by Dane Hartman
Look where it got her, Harry thought coming around the back of the Funhouse, sitting on the back flap of a station wagon sobbing into a paper towel with a plainclothesman offering her a Styrofoam cup full of coffee.
As soon as she saw him, she was up on her feet and running toward him. Harry caught her in his arms and held her tightly. Her small thin body shook next to his. He felt her bones drift in and out and saw her head bobbing with controlled emotion.
“The bastards,” she said. “The bastards. They set it up. They set it all up. He didn’t stand a chance.”
“Bastards?” asked Harry. “What bastards, Dotty? Who are ‘they?’ ”
“Those—those bastards at his office,” the woman choked out. “They did this to him. They did it.”
“Come on. Dotty,” Harry said, torn between soothing and grilling the crying woman. “Take it easy. You’re not making any sense.”
“They did it,” she repeated, looking up at him. “I swear it, Harry. Nash and all the others.”
“Nash . . . ?” Harry began, only to be interrupted by a strong hand gripping his upper arm. He turned and looked down into the face of Sergeant Lee Baker, a wiry, tawny-haired cop.
“You take it easy, Stilt,” Baker said. “Can’t you see the lady’s in bad shape?”
“Go write a report,” Harry quietly replied. “I’m a friend of the family.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Pope,” Baker snarled. “The lady is in my protective custody and she’s in no shape to answer questions.”
Harry had to agree with the sergeant there, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Instead he lowered his head to look into Mrs. Tucker’s tearful eyes.
“I’m sorry, Dotty,” he told her. “I’ll find out what happened.”
The woman stopped crying, then spent several seconds looking at Harry’s eyes. Then she nodded. Harry squeezed her arms as a gesture of optimism, then gently led her back to Baker. But before he left, he eyed the sergeant up and down. “No need to be so hostile,” Harry told him. “You’re not that short.”
Before Baker could reply, Harry marched back to the front of the Funhouse where Lieutenant Williamson was going over some notes with his aide.
“The kid’s got a bad case of grandeur,” Harry said.
“Who?” Williamson replied. “Oh, Baker? His bark is worse than his bite.”
“You might think about buying him a leash then,” Harry answered, glancing at the notes. “What’s the bottom line here?”
Williamson waved his aide away, took Harry’s arm, and led him inside before answering. “The M.E. figures three dead before too long, including Tucker. The first kid got the top of his head chopped off, but is still alive. But between the shock, blood loss, and wound, we don’t figure he’s got much of a chance.”
Harry had heard enough. “Where’s the bastard who did this?” he demanded.
“What?” Williamson replied.
“This, all this,” Harry said slowly. “You mean to tell me that with a gunfight raging inside a funhouse and a murdered sheriff, you couldn’t catch the bastard who started it?”
“What are you talking about, Harry?” Williamson wanted to know, his expression a mask of confusion.
It took a major effort for Harry to control himself. He blinked, swallowed, and put a hand on Williamson’s shoulder. The left side of his upper lip curled off of his teeth when he spoke. And his voice was not much louder than a whisper.
“Fritz, the radio reports said there was a gunfight here. You told me that three people got killed. There’s a woman and her child back there who’ll never be the same again. And you mean to tell me you let the man who did it get away?”
“Nobody got away,” said a strident voice behind Harry. He recognized it even before he turned around. It was the voice of Sergeant Baker.
“I thought you were in protective custody,” said Harry.
Baker stepped in between Harry and Williamson, the top of his head getting redder and redder. “Who the hell is this?” he demanded of his superior. “What the hell is he doing in the middle of a Fullerton investigation?”
“This is Harry Callahan,” replied Williamson, seemingly relieved by the interruption. “He’s an Inspector with the San Francisco Homicide Divi—”
“I’ve heard of him,” Baker interrupted again, returning his attention to Callahan. “So you’re Dirty Harry, huh? A lot of people seem to die around you, Stilt.”
Harry answered carefully. “A lot of them deserve it.”
