Dirty Harry 01 - Duel For Cannons

by Dane Hartman

  What he hoped would happen did. The building was so old it had settled, making every floor rest unevenly, and the door was so old that the jam was slightly rusted. Given enough time the door would creak open of its own free will. But Boris Tucker would not be behind it. No, Boris Tucker would be on the third floor, looking down, waiting for the hitman to start shooting.

  Even with his girth, Tucker moved up the stairs silently and smoothly. He placed his hand on the knob, turned, and swung the door open. Then the world blew up in his face.

  All he saw was a fuzzy band of white intersperced with ribbons of yellow, orange and red. He felt a searing heat rip across his face and the door tear out of his hand. He heard a cough mingled in with a smashing, whoomping sound. A dozen wooden needles dug into the back of his head as he fell over.

  On the way down he realized what had happened. The bastard had been one step ahead of him all along. He had opened the second floor door knowing that Tucker would move up to the third, then, somehow, he had gotten to the third floor himself and waited for him.

  After Tucker’s mind had pieced that mystery together, it realized two more things. First, he wasn’t dead. Second, if he was going to stay that way, he’d better start fighting back.

  Even as Tucker slammed to the floor on his left side, his right arm was holding his gun out and his trigger finger was contracting spasmodically.

  He knew his bullets had missed even before his vision cleared. He heard them whine off in several directions and the hasty footsteps of the hitman receding in the distance. When the rainbow haze finally dissipated he saw why it was so easy for the assassin to change floors. Now he was lying on a catwalk. A catwalk that stretched from one door to another. All around him were the workings of the ride. Turning rods, twisting valves, spiraling hooks, all were working their mechanical magic around him.

  Tucker painfully rose to a sitting position. He felt a warmth covering the entire right side of his face. When he touched it and brought his hand away, he saw his palm covered with blood. The hitman’s bullet had just creased his cheek, Tucker realized. But that graze was enough to hack out a canal of flesh from the side of his nose to his ear. If the bullet had been even a fraction of an inch farther to the left, Tucker’s head would have split and disintegrated like a rotten melon. High-powered Magnums may not be that easy to control, but when they hit something, that’s it for that something.

  Enraged by the assassin and his own stupidity, Tucker emptied his remaining bullets into the door at the other end of the catwalk. To his shock, he heard a high-pitched scream in reply. Not the sort of sound one might attribute to a hardened hitman. More like the sound a frightened young girl would make.

  The realization brought Tucker to his feet. He had just fired into an amusement park ride filled with innocent tourists.

  With grim determination, Tucker reloaded his weapon a second time. He refused to consider that the hitman was smarter than he was. Luck of the draw, that’s all it was. The ignorant bastard was merely taking advantage of some lucky breaks. This creep would even use innocent vacationers as a shield. It would be Tucker’s pleasure to blow his brains out.

  Swinging his chamber shut again, Tucker marched to the second door and kicked it open. Standing directly in front of him was a man with a gun. The man with the gun started to aim his weapon in Tucker’s direction. With great satisfaction Tucker shot the figure twice in the chest.

  A light went on above the figure reading “YOU WON.”

  It was then Tucker realized that he had beaten a mechanical dummy to the draw. The dummy started spitting sparks from his wounds. Standing to the side was a young girl with both hands in her mouth. Standing next to her was a young man with both arms around her. All four of their eyes were wide and staring at Tucker.

  The sheriff felt like a first-class fool. He lowered his gun, looked around, then returned his attention to the kids.

  “You see another guy with a gun come out of there?” he asked, pointing a thumb at the open door.

  The kids kept staring.

  “A big guy,” Tucker continued. “Dark hair, wearing white overalls?”

  The kids stared for another second, then turned and ran.

  “Hey!” Tucker called after them. “Hey! I’m not gonna hurt you. Hey, wait a minute!”

