know what I mean,” said the seasoned police medico. “I’ve taped up bullet grooves on your legs and stitched gashes in your head, but this was cutting it too close.”

  The cop sat up in the private room wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms. Aside from a variety of small bandages across his face and torso, the only thing that looked bad were his hands. They looked like an abortive audition for a Mummy movie.

  “Just superficial, right?” Callahan inquired, holding them up. “Only melted off the top layer?”

  “Right,” Rogers replied, packing up his black bag. “They’ll be stiff for a couple of days, but workable. I’ll be back to take off the heavy bandages tonight.”

  “Good,” said Harry. “Thanks, Steve.”

  “No sweat,” the doctor winked. “We hill boys have to stick together.”

  Before he could open the door, it swung back to reveal Lieutenant Bressler and Captain Avery. The superior officer walked brusquely in. The lieutenant followed, holding a small vase of flowers uncomfortably.

  “Good afternoon, Doctor,” Avery boomed. “Everything check out all right, I trust?”

  “As well as can be expected,” Rogers solemnly replied. He brushed by the captain but gave Harry another wink as he breezed out the door.

  Everyone waited until it closed behind him. Then Bressler moved nervously forward, holding out the plants.

  “Uh, the wife thought you’d like this, Harry,” Bressler mumbled.

  Harry held up his bandaged hands in a suppliant gesture.

  “Oh, yeah, right,” said the lieutenant, putting the vase on a side table. “Sorry.”

  “Tell her they’re very nice,” Harry said.

  “Sure,” Bressler agreed with relief.

  “So, Harry,” Avery blustered. “How do you feel?”

  “How do you think I feel?”

  “Sure, sure, I can understand that,” the captain rolled right on. “I want to commend you on the first-class job you did in there, Inspector. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a special commendation for your bravery above and beyond the call of duty.”

  Harry folded his legs, laid his hands on his stomach, and smiled. “And I just want to say what a first-class idiot you are, Captain,” he said pleasantly. “If it wasn’t for your stupidity, I wouldn’t have had to do anything above and beyond the call of duty.”

  A stillness close to death entered the hospital room. Bressler looked from Harry’s smiling face to Avery’s shocked one. He did that twice before trying to break the stalemate.

  “Uh, Harry, aren’t you being a little harsh . . . ?”

  Harry held up his hands. Bressler fell silent.

  “Just what are you trying to prove, Inspector?” the captain choked out, his face crimson.

  “Nothing,” Harry curtly replied. “I just wanted to get that off my chest.”

  The captain hastily pulled himself together. He straightened his uniform, cleared his throat, and looked sympathetically at Bressler. “Of course he’s upset,” he said, “who wouldn’t be?” He looked expressionlessly at Harry. “We’ll talk again. When you’re feeling better.” He had almost made it to the door when Harry spoke again.

  “Just be glad I’m not trying to prove anything when the Internal boys come around.”

  Avery stopped cold with one hand on the door latch. He turned around. “Internal Affairs?” he said as if mentioning the Spanish Inquisition. “Have they been here?”

  “Not yet,” said Harry. “I just thought it would be nice to chat before they do.”

  “Chat?” echoed Avery, nervously coming over to the chair next to the bed. “What about?”

  “About the deaths of . . . how many Uhurus? Six?”

  “They were . . . are a militant group. They attacked a white girl. They, uh, even fired on you!”

  “It doesn’t hold together, Captain,” Harry calmly explained. “You moved before the Steinbrunner autopsy report came in. I know. I had the report sent to my office as soon as it was finished. There was salt water in her lungs. Where was she going to get salt water in the Uhuru cellar?”

  “They could’ve kidnapped her from the beach,” Bressler suggested.

  “The coroner figured she died at least twelve hours before we found her. What would she be doing on the beach in the middle of the night?”

  “But the attack on you at the college and at the house . . .” Avery reminded the inspector.

  “Yeah,” Harry drawled. “The three dudes came into the school with fucking assault rifles. New ones. The men at the Uhuru house had discontinued jobbies. Army-surplus junk. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What do you want?” Avery demanded.

  “I want a free hand,” Callahan replied immediately. “I don’t want your office and the D.A. hovering around Mohamid’s hospital bed like vultures, waiting for him to die so you can slap a warrant on his corpse.”

  “He’s in a bad way, Harry,” Bressler told him. “The gas cans exploding in the garage threw him away from the worst of it, but he still has a concussion and internal injuries from landing on the sidewalk.”

  “If he’s awake, he’ll help,” Harry assured them.

  “Just one thing, Inspector,” Avery said brusquely, regaining some of his pomposity. “Why did Mohamid board his place up and open fire? What was the purpose of that?”

  “He thought he was being railroaded again,” Harry said simply. “When that first reporter confronted him about the letter, he said ‘it’s starting again.’ The press had a field day with that, but what he meant was they were being framed again. The three blacks attacking me at Berkley was another bad sign.”