“Yeah,” drawled Baker, smirking. “I’ll watch where I stand.” He turned back to Williamson. “So what is he doing here. Fritz? We don’t need a San Fran dick on a simple murder-suicide.”
The surprise in Harry’s voice was sharp. “Murder-suicide? What is this?”
“Your buddy-boy started shooting, that’s what,” Baker snorted. “He only blew his own brains out after blasting two innocent kids.”
Harry looked down at the sergeant as if examining a particularly offensive slug. “You’re crazy,” he told him flatly.
“Harry,” Williamson interceded, “Tucker was under a lot of pressure. Dotty herself corroborated this. He was getting old. He was near retirement time. And everybody in the park agreed that he started shooting. We have a dozen eyewitnesses who saw him shoot that tree and wave his gun around.”
“Yeah,” echoed Baker, “the ballistic boys have already collected lead from everywhere. All the shells were .44 specials.” Suddenly Baker’s face became the picture of innocence. “Like the gun you use,” he continued sweetly “You didn’t happen to be in the area, did you, Callahan?”
“That’s enough!” Williamson snapped. “I’m sorry, Harry, but it looks real bad. At the very least Tucker was breaking the law by carrying his weapon over state lines. That’s a bad sign.”
“Come on, Fritz,” Harry growled. “No good cop leaves his piece behind.”
“The law says—” Baker began.
“The law says Boris Tucker shot two kids and killed himself,” Harry interrupted. “The law says a lot of stupid things.”
“Yeah, the law says you’re also out of your jurisdiction, Stilt!” Baker yelled. “So get lost!”
“Shut up, Sergeant!” Williamson barked. “Get back to Mrs. Tucker and see that she’s all right.”
Baker clamped his mouth shut, looked to the lieutenant and then to Harry, then abruptly turned heel and walked away.
“That guy doesn’t need a leash,” Harry noted, “he needs a muzzle.”
“Come on, Harry,” Williamson complained. “It’s tough enough already.”
“Yeah,” Harry muttered. “Can I look upstairs, Fritz?”
“Sure, Harry, sure. Our guys have gone over it already. Go ahead.”
Harry Callahan wearily marched up the back steps of the Funhouse. He felt the comforting weight of his own .44 Magnum against his side, while thinking about the individuality of each weapon. A bullet fired from his gun would look entirely different from the same sort of round fired from Tucker’s Bulldog. But only under a microscope. And the way the Fullerton force was playing it, Harry doubted the investigation would go that far.
An aging cop under a lot of pressure goes beserk, then kills himself. It’s happened before. Neat and tidy. Only Harry knew Tucker didn’t do it. He was the kind of man who might kill himself all right, but he wouldn’t have taken anybody with him.
Harry stopped in front of the third floor door with the ragged hole in it. Shot from the outside, Harry realized. He put his hand on the doorknob, then took it off again. Instead of walking through to the Hall of Mirrors, Harry kneeled down on the metal staircase. He looked carefully at the steel slats. Suddenly he rose and checked the wall behind him. It was flat, unscarred by holes.
Starting from the wall, Harry traced the length of each steel slat with his eyes. He had traced six when he found what he was looking for. Wedged in between two of the flat metal lengths was a squashed slug. It was the bullet that had punched the hol
e in the wooden door. Its velocity must have been slowed down enough by that so the lead didn’t sink into the wall but got caught by the metal. And it wouldn’t have been found if someone wasn’t looking specifically for it.
Harry slipped the slug into his jacket pocket and went to check the Hall of Mirrors. The place, not surprisingly, was a wreck. Most of the mirrors were destroyed so that the hall was made up of a maze of bullet-ridden Plexiglas sheets. Harry walked amid them, looking at his shoes. Halfway around the right side, he saw something amid the shattered mirror shards. He reached down and picked it up. It was a button. A square, light-green button.
He checked out the rest of the area. He found eleven cents worth of change, two cigarette stubs, and six entry ticket stubs Harry kept the change and the tickets. They joined the slug and the button in his pocket. Then he retraced his steps and went back downstairs.
“Find anything?” Williamson asked.
“Nope,” Harry replied.
