Dirty Harry 01 - Duel For Cannons

by Dane Hartman

  “OK, I grant you,” mused Bressler, “you had some overlooked clues to go on. But that’s all! All you’ve done is establish that a man who might have been on the awning was also in the Hall of Mirrors. What good does that do? This guy could have been in the Funhouse at any time of the day. There’s no way to establish he was inside when Tucker was.”

  Harry held up the square green button as if it were a tape-recorded confession.

  “Yeah, it’s very pretty, Callahan,” Bressler said with sarcasm. “Quit savoring the moment and speak.”

  “Tucker was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with round red buttons. The murdered boy was wearing a gray-striped buttondown with round white ones. I’ve checked around. Square buttons aren’t used very much and the ones that are are usually on women’s short sleeve fashion blouses. You know, the silky ones with thin collars.”

  “What are you telling me?” Bressler inquired. “A hitman with black heels and a green silk shirt?”

  “No. Another victim. A missing girl.”

  “Come on, Harry, this is ridiculous! That button could have been lost any time of the day as well! You’re not going to get time off from the Fullmer thing because of a bunch of strung-up assumptions! Facts, I need facts!”

  Harry Callahan pulled himself up to his full height and moved right up to Bressler, leaving all the Fullerton items behind. “Facts?” he snarled into the lieutenant’s forehead. “OK, fact one; the dead kid was named George Garris. Fact two; his mother said he was on a weekend trip with a friend. Fact three; one of his best friends was a girl named Candice McCarthy. Fact four; Candice McCarthy has just been reported missing.”

  Bressler stared angrily at Harry for five full seconds. Then he said, “Aw, damn.”

  “The bastard who murdered Boris Tucker is out there,” Harry warned. “And he’s got a pretty young girl with him.”

  “OK, Harry, OK,” Bressler sighed. “You made your point. It’s a string of coincidences, but it’s a mighty strong one. I’ll call Williamson back and have him put the girl’s disappearance on his highest priority.”

  “No way,” Harry said for a third time. “It’s my business now.”

  Bressler was about to bark Harry’s head off until he saw the look in the inspector’s eye. Instead, he pursed his lips and waited.

  “You want to hear another coincidence, lieutenant?” Harry finally asked as he was walking toward the door. “Guess where Candice McCarthy lives? Guess who has jurisdiction?” Without answering, Harry left the lab and went back upstairs to collect DiGeorgio and hit the streets.

  Bressler looked at White, who was scrubbing the black heel mark with a wet paper towel while whistling. The lieutenant recognized the tune. It was “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

  “Hockey puck,” the lieutenant said.

  C H A P T E R

  T h r e e

  “Got any ideas, Harry?” asked DiGeorgio.

  “About what?” Harry asked back, taking a turn at Green and Kearney streets.

  “You’ve got your choice,” DiGeorgio replied, looking out the window at the night life around North Beach. “The Tucker thing, the Fullmer thing, or dinner.”

  “Dinner,” Harry said without hesitation.

  “That’s what I like about you, Harry,” his partner commented. “You’re the only one who thinks about his stomach as much as I do.”

  “I’m tall,” Harry explained, taking Grant Avenue around Telegraph Hill. “Besides we’ve got some time. The whole day’s been a bust.”

  “What’ve you got in mind?”

  “I know a little place on Columbus Avenue. Off the Embarcadero. The atmosphere’s a little loud, but the roast beef sandwiches are good. And the onion rings are fried in beer.”

  “Little place,” said DiGeorgio. “Little loud. Roast beef. Onion rings. Beer. Right. I’m with you, Harry.”

  “You better believe it,” said Harry.

  Tanya’s was exactly like Harry described it. The two cops walked right into the midst of an undulating crowd. People were everywhere. To their left was a rectangular dance floor bracketed by a bar along the side wall and a tiny disc jockey’s room along the back wall. To their right were six tables set for four and a smaller bar so that the eaters wouldn’t have to dig through the dancers to get drinks. This section had a couple of opaque windows lining the side wall and three doors in the rear section.

  Harry shouldered his way into the dining area, walking right into the arms of an incredible brunette dressed in a strapless elastic top and designer jeans.