  “That’s what set him off?” Bressler asked incredulously.

  “No, there was something else. When I was running through the house, I recognized everyone I saw from the afternoon we found Steinbrunner’s body. But there was someone missing. A girl.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” the captain claimed. “They wouldn’t want her in the middle of the firefight.”

  “Maybe,” Harry admitted, “but I took the liberty of calling in one of the uniformed men who was guarding the house before everything happened. He reported that the girl left the house two hours before the Berkeley attack. And she wasn’t dressed for hiding out. She was decked out for going out.”

  “That’s slim,” Avery contended.

  “Yeah,” Harry drawled. “But at least I don’t have to kill a half dozen men to make my point.”

  The captain
stiffened. “All right, Inspector,” he said officiously. “You’ve got your free hand. I trust you’ll have nothing undue to say to the Internal department.”

  “About what?” Harry asked innocently.

  The captain nodded, stood, and went to the door. Before he left, he turned for a last parting shot. “But you had better pray you hold a full house. Because if you blow this one, I’ll be waiting for you back at headquarters.”

  After he left, Bressler let out a sigh of relief. “Too tough, Harry,” he said. “Too tough. You must really like risking your neck.”

  Callahan shrugged. “I’ve handed my star in before. I can do it again. It always seems to come back.”

  “Yeah. Callahan’s boomerang badge. Now what about this girl?”

  Just as Bressler finished his sentence, the hospital door swung open and Sergeant Lynne McConnell strode in with Fatso Devlin close behind.

  “What timing,” remarked Harry. “Can I offer you a seat, Sergeant?” he asked, nonchalantly flipping back the covers on his bed.

  “Ooh, a gentleman!” McConnell exclaimed earthily. To everyone’s surprise, she called Harry’s bluff by striding over and sitting on the edge of the bed.

  Bressler looked from Fatso’s grinning puss to McConnell’s mockingly innocent gaze to Harry’s noncommittal one. He had never seen police officers acting this weird.

  “Uh, take it easy, Harry,” the lieutenant said, edging his way toward the door. “See you tomorrow, OK?”

  “OK,” Harry answered, looking at McConnell’s well-delineated form next to him. “Take it easy.”

  “You too.” Bressler left shaking his head and wondering whatever became of San Fran’s finest.

  “Some people just can’t accept change,” Devlin smirked.

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “Like me. Get off the bed, Sergeant.”

  McConnell smiled glowingly at him, then primly rose to occupy the chair Avery had left vacant. “Why, Inspector,” she admonished, “don’t you trust the new breed of policewoman?”

  “No,” said Harry without a trace of emotion. “They get killed as easily as the new breed of policeman.” That sobered things up in a hurry. Playtime was over. “How’s the case coming?” Harry asked anyone who’d answer.

  “Lousy,” McConnell answered, eager to make up for her faux pas. “Cunningham and Ramierz are up and talking, but neither has ever seen The Professor personally. They’ve talked to him over the phone, but they can’t even identify the voice.”

  “So there’s still no positive identification on him? No accurate description?”

  “Nothing. The children he used differ in their stories as well. It looks like he uses disguises. Why?”

  Harry looked at her young, clear, open, vivacious face hard before answering. “Just curious,” he finally related. “No reason.”

  They chatted about nothing for a few minutes before Fatso explained that they had just droppd by to see how he was and they had to get back to work. Harry said he was tired anyway. Devlin waved from the door. The sergeant suddenly leaned down and kissed Callahan lightly. Without another word, she swept out of the room. Harry looked questionably at Devlin. Fatso shrugged and followed her.

  Harry slowly put his hands behind his head. He stared up at the ceiling and thought. Hard.

  If Big Ed Mohamid wasn’t dying, he sure felt like he was. He’d drift back and forth into consciousness on a constant cloud of pain. Every time he slept, he relived the fire and the explosion. He felt himself falling, then he heard the blast; he felt himself floating away in a ball of heat, then something hit him. Hard. After that he felt himself being pulled across broken glass. Finally he woke up and felt the pain. When he closed his eyes, it all started over again.

  For what felt like the hundredth time he opened his eyes. He became aware of someone at the end of his bed. He tried to get up, he tried to shout, but the pain wouldn’t let him.

  “I don’t believe it,” said a familiar voice. “Someone as big and black and dumb as you can’t die.”

  Mohamid smiled. “Harry,” he breathed painfully.

  Dirty Harry Callahan kneeled by the side of the bed, showing the Uhuru leader his face in the dim light from outside.

  “Why don’t you turn on the lights, man?” Mohamid grunted.

  “Don’t want to make you too easy a target,” Harry expounded. “Why aren’t you dead already? I’ve been waiting all night for someone to make a move.”

  Mohamid turned his head gradually to the side. He saw that Harry was dressed completely in black; long-sleeved T-shirt, slacks, slip-on shoes. He was even wearing thin black gloves. In his right hand he held the Magnum.

