by Dane Hartman
The first guy Faye made a deal with wound up being Megan Fullmer’s last date. Faye perfected her technique with several deals after that. The date would cover for Faye, and Faye would provide a cover for the date. While it would seem a rapist stole the girl from the date, Faye discovered the best way to get a girl from her date was to have the date be the rapist.
Harry and DiGeorgio were happy to collect all the previous dates that very morning. With Collegiate’s confession, it was child’s play to knock the others’ stories. By midday, the Fullmer case had netted four murderers.
“That’s what I love about this job,” Harry said with disgust. “It’s a showcase for humanity’s ingenuity. The fucking ways they think up for killing each other off . . .”
DiGeorgio snorted and went back to his 1977 Playboy. The Playmate of the Month was the one with the blonde hair all the way to her ass. Harry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as DiGeorgio turned the magazine sideways and folded out. Harry was thinking about his next move on the Tucker case when Sergeant Reineke walked in.
“I’ve got good news and bad news, Harry,” he said without a smile. “The good news is they just found a girl answering McCarthy’s description in L.A.”
Harry opened his eyes and sat up. “The bad news?”
“She’s got a .44 slug in her.”
Harry leaned back. Slowly. DiGeorgio put the Playboy down on the desk and snorted. “You win some and you lose some,” he said.
Harry got up and put on his coat. He stopped beside Reineke on the way out. “Tell Confucius to find another partner,” he told the sergeant. “I’ll be in L.A.”
Candice McCarthy was dead. Harry Callahan was tired. Los Angeles Homicide Detective Lester Shannon was disgusted. They all were in the bridal suite of a North Hollywood hotel.
“Unbelievable,” Shannon was saying. “He made the reservation by phone, paid a small time stoolie to check in and get the key, then carried his ‘bride’ over the threshold in broad daylight.”
Harry didn’t look up from the girl’s still figure on the blood-soaked bed. Her arms were up, tied to the brass headboard. Her mouth was open, filled with a terry washcloth held in place with one of her stockings. Her green silk shirt was open, exposing the bullet wound in the middle of her chest. The coroner had said that her eyes were open under the handkerchief blindfold.
“Anybody see them come in?” Harry asked the muscular L.A. detective.
“Yeah, a lady whose window faced the entrance. She watched them because she thought they looked so cute. The bride had her arms around her hubbie’s neck and wore a veil. The groom wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low and had a coat draped over his shoulders with the collar up. The lady upstairs couldn’t see the girl’s hands or the guy’s face.”
“Didn’t she think it strange that the girl was wearing a veil with a green shirt and jeans?”
“She wasn’t wearing jeans by then,” Shannon answered. “She had on a long skirt. And the lady thought the veil was cutest of all. A blow struck for tradition and all that.”
Harry nodded and sighed. He noticed a variety of different clothes scattered around the room, including the denims and long skirt. The skirt had covered the ropes around McCarthy’s ankles, the veil had covered the gag in her mouth and the coat had covered the bindings on her wrists. The hitman was very professional and very sick. He took a chance by bringing a live witness into a motel to kill her, but he must have really got off on it.
“He couldn’t leave her alive,” Shannon muttered. “What was it?” he asked Harry, “A question of pride?”
“A question of identification,” answered Harry. “Anybody else see him?”
“No. He ordered everything through room service, had the waiter leave his meals outside the door and left the signed bill with the leftovers.”
“And naturally he left without paying up.”
“Naturally,” said Shannon, his handsome face screwing into an expression of distaste. “He left her as collateral,” he concluded, motioning to the corpse on the bed.
“How about the stoolie who fronted for him at the desk?” Harry inquired further.
“The manager remembers him as a short, wiry guy, like an ex-jockey or something,” Shannon described. “We have him figured as Little Brian Heald, a guy who works over at the Warner’s lot.”
“Pick him up yet?”
“The positive I.D. came through just when you showed up,” Shannon blandly replied, watching the rest of his men troop into the room and start wrapping the body up. “I’ll do it personally when we’re through here.”