“Where are those reports?” shouted Lieutenant Al Bressler out the open door of his office.
“Which reports?” asked Sergeant Reineke from his desk.
“The reports . . . you know the reports,” Bressler sputtered, waving his arms in little circular motions over his desk.
“The ones on the Kleindale Jewelry heist?” asked Reineke. The lieutenant shook his head. “The Allegra shooting?” Bressler shook his head again. “The Wilson stabbing?”
“No, you know . . . come on . . . the ones about the suicide thing . . . in Texas.”
“Oh yeah, the Tucker case,” acknowledged Reineke. “Harry’s got ’em.”
Bressler threw his hands up and stormed out of his office. He quickly walked in between the sergeants’ desks and moved down the man-made hallway toward the inspectors’ offices.
The world may keep turning, Bressler thought as he marched past different squad rooms, but some things never change. Like the San Francisco homicide office. It was still on the seventh floor of the Justice Building, it was still in suite #750 and, no matter how they changed the desks, or how many partitions they moved in, the ambience stayed the same. Too much smoke, too many junk food wrappers, and too big a stink from Vitalis, Right Guard and bad booze. The custodians try, God love them but they only make the offices smell like the inside of a Band-Aid two days after.
Bressler came to Harry’s office cubicle and stuck his head in. The only one there was Frank DiGeorgio, who was reading a 1977 issue of Playboy.
“Where’s Callahan?” the lieutenant asked.
DiGeorgio jerked in his chair, the magazine nearly hopping out of his hands. When he saw it was Bressler doing the asking he swallowed the curse that leaped to his lips and collected himself. “Down in Missing Persons, I think” was what he finally said.
Bressler nodded. “Good article?” he asked before he left.
“Article?” DiGeorgio replied. “Oh yeah. Right. Good article.”
The lieutenant should’ve chewed DiGeorgio out, and he would have if it had been anyone else, but being Harry Callahan’s partner was dangerous enough. That was something else that never changed. DiGeorgio was the only one out of six partners to last more than one case. That’s why they called Callahan duty the “suicide seat.” Only DiGeorgio seemed to have the sense and the timing to get out of Harry’s way when he played superhero.
It was Harry himself who always seemed to need the chewing out. That was the only way Bressler knew of controlling him, besides giving him plenty of rope and hoping he didn’t choke on it.
After all Harry’s tragedies, Bressler mused, it was amazing Harry could be controlled at all. First his wife was killed in a meaningless traffic accident, then there was the “Scorpio” affair where Harry threw away his badge, and recently that terrorist fiasco where DiGeorgio was stabbed and Harry lost his fifth partner; a woman.
And through it all, Harry just kept getting better and better and more and more professional. The “Vigilante Cop” mess probably had something to do with that, Bressler figured. Callahan really had to examine his M.O. during that case.
So now, if anything, Harry was even more devastating in the field. It was just a matter of utilizing him properly. After all their years together, Bressler considered himself the Callahan expert. Unfortunately the various captains, commissioners, and mayors that came and went couldn’t claim the same.
Bressler hopped into the elevator and rode down to the fourth floor. He found Harry in suite #436, sitting in Ron Caputo’s seat while Ron stood by, staring over Callahan’s shoulder.
“What are you doing, Harry?” Bressler boomed, a grin on his face, “Bucking for a transfer? Harry Callahan, tracer of lost persons. That has a nice ring to it.”
Harry said nothing, just grimaced and kept reading the papers in front of him. Ron looked at the lieutenant, smiled and shrugged, as if saying, “Harry’s at it again.” When Callahan got worked up over something, the office crew stayed out of his way.
“Come on, Harry,” continued Bressler, moving over to the other side of the desk, “what are you doing? It wouldn’t have anything to do with homicide, would it? After all, that is the department you’re supposed to be assigned to. And God knows there are enough murders to go around.”
“Just checking something,” Harry grunted without looking up.