  “They’re not going to kill me, man,” Mohamid chuckled deep in the back of his throat. “That would blow their game. Then the fuzz would know I was being rung.”

  “It’s safer to let you talk?”

  Mohamid closed his eyes and grimaced. “No one would believe me. Except maybe you.”

  Harry nodded. “I’m listening.”

  Mohamid swallowed and licked his lips. “They got Rose, man. They got Rose for insurance. Or maybe they liked the way she looked. I don’t know. These fuckers don’t care. They do anything they want. They’ve got the bread.”

  “Come on,” Harry stressed. “Who are they, Mohamid?”

  “Slavers, jack, modern-day white slavers.” Mohamid closed his eyes and smiled in agony. “Still believe me, Callahan?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Harry said flatly.

  “They came to me. Knew my history. Burn whitey. Anything for a buck. They wanted me to point girls out. Girls a little too in-de-pendent. Girls who dated blacks. White chicks mostly, but they hinted they’d look at anybody. They said they give me $25,000 a head. That’s how they put it . . . a head.”

  “You refused?” Harry asked.

  “What? You kidding?” Mohamid replied with painful indignation. “Twenty-five grand is twenty-five grand. I said I’d think about it. You see some of the chicks we got running around, man? Wigglin’ their asses, doing anything they like? Little sluts running around. A different guy every night. They want to be whores. They’re just askin’ for it.”

  “Rose asking for it?” Harry reminded him quietly, then adding a sarcastic “man.”

  Mohamid swallowed. “I guess I waited too long,” he decided. “When Rose didn’t come back, I called the number they gave me. They said I should admit to killing the white chick.”

  “What’s the phone number?” Harry demanded. Mohamid gave it to him. Harry rose and went to the door.

  “You see?” The man’s tortured voice came out of the darkness from the bed. “They don’t have to kill me. The courts’ll do the job for ’em. Nobody’ll buy that story in a million years.”

  “Maybe,” Harry said and left the room.

  Walking down the plain, fluorescent-filled hallway toward the phones, Harry considered disbelieving the story. He had heard rumors of a flourishing white slavery trade and a top eschelon police cover-up of the situation, but it didn’t seem likely, even to him. There couldn’t be enough money, and there were too many risks in abducting women. But then he remembered the thousands of people who disappear every year. Out of those it was quite possible that close to a hundred were good-looking females. And he remembered the San Francisco of the early 1900s. History has proven that then white slavery was a prosperous trade.

  Harry reached a pay phone in the hallway. He slipped a dime in the slot and punched out the number Mohamid gave him.

  “I’m sorry,” said a raspy voice in his ear, “the number you have reached is not in service at this time. Please check your directory and try your call again. This is a recording.”

  Rose Ray heard a recording too, but its subject matter was completely different.

  “Big Ed Mohamid raped the girl Barbara Steinbrunner. He raped you. He murdered the girl Barbara Steinbrunner. He threatened to kill you if you talked.”

  The same message repeated over and over again in
to her ear. After a while it seemed to go directly into her brain. As much as she shook her head, the message wouldn’t stop. As much as she tried to reach her ears to stop it, she couldn’t move. As much as she tried to stuff up her ears, they were already stuffed with the message. As much as she tried to scream, no noise would come out.

  Rose Ray was in a cell. A black, tight-fitting hood had been stitched around her head. Not tied, but stitched. The only way to get the hood off was to cut the stitching wires that laced up at the back of her skull. Inside the hood were two speakers that fit over her ears, two pads that fit over her eyes, and a large rubber shaft that filled her mouth.

  She lay spread-eagled in midair, halfway between the floor and the ceiling. She was held aloft by a dozen straps that stretched from the floor to her limbs, then up to the ceiling. There was a tight, thick strap around her ankles, her thighs, her waist, above and below her breasts, her arms, and her wrists.

  The only other thing she wore was an arrangement of straps around her hips. These held in the dildo which was always on when someone was not around to play with her. Then the vibrator was pulled out, and she would be gently swung back and forth in the horrible darkness until her raper was satisfied.

  Occasionally she would be sat down so she could go to the bathroom. At the same time she would be injected with enough nutriments to stay alive. But the hood would never come off. And the message never ended.

  “Big Ed Mohamid raped the girl Barbara Steinbrunner. He raped you. He murdered the girl Barbara Steinbrunner. He threatened to kill you if you talked.”

  It was a beautiful Monday morning in San Francisco. On a morning like it, sunny, sixty-three degrees, it would be hard for most people to really believe such things as rape, murder, child prostitution, and white slavery existed.

  It was hard for Harry Callahan to believe as well, but that was what kept getting him up every morning and into work. He wanted to make it impossible to believe. Unfortunately, doing that involved risks, and the reality of the world sometimes made it difficult for Harry to take all of them himself, much as he wanted to.