“We’re through here,” Harry declared pointedly. “Let’s go.”
Shannon didn’t need much convincing. For a homicide detective, his demeanor was as bland as his face was handsome. Harry pegged him for a failed actor turned cop. Not only did he take directions willingly, he couldn’t seem to stay quiet. He always had to keep himself entertained, performing for his audience of one.
Los Angeles was like that all over, Harry decided, looking out the window of Shannon’s unmarked car. If you weren’t working on a movie, you weren’t working. Even Heald, known about town as a small-time hood, did his nine-to-five at a studio. Harry could see Heald practicing his Richard Widmark laugh and Shannon wishing he lived at 77 Sunset Strip.
“Listen,” Shannon interrupted his thoughts, “if this hitman was so hot to keep himself a secret, why did he kidnap the girl at all? Why didn’t he just kill her at the park along with the Garris kid?”
“I don’t know,” Harry answered irritably, “Maybe he was homicidal and horny.”
Shannon laughed at that. Harry scowled and looked out the window. They were heading for the Warner Studio lot along Barham Boulevard, treating the San Francisco inspector to the sights of wide, nearly empty sidewalks and wide, nearly full open-air restaurants.
“No, really,” Shannon pressed. “It’s like he doesn’t want anyone to know what he looks like, but he wants everyone to know he did it.”
“Yeah,” Harry replied drily. He stared at the palm trees, stores, and one-story cement, adobe, and paneled dwellings as they seemed to zip by the car. He had to admit to himself that Shannon’s question and theory were valid. It would be hard for Harry to believe that the mystery hitman was just a joke-playing, bloodthirsty psycho, although all the signs pointed to it.
But Harry kept looking behind the facts. Why had the guy chopped up two innocent kids at the amusement park? Why drag a girl from Fullerton to L.A. only to kill her in a honeymoon hotel? Why be such a slavering bastard about the whole thing?
He was getting a very uncomfortable feeling about the whole Tucker investigation. The hitman had killed the sheriff in the most spectacular way possible, then he seemed intent on leaving a trail that was about as subtle as a thermonuclear attack. Why, Harry kept asking himself. Why not bury the girl’s body so there’d be nothing to bring either the Fullerton or San Fran force to L.A.? And why leave a live stoolie around to put the finger on him? Even if Heald got his orders over the phone, he was still around to say that he did. At the very least, Harry would know he was heading in the right direction.
It didn’t make sense. Up until now, no one could get a line on this particular hitman. Unless he had started his business with Tucker, that anonymity was the sign of a pro. So why was a pro leaving a trail of blood crumbs for Harry to follow? The whole thing stunk worse than the drank tank on Sunday morning.
“Here we are,” Shannon announced, turning onto the Warner lot. Harry looked up while the L.A. detective flashed his I.D. to the gate guard. Directly in front of them was an old fashioned water tower marked “The Burbank Studios.” All around that were two- and three-story buildings nestled amidst trees, hills and greenery. Shannon didn’t ask for any information or directions. The L.A. detective knew where he was going. Harry figured he had been to the studio as many times before as he could manage. Shannon just silently drove along a multicolored line painted on the dark pavement.
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br /> “Those color lines direct visitors to different departments,” he explained to Harry. “Heald works in the delivery department, which crosses the blue line.”
“Uh-huh,” Harry answered, seeing a speed bump up ahead.
As soon as Shannon had slowed to cross the mound, Harry opened his door and hopped out. Shannon braked in surprise. Before the L.A. cop could say anything, however Harry had laid his hands on the open passenger’s window and leaned down to elaborate.
“There’s no way Heald could think he wouldn’t be recognized. If he’s here at all, he’ll be waiting for us. Just in case he wants to do it the hard way, I’ll be waiting for him around back.”