  The sheriff started off after them, keeping an eye out for the hitman. He was striding across a black floor surrounded by black walls and a black ceiling. The environment gave the effect of the Twilight Zone. Tucker couldn’t be sure in which direction he was actually heading. He had let the hitman lead him into the Ghost Town’s Funhouse.

  He saw the kids turn a corner and followed. He stepped into the entrance for the Hall of Mirrors. The kids had already entered and were stumbling through, slamming into glass partitions every few seconds.

  Tucker saw his own reflection. No wonder the kids had reacted so strongly. In his haste and rage, the sheriff had forgotten about his wound. Not only had he shot a harmless dummy, he had blood dribbling across the bottom of his head. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now, he thought. The Hall of Mirrors was the last attraction the Funhouse had to offer, he remembered from the brochures. Once patrons got through that, the literature said, they would be treated to a wild ride and then out.

  Tucker had no interest in the exit. There was still a mad-dog assassin to catch. He was about to turn back when a fourth reflection appeared in the hall. It was the reflection of the mad-dog assassin.

  It was Tucker’s first good look at the man. The body filled out the dirty white overalls, showing signs of a solid musculature beneath. The face was wide, his eyes were gray and widely set, and the mouth was thin and wide. The only thing marring the expanse were pock-marked acne scars across both cheeks. The hitman could be called handsome in a very rough sort of way, but none of the three present were pleased at his appearance. Especially since he held his huge revolver up in plain view.

  Without hesitation, Tucker raised his own gun, took aim and fired. A spider-web seemed to hang by itself in the space directly in front of the sheriff as several mirrors beyond that shattered and collapsed. Beyond those mirrors was a blank gray wall. Tucker had misjudged the situation again, losing a bullet in the process. And here was no place to hide and reload.

  The hitman’s reflection was no longer in front of him. Tucker spun until he spied the white overalls moving behind him. The sheriff’s lips drew back from his teeth as a wolf's might. The assassin had taken a gamble. Here no one could be sure where anyone else actually was. And here, once all one’s bullets were used, the other could blast away until most of the mirrors were gone. Then it would be a race to see who could reload fast enough.

  At least there was a way to tell the actual reflections from the plain transparent wall sheets. The transparent partitions were made of Plexiglas, plastic, and didn’t shatter when shot. They created the impression of hovering spiderwebs. And it was the hitman’s turn to make holes in them. Tucker had expended three of his five bullets getting to this point. The hitman could have reloaded right after he shot the sheriff at the third floor entrance.

  So it was a matter of patience and stalking now. It was a matter of who would break first, the hitman, Tucker, or the two young kids stuck in the middle. The girl had started shrieking the second after Tucker had shot through the glass, and she had continued shrieking no matter how her boyfriend tried to soothe her. Finally it became a matter of shutting her up. The boy pulled her hands away from her face, wrapped one of his arms around her waist and pushed his other hand over her mouth.

  “Candy,” he said, “take it easy. Just keep quiet and lie down here, OK? Just keep your head down and your fingers in your ears. I’m going to try to find the exit and get help.”

  He half-lowered, half-pushed her to the floor as the two armed men began to move slowly around the hall. Then the boy, too, began to move. Tucker was about to yell to the kid to get down himself, but he cut off the words just as they were gathering beh
ind his lips. When the boy had spoken, the sheriff had been able to pinpoint his location instantly. He could’ve shot the kid with no problem at all. If he spoke, it was quite possible that the hitman could return the favor. Boris Tucker kept quiet and kept stalking. The other two men did the same.

  The dance around the Hall of Mirrors was excruciatingly slow. Each man did his best to keep the other in view and not knock embarrassingly against the clear partitions. The hitman and Tucker kept their free arms held out in front of them, but the kid was so desperate he would often smack face first against the clear plastic.

  Tucker began to sweat profusely, He told himself he wasn’t worried, but he also told himself that he’d have to be lucky in this environment. He’d have to nail the hitman dead to rights or he’d make himself a sitting duck. A sudden haze swept across his brain. His view got slightly orange at the edges for a second. It must be the wound, he thought. The loss of blood might be weakening him.