  “Harry!” the girl shouted in surprise over the throbbing music. “I thought you said you’d never come back here!”

  “I couldn’t stay away from the meat,” Harry shouted back.

  The girl threw her head back and laughed, giving DiGeorgio an enviable view of her torso. Harry wrapped one arm around her back so she wouldn’t pop out of her tube top entirely. “Tanya,” he called to the girl, “I want you to meet my partner, Frank DiGeorgio. Frank, this is the owner.”

  “Hey,” the girl said, dark eyes sparkling under her lustrous bangs, “good to meet you, Frank. Just sit down boys and enjoy the show. The meat is on me.”

  She winked at Harry who patted her on the butt as she drifted back toward the kitchen. The two men settled in at the table on the side wall closest to the rest room. DiGeorgio immediately did as Tanya instructed and feasted his eyes on the female dancers. Harry stuck his chin in one hand and looked over the bobbing heads.

  The day had indeed been a bust, he recalled. Neither the Garris or McCarthy mothers could tell them anything substantial to go on. The central files weren’t much help either. Ever since the Son of Sam massacre, the .44 Magnum had become the favorite weapon of psychos everywhere. Whenever some nut wanted to blow off a little steam by blowing away a few innocents, they cried for their daddy to buy them a Magnum. But there was nothing consistent in the research. Harry couldn’t establish a solid link to any particular person.

  Harry began to think he was wasting his time in San Fran. It was doubtful the McCarthy girl had been kidnapped back to her place of origin and the key to Tucker’s offing certainly wasn’t in the City by the Bay. But he couldn’t leave the Fullmer thing in Bressler and DiGeorgio’s lap. Especially since he was the one who had found the girl in the first place.

  Megan Fullmer was a nice, sandy-blonde girl of seventeen. She was found in what was left of a fashion leotard under the Oakland Bay Bridge—just a few blocks away from Tanya’s. The department had gotten a few investigatory nibbles, but no solid bites. A couple of other rape-murders cropped up in the North Beach area, but there was no solid connection between them other than the fact that each of the victims should have known better.

  That is, either the murdered girls were experienced or on a date. According to all the reports, every single victim wouldn’t have accepted a dance with another guy, let alone a ride. There seemed to be no way the murderer could get his target alone.

  “Man! You really know how to pick the restaurants!” DiGeorgio shouted to him, taking his mind off the murder musing. Harry smiled in a preoccupied sort of way and followed his partner’s gaze. Undulating under a strobe was an attractive auburn-haired girl. She was wearing a silky blue maillot bathing suit with a matching slit skirt and, of all things, a pair of sneakers.

  Harry shook his head in wonder. All you need to get into a dance club nowadays, he thought, was a bathing suit and a towel. The girl seemed refreshingly unaffected, so Harry kept a pleased eye on her. The strobe turned off and a multicolored spot turned on, bathing the girl in a rainbow. The girl smiled in appreciation and leaned over to say something to the girl next to her.

  The female companion was dressed in a strapless top that had a half-purple, half-blue band across her small breasts and a red torso which was tucked into red latex pants. Her hair was cut short in the shaggy punk style, her eyes were narrow, and her chin was strong and wide. DiGeorgio noticed her, too.

  “Dyke city for sure,�
� he commented. Harry just stared at the two girls while blowing on his left hand. The music stopped just as Tanya came back with their sandwiches. She bent down for Harry’s benefit, but he was looking over her shoulder at the other girls. He saw the short-hair say something and point to the rest room door. The auburn nodded and said something to her collegiate-looking date. He answered and she turned. Harry saw what she didn’t. Just before short-hair followed her, she locked eyes with collegiate. He smiled.

  Harry heard a buzzing in his ears. “What?” he said.

  “I said,” Tanya repeated, “you must have a bad case of dance fever. You’re not appreciating the sandwich or me.”

  Harry kissed her quickly. “Sorry. Got to go to the bathroom. Too much beer.” He slid out of his chair and moved toward the back door.

  “Is he kidding?” Tanya asked DiGeorgio. DiGeorgio shrugged.