Shannon, true to Harry’s estimation of him, nodded and drove on. After the cop car had turned out of sight, Harry had to admit to himself that he’d rather work with bland Shannon than Sergeant Baker of Fullerton. But whether Shannon had the sense of DiGeorgio was yet to be determined. Harry started walking along the blue line.
About fifty feet around the next corner, Harry passed a sign pointing out the messenger office as being only a trailer on the other side of the back lot. Harry left the blue line and started across a parking lot located in between a row of dressing rooms and a three-story office building.
Just as he was moving around the right side of the latter structure, dozens of men dressed in cowboy outfits emerged from the former locale, shepherded by a small, bespectacled, mustached man with a megaphone and a clipboard.
“Don’t walk on the grass, OK?” the man called through the amplifier; “OK, guys, you know your places from yesterday, right? They’re all ready on location with the same scene as yesterday, all right? Just a little more energy and a little more action and we can get it in the can today. All right, OK?”
The extras didn’t deem to answer. They just trooped toward Harry, walking on anything they wanted. Harry slowed his pace so that he blended in with the buckskin. It was a good camouflage. Heald wouldn’t spot him even if he were looking at this crowd.
“Hey, you!” Harry heard the megaphone man call. “Hey! Why aren’t you in costume? Hey, the guy in brown. The tall guy. Hey!”
It wasn’t until the third “hey” that Harry realized the man was talking to him. Not wanting to leave the cover of the crowd, he simply raised his hand in an “A-OK” sign, hoping the man would take for granted that Harry knew what he was doing. But he had underestimated the superiority complexes of assistant directors. He had just made it to the edge of the Western set when the megaphone man caught up with him.
“Listen, Stilt,” the short, intense man said, “I’m talking to you. Where’s your costume?”
Without slowing his stride, Harry answered. “You’re only the second person who’s ever called me ‘Stilt.’ I didn’t slug the first one because he was carrying a gun. You’re only carrying a megaphone.”
The man slowed and put his hands up in supplication. “I’m only asking a question, for Chrissake.” he said to no one in particular. “I’m only doing my job. Hey, are you on the list?” he called after Harry, flipping through the pages on his clipboard. “Hey, what’s your number?”
Not having a number and not being on the list, Harry took the moment to break off from the sea of extras, moving into an alley between two Western mock-ups. Trotting down the worn path, he noticed that only the front of the buildings were wild Western. They were just façades stuck onto what looked like inner-city brownstones.
Harry reached the rear of the set and spotted the messenger trailer across the way. There were only a group of trees, a small forest, separating him from his quarry. As he watched, Shannon’s car pulled into the trailer parking area. Harry looked back toward the Western street. The megaphone man was framed in the alley opening, still checking his list and scanning the crowd of cowboys. Harry smiled, turned back toward the trailer, and set off for the woods.
Just as he reached the first tree, a tiny, thin man burst out the rear door of the trailer, a veritable tornado of swirling papers in his wake. Harry remained motionless until the harried figure of Lester Shannon appeared in the back door opening, his hair disheveled, his face red, and his feet kicking at a few boxes in his way.
“Goddamn it, Heald!” the L.A. detective shouted. “Halt, would ya?”
The stoolie didn’t look like he intended to even slow down. The little guy was tearing up the dirt toward the back lot. Harry momentarily considered bringing him down with a Magnum bullet, but after a second’s thought, left his weapon where it was. A damaged Heald wouldn’t help at all come interrogation time. Instead, Harry ambled back the way he had come.
The stoolie and the San Francisco cop both arrived on the Western set at the same time. It was the time when the director called “action!”
In order to save time, the crew was shooting simultaneously inside the bar and out on the street. Inside the bar, stuntmen dressed as cowboys were struggling on a two-story interior set. Outside, more men were fake fighting on the bar’s balcony and on the street proper. Crawling around the floor, seated behind the bar, and set up behind the camera were special-effects people, ready to detonate various blood bags, exploding glass, and bullet holes on cue.
Not one of them noticed as Heald raced into the bar through the back way with Harry close behind.