  The loss of blood . . . ?

  When it happened, it happened very fast. Tucker looked down and saw the red splotches he had been dotting the floor with since his entry into the Funhouse. He realized that the hitman could follow those splotches directly to him. He realized that the reflection of the hitman in front of him was coming from behind him. He spun in his tracks and fired his remaining bullets back the way he had come.

  The Hall of Mirrors was filled with the sounds of breaking glass, gun reports, Candy’s cries, and Tucker’s curses.

  The sheriff fell down, digging into his ammo pocket before he hit the floorboards. The hitman’s bullets began digging into the floorboards before Tucker had shoved his hand all the way in. Taking no chances, the sheriff simply turned his pocket inside out and clawed at whatever ammunition was rolling around.

  Tucker had just filled his second chamber when a bullet splattered into the ground by his nose. That was it, he thought. The assassin had the proper range. The next bullet would lodge somewhere in him. The sheriff slammed his revolver shut and raised his arm to protect himself. So it was that he saw the hitman change his target.

  The man in the overalls leveled his weapon at eye level and blasted twice off to Tucker’s right. Glass shattered to Tucker’s left. The wounded lawman rolled over to see the broken reflectors reveal the stunned young man. The kid tried to leap through a Plexiglas partition, only to be thrown back. He tried to run away, but a mirror was blocking his path. He was about to hurl himself to the side when the assassin shot him in the back.

  The marksmanship was impeccable. The hitman used both hands and, with calm assurance, killed the boy in cold blood.

  Candy wailed in shock and despair, rolling back and forth between plastic partitions.

  “Had to die,” the man in the overalls quietly said as the last echo of his coughing report disappeared. “He was getting too close to the exit. Knew what I looked like. Couldn’t let him get away. Sorry.”

  Tucker listened in angry awe. Then he said, “Bastard!” and fired his newly loaded rounds.

  The hitman was forced to duck as the sheriff’s bullets smashed glass all around him. The lawman had been right. It was very easy to place a talking target. He was also right about the race to reload. Now both men had empty guns. The hitman scuttled to the right and around the hysterical girl as he pulled his plastic speed loaders from an overall pocket. Within seconds, six new shells were in the silenced Magnum.

  In the same amount of time, Tucker had only been able to find and load three of his rounds. He had spotted another lying next to his stomach when the hitman opened fire again. Tucker stayed cool and listened. Amidst all the breaking glass he heard the cough of the silencer coming from just left of the boy’s body.

  He looked up to see the hitman reflected behind him. In front of him was the boy’s body. Tucker stood and fired above the corpse. Mirrors were mowed down in succession, revealing the man in the overalls. Tucker fired again. The hitman disappeared.

  Tucker thought about it for only a second. The assassin had said the boy was getting near the exit. The brochure had said the exit started with a wild ride. It meant that the hitman had found the exit and fallen down it. If Tucker could catch him off guard, he’d be able to kill him with his last bullet.

  With a roar, Tucker folded both arms in front of his face and charged. He felt the plastic partitions fold before him as he smashed his way toward the young man’s corpse. He kicked the remaining shards of mirror out of the way as the last few feet were covered. Below his folded arms, he saw the exit was a gently sloping trap door. And before he could do anything about it, he saw the man in the white overalls propped just under the trap door.

  The man in the white overalls shot Boris Tucker in the chin. The bullet came out of the sheriff’s hair, taking most of his head with it.

  Minutes before, the noise of the gun battle had attracted a large crowd outside of the Funhouse exit. So Mrs. Tucker was there with her daughter when what was left of her husband came rolling out.

  C H A P T E R

  T w o

  San Francisco Homicide Inspector Harry Callahan stepped out of his rented Cordoba and scowled. He didn’t like the attitude of the officer who stopped him at the amusement park gate. He didn’t like the looks of the place. He didn’t like the way the sun was shining. It was shaping up to be one lousy visit.