Bressler looked under Callahan’s arm and read a piece of the report Harry was so intent on. “—therefore I see no reason why any further investigation into Tucker’s death is warranted—”
“All right, Callahan, that’s it!” Bressler exploded, pulling the papers out from under his gaze. Harry was immediately on his feet, facing the lieutenant like baseball manage Billy Martin after a particularly bad umpire call. Bressler cut him off before he could complain. “Now you’re bucking for a demotion,” he said. “These are private files lieutenant to lieutenant. That’s bad enough, but wasting time with a suicide when the workload is incredible—”
“It was no suicide,” said Harry.
Bressler took a sympathetic tact. “Look, Harry, I know you liked the guy. Hell, we all did, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Leave it be. Believe me, it’ll go away.”
“Lieutenant . . .” Harry began.
“Get your mind off it, Harry,” Bressler continued. “DiGeorgio is waiting upstairs. We’ve got to get a break on this Fullmer rape-murder thing.”
“All right. Lieutenant,” said Harry. “Come on.”
The two men stomped out of Caputo’s office with a cursory wave. The Missing Persons’ officer gave Harry the thumb’s-up sign. Just as he was rounding the bend, Harry gave him back an “A-OK.” Bressler kept his head down and headed for the elevators. Harry kept going past them.
“Hey!” Bressler called after him. “Where are you going?”
“To ballistics,” Harry replied, still moving.
“What for?” Bressler shouted.
“To show you something,” Harry answered. “Want to come?”
Bressler followed, cursing all the way. Walter White, the homicide lab man, was waiting for them.
“I see you got him here, Harry,” he said. “What did you do, promise him a cookie?”
“No lip. White,” Bressler warned. The lieutenant only enjoyed the lab man’s Don Rickies impersonation after hours, “What is this about?”
“Boris Tucker,” Harry said.
“Boris Tucker shot himself,” Bressler declared flatly.
“Boris Tucker,” Harry repeated, “was murdered in cold blood. So were the two kids who died with him. And there’s a good possibility that there’s a fourth victim.”
Bressler was unimpressed. “Funny I missed your deerstalker when I walked in, Sherlock. You bucking for vacation time?”
In way of reply, Harry walked over to a white drawer, pulled it open, took out a large manila envelope, came back to where Bressler was standing, opened it, and dumped the contents onto the lab counter.
“Very impressive,” Bressler drawled. “A flattened slug, a tick
et stub, a hunk of rubber, and a pretty green button. So what?”
“So this,” Harry said, picking up the squashed bullet. “Walter just gave me the report on this. It is a totally different filing than any bullet shot from Tucker’s Bulldog revolver.”
“Where did you get that?” Bressler said dangerously.
Harry dropped his arm to his side and looked at the lieutenant with veiled eyelids. “A pigeon dropped it on me,” he answered.
“Christ, Harry! Jesus Christ! Withholding evidence on a Fullerton investigation? You know what could happen?”
“Aw, come on, Lieutenant, you know those guys wouldn’t have bothered checking this far.”
“It makes no difference, and you know it, Callahan! You could be brought up on charges.”
“No way,” said Harry.
“How do you figure?” Bressler asked, getting intrigued. There was always a method to Harry’s madness.
“Because it’s not just a Fullerton investigation anymore,” Harry explained, holding up the hunk of rubber. “I found this on the back awning of the Ghost Town Funhouse, near another bullet hole. I was told it was a piece from a shoe heel.” Harry used the rubber like a magic marker and smeared a black line across the lab counter with it.
“Oh hell, Harry, I’m going to have to clean that off,” White moaned.
Callahan ignored the joker. “This matches with the same kind of streaks I found in the Hall of Mirrors. Both Tucker and the kid were wearing sneakers. They couldn’t have made these marks.”
“So?” inquired the lieutenant. “What does that prove? Those marks could have been made any time.”
“No way,” Harry said again, holding up the ticket stub. “First of all, I checked. The Funhouse is cleaned every night by a nice old guy named Whitney. He’s about the only decent employee that place has got. Everything is swept out and washed. He would have noticed the black heel marks if they had been there the day before. And the tickets are dated. The only stubs in there were marked with the day Tucker was killed.”