The scene was well choreographed. The bar was packed wall to wall with swinging men. They were swinging their fists, swinging their bodies over bannisters, into chairs, onto tables, and down stairs. One man was even swinging from the chandelier.
Little Brian Heald burst into the scene from the rear, bumping into a stuntman. That stuntman was about to dodge a roundhouse right. Heald knocked him right into the swing.
Both actors were rocked by the connection. Heald slipped by just as the man on the receiving end flew back into Harry Callahan’s arms. Quickly recovering, the punched man found his feet, whirled around, and slugged the cop in the jaw.
Harry’s head snapped back, but the rest of his body remained motionless. He heard his brain hum and his eyes clouded, but only for a second. Blinking his momentarily misty eyes, Harry looked at the stuntman. He could see real anger in the fighting man’s face, so he straight-armed the actor in the neck.
The stuntman choked, stumbled back a step, then fell to his knees. Directly behind him another actor was supposed to run toward the stairs. Instead he fell over the choking man. The man behind him was supposed to fake a punch toward another directly in front of him. But because of the falling man’s kicking feet pushing him forward, the punch became real. The man’s fist just glanced off the target’s shoulder, but it was enough to throw his practiced response off. Instead of falling across the bar itself, the stuntman collided into two other fighters.
Heald saw which way the fake fight was going. He took advantage of the situation by pushing as many stuntmen as he could into each other and slithering away just as Harry got close to him. Invariably the enraged stuntmen would whirl to see who pushed them and invariably Harry would be standing there.
The first attacker tried to knee Callahan in the balls. Harry threw the bottom of his body back and threw the flat of his hand into the man’s nose. The first attacker fell backward, a column of blood marking his fall.
The second attacker complicated matters by taking a swing at Harry while an off-set technician set off a “squib” on the man’s chest by remote control. Callahan ducked under the swing just as the small explosive attached to a steel plate on the man’s chest blew out, ripping open a fake blood bag. The stuntman’s fist missed the cop, but the crimson gore caught Harry full in the face.
The cop straightened with his face dripping red. Harry put both hands on the second attackers shoulder and pushed. Off balance because of his missed punch, the stuntman fell on his side.
The third and fourth attackers came from two sides. The third was another Heald-primed stuntman. The fourth was a guy who had witnessed Harry’s retaliation against the first and second. The third swung his right arm back, trying to hi
t whoever pushed him without turning around. The fourth hopped over the downed second man, his fists clenched for the kill.
Harry reached in between the clenched fists to grab the latter attacker by the shirt front. With an abrupt jerk, he pulled the fourth guy’s head into the third’s backward trajectory. One man’s knuckles collided with the other’s lips. Harry dropped the latter and sidestepped the former just in time to see Heald crawling toward the front door. Unfortunately, there were still about a dozen guys between him and the stoolie.
With an angry shout, Harry started hauling actors out of his way. When the third cameraman suddenly saw a bloody man in modern dress plowing through its line of sight, it reported it by radio to the assistant director. After the assistant told the director, an abrupt halt was called to the proceedings. But no matter how many “cuts” were called, the stuntmen were too far gone to stop. By that time the fight was real for them.
Even Heald was getting caught up in the brawl. When he saw Harry barreling toward him, he scrambled to his feet and pulled a six gun out of a struggling stuntman’s holster. Still backing toward the door, he opened up on the rampaging Harry. The stoolie was wondering why the “bullets” weren’t having any effect when two more stuntmen ran in to join the fray. They smacked right into Heald, sending the blank-filled gun spinning to the floor and the stoolie spinning under a table.
At that juncture, the assistant director came roaring in, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Cut! Cut, goddamn it! Didn’t you hear the director? Cut, for Chrissake!”
Finally the huge bunch of stuntmen started to respond, but there were still too many milling and rolling about for Harry to get to Heald. The assistant director was having no trouble getting to Harry, however. He plowed straight through until he was screaming up into Callahan’s still-wet face.