  He looked over to where a huge, blue-uniformed crowd had gathered around the front of the Ghost Town Funhouse. Pencils were hurriedly scribbling and flashbulbs were going off in the middle of the afternoon. Harry couldn’t see anything else besides the sea of blue.

  “Is that . . . ?” said a voice from over his left shoulder. He turned around. “It is!” said one of two men beneath a gnarled tree in the center of a little green. “Dirty Harry Callahan, as I live and breath. How the hell did you get here, Callahan?”

  Harry slowly took off his sunglasses and recognized Lieutenant Fritz Williamson of the Fullerton homicide squad. There weren’t many cops in the Southern California area Harry didn’t know and there were even fewer who didn’t know him. Many departments were often put on standby alert when a police chief heard Dirty Harry was in town. It seemed as if Fullerton hadn’t gotten the word.

  “Well, I took the Santa Ana Freeway to Riverside . . .” Harry said softly without a smile.

  Williamson laughed in spite of that, coming over to the car. Harry remembered the lieutenant as a nice enough guy, but a little slow on the uptake.

  “Yeah, right,” Williamson waved Harry’s directions away. “Well, what the hell are you doing here then?”

  Harry turned back to look at the scurrying cops in front of the Funhouse. “I had a dinner engagement,” he said, slipping his sunglasses back on.

  “So?” Williamson replied. “It’s in the middle of the afternoon.”

  The lieutenant was living up to his reputation. “My date is in no shape to chew food,” Harry said pointedly.

  “All right, I’ll bite,” Williamson retorted affably. “Why is your date in no shape to chew food?”

  Harry sighed, then answered in a flat tone. “Because he’s missing half his head.”

  Williamson finally got it. “Half his hea . . . oh jeez, Harry, I’m sorry. Really, I had no idea.”

  “That’s OK, Fritz,” Harry said. He shook his head. No wonder his men called him “On the Fritz,” behind his back. “What happened here?”

  “How much do you know, Harry?” Williamson asked as he came around the car, motioning his associate to follow.

  “Only as much as the police radio band and CB scuttlebutt said. Murder at the amusement park. Fellow officer shot in the line of duty. The usual. Boris said he might be taking Dotty and Lynn here this afternoon. I put two and two together.”

  “Christ,” Williamson shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at his shoes. “The truckers must’ve really gotten off on it, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “A lot of excited talk about calibers and what looked like rotten melons.”

 
; “Christ,” Williamson said again. “Come on.”

  The two men moved toward the Funhouse entrance. As they walked up the steps Harry noticed a dark splotch just under the exit sign to his right.

  “It really stinks,” he heard Williamson say. “We found him there. Most of the gore dropped out on the way down.”

  Harry turned toward the Fullerton cop. “Did Dotty see him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Around the back. With Sergeant Baker.”

  Harry moved purposely past the dark bloodstain on the yellow dust and walked around the corner. Just as he turned he heard Williamson mutter to his aide, “Jesus. I didn’t know he had any friends.” Well, not anymore. Harry’s definition of a friend was someone he didn’t know from his immediate job that he was willing to go and see. Otherwise he kept up a friendly banter with the guys at work and let the girls come to him when they both found time.

  If Boris Tucker wasn’t the last of the out-of-state associates, Harry would have a hard time figuring out who was. He sure wouldn’t cross the street for Fritz Williamson. As a matter of fact, ever since he’d met both Williamson and Tucker at a Midwest crime seminar he was forced to attend by his superiors, Harry knew that the latter man would make a good partner and a great beer-drinking buddy. It was too bad he toiled away in San Antonio, Texas, as a sheriff, and wasn’t willing to make the hop into Harry’s San Francisco suicide seat.

  His wife and kid probably had something to do with it. Dotty was a good cop’s wife, one of the best. Her father had been a politician and a bad one at that. He was part of a Texas state machine and was therefore always around and never took a stand on anything that wasn’t dictated to him. By the time Boris asked for her hand, she was ready for a strong man who acted on what he believed in.