  Harry stuck his head around the rest room door. He saw a stairway leading down. He took it to a short hallway going off in two directions, left and right. Down to the left was the ladies’ room. To the right was the men’s. Harry walked silently to the left and took up a position next to the lavatory door. He looked and listened.

  There was no other door in the left part of the hallway, but he heard a strange creaking, as if someone was having trouble with a particularly rusty pipe. Harry put the flat of his hand on the ladies’ room door. He leaned in. The door opened a crack. He was about to look when something slapped into the small of his back.

  He turned to face a muscle-bound guy with a mustache. “Hey, creep,” the guy said, “get your jollies somewhere else.”

  “I’m a police officer,” Harry said with a scowl.

  “Yeah, I’m Fran Tarkenton and That’s Incredible. Hit the road, Tom.” The guy jerked a thumb at the stairway, then folded his arms to show off his biceps.

  Harry looked at the guy for a second, figured “forget it,” then brushed around, and went back upstairs. He remembered what an old partner had said to him after he had been beaten up as a Peeping Tom during the “Scorpio” case. “Maybe that’s why they call you Dirty Harry,” Chico had said, or something to that effect. Good old college-educated Chico. Harry hoped he was having more luck on his new teaching job than Harry was having on this case.

  When Harry got back to the main floor, he noticed two things missing; most of DiGeorgio’s sandwich and the collegiate kid.

  “What’s the matter?” Tanya asked over a new set of music. “You not hungry or something?”

  “Hey, your roast beef needs something more than regular booze,” Harry said quickly. “You still got some wine downstairs?”

  “Yeah, sure, Harry, that’s a great idea. I’ll get you some.”

  “Nah,” he said lightly. “Stick around. Keep Frank company. That’ll be his dessert. I know where the stairs are.”

  But as soon as Harry left for the kitchen, DiGeorgio lost his appetite. “He’s on to something,” he said to Tanya.

  “Then why didn’t he come right out and say so?” she asked.

  “Because it could be nothing or it could be nasty,” DiGeorgio answered, wiping his mouth with the tablecloth. “Give me a beer and show me the back of this place, will ya?”

  The cook responded well when Harry entered.

  “Hey, Harry! Long time no see! What is it, you working for the health board now?”

  “Take it easy, Mike,” Harry replied, walking by quickly. “I, for one, like cat shit.”

  Mike the cook laughed and turned back to his tureens. Harry continued to a door in the back. Throwing it open and switching on the light, he made his way down the cramped, uneven stairway. One of the three naked bulbs that illuminated the large basement was out, so the far end was in darkness. Harry stopped for as long as it took him to pull out his .44 Magnum. Its barrel gleamed in the cellar’s yellow light.

  Harry carefully worked his way through the racks of food and beverage. These steel shelves were indiscriminately placed all over the enclosure so he had to move constantly. He took notice of the walls on either side. The building had known many owners so the structure was made of many products. One section was mortared stone, another was crumbling plaster, a third was boarded up. It was like that all over the basement.

  He had made it past the canned goods when the whumping started. Harry was taken off guard so he spun to pinpoint the noise’s location. Then he realized it was only the muffled bass beat of the disco music upstairs. He turned back toward the far wall and moved deeper into the darkness.

  The music and the coolness of the cellar gave Harry’s search an eerie edge. He looked in every corner of the cellar, trying to make a connection in his mind. He knew the men’s room had windows that opened out on a next door alley but where did the ladies’ room windows open to? If he had it figured right, there had to be a connection in this cellar.

  He came up empty. After searching the entire length twice. Harry admitted to himself that he was alone. He was about to attribute the whole thing to frustration over Tucker when he heard bass beats. They were out of sync with the music upstairs.

  Harry followed the sounds. They were like uneven pumps of air through a tight valve, making muffled bleats that ended on a slightly higher note. They were coming from the back wall, behind the wine rack.

  There was a small hole in the wall. Between the bottles there was a space on the back wall made by some planks and some bricks that didn’t quite fit together. Harry leaned down and looked through the hole.

  He saw short-hair, collegiate, and two other guys raping the second girl.

  The light from the ladies’ room windows made it clear enough. There was a space between the lavatory and the cellar. And in that space short-hair was holding the auburn-haired girl’s head in her lap; one hand clenched in her red hair, the other holding the girl’s panties in her mouth. Collegiate was holding down her arms on either side of short-hair’s sitting form. Another guy was holding her ankles around the final guy’s raping form. They were all positioned in such a way that the raper had his back to Harry. The leg-holder was a bit to Harry’s right while the other two were facing him, but too intent on their writhing victim to notice the cop’s face in the darkness beyond the little hole in the wall.

  Harry put his weapon away. As good as he was, he didn’t see a way of nailing all four without hurting the girl. But if he could split them up, he might be able to pick them off. Harry studied the hole. It was about five inches wide and four inches tall, surrounded by crumbling cement and rotting wood. Harry judged the rapist to be about twenty inches away from the hole. Harry took off his jacket.

  Harry clenched and unclenched his fists. Harry took two deep, silent breaths. Harry took up a solid position in front of the hole. Harry reached in and wrapped his right arm around the rapist’s neck.

  “You remember what it was like being born?” he asked.

  Then he pulled.

  The rapist’s head slammed into the wall with the speed and power of a wrecking ball. Harry felt the concrete scrape against the back of his hand, then the material gave way and he was smashing the rapist’s shoulders against the widening hole. He wrapped his other hand around the rapist’s neck and kept pulling. The wall held for a minute, then opened to let the bastard through.

  Harry hauled the choking, terrified rapist through the wall, through the wine bottles, and across the metal rack. Glass and liquid exploded in every direction from the force of Harry’s violent maneuver. He pulled until the rapist’s head was directly in front of him then swung to the side and threw the guy away.

  The rapist flew headfirst into another metal rack, bringing it down with him. He came to a rest, his neck broken, twisted among ten-pound cans of tomatoes.

  Harry’s Magnum was out before he even let completely go of the rapist. He pointed it through the bigger hole just as short-hair was whipping out a switchblade. She hauled the victim’s head back to expose her neck and brought the blade up, snarling.

  Harry shot her between the tits.<
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  Even before her back exploded out, the two remaining guys were crawling through the lavatory windows. Harry wasn’t going to be particular whether Collegiate bought it next, so he shot through the first window that came into his sights. One of the remaining rapists blew into the ladies’ room in a shower of crimson liquid and glittering glass. The last guy slithered all the way through and hauled ass for the ladies’ room door.

  Harry got a bead on the retreating figure. It was Collegiate. He was squeezing the trigger when the victim’s head floated into his view, her eyes tightly closed, tears rolling down her blood-splattered face, her mouth open in a silent wail and short-hair’s hand still tightly clenched in her hair. Harry let his trigger finger go slack. He lowered his gun just as the bathroom door slammed shut behind the last rapist.

  Collegiate tore down the hall to the men’s room, knocking over a coed couple in the process. In mortal fear that the big guy with the big gun might be coming after him he slammed through the men’s room door, roared past the urinals and dove headfirst through the window. He fell into the alleyway headfirst, cutting himself badly on the broken glass.

  The panic-stricken kid rolled and crashed up against the alley wall. He looked back through the broken window. The lavatory was empty. The big guy wasn’t coming after him that way. Collegiate nearly cried with relief. He was all set to take off into the night when DiGeorgio stuck the barrel of his service revolver against the kid’s neck.

  “Going somewhere?” he inquired. What DiGeorgio lacked in originality he made up for in timing.

  Harry crawled into the newly widened hole between the cellar and the ladies’ room wall. He pried short-hair’s fingers from the auburn hair. Using a piece of the victim’s torn dress, he wiped the blood from the crying girl’s face. Then he wrapped his jacket around her waist to cover what had been exposed. Then, gently, he took the auburn-haired girl in his arms. Later, he carried her upstairs.

  Her name was Faye, and she didn’t like pretty girls. Collegiate told them everything back at headquarters. Faye, it seemed, had a real interesting way of showing her dislike of pretty girls. Faye would make deals. Faye would make deals with guys who liked pretty girls a little too much. Faye would make deals with guys who pretty girls didn’t like at all.